Year: 2011

Tonight we had our traditional Zing outing to see the Rockies (the baseball team, not the mountains). They played the Astros tonight and the game went back and forth all night with a final 8-6 win for the home team. Brian found some great seats right behind home plate so we have a fabulous view of the game. All in all, another good time for the ol’ company team… plus Therese, of course.

Well, another awesome summer season of Grass Roots Ultimate has come to a close. Today was the annual tournament, and our team managed to do pretty well. We crushed the first two teams we played, and in the semi-finals we ended up playing the top-seeded team and lost a heartbreaker. We ended up in third place overall.

As always, the team was a lot of fun and we all had a great time.

I’ve been playing in this league for eleven years now, and still love it every year. I’m already looking forward to next summer.

Normandy was scarier than I thought.

Finally, I’ve been vindicated.

For at least a decade I’ve felt that the astrophysicists’ theory of “dark matter” was nothing more than a convenient math trick to explain anomalies in physical observations. Call it a kludge or whatever– it just seemed like they made up some mysterious invisible substance that made the equations balance. Just like Einstein’s Cosmological Constant– which he latter admitted was the biggest folly of his illustrious career– dark matter feels wrong.

Well, now a physicist has come out and said as much. He thinks there are alternative explanations, and we should darn well get to work figuring out where the missing mass really is.

First comment on Slashdot:

“Dark matter is the ugliest kludge to the standard model ever. It’s worse than the Plus upgrade for Windows 98.”

As someone who remembers Plus, I can only chuckle at the analogy.

Cool. A photo of a Perseid meteor taken from the International Space Station.

Instead of the usual shot of a shooting star coming toward you, it’s actually below the photographer. A rare sight indeed.

Whoever thinks it’s too late to patent things that are obvious has clearly not read Google’s latest patent. In part, it says:

Holy cow! That’s innovation!

For those who are confused or flabbergasted by such technology, Google has provided a helpful diagram showing this amazing process.

Does anyone in the room still believe the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is doing a good job reviewing applications like this?

Nice.

Last week we were at Rocky Mountain National Park with mom and dad. The kids stopped to pose on just about every rock along the trail.

I love how Zack and especially Alex have adopted the “too cool for school” pose.

A couple of weeks ago when I was camping and rafting with Alex, I had the van (to haul the supplies for the Scouts) and that left Laralee with my car. Of course she used it to tool around town running errands and dropping off kids and all the usual mom stuff.

When I was back, I drove Kyra to the store and she commented that my driving was “so much smoother than mom’s”. Maybe Laralee’s manual transmission skills have lapsed a little bit or something.

Of course when I mentioned Kyra’s comment to her, Laralee was indignant. “I drive a stick shift just fine!” Harumph, harumph.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about so-called “stand-up desks”. There’s been a flurry of recent studies claiming that sitting all day– even if you get up and exercise– can lead to increased incidence of heart problems. I know a couple of people who have stand-up desks and they say they’re great.

Since I’m sitting most days and don’t really feel like having a heart attack any time soon, I figured it would be worth digging into a bit. But motorized desks (which adjust from a sitting to standing position) are pretty spendy, and I don’t want to leap right into this and buy a new stand-up desk without giving it a trial run.

So with a bit of engineering, I converted my trusty basement office desk into a stand-up version. It involved eight cinder blocks from Lowe’s (total cost: $14) and help from a neighbor, but my desk is now sixteen inches higher and a perfect height for standing.

Do the cinder blocks look ghetto? Absolutely. I’ll run with this for a few weeks and if it turns out that standing is as awesome as everyone says, I’ll think about getting something a little more professional. In the meantime, if my feet get tired I’ve got a barstool right behind me.