This is Sarah's dog Chase (Chasie Boy). He is highly intelligent.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Zoombezi Bay Update 3.14.08
Drove by Zoombezi Bay construction at the Columbus Zoo and took a couple pictures and video:
http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb185/ntweisen/Zoombezi%20Bay%20Construction/
http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb185/ntweisen/Zoombezi%20Bay%20Construction/
Friday, March 14, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Winter Withdrawal
For coaster enthusiasts, living in the Mid-West has its ups and downs (no pun intended). In season, from April to November for those of you who ride all year, we are in "coaster heaven." Indiana Beach, Holiday World, Paramount Kings Island, Cedar Point, Geauga lake, and Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom are all less than a five hour drive. Throw in the smaller parks, such as Fun Spot and Stricker's Grove, and that's 75 different roller coasters. Classic wood, steel loopers, family coasters, stand-ups and custom coasters! You name it, we got it! CCI, B&M, Zamperla, Vekoma, Pinfari, Arrow, Intamin, Togo, Schwarzkopf, John Miller and Charlie Dinn, just to drop a few names. Spring, summer, fall we ride 'em all!
Ah, but come September… there is a chill in the air and one by one all our marvelous parks close for the season. No more Raven air, no Legendary laterals! No Cornball surprises, no Tig'rr roar! Usually, our last shining, glimmer of hope before a long, cold winter is PKI's closing weekend, or Halloweekends at CP. From November to March is a long, long time and undoubtedly come December, the dreaded "Coaster Withdrawal Syndrome" sets in. Many of us "snow birds" head south for a bit of a respite in Florida. Believe me, this helps! But all too soon, we are back up to our knees in snow and longing for the clackity-click and the wonderful aroma of grease from a chain lift. We haven't hit the lottery, so trekking back south is out of the question, but we did find a winter coaster-like thrill nearby!
Pokagon State Park is located in Angola Indiana, approximately six miles from the Indiana Toll Road. The park, on the shores of Lake James and Snow Lake, offers opportunities for outdoor recreation all seasons of the year. Boating, skiing, swimming, hiking and camping are available. If there is enough snow, cross-country skiing is also very popular. But, what interests us most is to drive to Pokagon early on a cold Saturday morning in February to ride the park's Toboggan Run. The Toboggan Run is a 1,780-long refrigerated twin track thriller, where riders reach speeds in excess of 40 mph. While the course doesn't feature any twists or turns, it does have a fairly steep first drop, a nice, sloping second drop and several bunny hops (that provide a bit of airtime)! Toward the end there is a bridge crossing the track that provides a head chopper effect. The run also provides an added bonus; you get a nice workout carrying the toboggan back up the hill and it is uphill all the way. The Pokagon Toboggan run is open weekends from Thanksgiving through the end of February. Hours of operation are Fridays 5:00 P.M. – 10:00 P.M., Saturdays 10:00 A.M. – 10:00 P.M. and Sundays 10:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.
http://tobogganrun.com/
Ah, but come September… there is a chill in the air and one by one all our marvelous parks close for the season. No more Raven air, no Legendary laterals! No Cornball surprises, no Tig'rr roar! Usually, our last shining, glimmer of hope before a long, cold winter is PKI's closing weekend, or Halloweekends at CP. From November to March is a long, long time and undoubtedly come December, the dreaded "Coaster Withdrawal Syndrome" sets in. Many of us "snow birds" head south for a bit of a respite in Florida. Believe me, this helps! But all too soon, we are back up to our knees in snow and longing for the clackity-click and the wonderful aroma of grease from a chain lift. We haven't hit the lottery, so trekking back south is out of the question, but we did find a winter coaster-like thrill nearby!
Pokagon State Park is located in Angola Indiana, approximately six miles from the Indiana Toll Road. The park, on the shores of Lake James and Snow Lake, offers opportunities for outdoor recreation all seasons of the year. Boating, skiing, swimming, hiking and camping are available. If there is enough snow, cross-country skiing is also very popular. But, what interests us most is to drive to Pokagon early on a cold Saturday morning in February to ride the park's Toboggan Run. The Toboggan Run is a 1,780-long refrigerated twin track thriller, where riders reach speeds in excess of 40 mph. While the course doesn't feature any twists or turns, it does have a fairly steep first drop, a nice, sloping second drop and several bunny hops (that provide a bit of airtime)! Toward the end there is a bridge crossing the track that provides a head chopper effect. The run also provides an added bonus; you get a nice workout carrying the toboggan back up the hill and it is uphill all the way. The Pokagon Toboggan run is open weekends from Thanksgiving through the end of February. Hours of operation are Fridays 5:00 P.M. – 10:00 P.M., Saturdays 10:00 A.M. – 10:00 P.M. and Sundays 10:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.
http://tobogganrun.com/
Friday, March 7, 2008
B-E-A-UTIFUL
Sigur Ros built a marimba made out of rocks, how cool is that! You can see it in their "Heima" video, about forty something minutes in. "They perform with a stone marimba comprising individual rocks found by a quasi-hermit called Páll Gudmundson"
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Ecto Cooler
Who remembers Ecto Cooler? And whatever happened to it? Is it still around anyone? I found this description to be pretty funny:
"Ecto Cooler is probably the greatest beverage ever invented. I've spent so many muggy summer afternoons, cool autumn nights, and frigid winter mornings guzzling this stuff by the gallon that it's a wonder my skin never turned green. And even if it had, I honestly don't think I could have stopped myself from cracking open another bottle and pouring another ten more glasses.
Here's the story behind this stuff: way back in the golden age of marketing, the 80s, there was an awesome Saturday morning cartoon based on the Ghostbusters movies. Kids tuned in by the millions and were enraptured by the hilarious antics of a talking blob of ooze. Realizing the incredible economic potential of legions upon legions of brainwashed children, the good people at Hi-C decided to capitalize on the show's momentum by creating a beverage that itself resembled ooze and branding it with the ooze monster's image. You heard me correctly -- they actually intentionally created a beverage that looked like toxic waste. We're already off to a good start.
Although it looked just like slime it tasted like magic. As a base they started with nature's wonder fruit, the orange. To complement they added orange's not-nearly-as-popular cousin, tangerine. To seal the deal they added crack cocaine. I don't know what they added to turn it green but whatever it was it tasted wonderful. They had stumbled upon the recipe for beverage glory and followed it precisely to produce a million gallons of heaven.
Ecto Cooler was so incredibly good, so incredibly positive that it's difficult to summarize without light and sound and crazy guitar riffs wafting in on waves of sweet perfume. This stuff was unrivaled amongst all sweetened liquids. There was just something about the sight of a tall green glass of juice that made whatever flavor you were about to experience ten times better than it could be by any other color. If the drink tasted okay, the green would make it great. If it already tasted great the green would make it wonderful. Somehow, green is the color of happiness (at least where beverages are concerned).
And I wasn't the only one who felt this way, either. A decade after the cartoon had been cancelled and nearly twenty years after the first movie came out in theaters you could still buy this stuff in almost every supermarket in the country. It was still called Ecto Cooler and still had the ooze monster shown prominently on the box, even though the entire current generation of children had no idea who the ooze monster was, or why the liquid was green. The truth is they really didn't have to know: they were born knowing that green Hi-C was just, somehow, right.
But apparently this miracle was lost on the steely executives who live in Hi-C Tower, because in the first few years of the 21st century they decided to change the name to "Shoutin Orange Tangergreen" and the color to vomit orange-brown. In a single move they had turned the greatest drink to ever grace the earth into a sad mockery of watery desperation. It was a liquid nightmare lurking in juice box form. It was a horrible day for lovers of magic everywhere, and for new born tastebuds destined to never experience perfection.
It took years after the discontinuation of Ecto Cooler for me to fully recover; to find beverage alternatives that barely filled the massive void in my refrigerator. If any of my mad scientist friends one day converts an old DeLorean into a time machine and I find myself with this great power resting in my hands, the first thing I will do will be to travel to the year 1990 and purchase 15 gallons of sweet, sweet ecto cooler. Only after I've absorbed a couple of these gallons will I proceed to use the machine for more scientific purposes like cheating the stock market or patenting mp3 players.
Ecto Cooler is just that good. It was a ray of liquid sunshine in an otherwise cloudy beverage aisle, and the world is a darker place indeed now that it is gone."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdARlTpw_Y0
"Ecto Cooler is probably the greatest beverage ever invented. I've spent so many muggy summer afternoons, cool autumn nights, and frigid winter mornings guzzling this stuff by the gallon that it's a wonder my skin never turned green. And even if it had, I honestly don't think I could have stopped myself from cracking open another bottle and pouring another ten more glasses.
Here's the story behind this stuff: way back in the golden age of marketing, the 80s, there was an awesome Saturday morning cartoon based on the Ghostbusters movies. Kids tuned in by the millions and were enraptured by the hilarious antics of a talking blob of ooze. Realizing the incredible economic potential of legions upon legions of brainwashed children, the good people at Hi-C decided to capitalize on the show's momentum by creating a beverage that itself resembled ooze and branding it with the ooze monster's image. You heard me correctly -- they actually intentionally created a beverage that looked like toxic waste. We're already off to a good start.
Although it looked just like slime it tasted like magic. As a base they started with nature's wonder fruit, the orange. To complement they added orange's not-nearly-as-popular cousin, tangerine. To seal the deal they added crack cocaine. I don't know what they added to turn it green but whatever it was it tasted wonderful. They had stumbled upon the recipe for beverage glory and followed it precisely to produce a million gallons of heaven.
Ecto Cooler was so incredibly good, so incredibly positive that it's difficult to summarize without light and sound and crazy guitar riffs wafting in on waves of sweet perfume. This stuff was unrivaled amongst all sweetened liquids. There was just something about the sight of a tall green glass of juice that made whatever flavor you were about to experience ten times better than it could be by any other color. If the drink tasted okay, the green would make it great. If it already tasted great the green would make it wonderful. Somehow, green is the color of happiness (at least where beverages are concerned).
And I wasn't the only one who felt this way, either. A decade after the cartoon had been cancelled and nearly twenty years after the first movie came out in theaters you could still buy this stuff in almost every supermarket in the country. It was still called Ecto Cooler and still had the ooze monster shown prominently on the box, even though the entire current generation of children had no idea who the ooze monster was, or why the liquid was green. The truth is they really didn't have to know: they were born knowing that green Hi-C was just, somehow, right.
But apparently this miracle was lost on the steely executives who live in Hi-C Tower, because in the first few years of the 21st century they decided to change the name to "Shoutin Orange Tangergreen" and the color to vomit orange-brown. In a single move they had turned the greatest drink to ever grace the earth into a sad mockery of watery desperation. It was a liquid nightmare lurking in juice box form. It was a horrible day for lovers of magic everywhere, and for new born tastebuds destined to never experience perfection.
It took years after the discontinuation of Ecto Cooler for me to fully recover; to find beverage alternatives that barely filled the massive void in my refrigerator. If any of my mad scientist friends one day converts an old DeLorean into a time machine and I find myself with this great power resting in my hands, the first thing I will do will be to travel to the year 1990 and purchase 15 gallons of sweet, sweet ecto cooler. Only after I've absorbed a couple of these gallons will I proceed to use the machine for more scientific purposes like cheating the stock market or patenting mp3 players.
Ecto Cooler is just that good. It was a ray of liquid sunshine in an otherwise cloudy beverage aisle, and the world is a darker place indeed now that it is gone."
http://www.youtube.com/wat
Zoombezi Bay Update
I know this is old and not the best quality but here is a drive-by video I shot of the construction progress at Zoombezi Bay on Feb 8, 2008.
Visit my YouTube page for more: http://www.youtube.com/NTWProductions
Visit my YouTube page for more: http://www.youtube.com/NTWProductions
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Wish Upon a Star
The following is an excerpt from Richard Collier's "Wish Upon a Star: The Magical Kingdoms of Walt Disney."
In (the Spring of) 1955, a letter arrived on Walt's desk from a woman in Tennessee. She and her family were faithful watchers of Disney's weekly television show, on which Walt had recently been describing his plans for Disneyland. Like millions of other youngsters, her 11-year-old son voiced the hope that he could one day visit the park. But Disneyland would not open for some months, and the boy no longer had the time. He was the victim of leukemia. Was there some way, his mother asked, that his dream could come true.
Walt at once made the arrangements. On a Saturday morning, weeks before the official opening of the park, the family arrived. Main Street and the central plaza were still unpaved, the landscaping was still underway, and the ... train, which was to circle the area, was still in the shed unpainted. But Walt ordered the locomotive and coal car out anyway. The boy climbed in and Walt took the throttle.
For two full hours they rode the train, backing and switching along the completed portion of the track. At one point a member of Disney's staff saw the train halt far off on the skyline. Walt's left arm was tight around the child's shoulder, his right was gesturing into the distance. Across the underdeveloped acres, Walt's ideas were dancing like will-o'-the-wisps, as he talked of things unrealized on any drawing board -- Rainbow Caverns, Tom Sawyer's Island, the Haunted Mansion.
Walt had chosen to share these dreams with a child who could never see them come true. But those who had seen him act out every role in "Snow White" knew that the visions that he was sketching for the boy were just as vivid as the real things would ever be. This is how (Walt's) friends remember him, the dreamer, the spinner of enchantment, in whose heart and mind there always lived the magical world of childhood.
Isn't that a great story? I've often wondered why this particular tale hasn't turned up in any of the Walt biographies that have been published over the past 30+ years. But from what Van France once told me (He was supposedly there the day that Disney actually took this young boy out for that train ride) Walt gave some very specific instructions to those who were at the Disneyland work site that Saturday: "No pictures. No publicity."
I don't know why it is that I find that particular aspect of this story so appealing, so refreshing. I guess -- given that we live in a world where celebrities won't even show up for a charity event until they've been assured that there will be cameras there -- to have Walt insist that this should be a private moment, something that only this boy and his family would ever know about ... That (to me, anyway) says an awful lot about Walt Disney and his character.
Aspirations
An excerpt from the book DisneyWar:
In 1988 he (Michael Eisner) was paid his salary of $750,000, a bonus of $6.8 million (2 percent of the profits over $100 million), and he earned $32.6 million by exercising some of his stock options (he had an unrealized profit of $50.5 million on the rest of his options.) His total income of just over $40 million that year made him the highest paid executive in
Redbox
I rented a movie from McDonald's last week. Actually, I rented the DVD from a Redbox that was at a McDonald's. I discovered this ingenious idea a few weeks ago. Redbox's business model allows customers to rent DVDs for $1 per day (plus tax), with no late fees.
Each fully automated Redbox DVD rental kiosk holds over 500 DVDs - generally representing approximately 70-140 titles - with stock rotated every Tuesday. A rental can be returned anytime before 9:00pm the following day without any penalty. DVDs rented from one Redbox location can be returned to any other Redbox rental kiosk. If a DVD is kept for 25 days, according to Redbox's policies, the customer has effectively purchased the DVD, and charges to the customer's credit card will cease.
And that's not all. Some of the best features, in my opinion, can be found on the website at redbox.com. You can search for Redbox locations near you by entering your zip code. Once you select a location you can then view all the titles available for rental and you can even reserve the one you want for pickup later.
Both website and actual Redboxes are very easy to operate and efficient. With over 6000 McDonalds location, if each Redbox only has 50 out of its 500 DVDs rented one day, that is still $300,000 for one night. I don't see how these things can not be making a fortune. Initial cost of DVD + maintenance + staff who stocks every Tuesday are about the costs it takes to operate these machines. Overall, an ingenious idea, and could this be the end of Family video, Blockbuster, etc.?
__________________
Each fully automated Redbox DVD rental kiosk holds over 500 DVDs - generally representing approximately 70-140 titles - with stock rotated every Tuesday. A rental can be returned anytime before 9:00pm the following day without any penalty. DVDs rented from one Redbox location can be returned to any other Redbox rental kiosk. If a DVD is kept for 25 days, according to Redbox's policies, the customer has effectively purchased the DVD, and charges to the customer's credit card will cease.
And that's not all. Some of the best features, in my opinion, can be found on the website at redbox.com. You can search for Redbox locations near you by entering your zip code. Once you select a location you can then view all the titles available for rental and you can even reserve the one you want for pickup later.
Both website and actual Redboxes are very easy to operate and efficient. With over 6000 McDonalds location, if each Redbox only has 50 out of its 500 DVDs rented one day, that is still $300,000 for one night. I don't see how these things can not be making a fortune. Initial cost of DVD + maintenance + staff who stocks every Tuesday are about the costs it takes to operate these machines. Overall, an ingenious idea, and could this be the end of Family video, Blockbuster, etc.?
Another great Redbox feature are the promo codes. If you join their emailing list they send you promo codes to your email that allow you to rent a movie for free one night. I’ve rented a total of 5 movies from Redbox and have spent a grand total of $2.14!
The only downside of Redbox that I have seen thus far, as with almost any movie renting retailer, some of the DVDs could be dirty or get scratches on them. But for only a buck a night, I’ll take the chance.
The only downside of Redbox that I have seen thus far, as with almost any movie renting retailer, some of the DVDs could be dirty or get scratches on them. But for only a buck a night, I’ll take the chance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)