Woo. Comments. Took a little longer than expected; I “rolled my own” except for the bit of JS I cribbed from Kiefer (via Mutak).

More later, including a prettier comment interface.

Ah, to be young and a terrible judge of time.

I love Minnesota and am having a great time here this summer, but I felt the need to get away for a little while. One thing led to another, and I soon found myself leaving work last Friday afternoon, bound for Chicago. I don’t remember much of the drive except that Madison has a good smooth jazz radio station. Six and a half hours after my departure, I entered the throngs of the Windy City roadway labyrinth. Turn, turn, stop, pay toll, go, exit, turn, turn, turn, and suddenly I was at Alex’s house. Although Alex injured his foot in Europe recently, the foot was well enough for Alex to be mobile. Alex was kind enough to give me the guest bed for a night as well as securing a parking permit for my car, both of which I’m grateful for.

Alex and I met up with one of Alex’s longtime friends, his girlfriend, and his sister and proceeded to enjoy the Lincoln Park nightlife. That neighborhood is in the city, so it’s easy to walk just about anywhere one need go. It’s just as well that we walked – there is a pronounced dearth of available parking spots. The area reminded me of Minneapolis’ Uptown district: nice, lots to do, definitely the place to be.

The clock indicated 3:30 a.m., and the party was still going strong. Unlike Minneapolis, Chicago allows some bars to stay open and serving until 4:00 a.m. We walked back to Alex’s house and shot the breeze for a while. I finally got to sleep when 5:00 a.m. rolled around. Four hours later, I was awake and preparing to depart. A half-hour after that, I was rolling down the freeway, bound for Terre Haute.

Back in January, I made the drive from Chicago to Terre Haute under the duress of extreme exhaustion. I don’t remember much of that drive. Although I was wide awake this time, and the sun was shining brightly, I recall very little of the drive. I think there’s a reason for my lack of memory: that drive is bloody BORING. It’s like driving through Iowa, but worse. There aren’t even any cops to make things interesting. I think they feel sorry for everyone making that drive, so they don’t bother setting any speed traps.

At about 2:00 p.m., I pulled into the Pike House. Immediately, I noticed the Annex and its new roof. Too bad the contractors were putzing with the gutters when a powerful storm hit; some areas around the edges of the building sustained considerable water damage.

The main house was quiet and surprisingly clean. Props to the handful of Brothers who are living there and keeping it so presentable. I hung out for a bit with McDonough, Edmonson, and Capizzi before starting work on my room. Martin and Baldauff, new members of the corporate world, also dropped by. It was good to see everybody again.

Tyler and I are completely redoing our room. The plan is to rip out the carpet, refinish the underlying hardwood floor, and build a new loft. The first step of the renovation was to remove the old loft. That process went relatively smoothly until about 12:30 a.m. At that point, I was expecting to separate the loft into two freestanding pieces and carefully take them apart, one at a time. Unfortunately, the pieces turned out not to be freestanding. With a crack and snap, the loft started to collapse. All I could do was direct it away from the windows – stopping the collapse was beyond my abilities. As I examined the tangled mess of wood, I breathed a sigh of relief. The falling loft missed all of the windows and the walls. Unfortunately, two very significant beams were jamming the door shut. I tried to undo the bolts holding the loft together but met little success. In addition to cracking a 2-by-6, the falling loft bent several 3/8-inch carriage bolts, significantly complicating my dismantling efforts. Eventually, I got out my hacksaw and sawed through four bolts, which loosened things up enough to free the door and allowed me to complete the demolition. All of that wrapped up around 2:00 a.m.

Seven hours later, I got up and gathered my things. After a few miscellaneous deeds, I was on my back to Minnesota. I made the 620-mile drive in about 8 hours, 45 minutes, including two stops. The lesson here: that was far too much driving for three days. I now appreciate even more the trips that my parents have made, as they too sometimes do the round trip on a three-day timescale.

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Everybody seems to be doing it, so I’m going to follow the crowd and implement inline comments. It’s a gradual step in the direction of Keacher.com version 3.0. Take a look at the Internet Archive for a humorous view of the past.

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It turns out that keacher.blogspot.com is NOT about oatmeal cookies, as I had previously guessed. I think that the blog author noticed people visiting the blog from my link and visited my blog, as this was posted a few days ago. Not to worry, my fellow unilingual Americans; the referenced post is in English. Apparently, to quote the blog author, it is a site about emotions.

I went golfing today, my first time playing a regulation course. Why?

A few weeks ago, my manager’s manager’s manager decided that his group was doing a great job with the current project, so he gave everybody in the group this afternoon off to eat lunch and play golf.

We played at Columbia Golf Course in Minneapolis, an 18-hole regulation size course. I chose to play 9 holes. Although my score was, um… high, I had a great time.

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I did one of my periodic searches for “Keacher” on Google today. Imagine my surprise when I found another Keacher with a blog! Then I became disappointed. It turns out that keacher.blogspot.com is run by some Hungarian.

Needless to say, I can’t read, speak, or otherwise communicate in Hungarian. Google couldn’t find any online Hungarian-to-English translators, so I tried running the page through a German-to-English translator. You’d be amazed how different German and Hungarian are. Nothing translated. Not a single word. Zilch. Zero. Nadda. Maybe it’s a site about oatmeal cookies. I have no idea. And learning Hungarian is definitely NOT on the to-do list.

I’ve been writing a lot about Rainbow as of late, so imagine my surprise when I opened today’s Star Tribune: There, on the front page of the Business section, was an article about Rainbow. Oddly enough, the journalist chose to focus the article on the changes made at my former Rainbow, the Plymouth Station store. I won’t bore you with the details, but basically the article claimed the store has become cleaner, brighter, fresher, and cheaper. With that, I vow to never again mention Rainbow in this blog.

After reading a different article in the Star Tribune earlier this week, I decided to get up early this morning and head over to St. Paul. Why? Mensa is having its annual gathering in St. Paul this weekend. As part of the event, they are offering an admittance test. After getting a good night’s sleep and eating my usual breakfast, I arrived in St. Paul at the Radisson Inn, where I joined 100 other Mensa hopefuls. Yes, I woke up early on a weekend to take a difficult test during my vacation from the kingdom of difficult tests, Rose-Hulman. Oh yeah, I paid to do it, too.

The test environment was reminiscent of the ACT and SAT, except the test taker median age was much older. The test session consisted of two separate test, either of which would qualify one for membership. The first test, the longer of the two, was a timed, sectioned test gauging many aspects of intelligence: pattern identification, math, coding speed, verbal acuity, and others. The test also stressed short term memory, in that the final section of the test contained questions about a short story that was read prior to the first section of the test. Surprisingly, neither of the tests were similar to the online practice test — the real ones were MUCH harder.

I will find out in a few weeks whether or not I qualified. Based on previous testing experiences and online practice exams, I think I will be right on the borderline. Though Mensa cannot release a raw IQ number based on the test (silly state laws), a qualifying score is usually in the lower 130s.

After the test, we were all encouraged to pick up a sample of “SmartWater Sport,” a bottled water fortified with electrolytes. This ain’t no ordinary spring water; it’s vapor distilled water. Maybe I’m wrong, but doesn’t distillation imply the presence of vapor? The side of the bottle describes a suggested use of the water, comparing it to sport drinks like Gatorade: “It has come to our attention that, at the conclusion of some sporting events, athletes pour large buckets of a ‘sports drink’ over their coach’s head. Not to be outdone, we encourage our loyal consumers to do the same after a grueling match. O.K, sure, dumping this over your chess team coach’s head may sound strange, but trust is, nothing gets chess fans more pumped.” Hmmm, I dunno about that. Any comment, Tyler? In any case, the free bottles were of the 750 ml size. Given the color, the “vapor distilled” verbiage, and the size, I couldn’t help but think that the water looked like a bottle of Absolut. Perhaps that characterization puts the water in the wrong class. After all, if I don’t qualify for Mensa membership, I essentially bought myself the world’s most expensive fifth of water. Pricier, even, than a fifth of Grey Goose. I hope I get in.

Remember the Rainbow Foods I wrote about last week? Well, it reopened July 1st. I thought that I would do a quick comparison between the new-and-improved Plymouth Station Rainbow and the Lund’s down the street.

Lund’s, you will recall, is an upscale grocer in the Twin Cities area, much akin to Byerly’s (In fact, after a merger several years ago, Lund’s and Byerly’s are owned by the same company). They compete on service, selection, and atmosphere rather than price.

I went in the Lund’s and admired how nice everything looked. Detail, it seems, truly matters. I meandered about the store, going this way and that. Along my serpentine route, I happened to notice the price of Tropicana orange juice; it was cheaper than the Terre Haute Kroger. No card required! Fascinating.

After admiring Lund’s, I drove down the road to Rainbow. I walked in, and, surprise, everything was fully stocked. Quite a contrast to my previous visit, when I found the shelves bare. I walked around for a bit, taking it all in. Something about the place seemed unwelcoming, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me: the store was cold. No, the air temperature was fine. The store itself just seemed lifeless, sterile, and unwelcoming.

Why? The harsh high-intensity discharge lights cast everything with a very high color temperature, a bluish tone. The metal shelves seemed strict and industrial. The high, warehouse-style ceilings probably didn’t help the situation. This was all in contrast to the warm lighting, abundance of wood, and low ceilings found at Lund’s. All that aside, the most noticeable difference was Muzak. Or, in the case of Rainbow, the lack thereof. Whereas Lund’s provided subtle aural stimulus in the form of background smooth jazz, Rainbow was eerily quiet.

I feel that music has the power to shape emotions, so why not play relaxing tunes in the background? I can’t cite any research, but I’d be willing to bet that a gentle melodic din increases purchases. Makes sense, really. Smooth music relaxes shoppers and makes the experience more enjoyable. It then follows that the shoppers will be happier. People tend to buy more when happy, therefore soft Muzak-style music increases sales. Q.E.D.