Mixing Star Wars and politics in a video entitled The Empire Strikes Barack? Funny.

On a serious note, I would like to see the “battle” if you will between these two end, as it’s getting closer to November and will leave voters minds clouded if this goes on too long. This will give the advantage to McCain who has to want this to continue as long as possible.

I still believe these two are fused at the hip and it will be an Obama-Clinton ticket or Clinton-Obama ticket in November for the Dems, despite what Ted Kennedy said recently about Obama not going to pick Clinton as a running mate if he wins the nomination.

Other notable Star Wars mashups
Steampunk Star Wars - Like charcoal drawings? Creative.
Star Wars Last Supper - You’ve probably already seen this, but hey, it’s well done and worth another link.
Urban Star Wars - Storm Troopers in the city? Oh yeah.
Tie Fighter computer desk - better looking than my glass desk, but I’m not trading.
From Honda to Land Speeder - It’s car mod time.
Wedding cake - A slice of the good side of the Force. And R2D2 works good as a peppermill too.

As far as snack foods go, popcorn is near the top of the list. Thanks to a friend this morning I learned about Popcorn Workers Lung:

The study, conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, (NIOSH) concluded that diacetyl, a chemical that gives microwave popcorn its butter flavor, needs further study so that workers in the flavorings and snack industry are no longer at risk of the fatal disease, also known as Popcorn Workers Lung.

The article goes on to report a consumer contracting Popcorn Workers Lung by consuming “several bags” of popcorn daily over a 15 year period which contained diacetyl. Watch those popcorn box ingredient labels the next time you go to the store.

Or buy one of these:

Coscto sells several different popcorn machines. The Elite Popcorn Maker Model EPM-400 sells for $229 USD and requires 15 minute assembly. This will make popcorn just like the movie theater.

Now the only thing you need to get that authentic movie theater taste is the butter and salt.

Any other popcorn fans in the house?

There have been some funny movies about marijuana and I was interested to learn that AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson was involved with one called Totally Baked. To promote the Totally Baked DVD, Johnson sang three songs with AC/DC bassist Cliff Williams laying the lowdown.

The 3 free song downloads sung by Brian Johnson for Totally Baked movie: Chain Gang, Chase The Tail and Who Phoned The Law sound very AC/DC-like and aren’t bad. Give them a download, queue and listen to ‘em.

Speaking of AC/DC, they just finished recording their newest studio album which is due out at the end of 2008. It’s been 8 years since their last studio album Stiff Upper Lip. There are some rumors that this album might be accompanied with a farewell tour. Hope this isn’t true.

I’m a sucker for practice. I hear some people complain about practicing like it’s some kind of time waster. Hey, if you want to improve your skill at something it should require work, shouldn’t it?

A couple days ago I shared the finger perils of not enough guitar practice and have referred to this blog numerous times as writing practice, so it should be no surprise that I’m also into typing practice.

TypeRacer joins the chorus of websites that lets you practice your typing skills. If you’re a busy person who needs more time but still love to write, just think what increasing your typing speed could do?

With TypeRacer you can compete against others to see who is the fastest keyboard masher of the pack. The results of my first time playing are pictured above. Third place for a little over 30 words per minute. My current typing speed is around 45-55 wpm.

How fast is your typing these days? And do you practice?

Having graduated from high school in Wisconsin, I cringed when I heard that a study found that the badger state ranks at the top of the drunk driving states list.

Wisconsin, with its prevalent drinking culture, was rated the state with the most drunk drivers in the country Wednesday. Over one-fourth of drivers said they drove under the influence at least once in the past year.

It’s not that surprising that a lot of Wisconsinites like to drink. It gets fricking COLD back there and it seems like every town has at least one bar. At the same time, note to my friends in Wisconsin: start using more designated drivers, please. If 25% of the people on the road are drunk that means 75% are not drunk and likely don’t want to die tonight.

Our 20 year reunion was last year and though I didn’t go, I’d like to think there will be enough people alive to attend the 30 year one. One of my classmates that I came back into contact with recently indicated she had gone through a divorce recently. Why? The guy drank too much.

This sucks. Switch to water, green tea or something else that’s better for you. Doing anything to excess is bound to shorten one’s life: stress, drinking, working too much, too much sex. Ok, maybe not the last one

I’m not into ‘why I haven’t blogged’ posts and try to spare you the exercise. For future reference, I write when:

1. I have the time
2. Something external (another blog post, news story, new site/service, etc) moves me and/or
3. I have something (fresh, preferably) to say or share

With #3 I’m being more challenged lately. This blog has well over 1.5 million published words and has covered a lot of different web terrain. Fortunately it isn’t niche, so finding something to make us both go hmm for the rest of my lifetime shouldn’t be rocket science. It’s not as easy any more, though because I keep getting literary deja vus. I’ve got to get back to more deeper web exploration.

You don’t care, I get it, just publish mon, publish!

I’ve found the editor in me getting much more picky about what gets published though. That’s really the problem. I just looked in the draft queue and see I’ve written around a dozen posts since April 2. Blame the editor, that’s it.

I digress. Recommendation: use the Hmm search or click the archive links from the home page to revisit the keyword(s) of your liking. There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills. I’ve been thinking about creating a couple pages with links to heavily trafficked past posts. Maybe one for the highest rated ones too, as that function is getting used more than expected. We tried a rating post feature here before and it bombed. I wouldn’t say the second time is a huge improvement, but more readers and visitors are using it. That helps determine what you like and dislike, so please take the time and rate every post that you read all the way through.

Providing fresh material should be every writer’s goal and I’m seeing — right or wrong — this blog as more like a book than a place to repeat something said days, months or [gasp] years ago. The five year anniversary for this site is fast approaching (July 4, 2008) and then I’ll need to make the call what to do the next five years, health willing of course. A few ideas are percolating. I might bring in some hired guns, what do you think of that?

Missing you
I do miss reading some of my friends when they don’t update their blog for awhile and wonder what they’ve been up to. I’ve been asked: hey, why no Hmm? Is everything ok? What’s going on? Those are questions that a 21 day off period don’t answer. I remember giving blog buddy Kent a friendly stick shake when he went AWOL and he’s been kind enough not to return the favor during my blackjack period.

The picture at the top of this post should answer where I’ve been — at least in part. Yes, I’ve been practicing playing my guitar instead of publishing blog posts. I have been writing a little bit here and there, but time where I’d normally be doing the blog exercise, I’ve been practicing so I can jam with the boys on Sunday nights offline. I’m hoping we get good or bad enough to shoot some compelling video because the Hmmcast is starting to grow some nasty looking cobwebs. It’s not much fun watching video, even in HD, of an average garage band, so that footage might never come to fruition.

The calluses on my left (playing) hand haven’t been there and needed to practice time to build up. This has turned me into one of those guys you see carrying around their guitar everywhere. I’ve always thought that was neat when I see people doing that. Every musician knows that practice is the only way to get better. Heck, any skill takes lots of practice. I’m stealing my writing practice time for guitar practice.

Oh, and couldn’t stand for playing live my 20+ year old electric guitar any more, so threw down for some Gibson Les Paul studio action at one of my new guilty pleasure stores: Guitar Center.

I’m a sucker for red guitars and this red wine style is a beauty. Oh, and it comes with a sweet case too.

What do you think? How many Hmm readers play guitar? I must admit with some embarrassment that despite buying this new guitar a couple weeks ago, it is still unplayed. I brought it home, told my kids they’d be cursed for life if they touched it, set the lock on the case and stored it away in a safe, dry place.

Now before you get on me too much, I bought it to only play live, not for practice. Maybe I’ll feel differently later on, but I’ve never owned a pro quality guitar. All my gear has been fairly low budget. I’ve wanted a really good guitar since I was 14 years old and the timing was right.

I also had a pickup installed in my Washburn acoustic guitar and it sounds great. I’m planning on bringing both of these guitars to our next jam session this coming Sunday night. I’m hoping to become regularly invited to the group which involves three other guys (two are younger, one is older). They asked me to play back after the first session so that’s a good sign. Much too premature to speculate on if we’ll ever get out of the garage. Last time I played in a band was back in high school, so lots of rust to knock off for me.

I’m compiling a list of songs I can play either in part or all the way through. Here’s the current list as of this writing:

Electric
AC DC - Back in Black, Dirty Deeds, Walk All Over You
America - Horse with No Name
Ben E. King (on bass) - Stand By Me
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Blue Oyster Cult - Don’t Fear The Reaper
Dokken - Alone Again
Iron Maiden - The Trooper
Judas Priest - The Hellion, Livin’ After Midnight
Metallica - Fade To Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls
Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train, I Don’t Know
Styx - Suite Madam Blue
Ted Nugent - Cat Scratch Fever
Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

Acoustic
John Mellancamp - Pink Houses
Five Man Electrical Band - Signs
Ritchie Valens - Donna

Have you got some good guitar song suggestions to add? There are a bunch of songs I’d like to learn how to play and, in some cases, learn how to play again. The song list shrinks if you don’t keep practicing.

Bought a bass for son
You might have noticed in the list that I snuck a song on bass in there by Ben E. King. Stand By Me is a great bass riff and fairly easy to play. My son was having trouble learning the guitar so I bough him an Ibanez bass. He’s learned a few songs on there and seems to find it easier to play with his smaller fingers.

Our third Guitar Center purchase was a set of Simmons electronic drums and drum amplifier. They sound great and we’ve been jamming a bit with bass, drums and guitar. My son who plays bass is also working on playing the drums too. We got a double bass pedal for it.

Rock Band full albums
I think what has gotten me started back into this was the game Rock Band which I’ve given high marks in the past. And speaking of Rock Band, Harmonix which makes the game yesterday started offering the first complete album: Judas Priest most excellent Screaming For Vengeance available for 1,200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. We bought this and played last night for a little while. Great stuff, this could give the music industry something to cheer for as I can see fans buying their album multiple times.

Worked for Judas Priest. Last night we took our youngest to dinner for his birthday and then we went and bough a CD. Which one? Screaming for Vengeance, of course.

Not sure I mentioned it, but we’re on our third set of Rock Band drums now. The newest one seems more heavily reinforced and maybe (hopefully) will last more than a month or two.

Time for me to jump back into my reading list which shows 1,000+ in Google Reader and 1,446 in reBlog and grows by the hour. Before the day is done, I might cheat and mark all as read, but we’ll see how things go.

Please share in the comments below what you’ve been up to, especially if you’re a blogger. Are you publishing less blog posts these days? Playing music or some other hobby offline? It’s good to have some variety in your life.

Yesterday our Zoom cable modem crapped out at home and it was no April Fool’s joke. Last night we went to Best Buy and picked up a new modem and upgraded our router to the D-Link Xtreme N Gaming Router which promises to prioritize gaming traffic.

Replacing the cable modem was as easy as unplugging the old, plugging in the new Motorola modem and calling Comcast to register the modem. I spent more time on hold waiting for the Comcast customer service rep (10 minutes) than actually hooking up the hardware. Once Comcast registered the MAC ID on their end, internet quickly returned.

Comcast also pitched me on a free 90 day trial of 8Mbps down 2Mbps up connection. At the end of the 90 days it will cost $10/month more if we don’t cancel. I said sure, uncap that badboy. Thinking back to the dial-up modem days, internet speed is the new drug.

According to data at speedtest.net it looks like Comcast is the top dog for bandwidth in our area:

Next, I put in the CD that came with the D-Link DGL-4500 and followed the wizard. It helped me setup wireless security and configure the modem with no manual intervention. Five minutes later, I asked our sons to give the new connection a whirl. Had lag improved? They said they noticed an improvement.

This morning I quizzed them again and they said it was “better.” I probably won’t enough time to test the gaming until this coming weekend. It’s no rush, we have 89 more days.

The DGL-4500 comes with a Y! Desktop Widget for real time network monitoring as well as offers a bright blue readable digital display on the router which they call a “network activity display screen.” The Widget doesn’t show anything that isn’t already available from the web interface (by accessing 192.168.0.1) so not sure if it’s worth the additional CPU overhead.

We paid $179.99 + tax at Best Buy. After some extended use, I’ll either write a detailed review of our findings or share feedback in updates to this post.

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton missed a way to turn a reporter’s question around:

a reporter for the student paper, The Butler Collegian, asked for her opinion "on the criticism of her mother that how she handled the Lewinsky scandal might be a sign of weakness and she might not be a strong enough candidate to be president".

Instead of showing indignance toward the reporter for asking Chelsea a good question she should have reinforced her mother’s strength in keeping a family together for not quitting in a time of personal crisis. Would it have been better for Hillary to divorce Bill Clinton over the incident? I’m sure some would be criticizing her now if she had. And would she be a serious candidate today if she had gotten a divorce?

Wrong or right, I don’t think so. Voters like me view divorce — except in rare circumstances — as a weakness, not a strength. When you go up there and agree to stand by your spouse in "sickness and health" and in "good times and bad times" that’s a contract to adhere. How do we know for a fact that Hillary didn’t already know about Lewinsky? Who knows, maybe she even approved privately. Whatever the case, if she decided to quit her marriage contract, how can we be sure she would stick by what she said in public office? Fair criticism.

Ask anybody who has ever been divorced if they should have gotten married and how many will answer yes? We all make mistakes, that’s not the point here (and not trying to make those who have been divorced feel like bigger failures either), but a contract of marriage needs to have some amount of importance in society again. Today all too many couples are getting divorced like they’re changing underwear. It’s one thing if no children are involved but quite another when there are.

Choosing the right partner
Thinking of getting married to someone? Make sure it’s the one. Ask yourself how you’ll feel when that person doesn’t look the way they do now? What if s/he becomes ill? Are you willing to stand by and take care of him/her? And are you best friends? Do you like to do a lot of non-sexual activities together? People who aren’t best friends shouldn’t get married. Look, you have very few true best friends in this world, so at least make sure before you marry someone that that person is a best friend.

I believe it’s possible to have more than one best friend and be compatible with more than one person in life, but the bar should be extremely high for your chosen life partner. Right now the bar seems to be way too low. If you’d like more guidance, read past post Does 17 Years Qualify for Giving Marital Advice?

Back to Chelsea
I wonder if Chelsea’s parents schooled her on how to answer this question next time. Staying together shows strength, dedication, resolve. I’m not saying what Bill did with Lewinsky was acceptable behavior in their marriage, but was it enough to break up their family?

Chelsea getting angry only shows a vulnerability and opens the door to future probing on the topic by any skilled reporter. I’d be surprised if she doesn’t receive this question again.

Chocolate bunnies for Easter are cliched. What you really need to taste is a lemonade pig.

Farmland Friends are made by R.M Palmer. You can bite off the head of a friendly duck if pigs aren’t your kind of friend.

I hope for those of you who celebrate that your Easter went well with your friends and family.

Good stuff on the horizon for Blu-ray fans as some much needed web-interactive features will become available.

The downloadable content will range from bonus movie scenes and trailers to "interactive movie-based games."

"With Blu-ray established as the high-definition optical disc standard, more consumers are ready to jump in and take advantage of everything the format offers," said Scott A. Steinberg, vice president of product marketing, in a statement.

Interactive movie-based games? Like Dragon’s Lair? Or how about a version of the upcoming Indiana Jones where you control Indy through perilous situations? One wrong move and Indy’s toast. I’m just dreaming aloud here, so don’t get too excited.

While this might work with action movies, it won’t work well with romance flicks. Or maybe it would? Oh boy, I better stop the brain before I get into trouble.