(Click for full size.)

Last night and most of today, the Drudge Report had my Hillary Clinton collage at the top of the page. Matt Drudge shrunk the image, turned it black and white and cut a little off of the bottom which contained the DanzFamily.com URL.

Even better, a producer for a national TV/radio/internet personality -- whose name you definitely know -- contacted me when his boss saw the image on the Drudge Report and said he wanted to use it on a recurring segment of his internet site. If something comes of it, I'll give out more details, otherwise I'm just flattered as I'm a big fan!

Do you think Will enjoys talking on the phone with his Aunt Donelda? He usually doesn't have too much to say, even with Drew giving him encouragement, but he sure loves to listen.

Is there no end to the amount of peanut butter jelly sandwiches a child can eat? When its Daddy's turn to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I play the "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" song. It's a tightened up clip from the Family Guy of the Buckwheat Boyz song I got off the podcast of Chicago radio host Steve Dahl.



(Steve Google Alerts himself so...hey, Steve, love the show, thanks for making the podcast available, been listening since the early eighties, you help keep me connected to Chicago from down here in Tulsa.)

This issue came up recently elsewhere on the internet in response to various initiatives to assist poverty stricken people in third-world nations. Some of the initiatives being discussed were monetary grants and providing simple, lost cost, laptops to people. The former always sounds like a good idea, but I don't think there is much evidence of its success and, at least in this country, does more harm long-term than good. The laptop idea...I've never understood.

I made a comment in the discussion that was responded to with much agreement (unusual for the internet) and praise. The comment, and my solution to third-world poverty is:

The single most important thing people need to rise out of poverty is property rights. You can have all the financial assistance and $100 laptops in the world, but if someone (a relative, a neighbor, a warlord, the government, etc.) can come in and take what you have built up away then there will always be poverty. There is an absolute correlation evidencing causation between the existence of well protected property rights and people being able to rise out of poverty and become wealthy. Man will find a way to become prosperous, if that prosperity is protected. Until the governments of poor nations are reformed, every other effort is doomed to failure.

Absent property rights, poverty is not far behind. Take for example second-world communist nations. They can have an incredibly educated populous but are still mired in poverty due to the lack of property rights. People, no matter what nation or background they are from, have near infinite potential. Their ability to make a better life for themselves and their children need only be protected.

Saturday evening Mary and I went to the Petroleum Club for the wedding reception of a friend of Mary's she knows through Kappa Delta. Normally, I'm not a big fan of people running off to some exotic location to get married and then inviting friends to a hometown reception later but, in this instance, it totally made sense. J. Anna and Michael met in Cancun, Mexico, eight years ago and that is where they recently got married. Additionally, he is from New York and she is from Tulsa, so either city would have been difficult for one group of friends or the other to attend.

The reception was beautiful with everything you'd expect at a wedding reception. Additionally, they had a photo booth where guests could get their photos taken. It was a great addition and a hit with young and old alike. After the jump, see a more natural set of poses of Mary and me.

This is Drew and Will watching early Saturday morning cartoons. It's really too bad our boys don't get along better together.

Drew and Will worked on their watercolor painting skills today with their Tonka paint with water books. The images have small dots which contain paint of different colors. A wet brush makes the colored dots dissolve which can then be "painted" to color the picture.

While it sounds easy enough, it's trickier than it seems. Not enough water and the dots don't fully dissolve. Too much water and the paper turns to mush. Not to mention that, even though the paint is pre-colored to match the picture, you still have to stay within the lines for a neat result.

Drew has just about mastered the technique. Will did a surprisingly good job and, along the way, he mastered spilling the "spill-proof" water reservoir.

I finally broke down and ordered a new computer. We got our old one in the fall of 2001 and while it was still running strong, it was a little slow and unable to handle really demanding programs (*cough* recent *cough* games *cough*...OK, photo and video editing software too). Since last year, I've been researching options, configuring potential systems, watching prices and waiting for new components to come out. Finally, last Friday I found I was able to use multiple discounts on a Dell build of components and options that I really liked. The final price was below even what I could get at a discount parts seller for everything unassembled. I placed the order and, today, our new Dell arrived.

The hardest decision was whether to get it with Windows XP or Vista and whether to get a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. Long...very long...story short, once we decided that, since we weren't breaking the bank getting the most outrageous options possible, this computer would not have to have a life-span of nearly seven years. XP is sturdy, familiar, faster and more compatible than Vista. Along with many, many others, we'll be skipping Vista entirely and go straight from XP to Windows 7. Since we were staying with XP, I decided we'd also stay with 32-bit as there is simply no compelling reason to jump to 64-bit.

Once the decision was made that the computer wouldn't have to last forever, the choice of what CPU to get was also easier. At similar prices, dual core chips run at a higher clock speed than quad core chips. But, for programs that are optimized to run on multiple cores, the slower clock speed of a quad core CPU is more than made up for by the additions cores so, in theory, a similarly priced quad core is faster than a dual core. In actuality, very few programs are optimized to take advantage of multiple cores. As a result, most programs today, including high end games, run faster on a similarly priced dual core rather than a quad core. I picked out the 3.0GHz E8400 as the optimal performance value in dual cores but to qualify for one of the discounts I had to go with the slightly more expensive E8500. The end result with the E8500 and discount was much cheaper than configured with the E8400.

The final specs on our new Dell:

DELL XPS 630i

- Intel Core2 E8500 (3.16GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1333 FSB, 45nm)
- 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz, 4 DIMMs
- nVidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
- 750GB Hard Drive, 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
- Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer
- Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
- 750 watt Power Supply
- Windows XP Professional

I wouldn't have even gone with another Dell except for the fact that they are moving their tech support back to the United States, they are moving away from proprietary hardware and some other reasons such as their implementation of ESA (Enthusiast System Architecture).

In January we replaced our monitor. Our old CRT had grown irreversibly fuzzy. After much research and consideration, we went with a Dell 22" UltraSharp 2208WFP widescreen flat panel monitor (1680 x 1050, 5 millisecond, 1000:1, adjustable height, tilt, swivel and pivot). The quality and design of the monitor is outstanding.

[Update:] Holy cow is this thing fast! I had purposely been keeping my expectations low regarding noticing any speed change except in really demanding tasks. But, everything, from just opening a file to surfing the internet is much much faster. And, I'm not talking about just an incremental increase in speed, everything is faster by an order of magnitude! It's amazing!

We're clearing out my parents' house (mostly Aunt Donelda is clearing it out) and we came across these two items. (Ignore the USB drive, I just threw it in for a size comparison.) The first item appears to be some type of handle. Maybe something would be attached to the end, except for the fact that there is no indication of any wear anywhere on it. It looks like the end could be used to push something, while the middle portion could hook something.

The second item, has what clearly appears to be finger grips on one side and a full length rectangular opening, half way deep, on the other side. We have no clue what either of the items are. Also, there was no evidence they are in any way related or go together.

Anyone have any ideas?

It is very unusual for our munchkins to just fall asleep.

But this has been an unusually busy week and tonight after getting ready for bed, Will drank his milk and drifted off.

Drew was feeling a little under the weather today and was camped out on the couch with no energy to play. Will noticed that Drew wasn't feeling well and, on his own initiative, climbed up on the couch and over to Drew and gave him a hug.

Will continued to coo and stroke Drew's face until Drew cracked a smile.

Drew was happy to be cheered up and gave Will a thank you kiss.

It's officially spring as our backyard garden begins to bloom. First out, the Emerald Blue Creeping Phlox (phlox subulata) shows its stuff.

Creeping Phlox is a beautiful early spring accent for any garden. We have it under all of our Crape Myrtles.