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This is a photo of a volcano in Iceland erupting as the aurora flickers overhead. Wow.

Hah, next summer is shaping up to be the Summer of Sequels. The following movies are scheduled for release in mid-2007:

Shrek 3
Harry Potter 5
Ocean’s 13
Die Hard 4
Pirates of the Caribbean 3
Spider Man 3
The Bourne Ultimatum

The funny thing is, I liked all of the originals (and their respective sequels) so I’ll probably end up seeing these too…

We were heading to Boulder for our weekly ultimate league game, and I caught a fantastic shot of the sun breaking through the clouds.

This is just before it started to absolutely pour rain, although it let up– in true Colorado style– within ten minutes and we played the game.

Finally, the moment we’ve been waiting for: cheaper phone service! The telephone companies will stop charging the 3% “federal excise tax” that was originally instituted in 1898 to help fund the Spanish-American War. At the time, only wealthy people owned phones, so the government had the idea of taxing them to pay part of the war costs. The problem was that when the war ended, the Gov decided it was sort of nice to have that revenue stream (and the number of phones was steadily increasing, of course) so it continued…

for over a hundred years!

But now it’s been harder and harder to justify the tax, so Congress repealed it. Effective today, all of our long-distance phone bills will drop three percent. Yay!

Aha, after all these years we can finally answer the question that has plagued generations of Americans:

Is it soda? Or pop? Or Coke?

A survey of over 120,000 people yields this color-coded map of the United States, showing that the northern half of the country are “pop” people, the Southeast is all about “Coke”, and the Southwest and Northeast (interesting opposites) are “soda” drinkers.

I happen to be a “soda” guy, and that’s bolstered by the big yellow spot centered on St. Louis. Note, also, that the region of southeast Wisconsin– where my parents were raised– is also a “soda” area. Apparently I was always destined for it.

“Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That’s nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.”

— Al Gore

I just love how my music player, AmaroK, displays lyrics for almost any song I have. Finally I can answer those age-long questions about what the heck the words to such-and-such really are.

But every now and then, the mystery only deepens. Consider this verse from UB40’s cover of “Red Red Wine”:

Umm, what? Is this some crazy “Louie, Louie” sort of lyric game?

The Department of Homeland Insecurity would make me laugh almost daily if they weren’t so terribly awful it made me want to cry at the same time.

They’ve compiled a list of potential terrorist targets– over 77,000 in all– in order to more accurately assess how to spread funding and protect vital areas from the devastation of a terrorist attack. This translates roughly to “If you’re on the list, you get some cash.”

It’s important to note that none of the following fairly well-known landmarks made the list:

• The Statue of Liberty
• The Empire State Building
• The Brooklyn Bridge
• Times Square

I suppose the Department has some inside tips saying that terrorists wouldn’t dream of attacking such high-profile, heavily populated places. Instead, the list does include these important locations:

I’d laugh, but these aren’t jokes. Can anyone seriously believe the government is able to protect us from terrorist attacks when it does things like this?

One of my clients has asked me to update a half-dozen different web sites– for their various brands– to provide a single “unified” mechanism for accepting comments and questions from their customers. They have a well-defined schedule describing when each of these changes should take place. In other words, on such-and-such a day I have to be prepared to “switch over” a particular web site to the new system, and then a few weeks later I’ll repeat the process with another one. Eventually, in September, all of their sites will be using the new system and the world will presumably be a better place.

So far, so good. I finished the first two sites, and was prepared to do the third in about two weeks. Today I received an e-mail from the client:

I responded and told him it’s not working because I haven’t set up the new programming for the site (since I didn’t expect it to be needed for at least another few weeks). His response is classic– truly a mind-bending peek into the way some businesses operate:

Now, clients often change schedules and so forth… but when I’m the integral piece, and nothing works without my programming changes, it’s a little surprising they went ahead with a bunch of things and then, oops, “didn’t communicate that”.

Priceless.

I just read about an awesome car race called the Mongol Rally. It starts in London, England and ends in Ulaan Baator, Mongolia. The route isn’t pre-determined, the only cars allowed to enter must have engines less than one liter (scooters are also permitted), and there’s no timetable.

This year’s entrants include such awesome road warriors as:

and:

Apparently much of the fun is derived from the excitement of attempting to cross into (or out of) countries run by crazy despots. Cheating is allowed, and in general the whole point is to provide some adventure “in a world that’s become too small”.

Imagine crossing the Gobi Desert in a Ford Fiesta, or perhaps this:

Heck, that might be a Fiesta! It’s hard to tell. And yes, one of this year’s Rally teams is actually driving a 1979 Ford Fiesta. Good luck to them!

Yes, indeed, there’s still fun in the world… I wonder if I could enter.

Oh, and every team is required to raise at least a thousand pounds (that’s British money, not something heavy) for charity. So it’s all for a good cause, as well as some good fun.