Author: cosmo

Cool. A photo of a Perseid meteor taken from the International Space Station.

Instead of the usual shot of a shooting star coming toward you, it’s actually below the photographer. A rare sight indeed.

Whoever thinks it’s too late to patent things that are obvious has clearly not read Google’s latest patent. In part, it says:

Holy cow! That’s innovation!

For those who are confused or flabbergasted by such technology, Google has provided a helpful diagram showing this amazing process.

Does anyone in the room still believe the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is doing a good job reviewing applications like this?

Nice.

Last week we were at Rocky Mountain National Park with mom and dad. The kids stopped to pose on just about every rock along the trail.

I love how Zack and especially Alex have adopted the “too cool for school” pose.

A couple of weeks ago when I was camping and rafting with Alex, I had the van (to haul the supplies for the Scouts) and that left Laralee with my car. Of course she used it to tool around town running errands and dropping off kids and all the usual mom stuff.

When I was back, I drove Kyra to the store and she commented that my driving was “so much smoother than mom’s”. Maybe Laralee’s manual transmission skills have lapsed a little bit or something.

Of course when I mentioned Kyra’s comment to her, Laralee was indignant. “I drive a stick shift just fine!” Harumph, harumph.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about so-called “stand-up desks”. There’s been a flurry of recent studies claiming that sitting all day– even if you get up and exercise– can lead to increased incidence of heart problems. I know a couple of people who have stand-up desks and they say they’re great.

Since I’m sitting most days and don’t really feel like having a heart attack any time soon, I figured it would be worth digging into a bit. But motorized desks (which adjust from a sitting to standing position) are pretty spendy, and I don’t want to leap right into this and buy a new stand-up desk without giving it a trial run.

So with a bit of engineering, I converted my trusty basement office desk into a stand-up version. It involved eight cinder blocks from Lowe’s (total cost: $14) and help from a neighbor, but my desk is now sixteen inches higher and a perfect height for standing.

Do the cinder blocks look ghetto? Absolutely. I’ll run with this for a few weeks and if it turns out that standing is as awesome as everyone says, I’ll think about getting something a little more professional. In the meantime, if my feet get tired I’ve got a barstool right behind me.

According to a poll by the New York Times, only 14% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.

About time. Hopefully we’ll see a huge shakeup in next year’s elections. In the meantime, I just watch my savings plummet as Congress plays chicken on the world stage.

Although I like Dell’s servers, I’m astonished at their marketing email process. They really enjoy sending automated surveys to their customers, and on more than one occasion I’ve opted out and specifically said I don’t want to receive their surveys.

So imagine my excitement when I received yet another survey message from them today. In part, the message says:

Wow.

So I’ve asked not to receive any marketing emails, and they send me a marketing email to tell me about an upcoming marketing email.

I wrote a pretty blunt letter back to the woman who sent me this message (in reality I’m sure it was an email ‘bot that sends this sort of thing). We’ll see if an actual human responds, or if I can look forward to more junk like this.

Sheesh.

The other day I was shopping on Amazon and needed to spend a few extra bucks to get free shipping. (What a clever marketing ploy, Amazon guys!) So I poked around the board games area and found one called Dominion.

I vaguely remember hearing about this game long ago– perhaps from a friend, perhaps on an online discussion forum, whatever. The reviews on Amazon were all very positive, so I figured I’d take a chance.

Plus I had a gift card.

So I bought the game and it arrived a few days ago. This evening we cracked it open and gave it a shot. None of us had any clue what it was even about, except that the box included about a gazillion cards.

After reading the rules we dove into it, and perhaps an hour later we wrapped up our first game. The game was sort of confusing at first because we had no idea what the strategy was or what to expect. But in the end each of us settled on some kind of strategy, for better or worse.

As it turned out, Zack completely demolished the rest of us. I still can’t quite figure out what he did, but about halfway through the game it was clear he was leaving the rest of us in the dust. Sure enough, when we counted up the points he was way ahead. Good for him.

The cool thing is there are a lot of variations to play– we picked the simplest one (which was recommended in the rules for “first time players”) but we all enjoyed it and it’s clear we’ll be playing a lot more in the future.

This evening:

Kyra + hairbrush + goofy mood