Although I’m less then 5 minutes from the heart of the RNC action, and up until last month I would have been living in the middle of it - I just can’t tear myself away and go over there. As much as I wanted to document it all - my respect and loathing for the police is just to great.

I’ve been an ACLU spotter for a long time, I’ve been arrested in Illinois and WIsconsin multiple times. But I just couldn’t do it here. To much on the line these days.

But I highly recommend spotting once if you’ve never done it. You go where the protesters are, hand out ACLU information, and ’spot’ arrests and call the ACLU legal team to let them know what’s going down.

It can be rough, and you can be swept up with the fray, but at the end of the day, you do feel really good about making a difference.

Although Max already posted this over at the MNSpeak water cooler, I felt it was odd enough for me to repost as well. One more reason to not live in Lakeville besides the fact that it’s Lakeville comes from their very own Police Department and an article from the Pioneer Press - Lakeville Police Surprise Sleeping Man With 3am reminder to lock his doors.

Yes, they went into his house and woke him up at 3am to remind him to lock his doors. Awesome.

Complete article text is after the jump, in case you can’t see it.

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There’s a lot of neat things going down in the TC this weekend, and here are some choice ones to check out!

The Bent Festival - Happening yesterday until Saturday, the 5th annual Bent Festival makes it’s last leg stop here in Minneapolis. Check them out at Intermedia Arts, on 28th and Lyndale. You’ll meet & greet and listen to some of the most interesting music in the world of DIY circuit bending. From soft soothing melodies to a brash jarring cacophony of sounds - you can find it there. At $10 per concert, it’s your best choice for 6 solid hours of music, and on Saturday there is a wealth of workshops to show you how to do it yourself and a barbecue to help you keep going! Please Note: They don’t like credit cards, so bring cash. And some of the workshops have a fee, so keep that in mind.

Studio Bricolage’s First Friday - A lot of people know about Leonardo’s Basement, an organization that helps boys and girls from 6 - 16 expand their minds with the help of music, art, robotics and more. But did you also know they hold an event every First Friday of the month at Studio Bricolage? Studio Bricolage is the adult oriented version of Leonardo’s Basement. For only $10, this month’s session will teach you how to melt plastic toys into bowls, crochet plastic bags together, create your own inflatables and a whole lot more. We’ve been here a few times, and it’s always a great time¹

Black Dog Exhibit Opener - If you’re not doing anything at all tonight and you’re in the St. Paul area, check out the Black Dog Coffee & Wine Bar for the opening night of their “Limitless Energy” exhibit - showing the energy that resides within the artist. Cost is free, and you can see some of my stuff! And maybe, even, buy it!² And remember, my art comes JACC approved, for that extra goodness!

And now for a few shots from last night’s Bent concert

1. Really looking forward to their Arduino workshops in June! [↩]
2. Yes, I’m a shameless whore. I’m learning that’s just the artist’s way [↩]

My home state of Minnesota is known for many many things. Our progressive politics and social policies. Our love of Norway. Our 10,000 lakes¹. Our health. Our highly educated and literate population. Paper mills. First iron ore, now taconite. Hockey. We get around.

We’ve also had our share of stars: Prince, Husker Du, The Replacements, Soul Asylum, Eddie Albert, Judy Garland, Jessica Lange, Winona Ryder, Vince Vaughn, Josh Hartnett, Jessica Biel, Melissa Peterman, Jonny Lang, Joel and Ethan Coen, Terry Gilliam and Mike Todd.

Our GDP is $234 billion (In 2005). Our state drink is milk. We’re the first state to mandate the use of ethanol fuel and we’re US’ largest producer of sugar beets, sweet corn, and green peas for processing, and farm-raised turkeys.

That’s all great, but none of them matter.

Our greatest natural resource is Angus “Mac” MacGyver.

It’s true.

Ok, so Mac is really Richard Dean Anderson - also a Minnesota native, but I won’t focus on that, even though he decided to become an actor when he took a cross-country bike ride from Minnesota to ALASKA after college. Friggin’ Alaska. On a bike. From here. Yes, it’s safe to say that Richard Dean Anderson and MacGyver are one in the same.

Mac is the reason I’ve carried a Swiss Army knife with me every day for over a decade. He’s the real reason I was in the boy scouts, and the reason I decided to learn dozens of knots and lashing wood together instead of hanging out with the other scouts at our Jamborees. He’s how I want Minnesota to be thought of: Quiet, Smart, Inventive. Someone you want on your side when the going gets tough.

Today is MacGyver’s 57th birthday. Born March 23rd, 1951 in Mission City, MN, he grew up to study physics at Western Tech, and then signed on to the Phoenix Foundation, where he learned to solve problems not with brawn, but with his brains.

Let’s all celebrate Minnesota’s greatest natural resource: MacGyver.

Mac is so epic that recently CBS decided to give him away to the masses, and as such you can now logon and watch every single episode!

And as great as it is to watch it online, it’s nothing compared to seeing it on a modern big screen, so go out and buy yourself the first season of MacGyver:

Then go out and buy yourself a MacGyver action figure:

Or, even better, the MacGyver multi-tool:

Add to that the appropriately titles “MacGyver” watch, with it’s combo watch/mp3 to round out the look:

And even more MacGyver links!

Read about him on Wikipedia, hit up MacGyver online to see every single MacGyverism he’s made. And be sure to check out TV.Com to catch those reruns!

It’s safe to say that Minnesota, and even the entire world, is a better place with him around - so happy birthday, Mac!

1. Actually, Minnesota has 11,842 lakes that are 10 acres in size or larger. Now you know. [↩]

I wanted to blog about how Google maps now has Street View for the Twin Cities, but all my friends have beaten me to it. Screw them and their promptness. Anyway, it’s true. Yay. Look - it’s our place!

The first real snow a few days ago - and there’s more on the way.

In the loft looking out:

A shot out the window:

So it truly did snow. Right smack downtown we received about 5 glorious inches of it - and there’s more scheduled for tomorrow.
I did take some pictures looking out of the loft, which I forgot to upload and will do so when I get home. I was going to walk around taking photos, but it was cold and windy and the snow was falling pretty heavily so I said pffft, screw it - back to Team Fortress 2!

But yes, terribly sorry about not uploading a picture. Sometimes it can seem like such a pain - download to my PC, upload to my Flickr account, blah blah blah - I just wish something would do it automagically. Oh wait, there is - Eye-Fi is a recent innovation and one people have been singing the praises of. It combines a 2GB Secure-Digital flash storage card and a WiFi connection all in one wonderfully orange package. You can upload the photos to your PC or you can send them to 1 of 15 photo sharing sites - such as Flickr. The card holds onto new photos until it senses that the WiFi connection you’ve setup is available, and then sends just the newest untransferred photos on over. Don’t want the world seeing all your photos? Configure them to upload as ‘private’ and there you go. Convenience on go! I could really use it and *gasp* don’t ya know, it sells on Amazon and is conveniently on my Wish List! Oh, and with it I’ll need an SD to Compact Flash adapter too. Now get going - Christmas is only a few weeks away!

The St. Paul Winter Carnival is selling shares of stock this year. No, not stock like you’d see on NASDAQ, but a stock in the festival. It’s called the Stock in a Block program and for just $122 “the public can help keep the Carnival “cool” by buying stock in a block of ice. Five dollars from each stock sale will go to the Dorothy Day Center in Saint Paul to help provide warm meals for fellow community members in need.”¹

1. See http://www.winter-carnival.com/stock_in_a_block/ [↩]

So I’ve tidied up the blog a bit and streamlined some things¹.
I removed the tag cloud because, well, they’re stupid and no one really uses them like they should, anyway. In its place sits a new blogroll of TC people. Blogs of people in the area I come across, I’ll just keep adding them to it. If you want yours added to the list, just leave a comment. I don’t really like how there isn’t really a definitive separation between individual links, I’ll have to see if I can’t fix that later.
I’ve also added a new “Minnesota Links” page - just a set of URLs I like to hit up that involves my home state. I’ll add to that as well when I come across new resources.

I went to bed last night seeing a dusting of snow outside. Thought I’d have a picture of the snowfall for you today, but when I woke up it was all gone. Though supposedly we’ll have up to an inch of snow tonight, so maybe tomorrow I’ll have the picture²

Also, I’m working on a long term story now. In my quest to prove “You can never really hide yourself on the internet” I’ve created a second blog. I’m using a completely new login ID, one that has nothing to do with me. I’m writing posts about things that are more out of scope then I normally do, and I’m rewording things currently happening or not writing about it at all. Nevertheless, in 6 months time or so, I will have an exhaustive article on performing internet forensics.
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1. Plus added a sweet footnotes plugin so I can do this [↩]
2. Damn, I remember trick or treating in the snow [↩]

If you’ve never heard of ALDI, you should read up on it. Basically, it’s an ultra-low priced supermarket. You can come out with an entire shopping cart full for $50. They can charge such low prices because their whole chain is based on keeping operating costs low. You have to ‘rent’ your shopping cart for .25, which you get back when you’re done. They don’t accept any form of credit card (only recently allowing debit cards), they charge you for bags, and the aisles are literally pallets full of food set on the ground. Low low costs!

Now, it makes for some really interesting people watching. You get the entire gambit there, from the folks in their Porsche SUV to the people who can’t even afford a working bicycle. And you get to watch them interact.

We go there for a lot of the staples - like cereal, canned vegetables, ramen, noodles, etc - stuff we end up keeping on hand. A lot of their store brand items are just as good, but insanely cheaper. Instead of $2 for a box of Mac N Cheese, it’s 10 for a $1. How do they do it? Low overhead. There’s probably questionable purchases where they get their food supply from but I don’t want to even think about it.

Anyway, we were there on Sunday picking up a few things and a new line opened up. Well, the line we were in was quite long, it must have been a good 12-14 people deep, stretching around a few pallets. Of course, a fairly large opinionated woman who was at the very end of the line rushed to the new one.

Or tried to, until the armed guard stopped her.

Seems it’s a new policy at that Aldi that when a new line opens up, the people waiting longest in the old line get to go to the new one. Sounds like a good policy right? Very fair, the people waiting the longest get helped first. Oh, well not according to this woman - she made such a ruckus, cursing the guard, calling him a racist (She was black, but the person who was grabbed from the old line and sent to the new line was black too - so I don’t think race was really an issue), stating this was never like this before - to which he kept saying it’s a new policy, and to live with it. The entire time she waited in line, she was muttering under her breath - as I and my fellow shoppers just smirked slightly and shrugged at the guard in the Minnesota typical “Some people, what can ya do?” fashion.

Pointless story, but then this is a blog right?

Huzzah! One of the greatest poli-punk bands ever, NoFX, will be coming to town soon! To the Myth on March 9th, to be exact. Get your asses there! Here’s the link to ticketmaster, but it wants some special offer code or password which I don’t have, so I guess I’ll have to wait for the tickets to be available to the public - unless someone knows something *wink wink*

Also, tonight only at the Triple Rock you’ll be able to find our favorite foul-mouthed globe trotting chef Anthony Bourdain hanging out and signing autographs for his new book “No Reservations” - starts at 7:00pm, and maybe I’ll see you there.

Additionally, Mishka wants the new Amazon Kindle for Christmas this year. This little sprint powered eBook looks like a relic of 1990s design, but supposedly is one slick piece of technology. It’s constantly sold out since debuting last week, but I’ll see if I can’t figure out a way to honor her wishes - I’m that kind of guy.

Oh, and Thanksgiving Dinner went splendidly too - the food was amazing. I don’t know if it was the recipe, the cook (Lovely Mishka), or the 100% organic farmer’s market turkey - but the bird was perfect!