Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, always a good time
It’s funny how our trampoline becomes Party Central all the time. Here’s Kyra (on top of the playset) and her four neighborhood friends all playing something in the backyard.
The $200 or whatever we spent at Sam’s Club ten years ago has definitely paid off… that thing is so awesome.
Wow, everyone’s getting in on the latest book!
I read an article by some guy named Chris Hedges, where he discusses how war in general, and Iraq in particular, can turn a soldier from a killer into a murderer. Of particular note:
He goes on with this blunt assessment of the side of the war we see:
Very true. And very scary.
10 points for creativity.
From the Associated Press:
The agency also announced that it was changing its policy on breast milk, and will allow mothers with or without children to carry more than three ounces onto planes.
Progress. It may not be much, but at least the boneheads running airport security are waking up to the fact that most of their idiotic rules aren’t actually doing anything more than annoying millions of passengers.
Maybe by this time next year we’ll be rid of the dumbest restriction of all, the 3-1-1 Rule!
Ultimate is such an awesome game because even when you lose, you have a great time. Or at least I do.
We played a double-header tonight in Boulder, and we were up against one of the top teams in the league. They’ve been crushing all of their opponents, and although we lost we held the score pretty tight the whole game. Then we played one of the weaker teams, who came on strong in the first half and managed to eke out a victory because we weren’t able to recover in time (eventually losing by one).
Yet despite that, both games were a ton of fun. I knew many of the players on the teams, and we were constantly joking and heckling each other during the game (“He’s got nothing!” or “What was that throw?”), and mingling on the sidelines talking about this play and that throw.
All in all, it was a nice summer evening enjoying time with friends and getting some exercise. It doesn’t get much better.
Dr. Jon Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, has spent decades compiling statistics about scientific knowledge amongst the general population of America. The results are… underwhelming.
Like, wow.
The other day Craig told me he knew I’ve been really busy lately because I hadn’t been writing in this blog. It was kind of funny– he was right, because when things get hectic I find that I don’t have the time to sit and write goofy musings or read the news stories about Bush that get me all fired up. Since he’s one of maybe three people who actually read this (even Laralee doesn’t) I figured I need to keep him entertained. So I’m going to calm down, stop working so hard, and write more.
So here’s a shout out to my homey Craig…
One of the exciting things about building web sites is that in many cases, I’ll be programming functionality for a customer without the data necessary to support it. For example, today I’m working on a site where the customer would like to embed a video clip inside the content of the page. I don’t have the clip they want to use, but obviously I need to make sure all of my programming works so when they use the real clip everything is smurfy.
That means I have to find a clip somewhere and test against it. I couldn’t resist using the classic song “You Are a Pirate”, which is apparently taken from some crazy kids’ show, and features a guy with an obviously fake beard and eyepatch, a pink-haired girl who does some wacky dance moves, and a cast of ugly puppets who struggle to keep the beat.
In any case, the programming worked, and right smack in the middle of the customer’s web site is a guy singing about how great it is to be a pirate. Sweet!
Last night I mowed the lawn. I think it’s the third time I’ve mowed since 1990– I didn’t do it in college, I didn’t do it in my apartment, and after getting married Laralee insisted on doing it herself because she (go figure) says she enjoys it. I’m not one to argue about mowing, so I’ve always let her have her fun. But she’s out of town this week with the kids, and the grass is growing, so I didn’t have much choice.
While working on the back yard, I was struck by the contrast between our yard and our neighbor’s yard.
Let’s call him “Bill”, mostly because that’s his name. Bill doesn’t seem to care about his lawn, and after leaving it as bare dirt for about two years, the homeowners’ association finally levied enough threats and fines that he dropped in some sod. But I think he only waters it once a year, so the grass is pretty much a crunchy burnt color. The weeds seem to do well, however, as you can see by the three-foot monsters along the back fence. The kids actually enjoy heading over to Bill’s lawn (after donning shoes, of course) and hacking at the weeds. Some of them are almost as big as Zack.
Unfortunately it seems that nothing can really be done about Bill’s yard. The HOA doesn’t care if it’s not visible from the street, and the city doesn’t have an ordinance covering back yards. So we sigh and do our best to control the weeds that creep over from his lawn into ours, and assure ourselves that the barren wasteland makes our yard look fabulous by comparison.