Author: cosmo

Ahh, Kevin Chang. King of the yearbook quotes.

This is Lyons, Colorado.

Last weekend several hundred volunteers from church went up to Lyons (it had just been re-opened to traffic) and worked at various locations where flood cleanup was needed. I worked at a small farm with maybe fifty other volunteers. The St. Vrain River is behind those trees in the background, and the mix of mud, sand, and rocks used to be a huge grassy yard. There were trucks half-buried– we excavated two of them and managed to pull one free of the mud; the other was too big for a pickup to pull with a tow cable. We emptied mud out of sheds, tore down chain link fences that had been twisted into wild shapes, and collected literally tons of equipment and belongings that had been destroyed by water and mud. Sadly, after hours of work, it hardly looked like we’d made a dent. There’s a long road to recovery for the people in this nice little town.

It was inspiring to see so many volunteers helping, though. In addition to nearly five hundred Mormons from Longmont, there were several hundred volunteers from an organization called Samaritan’s Purse, and I saw a huge group of other people wearing matching shirts (but too far away to know who they represented). There were hand-painted signs around town proclaiming “Lyons Strong” and “We are no longer a community– now we’re a family”. Although the extent of the disaster is staggering, it’s nice to see it bring out the best in people.

Tonight we went to a big Halloween party. I was Waldo. Laralee was… Laralee.

The jokes about “I found you!” started even before I got through the front door. I counted six in the first ten minutes… no surprise.

Of course I photo-bombed Kyra and her friends (Hannah, Alex, and Chaille).

And then we decided to do a nice “Where’s Waldo?” photo of the whole group. Can you find Waldo? What about the cowgirl (Chaille) or Barbie (Kyra)?

I found this image on Google Plus last night, in a photo stream that I follow. Amazing.

I don’t know how “real” it is; clearly the colors have been tweaked. Unfortunately it doesn’t work as a background, unless I happen to have a tall, narrow vertical monitor. (Hmm…)

I’m setting up a Windows 7 virtual machine for some client work. Imagine my surprise when the installer told me…

I need 17 gigabytes of disk space to install Windows! Holy cow. Bloated, indeed.

Ahh, another beautiful fall week in Colorado.

Brent is finalizing details of a new project with one of our clients, and during the course of the email conversation, the client wrote:

Uhh…

While it’s possible to buy a big box of Tootsie Pops, everyone knows that two of the flavors are completely pointless: chocolate and banana. I mean, seriously? The only “true” flavors are grape, cherry, and orange. So who wants to buy a box where 40% of the pops are unpalatable?

The answer: Amazon has some program called “add-ons” where you can add random stuff to an order. For example, you can buy a box of 60 Tootsie pops where all of them are one flavor.

My latest Amazon package (Halloween costume) just showed up. And…

Score!

One of Zing’s clients sent us a bunch of frozen desserts. They arrived in a styrofoam box packed with dry ice. After we moved the desserts into the freezer (for later consumption as a team-building experience), we were left with a styrofoam box…

…That looked exactly like the kind of box they transport human organs in.

So, I grabbed Brent’s red marker and wrote HUMAN ORGANS, DO NOT EAT on the box, then set it right inside the office door so everyone passing in the hallway could see it.

Josh has a good view of the hallway from his office, and he said there were quite a few people who walked past and did a double-take. A few laughed, and a few just shook their heads sadly.

I crack myself up.

Halloween is approaching, so I’m thinking about a costume this year. I was poking around Amazon, and stumbled upon an amazing banana outfit. Because hey, who doesn’t like a giant walking banana?

In the “customers also looked at…” section, I saw something that took my breath away. A bacon costume! Wow, I never would have imagined.

Even more funny than the costumes themselves are the expressions of the models. I can just picture the photo shoot, where the photographer is clicking away on his camera, yelling out, “Work it, work it! Be the bacon!”

Fortunately I came to my senses and didn’t get either one. I’m not sure what I’ll end up being this Halloween, but it sure isn’t going to be a breakfast food.