Year: 2008

Dirk sent me a request for proposal for a web site. It’s for a well-known educational institution who shall remain nameless, but in the request it includes this caveat:

Wow. That means after we’ve designed and built the entire web site, database, and content management system, they can walk away without paying a dime.

If any web development firm bids on this, I pray for their souls.

“Doing appears risky, because it exposes you to criticism and perhaps failure. Experiencing is hot right now: being part of the social network, helping maintain that online tribe you belong to. Getting your ducks in a row is not nearly as powerful as actually doing something with your duck.”

— Seth Godin

Don’t you hate it when you’re sitting there and suddenly your tongue feels a little something in your mouth and you maneuver it around a little bit, getting it out from between your teeth, and finally you’re able to pull it off your tongue and you see that it’s one of those little pieces of a popcorn kernel and you throw it away but then you think… wait a minute, the last time I had popcorn was two days ago.

Yuck.

So on our trip from UT to CO yesterday we weren’t too concerned about the weather because the forecast called for maybe an inch of snow in the morning. But of course we didn’t factor in the Wyoming Wind, which is a nasty beast that just laughs at hapless motorists on interstate 80. It was whipping around at 40+ mph, blowing that little inch of snow every which way.

The stretch from Laramie to Cheyenne was particularly bad– at times it looked pretty much like this:

Then a moment later the wind would die and suddenly you could see the road again. Add the fact that the roads were slick and icy, and you have a pretty nasty set of driving conditions. But we made it through the harrowing half-hour there and managed to get home without incident.

I don’t text much on my cell phone (apparently I’m not in the right generation) but I’ve configured my web and database servers to notify me via text messages if something isn’t running quite right. So most of the messages I get look like this:

But the other day I was pleasantly surprised by this gem:

Thanks, Lily. You rock.

La really cut the cheese today.

She also cut a pretty good chunk out of her finger. Ouch.

Here’s a hilarious Christmas card…

Seven point eight trillion dollars.

My favorite Mario Kart character:

Yoshi rules.

Laralee and I just got back from our second-grade science enrichment class. We finished our unit on the solar system with an activity where we paced off a scale-model solar system (with appropriately scaled planets too), and then had a presentation via laptop and projector where I ran Celestia and took the kids whizzing around the planets.

It was a blast, because the kids are so excited about this stuff. They kept oohing and ahhing as we talked about things like Quaoar and Sedna, how far Pluto really is from Earth, and even the volcanoes and sulfur lakes on Jupiter’s moon Io. But the real fun was with Celestia as we zoomed over to Saturn and watched a hundred moons whiz around it in one-million-times normal time, or rode Halley’s comet as it whipped around the sun every 76 years. The kids were literally yelling about how cool it was, and one of them said he was getting sick to his stomach on the Halley’s comet ride.

Not only do I enjoy spouting all of my crazy scientific knowledge, but it’s such fun to see a group of second-graders who are enthralled and excited about it.

They’ll really like it when we mess with lasers. And chemical reactions. And rocket propulsion. I can’t wait.