Introducing...

The handsome little guy pictured nearby is the newest member of our family, Hank, the dog! His past is shrouded in mystery, as you may have guessed by those soulful eyes, but one could reasonably surmise that he has some lab and some beagle in there somewhere. As in all the best cases of puppy love, there's some tragedy in his background – loud clippers, a death-defying leap from a high grooming table, a broken leg. Thanks to the care and attention of Auds and Curtis, though, he's back running around like a champ. Auds is a vet, actually; she saved his life, and decided he was the perfect dog for us. And she was right; perfect dog period.

We were already planning a trip down to Lexington to spend 4th of July weekend with Auds and Curt, so we combined an awesome visit – including hiking to some gorgeous views and delicious pizza, a blast of a 4th of July party with horses and the perfect spot to watch dozens of fireworks displays, and just great fun catching up with two of our favorite people – with a trial run for my sinuses. One short doggie drive later, and we had Hank home in Chicago, where he'll be staying with Annie's folks until we have a place that allows dogs in a couple months.

He was originally a Henry, but Hank seems the most apt. We've been floating around some of our favorite variations:

• Hanko Breadcrumbs Edison-Albright


• Hanko Verymuch Edison-Albright


• Hanko American Pasta Sauce Edison-Albright

That last one might be a bit much.

Two Times tables

Illustrious employer got a nod in the NYTimes yesterday, but more importantly (and timely), I can't wait to figure out who my presidential hair twin is! Ladies model also available.

Okay, one article and one table. And I guess the table is more of a chart. Maybe "Hair to the Chief" would have been a better title?

Iron Chef Gar-sieze

We're fast fans of Iron Chef America, and I recognize the anime cultural connection, and enjoy the aesthetic of excess and bravado that makes it successful*, but has anyone seen the latest promo? The one for Iron Chef Garces' debut? TOO. MUCH. STROBE.

I don't know if they did a Next Iron Chef Production Assistant series to select the person who cut this thing together, but I try to only swallow tongue at delicatessens and taco shops. We can't even protect ourselves by looking away from the screen or closing our eyes, it seems to reverberate off our walls and into our skulls. Thanks for new episodes, but seriously, knock it off.

*The strategy of making a burned plate of garbage palatable by covering it with foie, gold leaf, and shaved truffles will forever be known as the Iron Chef Gambit.

Don't know why...

Three cheers for Panera Bread — provider of hassle-free, strip mall wifi par excellence! Compelled to ask, though, why the world needs a lite-jazz version of Nora Jones’ “Don't Know Why” arranged for saxophone and harmonica. The original was too hard core? Wait — now they're giving the same treatment to Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” Someone may be having some fun with me, I suspect. Oh well, baguette sandwich with a side of baguette means all is forgiven!

Anyway, I find myself with a bit of time to catch up on a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy etc. and so forth, here just past the end of the season. (Full disclosure: our tree is still trimmed and burning.) Our schedules wouldn't allow a trip to Pennsylvania, which was a disappointment, but otherwise had a wonderful holiday, including singing at the Christmas eve service, a nice long visit from Nicole, and a grand Sunday-after-Christmas luncheon thrown by Sue and Paul on the occasion of Annie’s guest sermon at St. Luke’s.

But I see you are impatient, so on with the presents (in link form)!

• First is a gift from Paul to the whole internet: How we spent Christmas morning.
• Annie and I also cameoed in a couple (less musical) Christmas videos thanks to a gift from my folks.
• One of our photos and Annie’s eyewitness testimony were used in a French 24 news story about one of our favorite Slovak Christmas traditions.
We're internet celebrities!
• Meanwhile, Slovakia has been handing out presents of its own.

I’m particularly thankful for my pocketwatch from Annie (more on that later) and we're both very grateful for the ornaments from our parents, which made our first Christmas home so special.

Update: Hey, you in the corner! Who eats the soup and leaves behind the bread bowl?

You brought myrrh?

In the midst of a frustrating morning tracking down information on the Flare visualization library, I suggested to Matt that he should spend his 20% making a "It's Not Just You" button for the Google toolbar. You know, when a site is inexplicably unavailable, and you think to yourself, is the site down, or is it just me? The second thing I do after refreshing the page a dozen times is to google the url, to make sure I've got it spelled right, see if anyone has mentioned it's gone down, and check the cache for the information I was after. Matt realized we could just use translate.google.com for the same functionality. I tried it out, and it was not just me. Of course, this is the situation 99% of the time, I'm sure, but now I can feel like I've actually done something about it.

In other Matt news -- actually, very other Matt news, as this is about a different Matt -- Matt Stanley, a friend of mine from high school has a really cool audio/photo story on the dying art of rail hunting. Not to be confused with trainspotting. By all means check it out, as well as the rest of his blog.

Finally, cnet presents an object lesson in the pitfalls of web accessibility by including a picture of a table of data. In an article on web accessibility.

None too soon

Via Slashdot: IT Security Breaches Soar in 2009

Rest easy, North America, I'm back in town.

Bacon blogjam

A job search can sometimes lead to a bit of a paranoid blogjam -- could this post be too controversial for potential employers?

Well, who could object to these links? The first, found via Chow combines two of my passions (cooking and typesetting) to pose the question of the ages: Cheese or Font?

The second also combines two passions, this time cooking and bacon. It's Homesick Texan's Bacon Jam! Enjoy!