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As you read this, I am at the Walden Sand Dunes for our annual Memorial Day trip.

I’ll be back on Tuesday with pictures….

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There are few musical instruments that are more beautiful than a well played acoustic guitar, which brings us to this week’s Music Pick. Rodrigo y Gabriela are a duo of acoustic guitar players from south of the border. The two Mexico City natives play fast and hard - their CD includes covers of Metallica’s “Orion” and Zepplin’s “Stairway”.

If you like acoustic guitar, or are just looking for something different, check out their myspace page.

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Jericho fans are trying to send CBS a message - NUTS!

For those of you not familiar with the show, Jake’s grandfather told him a WWII war story where the Allied General in a hopeless situation was offered surrender by the Germans. Rather than surrender, the General sent back a one word reply - NUTS. Jake then used the same response to the leader of a neighboring town that invades Jericho in the final episode of the season (series).

Looks like Jericho fans want to use the same message on CBS and are sending nuts to the programming execs.

As a side note, I found out about this from a post on Quiet Earth - a blog, apparently based right here in Northern Colorado, largely dedicated to Post Apocalyptic fiction.

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Five years ago, when I bought my car, it needed a sound system. I looked at traditional radio/CD players, but being a vintage ride I didn’t want to hack up the dash to install something like that. My solution? A sirius satellite radio.

I had my original reciever for a couple years and then decided to upgrade to the Sporster model. Installed it and purchased and additional kit so I could move it between vehicles. Part of my reasoning when I first purchased the satellite radio was the lack of theft. The reciever was only about $100, plus it won’t work without a subscription, so there isn’t really any reason to steal one. This logic worked great for me, until yesterday.

I got in my car to head to a meeting and my radio was gone. Some MORON had stolen it out of the car. As I said, this radio is at least two years old, a discontinued model ( I couldn’t even find one for sale on ebay). The thief didn’t take the power supply or antenna so the unit was unusable, plus I suspended the account. Even if it was connected, it won’t ever work - unless I re-enable it on my account.

Basically the thief got away with a WORTHLESS piece of electronics, and I’m going to have to pay $70 for a new radio. Really, this pretty much just an act of vandalism. I almost feel sorry for the thief. The punk kid (I can only assume it was a kid) that stole my radio risked bodily injury and criminal charges to steal something with virtually no value. Why bother? I’ve never really understood the motivations for theft anyway, but theft without any kind of reward is just dumb.

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Looks like divorce rates are down, but not for the right reasons.
Time has an article discussing the divorce rate and the corresponding lower number of marriages.

Adults these days, products of broken homes, are chosing to cohabitate rather than get hitched. This corresponds to fewer marriages and fewer divorces per capita (not per marriage).

One interesting point made in the article was this

Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., says divorces are dropping in the college-educated sector because many spouses “are learning how to negotiate marriages based on less rigid gender roles than in the past.”

“College-educated wives are more likely to work than less-educated wives, and a recent study found that unlike the past, a wife’s work now tends to stabilize marriage,” she said.

Contrary to Coontz comments, college-educated mothers are choosing a more traditional gender role by staying at home with their children. Enough mothers are leaving their careers that it is causing some concern in feminist circles.

The debate is being fueled by “Vanity Fair” contributing editor Leslie Bennetts, who argues women face “tremendous dangers” by giving up financial autonomy to stay home with children, in her book “The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?” (Voice, $24.95).

The latest statistics show the percentage of working mothers with infants and toddlers has declined, albeit slightly, starting in the late ’90s — something Bennetts doesn’t see as a good thing for women. Married and in her 50s, with two teenagers, Bennetts says she is sounding an alarm for Generation X and Y mothers who she believes are living a fantasy that their lives will never be disrupted by divorce, unemployment or the death of a partner. If something bad happens, she said, these once-business-oriented stay-at-home moms think they can just jump back into the work force with little effort.

“I think women have been sold a bill of goods, and the media is partly to blame,” she said. “There are innumerable stories about the stresses of the juggling act. And then the stories about opting out. That’s only half the picture. It doesn’t talk about opting back in.”

Makes me wonder what the actual cause of our divorce rate is, what can be done about it and if the institution of marriage is ultimately doomed. I remember, as a kid, watching Sci-Fi movies depicting a future with a strange communal living environment. Now I’m beginning to wonder if that might actually happen…

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My dogs have done plenty of bad things (and plenty of good things - this morning they caught a mouse), but never anything like this.

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I have used Opera for many years, and it is still my browser of choice. Faster the firefox, more standards compliant than IE and (I think) the first browser to incorporate tabbed browsing, using Opera is a pleasant experience.

One of the drawbacks in Opera is it’s default download process. While better than the Firefox download manager, the constant appearance of the Transfer window, while informative, can be annoying. Every time a file is downloaded, by default the transfer window becomes the active tab.

Last week I did some research and found this is easily remedied.

First, you need to access the transfer tab. This is accomplished by the handy keyboard shortcut ++T
Second, the behavior of the transfer tab can be altered by clicking the View dropdown button at the top of the screen and changing
Show Transfers when starting download
to
Show Transfers in background when starting download

Now when I download multiple files I don’t have to move back and forth between the transfer tab and my original active tab, plus, with a quick ++T I can view the transfer window and see all my valuable download information.

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I haven’t had a Music Pick of the Week for a while, but those of you who have read this segment will know that I typically attempt to promote relatively unknown acts. This week takes a little different turn, this week I want to talk about Amy Winehouse.

Winehouse has been on the music scene for some time, her debut album, Frank, was released in 2003. In spite of this, I had never heard of her until her new single, Rehab, hit the airwaves in recent weeks. First impressions were of a Macy Gray type artist, but this not true at all.

Amy Winehouse is a Jewish Jazz Singer from London. Think Norah Jones with an attitude. I do not claim to be any Jazz expert, and I’m sure there are many that consider Winehouse a parody of the traditional Jazz singers of the 40s and 50s, but if that is so she has taken the mimicry to an extreme. Her look, sound, instrumentation and even her penchant for controversy and substance abuse is remincent of some of the Jazz greats.

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Woke up this morning to news on the radio about The Killers canceling last night’s sold out show at Red Rocks. Two songs in, Brandon Flowers had to leave the stage with voice problems.

Interesting comments about the show here, here and here (with pics).

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I have to admit, I am a sucker for serial dramas, especially those with a supernatural/sci-fi slant, post-apocalyptic environments, strange islands, nuclear bombs or hot young college coeds. I guess that’s OK, I know people that like reality shows too… I guess we all have our guilty pleasures.

Today I was dealt a double blow by learning about the demise of both Veronica Mars and Jericho. Sure, Veronica slipped a little this year with the changing of the theme song and the absorption of the WB into the CW. It seems the show had lost some steam and ‘Mars - the College Years’ wasn’t going so great, especially after the amazing bus crash story line last year. I’m still sorry to see it go.

Jericho, on the other hand, was just starting to get interesting. Hawkins was turning out to be a hero. Heather and Emily were about to be in a catfight, and Jake was going to avenge his father. The only downside was the untimely (and a bit cheesy) death of Gerald McRaney’s (Simon & Simon, Major Dad) character - Johnston Green.

The real problem with networks cancelling serialized drama is the lack of closure. The Mars writers typically do a good job of making the story lines wrap up at the end of the season. Jericho didn’t give us that at all. In fact, we will never learn who the evil homeland security guy is, why he set off the nukes, what will happen to the town, the story is just over - right in the middle.

I think there should be a law. Networks are not allowed to cancel shows without finishing the story. If this means that they have to buy a whole new season, so be it. The FCC needs to quit worrying so much about wardrobe malfunctions and start protecting all of us invest time in stories, just to be dissappointed. Come on, think of the children!

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