Year: 2004

Alex just got home from school and had these cool marshmallow-and-toothpick “sculptures” to show me. One is a house (fairly obvious) and the other is a mousetrap (not so obvious). Apparently the mouse– which he explained he didn’t have time to build– sees the marshmallows and goes into the little box and gets pounded with unimaginable marshmallow-and-toothpick force.

One wonders what a marshmallow-and-toothpick mouse might look like…

In keeping with tradition, Laralee and I watched “Groundhog Day” this evening. I don’t remember for sure if we’ve watched it on February second every year since we’ve met, but it’s pretty close. It’s a fun little movie, always entertaining, and gives us an excuse to do something on such a wacky holiday.

Now we put the DVD back on the shelf to gather dust until February 2, 2005…

Back in My Day, when we’d get candy in some kind of case it was either a Tic Tac box or a Pez dispenser. Then came things like Altoids (The Curiously Strong Mint) in a little tin. No big change.

For Alex’s birthday, one of his friends gave him a bunch of candy inside a dispenser shaped like… a cell phone. But wait! It wasn’t just a cheap plastic case that opened to reveal candy, it was a cheap plastic case that opened to reveal candy and also had buttons you could push to get a variety of beeps and boops, and a bright red LED in the “antenna” that flashes.

So the kids have been running around the house, making calls to their friends on this little candy cell phone. We keep hearing the beeps and boops as they hold imaginary conversations. It’s really quite funny, although I think it reached its peak when Alex received a telemarketing call this morning:

(Beep, boop)

Alex: “Hello?” … “Yes, this is Alex.” … “No, thank you, I’m not interested.”

(Beep)

I asked him what was going on, and he said it was someone trying to sell him something.

Boy, when the telemarketers get hold of candy cell phone numbers, you know the Apocalypse is near.

Today was Alex’s seventh birthday. It’s amazing how time flies… next thing I know, he’ll be asking for the car keys and I’ll be laughing hysterically as I explain about insurance rates for sixteen-year-old boys, and how the bank turned down the second mortgage on the house to pay for it.

In any case, he’s growing up to be a great young man. In addition to his smarts and good looks (inherited, no doubt, from the father he resembles so much), he’s genuinely a good kid and a good example to his younger sibs. We just had parent-teacher conferences the other day, and his teacher opened the conference with, “Well, this is my favorite conference because there’s really nothing to talk about. Alex is doing great.” That’s exactly the kind of stuff I love to hear.

So after a crazy evening with five (!) of his friends at a sleepover, and an inundation of presents, we begin another year of watching him mature and develop. What an honor and privilege it is to be a dad.

Every junior high kid knows there are three forms of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. You take a solid and heat it enough, and it becomes a liquid. You take the liquid and heat it still further, and it becomes a gas.

In high school, many kids learn there’s a fourth state of matter: plasma. Heat a gas enough, and it becomes ionized and turns to plasma. The fire in a standard wood-burning fireplace is an example of a plasma.

But a few years ago, researchers discovered a fifth state of matter, called a Bose-Einstein condensate. It only occurs at extremely low (near absolute zero) temperatures, and involves a radical phase change in the arrangement of subatomic particles.

And this week, researchers announced a sixth state of matter: a fermionic condensate (that’s a mouthful!). Again accomplished at very low temperatures, it has the interesting property of twisting the laws of quantum dynamics to allow subatomic particles to exist in states they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do.

Why is this newsworthy? (Or, more precisely, journal-worthy?) Because I think it demonstrates how scientific knowledge continues to increase at a breakneck (actually exponential) pace. There are amazing discoveries every day– many of which are never heard by the general public. I don’t expect high school textbooks to include discussions of, say, Bose-Einstein condensates any time soon… but it’s important to realize how incredible these scientific advances are.

Coming soon? Room-temperature superconductors (based on fermionic condensates) that will revolutionize the generation and distribution of electrical power. Now that would be newsworthy!

It’s hard for me to express how much I enjoy getting e-mail messages that are two or three megabytes in size because the sender decided to take a screenshot and send it to me via Outlook. I suspect there’s some goofball setting in Windows that lets you snap a screenshot and mail it to someone, but the default format (thank you Microsoft!) is a bitmap image… which is huge because it’s 24-bit uncompressed. The exact same image, without appreciable loss of quality, might take up two percent of that size– a mere sixty kilobytes.

Ahh, clients… without them my life would be so much simpler.

My old pal Chancellor is now the proud owner of a fancy web administration system, built by yours truly, so he can share his ramblings and musings with the world… just like me.

Anyone else? C’mon, I do this for a living– I can build you a web administration system in, like, an hour!

There was a hilarious thread on Slashdot today, discussing what computer desktops various famous people might use. Along with the typical jabs about what Bill Gates uses was a great series of comments:

molafson: “I would like to see Jesus’ desktop; I bet he uses OS X.”
madpierre: “Come on he’s the son of God. He uses the command line.”
rmarll: “We’ll never know. I’m sure he’s logged in as root though.”

Alex just came down to my office, tears on his face, and said he was having problems.

“What kind of problems?”

“The computer isn’t working.”

“And that’s something to cry about?”

“Well, it hurts my feelings when the computer does that.”

Apparently he thinks the computer misbehaves just to spite him. I suppose if I believed that, I’d be in tears most of the day…

“A happy person is one who enjoys the scenery on a detour.”

— Seen on a sign outside a gas station in Berthoud.