andersonfam.org

Mmmkay - so since we’ve moved into our place here in Blaine (1.5 yrs ago), I’ve always said that the number of big box home improvement stores nearby is ridiculous. Well apparently there weren’t enough. By next summer, there will be an additional Lowes and Home Depot. Here’s what the tally will be after those two are open…these are all within a 5 minute drive from my house.

Lowes - 2
Home Depot - 3
Menards - 2

!!!

Are they all really necessary? There have already been reports of sales at HD slowing…one could argue that this is due to the calming housing market. If I were a betting man, I’d be willing to put a fairly healthy wager on the fact that several of these home improvement megastores won’t be around in 10 years.

Tags: general by erik
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For several years, I’ve been trying to convince web surfers and domain owners that the “www” that prefaces most web addresses is now completely unnecessary. The practice of putting “www” before domain names for web pages was started in the early nineties to help web browsers distinguish HTTP-protocol web pages from other protocols such as gopher, ftp, etc. All modern browsers assume that you want to use the http protocol unless you specify otherwise, so the “www” is not necessary. Unfortunately, the vast majority of corporate marketing departments (probably out of ignorance) are still plugging their respective domain names prepended with www. Along with that is the fact that *many* clueless webmasters/sysadmins out there will only serve up their website of you go to the “www” form of their domain name. Ugh.

Anyway - all that to say that I stumbled across no-www.org yesterday. They’re on a campaign to do away with the scourge that is www. My website now validates as a “Class B” no-www site. This means that if you accidentally happen to visit www.andersonfam.org, you’ll get politely redirected to andersonfam.org.

Tags: general by erik
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…that life in the northern suburbs couldn’t get more interesting - someone goes and dumps a large artillery shell on Hwy 610.

Sheesh. I may avoid that route on my way home today.

Tags: general by erik
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Last night we were privileged with the opportunity of seeing Nickel Creek perform in the Great Hall at Bethel. I’ve been listening to Nickel Creek for a crazy long time, and this was my first time seeing them play live. Wow. What a killer concert. Sara, Sean, and Chris were joined by an upright bassist for the evening. They played a great variety of tunes from their three CDs as well as a few unexpected covers as well. Here’s the show setlist (thanks to Chasman on the NC forums for this):

1. Why Should the Fire Die
2. Scotch and Chocolate
3. This Side
4. Reasons Why
5. Ode To a Butterfly
6. Jealous of the Moon
7. Best of Luck
8. House of Tom/Short People/Bach Interlude/House of Tom
9. When in Rome
10. Somebody More Like You
11. First and Last Waltz/Helena
12. Nice Dream (Radiohead cover)
13. Smoothie Song
14. Anthony
15. Toxic (Britney Spears cover)
16. Stumptown
17. Fox/Fiddle Tunes, (with Mark clogging)/Fox

…followed by these six encore numbers:

1. Chris: Solo, Violin Sonata in G moll (J.S. Bach)
2. Sara: Solo, Pony, (Tom Waits cover)
3. Sean: Solo, solo tune - title unk.
4. Mark: Solo, The Falling Waters of Arden (from his new solo cd)
5. All: Dont Fall In Love with a Drifter (Jimmy Martin cover)
6. All: When You Come Back Down

From now on, I’ll be keeping a close watch on NC’s tour schedule and will jump at the chance to see them again. If you’re interested in reading more about the concert, a few reviews are posted over in the NC forums. I also took a few pictures…there up here. Sorry about the poor quality - I realized I didn’t have my SLR set to spot metering like I should have…as a result, the shutter speeds were much longer than they needed to be, causing some blurring in the pictures. Oh well…lesson learned I guess. I normally would have caught this, but I had turned off the LCD on my camera as to not disturb the people sitting behind me.

Tags: general by erik
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In lieu of posting something with actual textual content, I’ve decided to post a truckload of pictures I’ve been wanting to get up for the past several weeks. I’ve posted albums with pictures from such exciting events as:

• A picnic in Minnehaha park w/ Aunt Shelly. Bjorn also found his first geocache on this outing.
• Easter Sunday with Mr. Anderson and the Kuipers. This day turned out to be a bit more exciting for the Kuipers than was initially planned.
• Meghan’s visit to Spicer for a few days.
• Anneka Nelson’s dedication and celebratory lunch afterwards.
• A weekend at the lake with the Verdoorn’s and Jed.
• A beautiful spring family walk.

Enjoy!

Tags: general by erik
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