The Value of Gold

Happy Saint Patricks Day!

Yes, my greetings are a day late, but the shock has taken some time to get over. It's not that work was tiring yesterday or I was stressed about my finance final or that I took a nap or that my teeth hurt from going to the dentist (they didn't, I need to focus on my gums more, though) or from being hung over from too much green beer.

Everyone knows that leprechauns like gold. Well, my youngest brought home a gold nugget from school. I guess it was what they used as bait in their leprechaun traps. Before you come to our house and rob us because the price of gold is so high, its just a small rock painted gold. It could have even been taken off the playground for all I know.

Yesterday, as I was on a conference call, my youngest came to me, with a gleam of panic in his eyes. He quietly got my attention, “Dad, I dropped my gold.”

I muted the phone and asked, “Where did you drop it?”

“In the toilet.”

“I'll come help you in a minute. Don't do anything.” My call was wrapping up, so he wouldn't have to wait too long.

“But there is pee in the toilet.”

I was still on the phone, so I just decided to cross that bridge when I came to it. My call quickly came to an end and I wandered into the bathroom. The gold nugget was at the bottom of the toilet (because gold nuggets don't float) and the toilet had been pee'd in. Just like he said it was.

We didn't have any long gloves and as I wandered through the kitchen I knew that Heather would not stand for the use of a long spoon to fish it out. We had some short latex gloves, but they only cover up to my wrist, so they would just get filled up with pee.

With some consternation, I shot my hand into the toilet bowl, grabbed the gold nugget, flushed the toilet and washed my hand and the nugget with lots of soap and really hot water. I was careful to scrub the nugget, but not too much, lest the gold would flake off and be lost in the sink.

Yeah it was gross, but it wasn't that bad. It was over pretty quickly. This definitely pushes the limits on the grossest thing I've ever done.

But its one of those things you do for your kids. It was important to him and so I got it for him.

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!

Ahead on my home work,...

For the first time this quarter, I think I am actually ahead on my homework for my MBA program. However, this does not mean that it is all easy going, because over the next two weeks I have several group assignments, several homework assignments and we are going to get our take home final exam. I am not going to have any time, so I need to get ahead as far as I can while I have the chance. listen

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Take out Indian food....

Take out Indian food. I just picked up Indian food at Kanishka for dinner tonight and the smell of it is making me want to sell out my family and eat it now. I bought way too much food so they would never notice, but I'm a good guy, I'll take it home to them. listen

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I'm dehydrated, sore and tired... my vacation day was great

I took a well deserved vacation day yesterday and with the kids on winter break, we went skiing at the Summit at Snoqualmie. Like the rest of the week has been, it was a beautiful day - the sky was blue and the sun was shining.

It might have been a little warm for the snow, as it was pretty crusty and crunchy, but you didn't have to be bundled up all the way. If it gets any warmer, there will be girls in bikinis on skis!

We got a late start, since Alec had swim practice that morning and after he called us a few times, we picked him only 1 hour late. He forgot his cell phone, we couldn't find his sunglasses and I found my sunglasses this morning, on the floor, fallen from my pile of gear.

The kids took lessons again, which was great. Heather and I got some skiing in on our own and then we skied mostly as a family into night. Towards the end, I started realizing that I was about to drift off on the lift, so I sat out the final runs. I was a little dehydrated, though I carried (and drank) water through out the day.

When we got home at about 9:45, just about everyone went straight to bed. I remember pulling the covers up on myself, but that was all. I just went to sleep.

When I woke up this morning, after snoozing my alarm, I still had a dehyrdation headache and my legs were pretty sore, but in a good way. Kids 2 and 3 slept pretty late, though Kid 1 woke up early (he's always been an early riser). After drinking tea most of the day, I was able to get enough water to beat the headache, but there won't be any binge drinking this weekend (like there would have been anyways).

Again, it was a great day skiing and fun time with our family in the outdoors. Its nice that we are taking advantage of the closeness of the ski area and the rest of the outdoors now.

Lonely

As Heather indicated, the kids are on winter break this week. Today, they went to the Pacific Science Center and I am at home, all alone. The dogs are sleeping and there isn't anyone here to talk to.

Usually our youngest is home from school and we all eat lunch together. Today, they were all gone. Our house was quiet and all the lights out (turned off, not burnt out).

It was lonely.

Because I have school tonight and they have swim practice this afternoon, we won't be in the same house together until late tonight. By then, the kids will be asleep.

But tomorrow will be better! I'm taking vacation tomorrow.

Tweaking Ubuntu for my Dell D630

So, over the last month, I've been using dual booting Windows and Ubuntu and making the linux install do just what I want.

After my computer crashed, I got a brand new Dell D630. It came with an 80 GB disk just partitioned for Windows. I bought an external disk and installed Ubuntu on a partition there and booted from the USB device for a couple of days. I decided that I liked Ubuntu and repartitioned the hard disk into a Windows and Linux partition (more to come on this, I would do it differently, if I were to do it again). Now, my PC dual boots Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows XP (and Ubuntu is the default).

My old computer (aside from the hard disk) was working perfectly - graphics, sound, microphone, even power management. I've found with the new computer that not all the drivers are completed. With some work and good Google searches, I've been able to get a lot more of doing just what I want.

Lessons learned

1. Linux does just about everything that your windows computer could do and most of it, slightly better.
   
2. Most of the answers to the problems (or if it can't be solved yet) can be found on forums or educational websites. Learn Google searches before you learn linux.

The Ubuntu Community Forums have been the most helpful. There I found how to get my sound and mic input jack to work (had to recompile ALSA and the sound config change), tweak the sensitivity of my touchpad, adjust the power settings (I haven't done it yet, but I bet it will work)! I've watched DVDs on airplanes and my wifi works seamlessly. I need to further enable my video card for spiffy graphics features, but it works just fine as it is.

Lifehacker has a great article on how to arrange your disk partitions so that you can share data between the two OS. Linux can read a Windows formatted disk partition, but not the other way around. So, if I save a document in my Linux partition, Windows can't see it. Most of the time I save to my external disk or to my Windows disk, but I need to build some symbolic links to those drives to make it less of a hassle. Had I only made a third data store partition, it would have been much easier.

So, now I'm on to exploring Virtualization, to see if I can run iTunes (not made for Linux yet) and a couple of other Windows only programs (MS Project and Outlook). A good friend of mine suggested I try Evolution and so far it is a pretty good PIM - it definitely competes with Outlook.

As a free OS goes, with free software, this is pretty slick. It definitely competes with the commercial software out there. As time goes on, I can see me using this more and Windows less.

Thanks to all the help I've gotten both from authors on the web and from Manny and Erik!

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.

Outdoor activities, anyway

This weekend, a college friend and I were planning on going winter camping. We were planning on snowshoeing a short distance into the Cascades, near Snoqualmie Pass, and building a snow cave for the night.

This trip was predicated by a few things:

1. My desire to snowshoe more
2. My desire to camp
3. My desire to rough it a little more than Heather is willing
4. Heather's mandate to use my Christmas gifts before I get anything new at REI

As a quick review, most of what I got for Christmas was field cooking and eating gear. I got a Titanium fork and a spoon which doubles as a tool for my MSR stove. I also got a bowl and a plate, too.

To be able to use this gear, I've got to go on a long enough expedition to have to eat. An overnight trip fits that bill.

So, Wade and I discussed an overnight trip for this long weekend. We watched weather and avalanche forecasts. We discussed what we would eat and what safety equipment we would carry and how we would mitigate risk. I geeked out a little bit and wrote a detailed trip plan.

But Wade started to get sick on Friday afternoon. And it worsened on Saturday. And on Sunday, we called it off. I say that its better to be sick at home than in a snow cave in the middle of no where. We decided we would see how Wade was doing and then maybe do a day trip on Monday.

But contrary to Heather's post, I wasn't bored around the house. We had a great day!

We went biking to Beaver Lake and then Alec and I took some mountain bike trails back to our house. It was a lot of fun and I can feel it in my legs today!

Afterwards, we played in the street (it is a cul de sac) and washed bikes, kids and my MINI.

Heather and I cooked dinner together and we had a nice, albeit short, because we were all tired, evening.

Even though Wade and I didn't go camping this weekend (note the emphasis), we still got some outdoor activities in and as Wade says, "There will be snow for a while; there's lots of it up there."

We'll have more opportunities before the season is over.

Orange Juice you can chew

I like Orange Juice with breakfast. It doesn't matter what is for breakfast, I'll usually accompany it with OJ. However, in our family, there are some fundamental differences in how much pulp we like or if they like OJ at all.

• Heather likes OJ intermittently
• Boy #1 (Eldest, for those that read Heather's blog) like OJ with no pulp
• Girl #2 (PB, translated) sorta likes OJ, but with no pulp
• Boy #2 (lil man) likes OJ, but with no pulp
• I obviously like OJ and with lots of pulp

So, for the last many years, I have been buying OJ with no pulp, in order to satisfy the majority. This time, when I was buying some, it was on sale. I compared the price between the 96 ounce and the half-gallons, and the half-gallon was a better price.

So I did it. I bought one no pulp and one full of pulp. Why didn't I do this earlier? I don't know, but I'm happy with my OJ I can chew.

Coolest Coffee Mug

My Dad made me the coolest mug for my birthday. Since he has retired, he has really gotten into woodworking. He made the kids kaleidoscopes for Christmas and I got this super cool mug.

It is the neatest thing. It's made of mahogany (a log aged 16 years from Peru, evidently) and oak reportedly from Andrew Jackson's home. I didn't take a picture, but it is even signed on the bottom.

How cool is that? Its got a stainless liner and a travel lid and a shiny finish that shows off the wood grain, but providing some protection from moisture. And on top of all that, it kept my tea warm enough to drink yesterday afternoon. Yes, tea in the afternoon to rehydrate myself after all the espresso in the morning.

And since for the last three weeks, I've been the only one respecting the kids' basketball league request of not bringing beverages to the games, I'll be bringing my coffee is the coolest mug ever now!

Valentine's Day drives spam

I've seen a recent surge in the spam I receive, the most part of which is trying to get me to buy some product to help me:

I think that these spammers are capitalizing on Valentine's Day and increasing their "advertising activities."


It sucks. At least Gmail does a pretty good job of culling them from my inbox.

Dip Once or Dip Twice? - New York Times

Science in action!

Practical application of science, answering questions posed to us in Pop Culture.

Dip Once or Dip Twice? - New York Times


So, what do you do?

If I'm with family, I'll flip it around and dip the other end. If I'm in a public place, I'll only dip once. How is that for situational ethics?

The First Jott Users Group

Living in Seattle has some really nice perks. We are close to the mountains, which are supposed to get 26 inches of snow tonight. Seattle is a big city, but with less crime, less traffic, less pollution, less of the bad stuff.

But one of the cool things is that Seattle is one of those startup centers. Okay, its not the Bay Area, but lots of really cool things have come from or are going on in Seattle.

One of those is Jott.

Being a Jott user in the vicinity of their headquarters, I got invited to the First Jott Users Group and I got to meet some of the cool people from Jott, check out their digs, munch on some hummus and spinach dip, give some feedback and learn about what they have in store for the future.

We were asked to keep most things confidential, and I will. You won't be able to get it out of me; I'm pretty tough that way. But what I can say is that the Jotters are doing a great job keeping it simple, making it better , making it fit into people's work flow and then adding slick functionality on top of that. They even talked of "hyper-cool" things that they couldn't even tell us, they were so super secret. They've got lots of cool things coming.

Jott is a great company and product. With their voice recognition, you can cross the boundary from your voice conversation to text message or to an email. As more and more states pass laws against texting while driving, this will be a valuable function for many people. With Jott Links, I can Jott to Zillow, my Google Calendar, find products on Amazon or most importantly to me, add tasks to my Remember the Milk to do list. You can even make reminders out of your Jotts. It was neat to learn how some of the Jott team wants reminders on time and others early (I'm in the on time camp, btw). The company is also very focused on the customer. It was cool to meet the people that actually read and respond to my Jott Feedbacks. They really care and want to make a product that people need and can use, not just one that is cool.

Another thing that was cool was to be able to meet other Jott users (Jotters are people that work at Jott, so we'll have to figure out something else to call the rest of us). It was neat to see how some people were all about the web interface and others about links and others about getting collaborative, corporate teams to use the tool. We got to see how people use Jott, their hacks and more importantly, learn about some of the old skool, almost forgotten Jott techniques.

Since these are not secret, just lost, I will share them here. At the "Who do you want to Jott," prompt pressing 1 will automatically create a Jott to self. This is helpful in a noisy environment when you can't get past the voice recognition. Pressing # will end your Jott, again useful in a noisy environment. As voice recognition became better and noise canceling headsets were more prevalent, the old style of Jotting was lost.

Check out Jott. Sign up for Jott. Tell them I sent you.

Where did all of the Seattlites go?

Yesterday, Seattle got another dose of winter weather. On the Eastside, we had snow (albeit not very much) and a snow day was called. Not a snow day for me, either in work or B-school, but for the kids.

As the time approached for me to leave for school, I kept checking traffic and the roads were all green and wide open. This seemed very strange to me. Maybe the weather was creating a problem for the traffic reporting sensors. This is Seattle, where a little snow snarls the roads!

Work kept me, so I didn't leave any earlier than usual. I was a little worried, but if I was going to be late, so were others. It took me far less than the usual amount of time to get to school - the roads were in fine condition and wide open! It was bizarre?

Where was everyone yesterday?

Did they just stay home?

Did they go to the mountains to take advantage of the snow?

I think that this one is going to be a mystery to me for a while. The traffic was exactly opposite of what I expected it to be based upon the morning conditions.

Web 2.0 saves the day

I've spent the week at a Supply Chain Planning software company's training facility at their company headquarters. What has been interesting about this trip is that all day long, I have internet access, but not my PC. Web 2.0 has kept me sane, productive and connected during the business day.

• I've been able to check and keep up on my email, both Gmail for my personal mail and my company's webmail.
• I've used Meebo to hop on instant messaging for pressing work issues as well as the even more important playing in the snow pictures.
• I've been able to add tasks to my Remember the Milk to do lists
• I took notes from our sessions with NoteSake, an online note taking webapp.
• With ScanR, I'm able to capture the contents of the whiteboards from our brainstorming and training sessions.

I was prepared to take notes on the training computers. I took my Linux install off my flash drive and put back the Portable Apps, so I could run my own apps and take my notes home with me easily. But the computers were actually in another building, so I couldn't even access the USB port, so that didn't quite work out for me.

But Web 2.0 came to my rescue. It didn't matter which computer I was on, my notes were there. And when I got back to the hotel, everything was there on my computer.

Web 2.0 you are all right.

Trip in the way back machine

I am sitting in a Starbucks in Reston, Virginia with a big grin on my face. I'm tooling around someplace I thought I would never see again. I dropped some people at the airport and Reston was close. I had time to kill so I dropped by.

Lots of places look different when you come back to them after 20 years, but Reston (once you get out of the business areas) looks about the same as I remember it. Maybe it is a little more worn, but it is still the same. I could drive from our old house and get to my elementary school. I knew where a shopping area on one of the lakes was, so I came here.

Usually, I'm not a nostalgic person, but deep down inside, I must be. Being here just makes me smile.

• I saw the sign post that I ran into and cut my head wide open 10 days after we moved here.

• I see that they've taken out the basketball courts by my old house.

• It looks like somebody removed the shrubberies from the front of our old house.

• The community pool was still a pool.

• The school playground has been rebuilt, is smaller and has a fence around it.

I'd drive by a street and say to myself, “Scott lived that way,” or “David lived over on this street.” It's kind of crazy how much I recall. Its just weird - I don't think I would want to live here, but in some strange way, it is good to be back.

I didn't think that I would visit Reston. Firstly, I didn't think I would have enough time and secondly, I wasn't sure what the appeal was. I'm glad I did stop, though. It got me smiling and in a few hours, I'll be linking up with a college friend for dinner. Its a good day.

My bag just isn't as fast as me

I flew to the East Coast on Monday and thank goodness for my wife, I left home in time to catch my plane. There was an accident on 405 which would have really put me behind schedule. She told me about it, I took an alternate route and breezed around the accident.

As I was getting ready to leave, Heather asked me where was my suitcase. I had already staged it in the car, but I gave the smart-ass response, "Oh, these are all the clothes I'm taking for a 5 day trip. I'll just turn them inside out and wear them again." Little did I know, that smart-ass remark would come back to haunt me.

Because of weather, we were delayed arriving into Chicago, where I had to change planes. We arrived at B6 and my departing flight was at C20. I had about 5 minutes until the scheduled departure and all the status boards said my next flight was on time. So I sprinted through the airport. I did answer my phone when Heather called to say it was snowing, but every other chirp and beep that my phone made was ignored.

Much to my surprise, I made it on the plane. I didn't ask if the plane was actually delayed, since I was still catching my breath; I was just glad to be on my plane. It turns out that this plane was indeed delayed because it needed to be de-iced and we ended up getting into Dulles about 30 minutes late.

I went down to the baggage claim and as I came to the realization that my bag should have been the last bag on the plane and therefore the first one off - I realized that I should be wondering if my bag actually made it on my flight to Dulles. In this day of modern technology, United Airlines had a kiosk to check for missing or delayed baggage. And sure enough, "Your bag has been located and is delayed."

So, I geeked out while I told the kiosk where I was staying and several contact phone numbers and reveled in how easy it was to report my bag missing. No waiting in line, no irate people standing around. I'm sure that I missed out on being able to get something for my inconvenience from a real live person, but I wasn't really that put out.

I can go overnight and wear the same clothes the next day, no one will know. I can do without my toiletries for a night (plus the hotel had some to give me). I was even able to get by without my gloves, hat and jacket, but it is cold on the East Coast in winter.

My bag didn't arrive by the next morning, so I went to my meetings feeling a little underdressed. But the company I was at is on the casual end of the business casual and that is alright with me. And when I got back to the hotel this evening, there was my bag behind the front desk!

I'm excited that I get to shave with my own razor and brush my teeth with my toothpaste. But that is what I get when I am faster than my bag.

I'd rather be in the mountains

Friday, I flew to Oakland early in the morning. Someplace before the plane arrived, I looked out the window and to one side was a beautiful sunrise and from the my side of the plane, I could see snow capped mountains.

All I could think of while I looked at it was that I'd so love to be on those mountain ridges, watching the sunrise. I really love the winter time and the mountains.

I spent about an hour on Saturday at Winter Trails Day, trying out different snow shoes. It was great to get up in the mountains, even if it was just a short while.

My newest favorite magazine

I've got a new favorite magazine. No, this isn't some pervy post about the newest laddy magazine (but if there is one, pass it on to me, so I can check out the articles).

My newest favorite is Sunset. Sure, everybody has been reading it for years, including all my grand parents. And we've subscribed to it for at least a year now in our house. But it wasn't until just recently that I noticed it.

I really like getting into the outdoors, as my recent posts about snowshoeing indicate. One evening at dinner, I was looking at my wife and over her shoulder I noticed El Capitan, all covered in snow, on the cover of Sunset. My wife is hot, but that definitely caught my eye. I'd love to go to Yosemite in the winter with no crowds or wander though Paradise Meadow at Mount Rainier when it is under snow (and I might still do that this winter).

As I was reading it, I found more stuff that I enjoy - namely smoked salmon. There was an article with quick recipes to make with smoked salmon. Cooking is good. Salmon is good. Quick is good. I made Smoked Salmon Vermicelli for dinner that night. It was very good and very easy.

Since I had the El Capitan issue out of the basket, the next night, what did I see over my wife's shoulder, but a cover article about comfort food. You know me, I like eating just about as much as I like cooking, so I was all over comfort foods. Tonight, we had Beef-Ale Stew with Green Onion-Buttermilk Dumplings. It was really good. I'll definitely make more of that. It took two trips to the grocery store (I forgot to buy onions the first time around), but it was great.

My new favorite magazine - good eats and great places to go. I'll be checking out more of this Sunset magazine. And any laddy magazines that pass my way, too. :)