Birds on a Wire

On "Ken's blog" there was a post that overhead power lines were unsightly.. This picture is so pretty, the birds look like music notes on a staff. One point for overhead power lines! This picture was taken in San Diego, CA by Vladimir Jevtic.

Enron = Ethics

This weekend I watched the documentary "Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room" and needless to say, it made me rather grumpy. I remember what it was like in California with skyrocketing electricity prices and roling blackouts. Now to see what it possibly was like there, and the mentality of the people responsible for it, it is just disgusting to me. So much money was flying around and so little thought as to what was going on. Granted, the documentary was biased, but if even a little of it was true, it would still be disheartening to say the least.

Today the head honchos of the company (the smartest guys in the room) are starting their trial. Should be interesting. Comically, the website The Smoking Gun published the "Enron Code of Ethics." To see it click here.

There is no Spoon

I am not a spoon. Honest. I'm really a fork. Or maybe a threek.

Holiday Nuts

4 nuts during the holidays.

Yaspan's Movie Reviews #3 - Annie

We recently came across the musical Annie on television. It was the scene where Miss Hannigan (played by Carol Burnett) sings the showstopper song called Little Girls. A movie review was written on Netflix through my account by Apricot, writing from a female perspective. We put her initials on the Netflix review but, apparently they didn't like the idea... here is how the review reads:

"--Brian Yaspan--

Over twenty years later since I was a little girl, Miss Hannigan's stellar performance of "Little Girls" still mezmerizes me! Miss Hannigan (played by Carol Burnett) is indeed "an ordinary woman with feelings" who exhibits a parade of personas and emotions during this one song -- from drunkard and loony to a working-class gal workin' hard for the weekend. Hardened but fragile, tough but vunerable -- this is Carol Burnett at her best until the Rooster ruins the party!"

It does sound a bit like the Rooster is quite the character! In fact, the Rooster is played by none other than a slim Tim Curry!

I've Taken Back My Inbox

For as long as I've had email, I've used Eudora from Qualcomm. I just liked it so much better than Outlook or anything else that was out there. Now that I am at Vanderbilt, their preferred email client is called Mulberry. Besides having a cool logo (see right) it has absolutely nothing going for it and it is probably the most frustrating piece of software ever written. Basically, I was sick of it and decided to find out what else was out there. Fortunately, there is the Mozilla foundation who have the Thunderbird email client. First off, I have to say it has a much cooler logo than Mulberry (see left). Second, I just wanted to say (and this is the point of this post) that this email client is just great! The interface is intuitive, I can get RSS feeds, and it is very customizable. I have to give it to the open source software movement. So far, Firefox and Thunderbird are two of the best programs I've used in a while. You can get them here.

Snow! And Penguins! In Nashville!

It finally really snowed here last night, and we had a penguin visit! So cute...

Candy Bars

For a long time, if I wanted a candy bar, I would choose one of the ones with all the stuffings... nougat, caramel, nuts, tunnels of fudge, etc... My favorites here were 3 Musketeers and Twix. The Mars company triumvirate has always facinated me. You start with 3 Musketeers, just chocolate and nougat. Then when you add caramel, it becomes a Milky Way. Finally with the addition of some type of nut (peanuts or almonds), you have a Snickers. Offshoots of this include Twix and Mars Bar. I've never eaten a Mars bar so I don't know what differentiates them.

Recently though, I have been getting the simple chocolate bars and really enjoying them. I think it has to do with seeing the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, because I started doing this this summer. I just finished eating a Hershey's Special Dark, and found it quite good. It is still nothing compared to European chocolate bars, but it is still a nice, simple treat.

Anyway, this is just a message to remember to get out and enjoy a candy bar every once in a while. It's good and it will help brighten your day.

Belated New Year's Post

This year for New Year's, my cousin Matt and his girlfriend Sarah came out here to visit. It was a great time. We actually planned ahead for New Year's eve and got tickets to see the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Del McCroury (sp?) Band play. We got all dressed up and went to the gig. However, there was noone there! It was 10 minutes before the gig was supposed to start, and the entire street was empty!

Getting closer to the place, we see a handtaped sign up on the door saying "The show has been cancelled, Sorry for the inconvenince."

After a good laugh, we went to another show in town which was average at best, but was in an old movie theater with a full bar. Not too shabby.

Also the venue refunded our money for the first show and as a consolation gave us 2 tickets to another show in February.

Happy New Year!