I drove to Chicago last week with my brother-in-law. We went up through Louisville, then Indiana, and then over to Chicago. It was a boring drive. On the way back, I chose an alternate route. We went south through Normal, then through Padukah, then came home through Nashville.

One of the reasons for the alternate route was a statue I heard about. The tiny (very tiny) town of Metropolis, Illinois decided they would be the “Metropolis” in the Superman comics. They started calling their town the “home of Superman.” Clever, huh?

Part of being home to a super hero is having a statue in his honor. It just makes sense. Metropolis citizens raised money for their hometown hero’s statue (not from taxes, hooray for them) and erected this giant Superman statue in the middle of their little town.

It’s pretty impressive. That’s me (6 feet, 5 inches tall) by Superman’s right leg.

We stopped for a few minutes, bought me a Superman t-shirt, and spent money on supper at McD’s. That’s probably why they spent the money on the thing anyway. It gave me a reason to get off of I-24 and it put about $40 into their tiny town’s economy.

If you’re ever passing through Illinois on I-24, I’d suggest a stop in Metropolis. It seemed like a peaceful little town, but if a villain were to approach you, a super hero would be very near.

Fom the local news…an elderly lady was killed by the police in a shooting. There’s a lot of speculation about the validity of the information that led to the approval of the search warrant.

I heard this story, and I was just shocked. A woman was shot by police as they burst into her home when they shouldn’t have been there in the first place?! How terrible! But then I heard one small detail that the media somehow didn’t find worthy of focus:

She shot and wounded 3 officers.

Well, that changes things a little bit. The newscast made it sound like the woman was innocently watching TV when police entered the house. Here’s the thing, though. She shot at police. And by the time she was killed, she certainly had to know she was firing at police. If you shoot at police, you deserve to be killed.

So now we’ve got people screaming about civil rights and how this woman should still be alive. What a mess (as most cases with people screaming about civil rights are).

It’s a terrible thing that Kathryn Johnston was killed. I don’t intend to sound like that’s a minor thing. But she shot at police. She wounded 3 officers. So for those of you who have considered firing a round at police, be warned…they’ll shoot back (as they should) and you might die. You’ve been warned.

We just got back from our trip to Illinois.  In Letterman form, here is the top 10 list of “Things I saw while I was in Illinois.”

10. Expensive gasoline.  (but at least I was getting almost 30 mpg)
9. The inlaws. (yes, they’re my inlaws, but they’re not so bad.)
8. Water towers.  They are everywhere up there.
7. A giant statue of Superman.
6. Monical’s Pizza - not bad at all.  (Thanks, Andy.)
5. Normal, IL - hometown of The Normals
4. Windmills (about 50 of them, all together)
3. Miles and miles of nothing.  And I mean nothing.
2. People celebrating the existence (and possibly taste) of turkey testicles.
1. The sign that said “Welcome to Kentucky.”

(On that last one…for the record…I enjoyed my stay in Illinois, but after driving 7 hours and still being in the same state, I was thrilled to see the Kentucky state line.)

You can’t make this stuff up.

I’m at my wife’s parent’s house (near Chicago) this week, celebrating the Thanksgiving season.  We took the kids to a little town called Huntley today to get a McBurger.  We saw this sign:

I was going to just post the image and let it speak for itself, but my wife said I should Google it.  They have a web site.  I’d spend some time reading the site, if I were you.  You might find more great quotes like this one:

“Please come early to browse our wide selection of testicle apparel.”

Testicle apparel?  Nice.

What a weird thing to celebrate.  I bet the turkeys will be thankful when this festival is over.

Wikipedia says that “to call someone ‘white trash’ is to accuse that person of being bankrupt of cultural endowment.” I’d say that’s a pretty fair definition. Jeff Foxworthy defines “redneck” as a “glorious absence of sophistication.” I’d also say that’s fair.

I live in an area experiencing some growth. It’s certainly not a part of Atlanta (though we’re taxed like it is), but Atlanta is slowly migrating our way. Places that used to be flea markets are now Super Target stores. Places that used to be home to trees and snakes are now $400,000 homes on a half-acre piece of land. It’s nuts. Because of the recent growth (and because it’s Georgia), there’s a mixture of educated, employed people and redneck white trash.

On my way to work every morning, I pass the house pictured below. It’s on a corner lot where two pretty highly traveled roads cross. It’d be a great site for a Chevron station. Or a Waffle House. Or a vacant lot. (Click the picture for the full effect.)

Notice the “yard sale” sign out front. According to the time stamp on the file, I took this picture on July 18. That yard sale had been going on for more than 2 weeks when I took the picture. It lasted for almost another 2 weeks after that. Yes, they had a yard sale that lasted a month. I am not making that up.

Last night I passed this house just as 2 fire trucks were blocking traffic on Due West Road because the place was on fire. It was too dark last night to get a decent photo. This morning on my way to work, I was so deep into some Billy Cerveny music (country…ironic, huh?) that I forgot to look at the house as I passed it. I’m not sure what shape it’s in, but I do know that it’s still there, boldly preserving the “heritage” of Paulding County, Georgia.

I use Firefox. I use it proudly, with excitement, and with anticipation of what hypertext may lay before me. Certain Firefox add-ons (like Adblock, Google Toolbar, Tab Mix Plus) have made my life better. I’ll never go back to using Internet Explorer. What never? No, Never.

Now that IE7 is out there, falling into the hands of the unenlightened (non-Firefox users), I’m hearing reports of problems with the new Microsoft browser. Anyone that has upgraded has violated Ron’s #1 rule for installing Microsoft updates: wait 2 weeks after the 2nd service pack before upgrading. Granted, my rules aren’t internet standards (yet), but it’s good not to immediately jump on software coming out of Redmond.

Today I saw this blog post that referenced this other blog post about issues an IE user was having with IE7. Let me say that this user doesn’t see the advantage to tabbed browsing, so you should be cautious to just believe what he says without proof (since anyone who would not see benefit in tabbed browsing is an idiot). He does, however, make some good points.

Then, not 30 minutes after reading those posts, I was chatting via IM with Kink Wulfgar. The King, now a developer of parental controls software, said “I never realized how ad-riddled the web is before I started having to test [Safe Eyes] with IE7.” We got into a discussion of how Adblock has really kept our internet from becoming unusable because of pop up ads, pop up windows, and other unnecessary wastes of time.

If you’re using IE, dump it. Go get Firefox. You’ll thank me later. If you’re using IE7, I’d be interested in hearing what issues (if any) you’ve had since the upgrade. I’d also like to hear your overall opinion of the new version.

I took this picture in the parking lot of the Dallas, GA Wal-Mart on Saturday.  I’ve wrestled for something to say about it, but I think that, especially in this case, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Cason Cooley, musical mastermind formerly of the most awesome band ever, is playing on Conan tonight.  It’ll be late, but I’ll be up watching.

BellSouth is the worst company I’ve ever dealt with.  They’re not just the worst telco, they’re the worst company.  Here’s a glimpse of my day:

09:05 - “Hey Ron, is the internet circuit down?”
09:38 - After determining that it is not my problem, I call BellSouth.  Justin tells me that they’ll send it to testing and I should get a call back within the hour.
10:42 - Some woman calls me to tell me that it has been sent to a technician “in the field.”
13:26 - After 3 hours of silence, I call for an update.  Jeff tells me that there is no change in status.
14:43 - I call for another update. Sandy tells me the technician just got the ticket and that he is on his way.
15:28 - Technician arrives and resolves problem.
16:02 - Blog about how slow BellSouth is and about their poor customer service practices.

So it took 6+ hours to resolve an internet circuit problem - not too bad?  Well, the guy had it fixed in about 10 minutes, but it took 6 hours to get him here.  I’d think BellSouth could do better than that.

Unfortunately, we can’t exactly run to another provider for our data.  BellSouth has the last mile coming into our building, so if we went with somebody else for data, when problems came up, there would be a lot of finger pointing and blaming the other guy.  At least with the way things are now, everybody knows it’s a BellSouth problem, and we just have to wait for their tech to finish his afternoon nap and come resolve the issues at hand.