Not only did we fire up the grill and have a burger day at work today, but I also had the opportunity to take off a little early. That provided me the perfect window of time to take little PJ up to the capitol building for his first time! He wasn't scared when he first saw the view from the 18th floor windows, but he was surprised. His favorite was watching the little cars driving around down there. He always likes elevator rides too, and the capitol has fast ones. He asked to hit the buttons, of course.
This is the only mall I feel like visiting during the holiday season. I find it interesting that there was so much green grass under the snow. I noticed the same thing at the Tom O'Leary tennis courts. Bring on more November snow storms! I'm from the Rocky Mountains, so I remember trick-or-treating in snow so deep my dad had to carry me. I wouldn't mind October snow here either.
Once our capitol mission was accomplished, it was time to go look at things like motorcycle shops, trucks, and airplanes. Those are PJ's favorites, and he seems to remember everything he sees. When I tuck the boys into bed, I always talk about our day and all the fun things we saw. I expect they're going to grow up loving Bismarck-Mandan, and North Dakota in general, as much as their daddy does.
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( 3 / 60 )When I activated this feature a long time ago, I posted instructions on how to "Rate the Windbag." The number of regular visitors to the site has grown by leaps and bounds since then, so I'll post this again for those of you who are new. While older posts have rating counts as high as 400 or 500, I'm getting several times that many visitors on even a slow day now. So perhaps not everyone knows what those dots are for.
This is a 5-point rating system. If you like the post, click on the dot to the far right. If you think I'm out of my ever-lovin' mind, click on the dot on the far right. Just kidding. The dot on the left is worth 1 point, the one on the right worth 5, and I leave it to you to discern the values of the remaining three.
Each time a user clicks a dot it's added to the tally, the number on the right. The average rating is on the left. In the graphic above, 4 users have responded with an average rating of 3.8.
This diagram illustrates the difference between the way a designer sets up a web page, with how he thinks the reader will scan it in mind, and the way the average web surfer actually looks through the page. It's a pretty big difference, isn't it? By the same token, I tend to assume that those five little dots look like they're clickable... but apparently not everybody gets it right away. Oh well.
That's why, when you see the numbers at the bottom of the posts, things won't always make sense. I'll have a post with a low vote count, but with one comment, and dozens (sometimes hundreds) of comment views. So, while the post has been read between a thousand and two thousand times (that's how many daily visitors I get), only one person may have found reason to comment, and not everybody decided to read his/her comment. Even fewer decided (or knew how to) vote to rate the post. It's actually very interesting to see, especially in light of the server stats that I receive daily!
Of course, if you're reading this post on one of the websites that syndicate it, you're not eligible to vote. You have to actually come to www.bismarckmandanblog.com to do so.
Have fun. The old Democrat adage "vote early, vote often!" doesn't apply here. I haven't accepted any fraudulent ratings from ACORN, either... but I have added the text "Click a dot to rate this entry: next to the dots for the voting impaired.
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( 3.1 / 52 )
Today wasn't very sunny, so one of the features that makes this memorial at the state capitol grounds so special was hampered by weather this year. I was at work anyway, and ran errands over lunch, so I missed it. November 11th is always Veteran's Day, and this memorial is designed for something special at 11:00 am on 11/11 each year. Here's how I featured it last year:
I don't know how many of you folks have looked far back enough to see this post about the Veteran's Memorial at the state capitol grounds, but this year marks the first time I actually made it to the memorial on Veteran's Day. As noted in my original post, this monument has a unique feature that displays itself on Veteran's Day.
On Veteran's Day at 11:00am, the sun sweeps a path across the metal globe in the middle of the monument. Judging by the number of people waiting to catch a glimpse of this once-a-year happening, I can see it's no secret.
North Dakota is raised on this globe, and polished. When the sun comes across the globe, the great state of North Dakota shines. It was dull when I inspected the site on Saturday, so I rubbed it furiously to try to shine it up. You'd think someone would have thought of that already, but I guess not.
This is the base upon which the globe sits. Note that the inscription says "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day." That's important...
...because I got there late. I mistakenly thought it would be at 11:11. The significance of all those elevens, by the way? World War I ended at 11:00 on 11/11/1918. I mistakenly thought there would be a fourth eleven in the time that the sun was centered on North Dakota. That's why it's off-center in the photo above.
Here's the tube through which the sun shines to reach the globe in the middle of the memorial. It casts about a four-inch circle of light on the globe when fully aligned at 11:00. It appears to have some sort of reflective inside, although I don't know if that's true. While the sun is coming through it, it's hard to look at.
I'd like to pass along a belated thanks to all veterans. Closest to me are my friends Reed and Tony, although I've met many others and owe my freedom to millions of 'em. Military service is not something to be taken lightly. The memorial at the state capitol bears the names of North Dakota soldiers who lost their lives in service to their country. If you haven't inspected this memorial, which has a new parking lot and is just south of the State Library building, please pay it a visit. Once again, the original blog post can be seen by clicking here.
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( 3.4 / 82 )
I needed a photo of these three explorers for a video project I'm working on. You'll probably recognize it when you see it, and there's a good chance many of you will see it soon. The thing is, I needed a night shot with a clear sky. North Dakota winters are often quite hazy, so I was happy to see the clear dark sky last night. I ventured out in the cold with my trusty camera, snapped the shots, and hustled back to the warm truck.
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( 3 / 96 )
We can count the flakes as it snows and snows.
We can't get hurt. It melts and fades.
...
Was it only last week
we made crazy promises,
mad as the snow?
I couldn't help by throw some lyrics in from my favorite song by Kitchens of Distinction, titled "Mad as Snow." I was nearly mad at the snow Thursday and Friday; I had a lot of it to shovel!
I grew up in the Rockies and took a break during college to move back out and make a living (meager, yet fun) snowboarding. I started out shoveling snow but eventually did get to live out my "dream" of snowboarding all day and getting paid for it. The free season pass wasn't bad, either! But I grew to enjoy shoveling snow as I embraced mountain living. 50 miles from the nearest city, one usually has to master a shovel! But I'm not 20 years old any more.
I shoveled the drifts around our house, ignored the driveways, and made sure access to our rental property was restored on Thursday night. I woke up Friday to find that there was more snow than before! Grrrr. I got a text message from work saying not to come in, so I put that time to use with my trusty shovel again.
This time I took a break in the middle of shoveling to storm off to a few area stores to "check out" snowblowers. Of course there weren't any to be had, except some overpriced ones with plastic parts sure to break in the cold. Dejected, I made my way back home for more shoveling. Thank God I got through it, one scoop at a time. I could have done without the drifts, though.
Today I chiseled off the driveways I'd previously ignored, after a run to a very busy Scheels Sports. My favorite Thomas Dolby live album in my iPod, an ice cold Cherry Coke in the driveway, and my Dakota Snow Blade kept me company as I chopped the now-packed snow into manageable chunks and cleared the slabs. To do all this with a shovel instead of a snowblower DOES seem as "Mad as Snow." I'm just not mad AT the snow. Not yet.
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( 2.9 / 82 )
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