Month: May 2014

Today was one of those “get things done” days, where I did a whole bunch of stuff that’s been sitting on my to-do list for a while. One of them was to buy huge pieces of foam board so I could mount some new poster-size photo prints for my office.

I had to pick up some spray adhesive as well, which I sprayed on the foam boards before (carefully) laying the prints on them. I peeked at the warning label on the side of the can and hoo boy it was pretty serious.

This stuff contains hexane, acetone, propane, butane, toluene, and a bunch of other highly flammable gases. It has exciting warnings about how this can cause headaches and nausea, as well as permanent damage to the central nervous system. Wow.

I used it outside, because this stuff is super annoying if it gets on any surface (the surface feels tacky for the rest of eternity). Laralee told me I was going to be in trouble if the grass died where I’d over-sprayed the boards.

And I guess huffing this stuff is right out.

Wow, May 11 and it looks like this?

We only had a dusting… Boulder had at least six inches of snow!

I was reading an Amazon review and ran across this sweet quote:

And any time I think of sudo, I can’t help but remember the classic XKCD comic:

Ahh, memories.

Tonight was the annual Skyline High School awards night. Alex received an invitation letter a couple of weeks ago, which means he was going to get an award (he didn’t know what it would be). So he and I headed over there tonight.

As it turned out, he was given an award for excellence in the engineering program, as well as a second award for maintaining a 3.75 GPA for three years running.

Clearly, he was pretty excited about these.

I have the AccuWeather app on my phone and tablet. Generally it’s pretty good: it’s easy to use and provides the basic information I want. Is it going to be sunny tomorrow? Cold? Rainy? That’s really all I need from a weather app.

For whatever reason, the AccuWeather people programmed some sort of crazy fearmongering mode. Every now and then, it goes nuts and pops up all sorts of alerts about horrific weather conditions I should expect. At times during the winter, it was a daily ritual to see a warning about an EXTREME WINTER CONDITIONS, when in fact a few snowflakes were drifting down.

Well, today it warned that Longmont was under not only a SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING, but a TORNADO WARNING. Holy smokes! I was in Longmont all day, and I’m positive that at no point during the warm, sunny weather did I feel in danger of a tornado swooping down from the sky.

Methinks a better name for this app would be FearWeather.

Alex came home from martial arts tonight and jumped in the shower. When he came out, he decided to see how much he could get his hair to stand up. It turned out pretty awesome.

Laralee thinks he should wear it this way for school tomorrow…

Wow, I just opened a new three-pound bag of Wint-o-Green Life Savers and took a big whiff. That’ll clear your nasal passages.

At the beginning of April, Brent declared that we would have a round-robin ping pong challenge. Everyone who wanted to participate had to play against everyone else; standings would be kept and at the end of the month the winner would be awarded a Valuable Mystery Prize!

As it turned out, April was a really busy month for me, so I was pretty focused on getting things done and didn’t play more than a handful of games over the weeks. None of them were “challenge games” so they didn’t count in the standings. But then yesterday Brent reminded me it was the last day of the month and I hadn’t recorded any games in the brackets. Everyone else had, and the standings were pretty close: both Brent and James were 3-1, tied for first.

Keep in mind that it’s pretty serious around here. Everyone but me has their own paddle– Brian, feeling left out by the other guys, just bought a new one for himself this week. I don’t mind the generic Zing paddle we have, but Brent pointed out that using a paddle just because I’m comfortable with it is akin to driving a Fiat in the Indy 500 because I’m “used to” the Fiat. Wise words, Brent.

So I made some time in my schedule yesterday and threw down the gauntlet. I had four challenge matches to play, and I went through them one after the other. Based on previous challenge matches around Christmas, Brent calculated handicaps for everyone– as arguably the worst player in the office I was on the low end of that totem pole. I dispatched Brian and Nick without even needing the handicap; Brent and James proved a bit tougher but I finished them off as well.

Done! I went 4-0 to take the April championship. Clearly Brent will need to adjust my handicap for May’s games.

And the Valuable Mystery Prize? Well, it’s a little rubber ice mold that will create the Death Star in ice.

With a little imagination you can see it’s the Death Star. Pretty cool.

Ahh, how I miss the good old days when I was the undisputed, undefeated ping pong champion…