Lake David Fanclub Blog - Misc

Eleanor and more!

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:47:00 -0400

We've been busy at Lakedavid Enterprises Headquarters.

1. Mr. Fit mileage and CPG charts have been updated. Click here for the latest information.

2. We had a baby! Visit our sister website, http://www.yussen.com, for updates and photos of little Eleanor Esther Yussen. Out of respect for CAN-SPAM regulations, please note that we did not carry over our subscriber list. If you want to be notified of photo additions, you'll need to subscribe to the other website as well.

3. While we're not abandoning Lakedavid, you may expect less frequent news bulletins here whilst we focus our attention on more pressing matters such as child development, our busy work life, and enjoying the chilly autumn.

It's been a busy couple months! Since our last post, we attended the wedding (souvenir photo below) of Jenna and Keith. The HWCB concluded its Summer season and we've been on break ever since late July. The band is revving up the new year, and will be performing Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009, at the Hopkins Center for the Arts (7PM). We expect a return to rehearsals sometime soon after that date. In August, we enjoyed many performances at Lake Harriet, walks through Kenny Neighborhood, and a visit to Applewood Orchard for early apple picking. Since mid September, we've been busy with our newfound parental responsibilities, but have enjoyed every day, and still frequent our favorite places, enjoying what's left of the residual Summer warmth.

Fit Mileage

Wed, 27 May 2009 14:56:00 -0400

This past weekend marked not only Memorial Day, but also 1.5 years of FIT ownership for David.

It is a less frequent occurrence today than a year ago that David is stopped on the street by random passerby, inquiring as to the enjoyment rating and fuel economy of Mr. Fit. However, such random encounters have occurred as recently as May 9, 2009 (location: Marshall, MN AmericInn). Due to the increasing sales of the Fit and its presence on the roads, it may now be less of a curious sight in the "big city."

Nonetheless, I thought I'd take a moment to respond to the most common question and help explain why I'm still THRILLED with this car purchase. You'll note from my chart that since the purchase of ScanGauge II, I've slowly but steadily increased average fuel efficiency, from low 30's to a now frequent 38 or 39 mpg. Last weekend Mr. Fit had a single-tank PR of 42.3MPG. I have resisted modifications to the car for efficiency sake, but slowed down my driving and become more aware of wasted acceleration.

For those who might be wondering if this car is still worth it, the math is simple. Taking average mileage, and Insight Hybrid and Fit price tags from the Honda website, it will take only about 29 years until the Insight Hybrid pays for itself. If you drive more than average, perhaps a little sooner. For those with a Prius, the payoff takes at least as long because they are markedly more expensive than the Insight or HCH.

Given this data, and setting aside the arguments against Hybrid batteries and the environmental harm they may leave behind, how do we justify government incentives to buy hybrid vehicles when high-efficiency gas vehicles are becoming increasingly available? The fuel savings of the hybrid is important to the earth, and to our energy freedom, but it's not enough. We need to get to where these cars use very little or no gasoline AND don't come with a massive cost premium to the buyer.

Ides of March

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:19:00 -0400

The Ides of March have now come and gone, with merriment and a special dinner outing to celebrate a Birthday. The first weekend of March, before time rolled forward by 60 minutes, we visited the annual Bluegrass Festival. We are pleased to share with you three notable bluegrass announcements:

1. May is Officially Bluegrass month. Isn't every month bluegrass month?

2. You can now join a MBOTMA Fan page on Facebook.

3. Mark Kreitzer is no longer with the Middle Spunk Creek Boys. We had a brief scare that MSCB had been disbanded, but alas it is still intact and performing. They will be at the April annual or semi-annual MBOTMA fundraiser at Dulonos. Friday, April 17 and Saturday, April 18 2009. Click here for further details on the Spring Fling and send our pal P. Nussbaum your signup!

Mark Kreitzer and the Mark Kreitzer show can be found online via their new website, everything you ever wanted to know about the greatest and funniest bluegrass musician on earth.

February Bunkers outing to see Billy Johnson's Roadshow. David with two terrific ladies.

March 11-13, David and Christine visited Lake City, MN, Kellogg, MN, Wabasha, MN, Winona, MN, Stockholm, WI, Pepin, WI, Nelson, WI, and Alma, WI. During the getaway they stopped for their first visit to the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN (whose other large claim to fame is/was the filming of "Grumpy Old Men"). They had a highly educational and exciting time watching the 1 hour + informational session on bald eagles, with live demonstration of how to eat a pale of fish, bones and all. Scary!

And we leave you with a shot of Mr. Fit, now once again equipped with Summer wheels and tires, excited for the rapid snow melt which is currently underway in the Land of Lakedavid.

This brings us to our Reader Poll of the Week (RPW). If Mr. Fit and Eagle got in a tangle, who comes out on top? Mr. Fit has the weight advantage at 2500lbs vs 11 lbs, but Eagle can see for miles with perfect vision, and unleash 1600 pounds of force per square inch through its dangerous talons. Would these pierce Mr Fit's body armor like a mouse through swiss cheese, or would Eagle be caught off guard by the sport grille and quick agility of Mr Fit?

Android Takes Over Earth

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 11:36:00 -0400

"Also in the works from Hamblin's company: touchscreen menus for restaurants, Android-based medical devices, and a 15-in. kitchen computer where family members can leave messages for one another." Source: Business Week

I love it! Ordering food from an android menu. Can I also push a button to blog what I'm eating or send it to a diary that will track my caloric and nutritional intake? I'm picturing the scene in Back to the Future where MJF orders a Pepsi Lite from a hovering robo-waiter.

This is precisely why open-source rules. Collaboration. Teamwork. Creativity. All things stifled by the Microsoft and Apple approach. Do they make boatloads of money? Sure. But just for themselves. The open platform makes money for a disperse group of people, and offers consumers a better product. Things we never even thought of, but will definitely enjoy.

Starting today, Google is rolling out the 3rd round of software updates to the G1. This is rumored to include the just-announced Latitude GPS tracking module, integrated into Google Maps (already one of the very best apps on the G1 phone), a voice command Google web search, and auto-checking for updates to market apps you've already installed.

Expect 40 G1 phones to hit the stores this year. Sound crazy? Phandroid reports 6-8 phones in Germany on the O2 system alone. By July, they claim Android might top the iPhone in number of users. While I personally am skeptical about that forecast, I do think it will happen by next year. Motorola has been in the news for diving headfirst into The Sea of Android, to save itself in the land of all things mobile. Here's a prediction for you: Moto will come out with something as fantastico as the StarTAC. And it will happen by Summer, 2009. Secondary call: it will be sold by Verizon. Sprint strategic leadership is moronic, so they'll probably be the last U.S. player to buy into Android, after they get spanked again and later come to terms with the fact that their junk phones and junk service won't compete without it.

Since the October release, you've been dying to buy this phone for your Grandma. But, Grandma only uses gadgets that come with a user guide. Yes, you argued with the Senior T-Mobile authorized customer sales associate representative for 97 minutes, asking how in the world they could sell a phone with no instruction manual. After the STMACSA explained that HTC would have never done such a thing, but Google owns the world, and they don't like instructions, you opted to wait. Good news! Your wait is now over. Enter Chris Zeigler of Engadget with this brilliant text: T-Mobile G1 For Dummies [Amazon]

Since Android is going to take over the Earth, I feel they ought to embrace a new slogan. Here's my entry for the slogan contest:

Android. More Vital To Life Than Your Adenoids.

How to keep the news interesting

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:46:00 -0400

I followed a twitter link to this interview with Good Question man Jason DeRusha. The discussion on how the nightly news is slowly becoming obsolete intrigued me. Here's why...

I really think I might be among only a sparse few 31-year-olds in the state of Minnesota (or possibly even the country) who watches the 10 o'clock news most weeknights, and has a bona fide newsprint newspaper delivered to my doorstep every morning (WSJ). But why would I do this? I am on a computer all day, so like two thirds of the Gen-X and virtually all of the Gen-Y clans, I've gotten my overdose of stories from iGoogle, RSS feeds, twitter, facebook, startribune.com, cnn.com, (wcco.com? yea sure) well before I watch the news at night. I could be the broadcaster. I've already seen the stories five times, earlier in the day. The exceptions are:

1. the weather report, because they correct their forecast again every 15 minutes, so the later the better
2. special interest stories like Jason DeRusha's Good Question
3. op/ed segments like 'In The Know'

The internet is all op-ed, but then we have to get concrete facts somewhere. I often marvel that every network covers the major stories each day, and that they are all identical, and they are all exactly what was published on news websites all day long. Who decides behind the scenes what today's stories are going to be? Is there a secret bulletin that gets sent out at 5AM to all of the media outlets in the world telling them, here are your 6 stories for today?

Election Day 2008

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:37:00 -0400

Living across the street from my polling place has its advantages... I could roll out of bed and look out my window to see how far down the street the line stretched. After a quick shower, I headed over and got my place in line.... at 6:55AM!! The poll didn't open until 7AM but these pics capture the scene. Folks down the street and around the corner. By 7:43AM I was out the door and the ballot box machine indicated mine was #169.

Two things were noticeably impressive about the operation. First, it was my first time voting in a general election at this polling place. I had no idea how long the lines normally are, but folks around me who had voted more times than I am years old said they'd never seen a line like this, ever. Second, I was extremely impressed and proud of the poll volunteers for both their kindness and efficiency. The line moved steadily from the time they opened. A woman paced down the line to see if there were new registrants, and offer them a clipboard to work on their form, rather than having them hold up everyone once inside at the check-in table. The same woman spotted an elderly man, perhaps close to 90, sitting on a bench outside the school, while his wife waited in line. She brought him inside, out of the chilly air, and let him wait for her in a comfortable armchair. When I finally got inside, and down the hall where the line snaked, there was a table with 2 school workers offering sugar cookies, hot cider and coffee. Now I only hope this degree of Minnesota nice can endure the 13 hour storm and present itself in the same way for those people who wait in even longer lines after work this evening.

Put yer...

Bye-Bye Wifi

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:42:00 -0400

Those who have had the pleasure of listening to me rant about internet know I have been a passionate advocate for the last 7 months for the concept of Municipal wireless internet (aka muni wifi). Since Minneapolis was a pioneer in the country in building what has been heralded as the only or first successful, large metropolitan wireless internet blanket, I was set on supporting this effort as a subscriber. I closed my ears when several people offered early reports that it sucked and that they had a terrible signal. I felt, to be fair, we needed to give it an honest try and see for ourselves. Besides that the system remained under construction, the SLF (signal luck factor, as I like to call it) is highly dependent on the location of your home in proximity to a relay node.

While the service was without frequent issues for the first 5 months, it all went down the toilet when Spring arrived. We were told that leaves caused interference, and that adjustments would resolve the problems. Well, how could anyone possibly predict that tree branches would grow leaves? In any case, after 10 days without service in early June, USI offered us a month free to compensate for the now-frequent outages. The service came back, and stayed up, for several weeks. A week ago, it went down again. This isn't the typical DSL or Cable outage where you unplug and replug the power cord and wa-la, it's fixed. This is no service, solid, no matter how many times you recycle the power. The curious part of the leaves philosophy was that our signal strength (the Ruckus modem's connection with the nearest antenna; our house is only the 3rd from the end of the block...with a node stationed right around the corner) was always strong. Even on a lower level, on the opposite side of the house from where the signal originates.

It appears that our connection has been maintained but other nearby nodes lost the relay. Even 3/4 mi away at Starbucks, it is working. So it is a very localized problem, and they probably have a long list of these. Thinking this should be fixable we made 2 phone calls until we eventually reached a human, who informed us they could not provide any form of ETA for fixing the issue...they did not know if it would be a couple days or a couple months. That's right, months. Not "Maybe 3 or 4 days", not "We'll call you," not "Well, we don't work on the weekend", not even "There are parts on order, it just might be working before you get your car back from hail hell." Just 'we dunno'. Even after that round of bad news, we decided out of fairness and, so as not to be impulsive, to wait another 4 days before pulling the plug. I called Comcast last night and reactivated our previous high speed; for only $43/month we were instantly back online. Although it's expensive, we know it works. All the time.

In case any of you are considering signing up for Mpls Muni, I've provided a helpful map of service availability. Maybe in about 3 years, when they have 60,000 customers instead of 6,000 customers, they'll have these things fixed and we'll try again.

Postscript: After we attempted to cancel they offered us 2 months free to "save us." We already had one month free... what good is a free service that doesn't work? Too little, too late. Very happy to be back with CHS.

lake david theme

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:55:00 -0400

Anyone else out there with a Symbian OS mobile phone? Enjoy the enclosed lakedavid theme for your phone, free of charge. Or, you can make your own custom theme at ownskin.com. Enjoy!

Artawhirl-ypop

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:32:00 -0400

Year 2 Here are some pics from our second visit to art a whirl, NEMAA's famous neighborhood wide showcase of art.

The California Building

Motherboard Sculptures

Demo Zone

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:18:00 -0400

First, I must apologize that it's been over a month since my last update on life in Lake David. It has been a busy time, full of changing seasons and the glory of spring (snow) showers. We took a trip to Madison at the end of March to visit Herr and Frau Shabaker and gang, however I regret to inform you that the camera was left behind. Much fun was had by all. Activities included great food, sight-seeing downtown, shopping the newly renovated Hilldale, Orange Tree Import and State St., and revisiting some old neighborhoods. You may taunt, "So much for photo journaling!" Inasmuch as Lake David only recently made the leap from all ASCII, you should be used to it by now and just enjoy this small moment of purity reminiscent of that time before the internet added color and ventured into 3 dimensions.

If I've left you soured, then this should give you a good chuckle. Here is a glimpse of the current work site in my office building, entitled "Step 1: Demolition". For information on Step 2, please e-mail me.

A view from the exit door of my office suite...to be completed July 4, 2008.

Dust much?

St Pat's Report

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:40:00 -0400

. . . on the March 15th parade through downtown St. Paul:

Highlights of the marathon 1 1/2 hour event included bagpipers, Senator Klobuchar, 97 different Irish clans, a small smattering of kilts, Joe's and George's dueling hot dog carts, all the free rock hard candy you can catch, and of course plenty o' lucky leprechaun green bead necklaces.

Following the parade, there was a big Irish celebration in the historic Landmark Center, where visitors could listen to an all day lineup of Irish folk music, watch Irish stepdance performance, browse vendors selling clothes, jewelry and all things green, or visit 'the tea room' on the upper levels to escape the noise of the thunderous crowd.

Golfing in the skyways.....

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:39:00 -0400

A couple pics from Friday's 2nd annual Skyway Open, an 18 hole minigolf course designed by terrific architects and setup on platforms, as shown, in downtown Minneapolis. The event benefits the Boys and Girls Club.

An added bonus! Friday was also the kickoff to the weekend-long MBOTMA Winter Bluegrass Festival in Plymouth, MN. As D&C are new members of MBOTMA we were excited to partake in enjoying the jamming, in legal areas only, and highlight performances including a group from Madison, Wisconsin. Here's a neat review from Citypages.

Sebastian Joe's

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:48:00 -0400

When the never-ending arctic temperatures get you down, you can always get a laugh and a lift with an ice cream cone at Sebastian Joe's. How does an ice cream parlor stay in business during the Siberian season? They offer a sliding scale discount commensurate with the severity of the day's low temperature. That, and free WiFi.

City of Lakes Loppet: A Wintertime Aquatennial

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:01:00 -0400

Next weekend, Feb 2-3, is the annual City of Lakes Loppet. Thousands of local people cross-country ski in 9 events - anything from a couple blocks in the luminary event to the big race event 33KM. The organizers are making 50,000 cubic feet of snow (bonus points for anyone who can calculate the weight of this) to dump on the streets of Uptown for the finishing section. It is as exciting and entertaining as marathon-spectating; find a spot nearby and watch the enthusiasts fly by. You can yell things like "WAY TO SKI!"

I can't think of a better example of Minnesotans celebrating what nature brings us in our land and our winter.

Oh the weather outside..

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:37:00 -0400

I woke up one morning and the temperature had changed from 58 and Sunny to -3 and blustery. I found myself trudging through 9.7" of fresh snow to reach the bus stop and, oddly enough, the bitter cold was warmer on February 29 than it was on November 29. Perhaps it was the onset of the rare leap year. Perhaps it was the passing of our beloved Pennsylvanian holiday, The Groundhog Day. Somehow, the sun in the sky felt warm. The weather pixie told me to breathe deeply and enjoy a freedom from Midwestern allergens whom had been frozen into dormancy. I could flop onto a thin sheet of plastic and steam down the slopes of Anthony School, risking the broken bones, bumps or bruises that come more easily -- and last much longer -- with adulthood. Or I could skip all that and seek shelter in a nearby coffeehouse where the scents of freshly baked artisan breads, raspberry cocoa, the Sunday paper and an underground hootenanny warmly greet guests.

Would you prefer the universal remote control from "Click" to bring you to 2010 when a new President presides and we can enjoy Olympic games from Vancouver? Don't forget the lesson in the tale: treasure every day for what it is.