Month: September 2012

Funny because it’s true.

(Apologies for copyright– I have no idea what the original source of this graphic was. Credit to “The Internets” I guess.)

Zack and Kyra are both practicing their instruments at the same time. It’s an interesting mix of music because Kyra is in her fourth year of flute while Zack is in his fourth week of French horn. So there’s a nice gentle lilting of the flute, overpowered by the three brassy obnoxious notes that Zack knows. I imagine in a few years they maybe able to play a nice duet (although I’m not zure if there are duets for that particular pair of instruments) but for now it’s pretty comical.

As I walked off the ultimate field today with my friend Craig, he was asking what I did for a living. I told him I’m a web developer. He mentioned that it’s probably a lot like taking a bunch of magic dust, throwing it in the air, and chanting something to turn it into a web site. (I have no idea where that analogy came from.)

I laughed. “If only it was that easy.”

He thought about it for a moment and replied, “I guess it depends on the dust.”

Zack was working on his math homework today. He took the Easy Button from Laralee’s desk and pressed it every time he finished one of the problems.

“That was easy!”

Funny kid.

Today is the neighborhood garage sale, which means there are a lot of people driving really slowly along the streets, peering out at the stuff in yards. Zack had the bright idea of setting up a cookie and lemonade stand to catch the traffic.

Interestingly, cookies are far more popular than lemonade. We had to make an emergency batch this morning to keep up with demand. In fact, we decided to offer free lemonade with the purchase of a cookie so we don’t end up with several gallons of the stuff at the end of the day.

It’s good to see Zack with a little entrepreneurial spirit. We also did a little coaching, pointing out that if he smiles and says, “Good morning” to people walking past that his sales will dramatically increase. So he’s gaining some social skills along with a few dollars.

A few reasons I love my job…

Private office, where I can even close the door if ping-pong is getting too rowdy outside.

New toys, like a Macbook Air running Linux.

Zing-branded lava lamps (blue and green, even):

And of course, barefoot!

Ha!

The universe must be slightly askew today, because Laralee told me this morning how much she was craving a donut. She never craves donuts, so I figured I should take advantage of this strange mood. I headed over to the grocery store (I had to pick up some stuff for a party tonight anyway) and bought donuts for everyone.

My chocolate ring was only slightly contaminated by powder from Kyra’s neighboring donut, but it was still culinary ecstasy.

Many years ago, Thom picked up a couple of cheap cooler mugs at his local Big Lots. They were sweet mugs with hollow sides filled with water. You keep them in the freezer, where the water (obviously) turns to ice, and then when you pour a nice cool beverage into the mug, you can keep it cool without the need for ice cubes to water it down.

I’ve always envied him those mugs.

So finally I took action, and discovered that on Amazon there’s quite an assortment of cooler mugs: everything from the simple ones like Thom has to far more expensive ones whose technology is apparently far more advanced. I ended up going for one in the middle of that road– it has some kind of weird magic crystals in the sides, rather than water. I suppose they have a lower freezing point or something.

Now I have this awesome mug, and my orange juice (two quarts a day– just what a healthy boy needs) stays nice and cold. In fact, this thing is so cold that the juice usually turns to slush at the bottom before I can drink all of it. So I get the benefit of a nice cold drink followed by orange slushee. Can life get any better than this?

It’s been a long road, but we finally have the two new developers we need at Zing. We’ve been pursuing this for months now, and I even went down the road of hiring recruiters. As it turned out, the recruiters cost a lot of money and didn’t produce anything in the end. Lesson learned. But Brent, the new marketing genius at Zing, completely re-thought how we advertise for developers, and it was a wild success. We found two good guys within two weeks, made offers to them both, and they’ll be in the office by the end of the month. Woo hoo!

Does this mean I’ll finally accomplish my dream of working less than 60 hours a week? We’ll see…