One of the best holidays of the year is right around the corner.  The 4th of July is the best summer holiday.  You get a day off of work and see sparkle bombs while eating hot dogs on a warm summer night.  There are few things better than that and I can't mention them here.

Bring out your flags.  Wait…1…2…3……50……59…60…61?  61!?  That's not an American flag sir.  You must have that confused with the patriotic banner sold at the dollar store.  Patriotic Banner Day happens to be the same day as National Radio Day (August 20th).  If you wave it fast enough, I don't think anybody will notice.

This is not a joke about the dollar stores or Chinese made stuff.  I love them both.  Both are American.  You read that right.  Capitalism, free trade, and self responsibility!  USA!

I quickly want to say thanks again to everybody who is sending wedding gifts.  You guys are very generous and very cool.  This is the current pile of boxes.  It seems that stuff is sitting in front of the door every day when I get home.

Thinking about that, I came across this link last night.  I thought it was a fake product but it looks real.  It's called the Better Marriage Blanket.  What does it do?  It's a nice looking blanket filled with activated carbon to act as a filter to capture your smelly farts.  Activated carbon is found in many types of filters and it does wonders but it is only the sponge that catches the particles.  The particles still have to be forced through it somehow.  I don't see this blanket doing too much unless you're cutting some high velocity farts directly into the blanket.

Futurama is back on the air.  I hear good things.  I hated that show when it first aired but learned to love it through reruns.  I'm excited for it to be back.  If you're in the land of pay TV, catch it on Comedy Central.

This Funplex Fun Park looks like a good time.  I might check it out this weekend but I'd hate to go alone.  Erin is in Minneapolis getting her dress fit and enjoying brunch with other ladies.  She's getting a trial hair do as well.

I use Amazon.com for a ton of different things.  Mostly video games and music but everything else from water filters to bike parts.  I'm not sure when they started doing it but when I go to the site now, there is something called a PayPhrase.  It might be similar to their "1-click" checkout.  I really don't know how the PayPhrase it is supposed to work but this suggested one got my attention.  They change it up each time I visit the site.  I guess that they want to make unique phrases.  It reminds me of the CAPTCHA stuff or even better, the old temporary use AOL CD/diskette passwords.

Regardless, I don't know what stern digging is, why it needs to be capitalized, of if I'm even the Jason in question.  Clicking on "What's this?" wasn't helpful.

Now to something much more boring.

We had an earthquake today.  Well, by "we" I mean most of the northeastern states felt it.  I was on the third floor at the building where I work and things started swaying.  There is a ton of construction going on outside but it didn't feel like construction to me or to the one other guy who spent a few years in southern California.  It felt like a 2 or 3 from the third floor which meant it was probably less on the ground floor.

Sure enough, a 5.0 earthquake was reported in Canada!  It's a good thing nobody lives there.  Here's the Did You Feel It? map from the USGS public reporting website.

It's a once-in-a-decade event out here and it caused a bit of panic and a lot of talk.  It's a "who cares" weekly thing back home in the California desert but like a hailstorm in Joshua Tree, everybody gets confused.  It made me smile.

Officially it was about a 2 in Albany, NY.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to show my recently added photos as a dynamically updated side-bar thing.  So far I have been playing with an RSS feed which will probably work but I thought that for now, this would be a fun looking alternative.

Let me know what you think.

My favorite movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey.  A few of my favorite directors are Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino.  I'm not a huge Coen Brothers fan but I did like most of No Country for Old Men.  The ending was confusing and disappointing.  I'm sure there's a deeper meaning to it all, I just don't care to learn what it is.

These movie clip mash-ups are pretty awesome.

Thanks to great weather, I went out on my bike this past Saturday.  I was in a more rural area with farmland and a few houses here and there.  As I approached a gradual hill, I heard a familiar sound behind me.  I heard the sound of a dog running.  His nails scraping against the asphalt and heavy breathing.

I was already very tired.  I turned around and I saw a black dog running toward me.  Not in a friendly way.  He was completely off of the ground, front legs between his rear legs.  Once I saw him, he started growling and barking, teeth showing.  My first thought was to go as quickly as I can in the opposite direction.  He was about forty feet behind me.  I immediately began cranking as fast as I could.

I was in a good gear to climb up a long, gradual hill.  I wasn't in a good gear for getting away from an angry dog.  With him coming at me at that speed, I had no time to shift.  So off I went.

First off, great job Lynn for getting that job!

Second, thanks for the responses on improving this site.  I came up with a few ideas that I'll be trying over the summer.

All of the big E3 presentations are over.  Everything that was going to be announced has been announced.  People are really excited about the 3D Nintendo DS.  It doesn't require glasses.  I'll have to see it to believe it.

If you care to watch any of the presentations, go here.  I suggest the Microsoft one.  The Nintendo one stunk and Sony was mediocre at best.

My site started as an experiment to serve mostly as a resume while I looked for a job in New York.  It didn't help very much but I enjoyed using it as a sandbox to play with things.  Ultimately it turned into this and I love to play with it.  It has taught me a lot and pushed it's way from project to hobby.

As you know, I had to update the site about six months ago.  The old site was slow and looked too old.  There were plenty of things that needed to be updated.  I knew what to do and how to do it, I just don't have the time to do everything.  If this were my job and I had a few other people with me, it would be been fun to do our own thing.  I instead decided to find a package where the work was done and I only do minimal maintenance.

But I'm still getting beaten up.

E3 is on this week and out of the Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony keynotes, Microsoft dominated.  Last year's "Natal" project is officially known as "Kinect" and the tech demos were outstanding.  ESPN is coming to Xbox Live and the whole system is nothing short of amazing.

Sony's stage time was pretty average.  New stuff, good graphics, a funny spokesperson.  No huge game announcements.

Nintendo disappointed this year.  Not only was their very first tech demo with the legendary create of Mario and Zelda himself, but their flagship new Zelda game was very buggy.  It was blamed on wireless interference.  I believe them as Nintendo is known for the best controls in the industry.  No huge games but a big new handheld system with 3D that does not require 3D glasses.  No idea how it works but I'll check it out at my local nerd stores.

I can't wait for Dragon Quest 9 (out this July) but I found a game that Erin will love.  Epic Yarn.  Kirby's Epic Yarn to be precise but…yarn!

Lisa did a great job with the new logo.  The very next day, after putting it up for the world to see, I got another logo in my e mail inbox just for me and Erin for our wedding.  Check it out.

It might be a bit hard to see but that's Erin in the pink dress with the flowers and I'm the "Schlueter" with the bowtie.

That's right.  It took a long while but it's finally here.  Lisa did some awesome work and it adds a real unique touch to the site.  Comment on this post to tell her what you think.

..and I'm watching garbage on Youtube.  Happy Friday evening.

E3 is up next week.  If you don't know, E3 is the big video game trade show that is held every year.  It's where we find out what new video games and maybe systems we will be able to get the next year.  It sounds like it would be a fun trade show to attend.  Any trade show around a topic of interest sounds fun to attend unless it's your job.  I used to go to the big bicycle show in Las Vegas every year and it turned a hobby into a job.  But still, I wish I could go.

The Mortal Kombat teaser I posted a few days ago has been matched with a teaser video.  I was never a huge Mortal Kombat fan but I really appreciate and respect the speed and skill of the players.

I had a very good, long update written out on Saturday but I didn't save it.  I closed the program too soon.  I was too upset to start over again then.  This time I have a whole ton of junk to share so buckle up.

You probably remember talking about ditching Time Warner.  I have since been watching a lot of cartoons, many of them Looney Tunes.  Cartoons are still a beautiful form of artistic expression but the style has changed.  I love to read John K's blog (well, look at the pictures more than anything).  This is the guy who did Ren and Stimpy and is a bit of a guru on cartoons.  I found another great site specific to the backgrounds drawn for the cartoons.  The site is simply called Animation Backgrounds and is worth a look.  I don't know how this person would have access to all of these old background images.  I'm sure that they aren't being scanned from originals.

A side note, the spell checker wanted it to be "Reno and Stumpy".

This morning I updated part of the website and hopefully everything is running just fine.  Please let me know if you see any problems with anything.  There's a "tag cloud" to at the bottom now with tags from the posts.  I went through the old posts and tagged them.  It was a pain.  You can always search for anything up at the top.  It really works!

So the weather was pretty nice all weekend.  I hesitated going outside on Saturday because the forecast all day (and all weekend for that matter) was scattered thunderstorms.  Just when I would get excited, it would get really stormy looking and I'd shy away.

Saturday was not completely lost.  As you may remember, I cancelled Time Warner cable and have watched much less TV since then.  When we made the decision to finally ditch it, I had to re-evaluate what I really watched on TV.  Most of that answer is 'cartoons'.  Most of these cartoons I already own on DVD.  It didn't take a genius to figure out what I needed to do.