The other day I took my kid to a baseball game. It was the Big Ten tournament, with the University of Michigan spanking the University of Illinois. Michigan went on to spank Purdue as well - twice - winning it all and moving on to the NCAA regionals. It was a great weekend... warm weather, but not too hot, sunshine, a breeze blowing out to left field, and even a couple evening games under the lights. It was a perfect start to a Memorial Day weekend.

Being a decent, patriotic American dad, I gave my kid a few bucks to go get some Cracker Jacks and a Coke. He came back to his seat, and shared some of the Cracker Jacks with me (I raised him right). This was a true American experience: a man and his son eating Cracker Jacks at a baseball game. It was right out of a Norman Rockwell print. Well, almost... the Cracker Jacks were in a bag, rather than the traditional cardboard box I expected, but I guess I can let that go.

As my son worked his way toward the bottom of the box, he started looking for the prize. After all, it says, "SUPRISE INSIDE!" right there on the box.. uh, the bag, I mean.  Would it be a temporary tattoo?  A pencil topper?  A shape-shifter?  A little joke book?  No, it was..... nothing. THERE WAS NO SURPRISE IN MY KID'S CRACKER JACK!  Just think of it: A man, a boy, a baseball game, Crack Jacks, and NO PRIZE. It's just not right.

My kid looked at me and started to cry. OK, I just made that part up. But he did stand up, and announce to the other people around us, "There's no prize in my Cracker Jack!"  A few of the other fans added some comments of their own. I think it was something like, "Sit down!".

My son wasn't finished yet, though.  A few minutes later, along comes the seventh inning stretch. Everybody stands up as the organ (rather, the CD player) leads us into Take Me Out To The Ball Game. After we sang the line, "Buy me some peanuts and Crack Jacks," my son yells out, "WITH NO PRIZE!"

I really hope he's not damaged for life, and I'm doing everything I can to make sure he pulls through this traumatic event. Perhaps taking him to see Field of Dreams yesterday on the big screen at the Michigan Theater will help. I hope he still goes to Little League practice when it starts up next week. Oh, wait, he has to go - I'm the coach.

The attached picture shows what is apparently a new load of aluminum siding bound for some poor guy's house. I assume this is what the load includes from reading the labels, "ALCOA Home Exteriors" on the boxes. Well, from reading the parts of the boxes that weren't yet mangled.

If you can't see the picture too clearly (sorry, but all I has was my phone), what you have there are boxes of aluminum siding strapped down over a pallet that only supports the middle of the long boxes, leaving the ends to fold downward, and also the boxes on top being squished by the staps.

Perhaps what we have here is a new product for mobile homes, to make them look like they already got hit by a tornado.

Over at our house, we're certainly not noticing the effects of strike by the writers in Hollywood. Our favorite reality show, The Tom Brady Show, is still on. It's a fresh show every week, and it keeps getting better!

This coming Saturday night the undefeated New England Patriots will beat the New York Giants to wrap up their perfect regular season at 16-0 (not at all surprising, as they have a Michigan Wolverine at QB). The next three episodes after that will see them beating three other teams, beginning with either the Steelers or the Jaguars, then probably a re-spanking of the Colts (at which point they will achieve the greatest undefeated record ever, taking that claim from the 17-0 Dolphins of 1972), and ending with a defeat of probably the Packers in the Super Bowl.

Thanks to the wonders of Google, I have recently discovered that the world's other Duane Collicott, a guy up in New Brunswick, Canada, is Packer fan. I'm disappointed at that. It seems like a guy with such a quality name would make better choices. Perhaps he's the dark side.

Pretty wild news these days.

Following the recent news about an anti-spanking bill being introduced into the Massachusetts legislature, I found this other piece of news about a protest:

[ If you got this fair, I guess it's only fair to tell you that I made all that up! ]

For those of you in the Ann Arbor area, take a look in your December Ann Arbor Observer for an article by Lara Zielin entitled "Geek Chic." It's a look at how geek's are "the new black", with a focus on geeks in the Ann Arbor area, with a good part of the article being about me.  As of this writing, I haven't received my copy, but I believe there's a photograph in there as well.  I have received a copy of the text, though, and have already determined my favorite part of it is where Zielin describes me:

"... round face and glasses and frizzy light brown hair. Were his hair a little longer and a little grayer, one could call it Einsteinian."

OK, I'll take that!

For those of you who came to my blog after seeing my blog mentioned in the article, here are answers to some questions others have already asked:

• The Ann Arbor Computer Society meets the first Wednesday of the month. The web site is ComputerSociety.org.
• If you are interested in the sport of Curling in Ann Arbor, contact me to let me know. I am currently gathering information from interested persons, and some time in the next few months we'll meet to form a strategy for moving ahead with the process of creating a club in the area.
• If you are interested in my educational work with LEGO, check out Bricks for Brains.

It's time for Michigan to take back the land that Ohio stole from us back in 1837! It's not for the natural harbor, which was a nice thing to have back then, and it's not for the limestone quarries (our iron and copper mines say "meh" to that). Frankly, it's because they are obviously not fit stewards of this real estate and it's contents, as we can see by the outcome of the yesterday's elections.

There is a very fine children's hands-on science museum in Toledo, on the land that should have been part of Michigan, called COSI Toledo. Recently, they asked Lucas County citizens, a second time, for a small millage to keep the museum going, and, for the second time, they were denied. There are tons of us up here in Michigan who visit this museum several times every year (I even have my giant LEGO bridge on display down there), but since we couldn't vote in this election, all we could do is just sit on the sidelines watching the election results, hoping in vain that Lucas County citizens would come to their senses. Michigan citizens, of course, never would have let this happen, even though we're in the midst of new tax increases ourselves (we didn't get to vote on those... YET).

So, thanks to a 51% majority, my kids will no longer get to enjoy the Boy-yo, the roller coaster simulator, and the high-wire bicycle. Thanks for killing our fun, you tight-wad, anti-education, anti-fun sticks-in-the-mud!

Rally the troops! Grab your shovels! We'll meet down there tonight to dig up all the border signs and move them south!

(Note to any Buckeye fans living in this tract of land: you'll need to move further south after we annex this land, as you're not eligible for Michigan citizenship)

Woot.com is a cool site that sells one item every day. I've picked up some useful stuff from there at decent prices, but I've also bought some junk just because I wanted it (those motion-detecting oinking pigs, for example). There's a forum on the site, and apparently it's one of those Internet forums that actually has moderators, and, well, I was recently moderated.

I'm guessing the problem is that I asked if there were Linux drivers for the wine glasses, the power washer, the pocketknife, and the hot wings trays. Oh yeah, and the Oreck air purifier.

Everyone in Michigan has their own definition of what "Up north" means. For me, earlier in life it was the Indian River area, but these days it's the Leelenau Peninsula, and Northport in particular. but whatever "up north" is for each of us, one thing in common is that it always seems to provide great opportunities for photography.

This past weekend was no exception for me. After working on getting the boat ready for winter, I grabbed my camera and headed for Peterson Park, a small township park on a bluff on Lake Michigan, just northwest of Northport.  I took the opportunity to experiment with a time-lapse movie of the sunset.  The sunset fizzled toward the end, but it still worked out to be a pretty good movie. If you click on the picture, you'll see the movie. I'm sorry it's just a lowly WMV (thanks for nothin', Windows Movie Maker); I hope to convert it to an MPEG soon. For the curious, it's is a collection of images taken every thirty seconds. It was pretty cold, with that wind coming off the lake, but it wasn't too bad, as I had my little radio with me telling me all about the annual Sparty-Spanking as it happened.

Apparently, I'm not doing something right. A Google search for "Ann Arbor Geek" results in my blog being the second entry down. What, I'm not the geekiest Ann Arborite? This is like the witch in Snow White being told by her mirror that she's not the fairest in the land.

Now, don't everybody start thinking that I'm vain enough to be checking on this myself. It was actually somebody else: a writer who is doing an article on Ann Arbor geeks and how geeks are the now "in."  She interviewed me last week for her article, and it looks like it will be a pretty good one from what I've seen so far. I'm not going to give much away, you'll have to read it for yourself. Watch this space through the next couple months and I'll let you know when and where to find it.

I do have to admit that I am vain enough to do a Google search for my own name now and then. Doesn't everyone? That's how I found out that I'm not the only Duane Collicott in the world. There's another one, a pastor up in New Brunswick. Who'd a thunk it?

I took off up north last weekend to go winterize my in-law's motorboat, and to have a weekend off on my own for a change. This is why I haven't been updating my blog; I've been writing the posts, as I planned for every day November, I just haven't been posting them, as it would have publicly revealed that I was out of the house for the weekend and my wife and kids were there by themselves. Anyhow, on the way up north I was reminded of one of the reasons I don't hunt.

It's not what you might assume, for a person from Ann Arbor. I have no problem with hunting; I understand why it's needed. There are two reasons I don't hunt, though. The first reason is that I'm not tough enough to do anything with the animal once I get it. Heck, I barely have what it takes to take the hook out of a fish's mouth. The second reason is represented by this sign I saw along the highway. On opening day, coming up later in November, there will be about one million people out in the dark woods waiting for the sun to come up so they can start shooting. That in itself isn't a problem. The problem has to do with how many of them have been drinking. I'm guessing it's somewhere around 50%.

I like guns, but I'm not too fond of drunks with guns. For me, I just think it's a good time to spend the next couple weeks in the city.

OK, so here I go with this daily blogging thing.

Last night was a pretty good Halloween in our neighborhood. The weather was nice, the homeowners were generous with the sugarized products, none of the teens who live on my street were delivered back home by the police (again), and there were only a couple prostitots.

I don't know what it is, but some kids have a need (as I did when I was young) to sort their candy after they get home. As soon as we got in the door, my kids dumped out their bags and started separating the contents into categorized piles: chocolate, caramel, chocolate/peanut butter combinations (my favorite), hard candy, gummy products, Sweet Tart-like items, non-food items, etc. No cans of pop this year, which my kid got very upset about a couple years ago; it's one of those things that on any other day of the year it would have been happily received. I guess the idea of sorting is to weed-out the stuff they don't want. My oldest kid engaged in re-gifting (a practice usually reserved for Christmas) by giving his undesirable items to the trick-or-treaters who were still coming around. At that late hour, it was mostly the older kids.

By the way, how old is too old for trick-or-treating anyway? We discussed this annual topic this morning at the office. My feeling is that if you're old enough to have a driver's license or to shave, it's time to give it up. However, there seems to be one exception to this: if you take the time to come up with a creative costume, you can get away with it. After we got back to our house, I went out to sit on the chair out front (after all, it was a nice evening) to watch the "big kids" come around. There were some pretty good costumes out there, which were countered only by the occasional lazy seventeen-year-old with a pillowcase dressed as a lazy seventeen-year-old with a pillowcase.

I did get out to do a little photography around the neighborhood. I forgot to take along my tripod, so a lot of my pictures didn't turn out, as I had a hard time holding the camera steady long enough for the longer shutter times. However, I did get a few nice ones, such as the one included here, my favorite of the night. You can click on it to see a bigger version of it.

I'm probably going to end up going nuts for doing this, but during November I am going to create a blog entry every day and make it interesting. The latter half of that is the real challenge, of course. However, this practice of doing one entry every five weeks isn't very effective, either. So, we'll see what happens.

See ya tomorrow! And the day after that, and the day after that, ....

Another icon of my home town is gone. First Bo left us, and now Shaky Jake. According to a story in the Ann Arbor News, Shaky died on Sunday, September 15th at the age of 82.  Even when I was living away from Ann Arbor for six years, I felt like I was home when I would take a quick drive through town and have the luck to drive past whatever corner or storefront Shaky had parked himself in front of. He was always ready to return a wave at the honk of your horn, or if you were walking by and said something to him, he'd reply with something like, "Arright" or "I'm on the move!"

During the one year I spent up at Michigan State University (forgive me, I wasn't in my right mind) I made friends with a woman who had previously spent a couple years here in Ann Arbor (seems like everywhere I've lived I've only connected with people from back here!) One day she called me and told me to hurry up to her room. There was Shaky, walking down the hallway of the dorm pushing a handcart, delivering a rented mini-fridge to my friend. I think he was working for a place on State Street. Perhaps it was called Music Mart.

One thing I find fascinating is the mystery that surrounded him. There were stories about him once being a famous blues musician, and about his "way" with the ladies. I seem to remember an article in the Observer or Ann Arbor News where he propped up that story himself in an interview. Who knows... maybe it's true! There were more questions about him than there were answers. Where did he live? What's his real name? Where did he come from? What does he do? Can he really play the guitar? How can he stand wearing that heavy coat in August?

But the real story about Shaky Jake is that none of that matters. What matters is that he selected a role for himself and played the part incredibly well. Some towns have a town drunk or a village idiot, but we had the opposite. He will forever be on my short list of Ann Arbor memories, along with Bo, Bimbo's Pizzeria, the Fleetwood Diner, Quality Bakery, that granite whale I played on at Arborland, and Ernie Harwell (I know, Ernie's not actually Ann Arbor, but Ann Arbor is where I was when listened to him on that transistor radio hidden under my pillow those summer nights).

One day after my previous post about the local McDonalds restaurant having problem setting their flags properly while flying the American flag at half-staff (here), I see they have fixed one of the two flags, that of the state of Michigan. However, the result is now their corporate flag flies above both the American flag and our state flag.  This is interesting, as it pretty much signifies how many people feel our country is operating these days: corporate interests trump the interests of the people.

The McDonalds restaurant on my way to work (2310 West Stadium Blvd, Ann Arbor, MI) has a chronic problem with their flags when it comes time to lower the American Flag to half-mast. It is nice that they took the time to lower the American flag. However, as seen in this picture, they're not bothering to set the Michigan and McDonalds flag lower than the American flag, as specified by The Flag Code: "No other flag or pennant should be placed above ... the flag of the United States of America."  I've brought this to their attention a couple times in the past, and in the rare case I actually get a response, it's just a shrug of the shoulders.

Here's the picture from this morning: