A new feature on spudart.org:
Trucker Tuesdays
Every tuesday on spudart.org will feature advertisements that appear in the semi-monthly "The Trucker" national newspaper. This publication is for the truckload freight industry and it contains many advertisements trying to get truckers to join different trucking operations.

This series will take a look at the methods used to attract your regular joe trucker through stereotypes, Americana pride, family, and just pure truckin balls.

First in this series features a stereotype trucker in a wife beater shirt, a handlebar mustache, a strong dosage of hair on his forearms, and a carton of milk. Milk?
That's right, milk. It's nice how Transcraft balances the macho conception of truckers with the softie guy inside. Now when he goes to drink that milk, he's gonna get one momma sized milk mustache!

If you'd like to get updates on the trucker series via email, just go to the spudart subscription page at: http://www.spudart.org/blogs/mailinglists/subscribe.php

Today being Memorial Day, it's intersting to think of how many people you know that served in the U.S. Armed Forces past and present.

I know of five:
• Army: Rob Frey (best friend from high school)
• Army: Ben Ouwinga (friend from high school)
• Marines: Tanya Kunstman (high school girlfriend)
• Army: My dad
• Navy: Billy Benham (friend of my girlfriend. I'm counting him, cuz I met him a couple times)
I find it odd that I don't know anyone from college that served in the Armed Forces. Plus I'm just surprised at how low my number is. How many do you know?

Have some interactive fun in your office with this great new idea for New Toy Friday: Build a stickie note village on your office bulletin board. All it takes are some sticky notes and a bulletin board.

Start off by posting one stickie note with the following message:

Let's make a Stickie Note Village
1) Draw a line on any sticky note
2) Draw any houses, people, dogs, whatever
3) Post your note, connecting the line

It's fun if you put these instructions in word bubbles and have them spoken by some simple stick characters.

People are then encouraged to follow the instructions and continue the stickie note village by making new houses, buildings and people to live in the village.

A few tips:
1) Stickie notes don't stick very well on cork. Make sure an abundant supply of thumbtacks are available on the board.
2) Line up all the thumbtacks by the original instruction sticky note, so people can easily identify the instructions.
3) Make your beginning drawings pretty simple so you don't scare away people who say they can't draw.

What is up with all these new lego-like plates being installed at the edge of sidewalks in Chicago?

Purpose
A) General Safety: The bumps would (in theory) make it harder to slip into the street. (I'm not sure of that, because when they get wet, they would get pretty slippery.)
B) For the Blind: The change in texture in the sidewalk would probably assist the blind to indicate that there is a street at the end of this sidewalk. Now would a blind person be able to tell that with their cane? Maybe it's for the seeing-eye dogs. Let's take a look at how a dog would see it in black and white.

Yup there's a good amount of contrast between the bumpy thing and the sidwalk. Could have more contrast though. Which brings us to the next point.

How can these be improved?
The dusty mauve color sure is an... interesting choice. Why not go with the bright yellow that the Metra employs at their train stations? Or maybe the pretty blue the CTA uses at their train stops? Perhaps dusty mauve was chosen to blend in more, but actually the color just makes it seem like they are an ugly faded red. Why not just go with a nice deep charcoal gray? Hmm, but having color does make it more alertful.

Other uses
Or maybe I've missed the mark completely on this. Perhaps...

1) They are lego plates encouraging the general public to stack legos on them.
2) They could also be installation blocks to create archways across the street.
3) Or maybe it's just a case of the sidewalk having the mumps or pimples.

Any other ideas about these sidewalk doo-dads are welcome in the comments.

The highlights from my croquet photo collection are now featured on flickr. Right now there are 24 photos up. To learn more about the Chicago Croquet of Squirearchy, go to our site at: www.chicagocroquet.com.

We all know that dart guns are fun at work. They should be a standard office equipment of any good corporate America worker. Right next to your stapler and scissors is your dart gun.

Here's one way to target higher fun productivity at work:

1) Draw a big fat target on your office whiteboard. Use concentric circles and give point totals to each circle.
2) Determine a shooting range--this will depend on the quality of your gun. Our range was about 15 feet.
3) Instead of shooting just one dart, let each person shoot like 10 darts per turn.
4) Add up the point total for each person and write then on the whiteboard right next to the target. Let's get some fun competition!

Hint A: For this idea to work, you'll need a darts that can stick to the whiteboard. There's darts with suction cups on the ends. Those work ok. But even better are these dart guns being sold at Walgreens that have a super sticky end to them. Think wacky-wallwalker-sticky, but on a dart. It's called Foam Force Clip Load Tacky Dart Blaster by Imperial


Hint B: Instead of stashing the dart gun at somebody's desk, keep it by the whiteboard target at all times. That will help to foster spontaneous attempts.

Hint C: Some alternatives to this idea could be drawing drawing an outer circle that is worth double the amount for the bullseye. This helps to reward those whose accuracy is not the best. Or maybe even draw triangles instead of circles. Or even random irregular shapes to make it even more fun.

Hint D: Offer some goofball prize for the person with the highest score. I highly suggest that you get a bag full of trophies like these 4-inch tall gold trophies from S&S Worldwide:

4" Gold Trophy (pk/12)

On a mailing sticker you can write something like "14th floor Best Sharpshooter." Or if you are really fancypants, you can get the gold foil mailing labels and run through a printer to make it even more official looking. Then put the trophy on top of the whiteboard and say "Highest score by May 26 wins this trophy!" Play up the tease of the trophy! (and having a date gives it more urgency)

Yesterday my family had first row seats in section 224 at Wrigley Field. Sounds like great seats, nobody in front of you to block your view. Think again.

There's a busy walkway in front of the first row where people constantly walk. The first row seats are elevated, but not enough. The heads of the walking people over 5' 5" block the view of the field. Which is alright if the people keep moving. But there was an usher in front of us for section 123. He asked every person for their tickets before entering his section. So people stood there--blocking our view--to find their tickets.

Although it was humorous to see people who were trying to get into the section that didn't have tickets. They would stand there for a couple seconds pretending to try to find their tickets, but then give up. At that point my brother and I would yell out, "busted!" and the guilty party would usually smile and walk away.

Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful to get these tickets (especially since they were value tickets), and front row is nice. But just a guide, at Wrigley Field if the front row has a busy walkway in front of it, you might want to opt for 2nd or 3rd row tickets.

I've uploaded eight videos to YouTube, including this one named "Bear Left Flat Behind in Chicago"



You can see all my videos on my YouTube page.

Let's say there is a raffle. 200 people buy a raffle ticket for $1 each.

Let's say right before the end of a raffle you find out that 200 people bought a raffle ticket for $1 each. What if you bought 200 tickets right on the spot? That would put 400 tickets in the raffle, with 200 in your hand. You'd have a 50/50 chance of doubling your money.

But then what if the raffle auction decided that half of the proceeds go to charity, then the $400 prize drops down to $200. You have 200 tickets. Other people have 200 tickets. Now you only have a 50/50 chance of winning your money back. That's rather silly.

Looks like raffles are fun to participate in when you just buy a couple tickets for the fun chance of getting the huge multiplier prize.

(these were just some thoughts I was having at a recent raffle auction)

It's amazing that this one designer has done the logos for
• American League 100th Anniversary
• Anaheim Angels
• Basketball Hall of Fame
• Milwaukee Brewers (1994-1999)
• Brooklyn Cyclones (minor league baseball)
• Fenway Park 90th Anniversary
• 2004 Houston Super Bowl Host Committee
• Jackie Robinson 50th Anniversary
• Washington Nationals
• Super Bowl XXXVIII
• 2006 World Baseball Classic
• 2003 World Series

Ten times a day, a digital clock will display numbers that are consecutive from low to high.
12:34 (am/pm)
1:23 (am/pm)
2:34 (am/pm)
3:45 (am/pm)
4:56 (am/pm)

If you count army time, then you can include:
23:45
0:12

And if you count going down:
6:54 (am/pm)
5:43 (am/pm)
4:32 (am/pm)
3:21 (am/pm)
2:10 (am/pm)

(this post was an idea my mom brought up in conversation on Mother's Day, thanks mom!)

Inside my can of Pringles Prints was a potato chip that had the words "Printed fun on every one" and a weird pattern. At first I just thought it was just a fun different chip, but then I realized that this was no normal chip, oh no.

When pringles is printing their fun facts on their potato chips, every now and then they will print this pattern on a chip to indicate how much ink is printing on their chip during that run on the printing press. Those press machines are very delicate and complicated machines that have to run very large quantities of chips in a small amount of time. Pair that with the variables in the air (humidity and temperature), and the varying qualities of the chips, and you need a system that will ensure the right amount of ink is being printed on the potato chips.

Too little ink and the lines on the top and bottom would not show up on the registration ink density chip. If there's too much ink, then the lines in the middle would get all clogged up and you wouldn't be able to see the space in the middle. It looks like the press at this time was running with a bit more ink than ususal, because the middle lines were appearing slightly clogged.

In the graphic design field these use similiar test patterns on paper to see how much ink the press is running so images don't appear too dark or too light. It's fun to see that it translates over to the field of potato printing. Certainly, it's a work of art--a work of spud art, if you will.

It's fun when somebody's first name ends with an "o." Here's an example. One of my super duper cool coworkers name is Marco Buscaglia. But if you say it really fast, it can sound like Marc O'Buscaglia. An instant change from Italian to Irish!

Here's a complete list of baby names that end with the letter o.

Boy Names:

Alberto
Aldo
Aldolfo
Alejandro
Alfonso
Alfredo
Alphonso
Alvaro
Angelo
Antonio
Armando
Arturo
Benito
Bernardo
Bo
Carlo
Cordero
Dangelo
Dario
Deanglo
Demarco
Diego
Domingo
Eduardo
Eliseo
Emilio
Enzo
Ernesto
Federico
Fernando
Francesco
Francisco
Gerardo
Gilberto
Gino
Gonzalo
Gregorio
Guillermo
Gustavo
Hugo
Humberto
Ignacio
Isidro
Jairo
Julio
Lazaro
Leo
Leonardo
Lorenzo
Marco
Mario
Mauricio
Octavio
Orlando
Osvaldo
Pablo
Pedro
Ramiro
Raymundo
Ricardo
Rico
Rigoberto
Roberto
Rocco
Rodolfo
Rodrigo
Rogelio
Rolando
Santiago
Sergio
Vincenzo
Vito
Wilfredo

Girl Names:

Jo
Margo

Amazing. 71 boy names ending with o. And just two girl names end with the letter o.

Gummi Bear, Tootsie Roll, and Lollie Pop made it into the Highland Park Art Walk 2006. (Gummi Bear is definitely in, we are waiting to see if they can squeeze in Tootsie Roll and Lollie Pop too)

They will be appearing in the Goodies storefront window at 652 Central Ave, Highland Park, IL 60035 (map).

The opening reception is Saturday, May 6, 2006 from 7pm-midnight at Gallery 60035 at 1946 First Street, Highland Park, IL (map). There's a bunch of work at this gallery, but most of the work is in storefront windows in the area around the gallery. So during the opening reception, I'd imagine most of the people will be hanging out at the Gallery, but many people will be walking around checking out the artwork in the storefront windows--and that's where mine is--at the Goodies store window.

The artwork will stay on display from May 6 to May 27, 2006. All the artists shown are Illinois artists.

A big thanks goes to Debra Hatchett for finding my work online and asking me to be part of the exhibit.

My work will also be on sale. $300 for each framed original drawing. $150 for each framed photographic reproduction.

What would be a good caption for this photo? Please leave your captions in the comments.