Mark's blog
Sporadic blog posts on a wide variety of topics, by Racine, Wisconsin web designer Mark Czerniec.(Also check out my weekly roundups in Another Week.)
First day of winter is December 1
When I woke up this morning to a few new inches of snow, the temperature outside was -4°F, combined with a 23 m.p.h. breeze for a wind chill index of 28 below zero. The news anchor on WBBM 780 informed me that winter had just officially begun one minute ago. When we...
Snow in Wisconsin: December 19, 2008
This was the view outside my window at about 9:20 this morning. I think I'm going to send it to Charles Osgood and ask him to use it as the last minute of this week's CBS Sunday Morning. The snow has since stopped, so now we're going...
‘The Digg Reel’
Here at the Mark Czerniec Internet Testing Laboratories, we like The Digg Reel. As a matter of fact, we have secretly been enjoying The Digg Reel since — well, since September 6, which is when we discovered Miro, the thing we use to download and watch The Digg Reel....
Digital antenna: Could free TV make a comeback?
Consider the case of our neighbor Mary Jean (pictured above in warmer days). In her roughly 90 years as an American, she has seen all sorts of technological and economic waves break, splash, and recede. While not afraid of the latest and greatest, she also values the...
It’s blowing, it’s freezing
We didn't get a very good sleep. All night long, the wind was plying the trees and testing for loose roofing shingles, flinging garbage cans and neighborhood Christmas decorations, causing much fitful tossing, not to mention frequent turning. Giant Hawaiian waves were...
‘Black Dynamite’: Next big movie buzz?
Amy's job puts her in regular contact with a number of software developer-type people who regularly wade in certain offbeat, cultish humor channels. She tells me that, among these plugged-in folks, there is a strong, giggly anticipation about a movie called Black...
Shoes thrown at George W. Bush by Iraqi reporter
High and outside: FishbowlDC posts NBC video and three entries about one Iraqi reporter's goodbye today to President George W. Bush: Reporter Throws Shoe At President Bush VIDEO: Reporter Throws Shoes At Bush Block The Reebok: More From The Scene The official quote...
Attention, Richard Roeper: The new media flows two ways
I am lying on the sofa just now, reading a 5,500-word entry in Roger Ebert's Journal about Bill Nack and Mark Twain and the beauty of ordinary language, masterfully employed. Roger Ebert publishes one of these wonders every few days in his online Journal — long,...
George W. Bush library pays $35,000 for Web domain name
The web domain name for the George W. Bush library was in the news today on NPR's Morning Edition: The name is www.GeorgeWBushLibrary.com. A Florida firm was handling Web services for the presidential library. The Dallas Morning News reports that the company's rights...
‘Good Eats’ on YouTube
I have written here before about Good Eats — about the steel-cut oatmeal show, the gumbo show. Good Eats is one of my all-time favorite shows on television. At the same time, I currently loathe the Food Network. Where I once looked...
T.D. Mischke fired from KSTP
(Update: Great news: Tommy Mischke will be heard again on weekday afternoons beginning March 4 from 2 to 4 p.m. via CityPages.com.) As you most likely know by now, broadcasting legend Steve Dahl was let go on Friday by CBS Radio. Phil Rosenthal has the details over at...
SNL skits: Fred Armisen, ‘Obama Plays It Cool’
Fred Armisen was jeered pretty roundly when he started playing Barack Obama on SNL, but I always thought he had keyed in on several quirky traits, and that the parody just keeps getting better and better. Last night's "Obama Plays It Cool" piece was his best yet....
Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP is getting panned
I know Gwyneth Paltrow as an actress, and as a rock and roll wife and mother to a couple of kids with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin. I also had read that she was part of a Mario Batali foodie/travel series on PBS called Spain ... On the Road Again which I probably...
Snow! Bring back Indian summer
Our local forecast: This afternoon: Flurries and areas of blowing snow before 3pm, then areas of blowing snow after 3pm. Tonight: Wind chill values between -5 and 5. Sunday night: New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible. Monday night: New snow accumulation of...
Happiness greater with friends nearby
The "Your happiness could be contagious" story was all over the news yesterday, but it makes much more of an impression when it's accompanied by file footage of happy people, as in last night's NBC Nightly News story, embedded above. [includeme...
Total Oprah
Speaking of Oprah, Sarah Terez Rosenblum has a Chicago Sun-Times story today about Robyn Okrant, a writer-performer who has been living her life according to Oprah for darn near a year now: "... I have to breathe a certain way, I have to savor every meal, I have to be...
Oprah Winfrey snow globe
Apart from losing my job this morning, my biggest disappointment was that Steve Dahl never got around to reading Christopher Borrelli's outstanding Tribune story about the amazing and wondrous Oprah Winfrey Show snow globe, available at the Oprah Winfrey store. (The...
Telecommuting termination: Exit interview by telephone
I'm sitting in my kitchen waiting for Rod Zimmerman and Todd Cavanah of CBS Radio to phone and officially terminate my seven years of telecommuting employment with their company. Otherwise, it's at least sunny outside and I would like to shower and maybe go for a...
‘Steve Dahl Show’ to end, along with my job
Around 10 o'clock this morning, I got a phone call from Steve Dahl. Since Steve just never calls me, I immediately understood that this was the very bad news he had been foreshadowing for a couple of weeks. He confirmed it. CBS Radio...
Counterfeit prevention: ‘Y2K fake protection packing’
The other day, while making her rounds on business, Amy stopped in at the office of an acupuncturist. Upon leaving, she was gifted with a box of Hysan Hua Tuo Medicated Plasters, which is pictured above. Amy had mentioned her aching...
Election Day 2008: Live blog
9:17 a.m. — I've got some leftover sauce reheating in the microwave. I'll mix it with the egg noodles boiling on the stove and call it breakfast. MSNBC is on my TV, and I can see my local polling place from my living room window. It's 61 sunny and clear degrees...
Early voting in Racine
I voted. Amy voted too. We voted early. We have been receiving the notices from the Obama campaign and seeing how they urge people to vote early. They even have a Web site, VoteForChange.com, to help Americans find out how to vote early. Still, I wasn't completely...
ABC World News: Racine, Wisconsin’s minute in spotlight
ABC's ABC World News with Charles Gibson devoted this past week to a "Great American Battleground Bus Tour" gimmick which purported to give Gibson and his viewers insight into real, live heartland voters in cities like Dayton, Bowling Green, Indianapolis, Davenport —...
Apple orchard near Burlington, WI: Brightonwoods Orchard
Just a quick reminder that we're now well into apple season, and that one of the best places in our area to experience this fleeting magnificence is Brightonwoods Orchard near Burlington, Wisconsin. Brightonwoods is not an orchard you...
The Great Recession of 2008
I cannot process the economic depression is unfolding here in the U.S.A. over the last few days. A crushing, amorphous weight has me plastered to the sofa in front of the TV. My breathing is labored, and my heart stops beating every now and then for ten or fifteen...
Social media smorgasbord: Four weeks wandering Web 2.0
Nothing in particular has inspired any new blog posts here in recent weeks. Instead, I've spent much of my free time playing around with a few of the endless new gizmos that are hatching every minute in the now four-year-old world of "Web 2.0," the cross-fed,...
Andrew Bacevich on ‘Bill Moyers Journal’: Warning in America
We modern Americans are marvels of indolence. We'll slap magnetic "Support our troops" ribbons on our minivans and surrender our freedoms to telephone companies if that's what it takes to keep from having to protect our freedoms, but let anyone even suggest keeping...
Rick Warren’s Saddleback Civil Forum
There were a number of interesting moments in Saturday night's "Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency," but one that I have not seen mentioned came as part of John McCain's response to a question about taxes. Part 5 of Pastor Rick...
Election 2008: It’s God time
Reading Andrew Sullivan's acclaimed piece pn Election 2008 in last December's Atlantic magazine, I noted the emphasis on Barack Obama's religious conviction and how one Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright introduced Obama to Jesus Christ. Sullivan was wowed: To deploy the...
Recipe: Roasted Potatoes with Mustard and Rosemary
For more dinner ideas, see our list of Easy dinner recipes, chicken recipes, side dishes. As the weather here already begins to turn cooler, our oven is getting some use again. Last night we roasted a chicken, accompanied by a simple, rustic roasted potato recipe that...