This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of January 18th through January 21st (Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday weekend).

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

You know the drill by now. Read Letter From Birmingham Jail.

The Monopoly game of the century took place this weekend. A 5-player game came down to a 2-player titanic struggle between me and my sister. They say that he who controls Park Place (actually Fenway Park in the updated electronic version) controls the world. And that’s how I lost: two back-to-back trips to Fenway in as many laps around the board, costing me $26 million in rent and the game.

By the way, the location choice on the updated electronic Monopoly is weird: I get Times Square, Disney World, even Fenway. But Jacobs Field? The White House?

And what’s with the tokens? A tin of Altoids? Not to mention the terrible, trendy new Community Chest and Chance cards. “You buy a hybrid! Go ahead 3 spaces!” Oh well. The “electronic” part saves the hassle of all the paper money.

In other electronic gaming news, my household is now in possesion of a DDR dance pad. We are approaching the point of what I have deemed the “rhythm game event horizon”, in which it is no longer possible to do anything except play rhythm games. Karaoke Revolution, Stepmania, Guitar Hero, Frets on Fire, etc. The number of periphreals alone is staggering, not to mention the sheer weight of both Xbox and Xbox 360.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of January 11th through January 13th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

Welcome to the end of the weekend.

Let me first address the issue of why posting has been a little slow around here. I’m instead spending the time working on a couple of other websites: one of them a professional endeavor, one of them a site for my son, Matthew K, who is due on May 1st. I appreciate your patience and direct you to the Google search box on the right to comb through the archives and read some old posts. If you haven’t seen them, they’re new to you!

Much has been said about overprotective parents and the industry that feeds their demand. Freakonomics, for instance, had a whole chapter about it. Let me tell you that as a soon-to-be parent, I’m experiencing it first-hand.

Ali purchased this gadget called the Angelcare Monitor. (Warning: hideous, hideous website). It’s a pressure switch that you put under the crib mattress. If the baby does not move for 20 seconds (i.e. he stops breathing), an alarm will sound. I installed this monstrosity this weekend, and I want to go on record with my predictions for when it will be put to use. Bear with me on these hypothetical timestamps:

• Angelcare alarm purchased for $50. Installed in the crib. Tools required: none.
• Matthew K is born. Some time passes.
• 2:00:00 am: first time Matthew is put to bed in his crib, alive and breathing just fine.
• 2:10:00 am: AngelCare alarm is switched “on”.
• 2:10:20 am: AngelCare alarm starts to blare, waking Matthew K, who is still breathing, and annoying Matthew D.
• 2:20:00 am: AngelCare alarm sensitivity is adjusted, and turned back on. Matthew K falls asleep instantly, because he loves his father.
• 2:20:20 am: AngelCare alarm starts to blare again, once again waking Matthew K (stubbornly continuing to breathe) and really annoying Matthew D, who probably has an exam tomorrow or something.
• 2:30:00 am: AngelCare alarm “reinstalled” in the Columbus City trash can. Tools required: 1 hammer.
• 1 year later: Matthew K still breathing, but with $50 less in his educational fund.

I got some free Xbox live points today. What should I spend them on?

School is now underway, so expect that to keep the frequency of posts down as well. I think I’ll be done with school at the end of this summer at the very, very latest, though I make take an extra class or two after that.

If you wanna write some blog posts here at mgroves.com, just send me an email. You can post whatever you want, as long as it isn’t obscene and isn’t stupid. But please, only if you can post at least once a week. If you want a cut of ad revenue, that’s fine: I’ll send you a monthly check for $0.83.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of December 14th through December 16th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

The big event this weekend was the annual Groves Christmas party, now in its third year.

This year, the weather was a little rough which caused many guests to show up late and some not to show up at all. I was worried that there wouldn’t be enough people to eat the ridiculous amounts of food that seem to be increasing exponentially every year. However, plenty of guests showed and the party was a rousing success.

Minywheats received his Brutus Buckeye coffee mug. I didn’t get any video, but I assure you his acceptance speech was filled with sarcasm and expletives, just like his comments on this blog.

Ali’s brother’s wife has taken to calling me “Mateo”, the Spanish version of my name that I also went by in high school Spanish class (she is from Columbia). This is also the first time she’s seen snow in person, and she was frolicking in it like a crazy person. I also did a little parking lot fishtailing to demonstrate snow driving issues. Heh, I love doing that, even with no one else in the car.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of November 30th through December 2nd.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

Busy weekend!

We tried to cut a Christmas tree, but we couldn’t find a farm. We will try this weekend. The Christmas party is coming up and we need a tree!

I did lots of Christmas shopping; while I was out, I finally rented Orange Box and played a lot of Portal. More on that in a future post, but suffice it to say, Portal now ranks pretty darn high on my all-time favorites list.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the baby room. The last thing to do is a hang a new entrance door. Right now I have one coat of paint on each side, so that should be done by this weekend. I made a Flickr photoset of all the photos I took of the work in progress. It’s far from perfect, but pretty good, considering it’s me who’s doing it.

Exams coming up this week, or rather, singular: exam. Shouldn’t be too bad.

Don’t ask me why I have so much Juicy Juice, but I do:

I’ve been reading a very intesting piece of research about school choice/vouchers, public/private schools, and public policy therein. I have more than a passing academic interest in this topic because I am fast approaching the time where decisions about my child’s education need to be made, and I want to be as informed as possible. The research is called Forging Consensus (PDF link), and while it doesn’t spend a lot of time in the public vs. private debate, it does give a lot of detail (backed up by a lot of stats: this is not a fluff piece that can be scanned in 2 minutes) about various different policies throughout the world regarding the issue of vouchers and tax credits for private schooling.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of November 22nd – 25th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

This was Thanksgiving weekend. I want to say that I’m very thankful for everything God has given me, and I still believe that if one really takes the time to count all one’s blessings, the problems and trials that we face every day really aren’t that big of a deal.

I also want to say that I’m very thankful for all of my faithful blog readers who put up with my nonsense and leave clever, thoughtful, and humorous comments all the time. Reading this blog wouldn’t be half as entertaining without you.

Next, I’ve been building up a backlog of interesting links I wanted to write about but haven’t really got around to it yet. I wanted to at least share the links before deleting them after they get too old.

• Recently, I was doing some work with generating Excel spreadsheets dynamically with PHP. Hint: don’t try it with SSL. Here’s a link to help you out a little bit.
• Geeks.com has a portable Intellivision system available on their site now. I think it’s pretty cool looking.
• Complex tax law has been estimated to cost $265 billion or more, but it is sometimes advantageous if you happen to be a big company that can afford to spend a little on lawyers and tax shelters. Note to next president, whoever you are: let’s put a simple tax system in place, okay? Sales tax, flat tax, fair tax, whatever. Just do it already.
• Something fishy might be going on with the unions and the Franklin county commissioners in regards to Huntington Park.
• I think this is a pretty good article about Bush hatred.
• Kudos to Mike Coleman for cutting spending instead of raising taxes. I didn’t vote for him (or any mayoral candidate), but I gotta give him props. Note to next president, whoever you are: can we get a balanced budget amendment going already, okay? Just do it already.
• And finally, Digg’s political bias is now a matter of record. The official bias: out-of-the-mainstream candidates. Besides that, it leans heavily to the left (and Hillary isn’t even there yet). By Digg, of course, I mean its users, not the staff of Digg.

And here’s what my neighbor did, really:

Not quite as ridiculous as this guy, but still pretty cool. Note that this isn’t my rotten neighbor.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of October 19th – 21st.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

It’s early for a Weekend Update, but I’m leaving for New York this afternoon.

It’s been a manic week.

On Tuesday afternoon, I turned to my esteemed colleague, Sithlet, and told him “Oh man, I can feel the sickness–she is a-comin’”. Using those exact words in a southern drawl.

And how! This is the sickest I’ve been in a long, long while. I was so sick that I missed my wife’s second ultrasound, which just happened to be the one in which fingers and toes could be seen as well as other extremities. That’s right, it’s a boy. If you are reading this in the future, Matthew Kevin Groves, please forgive me for talking about your junk on the world wide intrapipes.

So, that sucked. Plus I missed a bunch of class and the final presentation in another class. But not to worry, I had a fantastic group that did just fine without me (if you can even fathom a possibility like that) and we got excellent grades all around.

So, I went to the doctor yesterday, after being dragged there by Ali. Ear infection. I took the Amoxiwhatever and started feeling better almost immediately. Freakin doctors.

So luckily, I’m feeling good enough to drive to New York to see my brother before he leaves for Iraq again.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of October 5th – 7th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

This weekend I went to a warehouse sale for Augsburg Fortress, in lieu of my wife, who didn’t want to stand in line for 3 hours in the early morning because of her 9-month excuse.

So, why did I go there? I go there because they have Friar Tuck shirts for $1 a piece. I bought 59 of them. I can’t really go into any more detail why. I encourage you to be creative and leave your speculations in the comments below.

Anyway, Augsburg Fortress is the most awesome name for a company of all time. Seriously, if I ever start a company, it needs to have the word “fortress” in its name.

I found an interesting website this weekend, What Should I Read Next? You list books you like, and it will recommed more for you. I’m going to use it for audio books, and I’ve already gotten The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a book I’ve always wanted to read, but never got around to it.

Here’s what I else I did this weekend:

Heh, just kidding. What’s wrong with these people?

I plan on paying another visit to Wholly Joe’s this weekend, a restaurant that may contain the best hot dogs I’ve ever eaten. You can get a whole pickle spear on them! What a great idea! Plus they have both Pepsi and Coke fountains, a work of genius that until now I believed would be relegated solely to Speedway for all eternity.

We bought a new bed frame this weekend, for reasons that I’d rather not go into. I bought it new at a local store, but all they had left was a floor model. I had to help the sales rep take the thing apart with a junky screwdriver that they had. Then I had to cart the thing home, disassemble the old one and put together the new one. What a hassle! I think there’s plenty of room for innovation in bedding. Someone needs to get to work on that.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of September 28th – 30th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

Well, the big event this weekend was the air show. My father, brother-in-law, and I all went to the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends at Rickenbacker airport. This was a really good show.

First, the most amazing thing I saw there was a demonstration of the 5th generation fighter plane, the F-22 Raptor. You know those lights in the sky that conspiracy nuts claim are alien ships because of the way they dance in sky that seems impossible? Yeah, those were the Raptors. This YouTube video of the Raptor does not do it justice. This plane basically flew backwords, did a turn on its nose, and made the tighest turns I’ve ever seen. It can do an Immelmann so fast and tight that it could literally flip around behind a fighter chasing it. It can reach Mach 1 without afterburners. Oh yeah, did I mention it was stealth too? Enemy targets have no chance.

The best part of the show, however, was the incredible collection of World War 2 planes that were there, especially Mustangs. We got to see a lot of them fly, which was so cool. I actually got to go up inside of a B-17, which is probably my favorite WW2 plane. Those things look big, but they are incredibly cramped. I imagine that it was a pretty intense experience to be in one of these things in combat.

The most ridiculously awesome part of the show was the simulated strafing/bombing runs that the classic planes did. Go ahead and read that last sentence again. A bunch of the WW2 planes made passes on the runway, and explosives/pyrotechnics would go off on the ground to simulate what their ground attacks would be like.

One of the two remaining Lancasters is the world was at this show. The largest bomb that the British ever constructed in WW2 was made especially for this bomber’s large capacity. It was called the Grand Slam bomb. The simulation of the Grand Slam bomb may not have been entirely accurate, but I think that’s only because they erred on the side of safety. If this picture had sound, it would be a thousand people screaming HOLY !@#$. I think when they “dropped” it, I pooped a little.

Here’s a Flickr slideshow of the rest of the stuff. I could write all day about all the history and things I learned about these aircraft, but I encourage you to check out Wikipedia.

It turns out that my dad was stationed at this same airport when he was in the Air Force, so I got to see a lot of the base and stuff too. I also got to see the type of cargo plane that my brother has leaped out of for no good reason.

The other major thing that I did this weekend was go to the Funny Bone comedy club here in Columbus to see Adam Ferrara. He’s not my favorite comedian or anything, but he’s very funny, and I really enjoyed it. The opening comedian was Rob Little, who was very funny too. The MC was the guy who hosted (and still hosts) open mic night at the Funny Bone. He is a bitter, angry man (it’s not just his act), and I don’t really like him. He is pretty good at getting the audience warmed up, though.