(Quality is not an option.)

With apologies to John Hodgman, I took Luke Howell’s Quote Rotator and modified the plug-in ever so slightly to produce the Random Hobo-Name Generator (look for a blue box on the left titled “Random Hobo-Name”).

This morning, as I was shaving my head, I had the thought that I missed a golden opportunity yesterday to give a fairly unique gift to my loving wife… her very own entry in Wikipedia as the World’s Best Mom. This of course led me to wonder what *did* happen in Wikipedia on Mother’s Day, so after a little bit of poking I found a list of every page that had been created or updated on Sunday.

How depressing to discover that the only reference to the word mother in the list was for “the mother of all battles.”

Next year, that won’t be the case.

Here’s the complete list of 1500 plus changes made on May 11, 2008, in the event you are interested.

The secret to a successful Mother’s day outing in a city of millions is to go where the people aren’t. Say, for example, the 11:15 showing of Iron Man at the local theater followed by a trip to an Asian fusion restaurant in the Galleria at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Oh, and being married to a remarkably cool Mother who’s willing to go into the store after the movie to pick out her new purse and shoes while you hang out in the Apple store is also an important success factor.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Writing about the banner that I used to have hanging in my barracks in Okinawa yesterday sent me rifling through photo albums looking to see if I actually had a picture of it. Sure enough, I did (do), so I offer you this picture of a picture.

You might notice that even back in the 1980’s I was photo-stitching… I was just doing it a little differently. The text balloons were cut out of Heavy Metal magazine and Penthouse, I would imagine (since it’s obvious I wasn’t reading GQ). The Coca Cola shirt was just to tick off the natives, and I’m pretty sure the hat I’m wearing has a slogan on it specifically designed to start a fight.

Waiting for me to apologize? Not going to happen. I was in my early 20’s, I was a United States Marine, and I was damned sure I’d be dead before my 30th birthday.

It’s amazing what a few years and the love of a beautiful woman can do for a man in that situation.

When I was stationed in Okinawa I came across a large cloth wall screen with a picture of a bicycle leaning against a tree and leaves falling around it. The caption for the wall hanging was “I make an end of trip.”

I bought it and put it in my barracks mostly because of the odd translation. Now I wish I still had it for the sentiment. It is nice to come home after a journey. After the rush to the dry cleaners, the trip to the gas station, and the stop at the tailors, that is.

To finish out the week, I decided to play with some of the photos I’d been taking this week using Photoshop. Similar to last week’s entry, here is a stitched skyline:

And here is where having dozens of filters and transformations leads an easily amused man:

(Bonus point if you can spot the differences in the photo of the bird of paradise here and earlier.)

While there is much to be said for the amenities of the hotel du jour, the elevation of the desk is not on the list. Not sure what that means? Allow me to illustrate. From a sitting position, extend your arms in front of you until your thumbs are level with your eyes. That’s the position my arms were in when I sat at the room desk and tried to type on the laptop.

Obviously, that was not an ideal position for working at a computer, so I decided to convert the hotel restaurant into my office for the day. Overall the experience was a good one, but here’s a free tip if you ever intend to do the same thing:

Don’t order something to munch on from the menu every 30 minutes. After six hours, you’re in real danger of exploding and you’ve added $100.00 to your room bill for the day.

Fortunately, some co-workers who wanted to have a meeting suggested that we conduct it while walking, which led us to Oklahoma’s City’s Myriad Botanical Garden and the Crystal Bridge.

After work today there was time to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial. The photos say more than I ever could.

St. Louis to Atlanta (”Welcome to Atlanta! Get your T-Shirt and get the hell out.”) to Oklahoma City, arriving near midnight. I can smell the rain coming in the ionized wind that blows when two fronts are about to collide, so I grab the camera and walk the downtown while there’s still a dry sky.

Because I had to take two Delta flights almost on top of each other, I could spend some time asking why the following quotes were actually broadcast on the respective aircraft by the crew:

“Welcome aboard Delta xxxx to Jaimaica, mon. Don’ worry, all expenses are paiiiiiddd, mon.”

“Please keep your elbows and knees out of the aisle while we provide beverage service. We don’t want to hurt you. But we will if we have to.”

But I’m afraid someone would actually explain it.

After a day of meetings, I got the chance to take the camera around downtown St. Louis. I walked to the Four Seasons Hotel on the advice of a coworker, and took my obligatory shot of the Arch from its 8th floor swimming area. Deciding that the bar next to the pool probably had the best view of the city I was going to come across on foot, my plan for the evening became waiting there for the sun to go down and grabbing some additional pictures of the Arch at sunset and at night.

In passing the time, I became interested in a bottle on the bar shelf filled with a clear liquid that had no label. I asked the bartender about it, and she took it down, sniffed it, and told me it was grappa. By means of a thought process usually reserved for children in a toy store, I decided that I wanted that bottle and asked if I could have it if I drank the inventory first.

The bartender agreed, so I started with straight shot of the grappa to get a feel for it’s taste and texture. For the second round, I had the bartender treat it like bourbon and combine it with simple syrup, some Agnostura bitters, and a twist of lemon. Seeing that I was the mixing sort, the rounds that followed came about as suggestions from the hotel bartenders… Southern Comfort and grappa is one that I remember. When the bartenders ran out of ideas, they had the sommelier from the adjoining restaurant come over to mix a grappa drink (a martini with lemon, orange, Sprite, and simple syrup).

When it was all said and done, I exchanged two hours, $100.00, and a portion of my liver for a small glass bottle that would probably shatter in my suitcase, some photographs, and the e-mail address of one of the bartenders.

As I use the self service check-in I’m asked, “Would you like to upgrade to First Class (if available) for $35.00?” In response, I hit the yes button so hard that the attendant behind the desk comes out to check on me. Yet another subtle way that travel for business drains one’s personal coffers as effectively as they draw on the corporate expense account.

Looking for an opportunity to use the new camera in low light settings, I try grabbing some shots from the plane window as we approach St. Louis. I discover that there simply isn’t a shutter speed fast enough to take a well defined night photo from a plane traveling four hundred miles per hour, so I try to have some fun with the exposure settings.