Month: October 2012

I encouraged everyone at work to dress up for Halloween, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I wore my fancy four-dollar afro wig all day– scratchy, but awesome.

Brent also had some big hair, although he had a sweet leisure suit jacket that really added something.

Ben was some comic character named Princess Purple or something.

And Brian… well, Brian apparently dressed up as a long-haired PHP developer.

Happy Halloween!

Tonight we had our annual pumpkin-carving party. Laralee worked hard on hers:

Zack carved a really cool set of flames (?) but accidentally broke one of them. We assured him that super-glue probably wouldn’t fix it, so eventually he reworked the flames into a sort of creepy octopus (??).

I carved my usual “traditional” pumpkin:

I’m looking forward to the big day on Wednesday.

I just completed my mail-in ballot.

Johnson for President.
How many of the other presidential candidates have climbed Everest? Or compete in triathlons? Seriously. And on the topic of presidential candidates, I was surprised to find that Roseanne Barr– yes, that Roseanne– is on the ballot. Who knew?

Thumbs up for legalized marijuana.
Let’s face it: the War on Drugs is an abject failure, and the real reason marijuana is illegal is because the paper conglomerates back at the turn of the century were worried about hemp paper eating into their profit margins. Plus, this is Boulder County.

More money for schools.
I’ve seen the results of massive budget cuts in my kids’ schools, and hopefully a slight raise in the mill levy will get a few more computers and a few smaller classes.

I wonder how many of the things I support will win.

One of my clients is a yogurt company (!) and I’m included on the comments their consumers write on their web site. This one caught my eye:

Now that’s a fan!

The kids at the Denver Aquarium a couple of weeks ago…

As part of the Great Re-Carpeting of our house, I had to empty most of my basement office. It was amazing to see all of the stuff I’ve accumulated over the past decade… there are so many computers it’s embarrassing.

After a bit of thought I decided it was time to get rid of the hardware that I’ll never use again. It included a couple of old desktops and an ancient Power Macintosh…

… as well as three of the original servers from BitRelay, my hosting company. The term “server” is being used loosely– in truth these were cheap iMachines desktop systems that were on sale at Best Buy when I started the company.

Perhaps most interesting of all was the stack of eleven old desktop systems that my friend Mike scavenged from a business many years ago. The company was tossing them out, and they were brand new in the box. He and I each snagged about two dozen of them, and over the years I’ve used them for a few hobby projects or to let the kids rip apart and learn how a computer works. I gave several to the local Boy Scout troop for their computer merit badge. But in the end, I really can’t think of what to do with eleven computers sporting 150Mhz processors, 4MB of RAM, and ancient ISA slots.

Practicality won out over nostalgia. So long, computers of yesteryear!

A fun night at Red Robin…

Today was Day One of the Great Carpet Installation. We’re replacing the carpeting throughout the house, since the builder-grade stuff is pretty worn after ten years.

It’s a bit of a challenge because we basically have to move everything out of the rooms the installers are working in, stuffing it into other rooms. Then, after the carpet is finished, we’ll move everything back and add the stuff from the unfinished rooms. On Thursday they’ll come back and finish the job.

Our bedroom shows just how worn the carpet was. Notice the big rectangle against the far wall where the bed has sat for all these years. The carpet under there was quite a bit lighter and of course a bit softer.

This evening we moved back into our bedroom, with the new carpet underfoot.

The difference is dramatic. This new stuff is really nice… as I shuffle around in bare feet, I can’t believe we put up with that old carpeting for so long.

I’m excited to see how it all turns out. We’ll wrap it up Thursday evening, just in time for mom and dad to visit on Friday…

This evening Laralee was driving home after dropping off Alex at martial arts, and she called me. “You’ve got to look at the sunset– it’s amazing!”

I went outside to take a look.

It probably was amazing, but Alyson’s house sort of ruined the effect…

This made me laugh out loud…