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There was a block party in the neighborhood today, complete with catered food, a huge inflatable bouncy castle, and of course…

… face painting. Kyra makes a good tiger. (Or is the proper term “tigress”?)

Yesterday we had a little adventure with a mouse. I was down in my basement office clacking away at the computer and noticed something on the screen of the window beside my desk. I thought it was a bird, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be a mouse. The little guy was about the size of a half-dollar, and he had somehow fallen into the window well and was apparently trying to figure out a way back up to solid ground.

Of course the screen wouldn’t get him there, nor was there really any way for him to climb the window well itself, so I figured we’d have to rescue him. I called Alex downstairs (he was the only kid home at the time) and he immediately insisted that we catch the bugger. We opened the window, popped the screen, and I grabbed the mouse as he scurried around the rocks outside.

As I was about to drop him into the handy CD-R spindle container, he made a mighty leap and jumped down to the floor. And let me tell you, that little sucker was fast. He ran for cover underneath the printer, and we prodded him with a hiking pole (yes, I have lots of interesting things in my office) until he ran across the carpet for the door. Luckily Laralee slammed the door in time, or he would’ve had free reign of the house. After a few minutes of chasing him and cornering him with ingenious combinations of foam board and camping equipment, we managed to get him into the spindle case.

Then it was amazing to see him jump. Had we not put the little phone directory atop the container, he would’ve leaped right out of there. He kept hopping up and down, slapping the book at the top, until I guess he finally figured it that wasn’t going to work. Then, with nothing else to do, he pooped in the container.

Alex trotted him around the neighborhood, showing Kyra and Zack (who were at different friends’ houses), and eventually released him back into The Wild down by the creek.

We thought briefly about how fun it would’ve been to put the mouse in the cage with Pumpkin (Kyra’s gerbil) but considering his teeny size, I suspect Pumpkin would’ve just eaten him. Or maybe just accidentally sat on him, who knows.

Today was the summer ultimate league tournament. The sky was a gorgeous blue, the temperature was a nice 80ish, and there was only a light breeze. Beautiful weather for a day on the grass.

We were pretty much in the middle of the pack in the regular-season standings, so we were seeded against a team with a slightly better record. After a rough start we found ourselves down 5-9 but rallied for four straight points to tie it at 9-9 going into the final point. That last point went back and forth for a while, with everyone playing hard. All of us on the field were exhausted (and it was barely 11am!) and those on the sidelines were cheering and shouting… it was crazy. But the other guys scored the winning goal on a great diving catch by one of their women, so they advanced to the next round of the championship.

We, on the other hand, had the distinct privilege of playing in the consolation (“beer”) bracket, where we met up with a team who had a bunch of fun players. We put together a strong defensive showing, stopping them again and again as we continued to score, and found ourselves with a comfortable 8-1 lead. At that point we decided we should just have some fun, so we pulled out a secret somersault play:

A few points later we played an upside-down point, where everyone had to throw the disc upside down (hammer, scoober, dish, or just a straight upside-down pass). That was a blast, and we finally pulled it off after an (if I may be so modest) amazing fingernail catch by me:

(That’s me in the background– Josh is coming up the sideline and completely blocking the camera!)

So we beat them to advance to the beer bracket championship game– truly the pinnacle of any ultimate team’s season. Unfortunately the opposing team had all but disintegrated; several of their players had been injured in prior weeks or just couldn’t make it today, so they didn’t have enough to field a full team. The team we’d just beat asked if they could play, so a few of their players joined, and a third team jumped in as well. So we essentially played against three other teams at once.

Again we got off to a rough start and found ourselves down 3-7, but a rally tied the game at 7’s. They scored again to take the 8-7 lead, and then for reasons I still don’t understand about half of them decided to leave. As in, leave the field and go home. It was completely weird, but it meant we no longer had an opponent! The game was supposed to go to 15 but we had to stop. So in my heart I count it as a win by forfeit (although surely we would’ve won anyway– we were playing a strong game).

So there you have it: the beer bracket champions of the Boulder summer ultimate league.

It was a great season and a lot of fun. What a fantastic group of friends.

Air travel sucks in so many ways it’s hard to describe. But every now and then I find myself in need of a quick flight somewhere, so I heave a sigh and gird my loins and make my plans.

For my latest escapade I’m flying from Denver to St. Louis and back, and was amused (or perhaps horrified) by one of the options United offers.

So I could fly direct from St. Louis to Denver in a jump a little over two hours long, or I could first go out to Pittsburgh before turning around and basically crossing right back over St. Louis on my way to Denver in a lovely six-and-a-half-hour tour of the country. What the heck…?

Oh, and the price is the same either way. Decisions, decisions…

It looks like the Stargate, but it’s not…

It’s the heart of the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN’s new Large Hadron Collider, the biggest and most powerful particle accelerator in history. This puppy is going to be used to dig into the very depths of subatomic physics, and could produce some real eye-opening data for physicists.

For now it’s producing some sweet pictures as the final components are put into place.

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

— H.L. Mencken

People whine about the U.S. economy’s woes, but it’s those people in Zimbabwe who should really be worried. You know it’s bad when your government prints money like this.

Good news: the Associated Press has declared that the Iraq War is essentially over, and we’re victorious. Woo hoo!

From their article:

Wow, that’s amazing. But before we break out the party poppers, let’s review a few things that happened in the last 60 hours:

• A roadside bomb planted outside the residence of Dawa Party member, Abdulrahman Mohammed Dawood in Zafaraniyah, southeastern Baghdad exploded injuring Dawood and two of his security detail at 11am
• Police found two unidentified bodies in Baghdad. The first body was found in Zafaraniyah district while the second body was found in Ur neighborhood.
• A woman was killed in a roadside bomb in Abo Saida area east of Baquba around 11:30am
• Gunmen killed a civilian in al Midan neighborhood in downtown Mosul city.
• Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in al Tahreer neighborhood in east Mosul city on Wednesday afternoon killing two Iraqi soldiers.
• Gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by Awakening Council, a U. S backed militia, in Adhamiyah at 9am killing two members. The gunmen used silencers on their weapons, said Iraqi Police.
• One unidentified body was found by Iraqi Police in Nidhal Street, central Baghdad.
• A suicide car bomber targeted a checkpoint manned by Iraqi Army in al-Intisar neighbourhood, eastern Mosul killing two soldiers, injuring two others.
• A female suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt targeted an Awakening Council Commander in Baquba, Naeem al-Dulaimi at 3pm. The explosion, which took place in a car dealership while Dulaimi was checking a car killed him, his two security guards and four civilians, injuring at least twenty four others including women and children.
• A roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol in Ghazaliyah, western Baghdad at 3pm injuring two soldiers.
• Around 8am a roadside detonated in Jihad neighborhood (west Baghdad). One person was injured.
• Around 10am a roadside bomb targeted an army patrol in Sleikh intersection(north Baghdad). Two soldiers were injured.
• Around 2pm a roadside bomb targeted civilians in Kamb Sara in Adhamiyah neighborhood (north Baghdad). Six people were injured (including 1 policeman and two Sahwa members).
• Around 3pm gunmen attacked and injured awakening council official in Daowdi neighborhood, west Baghdad.
• Around 4pm a roadside bomb targeted awakening council member, a U.S. backed militia, in Sleikh neighborhood, injuring two militia members.
• Police found one dead body in the Baladiyat neighborhood.
• A gunman with silencer opened fire on an American patrol in downtown Kirkuk. A 14 year-old kid was killed in that incident.
• In the morning gunmen opened fire on a combined patrol from Iraqi security forces and Americans. One Iraqi policeman was killed and another was injured.

Yep, clearly things are looking up. I think Bush said it best:

“Mission Accomplished!”

I just got a check from a client. I don’t know who signs the checks, but they’re awesome.

It reminds me of my credit-card signature.

Every week I get a couple of leads for web projects. Usually we have a phone conversation or two, trade some e-mail, and then the project either gains momentum (in which case I write a formal proposal) or sputters out (in which case I move on with my life).

Of course sometimes it takes a little prodding to get potential clients to understand that they need to actually tell me what they need. Sometimes I get vague requirements like “Yeah, uhh, I need a web site for my collectible Pez container business” or whatever. Then I have to explain there are a lot of facets to web sites, how much some of them cost, and so forth. After doing that, sometimes I never hear back from the person… generally because they expected to pay a few hundred dollars for a site that rivals Amazon, and when I tell them it will be several thousand dollars and the site most definitely won’t rival Amazon, they change their minds and decide to do it themselves in FrontPage or whatever.

Anyway, there are times when I don’t know whether they’ve gone off to learn FrontPage, or they’re just really busy with things and would in fact move forward with the project if only I moved things along. So I do my best to follow up with all of my leads, if nothing else so they’ll remember me six months from now when they find out FrontPage is a piece of crap and their site looks like something built by a nine-year-old, and then I’ll get their business.

So I wrote to one of these mysteriously quiet leads today, reminding him that he had promised to call me to hash out some details of his proposed project. He wrote back with what must surely be the strangest reply I’ve ever heard from a lead:

Umm.

Who the heck is Mike Jones? And what does the mayor of Honolulu have to do with a baseball team? And– more to the point– how in the world does this have anything at all to do with a web site?

I guess I’ll write this one off. Heh.