Passenger moons speed camera

I got this from one of my favorite sites Boing Boing, and since we all seem to be tense with my last couple posts this could be funny. I warn you its mildly graphic so you have been warned adult concepts! Road rage! You could visualize this happening in some Lake County commutes!

Me with the angry protestors for heated streets!

Best April 1 Ever!

I have done three of these, but this one is the best! We are not ripping up every village street. We are not laying high voltage lines in small trenches on the roads. We are not spending millions on the project. We are not putting giant wind turbines behind the Police and Public works facility!

I moderated comments all day, and blocked all the comments that would spoil my fun! I have released all the spoiler comments and the blog now has unmoderated comments again!

I had a great day! I love my blog, and I love Round Lake! But best of all I love a laugh!

PS Devon if you are real, I am truly sorry to have ticked you off to that level, otherwise great comment!

Gnome Fever?

A town in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a 'creepy gnome' that locals claim stalks the streets at night. The midget - which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk - was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters.

Teenager Jose Alvarez - who filmed the gnome - yesterday told national newspaper El Tribuno that they caught the creature while larking about in their hometown of General Guemes, in the province of Salta, Argentina.

He said: “We were chatting about our last fishing trip. It was one in the morning. “I began to film a bit with my mobile phone while the others were chatting and joking. "Suddenly we heard something - a weird noise as if someone was throwing stones. "We looked to one side and saw that the grass was moving.

To begin with we thought it was a dog but when we saw this gnome-like figure begin to emerge we were really afraid." Jose added that other locals had come forward to say they had spotted the gnome. He said: “This is no joke. We are still afraid to go out - just like everyone else in the neighbourhood now. "One of my friends was so scared after seeing that thing that we had to take him to the hospital.”

Leap Day is here!

A person who was born on February 29 may be called a "leapling". In non-leap years they may celebrate their birthday on 28 February or 1 March.

For legal purposes, their legal birthdays depend on how different laws count time intervals. In England and Wales the legal birthday of a leapling is 28 February in common years (see Leap Years, above). In Taiwan the legal birthday of a leapling is also February 28 in common years. In both cases, a person born on February 29, 1980 would have legally reached 18 years old on February 28, 1998.

"If a period fixed by weeks, months, and years does not commence from the beginning of a week, month, or year, it ends with the ending of the day which proceeds the day of the last week, month, or year which corresponds to that on which it began to commence. But if there is no corresponding day in the last month, the period ends with the ending of the last day of the last month.^[2]"

There are many instances in children's literature where a person's claim to be only a quarter of their actual age turns out to be based on counting their leap-year birthdays. A similar device is used in the plot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Frederic, born on February 29, was apprenticed to a band of pirates until his 21st birthday, meaning that with all the missed birthdays, until he was 84 years old.

Separated at Birth?

My 18 year old daughter and 23 year old nephew built this for me.

Monday's Post-- Mystery Man Identified

Its longtime Round Lake resident and WRLR Radio President Bish Krywko!

Who is this Round Lake Mystery Man?

If you can identify this beloved Round Lake icon, I will come up with some suitable gift for you, guesses in the comment section of the blog.

This is a good idea for our centennial, so if anyone has some pictures of things they would like to show or ask questions about send them here and we can put them on the blog on the weekends, since I have been kind of lax recently on the weekend posts!

Talk about Media Coverage

I came across this a awhile ago, and got a big kick out of it. Plus in my never ending quest to interest my readership, plus I have no post for today readily at hand, here it is! See if you can solve the crime.

Above the fold of the newspaper appeared a photograph of Michael Millhouse, painting a sign on the window of a business. But below the fold, he appeared again, in a still taken from a convenience store where a wallet containing $600 was lifted. Due to his size, and the fact that he was wearing the same clothes, he was easily identified and caught."

Here is a link to the frontpage all blown up. Newspaper.pdf

Then there is the follow-up from the newspaper here.

Happy New Year!

This was the scene in my living room a few minutes after midnight today. I got the expanded Neumann home as you can all see.

In reality it was more like me lying on the couch plotting!

Actually it was more like me figuring out how to win the 26th, build 120 and 53 all at the same time!

Happy New Year Everyone! By the way none of the above is true! Well some of it.

LA Can't Drive

I came across this website in one of my late night surfing trips and thought it was quite funny. I know many of us can identify with whats going on here. I think that LA is a bit more extreme then some of the goofiness we see here in Lake County. Careful there is some salty language on here

This is so Funny! (Need sound to be on)

This is so funny, I can't figure out to load this on here....but check this out.

A Little Humor on a Thursday

Your House As Seen By:

Yourself...
Your Buyer...
Your Lender...

Your Appraiser...Your Tax Assessor...

Picnic for Village Employees

On Saturday we had a picnic at the Police and Public Works complex for village employees and there families. We had a very nice turnout! There were quite a few games for kids and adults, with yours truly and my daughter winning the water balloon toss! However there was a steady mist or drizzle throughout so the actual highlight of the day's events was musical chairs, there were two divisions, Child and adult, the adult version should have been called musical sumo.

Trustee Dale Multerer (he is a wee bit accident prone) went flying appearing to strike his head on a chair! After a further few rounds of roughhousing , there were the final two competitors Police Chief Cliff Metaxa, and Trustee Michael Blum who ended up circling the chair, then Trustee Blum attempted to pile drive the Chief in some form of WWE move, there was a general melee, then both ended up on the ground about 6 feet away from the chair, when the music stopped, Cliff making it to the chair first from the ground. See pictures above.

Many thanks to all who made this wonderful afternoon possible!

How's This For Some Craziness!

Badges! Badges! Does a library board need badges?

July 25, 2007

By Kristen Schorsch sun-times news group

Crestwood Public Library Board trustees have decided to keep their controversial police-like badges despite outcry from taxpayers who have accused trustees of wasting money on the credentials they rarely use.

In lieu of ditching the badges, the library board on Monday adopted new procedures for using them. Among the rules: Trustees have to keep their badges in a safe place and can't let friends borrow them.

"When we did this, we felt it was a perk," board president Clyde Petersen said, adding that he didn't think spending $600 of district money on the five-pointed stars and leather holders would create such strife. "I don't think it's wasteful."

In March, a friend of trustee Zeno Toscas was arrested for flashing Toscas' library badge to snag a better parking spot at a bar in Merrionette Park.

Crestwood library trustee's friend arrested for allegedly using police-like badge

March 15, 2007

By Kristen Schorsch Staff writer

The friend of a Crestwood Public Library District board member is in hot water after allegedly flashing the board member's police-like badge to snag a parking spot last week at 115 Bourbon Street in Merrionette Park.

Kristopher Bobb, 22, of 12557 Rail Lane, Palos Park, has been charged with impersonating a police officer, according to a Merrionette Park police report.

But Bobb, who is friends with 21-year-old library Trustee Zeno Toscas, said he isn't worried about the charges because he wasn't holding a police badge -- he was holding a library board badge.

"Just somebody who worked (at Bourbon Street) just assumed I was a cop," Bobb said Wednesday.

The Crestwood library board came under fire last year when it spent about $600 on five-pointed gold star badges that look like police badges, as well as leather badge holders, to identify board members.

Board president Clyde Petersen said at the time that trustees would not wear the badges at board meetings. They would only display them in certain situations, such as attending library conferences or other functions outside the Crestwood library. He could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

The incident that led to Bobb's arrest happened at 12:52 a.m. March 4. Toscas parked his car in a way that blocked another patron's vehicle, the police report said. Bourbon Street co-owner Nick DiNovo said Toscas parked behind a vehicle that was in a valet spot.

When a restaurant employee approached Toscas' car, Bobb yelled out that he was a cop and used several profanities, the report said. He allegedly flashed a badge and said he would do whatever he wanted.

On Wednesday, Bobb said he meant to quickly run inside the club to get his girlfriend and her friend. He said he got out of Toscas' car, which was parked in the back of the parking lot near 115th Street and Kedzie Avenue, and he was holding the badge.

"All I did was carry it," Bobb said. "I was playing with it in the car. I didn't realize it, and I walked out" of Toscas' car holding the badge.

Toscas' father, John Toscas, said four witnesses can testify that the charges against Bobb are "not anywhere near the truth." He referred questions to Bobb's attorney, Carl Evans. Evans did not return a phone call.

Toscas was not charged in the incident. He could not be reached for comment.

Crestwood Police Chief Tim Sulikowski said the incident is a "perfect example" of how the library board badges might be abused.

"I'm glad that person was arrested," he said of Bobb.

Sulikowski said it would be up to the library board whether to revoke the badges.

Triple 7's

To bad we don't have a place to play the numbers, because I bet this one get's a lot of play today ! Oh wait we do have a place....the Illinois lotto stores throughout this fine town. Gee did you think I was going to say somewhere else?

Big bath tub races tomorrow! I am racing the other Mayors it seems! Not sure how I got conned into that, anyway its at Beach Fest at 4pm.

April Fools Joke Was Played Yesterday

Okay for the 5 people who called me about it and the few who commented on it, this was a prank. I have a history of this. Last years post was here and the disclaimer is here. My apologies to the people who felt the need to post and spoil the joke I deleted your posts. I will have them up today if they still exist!

Like I could get an ordinance like that passed! Actually I did like the salary one. Nothing like an incentive contract to get some dense development going up! I think the Mayors salary should be balanced between respectability and miserliness. You don't want to pay so much that the mayor wants to keep the job forever, but you don't want to pay so little that the aggravation has zero reward. For those of you who don't I make $10,000 a year which equates to about $1.67 an hour it seems.

By the way elections cost the village nothing since they are administered by the county clerk's office as well. If I forgot to clarify anything else in the post, its a prank as well!

Attack of the Birds

Last night was quite the night. The last few years my house has suffered from an invasion of birds who fly into one of our attic vents on the side of the house and force there way through the vent and nest in the tubing up in our attic. A few years before that we had a big bee problem in the same spot. So I actually preferred the birds!

I have hoisted my self into the inferno/fiberglass hell that is our attic, and discovered that Neumann Homes did there usual shoddy job with the vent, by not installing any cover or any formal attachment which the birds pecked away in 2-3 seconds. So using my trusty roll of duct tape I reattached the vent as best I could while sweating and scratching from the heat and fiberglass.

Anyway over the last few weeks I have heard the pleasant chirping of little birds when I wake up. A nice thing? Not when you know they are in your house! Since I don't have a ladder long enough to get after the outside of the vent, I am promised myself that I would go up to the attic over the weekend and fix the vent again. Which I hate.

Well anyway, last night the birds pecked there way through the vent tube and were banging around, chirping and what sounded like (I kid you not) speaking in tounges all night long. They appeared to be having a convention right above my bathroom where the vent fan was. It also sounded like they had a kids toy that had some form of repetitive beeping noise with them.

So at 1am I am in my bathroom with all the lights on glaring at the vent where all the noise was coming from and disturbing my limited beauty rest. When I decided to turn the fan on and hopefully mulch the birds and the kids toy. Thats not what happened but it scared the crap out of the birds, which had some value, and drove them some where else in the attic, because they quieted down.

So when I get home tonight I am venturing up into the attic and duct taping the vent with 6-10 rolls of tape if I have to, and then this weekend I am going to venture up the side of the house and figure out a way of blocking the vent. Delightful!

Hansel and Gretel Come to Town!

Hansel and Gretel find themselves lost in an enchanted forest at the Round Lake Area Park District Community and Studio of Dance Presentation. Performances are Friday March 23 at 7:30 and on Saturday March 24th at 2:00 and 7:30, and then on Sunday March 25th at 2:00. The presentation is at the Round Lake High School Theater.

There are many more plays in production, among them are "Beauty and the Beast", "Enchanted Sleeping Beauty", and "The Wizard of Oz". Check your quarterly Park District Brochure for more detail.

Rumors that they are doing a special adaptation of my life are unfounded by the way! By the way the picture is of the Witch in the play, who does not look like this!

Funny Picture from Right Here in Round Lake

I know it has been quite cold, but when the air is freezing, you know its cold! This picture was taken here in the area.

Good vs. Evil in the Round Lake Blogosphere

or
While trolling late at night I discovered this site that ranks blogs on a ranking scale of 1-100 for good and evil. Since I believe I do no wrong I decided to evaluate my site from this highly scientific methodology and of course I was shocked that its only 69% good! Imagine that!

I evaluated other Round Lake Blogs as well.

Sean Gillette

Brian Brubaker

Al Villasenor

So now we know! Al's score is the biggest surprise, he just posted a tame valentine's day post, which probably dropped his evil quotient.

Number 100,000 was Mayor McCheese!

At 7:13 last night we hit unique user 100,000! It was Mayor McCheese! Since I am not on the Atkins diet right now I ate him! Mmmmmm tasty!

I am bowling tonight at Lakes Bowl with the Round Lake Queens. Last year I was the high game among all the Mayors present. I was the only Mayor present. I did manage to throw a strike left handed in the goofy bowling portion which still shocks me! I am aiming to throw more strikes this year!

Genealogy of Influence

I was a history major in college and have always been fascinated by all sorts of historical things. This gentlemen has mapped out visually a relationship map called "Genealogy of Influence" which documents a visualization of the connections between the most influential writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians of Western culture.
If you go to the page its a relatively large flash or Java file, but once you get there you can click on each individual and how they are interrelated. It is extremely neat to see how the screen moves let alone how some people influenced others and how they continue to 100's of years after there deaths!

Best Comment Overheard at the OTB

The six gentlemen sitting at the table next to us at the OTB, (the youngest was approximately 70 years old). One says completely out of the blue in the middle of a discussion about the merits of the upcoming race....

I need to change morticians!

Think about that for awhile. We laughed for about an hour about that one, amazing, what was the reason I wanted to ask. But didn't.

Database's Gone Wild

This is the actual address a piece of mail had on it when it arrived at the Village Hall. A few questions come to mind? How did the database program know that a person with the first name "Round" was feminine? Let alone why would they remove the "ladies" middle name of Lake and make it an "L". Overall everything else was perfect address wise, sadly when I took the picture of the piece of mail I neglected to ask what was inside, that might have added to the story.

Interesting Occurance

First of all I must preface this story with a comment on hit counters for web pages. The one I use was set to count unique visitors, and counted hits, not visitors. So needless to say I did not realize that this meant that my traffic figures were off by like a factor of 5....so if I got what I thought were 1000 users I was really getting 200. Needless to say I fixed the counter.

So I was going to casually never speak of this to anyone ever again. However something came up that's kinda interesting, and of course is to good a story to bury in my Internet shame. Over the last year my traffic has been steadily climbing and my highs (not my old highs) were around 330. Then as we got to the middle of the month my traffic which has been edging higher over the last 4-5 weeks by about 10-15 visits a day, jumped by about 10% to a high of 388, 399, 424, 528, 848, 1,808 and then 2,289. You can see the giant spike in the accompanying graphic. One hour got me 249 users, which was equal to the entire amount of visitors last Friday

The numbers made me think I had screwed something up again and of course sent me looking for a new hit counter, however Sitemeter.com has a section where I can look at where my traffic is coming from, and 50% to 70% was coming from a search for a picture I used on Thanksgiving Day 2005. The picture is shown below.

Apparently this image is appearing on the first page for google images when you search for images of Thanksgiving. So the traffic is all going to the archive page for November 2005. Not for my brilliant witty observations on the state of Round Lake but rather for a turkey!

Early Morning Walk

Went for an early morning walk in the downtown area, with Trustee Michael Blum, sort of looked for garbage and stuff. I found a few things that I will have our department heads take care of on Monday. I did however find a sign at the train station that was quite humorous and we will be taking down, but I feel the urge to reproduce it here. Imagine that June 1999, I think most people know that by now!

Challenging Test

Okay clearly I found this one on a late night insominac trip across the internet. I messed it up repeatedly becuase I am color blind. But it was clever and fun, and for that reason alone it deserves to be on this blog.

So to play...Click Here!

My Plot to Dominate the World Has Started!

Bonus points to whoever can deduce where this legitimate street sign is. This post is in honor of my sister Gaye and my neice Olivia coming to visit from Boston for the weekend, Olivia is quite simply here for the candy!

Curious Photo

Bonus prize if someone can tell what this is a picture of! Not sure what the prize is but I will find something appropriate! Hint: It is not really Round Lake related.

I am off to the Arlington Million today, I have $75 burning a hole in my pocket and I looking at Gorella in the Beverly D and I love Cacique in the Million.

The answer to the question on Saturday night!
Satellite image of crops growing in Kansas, USA. Healthy, growing crops are green. Corn would be growing into leafy stalks by late June (when this photo was taken). Sorghum, which resembles corn, grows more slowly and would be much smaller and therefore, possibly paler. Wheat is a brilliant gold as harvest occurs in June. Fields of brown have been recently harvested and plowed under or lie fallow for the year. The circular crop fields are a characteristic of center pivot irrigation. The fields shown here are 800 and 1,600 meters (0.5 and 1 mile) in diameter. The image is centered near 37.4 degrees north latitude, 100.9 degrees west longitude, and covers an area of 37.2 x 38.8 km. The 'grid' in which the fields are laid out runs North-South/West-East and the dark angled line is U.S. Route 56.

The image is aligned with the satellite orbital track, which is in a 98 degree tilted orbit. North is not "up". Rotate the image about 10 degrees clockwise to align the roads north-south. The image is a false-color presentation made to simulate natural color. The 3 bands that were used are in the green, red, and near infrared parts of the spectrum. ASTER does not have a blue channel, so any blue that can be seen was created from the other bands.

Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17006