A Veritable Cornucopia of Useless Information

The JiffyLube on 48th & Normal in Lincoln currently proclaims on its marquee:

LOVE IT

LUBE IT

I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.

I shouldn’t let an entire month go by without a blog post, eh?  What should you, dear reader, do in response to this?

I recommend that you continue to be amazed that I’m not closely related to (the vast majority of) you, send along unsolicited Wii-related gifts, and cheer on the St. Edward Beavers next Thursday during their first appearance in Lincoln in 22 years.

If nothing else, my February wasn’t as life-changing as it was for my sister.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve grown out a goatee, as is my (sporadic) winter custom.  The longest period of time I’ve ever kept a goatee was about a month, so I’ve never experienced a point in my life where the “evil stroking of the facial hair on the chin” ceases to be fun.  I don’t know how long I’ll keep this one around, but if that happens, it’s gone.
I also feel a bit more metal with the goatee, which is especially useful to me lately.

It’s already nearly a full month into 2007.  Time may fly when one is having fun, but it also flies when one has a very stable (if uninteresting) routine.  So, what, you may ask, have I been doing to keep myself occupied these past few weeks?  Well…

• I’m (once again) actively pursuing the completion of my master’s degree;
• I am still awaiting the day when I will be able to walk into a store and buy my “Christmas” present;
• I’ve blown money on not one, but two additional genetic DNA tests;
• I keep people updated on my status using bulleted lists.

I spent the past few days traveling to and from Dallas to watch Nebraska take on Auburn in the Cotton Bowl.  I wish the game had turned out differently than it did, but I still had a good time and a very pleasant trip overall.  Here’s some random observations for your consideration…

• As my friend Henry noted several months back, people leave/abandon their cars along the side of the road much more often in Oklahoma (and Texas) than they do around here.
• The “cult of the megachurch” is much more advanced in Texas than it is here.  Nearly every freeway exit in the DFW metroplex has a sprawling church campus proudly proclaiming its Baptist or Christian affiliation (which seems to be one’s only choice among Southern houses of worship).
• Another interesting artifact of a North/South religious divide is the complete lack of pro-life billboards (in my observations) anywhere south of I-70.  This strengthens my suspicions that “abortion as a major issue” is, in large part, a Catholic phenomenon, not an evangelical one.  My roommate summed up the North/South divide quite eloquently as the difference between being moral and being pious.
• Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar is a wonderful place to spend New Year’s Eve, and, I presume, any other night of the year.
• Texans really love their regional fast food chains.  Whataburger makes a delightful non-greasy burger, but I would love to see a Taco Bueno open in Lincoln someday (incredibly, one just opened in Omaha); the Party Burrito is drunk-food Mexican heaven.
• Getting in and out of the Texas State Fairgrounds is extremely painful.  Lincoln’s traffic control before and after Nebraska games is much, much better.
• Tulsa, in both population and demographics, is Omaha’s long-lost twin city.  If it was the largest city in the state, there would be an uncanny resemblance.
• The rural airports in southern and central Kansas are proportionally larger (for the populations they serve) than their counterparts elsewhere.  Presumably, Wichita’s position as general aviation capital of the world extends across much of the state.
• I lost count of how many hawks I saw in central Kansas.  In some places, there would be 2-3 hawks perched on fence posts per mile.
• Manhattan, Kansas is *really* in the middle of nowhere, but is much more hilly and pine-covered than I imagined.

Just over a week ago (December 10), I was driving back from a family Christmas in Columbus.  I was about 5 miles west of Bellwood when an animal ran across the road about 200 feet in front of my vehicle.  It ran very quickly and had disappeared into some trees just to the south of the highway before I knew it, but the sum of its physical characteristics was quite unusual:

• Size: around that of a large dog or small doe
• Color: tan
• Gait: more “cat-like” than “dog-like”

I was about to write it off as a bobcat when one final observation came back to me: it had a long tail.

So, yeah, I can now count myself among the numbers of people who claim an unverified mountain lion sighting in Nebraska.  Go me.

Sorry, today gave me a tailor-made excuse for the title of this post.

I enjoy technology. To be specific, I enjoy upgrading every aspect of my technology to the latest version available. While the former is reasonably common, the latter is best described as “masochistic and ridiculous”. So, with that in mind, I set out yesterday to install a not-terribly-public build of a pre-release operating system on hardware that’s only accidentally compatible with said operating system.

The result? It installed successfully, but only after I realized that “20 minutes of a black screen, no response to user commands and constant drive spinning” means it’s not done yet, but that “8 hours of a black screen, no response to user commands and constant drive spinning” does indicate a successful install.

Based on the ratios of campaign signs I saw while driving to/from my parents’ house last weekend, here’s my “fearless” predictions for three Nebraska elections:

• Senate: Ben Nelson over Pete Ricketts, by a smaller-than-projected margin
• Governor: Dave Heineman over David Hahn, by a large margin
• 3rd District: Scott Kleeb over Adrian Smith, by a large margin

Bumper sticker slogans - it’s free and easy to do!  Make your own!  If nothing else, I’m pretty sure I didn’t read or hear these at some point in the past:

• Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but guns make it a lot easier for people to kill people.
• Violence doesn’t solve anything, but it’s a very effective means of conveying one’s point.
• The One Law of Broken Relationships: men are pigs; women are gullible.