Year: 2008

Because it’s another unbelievably gorgeous day, I decided to get up from my desk and go biking for a while.

I just bought some new tires for my bike a few days ago, because I keep getting flats, and these puppies are sweet. They’re Kevlar-lined and tough as steel, so pesky thorns don’t even get through them. And a good thing, too: after today’s ride I picked goat’s heads out of the tire. There were forty-one of them stuck in it. Wow.

70 degrees on November 18? I suppose global warming isn’t all that bad, if it gives me a chance to go out and play ultimate…

“No audience member in the history of presentations has ever said, ‘it was exciting, useful and insightful but far too short””

— Seth Godin

Last Friday Laralee and I taught our first “enrichment” class of the school year. It’s nine second-graders who are considered gifted, so they get to skip an hour of reading time and come to a class we teach. Although there’s a recommended curriculum for the class, most of the topics are pretty dull. So we make up our own lessons, which is not only more fun for us (although more work) but also seems to excite the kids.

So we started with the solar system. We talked about the planets and what’s interesting about them (Venus is the hottest! Neptune has winds that blow at 1,300 mph! Uranus is flipped on its side!). The kids were so excited to learn that stuff that we’re going to do a second class this week.

I’m playing around with some software called Celestia, which I’m hoping I can figure out and get running on my laptop so we can take a “tour” of the solar system. The graphics in the program are amazing:

In addition to being cool to watch, you can move in three dimensions, through time, across space, and watch the planets spin and orbit and moons whiz around them. Awesome stuff.

The kids are upstairs sending e-mail messages to one another. Alex pointed out “Of course we could just walk into the other room and say it, but there’s something fun about doing it in e-mail.”

I remember my first exposure to e-mail, back in 1990. I heard someone mention there was a way to communicate with people anywhere in the world instantly and for free. Imagine! I could write to a pen pal in Germany (hey, I’d just finished three years of German in high school) without licking a stamp. It was a pretty new medium back then– few people actually had e-mail addresses, and you had to fill out a ton of paperwork at the university to get one– but it sure seemed cool.

Now it’s a key part of modern communication, and something most of us take very much for granted. So it’s fun (and a little funny) to watch the kids suddenly realize what it can do.

“To initiate great things, you must truly not give a damn about what people think about you.”

— from Tribes Q&A, based on Seth Godin’s Tribes

Kyra has suddenly jumped on the e-mail bandwagon and is writing messages to relatives and a few friends. She sent me this last night:

What a sweet girl. At least she knows how to butter me up before sending me her gift list.

I just read an article about how the current (crummy) market is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs and people willing to take a little risk while everyone else hunkers down.

This paragraph– discussing how to build a great product from a great idea– caught my eye:

There have been times in the past eight years when I’ve been tempted to give up and go work for The Man somewhere, because quite honestly it’s easier to have someone tell you what to do than to come up with all the to-do’s myself. And it’s easier to be the quiet programmer slamming out code in the back room than the Front Guy writing the proposals and pitching to the customers and managing the projects and making sure everything continues to run as smoothly as it can.

But then I stop and think. And I realize that no, in fact I’d rather be the entrepreneur. Now I just need to find that great idea and take a little risk…

As the Senate prepares to debate a $25 billion bailout package for American automakers, I can’t say it enough times:

It is not the job of the government to prop up failing businesses. Period.

Banks, auto manufacturers, airlines, trains… these are all private corporations who need to make it on their own. If they can’t compete in the marketplace, then they should close their doors. Things are slower in the web programming arena these days, but you don’t see me asking for a handout from the Gov, nor do you see the Senate even considering what to do about a hundred thousand small businesses that are having a much harder time of it than a few dozen mega-corporations which gobs of liquid cash and executives who earn a hundred million a year.

What happened to capitalism? It looks more like an unpleasant mix of cronyism and socialism to me…

The Halloween candy is almost gone, but down at the bottom of the bags, hidden beneath some old Whoppers and Dots no one wants to eat, lurk a few last good boxes of

which are basically crunchy wads of colored sugar. Yum.