Author: Mitchell Laurren-Ring

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Vital Statistics

This article caught my eye on CNN the other day. The father and daughter in the article are “early risers”, which is now described as ASPS (Advanced Sleep Phase Syndrome). I looked it up on Wikipedia and soon found myself checking out other sleep disorders. I have had problems with sleep all my life and suspect that I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS). I also believe that my father had it and probably several of my siblings. DSPS sufferers are often called “night owls.” Sound familiar?

Before we had kids, I entertained the notion that it was Non-24 Hour Sleep Phase Syndrome and actually tried a sleep schedule that wasn’t based on a 24 hour clock. Unfortunately, that and my adverse job circumstances eventually led to clinical depression.

Bike odometer: 5818 miles
Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
McCartney Trivia: Paul wrote the melody for “Yesterday” after he awoke from a dream in which he heard it. The original lyrics were “Scrambled eggs, baby I really love your legs.”
Recent listening: De-Loused in the Comatorium, Coverville, Da Vinci’s Notebook
Recent viewing: Sportscenter, Suns vs. Clippers, The Late Show with David Letterman, Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Recent playing: Poker Room
Recently Accomplished: Cleaned and lubed my rusty bike chain while waiting for the Max
Imperative To Do: Start taxes, retrieve Ryno mail, truck maintenance
Cool link: Death By Caffeine: How much of your favorite caffeine drink does it take to kill you?

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Vital Statistics

  Remember me? Dynamite Magazine

Bike odometer: 5805 miles
Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
McCartney Trivia: Nearly all Lennon/McCartney compositions can be described as verse/chorus/verse/chorus/”middle eight”/verse/chorus. John and Paul could not read music so they called all middle passages the “middle eight” regardless of the number of measures. The last verse was frequently just the first verse repeated to really drive it home and make it memorable.
Recent listening: Extraordinary Machine, Rid of Me, Avalon, De-Loused in the Comatorium, Frances the Mute
Recent viewing: Medium, Crime Scene Investigation, Sportscenter
Recently Accomplished: Sent in rebates, paid bills, mowed lawn, purchased new Quicken
Imperative To Do: Start taxes, retrieve Ryno mail, truck maintenance, bike maintenance
Cool link: The Covers Project

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Miami Heat vs. Cleveland Cavaliers

Thoughts I had during the game:

  • Dwayne Wade is the fastest half-court player in the NBA. Some players have great fast break speed, but Wade has great baseline and in-the-paint speed. He takes tremendously long strides when he wants to blow by someone and seems to just tilt from one side to the other as he weaves his way to the basket. I really love his game.
  • During the Laker’s first championship run, the thing that really surprised me about Shaq was what great, soft hands he has. He gathers in nearly every rebound or pass that is near him and it’s nearly impossible to dislodge the ball once he has two hands on it.
  • I used to really dislike Alonzo Mourning, both as a Hornet and later when Riley traded to get him on the Heat. He always seemed to whine about foul calls more than anybody else. I also never accepted him as a true center – he’s not even a 7-footer. However, since his return to the Heat, the guy has been the definion of a sports “warrior.” He does what he’s asked to do and never complains about his minutes. He even waived off the postgame interview after his fourth quarter heroics.
  • I can’t think of a better center tandem to have on a team than Alonzo Mourning and Shaquille O’Neal. Even at this late stage of their careers, both are able to put in a great 15-25 minutes per game. I expect that if they stay together that they will be able to buoy each other’s careers tremendously over the years.
  • Speaking of great tandems, Jason Williams and Gary Payton both seem to have adjusted to the Heat game. I didn’t see either of them shooting shots that were out of the flow of the offense. You definitely could not say that earlier in the season.
  • I’m especially happy that Payton has worked out. I was really disappointed in his showing for the Lakers two years ago, but perhaps I was expecting too much from the old guy. He’s definitely playing fewer minutes now and is a long way from being the star he was in Seattle. I’m continually surprised at how few players that were great when they were young are able to mold themselves into great role players late in their careers. Ron Harper is an excellent example of that. Magic Johnson is not.
  • I hear Antoine Walker is also getting better as the season progresses, but I have seen no evidence of that yet. He still shoots more three pointers than he should, he still mishandles rebounds and he still blows layups. He needs to sacrifice a little of his alleged finesse game and add a little power. At least Riley hasn’t replaced Haslon with Walker. That would be a travesty.
  • I really doubted that the Heat would be able to mesh given all the changes that they made during the off-season, but it really seems like they are getting there. Posey was very sharp and even Shandon Anderson made a contribution in the game.
  • When I first saw Wade playing in the playoffs 3 years ago, he reminded me very much of Michael Jordan – mostly because he’s a high flyer and clearly imposes his will on the game. Since then I’ve seen a certain grittiness that even MJ never displayed. He may soon replace Allen Iverson as the toughest player in the league. If he can add a credible three point shot to his game, he could be better than Mike.
  • Check that – he would also need a good low-post game, too. No two or three has ever had the game that Michael had on the block. In fact, does anybody that’s not a center or a four have a low-post game these days?

Update: Shaq was not happy about sitting on the bench in the 4th quarter

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Vital Statistics

At the beginning of the week Tina made popcorn one night for the two of us which we enjoyed as we watched TV. She’s found a really good brand of microwave popcorn that make some really good kettle corn and caramel corn. I don’t remember which we had, but evidently a husk from one of the kernels embedded itself in the gum near the back of my mouth and it’s been there ever since. I didn’t really notice until the area had swollen quite a bit. I’ve flossed many times as well as poking at it with a periodontal probe. Nothing has helped thus far so I think I’ll have to visit my dentist next week to get the problem resolved. The whole area is very sore.

Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
Recent listening: Coverville, the rest of the Christmas CDs

Recent viewing: Big Ten Basketball Tournament, Brainiac, Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Sportscenter
Recent playing: Poker Room
Imperative To Do: Rebates, renew prescription, start taxes, retrieve Ryno mail
Cool link: PhoneSwarm: Coordinated “swarming” of a particular pay telephone somewhere in the U.S. The number is changed occasionally. You call at your leisure and then post a comment. Or just read the funny comments from others.

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Vital Statistics

It’s snowing outside right now – big, fat flakes, too. However, they are hitting the ground and melting.

I installed a new plugin for the blog which allows me to pre-approve comments for certain email addresses. It should make it easier for people to post comments here now.

Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
McCartney Trivia: Paul wrote “Got To Get You Into My Life” as an ode to marijuana.
Recent listening: Coverville, KBOO Bike Show, Blame The Vain, New Roman Times, Michael Martin Murphy
Recent viewing: Oscars, Sportscenter, Pardon The Interuption, Crime Scene Investigation, ER, Drawn Together
Imperative To Do: Rebates, renew prescription, start taxes
Cool link: Calling All Wingnuts: A grassroots effort to hold right-wing radio hosts accountable

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Jon Stewart and the Oscars

Have I mentioned how much I like Jon Stewart of The Daily Show? The shows I missed the most when my Tivo was broke were The Daily Show and Countdown. Here’s a few random thoughts:

  • One of Stewart’s specialties is taking something a politician says recently and then going back through old footage and finding contradictions and straight-out lies. He makes it funny but why can’t the “real” news do this? It seems so obvious.
  • Jon Stewart himself describes his job as “making faces at the camera.” This may be true, but he is the best face-maker in the history of television.
  • It’s hard to decide which I like best: the fake news at the beginning of the show or the correspondent story in the middle. After Steven Colbert left, the new crop of correspondents they got seemed like they weren’t as good, but last night I saw a story about a women’s prison in Minnesota that was incredibly funny. The interviews with the ridiculous questions are enough to make anybody laugh.

Sour PussBTW, despite the ill-humored Hollywood denizens (Joaquin Phoenix, I’m talking to you) there that obviously didn’t appreciate his humor, I thought Jon Stewart was really funny at the Oscars. I think they were expecting a bunch of Republican bashing and when he started tipping their sacred cows, they just didn’t find it funny for some reason. For example, he said Walk The Line was a remake of Ray with white people. Or that you normally have to go to a Democratic fundraiser to see so many movie stars. Comedy gold!

For me, other parts of the program had negative entertainment value:

  • I counted at least three “reminders” about how the theatre-going experience beats watching movies in other venues. DVDs were specifically called out for their poor recreation of the theatre experience. Telling your audience how they are supposed to enjoy your product is condescending, but many would also argue that viewpoint is very flawed. Sometimes you just want to curl up at home in front of your TV and DVD player. Who the hell do they think they are to tell you that’s the “wrong” way to enjoy a movie? Total bullshit.
  • The film editing union must be very strong this year because the number of montage sequences was totally out of control. The worst was a montage about films that “change the world” (or something) which included The Day After Tomorrow. I liked that movie, but I don’t think it changed the world.
  • Aside from Dolly Parton’s performance from Transamerica, none of the other songs grabbed me. I thought they ranged from boring to over-the-top unbearable. BTW, how cool is Dolly? Despite the fact that she looks like total white trash, she’s got to be the coolest member of country’s “old guard.”
  • I’m a George Clooney fan and really dig when he sticks it to blowhards like O’Reilly, but his tirade about being “out of touch” early on was very self-righteous and hypocritical in the historical facts he mentioned. For example, he said Hollywood talked about AIDS when everybody was whispering about it, but Hollywood never made an AIDS film until 1992.
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First Place

Yesterday was a great day in the history of Pinewood Derby cars at the Ring household. I knew it was going to be a good day after only two races when both Thomas and Graham came in first with a big lead.

The track that we race on has four lanes with electronic timing. Each car gets to race on every lane in order to minimize the impact of slower/faster lanes. A computer schedules all the races and tabulates the time for each car. At the end of the round-robin tournament, each racer has four times that are added together. The two lowest total times are chosen as 1st and 2nd place for each of the four dens in our pack. These winners may all participate in the regional competition. The eight den winners then compete for the honor of best in the pack.

After the round-robin, Thomas and Graham were both first in their den and participated in the pack championship round. Thomas took first in 3 out of his 4 races, but Graham didn’t fare as well in the stiffer competition. Graham finished 4th or 5th in the pack and Thomas finished 1st!

I went to the post office in the morning to make sure that both cars were regulation weight (no more than five ounces), and so we had some last minute weight stuck to both cars. Both boys had two golf club weights on their cars because they are light enough to get you very close to regulation weight (more weight means more speed). In these pictures, they are the flat, rectangular weights that are light silver in color. On Graham’s they are mounted vertically (at his insistence) and on Thomas’ they are are flat against the body near the rear (by the fin):

During one of the two races where Graham and Thomas raced against each other, all four weights came off their cars. Evidently, that had been happening to Graham’s car for awhile, so the race official just slapped all four onto Graham’s car where they remained until after the racing was all done. When I picked up Graham’s car after it was all over, I was perplexed to find the extra weights on the car. I couldn’t figure it out until I saw Thomas’ car without the weights and then it all became clear.

I weighed Graham’s car right before we left and it said 5.4 ounces, which might have been a big advantage to Graham, but probably was also a disadvantage to Thomas. Or was it a disadvantage? Physics experts, please weigh in!

There are more pictures here.

Tina’s blog entry is here.

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Vital Statistics

Pinewood Derby is tomorrow and once again we’re down to the wire in finishing the cars. This year I had three months to get the job done, but that still was not enough. I am a lifelong procrastinator. Fortunately, we have Tina to help us with the finish, so the cars look really cool again this year. We’ll have to see how we do tomorrow.

Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
Recent listening: De-Loused in the Comatorium, 12 Songs, Dark Side of the Moon, The Beatles
Recent viewing: Sportscenter, Attack of the Show, My Name Is Earl
Imperative To Do: Rebates
Cool link: State of Oregon Surplus