12/20/2004

‘Tis the season for Christmas cards.

As usual, Laralee and I are sending cards to pretty much everyone who’s anyone, which includes about 150 friends and family. I’m also sending the usual cards to my clients, and this year that’s about 40. Yikes.

Of course, when you’re looking at making and mailing nearly 200 cards, you’re also looking at pretty much anything that will streamline the process. Instead of buying cards at the store, printing a Christmas letter that no one really reads, and then writing in all those cards (even if it’s as simple as “Hey, Bill, hope you have a good one!”) we decided to print our own cards. No letter this time– just lots of fun pictures. No signatures– they’re scanned. Buy some card stock and some half-page-sized envelopes, and you’re in business. Print, fold, stuff, stamp, send.

It’s sort of sad, really, to consider how much of an assembly-line process it’s become. But at the same time, there’s simply no way to give all of these cards the personal attention I’d like. Thus, when I was stuffing all these cards late last night (Laralee was feverishly wrapping gifts), I felt a twinge of guilt. But only a little twinge.

12/17/2004

Hoo boy!

I’m featured in an article on NewsForge, which is a popular site that bills itself as “the online newspaper for Linux and open source”. Along with two other Colorado Linux consultants, I dispense advice about working with Linux and how it helps me succeed as a business. Of course I’m always evangelizing Linux to my clients, even though most of them don’t really understand what I’m talking about. The only thing that matters to them, at the end of the day, is whether their shiny new system will be (1) secure, and (2) cheap. Luckily I can do both.

I don’t expect to get a sudden rise in work from the article– after all, who reads news stories about companies and then immediately calls them to do a project? But it’s a nice addition to my publication portfolio.

12/17/2004

Once again I’m sitting in bed, working on my laptop in the wee hours of the morning. As usual I’ve got my headphones on, jamming to some random music while I work.

For whatever reason, Meat Loaf showed up in the playlist and I’m listening to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”. It’s such an interesting and fun song… and it reminds me of the ol’ college days, when I first heard it (and other selections from the Meat Loaf discography) because a bunch of friends of the female persuasion really liked the music.

Boy, there’s nothing like listening to stuff like this at 1:30 in the morning…

12/13/2004

How to have fun in old Ireland:

Step 1: Drive car off dock into water.

Step 2: Get crane truck to lift car out of water.

Step 3: Oops, bad call on weight distribution; crane truck falls in water too.

Step 4: Ahh, get bigger crane truck to lift both out of water!

Step 5: Uhh… anyone have a bigger crane?

12/12/2004

In a fit of boredom (after finishing the annual Christmas card-letters) I decided to poke around the ol’ cyberschroeder web site. I looked at the statistics for the month, and was surprised by some of the search terms people used to get to the site (see the screenshot following):

“Short stories for English class” — Okay, they were probably a bit surprised when they found my rather cheesy writing, but hey, maybe one of them will turn out to be a publisher.

“Journal entries by President Bush” — Well, ol’ Dubya hasn’t written any entries in my journal, but there are certainly some pieces about him.

“Wonder Woman stationery” — I can’t even imagine why someone would search for that, but maybe they know Sarah and her penchant for the lady with the magic lasso.

“Reality in a Box” — This is the title of one of my stories, and certainly an unusual phrase. Maybe my fame is sweeping the globe and people have heard of the killer story.

“UMR homecoming” — Hello, fellow Rolla grads, wherever you are!

“Craig chancellor” — Ahh, who can forget my good pal Craig “Chancellor” Wyzik, who is mentioned many times in the blog?

“Devastatin Dave Zip Zap Rap lyrics” — Whoa. This one is just plain scary, because it means there must be some Devastatin’ Dave fans out there. Too bad the only reference I have to Dave is the classic Worst Album Covers page.

“Annelise LeCheminant” — Fans of my friend Annelise; cool!

All in all, I guess it goes to show people look for some pretty interesting stuff on this thing we call the world wide web…

12/11/2004

Today’s Idiotic Spam Award goes to the lottery notification I just received, informing me that I’ve won the THUNDER-BALL UK INTERNATIONAL CHARITY lottery. Woo hoo! Now all I have to do is give them my bank account information and they’ll deposit my prize. What could be easier?

(How in the world do people really fall for this kind of stuff? Sheesh.)

The best is the guy’s signature:

Michael Foster,
Directors of Operations,
THUNDERBALL UK LTD,
Thunder-Ball House,
221 Albemarle Street,
London W1S 4BS,
United Kingdom

It would totally rock to live at the Thunder-Ball House.

12/09/2004

Last night Alex and I attended our first Pinewood Derby race. This is a Boy Scout tradition (no, Alex isn’t in Scouting) where the kids take a block of wood and some wheels and saw, sand, paint, and finish a race car. Then, in the spirit of male competition, the cars are raced.

There were 22 cars entered in the race, and probably 60+ people there. Before the race, while the “officials” were setting up the timers and computer software (!), a bunch of the kids were testing the track with their cars. Alex’s car consistently beat them– every single race he ran, his car zipped ahead of everyone else.

This struck me as pretty funny because according to tradition, when you build your car you’re supposed to file down the axles, sand the wheels with 600-grit sandpaper to remove any “imperfections”, use graphite to improve spin, balance the axles carefully to avoid a tilt, and so on. When I first heard about what other teams were doing, it made it sound like they were preparing for the Gran Prix or something. Alex and I took our block, sawed out a reasonable race-car shape, sanded it, and spray-painted it gold. We hammered the axles in place, glued a little Lego guy into the cockpit, and called it good. Yet our woefully unprepared car was crushing the fancy ones. Hmm.

Anyway, the races began and it was a lot of fun. Every car raced four times (once on each of the four parallel tracks) for fairness, and the computer system recorded times to thousandths of a second. At the end, everyone’s times were averaged so the final winner could be determined. Shockingly, Alex’s car placed third overall– an average of less than a tenth of a second behind the first-place finisher. He was thrilled, not least because he won a Hershey bar.

It was a real hoot, and amusing to watch the fierce competition.