Making funny faces

My wife makes funny faces while she's at her computer. I think that its quite cute and over the years, I've learned to interpret her facial expression to let me know what she's doing. Sorry, there are no pictures of these faces, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Big cute grin
When my wife is blogging or, more importantly, responding to comments on her blog, she has a big cute smile. Its one of those smiles that just makes me happy when ever I see her with that face on. I like to ask her what she's doing when she's making this face, as its obvious that she is happy. Keep the comments coming over on her blog.

Concentrating face
When my wife is composing an email for swimteam car pool or PTSA volunteering or something like that, she is concentrating hard. Her lips are pressed together, thinning them to almost a line. She looks very stern - and knowing some of the car pool coordination problems she deals with, she should be. I'm learning to not disturb her when she's making this face. Its sort of like the headphones worn by cube workers to say Do Not Disturb.

Concerned face
This is a new face that I observed this morning (and which instigated this post). Her brow was furled, but she was intently watching her computer screen, only looking away when scooping more oatmeal from her bowl. I asked her what she was doing and it turns out she was watching Fringe on Hulu. The particular episode was about mutants and they were conducting an exhumation. She doesn't like shows about mutants in the same way that our daughter doesn't like zombies.

Writing this made me think of one other face she makes. She probably won't want me to write about this one (and get your head out of the gutter). Its her Focused Physical Concentration face. When she's doing something that requires a great deal of focus, like threading a needle or using a jewler's screwdriver, she sticks the tip of her tongue out of her mouth, just a little bit off center. This is another face that says Do Not Disturb lest I break her concentration.

This is not a strange phenomenon, as I do the same thing. Heather can tell when I'm in pain, as I have my pain face. I'm sure we all have faces that we make? What are yours?

I have the best Facebook Friend, ever....

Don't be jealous.

I have the best friend on Facebook.

Heh. (that part is for you Murph)

Funny ad sequence

I was returning from voting today and I heard an ad on the radio for the new Triple Steak Burrito at Taco Bell.
The "benefit" that this burrito brings is Steak, Steak and more Steak. It's steak, flavored with steak, topped with more steak.

It sounds pretty good.

The ironic thing was the next ad.

"Are your triglycerides high? Can you spend up to 2 weeks in a clincal trial?" A medical testing clinic here in the Northwest is trying to round up volunteers for some clinical trial. They need the people that eat the Triple Steak Burritos.

So, they guy who schedules the ads either has a great sense of humor or is a great marketer, as these two ads complement each other. Talk about hitting the target audience.

Weather

My computer, running Ubuntu, has icons in a system bar to show certain things. When I sat down this morning, I saw something I hadn't seen before - a yellow dot. My first thought was it was some cautionary alert.

But then I realized that it was the weather applet!

I had never seen the sunny weather indicator before!

I should have been able to connect the dots; I went out this morning to get coffee beans for my wife and when I came home, I didn't take my sunglasses off because of the sun streaming through our kitchen window.

Today looks like it will be a nice day. I'm wearing shorts (and ankle high socks, for those that it matters). I'm glad to be home again. I just spent 4 days in California, but it wasn't very sunny there.

I wish my office was like this!

It's kinda long, but it is pretty good. I didn't know there were so many different NERF weapons!



But wait, it could be... The kids are on summer break and my office is at home...

He's not paying...

I noticed my college room mate online this evening and his IM status message was pretty funny.


I wonder how his ISP feels about him not paying.

And if his ISP is actually reading this, it does say paying attention. I have no knowledge of sharing cable service or finding excess coaxial cable around frat houses.

For Mother's Day?

As Mother's Day is approaching, a lot of the ads that get into my mailbox are becoming mom focused. I quickly scan them and delete them, like most other ads, but the fact that they have Mother's Day themes sticks in my head.

I also get lots of spam. And almost 100% of the Spam is to enlarge my male organ.


Imagine my surprise when I see this ad from Red Envelope...

Compared to all the spam, that subject line seems pretty racy for Red Envelope and not quite the subject for Mother's Day.

But here is another twist. I followed the ad with the text, "Not everyone desrves flowers." Not quite the right sentiment with Mother's Day approaching, but I'll check it out.

Son 3 was quite surprised and wanted some explanation, "Is that guy POOPING in a box?"

His next statement was, "Click on his butt." I guess the surprise didn't last too long.


I was intrigued. I had to see what the product looked like.


It's chocolate. Or that's what they say at PooParcels.com. That's pretty disgusting. I wonder how they make them? Do they have a row of strange sex toys [safe link to my wife's blog] that extrude the chocolate? That might be too shocking too see!

I don't think that this targeted advertising is working well. Funny gifts, yes. But not for Mother's Day.

Now, I've got to figure out how I want to mail poo too...

Sixth grade jokes

We've gotten to that stage in life with our kids. Saturday morning Son 1 shared a joke that he learned from one of his friends.

I'm sure you've all heard variations on jokes like this, but it goes something like this.

Teacher to Struggling Student: If you get an A on this test, you can come to my house for a BBQ.
Struggling Student gets an A on the test, and goes to BBQ at the teachers house.
Teacher: Since you did so well, you can stay for a sleepover.
Teacher: Since there is only one bed, you can stay in mine.

By now, I'm sure you can see where this joke is going.

Struggling Student (now in teacher's bed): It helps me fall asleep to stick my finger in my Mom's belly button.
Teacher: Okay.

Now, Son 1 delivers the punchline. Remember, he is telling this to his MOM!

Stuggling Student: That was my finger.
Teacher: That was my belly button, either.

Both Heather and I scrunched our foreheads for a moment while we thought through the punch line. We quickly figured out that it should have been.

Stuggling Student: That wasn't my finger.
Teacher: That wasn't my belly button, either.

On top of misdelivering and misunderstanding the joke, he was telling it to his Mom. While there's no stopping sixth graders from telling jokes like these. But you don't tell them to your mom!

That's not my thing

While I was catching up on the days news, my Firefox browser created some pretty funny tab names.

This one, I needed to get a screen shot of.



Really, that isn't my thing. I don't even want to imagine what government agents might do with their sunglasses, guns, badges or earpices.

The real article, though is one about DB Cooper and the recent spate of clues as to where he landed. Good Northwest news!

Just be careful of how many tabs you have open!

Where's Beau

So, I've been busy of late and haven't had much time to blog. To keep you occupied until I do have some time, here is a little game to keep you busy.

Like Where's Waldo this one is Where's Beau at the RFID Journal Live conference last year....



It was in their pamphlet for this year's conference and I noticed one of my co-workers and lo, I was talking to her.

Enjoy and leave a comment!

Some day I'll have an easy chair

I just spent 4 hours (less fast forwarding through commercials) catching up on the new television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Being a guy, it is pretty good TV and considering that it was launched during the writers strike, it is the best thing on TV.

Some of it I watched on my iPod, some transfered to our downstairs Tivo and tonight, it will record in HD on the new downstairs Tivo unit. It took a little while to get a hang of the Tivo remote after almost two years of not watching TV (or Tivo for that matter), but I was able to get through the commercials pretty effectively.

So, after watching the 4 epidsodes, I saw some cool things. Sure, who wouldn't mind a cute, girl robot who can kick ass. Maybe in later episodes, John will find out if she has girl parts, too! But what I really thought was cool - the easy chair in the pilot! It was reinforced with kevlar in the back, so as to stop bullets.

I want an easy chair like that. Who never knows when someone might try to shoot me in the back? Who knows when evil metal headed robots from the future might try to kill me. I'd want to be enjoying my scotch and a nice book by the fire knowing I'm safe.

Some day La-Z-Boy will make one. If they don't already.

Reducing the Stigma of Incontinence

Recently, a Forbes.com article was pushed to me through an RSS feed, entitled Panel Urges End to Incontinence Stigma. It was surprising on multiple fronts:

1. This was in Forbes magazine, a reputable news source.
2. I don't see what this has to do with business or finance, which is what Forbes is known for.
3. This panel was a government sponsored panel, by the National Institutes of Health.
4. I was even surprised to learn so much about incontinence.

Did you know that there are two types of incontinence, each with two subtypes?

Urinary incontinence is the more common type; previous estimates have put the number of people with this condition at around 13 million. Actually, more than 20 million women and 6 million men have experienced urinary incontinence at some point, the NIH panel concluded.

The two most prevalent subtype are stress incontinence and urge incontinence.

Stress incontinence is leakage caused by physical pressure to the abdomen, such as coughing, sneezing, laughing, jogging or lifting a heavy object. Urge incontinence is a sudden, uncontrollable urge to urinate, sometimes called overactive bladder.

Fecal incontinence is harder to measure, even more stigmatized and thus hardly ever studied. The best estimates suggest it affects up to 5 percent of the general population and up to 39 percent of nursing home residents.

A better factoid from the article is that "one in four US adults will experience some kind of incontinence". I think that means we should all be investing in Clorox or other detergent manufacturers.

But more surprisingly, the panel recommends, ""We as a society need to get over our discomfort with this subject..." Tax dollars at work suggesting that we should be okay with incontinence. This is going to change how parents raise their kids! This is going to change how kids interact with each other in locker rooms or with the stinky kid in pre-school.

What is this going to mean for toilet paper manufacturers? Are we as a society going to start to use less toilet paper? Is the toilet paper industry going to spiral into financial despair, requiring a federal bailout because we are all okay with a little anal leakage?

How about salty snacks and fat substitutes, like Olestra? Are we just going to replace all the fats with man-made fats because a little anal leakage is okay? Invest in Frito Lay, I say!

What about the clothing industry? Are pants prices going to increase because the butt and crotch portion will require absorptive reinforcement? Will demand for underpants increase because people will carry multiple sets to get through the day?

The implications are mind boggling once we are okay with a little incontinence.

But(t) being the rebel I am, I'm going to go against the government on this one. Cleanliness is next to godliness is how the expression goes and that works for my butt too!

For more resources on incontinence, check out this search on the NIH website. There's more than you could want to know!

Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas, all.

No, this isn't a blog giving greetings to you, this is about the email cards I've gotten at work. I've been on vacation, so I've been going through old emails and this one really struck me as funny and maybe inappropriate, because I don't see how it fits into Christmas.

Like most greeting cards it came with a nice greeting:

Sending warm thoughts your way this holiday season and wishing you a happy, healthy and fit New Year.

Nothing wrong with this, at all. Nice sincere thoughts that fit in a professional environment.

But it was the picture that got me.

Now, I'm all for women in short shorts, don't get me wrong. But getting hot pants pictures just doesn't fit in with the Christmas spirit for me, especially for work greetings. Maybe if it was Santa's Sexy Helper, it might be more Christmas-y, but even less work appropriate.

If you look closely, the Santa hat was actually photo-edited in!

I hope that you and yours had an enjoyable Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever holiday you celebrate in the winter and that your New Year starts off with a bang!

Breasts and Hooke's Law

My wife brought up Hooke's Law in a comment on Amelia's blog about her breasts.

After thinking about Amelia's boobs and Hooke's law, I realized that she made errors in her explanation of Hooke's Law. I did post a comment, the text of which I have pasted below and I can assure you that I will explain and demonstrate Hooke's law to my wife and how it applies to her breasts at my earliest convenience.

Scout's Honor [ed: my wife's pen name], while Hooke's law does apply to boobs, I think you misunderstood which forces where being discussed.

Hooke's law is applicable to springs and what force F is required to make them stretch a certain distance x. There is a material property of the spring k, called the elastic coefficient, which drives that ratio.

So, how does Hooke's law apply to breasts, in particular Amelia's? As she so astutely noticed, probably along with the other men in her town, her breasts are getting bigger. As her boobs (need to bring this comment back down to the level that it deserves) increase in size, they also increase in mass.

This increase in mass increases the force due to gravity on her breasts, which could cause some, but not all of the problems you identified in your comment. Obviously a force applied to the boob will actually pass back to where the boob meets the chest (not that great lower breast part), but that which is visible when showing off cleavage. I can not imagine that boobs will get so large as to actually cause a rupture, or explosion as Scout brought up, but if the current rate at which your breasts are increasing in size continues, they are going to be ginormous!

However, this is where the science gets fun! Amelia, we need you to collect some more information. Maybe this is better information for your husband to collect, to mitigate any anger issues that might arise from how much thought I've put into your breasts lately. We need to measure the change in the elastic coefficient of your boobs.

While there are many good scientific methods we can use, a good approximation would be to measure their firmness, which is where your husband comes in. Another method would be to actually apply weights to your nipples and measure the amount of stretch, but I don't know if you are that kind of girl or not. Which ever method you and your husband choose to measure the elastic coefficient of your boobs is up to you! Make it fun, science is fun!

So, Hooke's law dictates that the larger your boobs get, the more they could, for lack of a better term, sag. But I maintain, especially amongst preggers, that as your boobs increase in size, they will also get firmer (sweet). This increase in firmness, or the elastic coefficient, should mitigate any additional sagging. From my experiences with Scout's boobs during and shortly after pregnancy, the firmness will change during the course of the day, based upon feedings and other external influences.

Amelia, in the name of science, keep collecting and reporting the details!

If there is anyone from the NSF reading this, I would greatly appreciate some grant money so that I can study the effects of increasing breast size, both in preggers and non-preggers, on the elastic coefficient of the female breast.


[ed: I wish I had the right pictures to put on this post; a picture is worth a thousand words]

Baby Island: Boobs - A Visual Aid

Baby Island is a blog my wife reads and the authoress, Amelia, comments frequently on my wife's blog.

Amelia wrote this post, Baby Island: Boobs - A Visual Aid, and of course, I read it. How could I pass it up with a title like that. And I just feel the need to pass it on.

But it is a great read and all about math and science! Read it for the articles.

8 Random Facts

Helen once again tagged me, this time for eight random facts about myself. So here goes.

1. I like a lot of espresso. I do also like espresso a lot. I drink about 6 shots a day. Ten on the bad days. I will try just about anything with espresso in it - I even made an espresso creme brulee twice (I forgot how bad it was the first time around).
2. My favorite dessert is creme brulee. Not any of the fancy flavored ones (no green tea or chocolate), just a pure and simple creme brulee. And I think that it is snobby to refer to is as "the burnt cream," as they called it at the Chena River Lodge in Fairbanks, Alaska.
3. I lived for 4 years in Fairbanks, Alaska and have slept outside in just my sleeping bag at -26 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. I love the outdoors, camping and hiking and wish I could spend more time with those pursuits.
5. I really like haiku. The formal structure appeals to the engineer in me.
6. Since I was ten, I haven't lived anywhere longer than 5 years. I hope to change that here in Washington.
7. I haven't gotten any taller since I was a freshman in high school. I was pretty tall then. Most people have caught up with me now.
8. I love new technologies and being on the leading edge. However, I am cheap (my friends tell me I am frugal) and that keeps me from being an early adopter of things that cost money. No iPhone here.

Wow. That was easier than I expected. Pretty random stuff. Enjoy.

KFC ran out of chicken

Last night I went to the local Taco Bell Express/KFC to buy a bucket of chicken for dinner. My daughter and I stood in line and waited our turn. While waiting, I overheard the counter-people offering Empanadas because they were out of biscuits.

Undeterred, I still ordered the bucket of chicken we wanted. Evidently my wife has been craving fried chicken after Brittney Spears did something (non-leg spreading) with some fried chicken greasy fingers. We were warned, "We are out of extra crispy and it will be 15 minutes before it is ready."

"So, you are out of chicken right now," I inquire?

The kid at the counter said, "No. It will be 15 minutes." Not wanting to debate the finer points of out of stocks and having the product when the customer wants it, I called home to see if burritos would suffice as an alternative. While I was calling I was overheard and questioned by two people about KFC being out of chicken.

This was also the same Taco Bell that ran out of tortillas for Crunch Wraps (seriously) and asked me to buy 50 Chicken snackers (in jest).

You've got to wonder if there is an opportunity for a suuply chain professional there? Good food, good humor...

I am stunting my career development?

A while back, CNN had a Q&A on golf for professional development. I think I'm in trouble. I find golf incredibly boring. I'd rather pick up a golf ball, throw it as far as I can and run after it and pick it up. Sort of like an endurance running golf game.

Although golf could be alright. At one point in my life, I lived on the edge of a golf course, just off the second tee. The kid across the street from me, Teddy, has some naked lady golf tees. Naked ladies would most definitely make golf more enjoyable.

Mmmm.

They would probably have to make the flag poles a little more robust for some on the green entertainment.

I would worry about the naked lady caddy getting sunburned though.

And what shoes would she wear? High heels would probably be hard to walk in in the grass...

I guess there are some kinks to work out still. Maybe this is my great idea - Naked Lady Golf. I wonder how it applies to minature golf - Miniature Naked Lady Golf?

This is a way to collect taxes

Dancing eunuchs taxing red-faced shopkeepers

Check this out. This is some way to collect back taxes. It sounds like state sponsored sexual harassment. It is a strange world.

Now the thing that I find most interesting...

Eunuchs are still common in India, where they live in closed-knit communities. Some are castrated men but others are transsexuals and hermaphrodites who have been ostracized by their families.

Also known as hijras, they are widely feared and move around towns and cities in groups and demand money on occasions such as marriage or the birth of a child. They are believed to have occult powers.

So, in all actuality, the government hired a bunch of thugs (or at least people that inspire fear) to go out and induce people to pay up.

In the US - black helicopters, windowless vans, SWAT teams kicking down your door.
In India - bands of eunuchs.

Get your quivering beaver at Burger King!

This post is rated PG. Although, there is adult humor cleverly concealed in here.

Some times, when you go to a really fine restaurant, the food can be described as causing intense emotional excitement.

That same experience can be reached at Burger King. Yeah, that guy looks kind of creepy, but hey, he must do it for somebody.



This is the promotional toy for Open Season, some new animal themed movie. I want to know what the moose will do!