Month: August 2007

Tonight I was driving back from Denver just before midnight, and there was a spectacular lightning show in the northern sky. Storm clouds were towering into the sky, and the lightning was threading through them providing some amazing pink and orange backlights to the clouds. The flashes were almost constant– every few seconds another cloud would burst with light.

I pulled off the interstate and took a dark country road a little way, so I was in a really dark area and could watch the show. I had my pocket camera with me, but unfortunately it doesn’t have the flexibility of my other camera so I couldn’t really capture the sky. I ended up with a bunch of pictures like this:

Oh well. It was still a fantastic display.

When Laralee and I first got married and moved into our townhouse, we received a “welcome to your new home” package with a bunch of random coupons. One of them was for a free plant at Home Depot. It wasn’t just any plant– as I recall, we could only select from the “$5 or less” plants or something.

But I chose a little palm plant, because as a kid I’d had one (until Kari accidentally killed it). This little guy was about three inches high. I named him Herbie.

Now, eleven years later, Herbie is an enormous plant that dominates the corner of our living room. He’s at least three feet high and probably four feet across, and constantly shooting out new branches and leaves.

Someday I hope Herbie grows as big as the palm my grandma had– it was at least six feet tall.

“The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.”

— Ralph Sockman

Today was the summer ultimate league tournament in Boulder. We couldn’t have asked for better weather: lots of sun, no wind, no rain. We played some really great games and fell just short of the finals, taking home third place overall.

The season was fantastic, and this was a really fun team. I’m bummed that the season is over, but looking forward to next year. And of course I’ll still be playing pickup games twice a week well into the fall, so I’ll continue getting my dose of the world’s greatest sport.

It was bound to happen sooner or later: the RIAA is now the defendant in a class-action lawsuit. Charges include:

• negligence
• fraud
• misrepresentation
• racketeering
• corruption
• abuse of the legal process
• malicious prosecution
• intention to inflict emotional distress
• computer fraud
• computer abuse
• trespass
• invasion of privacy
• libel
• slander
• deceptive business practices
• misuse of copyright laws
• civil conspiracy

Whew! Here’s hoping they get a good old-fashioned kick in the head. Their shenanigans have gone on long enough.

Happy birthday to the compact disc. It’s 25 years old today.

It’s amazing that it’s not only lasted this long (in an age where technologic obsolescence is a pretty quick game) but that it’s spawned so many other technologies based upon it: the CD-ROM and associated writeable media, the DVD and it’s associated media, and in fact the entire digital music revolution.

The big question: what’s the next technology that will have such staying power?

The world of finance will always confuse me. I just saw this headline:

So, if I read that right, our entire capitalist economy depends on Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

May heaven help us.

This weekend we went up to Winter Park and crashed at Ryan’s place, which was an absolute blast. At one point we were playing a rousing game of Pit and screaming so loud that everyone who was watching Bugs Bunny in the next room had to turn on the subtitles because they couldn’t hear Yosemite Sam blasting Bugs with a cannon or whatever.

The alpine slide was a hoot, although Zack tended to go a bit slow and caused traffic jams on the way down. Notice Tony (in the white shirt) looking like he’s about to fall right out of his sled from boredom.

However, Zack picked up the zip a bit by doing flips while attached to bungee cords thirty feet above the ground:

Not to be outdone, Alex and Kyra hopped in and did flips of their own.

And of course we couldn’t skip the full 18-hole miniature golf course:

There were, of course, some really tough shots that required intense concentration. Much like the Masters’.

All in all it was a terrific time, with only minor sunburns all around.

I think Scott Adams pretty much summed up the presidential candidates’ talking points…

Last night we went camping.

In our backyard.

It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I finally got around to actually organizing it. We invited all of the neighborhood kids to spend the night in the yard. They could bring sleeping bags, blankets, tents, whatever. There was even talk of sleeping on the trampoline.

We borrowed one of those portable fire pits (just a big shallow metal bowl) and lit up a little bonfire. The neighbors came over and we roasted marshmallows and chatted while a dozen kids ran screaming around the yard with flashlights.

Around 10:00 the adults headed home to their nice comfy beds, and around 11:00 Laralee went upstairs to her comfy bed. I unrolled my sleeping bag in the grass and slept under the stars with the kids camped out nearby.

It was really cool.