Skijoring!

Posted by Ross

I'm interrupting DoubleM's life rules with one of my own.

If you live in a state with cold winters, get outside or move.

I posted about skijoring 2 years ago when my friend John introduced me to it. It's like dogsledding with skis. I figured it was worth sharing because it's a great winter activity if you have dogs. In my opinion enjoying the winter is all about being able to get outside. Why would you live in Minnesota if you can't enjoy the cold? Here's John with my dog, Mario, and his dog, Tigger. They are getting ready to race.

They were racing in the City of Lakes Loppet. It's a weekend event with a bunch of skiing races over by Lake Calhoun. Here they are after the finish line.

I also wanted to get this out there because it was really difficult for me to find information on where to skijor in Saint Paul. If you happen upon this post and have other places, please leave a note in the comments. I've been going to Highland Park. Many of the golf courses in MN are used for cross country, most don't allow dogs. Here's a map of the course. Park on Edgecumbe and ski clockwise.

View 2011-01-30 15:30 in a larger map

Lastly, here's a video of us starting out.

If you're in the cities you should definitely check out the festivities on lake Calhoun Feb. 5th and 6th.

Update: Beermann shared this awesome related link in the comments.

Dennis loses it

Posted by Ross



Hey there folks. I know it's been a long time since I've posted something. I thought I'd break the dry spell with a quick clip from a recent episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. NSFW Audio. What more would you expect from Sunny?

I wish I had HBO

Posted by Ross




HBO has a lot of good programming. There is one show in particular that make me wish I had it. Bored to Death features Jason Schwartzman (one of my favorite actors) as a writer who tries moonlighting as a private detective. It appears from the trailer that it has some pretty great guest appearances (John Hodgman, Patton Oswalt, Kristen Wiig, Parker Posey, Bebe Neuwirth, Oliver Platt). Enjoy the trailer and invite me over to your house for the premiere if you have HBO.

Date My Avatar

Posted by Ross

So most of the geeks out there have already seen this, and most of the non-geeks won't really care, but I thought I'd post it anyways. It's a video featuring Felicia Day to promote The Guild, which starts season 3 in a few days. You may remember we were lucky enough to have Felicia stop by and comment on our blog once.

Here's the video.

And for fans of Zaboo, don't forget Sandeep Parikh, Creator/Writer/Directore/etc. of Legend of Neil is in it's second season. I'm not sure how appealing this show is to people who have never touched a Zelda game, but that's definitely not me, so I like it. (For the record, I'm a huge fan of the Zelda franchise, I've never played an MMORPG, and I do love The Guild)

PS Geeks - Firefly is on hulu

After Dark: Bikini Cinema - The Big Lebowski

Posted by Ross



It's not really NSFW as the girls are wearing bikinis, but that combined with the dialogue (If you're unfamiliar with the Big Lebowski: 1- you're an idiot, 2- there are a lot F bombs) I figured some colleagues may think this is in poor taste. Anyways, without further ado, I bring you chicks in bikinis reading from the script of The Big Lebowski.

CTRL

Posted by Ross



Many of you die hard Arrested Development fans are probably turning blue in the face from holding your breath waiting to hear about an official green light for an AD movie. While you are busy hoping and praying for that to happen a little show called CTRL might give you a little taste of what you've been missing. Tony Hale plays a Buster-esque character that wields a keyboard imbued with magical powers from spilling Nestea on it. OK, so the premise is a little weak and there's a lot of obvious product placement, but it's entertaining. At one point Tony Hale even does the nervous Buster arms-back-up-elbows-hands-over-the-ears maneuver. At about five minutes per episode you don't really find enough time to ponder how ridiculous the plot and actions of the characters are. Episode 1 embedded below for your viewing pleasure. (Yeah Hulu!)

h/t @Risk

America Is Bad at Science

Posted by Ross

Warning: Rant ahead

Plug In Hybrid vehicles have been bothering me for quite some time now. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for them, and I hope to buy one some day, as they are a great idea for a lot of reasons. So what bothers me? The way car companies market them. Chevy made an announcement today about the Chevy volt and that it will get 230 MPG. I'll say this once, in bold, so we are clear on this.

THE CHEVY VOLT WILL NOT GET 230 MILES PER GALLON.

No car will anytime soon, if ever. You may be able to go 230 miles by putting in a gallon of gas, but that's because you are also adding another source of fuel, electricity. They could just as easily say that the Volt gets 1,000 MPG or 40 MPG. It all depends on how you drive and fuel your car. I'm making this post because this sort of marketing needs to stop. Although a plug in hybrid is a fairly simple concept, America can not grasp their fuel efficiency. Car companies are now using that to trick people into thinking these cars are more efficient than they actually are. Consumers need to realize what is actually happening so they don't think that they can drive across the country for 30 bucks worth of fuel. It's not just car companies at fault either. News outlets are just as guilty and even one of my favorite websites on things green, ecogeek, is guilty of this. In order to really compare efficiences we need to know how many MPG the car gets from the gasoline engine and how many miles per kWh or Amp-hour the car gets from the battery. Just a personal gripe of mine that I wanted to share with you all. Sorry for not having anything entertaining, here's a lolcat.

Happy Birthday Double M

Posted by Ross

Sorry I couldn't one up your sweet birthday vid for me.

Drunk Animals

Posted by Ross



I feel nothing more needs to be said about this clip, except that I found it on TYWKIWDBI.  That blog finds a ton of good stuff.  Definitely worth adding to your reader.  

Have a great weekend, now go party like an animal.

Check out the Streamys

Posted by Ross



As you all must be painfully aware, this blog loves things that can stream on the internet.  Aside from our staple youtube videos, we've also brought you things like Dr. Horrible, The Guild and Legend of Neil.  All these shows happen to be nominated for Streamys.  (Yes, they all have Felicia Day as well).  If you're like me, you were unaware of the Streamys until just recently.  Well, it's an award show "to recognize outstanding achievement for shows produced originally for broadband distribution."  I loathe awards shows like the Oscars and the Grammys, but I can respect this because it's supporting a format with a much lower barrier to entry in a much more open format.  Check out the video for Viewer's Choice (embedded below, and still open for voting) and the other nominees.  You might find a new show worth watching.  The award show can be watched live, tomorrow, at 7:30 PM Pacific Time.

Flirting With Magic

Posted by Ross

OK, so normally I wouldn't just throw info like this out into the public eye. But seeing as 2 of the posters here are engaged and two are married it's not doing a lot of good keeping it to ourselves.  Please post results in the comments.

Summer of Tears in Teen Wolf

Posted by Ross

The Funny or Die video earlier today reminded me of one of my favorite Funny or Die videos, maybe the best.  Comedey troupe Summer of Tears shows what Teen Wolf would have been like if they were there.  I'm posting it at 5, because it's a 7 minute video that is so funny you don't want to half-ass the viewing while slacking off at work.  Enjoy uninterrupted viewing at home, embedded below for your convenience.

Teen Wolf - watch more funny videos

Fail Blog Fails

Posted by Ross

The following is an experiment I will try to keep going.  I don't subscribe to fail blog, but every once in a while something pops up in my reader from them.  It's often funny, but when it's a video it's frustrating because it's a youtube clip and it's not embedded.  Clicking through isn't really a hassle, but it's completely unnecessary.  So go here and add that blog to your reader if you want the fail blog videos in your reader.  The first installment is a video that you already saw posted here, that I found to be particularly unfunny, because when I feel a video is obviously staged, it loses its humor.  

This is really nothing more than an attempt at punishment to failblog since they fail at proper usage of an rss feed.

PSA: Free Subs

Posted by Ross



As a man who loves sandwiches, I must share this with my readers.  Free subs from Quiznos.  Get in on it while it lasts  Of course you're being put on their marketing list, but it's totally worth it if you ask me.

What the Stimulus Package Looks Like

Posted by Ross

I debated putting some sort of crude joke image here, but decided to just stick with the pretty pictures I found.  I'm not offering any sort of commentary here about what I think about the money being spent.  I'm totally unqualified to assess what the economic impact of this all will be, I just think it's important that you know where your money is going.  You'll need to biggify these and take a closer look.  

Image credit: creditloan.com

The Washington Post has, what I believe, is a more up to date image:

Make Any Webpage Less Sucky

Posted by Ross

I give you two options to test out here at Immediate Regret (which I hope you think does not suck).  Just click below.

For the remaining small percentage of the world not pleased with ninjas, unicorns or rainbows; click the following link to be sated. LINK

Immediate Regret is for sale

Posted by Ross

I haven't checked with the others, but I bet they'd gladly take a cut of Stimator's estimation of the value of our site.  I'm not really sure how they justify this, but they say we are worth over $4,000.

EDIT:  Hmmm, the html code they give you doesn't even work.  This site can't be reliable.  We must be worth much much more.

More TSOL

Posted by Ross

I love the thirty seconds or less idea.  I guess these don't really need explanation.  All but the second vid drops the F bomb.

World's Largest Skijoring Race

Posted by Ross

First thing is first, you are probably wondering wtf is skijoring. Basically it's dog sledding, but instead of a sled you are on cross country skis. On Saturday Minneapolis held the 4th annual City of Lakes Loppet. (pronounced lope et, or maybe lope pet). One of the events was skijoring.  Even though I've taken my dogs skijoring before, I didn't participate, as I didn't want to buy the necessary safety equipment (a quick release incase you fall and need to let the dogs loose).  My buddy John formed an all-star team with his dog Tigger, and my dog Mario.  Coco can't quite keep up, so she was a spectator.  Most people raced with one dog, and two is the limit.  

This was the world's largest Skijor race with over 100 registrants. I think last year's race with 67 may have previously been the largest race. Not a very popular event, but still very fun. There was a pretty large turnout of spectators as well. The entire city was buzzing as 40 degrees and sunny is the best weather we've seen in a while. It was a perfect day out today. Here's the lake about a half hour before the event.

John and the dogs:

His Yellow Lab, Tigger:

My dog, Mario:

The start:

The best part of the race to watch was the final 90 degree turn, that had a short, but steep incline. Quite a few wipe outs, a few distracted dogs, and at one point a muskrat wandered on to the course. He was shooed off into the crowd. There were a lot of dogs with the onlookers as well, so that little rodent created quite a stir.  John, Tigger and Mario finished in just under 15 miuntes, coming in 36th.  The race is 3 miles, so that's over 12 MPH.  So, you might say John is the 36th best skijorer in the world.

It was a great day to be out there. There was also some sort of bike race happening on Lake Calhoun, as well as a ton of kite boarders out there. Dogs pulling skiers, kites pulling boarders and bikers in the snow. All things you don't typically see.

An open letter to abc.com

Posted by Ross



Dear abc.com,

You suck.  I don't want to dwell on how much you suck, so I will briefly tell you why you suck.  First and foremost you break one of the most important rules of websites.  You make sound without you asking me to.  Youtube, liveleak, metacafe, sites like these are the only ones that get a break on this rule.  This is because people follow links directly to a video that they expect to make noise.  Please note that the main pages of these sites are silent, as every website should be.  It's like a speak when spoken to thing.  That's just a precursor to the real issue here, it all has to do with watching videos on your site.  The following is why your video player sucks.

• It opens in a new window, completely unnecessary
• Fullscreen isn't really fullscreen, that progress bar hangs at the bottom.
• You only work in IE, Firefox and Safari 
• The volume control is wonky
• You have to click off the ads to get back to a program you are trying to watch

In short, you are not hulu.  Go take a look at hulu.com for an example of how to do things. You're lucky you have Lost.