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Laurel Krahn's weblog since August 1998.

I can't even stand to think about a baseball strike right now. With the Twins doing so well, with the honest truth being that a strike could be the end of major league baseball in Minnesota.

This column by Dan Barreiro expresses the feeling well. He simply runs down yesterday's game at the ballpark. The other pieces I link to in this entry sum it up nicely, too. There's still so much to love about the game if you let yourself.

Great Big Sea, one of my favorite bands, plays free concerts tonight and tomorrow night at the Minnesota State Fair. 8:30pm on Friday and Saturday, at the big Bandshell.

Here's Jon Bream's review of the concert I saw on Tuesday at the Fair. Lyle Lovett and Bonnie Raitt. Great show, great fun.

Hooray! Three great albums by the Suburbs are finally available on CD: Love Is The Law, Credit In Heaven, and In Combo.

The Suburbs will be playing three shows at First Avenue, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday - September 30th, October 1st & 2nd, 2002. Oooh! I've gotta go to at least one of these shows.

Apologies if you're a regular reader of my TV Picks 'cuz you'll have seen this already.

You can now pre-order Season 1 box sets of the series Law & Order, Mad About You, Malcolm in the Middle, and Baretta.

DVD sets of the following series are in the works (I'll let you know when you can pre-order 'em): Magnum P.I., Battlestar Galactica, Dragnet, Earth: Final Conflict, Emergency, The Rockford Files, Land of the Lost, Quantum Leap, and Sliders.

You can now pre-order Season 6 of The X-Files on DVD.

You can pre-order the soundtrack to the "Once More, With Feeling" episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (a.k.a. Buffy: The Musical). This page has all the gory details on the album (it includes some extras, like a demo of one song as performed by Joss and his wife). It's being released on September 24th.

I'm trying to keep a complete list of what TV is available on DVD in the sidebar at TVPicks.net, in case you're curious what TV shows are available in the US on DVD (if you notice I've missed something, let me know).

John M. Ford wrote an incredible poem last September, called "110 Stories." Elise Matthesen got permission to post the poem in her livejournal and gave permission to people to link to it. Ford's one of my favorite people and one of my favorite writers and this is just a truly fine piece of writing on a tough subject.

I hope it spreads, as TNH wisely predicted, "like wildfire." And that folks keep the name John M. Ford attached to this piece.

(Curious about this John M. Ford fellow? May I suggest the fine collection From The End of the Twentieth Century. Or The Last Hot Time. Or the funniest Star Trek novel ever: the funniest Star Trek novel ever. Or maybe the best book about Klingons ever. Watch used bookstores or check libraries for copies of The Dragon Waiting, The Scholars of Night, Casting Fortune, The Princes of the Air, Web of Angels, or Growing Up Weightless).

Hey, waitaminute--

I was updating the entry for Windowseat at Eatonweb and as I did it, I realized that right about now (I'll call it today) is the four year anniversary (birthday?) of this here weblog. Go me! Go us! Yay Windowseat!

I really need to change the graphic on the archives page, as it still says we're celebrating two years of this weblog. D'oh.

If you have a weblog, you should be listed at Brigitte Eaton's Eatonweb Weblog Portal. And if your weblog is already listed there, you should still pay the site a visit to update your listing as lots of new features have been added recently. Act now! Act without thinking!

One year ago today, I was laid off from my position as a systems administrator for a graphic prepress company. I'm still looking for work.

Huge thank-you's to the many friends and strangers who've been supportive during this time. Your emails, gifts, donations, and well-wishes have meant a lot. Job leads have been much appreciated. Encouraging words and advice are cool things. Links can make my day. Thanks so much to those who know me in-person and who've taken me out to movies and shows and/or to dinner. Y'all rock.

Here's a link to a rough web version of my resume. I need to spruce it up a bit. If you've got suggestions for my job search (or for spiffing up/cleaning up this resume), they're still very much appreciated. If you've job leads, send 'em my way. I'm primarily interested in jobs where I can continue to live in Minnesota, but for the right gig I might consider a move.

I am considering a career change, getting out of ye olde IT field. Many think I'd be well-suited to a job where I wrote about TV (hey!) or about pop culture. I'm intrigued by positions that involve proofreading, editing, and/or writing. I like doing public relations and marketing sorts of things. I've been a great administrative assistant in the past. I love doing research (and I'm good at it). I've got good instincts when it comes to user interfaces (and I enjoy testing and doing quality control sorts of things). I'm still searching for my ideal job, I guess. (Got any ideas? Fire away!) I think my ideal gig would probably involve words and technology, somehow. If only weblogging and tv-picking could pay my bills.

It's a drinking mug, it's a Klein bottle, it's two things in one. Made by Cliff Stoll, even.

Are you missing David Letterman while The Late Show is in reruns? Well, if you're a Letterman fan and don't regularly visit the official website, now's a fine time to catch up on any episodes of The Tony Mendez Show that you may have missed.

Ghost Of The Robot is a band that I've never really heard. But James Marsters plays guitar and sings lead for 'em and boy does that website have pretty pictures of him, um, doing that. Just saying.

Woohoo!

You can now pre-order DVD box sets of Sports Night, Once and Again, and Felicity.

Great TV on DVD. The Sports Night set contains both seasons of the show. The Once and Again and Felicity sets are of the first seasons of each of those shows, with sets for the rest of their seasons to follow.

Outstanding article about life online (found via editrx's livejournal).

It's about the "Cult of 'Turn Off Your Computer'," those people who love showing up in online discussions to point out that those participating should "get lives" and "turn off the computer" and "go outside":

Those who advise us to unplug and get a life are operating under the false assumption that what happens online isn't real. This is why most members of the cult of Turn Off Your Computer (or TOYC, for short) post anonymously. Such individuals play online as if they were playing a Playstation video game. They keep their actual selves safely back in the real world.

Yup. This mentality has never made sense for me. The person I am online is the same person I am offline. Read the whole article.

This article couldn't help but remind me of the arguments some science fiction fans have had about badge names at conventions, too (some people go to cons to play, for others of us . . . cons are family reunions).

You can vote for Dum-Dum flavors online. Yes, you can! Really! Would I make this up?

There's a big long article called "Homeland Insecurity" in the September issue of Atlantic Monthly which is very cool. And hey, it's basically a big interview with my friend Bruce, too. (Go Bruce!) It's good stuff. Go read it.

Cool new article about Torii Hunter from the August 19th ESPN Magazine. And an article that compares the current team to the '87 Twins.

And another article that ranks the A.L. MVP candidates (with Hunter listed at number 1).

This is article lists LaTroy Hawkins as a player to watch down the stretch. When LaTroy first started pitching for the Twins as a starter, it seemed like it just happened that every game we saw that year was one where he started. He didn't always do so well. But I'm pleased beyond belief at his success this year, 'cuz I've been pulling for him from the get-go (that pretty much applies to this whole Twins team, to be honest).

I'm still going to a lot of Twins games, I try to write about those in my livejournal.

I really need to remember to at least post links here when I stumble across something cool (or someone emails me a cool link). Even if that doesn't happen as often anymore.

You can now pre-order the complete first season of Babylon 5 on DVD. Woo!

And did you hear that Sports Night, Felicity, and Once and Again will be released on DVD this fall? So very cool (I'll let you know as soon as you can pre-order those on Amazon).

Boy do I love DVD sets of TV series (as evidenced by the number of 'em on my wishlist).