Bob Rhubart's Blog

Foster Homes Desperately Needed for Rescued Greyhounds

2011-12-31T10:57:00.001-05:00

North Coast Greyhound Adoption & Connection of Ohio (NCGC) has several recently rescued dogs that need temporary foster homes. If you've been thinking about adopting a rescued dog, please consider opening your home on a temporary basis to one of these fantastic animas.For more information on fostering please visit North Coast Greyhound Adoption & Connection of Ohio.

North Coast Greyhound Connection Holiday Open House

2011-10-28T15:23:00.001-04:00

Vermillion, Ohio - November 1, 2011 — Celebrate the holiday season and help support greyhound rescue at the free North Coast Greyhound Rescue Holiday Open House, December 4, 2011, 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm, at Canine Sports LLC, 1607 State Route 60. Bldg C, Vermillion, Ohio. The free North Coast Greyhound Connection Holiday Open House is the perfect opportunity to learn more about retired racing

Brush with Fame

2011-03-30T16:45:00.001-04:00

Spotted this item from NPR: So You Think You're A Superfan? : The Picture Show : NPR Last month, we asked you to send us photos of yourself with your favorite musician, and to tell us about the time you waited outside the club in the freezing rain for hours and finally got to — gasp — MEET THE BAND! It brought to mind a funny story... A couple of years ago my buddy George and I saw Robbie

Why I Love Rhapsody

2011-03-30T15:44:00.002-04:00

Amazon Cloud Player? No thanks. So Amazon is getting a lot of attention with the introduction of its new cloud-based music service. Yawn… I don’t see that it stacks up at all against Rhapsody, a truly cloud-based music service. About two years ago I was at QCon San Francisco and had a great, wide ranging conversation with a software engineer from Rhapsody. About a year later, while calculating

Game Review: 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself)

2010-12-25T21:18:00.001-05:00

One of a series of game review videos I did that appeared in two different publications: TapTilt, an experimental magazine for the iPhone, and Sideways, an equally experimental magazine for the iPad. Both were produced by SIdeways LLC, which is doing still doing innovative stuff in e-publishing. del.icio.us Tags: iphone,adult swim,ipad,game review Technorati Tags: iphone,adult swim,ipad,

iPad Game Review: Predators

2010-12-25T20:47:00.001-05:00

This is the last of a series of game review videos I did for Sideways, an experimental magazine published exclusively on the iPad. While the magazine only put out three issues, the company behind the magazine, Sideways LLC, is still very much alive, and doing some truly amazing stuff in the e-publishing realm. Technorati Tags: ipad,predators,chillingo,fox digital entertainment,sideways.

Spicy With a Side of Deadly

2010-10-06T19:23:00.001-04:00

Among my friends hot peppers are not so much a culinary matter as they are a gauge of manhood. While some guys go in for bungie jumping or skating down the sides of tall buildings, my buddies test their testosterone by eating things that other people use to repel muggers. Let’s face it, hot peppers as a flavor enhancer are fine. But at the point where the cook is using life-threatening peppers,

Books in the Cloud?

2010-05-21T12:35:00.001-04:00

Reading E-Books Rewrite Bookselling in today’s Wall Street Journal got me thinking about how much the manner in which I consume media has changed of late. Several months ago I cancelled all of my cable movie channels and re-activated my NetFlix account; I stream the movies more often watching via DVD. Similarly, I also recently started using Rhapsody (love it!), a fantastic alternative to

Top 100s by Year by Bing

2010-04-21T21:34:00.001-04:00

As iPhone music apps go, Top 100s by Year by Bing is pretty damn cool, especially if you’re a pop music fan of certain age. But after combing through some of the year-by-year lists, I have questions about the source of the data. For the year 1962, the BillBoard Top 100 list has many songs in common with the Bing list. But focusing on the top ten, there are significant differences…

Defining Freedom

2009-12-21T14:11:00.001-05:00

The Rise Of Republican Nihilism | The New RepublicThis fascinating article by Jonathan Chait includes lovely bit: "In the right-wing mind, the world we live in at any given moment can be described as the free market, the American way of life, perhaps not a perfect world but a cherished and fundamentally free one. The next advance of liberalism will always bring socialism, tyranny, a crushing

Amazing Avatar Lives Up to the Hype

2009-12-21T11:47:00.003-05:00

How good is Avatar? So good that I managed to sit through the entire experience (three hours, factoring in the previews of coming attractions) without visiting the men's room. For a man of a certain age, that's really something. I can't think of a movie I've seen since passing the half-century mark nearly six years ago that wasn't interrupted by at least one hurried trip to the john. The hype

American Car Culture is Humming Along

2009-05-28T09:51:00.003-04:00

In his Wonderland column in today's Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger accuses the Obama administration's efforts to increase automobile fuel economy standards and drive the transition to alternative energy sources of killing an important element of American culture: When Barack Obama announced that the government will use its fist to wave onto the highways of America cars that get 39 miles to

Boomer Barbie

2009-03-02T11:57:00.002-05:00

For five decades little girls (and little boys with remarkably open-minded parents) have elbowed their way to the foot of the family Christmas tree to frantically claw at gaily wrapped presents in anticipation of finding Barbie. Today many of Barbie's fans are adults who continue to collect Barbie stuff. But you have to wonder if some of these mature fans aren't thinking that it's about time for

Klingon for Social Occasions

2008-11-12T08:31:00.001-05:00

Being a fan of CBS's Big Bang Theory, I wasn't exactly surprised that this week's episode opened with the characters speaking Klingon. But I laughed anyway. The fact that a fictional language -- or maybe it's a real language created to flesh out fictional characters -- remains such a fixture of popular culture is funny in itself. And that was the inspiration for a column I wrote about ten years

My Election Night

2008-11-05T18:13:00.001-05:00

I voted by absentee ballot a couple of weeks ago because I had to be in Denver for a technology conference on election day. Given the reported voter registration issues -- real and contrived -- and the way things played out for the last couple of presidential elections, I assumed it would take several days before we'd know the real winner. So I was completely surprised when I returned from

Storm Damage 9/14/08

2008-09-15T10:02:00.002-04:00

Storm DamageOriginally uploaded by Bob RhubartAbout an hour after my daughter called from Columbus to report that a wild wind storm was uprooting trees all over her neighborhood, the same thing began to happen in Bay Village. It wasn't long before my wife and I heard a huge thump that shook the house. The limb in the photo was the source of that thump. I now have a hole in my roof, crushed

Gas prices, shrapnel, toxic fumes, and a beautiful lawn

2008-05-27T14:27:00.000-04:00

In The Plus Side of High Gas Prices, Joseph over at Plunderbund writes: Yes, gas prices are much higher than they used to be. And yes, the cost of fuel is impacting the cost of groceries and everything else we buy. But maybe the news isn’t all that bad. Joseph cites increases in the use of public transportation and the use of bicycles as benefits. Those are very good things, indeed,

Elderly Brothers at Wilberts, 5/29/08

2008-05-27T11:36:00.001-04:00

Cleveland faux-folkers The Elderly Brothers will open the CD release party for the Troubadours of Divine Bliss this Thursday at Wilberts in downtown Cleveland. I have a limited number of free tickets for this event. Ping me on Twitter. Technorati Tags: Cleveland,The Elderly Brothers,Troubadours of Divine Bliss,Wilberts,music,faux-folk,live music

35 and Counting

2008-05-25T11:13:00.000-04:00

This past weekend Kathy and I celebrated our 35th anniversary with a great dinner at Momocho, where we learned halfway through the excellent meal that our very gracious and affable waiter was owner/chef Eric Williams. This was our first visit to Momocho, but we promised Eric that we wouldn't wait until #36 to return. Last year at this time I posted exactly the same photo you see here, but

Not so lost in translation

2008-04-02T09:40:00.001-04:00

Among the spam in my inbox this morning, I found this: From: "bio Subject: "Increase your copulation organ" Message body: "Extend your rocket with loads of inches running on the chief therapy. Go instantaneously to bootsize.com and penetrate the praiseworthy therapy on the market." Technorati Tags: email,spam,funny,bad translation

A sure sign of Spring

2008-03-25T13:26:00.001-04:00

Solar Ferris Wheel Originally uploaded by Bob Rhubart The object in this photo is a little solar-powered Ferris wheel, maybe a foot tall. It came into my possession a couple of years ago in one of those weird, overly complex office Christmas gift exchange rituals. There is an electrical cord, but I've never plugged it in. Though I don't remember how it ended up this way, exactly, the

Life in the City with the Hole in the Middle

2008-03-20T16:30:00.004-04:00

Some days are just weird.This morning, driving up W.139th toward the Triskett Rapid Station, I saw a person back out of his/her driveway directly into a parked car. The person paused for a moment, then drove off.At the station, the train, once again, was late. When it finally arrived there were few seats left. As I took up a position in the aisle, I watched as a women quietly but firmly said "

Because we need something to look forward to

2008-03-18T22:30:00.004-04:00

Looking north from the 16th floor of the Penton Media Building in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, on a gorgeous July day. Note the sunlight and the green things and the absence of ice on Lake Erie

The Wind Ate My Hat -- and other tales of Winter Misery

2008-03-13T10:20:00.001-04:00

This morning, after taking about 20 paces out of the unfortunately named Terminal Tower, one of those 75 mph gusts of wind that are all too familiar to those who work in downtown Cleveland (The City with the Hole in the Middle) blew my favorite baseball cap to its new home in a distant galaxy. The week started off on a sour note anyway. On Monday I drove, as usual, to Triskett Station to

I got my sticker

2008-03-04T11:41:00.001-05:00

I voted at 7:30 this morning at the Dwyer Senior Center in Bay Village. No line, no waiting at all. The low-tech, pen-and-paper approach was a bit of a surprise, but the learning curve was not an issue. Afterward, a very cold, uncomfortable young man in the parking lot asked me to sign a petition to allow casino gambling in Ohio. I like casinos. I told him where he could find coffee.