Thanks to those who offered advice on my cable modem of doom.

While troubleshooting I left my cable modem powered off for a bout 30 min yesterday and fired it back up.  For some reason it has been up and problem free for nearly 24 hours.  If the problems pop up again I’ll go straight to Comcast but as it is I’d rather hope for the best for now and not deal with Comcast.

Chicago

I know I promised some accounts of my trip to Chicago.  I’ll post some soon, with photos!  Maybe even with me in them!

E-Trade

I finally got around to opening up an E-Trade savings account to stash my spare cash in at rates better than my bank provides, even for CDs…

Let’s hope I don’t go crazy and move that money out of savings and do something stupid:

-Not likely, I’m painfully conservative with my pennies.

Buying Art

When I have traveled to Europe I found that buying something from some the local artists have provided by far the best souvenirs.  Some of them are simple black and white charcoals and others water colors.  I’m not so much looking for those impressionistic prints you see outside every large tourist structure (they could generated by photoshop filters for all I know) but something with what I think of as an individual style that I enjoy. 

The most I’ve spent I think was 300 USD.  It was a wonderful large etching of a scene from Venice that I bought a vender just around the corner from St. Mark’s.  The rest of the stuff was much less expensive at $50 or something.  Simple stuff but looks nice and it takes up space on my walls after I have it framed.  Far better than those horrific pieces I find in the local frame shops that shout “hey I’m a flower and I match your couch!”

Anyway I haven’t bought much lately as I haven’t traveled much.  The wife and I decided to splurge a bit and buy something for our anniversary (last month).  While it was easy to find affordable art and artists in Europe in the here in the Twin Cities it is going to take some more looking.   In my experience the art stores that aren’t selling “art to match your couch” are way expensive.  Yay for those artists that can make a living and sell art for that much, I’m just not going to buy from you…

What we want is … we don’t know.  Painting, sure, what kind, what of?  I don’t care really.  Drawing, sure, maybe.  The medium is not that big a deal to me.  I’ll know I like it when I see it.  Same goes for the wife.  Do we both like it?!? Winnar!

What I need to find is a starving artist store where they have some stuff but for reasonable prices from students for folks who do some work on the side and are ok with selling their work for less than the price of my car.  We’re happy to throw down some extra money (well more than I paid for the etching) but plenty of the stores I’ve seen have gone well beyond that and in those cases they were investments that I didn’t feel comfortable in making.

Some folks recommended me the local community art fairs but I’ve gone to many of them and while I’ve seen some occasional work that I like for sane prices for the most part those art fairs are hardly filled with starving artists (expensive).  Also there’s a lot of stuff that looks like it was made to match someone’s couch.

Vikings 1 Win 0 Losses

So the Vikings defeated the hapless Atlanta Falcons.  Not sure what that proves.

I believe there is more reason for optimism than last year.  We’ve replaced Brad “I can’t throw farther than 15 yards and I’m going to stand here like a post” Johnson with a fairly mobile rookie who has a cannon arm.  That might not sound like a big improvement and if Jackson turns out to suck it won’t be, but the good news is that the Offensive line is strong providing the rookie reasonable protection that he can learn with.

The other offensive reason to have hope is the new RB Adrian Peterson.  A good combo with Peterson and Chester Taylor should keep them both from being warn down thru the season and as they’re both great RBs that should provide Jackson even a better environment to learn under.

The defense is roughly the same as last year.  So you can’t run against them.  Of course you can pass…   The new defensive coordinator has said and is showing blitz a great deal more this year.  It was nice to see some actual pressure on the opponents QB for once rather than selling out all game to just stop the run.

There’s hope but as they play Atlanta, Detroit, K.C. and Green Bay . . . they could go 3 and 1 or even 4 and 0 and I’d still not know if the Vikings were any good as all those teams are suspect, including the Vikings.