Turbid Water

Life Amongst the Nords

2012-01-31T19:45:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write about Skyrim for a while, but then, that would mean stopping playing Skyrim to take time to write a blog post. Somehow, I'm managing that tonight. I've been playing Elder Scrolls: Skyrim for a while now. I'm up to level 18, and having a smashing time.

But things weren't always like that. Starting out in the game, I was pretty overwhelmed. It's like there is too much to do and no one telling you what you should pay attention to and what to ignore. Granted, it is a sandbox game, which means there's no set course. You can wander where you will, and do whatever you like. But when I am starting out, I was freaking out a bit because I had no idea whether I would need to save this broom I found for later, or if I would regret not talking to that person because they'd never show up again and I'd lost a chance for a cool quest or something. So it started out being stressful.

I've gotten past that. I'm entranced by the lush landscapes and detail. At one point I emerged from a cave to stare agog at aurora borealis lighting up the fantasy sky adorned with double moons. I'm oddly enthralled by the menial tasks you can perform like cooking, training, picking flowers, or chopping wood. I'm enjoying the lushness and the cool dungeons and monsters. That doesn't mean I haven't come up with a new set of gripes.

Even after the amount of time I've played, combat still is chaotic button mashing. I usually end up staring into my opponent's armpit or slashing next to them. Any lateral movement makes me lose track of where my foe is. Thankfully, I've got a few other people to depend on. I can summon a flame elemental thingy that is very effective at blowing up the baddies, and I have my trusty housecarl Lydia who has much better battle sense than I do, even if she cannot figure out how to climb out of a lake on her own.

Sometimes, combat is awesome. After one dungeon, I found a route out of it on top of a mountain. I emerged on the snowy peak and climbed through a blizzard to a monument on top. There I was attacked by two ice wraiths, nasty serpents of cold and malevolence. Right as I was finishing up that pitched battle, I was bathed in fire. I was immediately being attacked by a dragon! In the raging snowstorm, Lydia and I fought a desperate battle. Lydia almost died before I healed her back up, but the battle raged on. I lost sight of her, and I feared she was dead. The dragon landed and I went in for the kill. As I slew the dragon, the body started to slide down the side of the mountain with its valuable treasure. I ran after it and caught up before it went over the edge. I turned around and Lydia was there. She had survived! It was an exultant moment. I was pumped and grinning. That was awesome!

I then spent the next hour trying to get Lydia to walk through a door. It was not fun.

That's one of the other things I can gripe about. The game can be pretty buggy. You'll come across axes or tables floating in midair. Lydia wasn't following me through a door because there wasn't enough space to accommodate her on the other side. I also spent a lot of time trying to get her out of lake she'd fallen into. The floating sword type bug is easy to forgive in a world as massive and complex as Skyrim, but when a bug threatens to make me lose a valuable companion (plus all the loot she's hauling for me), and I spend hours trying to circumvent the problem, I get grumpy.

One other gripe I have is that the people don't seem to matter very much. This is an odd complaint, but it stems from having played the Mass Effect games. In those games, your companions, the other people on your team, have stories and personalities and you bond with them. You delve into their lives and help them in their personal crises. It makes sense that people going through war together would get to know each other. In Skyrim, Lydia has crawled through dungeons with me. We've battled dragons and trolls together. She's followed me through the rain on nighttime treks. She has saved my life, and I have saved hers. Yet all the communication I'm allowed with her is where I want her to stand and what items I want her to carry. She's following me all across Skyrim. Shouldn't I learn something about her family or her history?

In another example, I retrieved a guy's stolen family sword for him for one quest. Immediately, I also beat the snot out of him for another quest. I then ask him to train me in combat, and he agrees. Then after that, he acts as if we've never interacted. Weird. Again, I have to forgive this to an extent, since the land is so amazingly detailed. It's definitely the strength of the game. I can understand if the social interactions got short shrift.

Ok, one final gripe before I go back to extolling the virtues of this game. The plot has to do with everyone freaking out because dragons are coming back. People act like they're these super scary monsters. But they're pushovers. I beat my first when I was level 4, and every one since then, with the exception of the mountaintop battle, has been a pushover. The giants, however, are things to be feared. They can kill you with one hit. Or how about snow saber cats that can maul you in seconds? No one seems concerned about them, but they are far, far, far fiercer creatures than dragons. But everyone is soiling their pants over dragons. It seems a bit silly, really.

Anyway, I am loving Skyrim. It is so open-ended; it is astounding. And the fact that it can make me enjoy foraging for alchemical reagents or trying to find cheese to make fondue (really), says something. I'm going to be playing this one for a while.

San Francisco

2012-01-29T14:34:00.000-08:00

This last week I was in San Francisco receiving some training with a couple of my coworkers on the Ext.js JavaScript framework. Our flight to California, which was less than 3 hours long, was delayed by 5 hours, so rather than get an evening in San Francisco, we got to hang around DIA watching the playoff games and waiting for a flight that seemed like it would never come. Finally we arrived just after midnight. We were staying on the border of the Financial District and Chinatown. We heard a bunch of firecrackers going off when we got out of the cab. That's when we realized it was the Chinese New Year. So those firecrackers continued well into the morning. I fell asleep around 1:30 AM, but John said they went longer. Then they started up around 7 the next morning and would intermittently punctuate our time there for the rest of the week.

It was fascinating to walk through Chinatown. It felt like being in a different country where all the street names were in English. Most of the conversations I heard though were all in Chinese. There were stores and restaurants that were unlike what I've seen in the States before. In the morning I could see old women doing tai chi in the park across from our hotel. There were restaurants with whole roasted ducks in the window. Pretty wild. Our first morning there, there was a celebration at the hotel complete with dragon dancers and the mayor of San Fran.

We had some great food while we were there. I tried raw oysters for the first time at The House, which in general was quite good. I had escargot for the first time at Cafe Bastille, accompanied by an absolutely excellent cassoulet with duck confit. We had some really great Italian food at Perbacco, too. And we got great sandwiches from Molinari Delicatessen, which felt like it was lifted from Italy or some other decade. Of course we also had some good Chinese food, though we did not stop at the restaurant with the ducks with their heads still on.

One morning I decided to hike up to the Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill. Unfortunately, I chose a rather foggy morning, and I only got a few glimpses of the bridge. I did see and hear the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill though, which added to the feeling of being in a different country. Despite the cool weather, I was well drenched in sweat as I descended the hill and went to the training. I stood outside for a while to try to cool off, but I think I was still getting condensation from the moist air.

Thankfully the trip back was much, much smoother than the trip out. I was glad to get back to Colorado and my lovely wife, who managed to finish up a lot of the nursery while I was gone. Now it is complete with border, crib, and changing table! San Francisco was fun, but I love my wife and am glad to be home! You can see a few more pictures in my gallery, if you like. Below is a sneak preview of the nursery!

Playing to Win

2012-01-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

Last night we had a friend over for some games. We introduced him to the game Agricola, which I had gotten Jen for Christmas. It's essentially Subsistence Farming: The Game. It's a lot more engaging and fun than it sounds. As we played, our friend Tom's tactics were markedly different than the way Jen and I have played the game. The game is designed to punish you for not diversifying your strategy. If you don't have, say, any vegetables or any cattle at the end of the game, you lose points, so you can't just pour all your efforts into specializing in farming grain or raising sheep. You can make that a core of your strategy, but you must diversify to avoid penalties. Tom, however, was picking out a couple of areas to focus on and exploited every advantage it afforded him. He grew very strong in certain areas, but had nothing in most others. Where Jen and my farms were growing in a balanced way, his was skewed and lacked many essential things. I thought he was heading for a fall. Instead he ending up winning.

So, my brain has been buzzing with ideas of how people play games and why they play them how they do. Tom was playing to win. He saw the numeric structure and where the points could be most efficiently gained and pressed the advantages his cards gave him to focus on the most profitable areas. Then with his "profits" he could diversify at the last minute to stave off penalties. He saw the system of the game and determined how to play it in a more optimal way, even though that is outside the way I intuited that the game was supposed to be played. I was playing in the way I imagine the makers of the game intended it to played, whereas Tom was playing in a way that worked around the obvious approach to take advantage of the system. It's a totally legitimate way to the play the game, and I'll confess a bit of jealousy that I didn't see the same type of strategy. I was playing the conventional way, taking on the challenges from the angles it seemed to me the game designers intended. I was walking through the maze to reach the goal, when a legitimate and smart way to reach the goal would be to simply walk around the maze instead. I was playing to play.

Playing To Win

What is the goal of a game? It's to win, right? You want to reach the Candy Castle first, to destroy your opponent's army, to beat all the levels, to get the high score. So logically, you want to optimize your strategy and take whatever steps that will give you the most points or propel you quickest to victory. In a point-based game, it means you have to pursue points and do whatever will give you the most points the quickest. In this efficiency, you may abandon whole parts of the game that don't contribute to your strategy. If you find a particularly effective strategy (or a game is unbalanced), you may never need to deviate from it. You've figured out the game and mastered it. You win, and you win regularly. What if that's not actually the goal of the game? What if you're playing the game for fun or socializing? What if it's to be stimulated and challenged by the obstacles in a game?

Playing To Play

I'm not a particularly competitive person, so winning is not usually the goal for me. I am happy to play sub-optimally and lose if I can make the game more enjoyable. I also like to play along with the way game designers seem to be funneling me, even if it's less than optimal. Jen and I almost always have a game of Scrabble going on online. We've gotten to the point where we can play highly optimal and efficient games by tightly clustering our words together to maximize points, playing lots of small words that don't get used outside of Scrabble. It's definitely a winning strategy. You maximize the amount of points while denying your opponent opportunities for triple word scores and the like. It also just makes for miserable, protracted, constipated games. I'll gladly throw Jen an triple word score if it means I can open the board up for easier play or play a satisfying word. It means I have more fun playing, which for me is the point. Once a game ceases to be fun, whether because I've figured it out and it's no longer a challenge or it's become a grind to optimize the strategy, I feel it's a loss.

For some people, the enjoyment is figuring the game out, mastering the system. It's a fun intellectual challenge to beat the system of the game using the system's rules. For others, it's a need to win the game, regardless of how it's done. And for others the win is in having fun, socializing, and exploring the experience of a game, even if it is a suboptimal way to play. These are all legitimate ways to play, though there can be some cultural clashes when gamers from different approaches meet. Jen and I play Settlers of Catan in a pretty conciliatory way. We won't attack each other until we feel wronged or the other person is gaining too much of an advantage. I've also played with other people who as soon as they can use the robber to steal one of your cards and deprive you of resources, they immediately and gleefully will do so. It's a winning strategy ... if your goal is to win.

Exploiting the Game

Some people find ways to exploit a game's structure to win. It may be finding an unbalanced tactic that gives you an unfair advantage or finding a flaw or vulnerability in the game. I found with the game Nethack, I could hide my saved game from the system that would delete it if I died in the game. (Hey, it's a hard game.) Or you may be able beat an enemy by standing on something where the enemy can't reach you and just whaling away on them.

This hovers on the edge of cheating. The challenges posed by the game are removed or significantly weakened. You're not playing better, but weakening the game or pressing on flaws in the game to circumvent the challenges. This starts to defeat some purposes of playing a game. Sure, you're getting closer to the ostensible goal of the game (winning), but losing out on overcoming challenges, pitting your skill against the rules. You can use cheat codes to play in God Mode, but then what would winning even mean? If there's no challenge, what's the point? If you're playing against another person, rather than against the game, you're going to start accumulating ill will by cheating the other person or bringing them to use the same tactics, and starting to break the game. And who wants to play a broken game? That's no fun.

Breaking the Game

Well, some people do like to break the game. A while back, I was talking with a teenager who was quite proud of his prowess in playing an online multiplayer game. He had found several exploits in the game. One was to perform a series of actions that caused the server to lag in tracking his location, so he could essentially become invisible and super fast and slaughter anyone he liked. He thought this was so cool. He relished his domination in the way that a teenage boy can. He also took it as a mark of pride that he had become so skilled in killing other players that many people would log off the shared server as soon as he logged on. I'm still kicking myself for not telling him that fact meant he'd lost. As soon as people don't want to play with you and stop playing the game because of you, you've lost. You may have won the game, but you have lost in so many ways.

First off, you've broken the game. The challenge drains out of it. The fun is diminished. Secondly, you're losing the point of playing games: to have fun. You destroy the fun for others, and you lose the fun of matching your skill against the game. Thirdly, you're being a jerk and losing the social game. You're losing points with friends or acquaintances by being a dick. Fourth, if you drive enough people away, you'll have no one to play with. Game over, man. Game over.

The Game of Life

My brain has continued going down the path of wondering how people play games plays out in real life. How does your game-playing strategy bleed into how you interact in the real world? In talking this over with Jen, she mentioned a model of moral development that centers around who you see as being on your team. The lower level is when it is all about you. If you win, it matters little what happens to others. This goes up the scale to include more and more people and the world. So when you're playing a game, is your team just you or the group of people you're playing with? But this post has gone on long enough. There's a lot of fertile ground for thought there. For now, my eyes are going to be open to examine how and why I play games and how that corresponds to how and why I live the way I do.

By Accident

2012-01-12T19:01:00.000-08:00

Dear People Having Accidents,

You are having far too many accidents. Stop it. Pay attention while you're driving and stop hitting each other. In the past 3 days, one of which I didn't drive on, I have had to deal with 5 of your accidents, 3 of which caused major traffic jams. This is highly inconveniencing for the rest of us. And the accidents I've seen haven't even been snow related.

If you simply must have an accident, please be considerate enough to have it on a minor side street and not on a major freeway. Why, just the other day I was rear-ended by a gentleman sliding down a snowy hill in his mini-van. Not only did he have the courtesy to have this accident on a minor side street, but he also managed to do essentially no damage to me. You all could learn a lesson from him.When you have emergency vehicles come, they block things even worse than the rubble from your ruined car.

So please, stop having accidents. They are driving me insane with rage.

Thanks,

Nils

A New Dawn

2012-01-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

Ooohhhh, I couldn't resist using something cheesy like that. It is the dawn of a new year, and this morning the dawn looked amazing. I stepped out and snapped a few quick picks. They're a bit blurry, but the crispness isn't the point. Look at that color! Once Adobe releases that wicked anti-blur technology, blurriness will be even less of a problem. For now, however: pretty! You can click on the photos to look at a larger version.

Updating and Relaxing

2011-12-27T15:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was our traditional day of hedonism. Best tradition I've had a hand in creating. We take the day after Christmas, that's Boxing Day for everyone in the Queen's domain, and just do nothing. No work. No calls. No healthy eating. Oh. So glorious! We played video games and board games all day. Well mostly. Jen did go to her Bible study and I ventured out to a game night at my local game store. They do a great game night, and I've learned a new game each time I go. Last night I learned Glory To Rome, which is interesting, but a little frustrating to pick up at first. Previous ones I've learned are 7 Wonders, Troyes (pronounced "Twa" like the French number), and the excellent Galaxy Trucker. Furthering the collection of great games, I picked up the Intrigue expansion for Dominion as my Christmas present to myself. Now I can play 6 player games of Dominion. I also got Agricola for Jen for Christmas, which we've been enjoying.

Today, I've been cleaning up; doing what was left undone on Monday. One of my tasks was to update my links page with all the new web comics and whatnot. I feel I should call a few of them out.

Sfeer Theory is incredible. It's not long so far, but has a late Colonial era with magic deal going on with some fantastic writing and delectable art.
The Fox Sister is done by the same artist as Sfeer Theory, but a different writer. The archive isn't long right now, but it contains a nearly heart-stopping moment. Excellent stuff.
I can't remember if I've mentioned Cucumber Quest before, but it's good enough to mention again, even if I did. It's a zany take on a quest story, and the art is great. The art looks simple, but if you look there are plenty of subtle touches that show there is a lot of craftmanship being applied here. The expressions are fantastic and the character design is great.
Goblins takes a while to get going--I've had aborted attempts at crawling through its archive before--but once it gets going ... oh my! There's some great pathos and cliff hangers in there, and the art gets better. Warning: it does have some extreme gore in it. Also, most of the humor requires Dungeons & Dragons experience.
String Theory is a dark little spiral of situations going from bad from worse, but it is a strangely compelling look at how a semi-respectable scientist heads down the road to super villainy. It doesn't have much gore, but it can be disturbing purely on an emotional level.

As long as I'm making recommendations, I'll throw out my pitch for The Civil Wars as well. They're a country-ish duo. They're just fantastic; so good I can barely stand it. They have awesome vocals and catchy songs. Most mornings I am waking up with one of their tunes in my head. Go listen and enjoy!

Ok, now I'm going to go play some Skyrim. I'll probably re-emerge from that in a month or two.

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick note to wish you all a Merry Christmas! This Christmas season has been really busy for me, but mainly with things unrelated to Christmas. The heavy snow we've had has taken up some free time by providing me ample opportunities for shoveling. Work has been thick with tasks. I just finished up a project right at 5 last night before heading for the second dinner we've had with Jen's family.

On Monday, my co-worker Jody and I went out to try Bombay Bowl, which is a Chipotle-style take on Indian food. It was quite good, but the real surprise is that a photographer for the New York Times was there and took our pictures as we grabbed a bowl of curry chicken with garbanzos and mint chutney. So, I may be showing up in the Times' Food section here soon.

Later that night it was snowing and I made the mistake of taking my normal route, which involves a relatively steep side street. I slid a bit when stopping, but came to a stop safely. The guy behind me didn't. There was no real damage to my car, except a little rubber bit popped off. I can glue it back on. I told the guy not to worry about it and wished him a Merry Christmas. I've had grace extended to me in bumper-related incidents, so it feels good to do the same.

Okay, the cinnamon rolls are ready for tomorrow, but the car is waiting to be packed and we need to fit some lunch in here too. Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, 2011!

2011-12-18T19:50:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is, a little earlier than usual: the annual Thingvall Christmas letter. This version is new and improved, upgraded for the 2011 year with streamlined contours and 100% more baby. Act now while supplies last! And Merry Christmas!

Sacrificial Lambs

2011-12-13T19:43:00.000-08:00

I've decided to sacrifice my headphones. I have a pair of headphones for my phone that I rarely use. I seldom listen to music on my phone, and I'm not terribly fond of earbuds. However, I have found a use for them now. I've been having a very hard time getting myself motivated to get on the elliptical machine. Tuesdays and Thursdays I do 15 minutes on it before lifting weights. The elliptical creaks and moans, is a strenuous workout, and boring as all get out because I can't read while on it.

I've resisted using my earbuds to listen to podcasts or the radio, because I didn't want to make them all nasty. But I figure I need to keep myself exercising, so I'm sacrificing my headphones, shoving them into my sweaty ears.

So far it is working. I put NPR on and work out and I am not counting seconds as I step and step. This morning however, I was puzzled when Massive Attack started playing over NPR. It was synched well enough that I thought it might be part of the piece, but it kept going. Somehow my phone had started playing music. I turned it off, returned to NPR, and about a minute later, it started up again. I finally figured out that my headphones have a play button on them that must have been getting jostled. So, uh, anyway, that's my story. Not particularly interesting, but it is a story.

It Came Just Past a Midnight Clear

2011-12-10T09:09:00.001-08:00

Nothing quite wakes you up like hearing strangers talking outside your bedroom door in the middle of the night. Though I was still physically quite groggy, my mind snapped to attention and I sprang out of bed. Now, as soon as I got out of bed, I thought the tone of the discussion, as well as its volume sounded a lot like the radio. Still, just to be safe, I grabbed my big Maglite flashlight/bludgeon out of the closet. Unfortunately I caught the edge of the closet door with the flashlight, making the loudest sound in the world of that time of night, prompting Jen to ask if I was all right. I went next door and found that the radio alarm clock in the gym had mysteriously popped on the BBC at 1:30 AM in the morning. I fumbled it off and went back to sleep surprisingly quickly. Of course, I proceeded to dream of people invading our house. Why I dreamt that the home invaders were 5 students from Colorado Christian University and 1 ex-drug addict hiding behind an end table is beyond me.

Manitou

2011-12-04T11:42:00.001-08:00

For Jen's birthday I got us a couple of nights at a bed & breakfast down in Manitou Springs. We stayed at the Avenue Hotel, which was great. It's a nice cozy place with a great location in the historic downtown of Manitou Springs. We were able to easily walk around, do some shopping and eat at some good restaurants. The B&B also had excellent food, introducing me to baked grapefruit and pralined French toast. If I had known that grapefruit could taste like that, I would have been more kindly disposed to that fruit.

We read books, watched movies, strolled around town, and in general took it easy. I worked a bit on my cookbook in an increasingly more desperate bid to get it done, printed, and mailed before Christmas. I'm definitely starting to feel the pinch on that. I will be very glad when I get it done.

Birthday Girl

2011-11-29T20:09:00.000-08:00

Today was Jen's birthday, and she got an amazing present. We went in for an ultrasound of the baby and got to see our little girl. That's right! We're having a girl. She'll be making an appearance sometime around April 16th, falling between the undesirable dates of April 15th (tax day) and April 20th (lots of bad things: pot smoking, Columbine, and Hitler's birthday).

It was so awesome to get to see her heartbeat and her wiggling around. It's surprising that with all that movement Jen can't feel too much going on in there. It's also reassuring to see how much the baby is moving, as Jen gets a bit nervous not feeling anything.

The ultrasound technology really seems to have come a long way. The images were not so blobby. We could clearly see the spine and ribs, as well as the feet and profile. We even could see her skin as a layer in the ultrasound. The tech said everything looks great to her. I'm happy that our child isn't looking quite as alien as other ultrasounds I've seen, too.

What a moment of realization this is! For most of the pregnancy, it has been pretty intellectual. Jen hasn't really been showing until just recently, so this was finally when things are hitting home. Seeing that fluttering little heart made me realize that I'm going to be dad. We're going to have a daughter! Craziness.

We're so excited!

Leaves: The Aftermath

2011-11-21T17:39:00.001-08:00

This weekend was, in my mind, all about getting the yard work done. Mainly it was the leaves that needed to be taken to the drop off center, but then there were gutters to be cleaned, lights to be hung, massive tree chunks to be sawed, leaves to be mulched, and lawns to be winterized. Well, at least the first thing got done.

We had 64 bags of leaves this year. 64! 15 of those were 39-gallon trash bags, and the rest were 30-gallon bags. Between Jen being sick and pregnant, she wasn't able to help much. She deadheaded and raked a bit, but most of it was me and the leaves; first on the weekend, and then each weekday morning. This is not my favorite aspect of being a homeowner. Last year our neighbors had offered to let us use their truck to get the leaves to the city's drop off center. This year, we thought we'd take them up on the offer, as well as help them with their leaves. Between their Avalanche, Jen's Maxima, and my Mazda 3, it took 3 convoy trips to drop off all the leaves. I had already been feeling a bit sick, but by the end of that, I was shot. I consigned the rest of my yardwork to the upcoming long weekend and played Batman and worked on my cookbook for the rest of the day.

Part of last weekend's yard festivities was dealing with the massive chunk of one of our cottonwoods that broke during the heavy snows we had recently. It was hanging up in the tree like a widowmaker, and I was going to have to rake underneath it in heavy winds. So Jen and I set about bringing the big boy down. We took one of Jen's 3-pound hand weights, tied a long rope to it and fruitlessly hurled it at the branch trying to hook it. After a break and some restrategizing, we finally got the limb hooked and we stood a long ways away and furiously tried to get the limb to fall. Seems like it would have taken more than a stiff wind to fell this puppy. Jen and I hauled away on it and finally got it to fall. It came down with many other chunks of tree that I now have to figure out what to do with. Supposedly cottonwood makes for lousy firewood. It doesn't cure well and puts out a lot of smoke. Great.

So next weekend starts with turkey and then dives into a steady amount of work: decorating, cookbookery, and daunting piles of yardwork. I will need a vacation from this vacation.

Raking, Baking and Aching

2011-11-13T06:59:00.001-08:00

I'm feeling old. I went out to do all the raking yesterday. Jen was sick, so she helped out with deadheading plants, but didn't help with the raking and bagging. So I got to tackle all the leaves on a very windy day. Because of the wind, I had to bag a pile as soon as I had it together, so my back got to start aching earlier. I got the front yard done and about half of the back yard done after raking the from 9 to 4:30. Afterwards, I had a difficult time just laying down on the floor to realign my back. Jen and I both were feeling very decrepit as we hobbled around and moaned.

One place we hobbled to was Smashburger to use up a Groupon I had and reward our hard work with burgers. The burgers and fried pickles were good. Not so good was a fight we witnessed there. I won't go into details, as the police officer who responded said we would likely be called on as witnesses if there's a trial, but two guys started talking trash and one guy threw two milkshakes on the other. Thankfully no punches were thrown. I'm especially grateful, for as aching as I was I was even less inclined to intervene than usual (which is not really at all).

Then I went home and baked two pies (avocado and pumpkin) for our house church today. Now I am up after a night of wind that shook the house, yet somehow managed to not overturn the trash cans I used to bag leaves. And I will be out there later. I need to rake and bag the remaining half of the yard, bring down part of one of our cottonwoods that snapped in the heavy snow, and refill our crawl space now that it is getting its radon abated. Relaxation will have to happen next weekend.

Adventures in Hantavirus Land

2011-11-06T19:06:00.000-08:00

This Wednesday we got our second major snow storm of the season. This and we're barely into November! We got 8 to 10 inches of very sticky snow, so I got to go out and shovel the walk and shake snow off the trees. Unfortunately, the snow put the kibosh on our attempts at radon abatement.

Colorado has a plentiful amount of radon stored in suburban basements and crawlspaces such as ours. When we bought the house 2 years ago, the radon levels were a bit above what the US tolerates, but still beneath what they allow in Canada and parts of Western Europe, so we weren't too scared. Our realtor recommended that we get a long term test and see if the levels changed when we were actually living here. It took us a while to get around to it, but we did it and the levels are still high. Since we'll be welcome a little one into this house soon, and since we're planning on living here long term, we decided to get someone to seal our crawlspace and put in a fan to blow carcinogenic gases out onto our lawn.

The abatement guys were supposed to come on Wednesday, so on Sunday Jen and I took on the odious task of emptying our crawlspace. We hauled out a bunch of boxes and flattened a lot of them, an action that somewhat reminds me of early settlers in North America burning their boats to encourage people to stick around. We also had to haul out sheetrock, flooring, carpet and insulation that had been left there by the previous owners. It was when I started moving around the rolls of carpet that I noticed the copious amount of mouse poop on them. This always brings to mind happy thoughts of hantavirus, and made me consider stopping work to grab some surgical masks. A family friend of ours back in Oregon actually died from a hantavirus-like ailment after mice infiltrated his hunting camp, so it's definitely a specter that quickly arises.

We decided to bring one of the bigger boxes back into the crawlspace and fill it up with the feces-laden remnants. We then brought it out and set a tire on top to keep the lid closed. And then we vacumned and washed all our clothes and showered. Ick ick ick.

So we were none too happy when the abatement guys announced that due to the near foot of snow on the ground they wouldn't be coming to abate our radon. So this means we've had flooring and sheetrock and tires and boxes of crap sitting around our house for the past week. The radon abaters will be here on Friday, barring any snow, of course. Please God, don't let there be snow then.

Reamde

2011-11-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

I finished up Neal Stephenson's new book Reamde this week. I had been feeling the pressure to finish it as it is 1,044 pages long and I had two weeks to read it before I had to return it to the library. My normal reading session of 45 minutes on the exercise bike 3 times a week wasn't going to cut it. So last weekend I took a whole day pretty much to read, which felt really nice. I still hadn't finished it, so on Halloween, when Jen was gone to Bible study, I sat at the dining room table with the book and a bowl full of candy. I'd read along and every once in a while get up to pass out some miniature candy bars. We only had around 20 trick or treaters, so I got a lot of good reading time in and finished the book.

Overall, it was quite enjoyable. It just wasn't quite Neal Stephenson good. One of the things I really like about his books is he gets into nerdy ideas and really goes deep into them, looking at real world applications and explaining complex concepts in a good narrative. Reamde is much more a spy thriller. There are a handful of concepts explored, such as using real world geological patterns to create a World of Warcraft style game, using those types of games as money transfer systems, and great circle flight pattern considerations. However, mostly it's a cat and mouse game between people trying to rescue a very unfortunate girl and the people who have kidnapped her.

My biggest bones with the book are 1. there is a highly improbable coincidence in the middle of the book that the book hinges on, and 2. right after that coincidence one of the characters makes a decision that makes no sense to me. Still, the book is very good. I especially enjoyed the character of Sokolov, who lets us step into his mind and see its highly cautious, calculating workings as they take on an array of situations ranging from spycraft, firefights, and managing a mentally unstable Russian crime boss. I appreciate how deeply Stephenson goes into his mind and works on his perception of the world.

Anyway, if you're a Stephenson fan, you'll want to read this book, but it doesn't get up to the level of his better works such as Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon. It does however, have a much better ending than Anathem, the book he wrote before Reamde. A satisfactory ending means a lot.

New Baby

2011-10-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

No, not our baby. Jen's friend Vanessa had her baby Logan yesterday. She and her husband Robby were esconced at the hospital here in Lafayette, so we swung by before church today to say howdy to them and the new baby.

This was also a bit of scouting on our part, since that hospital will most likely be where our child will be born. Robby and Vanessa gave it a thumbs up, and the facilities certainly look nice there. I think this may be the first time ever and certainly in a very long time that I've gone to see a new baby in the hospital. Now it is a vision of things to come.

After church we had some folks from there over for lunch. I had a roast in the slow cooker, and other than not being shreddable, it was quite tasty. I just sliced it up for sandwiches and we had a grand time. Emmy Lou brought an awesome apple pie that is making me consider changing my crust recipe. Soooo good!

Oh, Snap!

2011-10-30T17:46:00.000-07:00

We had our first snow of the season on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was unusually heavy for this time of the year. We ended up having about a foot in our backyard, though our front yard was more like 4 inches. Weather oddness. On top of that, the streets were mostly dry by the end of Wednesday, so Jen and I went out and had some delicious food at the Trattoria on Pearl that evening.

After waking up on Wednesday morning and exercising, two things became apparent. First off, I needed to get out and brush snow off our trees, all of which had the bulk of their leaves still on, especially our two apricot trees. Secondly, I discovered the answer to a mystery. On Tuesday night, Jen and I had been relaxing in front of the TV with the snow flurries busy outside when we heard a loud crash that sounded like it came from our garage. We went out and investigated, expecting to have some wild animal or a broken shelf. However, we couldn't find anything askew. So we went to bed. However, the next morning the mystery was solved. Our umbrella for the patio furniture was snapped in half and laying prone on the deck. It was open. Ohhhhhh. See, I've never owned a patio umbrella. I also grew up where thinking about the consequences of heavy snow was not an issue. So I was not thinking about our open patio umbrella. And now the metal post is sheared into an irreparable mess. Well, that umbrella was nice for the half of a summer we had it...

Bun in Oven

2011-10-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

So, one thing Jen and I started doing this weekend was to start spreading the news. The news is that we're going to be parents! Jen is at the end of her first trimester, so the baby should be due some time in April. She's doing well; her symptoms haven't been too severe. So far things seem to be going smoothly. The next milestone will be finding out the gender, but that's still several weeks off. We're excited and grateful that God has blessed us with a child so soon after we started trying. Anyway, that's the big news!

Anticipation on the Rocks

2011-10-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

Coming home tonight, I was very excited about two things. One is Catching Fire, which is the sequel to The Hunger Games. It is rather good, stringing one cliffhanger ending of a chapter along with the next. I was excited to read it tonight, but I wasn't sure how much I would read because today I also picked up Batman: Arkham City for the XBox 360, which is the sequel to the very excellent game Batman: Arkham Asylum.

My compromise would be that I would read Catching Fire over dinner then switch to the video game. However, Catching Fire caught me up and I ended up reading too far. If I read any more, I wouldn't have enough to tide me over for my time on the exercise bike tomorrow morning. So I switched over to Batman. As the game started it asked me if I wanted to download the free content I was entitled to having bought the game new. I agreed and that was the end of my attempts to play Batman. Right now, after having been going for around 40 minutes, it is at 59%. I suppose I could attempt to play the game, but at this time I'd risk losing the hard won progress. So, here I am writing a blog post.

In other news, I went to a game night at a local coffee shop yesterday night. It was a good deal of fun and I got to learn the game 7 Wonders, which is a pretty cool game. There seems to be a good crowd of pretty normal guys and a few girls that get together to play each week. It's put on by Board Now Games. Seems like fertile ground for making a few friends in the area. I will definitely be going back.

And we've made it to 71%. Ugh.

When a Plan Comes Together

2011-10-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

I had big plans for Saturday, and for once they came together. I was able to go over to my father-in-law's and get my check engine light turned off by his code reader. That was necessary so I could go get my emissions tested, which I did with no delay or problems. That was necessary so I could renew my tags for my Mazda, Daria. Once that was done I did a mess of grocery shopping, buying lots of vitamins. That was necessary because I needed to get a flu shot, and if I bought $25 worth of vitamins I could get a free flu shot. That all went according to plan. As a surprise bonus, I got an email while shopping that let me know I had a book on hold at the library. Since the library was right across the street from the grocery store, that was another triumph.

Jen made fried apples and cheese for lunch, which was a new culinary experience for me, but delightful. We used apples from our friends John and Jen and I turned the rest into an apple pecan pie. We'll be enjoying that with Jen's parents tonight. I also went out and harvested the remaining tomatoes, since it did snow a little bit yesterday and the temperatures were below freezing during the night. I pulled off quite a few of them.

The only two things that didn't turn out so hot yesterday were some pasta and my constitution. In trying to use up the rest of the tomatoes, I made a tomato sauce recipe from smitten kitchen. I haven't had a bad recipe from there, but this one bombed. It calls for adding a bunch of water at the end, which made the sauce soupy and bland. I imagine it would have been all right without it. However, at this point it felt like a blow because I was also starting to feel rather nauseous and achey. I proceeded to have a pretty good set of flu symptoms take hold that left me shivering on the couch. I guess that flu shot may have been a bit too potent. Fortunately, I had The Hunger Games to keep me company under a very warm blanket. The book is grim, but good. It definitely moves at a brisk pace that makes it addictive. I read 2/3 last night and finished it up today. I wanted to read the series before the movie comes out next year. I also had thought about the trilogy as a gift for nephews, but after reading the first book, it's clear I need to wait until they're older. The book lays some parallels to how we in the first world live at the expense of those in the third world, but the author is not heavy handed about it, which I appreciate. I've already put the second book of the trilogy on hold.

Fortunately for me, after a night of laying around reading followed by good sleep and some ibuprofen, I feel just fine today. This is also good, because this was one of the Sundays that we led house church. We did a little experiment and did a hike together as a church group with scripture to read along the way. I dunno how effective it was in practicing solitude on a busy trail, but we had a good time with our church family and it was a beautiful day for a hike following yesterday's solid day of rain. Better yet, we followed it up with frozen yogurt. Score!

Aspens and Burnt Pizza

2011-10-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

Today we went up to see the aspens again, and I'm glad we did. The colors were astounding. We went to Golden Gate State Park and hiked along the Raccoon Trail. At first I had low expectations, as the aspen around the trailhead had passed their prime. However, once we got down into a valley, the colors were awesome and the rocky outcroppings of the park made nice backdrops for our colorful aspen. The hike was a nice 2.5 mile loop and not too strenuous. It is sad, though, that my first real hike of the year is happening in October.

We drove through the rest of the park and then caught Highway 72 over to Nederland, where, unfortunately, we stopped for lunch. I say unfortunately, because the lunch there set my mood for rest of the day in a negative way. We went to Backcountry Pizza. After sitting for a bit and seeing no waitstaff, we ordered at the counter. Okay, that's fine. I asked for a small deep dish supreme After a long while, Gavin and Sarah, who ordered their pizza after us, got their pizza, which was a bit burnt on the crust. We figured that our pizza, being deep dish as well as made in laid back Nederland, would take a little bit longer. Time ticked by and Gavin and Sarah were mostly done with their pizza. I got up and got a refill and inquired about our pizza. I was told then that deep dish could take 30-45 minutes. That would have been handy to know when we ordered. Shortly thereafter, the restaurant was filled with a smoky haze, as something in the oven was burning. We waited and waited. Gavin and Sarah finished their pizza. After what seemed like an hour since ordering, and about the point I was ready to go cancel our order and just grab some slices, they called our name and presented us with a pizza whose crust was quite burnt. The guy at the counter apologized quickly, but at this point I just wanted to get out of there. The pizza wasn't bad, and would have been good if not for the burnt crust and hour long wait.

I suspect they either burnt the pizza or forgot about us. The deep dish isn't as thick of a crust as the normal one, and certainly shouldn't take 45 minutes to cook, let alone the hour ours theoretically was in there. Whatever the case, I won't be returning there.

That set the tone for the rest of the day as I felt hurried, trying to make up the time I'd lost to the incompetent cook. Finally, around 9, I'm finally feeling like I'm out from the funk. I'm looking forward to having some free time tomorrow to make up for it. I see me, my deck, and some alcohol in the near future.Oh, and the pictures from last weekend and this weekend are up as well. I've got them in a Picasa gallery for your viewing pleasure.

Flopping Leaves

2011-09-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we did our annual trip up to look at the aspens with Gavin and Sarah. Unfortunately the two sources we consulted about when the leaves would look the best were both wrong and most of the leaves were still quite green. There were patches here and there of gold, but only a few trees were sporting the brilliantly gold leaves we were seeking. It was an odd mix of leaves. Many aspen at higher elevations were greener than their counterparts at lower elevations. So we're going to try again this weekend. We'll see what happens. Last week, we met in Bailey and then drove up to Kenosha Pass. The parking lot for the trails was full and the leaves were green, so we continued over and then headed through the colorful town of Como. That led us up Boreas Pass, which was pretty, but predominantly evergreens. We did come down into Breckenridge, which was sporting some golden colors. We took a walk and grabbed lunch before continuing over Loveland pass which is devoid of aspens. So, it was not too successful. This week we're starting out in Golden, hoping that the auspicious name of that town will lend its tint to our trip. We'll head up towards Golden Gate State Park (there it is again) and then meander from there. Unfortunately we spent our time budget last week, so this has to be a quicker trip. We have disgusting bathrooms to be cleaned and pies to be made that demand our attention.And on a limited culinary note, I made some ginger lime grape ice cream. The grapes were the base, but all you can taste are the ginger and lime. It's very tasty, but not what I was expecting. I think to get grape flavor, you may have to go with artificial flavors, or at least tarter grapes. But ice cream season is winding down. Perhaps now I need to be focusing on bread. Hmm...

Welcome Home

2011-09-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't heard otherwise, so I'm assuming that my brother-in-law Joe is back in the US from Afghanistan. Welcome home, sailor! I'm grateful to God for his safe return!

I've also been taking walks out to Waneka Lake in the evenings. I miss Nature and the connection I get with God when I'm out there. Tonight was no exception. There was a tremendous sunset. Swallows filled the air and dipped and weaved right above the surface of the lake. A light shower of raindrops rippled the lake, which was reflecting back a blazing sunset framed above rugged mountain peaks. Thanks, God!

Filler

2011-09-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

Filler is one way to describe episodes of a TV show that don't advance the plot. Nothing really changes in the main important story line, and the characters run around in circles for a while trying to entertain the audience while nothing of import occurs. This is particularly apparent in anime shows adapted from manga (Japanese comic books). Anime series will have large stretches of filler while they wait for the manga to get far enough ahead of the series or for the animators to create the episodes that are part of the main story.

Not only is filler inconsequential, but it also tends to be lower quality. The writing is lower quality. The animation is lower quality. It's merely there to entertain the audience and keep them occupied and watching until the new episodes start with the good stuff.

Filler is also creeping into my life. The content that made me think about this was my phone. It has twitter and Facebook and RSS feeds to divert me whenever I have a spare second or two. It has become my interstitial activity. Whenever I have a spare moment between larger activities or events, I pick up my phone to see the latest from twitter or whichever piece of filler can wedge itself into my time. For a while there I even was taking my phone to the bathroom to fill that slice of time where I am somewhat idle.

It's filler content. It's low quality and only there to keep me entertained. What it has done is push out what used to occupy those nooks and crannies in my day. What used to be there was contemplation, prayer, daydreaming and just plain old space. These things give my brain a bit of a respite from work or errands and help keep me connected with God and the world around me. When I am constantly entertained by a screen in front of me, I don't look around and notice the world, the people in it, or the Spirit acting in it.

So today at church as I was running slides for the worship team's rehearsal, I put my phone in its sleeve and set it down. It felt good to have a bit more head space to prayer or contemplate or do whatever and let the mind uncoil and stretch. Let's see if I can make that a habit.

A Narrow Escape

2011-09-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law Joe is in the Navy. Two months after getting married to Jen's sister Christie, he was deployed to Afghanistan for a year. The military is not known for having the best timing in personal matters. So, a year has passed and it is coming time for Joe to come home. In fact, he was supposed to leave Afghanistan on September 11th, not a particularly auspicious date. Indeed, there was a couple of attacks on US bases in Afghanistan, including Baghram Air Force base, so his departure was delayed an indeterminate amount of time until it was safer.

Following the delay, insurgents mounted a bold attack on the US Embassy in Kabul and the NATO bases near it. This definitely got our attention, as Joe's base was right next door to the embassy. We followed the reports of gunfire and rocket propelled grenades seeking out information on any casualties. Thankfully, there were no US or NATO casualties in the attack, though at least 7 Afghans were killed and many more were wounded. Shortly thereafter we got word that Joe had left Afghanistan and was headed to an intermediary base between there and the US for some debriefing. So either he left right in the midst of the attack or just before it.

We're so grateful he was able to get out of Afghanistan safely, though a bit curious as to what exactly happened and whether he was near Kabul when the attack on the 13th occurred. We definitely thank God for protecting him and we are praying for his safe return to the US and to his waiting bride.

Hidden Servants

2011-09-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

Labor Day seems a better day than most to post about servants. I've been reading Bill Bryson's book At Home recently. Bryson in the past has written some travel books that have left me helpless with laughter. His writing is now more historical than hysterical, but he certainly knows how to draw out the more interesting and entertaining tidbits from history which helps keep my eyes on the page.

At Home is a history of the home, or more accurately, how history ends up and accrues in our homes, making them the way they are today. One of the things Bryson covers is how servants kept a household running back in the 18th and 19th century. Mostly their tales were ones of hardship, humiliation and unreasonable employers. Yet they were lucky in a way, as they had a certain modicum of security and stability unavailable to peasant farmers. Still, they worked brutal hours, had no rooms of their own in many cases, and were not exactly treated like people.

It got me to thinking about the many hidden servants we have now. To live the middle class lifestyle Jen and I have grown accustomed to except transplanted to the 18th century would require a coterie of servants. This has made me more grateful for the hidden servants we do employ. Some of the obvious ones are our washer and dryer that keep us in clean clothes and the dishwasher that supports my cooking habits. Servants doing the laundry had one of the worst tasks. Not only were they having to scrub and rinse and mangle, but they had to come up with their own cleaning agents. There was no bleach or detergent back then, so they had to manufacture their own. They also had temperamental fabrics to work with that were treated with dyes that were less stable than their modern counterparts. And if fabrics were mixed, say a linen tablecloth with lace accents, a laundress might have to disassemble the tablecloth to wash each part separately and then reassemble the whole thing afterwards. Then they had to dry the laundry and hope no one stole the laundry (a common occurrence) and cost them their job.

We have more servants still, though less obvious ones. Instead of footmen, we have phones and email that carry our messages to their intended destinations. Plumbing takes the place of those servants that would do the difficult task of drawing a bath or the unpleasant task of emptying chamber pots. Electric lighting takes the place of a host of candles and lamps that would require constant attention from servants to keep lit and prevent them from burning down the house. Then there's the vacumn cleaner, the blender, my car engine, my sprinkler system, and more.

Of course, we no longer have some classes of servants. I dress myself, thank you very much. One noble back in the day was unable to work his own toothbrush because he had a servant who always handed it to him foaming. Without his servant, he thought his toothbrush was broken because it wasn't already foaming. I somehow manage to make it through this life without that service.

So, I am grateful for the hidden servants that support my bourgeois existence. I'm grateful that people no longer must suffer through laundry or larding knives to prevent rust or scrubbing flagstones. I am grateful for those who pick my fruit, ship it across continents and oceans, stock it in my store and manage the checkout process so I can get my pears in July. Thanks!

Gold Life

2011-09-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

There's a new series of Dunnies out called Gold Life. Rather than the normal pattern of having a group of artists design Dunnies around a theme, this whole series is by a single artist: Huck Gee. This particular series looks great and is all based around the Japanese feudal age. It's a great series. I don't think there is one figure in the series that I wouldn't like to have.

Today I picked up a few of the series. It's already sold out from the KidRobot site. I was happy to be able to pick up a few from Plastic Chapel including the two pack of a kabuki actor and samurai (on the right). I was also grateful to get the panda and the tiger (left and center), which were the key ones I wanted, though I didn't get the rhino with the eyepatch. I mean, it's a rhino with an eyepatch! How awesome is that?

Race for the Galaxy Explained

2011-08-31T21:26:00.001-07:00

I have something to share. Jen and I play a game called Race for the Galaxy. It's a card game that was given to us. The great thing is that it is really quick and can be played over lunch. The bad thing is that it takes longer to explain or learn than it does to play. It was really hard to understand from reading the manual and it took quite a while for us to get it internalized and play it right. Now that we understand it, we want to get other people to play it. However, it is a hard game to explain.

Because I am a huge nerd, I went ahead and wrote up a script for explaining the game to new players. I hope that this will make it easier to get others to play it. Just in case it might help anyone else out there, I'm posting it for the public to make use of. Hopefully it will help someone. You can download my explanation of Race for the Galaxy and see for yourself.

Finding Inspiration in Weaponry

2011-08-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

Jen was away on a women's retreat this weekend with her Bible study group, so I was a bachelor temporarily this weekend. It does feel good to stretch out in the bed at night at times. During my solo weekend, I helped some friends from church move. There were a lot of people, so it went mercifully fast. I also went to a game night where we played the interesting economics-heavy game called Power Grid. It's definitely a complex game, and it has some interesting mechanics around supply and demand, among other things. I also went to church and after Jen got back we went down to an open house put on by one of my co-workers.

One awe-inspiring thing happened on Saturday. It was Jen's parents' anniversary this weekend. In an uncharacteristic moment of me thinking about other people, I was inspired to take over a bouquet of flowers to them. After all, this was their 40th anniversary, which is inspiring in and of itself. While driving over there, I saw a strange plane flying in front of me. It banked and I made out the distinctive outline of the stealth bomber. The plane flew past me and out of sight. When I arrived at Jen's parents' place, I was excited to tell them about the sighting. However, Jen's dad was already in the driveway with binoculars. The bomber was circling, so every so often we'd get a good view as the plane banked again.

Finally the bomber broke out of its holding pattern and flew straight towards us. This massive flying wing with the zigzag trailing edge came fairly low and surprisingly quite. Viewed straight on it seemed so thin, like a sliver of black floating through the sky. Then he was directly over us, its unusual shape starkly laid out against the blue Colorado sky. I couldn't help but wave like a 10-year-old boy. It seemed so unlikely that something like that would fly. Then it was past us and heading towards the airshow in Broomfield, and the rumble of the jet engines rolled into to fill its wake. Soon it altogether was gone.

It's not often I am filled with awe. I can get excited. I can be impressed. I can see beauty and ingenuity. I can see the majesty of mountains and feel wonder towards the creativity and power of their Creator. But deep-seated awe is not something I am used to. But that's what this bomber did for me. To see this somewhat beautiful, certainly massive, and definitely powerful craft come quick and quiet right over the top of me and to leave a rumbling sky behind lit up the awe portions of my brain. And to think of the ingenuity of its improbable design and the purpose it serves adds to that awe. It is tempered slightly by the fatal purpose of this craft. All this power, beauty and cleverness was made for the raining of destruction down on enemies from the masking darkness and to guard the lives of the pilots who steer this vessel on its grim and shadowed way. And yet: awe. Perhaps the martial uses of this plane adds in to the sense of awe; its awful power and grace.

The whole event felt like a gift from God. I think the Spirit must have prompted me to take that bouquet over, and I had a nice shared moment with Jen's parents. It left me feeling inspired and grateful. I certainly wouldn't have noticed this circling masterpiece had I been on my couch playing video games or with my nose stuck to my computer screen. Thanks, God!

Tomatoes Down

2011-08-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

Well, last night was evidently a catastrophe for my tomato plants. When I came out to water this morning, both had flopped over, twisting the cages they had been planted in. I wrestled with them for a while trying to get them to stay up through the use of stakes, twine, and lumber, but only by leaning them against the fence and reinforcing them with said lumber was I finally able to get them upright. Hopefully they will survive their trauma. They dropped about 6 tomatoes, most of which were green. I may need to make some green tomato pie. Our plants are loaded and heavy with fruit, so if this trauma kills them off, I'm going to be able to make several pies.

The good news is that from one plant I picked a beautiful, perfect tomato. Most of our tomatoes this year have been marred by deep scars that start from the stem and run down the sides of the tomatoes. I'm not sure if this is disease or pest related, or if the tomatoes are just growing too fast. I did discover that the tomato plants are home to quite a few mosquitoes. They got in a few bites while I was wrestling my errant plants back into being upright citizens of our garden plot. I also noticed that my long-sleeved white workout shirt looked like I'd been wrestling in turmeric after my struggle with the plants. I had no idea tomato plants had that quality to them.

In some other good news, I was able to finally win a game of Dominion. Jen and I played a couple of games, and I was sufficiently grumpy after loss #5 that Jen may not have fully pressed me and I ended up with a decisive win. I still like the game a lot, but I'm going to need to think about it differently.

Post Birthday Post

2011-08-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was my birthday. That's hardly convenient for celebrating, so on Saturday Jen and I, along with both of our sets of parents drove up to Fort Collins to tour the New Belgium Brewery and the Odell Brewing Company. I had to schedule our tour of New Belgium 2 months in advance, but it was well worth it. We got 6 glasses of beer, some of which were rarities. The tour was 90 minutes and really enjoyable. Our guide was a good story teller, amiable personality, and enthusiastic employee. Of the 6 beers, the one that surprised me was the Kick beer. It's a sour beer aged in wine barrels that previously housed red wines. It also has some pumpkin and cranberries in it. It's unlike any other beer I've had, and it was quite enjoyable. So far it is not in wide release. I was sad that they didn't have any of the dunkelweiss beer I had enjoyed. Sad.

Odell Brewing was fine, and had I not just been on an awesome tour at New Belgium that included a spiral slide and 6 glasses of beer, I might have appreciated it more. If you go do brewery tours, hit New Belgium last so everything else doesn't feel like a let down.

After the breweries we hopped on I-25 and drove down to Denver for a meal at my beloved Euclid Hall. They did not fail to impress and the food was excellent. I did finally try the bone marrow, and although it didn't taste bad, it's nothing I'll repeat. The texture was more gelatinous than I had expected, so it mainly was like eating fat. But the spaetzle, cabbage, and poutines did not disappoint. Unfortunately, we had to skip the waffle ice cream sandwich, but fortunately it was for a good reason. Back at our place we had ice cream cake from Sweet Cow Ice Cream. Delicious!

On my actual birthday, Jen had to work, so I went and had dinner with my folks. They got me the game Dominion for my birthday, so I taught them to play that. It's a great game with a clever way of slowly building up what you can do. It has a ton of replayability based on different combinations of cards that you can play with. We had played it before with friends, but I was hungry to have it for my own. Last night Jen and I played it 4 times. The first time we tied (though she technically won), and the next 3 times she gave me pretty solid thrashings. I may need to reformulate the way I play...

The Mysterious Case of the Assault Rifles: Solved!

2011-08-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

Never fear! I persisted and called the Broomfield police's records department and learned the truth: the (not shocking at all) truth behind the police with assault rifles I witnessed. Turns out they were responding to a faulty hold up alarm at the gas station. I know I felt pretty sheepish and embarrassed when I set off the alarm and called the paramedics, but at least they weren't brandishing assault weapons when they responded. I can't imagine how it feels to realize the police are responding with heavy weapons to your indiscretion.

Aaaand in completely unrelated news, my parents are in town. They're on their way to Wyoming for an RV rally, but they're camped out up at St. Vrain State Park and hanging around for my birthday. We're going to tour some breweries on Saturday with them and Jen's folks before heading to Euclid Hall for some birthday like celebrations. I think we'll keep things pretty quiet and mellow this year.

Excitement

2011-08-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

The bats are wheeling around my back yard in the dusk. I'm happy to see them out there devouring the myriad bugs that assault anyone trying to sit out on the deck. It finally is cool enough to make an evening on the deck worth considering. We've even eaten a couple of meals out there. My parents are in town, so perhaps we'll have them over for dinner on the deck.

This weekend I got a new desk. It is a birthday present from Jen and replaces the college furniture grade desk I had before. It looks mature and befitting of someone coming up on a third of a century. I think Jen is more excited about the desk than I am, and I quite pleased to have something more stable and less obstructive of the view. That's how I can see the bats out there while I'm writing this.

Yesterday I had some excitement driving back home from getting my car washed and waxed (also very exciting). I was coming through Broomfield when I saw a patrol car flip on the lights behind a truck. As I watched, however, he didn't pull the truck over, but instead wove through traffic and turned off his lights and parked along the side of the street. I saw him get out and kneel near a gas station sign. I thought he was reaching for his side arm, when I realized in fact he was carrying an assault rifle and taking cover behind the gas station sign. He was drawing a bead on the lone truck at the gas station. Another cop car was coming up quick as well. And then I was past them.

I considered for a moment turning around and rubbernecking a bit. Then I thought about the type of situation that calls for assault rifles and figured I should continue on home to my loving wife. Curiosity did spur me to action, and I called the Broomfield police to see if they could tell me what was going on. Unfortunately the lady I spoke with didn't have the particulars, other than that no fire fight broke out afterwards and no one was hurt. She did give me the number for records, which I may have to call up tomorrow to find out what the deal was.

Another thing I'm excited about is that Jen is playing Portal 2 by herself. We played through the cooperative and had a lot of fun finishing that one up. It is such an excellent game; well written and clever. It even has a satisfying ending. And now she's going through the single player by herself, and sometimes is getting through the puzzles faster than I did. This nerdly husband is proud. However, where I find the snarky Glados AI in the game to be hilarious, Jen wants to destroy her. Jen says her perspective is different from having to work with clients who have mothers who are as nastily passive-aggressive as Glados. Ok, yeah. Having Glados for a mother would be a good reason to spend a long while in therapy. But as long as Valve keeps putting out games this good, I'll be returning for another helping.

Waiting and Preparation

2011-08-06T14:48:00.001-07:00

So, the lawn is mown. The tall grass has been weedeated. Rolls have been made. The roasted corn and poblano salad is chilling in the fridge. The lime curd is cooling down. The brisket bubbling in the slow cooker is almost ready to be shredded for use in sliders. The laundry is clean, but needs folding. Source Code has been viewed, enjoyed, and returned. Groceries have been purchased. Preparations have been made.

This has been one busy Saturday, and it is not over yet. In fact, the main event is yet to come. We're having some friends from church over for games and fellowship. Right now, we're chilling out a bit; putting our feet up and resting before the next burst of activity.

I love productivity. If I store enough it up, I can feel okay sitting down and zoning out with video games or the Internet. When I feel unproductive and ineffectual, I do not do well, especially if I have actually been expending a lot of effort to do things right, but to no avail. Then I simmer in a potent broth of frustration and fear. I've been feeling a bit of that lately, so a productive day feels so good to me, despite how tired I'll be. It's also nice that it was proceeded by my preparing our first meal of the summer out on the deck yesterday. It felt good to finally use our "new" patio furniture and enjoy the yard we spend so much time maintaining. Here's to productivity and summer meals.

Mental

2011-08-02T17:50:00.001-07:00

I'm very happy to hear that Congress decided not to hamstring our economy. Seems like a prudent choice. Of course, we'll have to debate whether to hamstring our economy again in a few months. Evidently the prospect is tempting enough to some that they want another whack at it.

Actually, I don't even have to speculate. There are some people in Congress who have said outright that they think we should have defaulted on our debts. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has repeatedly stated her opposition to raising the debt ceiling. It's not that she opposed the deal passed by Congress, but she was against the very idea of raising the debt ceiling. In an interview where a Fox news anchor asked incredulously if she actually can't call the bill averting a disaster a good thing, she said she couldn't, saying that it would lead to long term ruin. Evidently that is not quick enough for Bachmann, who would seem to want ruin in the short term. Letting the US default on its debt because you're afraid the country will get into serious financial trouble in the future is like cutting off your foot because you're afraid you'll run over a cliff.

The part that really scares me, is that Michele Bachmann is considered a legitimate contender for President. Ron Paul, another GOP candidate, also holds the position that we shouldn't raise the debt ceiling. When these people to say we refuse to pay the debts we already owe and instead default, they lose the right to say the words "fiscal responsibility" except when immediately preceded by the words "I know nothing about". These people need to put down those sweet paint chips they've been munching on, toss that mercury smoothie, and get the heck away from the halls of power before they hurt someone or, you know, hamstring our economy. Taking the economy hostage is not an acceptable way to pass legislation.

Not that the rest of Congress or the President have acquitted themselves well. I'd like to think that Speaker Boehner and Obama could have settled this like adults if Boehner could have kept the crazies in line. Even if their plan went nowhere, the only people who came out of this with much respect left were the members of the Gang of Six who sat down together and put together a plan.

Okay, I'm trying to stop this political stuff. I apologize for the rant. This isn't like me. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

Exhausted

2011-07-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

I'm turning to other stations now when news of the debt ceiling crisis comes on. I get so upset at the shenanigans going on there. It can't be healthy for me. I just get irate when people are willing to wreck the country rather than compromise, especially when a compromise is on the table that has 3 parts the amount of what they want to 1 part of what the other party wants. Hopefully the lunatic fringe can be brought to heel before they throw this country off the tracks.

Arrgh. I'm getting too angry just writing about this. Okay, peaceful interlude:

This last weekend we went for our first camping trip of the season, and my first hike of the season. There is something wrong with that occurring so late in the season, but anyway... We went camping with our church up near Beaver Reservoir. It was great to get out and spend time with the church family. However, with all the kids, dogs, and flaming sticks, it was not the relaxing getaway I long for when I camp. We did sneak away for some hiking by ourselves, which lead us to a secluded spot on the lake. We also did some four-wheeling with some friends. However, over the weekend, I think we both were exhausted. We mainly spent Sunday laying around and recouping.

Unfortunately, the only photos I got from the weekend were sunset pictures like the one above. My camera's batteries went out after just 10 pics. I did get some cell phone pics, in particular of a chair burning in the firepit, but nothing worth writing home about. So why am I writing about them. Sheesh. I should mind my idioms.

Europe Pictures

2011-07-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's late, so I'm just gonna say it straight: Here are my pictures from Europe. You can either just look at the highlights, which I've put in one album, or go through an album for each location. I hope you enjoy!

Trip Highlights - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/Europe2011Highlights?authkey=Gv1sRgCNzqi5zW7v2ZKg

Switzerland (our side trip before the tour) - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/ToBaselAndLucerne?authkey=Gv1sRgCM-ThIeMz52k0gE

Berlin - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/TouringBerlin?authkey=Gv1sRgCJXa5IuAgL3zzAE

Dresden - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/MeetingInDresden?authkey=Gv1sRgCOL7u-SQqfekygE

Litomerice and Terezin - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/LitomericeAndTerezin?authkey=Gv1sRgCIvCkLr8y-HC9AE

Prague - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/TheBeautyOfPrague?authkey=Gv1sRgCI7GsNWf1c7b4QE

Cesky Krumlov - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/TheCharmOfCeskyKrumlov?authkey=Gv1sRgCIvC5sfnvbPDeg

Melk Abbey - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/MelkAbbey?authkey=Gv1sRgCJeU292uzqiiCA

Vienna - https://picasaweb.google.com/nils.thingvall/ToViennaAndHome?authkey=Gv1sRgCIjD0bjGg5fzZA

Processing Europe

2011-07-18T18:13:00.001-07:00

It's interesting. I've been back a week, but I'm still actively processing Europe. Not only am I going through the pictures, catching up on missed work and chores, and cleaning up the detritus from the trip, but I'm also dreaming a lot about Europe. I've had good dreams and nightmares, all set in the amazing architecture of Prague and Vienna.

So as some further processing, here are some things I think Europe needs to get their act together on:

Big coffee with cream to go. Outside of Starbucks and the occassional bowl of cafe au lait, coffee is sold in units of two gulps. And usually you cannot get your sips to go. It's a cultural thing I know, but I. Need. More. Coffee. Also, milk is not cream. Coffee with milk is categorically inferior to coffee with cream or half-and-half. Scientifically provable fact.
Iced coffee. Again, outside of Starbucks and one exceptional coffee shop we found in Berlin (We ♥ Coffee next to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), iced coffee is hard to come by. We did have this weird lukewarm mocha with a dollop of ice cream. Not acceptable. Get on it.
Water fountains. Vienna gets a pass on this, but trying to find drinking fountains in the summer heat in Berlin made me very grumpy and frustrated.
Pay toilets. Really? C'mon.
Sheets. When it is 95 degrees out, you do not want a heavy duvet to sleep under, especially in an unairconditioned hotel room. You know what would be nice? A nice thin sheet. Why do you have no sheets?
Shower curtains. We only found this in one hotel, but when you have to shower without a shower curtain, it is a highly unsatisfactory experience.
Poppy seeds are not a proper pastry filling. It is quite disappointing to bite into a pastry you think is filled with chocolate, only to get a mouthful of poppy seeds. That slightly sour, slightly dirt-like flavor should not be concentrated, and certainly not in lovely flaky pastry.

Okay. Now that that is done, let's talk about what the US needs to learn from Europe:

Clever windows. All over we saw these clever windows. You could open them on hinges from the bottom to make an opening at the top. It's great for getting air but maintaining privacy. The clever bit comes when you swivel the handle around the other direction and you can open it on hinges from the side, just like many US windows. Brilliant.
Effective blinds. The window blinds at the apartment of our friends Angie and Matthias came down and closed all by twisting a handle. Once they were shut, light barely could make it in, which caused me to panic a little the first time I woke up during the night and couldn't see a blessed thing.
Doors with lips. Also aiding in darkening that room were the doors. Rather than closing flush with the door frame, the doors have little lips around them that sit on top of the door frame covering the gap between the door and frame. Why don't we have these?
Gelato. Ok, we have gelato, but not like the masterpieces I had in Vienna. If you're there, you need to go to Zanoni & Zanoni. Two blocks down from that is the 99.5% as good Castalleto gelateria. Blissful and cheap to boot.
Courtyards. I can't necessarily explain why I love courtyards so much, but the privacy and peace seems so much better than a backyard.

Anyhow, there's a little more Europe. I'm captioning photos right now, so hopefully the galleries will be good to go here soon. Stay tuned!

Missing Irony

2011-07-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Go figure. I spent a lot of the trip in Europe panicking that I had lost something. First thing was I couldn't find my bag of pills I brought along. I searched everywhere I could think of multiple times, but I couldn't find them. They were just vitamins, so I was able to buy some more easily, but I couldn't figure out how the heck I had managed to not put them in my luggage. Then, about two thirds of the way through the trip, Jen was going to borrow my dental floss and when she rummaged through my toiletry kit, she found my vitamins. I had searched my toiletry kit three times while looking for the pills. How the heck had I missed them? Evidently they were hidden behind a wall of those EmergenC packets I'd brought along. Though I am glad I had not somehow managed to leave them at home, I was less than pleased about my inability to find a big bag of pills in a small toiletry kit.

This was to be a theme for the trip. I would freak out that I had lost something and then I would find it several days later. This included a flash drive of pictures that turned up later in a jacket pocket, 200 Czech kroners that I thought had been pickpocketed, my document pouch I feared I had left in airport security, and so on. Thankfully I didn't announce my freak outs, because then I would have double embarrassment when I found the missing item.

The irony is that on our very long trip home, I managed to lose two very important items and not even notice until a friendly employee from the Montrose, Colorado airport called me up to tell me I had left my library book on the plane along with my passport that I was using as a bookmark. This was even after I had unpacked my bag. Evidently that's where our plane from Calgary ended up. I can give myself some leeway for forgetting it, as I was in a very foggy mental state when we landed, but I am not overlooking the irony that everything I freaked out about losing was found and what would have been really awful to lose was not even missed.

So tomorrow my book and passport will be en route to me. I am grateful to be back where losing something doesn't mean returning to a foreign country or retracing steps through airport security. I'm also grateful that my head is attached to my body. Who knows where it would end up otherwise?

Back in the US of A

2011-07-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

Europe was grand, the US is great, and I am jetlagged. Yesterday, and sort of the day before, was almost 27 hours of travelling. We were up at 4:45 AM Vienna time on the 8th, which would have been 8:45 PM Denver time on the 7th. After passing through Heathrow and Calgary, we made it home around 11:30 PM Denver time on the 8th, thus the nearly 27 hours. Suprisingly (or not, depending on your experience) we couldn't really sleep in today, so we were getting groceries before 8 AM.

All that said, we had a great time in Europe and we have more than 3,600 pictures to show it (3,000 from me, 600 from Jen). I'll spare you the whole story and give you the brief run down. We started out in Basel, Switzerland visiting my friends Angie and Mathias and their new baby Olivia. They were terrific hosts, especially considering their new parents status, and we saw some excellent sites in Switzerland and extreme southwestern Germany including a vista from the top of the Rigi near Lucerne and a visit to the Vitra Design Campus in Weil am Main.

We braved EasyJet and made it to Berlin where we met up with Jen's sister and parents and the rest of the Rick Steves tour group. We spent a couple days mainly in East Berlin before departing for a day in Dresden. After that we crossed over into the Czech Republic stopping at the Terezin concentration camp before ending up in Prague. We spent a couple of days in that gorgeous city before heading to the village of Cesky Krumlov. It is a picture perfect village with an impressive castle towering over it, and a great place for us to celebrate our anniversary. The next day we stopped briefly in Melk, Austria to check out the monastery there before ending up in beautiful Vienna, where we spent two and a half days gawking at buildings, eating great food, checking out the art and culture, and gorging ourselves on insanely good gelato.

By the time our trip was over, I think we were ready to be back home. I was sad to leave the splendor of Europe, but I was very happy to make it back safe and sound to the States, where the coffees are large, the beds have sheets, and drinking fountains are taken for granted.

Naturally, I will be putting up pictures here in the relatively close future. I'll probably do a condensed gallery for the ADD set and also put up a more detailed version for those who want the whole story. Of course, first I have to sort through 3,000 pictures...

Taking T-Mobile Overseas

2011-06-20T19:25:00.000-07:00

It's not often I am thrilled by talking to customer service. Yet when I spoke with a guy at T-Mobile, I was, namely because he provided me with a ton of great information. I'm going to be taking my phone with me to Europe. I should be able to use the wi-fi powers of my G2 to get data and make calls. However, my wife spoke with T-Mobile and found out there are many different ways you can get inadvertently charged for cell service, making turning your phone off or putting it in airplane mode about the only way to avoid charges.

My quest was to find out if there was a way I could leave my wi-fi on, but avoid any over the air charges. The rep from T-Mo got me almost all the way there. Here are the steps and advice he gave me for avoiding charges while abroad.

Turn off data roaming. You can do this in Android by going to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks and unchecking Data Enabled and Data Roaming. This way your phone won't try to get its data from the T-Mo network.
Use wi-fi calling with a caveat. I can call phones in the US for no charge using wi-fi. However, if you try to call a phone in a non-US country, even if it is in the room next you, it will be charged to your account as an international call. Wi-fi calls originate from the US, making US calls domestic and calls to anywhere else, still international.
Don't let people call you. If you are abroad and someone calls you, even if you don't pick up and it goes to voice mail, the network had to find your phone and you'll be charged for a minute of international air time. You can stop this by setting up unconditional call forwarding, which means anyone who calls your number will go straight to voice mail without the network trying to find your phone. You can do this on any T-Mobile phone by dialing in a special code. Dialing **21*18056377249# will turn it on. Dialing ##21# will turn it off. Wunderbar!

Now, the one thing I haven't figured out how to avoid is a charge when your phone checks in with a tower. If keep my phone in airplane mode, I should be able to avoid this, but if I want to use wi-fi, I'll have to grit my teeth and take the charge. I might be able to get away if I remove the SIM card, but that's a pain to do and I don't want to carry my SIM card separately for fear of losing or damaging it.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the intel.

EMTs and the Unintended Consequence of Working Early

2011-06-20T19:05:00.001-07:00

I really thought I was going to post on Tuesday. Now almost a week has gone by. Yesterday we celebrated Father's Day with Jen's parents. We saw X-Men: First Class, which I quite liked, and then we got pizza and ice cream at Lucky Pie and Sweet Cow. That's a good celebration.

This weekend I also attempted to rake up the cotton coating our yard. If Zeus ever tires of having Sisyphus move that boulder, he can have the poor guy turn to trying to rake cotton out of a lawn. When I was done, I had filled a 30 gallon trash bag with the stuff, and yet my yard looked like I hadn't done anything. Then it rained, and the remaining cotton has mostly dissolved or disappeared. Go figure.

Work has been difficult but enjoyable. I've been parsing rather ill-conceived data sets into matrices in order to display them as tables. Then I have to make them editable, reorderable, and addable and then turn them back into the same format as the aforementioned data sets. My brain has been working overtime. Sometimes it seizes up, but I have made it through the complex grids. I feel smarter.

Too bad that didn't help me on Friday. See, on Friday I went to work early in order to work on the complex grids. I arrived before anyone else, which is unusual. I went to turn off the alarm, but my code wouldn't work. It'd been a long time since I had to deal with the alarm, so I couldn't remember if I had to press a different key at the end of my code. So I started punching in my code and following it with a different key. Finally the alarm went into high gear, the kind that summons police officers and triggers an animal panic in a person. It certainly did in me. My hand started shaking and I started hitting buttons I knew had nothing to do with disarming the alarm. Finally I called my boss, who was in the shower, and he walked me through several attempts at silencing the alarm before we finally got it to work. I apologized and walked upstairs. Then my boss called me back. He told me that police and EMTs had been dispatched, because, in my panic, I had hit the medical emergency button. Oops. He said he told them to not come, but he told me to be prepared for some imminent arrivals. Thankfully the police never showed, but the EMTs did. I apologized profusely and they were thankfully understanding. I considered baking them cookies or something to apologize. It took a while for me to calm down enough to work. So much for getting an early start.

Denken auf Deutsch

2011-06-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

Exercise time is German time for me now. In preparation for our trip, I'm pulling out my old college German textbook and while riding the exercise bike, I'm brushing up on my dative/accusative prepositions, vocabulary, and irregular conjugations. It's encouraging to me how much of my 3 long lost years of German is coming back to me. It's also alarming when I realize more and more how much I don't know. Speaking a foreign language is often frustrating for me. Because I enjoy the nuances and complexities of language when speaking in English, being reduced to a 1st grade level of speaking proficiency is galling to me. So even though I have a native German speaker as a friend, I never use it, especially since she speaks better English than some native speakers. Of course, I realize that's going to be the case with most of the people I encounter in Germany. I'm probably going to study and study and then not use it for anything more than reading signs.

But I am having fun. German is a pretty logical language, and most of the words are compound ones that make for amusing ideas. For instance, ein Schrank is a cabinet. A refrigerator is ein Kuhlschrank (literally a "cool cabinet"). A freezer is ein Tiefkuhlschrank (literally a "deep cool cabinet"). Eine Tasse is a cup. A saucer, then is naturally eine Untertasse ("under cup"). One word for a mat, like a bath mat, is ein Vorleger ("the thing that lays in front"). And an important one: Nachtisch ("after table") is dessert. I am driving Jen a little crazy by trying to say everything in German, or translating what I just said. "Because the door was open, I thought that you had gone downstairs" becomes "Weil der Tür geoffnet war, habe ich gedacht dass du hinunter gegangen wärst" or something like that.

Outside of German, things have been busy. The cotton from our trees is coming down like snow, except snow melts and this crap sticks around and gums up my lawn mower and gets tracked in the house until we either have a downpour or a mighty wind. So mowing this weekend was tough and ineffectual. There were many other chores, and I made some awesome chicken sandwiches and a decent ice cream pie for some friends that came over. We were so exhausted. We did little on Sunday other than church and a walk along Boulder creek.

Oh, I did get sucked into Angry Birds, now that it is free and runs in my browser. Then I got Jen sucked into it. Our productivity will take a hit for a while. I'm also getting drawn into the Tim Keller sermons even more. Today he was talking about the Fall and made a really good point about how the root sin, the root temptation in Genesis was to break our trust that God is good. The serpent was saying, "If you follow God, you're going to miss out. You're not going to get the good stuff." He didn't try to argue that God didn't exist, or that God didn't really say what He said. It was that God was keeping the good stuff for himself, wasn't looking out for us, and wouldn't give us what we needed if we followed Him. Wow. That's some good insight. I see that assumption buried deep in a lot of my sins, especially those of omission. I don't step out in faith because of a root lack of trust that God is good and will take care of me or at least make it all work out for good. I'm looking forward to the rest of the CDs. I'm woefully ignorant of any current events, but this is the situation during NPR pledge drives. Well, with those lemons I'm making lemonade ... Oder soll ich 'Limonade' sagen?

Thank You God for My Hearing

2011-06-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

Let's see. I'm finally playing Portal 2. I got in an hour and really enjoyed it. Very funny game. Maybe sometime this week I'll get another hour? Anyway, the cottonwoods are starting their assault on our our yard with small dusting of cottons; mere portents of the drifts to come. I'm starting to practice my German again. Oh, and I almost got T-boned by a speeding fire engine.

So, there's a hill I usually race up on my commute so I can make it through the light at the top. On Tuesday, the crosswalk was flashing a Don't Walk sign, so I sped up to make it through the light. Just before I got to the intersection, I heard a thunderous blat of a horn and I wisely put on the brakes. I stopped outside the intersection in time to see a fire truck with all the lights going blast through the red light. Had I tried to make my intersection, that engine would have been picking me out of their grill.

For this reason, I have not and will not use headphones in my car. This is pertinent this week since the local NPR station is doing their pledge drive and I brought my Playbook along to listen to podcasts during my commute. Unfortunately, it is a bit too quiet to listen effectively on the freeway. I spent part of my commute holding it near my ear like a loud cell phone. But no headphones for me. My hearing is a bit too important to survival. Fortunately, Jen's parents came to the rescue and lent me their CDs of Timothy Keller sermons. I listened to two today, and although they aren't as jam-packed with awesomeness as his books, they are quite good. They also are the perfect length. The sermon on the drive home today ended as I was pulling into the garage.

Throw Back

2011-06-06T19:30:00.001-07:00

There is something seriously wrong with me. I have a free evening and a copy of Portal 2, and I still haven't even taken the shrink wrap off it. What the heck?! Instead I am writing this blog and posting pictures. The pictures are of Laura's birthday celebration. We joined up at Steuben's to grab dinner before journeying over to the Fillmore for roller derby. You can see the photographic evidence in my gallery.

I'm not sure when roller derby started making its comeback. I remember being rather confused by it during the 80's. I was a kid, but I could still sense the theatrics involved, and I couldn't quite fathom what the heck was going on. Now with a little more experience under my belt, I found I actually was enjoying it quite a bit. There were no theatrics; no staged dives or choreographed spills. These girls were taking it seriously and the falls were real and painful. It was actually quite fun, even standing in the smelly heat for the whole 2 plus hours.

The home team was the 5280 Fight Club and the visitors were The Oly Rollers from Olympia. They were supposedly the best two teams in the league, but the Fight Club got their lunch eaten by the opposing team, which was too bad. Still, it seemed like everyone had fun. About the only disturbing thing was the half time bout by the Roller Punks. The Roller Punks are 12-17 year-old girls doing roller derby, which I think is actually kind of awesome. However, the young girls with their cheeks hanging out the backside of their spankies were a bit disturbing. I'm having flash forwards to being a dad and thinking "You're not leaving the house dressed like that."

The rest of the weekend was spent doing yardwork, having lunch with our friends Glenn and Jenny, and playing Lego Pirates of the Carribean on XBox. We also had the exciting arrival of patio furniture. Jen's parents got themselves some new furniture, so we inherited theirs. We have greatly expanded our ability to host people on our deck now and don't have to rely on the mismatched mish mash of plastic and vinyl we've been sporting thus far. Sounds like time for a deck party.

What Was

2011-06-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

The week has been packed, so here's a quick recap:

Memorial Day weekend was mainly yard work and barbecues. I made a great corn salad and some other stuff. We started doing some planning for our Europe trip. We got the new Lego game: Pirates of the Carribean. It's fun. The weekend was good.

This week we had a guy from one of our clients fly out and work on site. It's stopped me from programming, but the planning and brainstorming we have done will save me tons of time and heartburn in the future. I am all for this sort of thing. Also, we drank beers in the sun at picnic tables at the office and had good lunches. That is good.

Earlier in the week I had celebratory drinks with the rest of the team that worked on a massive and frustrating project for another client. We drank big beers at Gov's Park and toasted never having to touch that code again.

Also this week at work, they filmed an episode of the show Eats Street in our parking lot. It runs on the Cooking Channel. There's a really good chance you will have the opportunity to get to see me eat a freezing cold ice cream sandwich on television. My boss John has a bit more info on his blog here.

I bought Portal 2 today, which was on sale for $40 (awesome!!!) at Best Buy. I can't believe I'm writing this blog post rather than playing it. What the heck?!

The Playbook on the Road

2011-06-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

So, I gave the Playbook its road test while I was in Mexico. In general, it did quite well. Right at the airport, it showed an advantage over a laptop: I didn't have to take it out of my backpack to go through security. Score!

During flight time, I did give it a go watching TED talks and other podcasts. I was using my Android ear buds, and unfortunately they were not powerful enough to overcome the background noise of the airplane and make speech intelligible, even with the Playbook and the app at full blast. I also had brought along a pair of Blackberry ear buds I had gotten for free at 360|Flex. These proved to be powerful enough to make the speech intelligible, but were exceptionally annoying because they kept popping out of my ears, despite the three different sizes of ear buds I tried. So, I was able to listen, but not contentedly. I'm sure the Android headset would have been adequate for music, but not for speech.

Once I was relaxing on the veranda, the Playbook was great. I listened to and viewed more podcasts without any problem and in good comfort. Even the partial sun didn't mar the screen's brightness.

I also used the Playbook as a tool for running a trivia night in Mexico, and it worked quite well for that. I was viewing a Word doc, so nothing too complex. I had planned to be playing music and running a timer simultaneously, but that proved to be overkill ... for the trivia, not the Playbook. When I tested that trio of functionality before the trip, it worked great with the exception of the timer not rotating to portrait mode and that making switching apps wonky.

I also played games on the Playbook, namely BubbleMech Lite from Coldwired Games. It was a great experience. Not that the game is hardware intensive, but as a general experience, it was good. The game is good too. I'm waiting for the full version of this to come out.

So, overall, I was pleased. I still turned to books for the majority of my flight time entertainment, but I certainly intend to take the Playbook on future trips. High portability and a good battery life are also good aspects. Now if only they could get freaking TweetDeck on there...

Views from Mexico

2011-05-26T19:29:00.001-07:00

I have to say, I'm really glad that the Picasa app has been updated so that you can easily upload all your starred photos. Maybe they have had that and I'm thinking of saving or moving them. I dunno. Anyway, the short of it is, I've got pictures up from our trip to Mexico. As is customary, you can view them in my online gallery. I believe that is what the cool kids are doing these days.

In totally unrelated news, I learned today during my reading of the Pueblo Chieftain, that there is a player for the Arizona Diamondbacks named J.J. Putz. Wow. That is an unfortunate name, especially because that means that his last name is plastered across the back of his uniform, like a label. Unfortunate.

Back Stateside

2011-05-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

Jen and I are back stateside after the RealEyes crew took a trip down to Mexico. We went to Puerto Aventuras, which is about an hour south of Cancun and the location of a previous RealEyes trip. This time however, we stayed in an even awesomer hacienda with enough space for everyone. I'll get some pictures up eventually, but it was an incredible mansion on the water with a big courtyard.

While we were there we kayaked in the ocean, swam, read, ate and drank. We were supposed to go on a catamaran tour, but they postponed it to Thursday, which was unfortunately at a time after Jen had to leave. She had a class she needed to attend back here in Colorado, so she had to leave early. I drove her up to the airport and came back without incident, for which I am grateful. I'll admit that driving alone through a foreign country with infamously corrupt police made me a bit nervous. However, when I got back, I found out that the boat trip was cancelled due to high winds and a broken motor. So no boat trip for either of us.

Instead we bummed around Puerto Aventuras enjoying 2 for 1 margaritas before heading into nearby Playa Del Carmen later in the evening for walking along their impressive marketplace and then grabbing a late dinner at the truly excellent Yaxche restaurant. They served Mayan cuisine, and although I doubt Mayans regularly ate this type of feast, it was really good.

While we were down there, we also did several competitions, including seeing who could get the most coconut milk, a photo scavenger hunt, board games and trivia. I won a game of Apples to Apples and got a USB drive as a prize, and got second in the photo scavenger hunt and got an iPod nano as a prize. That was quite fun.

It was a good vacation with no major hiccups. I flew back in on Saturday and Jen picked me up after her class. Today was primarily spent at church and doing the catch up chores of laundry and mowing. It's funny that as much as I wanted and needed vacation, I was ready to come back. More than just wanting to escape the humidity, I felt a need to get back into routine and healthy habits. No more excessive eating (well, less excessive eating), no endless bowls of guacamole, no sunburns, and definitely no nasty sangrita (which is like salted, alcoholic koolaid).

We'll see how the body reacts to getting up at 6 again rather than the 8:30 or so we did in Mexico.

Playbook Development

2011-05-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

This week I gave a presentation at the Rocky Mountain Adobe Users Group about developing for the Playbook with AIR. You can watch the presentation recording if you like. Jun Heider also presented about developing for the iPad using Flash Builder. It went pretty well, certainly much better than the half presentation I did at the RMAUG unconference at 360|Flex. I even got an invite to speak at another user group in the area, which is some good affirmation!

I've been using my Playbook more and more. I've finally found a good use for it outside of cooking and travel. When I'm on the exercise bike, I can surf the web using the Playbook and tuck it inside the little reading stand built into the bike. I've found a decent feed reader for the Playbook too, so I can look at my RSS feeds as well as get my webcomic fix.

I have been having a few network connectivity issues, but I'm not sure if that is a fight between my network and the Playbook or just the Playbook itself. It seems to be doing all right recently. However, the other day I was downloading a heap of podcasts in preparation for my upcoming vacation, and I had to babysit the downloading process. It would stall every 4 to 60MB and I would have to restart the app. But then again, this morning I downloaded a few more and it behaved flawlessly, burning through the queue of Planet Money podcasts. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Playbook functions as a laptop stand-in as I fly down to Mexico.

Lazy and Busy

2011-05-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

I just pulled some scones out of the oven. Earlier I built a zombie defense wall using all the branches we've trimmed, collected and sawed. It'll be picked up this week by the city, for which I am grateful. Also, I planted some mint. Then there were groceries, laundry, and the like. So I've been a bit busy today. But I'm also feeling oh so lazy.

I'm in vacation mode. Jen and I will be leaving to go down to Mexico soon for the RealEyes trip. We're headed to the south of the country near Cancun, so hopefully that puts us far enough away from drug cartel violence and the ancillary business that goes with it. We are both looking forward to some sun and relaxation.

It's been uncharacteristically wet, making the impending sunbathing all the more appealing. We had one day straight of nothing but rain, followed by some more rain. This is piddling stuff compared to Oregon, but for Colorado, a day and a half of solid rain is unusual. Then we had a beautiful day yesterday. And today we're getting heavy rain again. Too much time here in this sunny state is making me feel more like the solar-powered natives who require consistent sunshine to function. But soon, Mexican sun will be recharging my batteries.

Bun Bun Bun Bun

2011-05-05T19:52:00.000-07:00

We have a rabbit in our backyard. I think we do. I'm not sure any more. Around Easter we noticed a very cute little bunny out there. We figured he was passing through ... well, we hoped he was at least; Jen maybe less so, as she was hypnotized by the bun bun's cuteness. Apparently, though, he was not passing through. Content in our fenced in yard, guarded from many predators and us by our fence and deck, he was eating holes in our yard. It would not be long before he'd start on our volunteer lettuce. So we ended up getting a live trap.

I set it up after a long day of yardwork, which probably scared him out anyway. It sat there for a few days, its carrots scorned by the bunny. Then I came down and the carrots were gone, the trap was sprung and locked, but there was no bunny. Huh. Evidently that is one quick rabbit. I may have screwed up by not putting it out there without arming it to lull the rabbit into complacency. Now he may be gun shy, so to speak. Of course, it might not have been the rabbit anyway. We haven't seen him since, but something ate the bait.

I've done some reorganizing of my links, and added in some really, really good new webcomics. Unsounded is tremendous. Fantastic art, creative use of the medium, and interesting characters. I hope this one is around for a long while. Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hardboiled Shaman hasn't been around for too long, but it has grabbed me with what it has thus far. If you're looking for a serious webcomic (a la Persepolis), the Eisner-nominated Zahra's Paradise is a good one set in Iran. The art is striking and the story is moving. And the there is Ratfist, which is an insane comic by the creator of Earthworm Jim.

Finally, I need to throw in a recipe, mainly for myself. I improvised something that turned out really well, so I want to record it. It's a nice "throw things in a skillet, cook, serve over carbs" recipe.

Curried Bratwurst Goulash Thing

6 bratwurst
2 tsp. olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 14.5 oz. can chickpeas (garbanzo beans) drained
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 smaller can corn with peppers (like 2/3 the size of the 14.5 oz. can?), drained
1/2 tsp. garam masala
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1/2 C. cilantro, chopped
Cooked rice

Heat the oil in a skillet and then brown the bratwurst in it. Remove the bratwurst to a cutting board and add in the onion to the oil. Cook the onion over medium high heat until limp. Meanwhile, slice the bratwurst into 1/4 inch rounds and add back to the skillet. Add in the chickpeas and cook covered for 3-5 minutes. Add in the tomatoes with their juices, the corn, and spices minus the cilantro. Cook over medium high heat for about 5-7 minutes covered. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro. Serve immediately over hot rice.

This is a suprisingly pretty recipe, what with the mixture of colors and all. The bratwurst works better than I thought it would, and the flavor is really great after it has sat in the fridge overnight. We served it with brown rice, which defies coming out decently, so half of it was burned. So I found that this also goes equally well over toast.

Oh, and one more thing: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is an unexpectedly good and hilarious film. It's definitely crazy and wacky, but with lots of really great little details and fun, over the top moments. I want this in my library for repeat viewings.

Moving May Day

2011-05-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the weather forecast was promising a mixture of snow and rain and highs in the 40s. I am glad to say that was not the case because we were helping our friends Nathan and Elizabeth move into their new house. I was happy because not only were we moving them from an apartment to their first house, but we were also moving them closer to us and into a space with more room for game nights, as well as their two sons, including their newborn Samuel.

The weather was actually great for moving, the stuff was nicely organized in boxes, there were many hands to make the work light, and thankfully, there was not much in the way of stairs to deal with. The move went smoothly except Jen got a nick on a finger and I stupidly missed a shelf in the bottom of a bookshelf and got my hand very painfully pinched when it fell. That left a gruesome looking wound on my hand, which thankfully doesn't hurt as bad as it looks.

Moving was followed up with excellent chili and apple cake made by Elizabeth. Then we hit the store and came home to shower and take a long nap. Later, we watched Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which wasn't actively bad, but certainly a step down from the previous Narnia movies. I made some pretty bad guacamole that we ate with cheese-drenched chips that made the bad guac tolerable.

Anyway, that was Saturday. Thankfully today my congestion from the allergies/cold/whatever is gone and I'm feeling almost back to myself. Hopefully that will stay through the day and whatever it is we end up doing.

Blackberry Playbook: Second Impressions

2011-04-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

Ever move from one region of the country to the other and find familiar staples have been replaced with different, sometimes inferior versions of themselves? There are no Burgervilles, but there are Steak n' Shakes. There are no Shari's, but there are plenty of Perkins. Key Bank is gone, but Wachovia's everywhere. IHOPs are now Waffle Houses. The guy selling furniture on TV owns a lion instead of a tiger. It's not quite Bizarro-world, but things feel off. This is the feeling I get with the Playbook. Coming from an Android world, the Playbook feels adequate, but off.

I finally got a chance to sit down with my Playbook and get acquainted with it. My overall impression is that it is a solid piece of hardware, but awkward and ungainly in many places, but beautiful in others. Unfortunately, it also has some huge gaping holes.

The Good Stuff

The performance on the device is great so far. The touch screen is responsive, the OS is fast, and lag seems to be non-existent (with one exception, I'll touch on later). Video on the device is brilliant and beautiful, and the sound put out by the little speakers is listenable and strong. I can actually imagine myself using the Playbook to watch movies or podcasts while traveling.

The device itself is nice. It is smaller than I had expected, but it will be nice and portable. You can easily hold it in one hand and the backing of the tablet where your fingers will rest has a quite pleasing texture. The screen is nice and bright. The battery seems to have a very nice life to it as well.

Network connections are where I can see some lag. I can't tell if this is application specific or device specific. The browser speeds along at a respectable rate, but while watching some videos on the YouTube and National Film Board of Canada apps there were times of buffering making the media unwatchable. Other times I could watch just fine. It seems good most of the time, though.

There are some apps that are quite good. The weather app and the calculator are exceptionally good. The podcast app is also quite excellent.

Things That Make Me Go "Meh"

The cameras on the Playbook are a disappointment. There are two of them with 3MP in the front and 5MP in the back. Both take pretty disappointing pictures. Even with good light, there is a lot of speckling and noise as if I was shooting in low light. I haven't taken it out into bright daylight yet, but this is a tablet that is probably not going to be used in that setting often. For as vibrant as the video output is, it would be nice to have inputs that are even close to being worthy of being shown in the same venue. Also, pictures in the gallery view won't rotate with the orientation of the tablet. This means that pictures taken while holding the tablet in portrait mode are scrunched down to fit into landscape mode when viewed, regardless of whether you're holding the tablet in portrait or landscape mode.

The OS is a different experience in the aforementioned not-quite-Bizarro-world way. Coming from Android, I'm used to having a standard, ever present back button. On the Playbook, going back in an application or context is always a different way. Some places have an explicit back button. Some have a home button. Others lack a back button at all, requiring you to minimize the app. The same is true for submit buttons. Sometimes there will be a submit button in the app interface and other times its a button in the pop-up keyboard. That's a UI design that'll take some getting used too. Also, for a touch device, the Playbook has some really tiny interface buttons. Mainly here I'm thinking of the application close buttons. Often times I'll reenter an app while trying to close it.

More of the "different" feel of Playbook comes from the app selections. There's no Google maps, but instead, there's Bing maps. There's no Pandora, but instead there's Slacker Radio (which incidentally was a Steaming Pile of Fail when I used it). The browser also uses Bing to search, rather than Google.

Steaming Piles of Fail

There are no calendar or email apps. The Gmail app on the desktop is just a shortcut to the Gmail site. Same with the Yahoo! email app, which I couldn't get to work when I tried it. Facebook? Twitter? Both are links to the respective websites.

Manual sleep mode is broken. Supposedly you press the power button to put the device to sleep. It does not work at all for me. Plus that stinking power button is so tiny and close set to the surface that I have to use a pen to press it and be sure it registers.

One promise was that the Playbook would run Android apps. Well, not really. I thought that I could run to the Android Marketplace to fill in the gaping holes in the Playbook's app selection. I spent a good while trying to figure out how to install an Android app on the Playbook and couldn't get it. After some research, I found that the promise of running Android apps means that developers can take their Android apps, package them as Playbook apps and then put them in Blackberry App World. So this means no supplementing App World with the Android Marketplace. Which means the apps I have come to depend on are absent

I saw a recent figure saying there are just over 1,700 apps in App World, which is a surprisingly low number. This means that the field is open for developers to put out their apps. I have become dependent on certain apps on my phone that are not available for Playbook. Where is my TweetDeck? Where is Pandora? Where's Grooveshark? Where is my YouVersion Bible? (To be fair there are other Bible apps, but YouVersion rocks.) Where is my Astrid To-Do list? Where's GTalk? Skype? I guess I feel a bit guilty for beating up the Playbook because it's not Android. Still, I want these apps. Hopefully they will show up in time.

Overall, I guess I'm a bit disappointed with the Playbook. Hopefully the app selection will grow and my expectations will change. I'm not sure what I should expect from a tablet. I think I'm coming in thinking it should be like my phone, but with more options. After playing with the Playbook, mainly I expect to use this for travel entertainment and online recipes in the kitchen. I don't foresee me laying down my phone to use the Playbook unless I want to watch a movie or read an eBook. But that's all right. I got this for "free".

Recovery & Gain

2011-04-26T17:18:00.001-07:00

I'm sick. I have a gamut of symptoms, none horribly severe, but all unpleasant. Currently I seem to be in the headache phase. For this reason, I stayed home from work, alternating doing work on the laptop with naps and moaning. It's unfortunate that I'm sick, for the obvious reasons, but also because that time overlapped with my parents' visit here for Easter. Thankfully I haven't been fully incapacitated, so I could enjoy some time with them before they left this morning.

My parents flew in on Thursday and Jen picked them up. We enjoyed showing them Smallworld, walking around Boulder, and having Easter with them. They took my car while I was at work and ran errands, did some sightseeing, and visited with friends.

Easter was pretty intense. There were a lot of folks over at Jen's parents' place and I think the prelude to my sickness was in effect making the party a bit overwhelming. At one point I had to hide down in the basement for a nap. Thankfully my pear anise pie and sweet and hot mustard were a big hit. I just wish I had gotten more of my pie.

One perk of today, or complication depending on how you look at it, was that while I was home sick, my Playbook arrived. I wasn't expecting it this soon. I had to deny my nerdly gadget lust and leave the box unopened so I would rest and work. Now that I'm done working, I'm starting it up and beginning to play.

The packaging was interesting. The interiors boxes were almost like origami. The instructions were on cards bound together with a band. Interesting. The device itself is smaller than I first imagined it, even though I'd been told it is a 7 inch screen. If I were buying this rather than getting it in trade for my app building, I would want something with a larger screen, I think. The back is this interestingly textured material that I just want to run my fingers over and caress.

One disappointing thing is that the Playbook had to do a lengthy software update before it even got going. I guess that indicates how close to the 11th hour Blackberry has been working on the OS and firmware. So far it seems nicely responsive and comfortable in the hand. Despite my feeling that it is rather small, I think that may make it a nice device for traveling. It certainly will be easier to use on a plan than this ridiculously large laptop I'm typing on right now. We'll have to see how well this works out.

Weekend Clusterfluff

2011-04-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jen and I did a lot of church stuff before she went off to visit a friend and I settled down for some reading. The day before I finished the excellent A Wise Man's Fear while we read by the creek in Boulder. It's so nice to hear running water again. After our sunny reading session we strolled the Pearl Street Mall and picked up some ice cream at Ben & Jerry's which we ate while dodging street performers and listening to buskers. I had a new flavor called (hilariously) clusterfluff. It's peanut butter and marshmallow fluff and quite intense and good. Jen had the Midnight Snack flavor which included chocolate covered potato chip clusters. It was interesting, but not my favorite.

For kicks on the way home, we went out to see if we could locate a 1,000 foot high tower I had heard about on the news and realized I could see from our house. So we wound through Erie until we found the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory. It's not quite 1,000 feet tall, but quite close. It has an elevator for raising equipment up the tower.

Jen and I have been watching an anime series together, which makes me happy. The series is Gosick. It's about a Japanese boy going to school in a fictional European country in the 1920s. He encounters a girl who is like a petulant Sherlock Holmes and they solve mysteries together. It's enjoyable because the characters are multi-faceted and it's pretty funny. And if it's a series Jen will watch with me, more the better!

Overdue

2011-04-16T09:14:00.001-07:00

I notice that when I actually have things going on worth writing about, I'm usually too busy to write about them. There is a certain irony to that. The last few weeks have been busy, especially this last one. Then when I get around to writing, so much has transpired, I don't feel like giving it the amount of writing required. So here's what I've been up to, in brief.

I went to 360Flex this last week. It's a conference for Flex and Flash development, and easily is the best conference I've gone to for learning new things. This year it was held in Denver, so it was a different experience. For instance, at other conferences, there's a lot of hanging around with co-workers or people you've met and grabbing drinks or food after the day's sessions. But with a conference in my own town, rather than having nothing to do but hang out, as soon as the sessions are over, I can go home, and so can my co-workers. So most everyone scattered as soon as the sessions they were interested in were over. I miss that normal conference experience.

The sessions were good. I saw a guy using Flash to receive input from a brain wave scanner toy to control a quadcopter. I saw another guy using Microsoft's Kinect motion control to control a 3D picture wall. I also saw some much more practical sessions on mobile design, multitouch, type frameworks and more. Unfortunately, a lot of the sessions were interrupted by work. Even though I was not in the office, it definitely made its presence felt. I had to leave the conference early to put out a fire and other sessions were half heard as I tried to get some work done. I had even spent the Saturday before working all day, and I mean all day. If I have to do this sort of dance again, I'm not sure it is worth it. I don't get much from the conference and am stressed and irritable to boot. Still 360Flex is an awesome conference.

What else? Well, I'm reading through The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. It is the second in an excellent series and it totally has its claws into me. Every bit of time I can snatch for myself I am sticking my nose in the book. It's a fantasy novel that I highly, highly recommend. The first in the series is The Name of the Wind. Start there and enjoy.

My parents will be coming up for Easter, which is awesome. I'll be glad to have them around for the holiday and share this time with them. I'm already thinking about what to cook while they're here.

We went to a Chopped themed party. Chopped is a cooking show where cooks are given a basket of ingredients and told to make an appetizer, entrée or dessert with them. Each course, one chef gets chopped from the competition. For this party, people were given an array of ingredients to choose from, with some ingredients earning you more points on account of their difficulty. Of course, I made a pie. It was a deluxe avocado pie, using graham crackers, avocado, coconut, and baker's chocolate as the four ingredients chosen from the list. I was pleasantly surprised that I won the dessert category, so now I can say I make award-winning pies. I don't need to mention that the award was a bottle of wine. It was a really fun party and a great idea. I would love to try something like this in the future.

Okay, I'd best get to the other tasks I need to get caught up on. Hopefully I will be writing again soon and not waiting half a month.

Easy as Ice Cream

2011-03-31T20:26:00.001-07:00

Usually the saying is easy as pie. Ice cream is not easy to make. At least, that's how it has been for me. The recipes I have start with you boiling sugar to a certain phase, mix it into a custard, whisk it until your arm starts to detach and then churn it for a long while. That does make good ice cream.

You know what else makes good ice cream? This fantastic and wonderfully easy recipe from the Stone Soup Inn by way of Sunset. It's sour cream chamomile ice cream, which probably doesn't sound that great, but it really, really is. Best of all, you just mix the ingredients together and throw it in an ice cream maker. No messy boiling sugar water. No endless stirring. Just half-n-half, sour cream, and flavoring.

I used Celestial Seasoning's Honey Vanilla Chamomile tea, which really packs a flavorful punch. I took the ice cream to a friend's birthday party and was commissioned to take some leftover cake and make it into ice cream. Since it is now so freaking easy, I made some Black Forest ice cream with cherries, almond flavoring, and cake. I had more left over, so tonight I made orange spice cake ice cream, with Celestial Seasoning's Mandarin Orange Spice tea, orange zest, toasted almonds, cake, and too much cloves. When will I ever learn with cloves? Bitter aftertaste! Bitter aftertaste! Remember that. It's freezing right now, so hopefully now that the cake is mixed in it will counteract that.

The ice cream does differ in texture from custard-based ice cream and some of the sour cream flavor sneaks through, though favorably so. The real problem with this ice cream is that it is so easy to make. I now have a lot of it in my fridge, and it's going to end up on somebody's waistline, most likely me. Thank goodness half of this is reserved for the cake's baker.

Where Did That Come From?

2011-03-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

This week I was exercising in the morning and happened to look out the window. The window in our gym looks out onto the roof above our back room, which has skylights. Sitting next to one of the skylights, was a small pile of poop. At least, it looks like poop. I haven't gone out there yet to investigate. But it raises the question, how the heck would it get there?

The turds look big enough to have come from a small to medium-sized dog, so having it come from a squirrel is unlikely. Conceivably it could be a raccoon, but we've never seen raccoons here, nor could we explain why it would get up on our roof. We briefly entertained the idea that someone could have thrown it up there, but either they'd have to have gotten into our backyard or have a small catapult (caca-pult?) to hurl it up there, and then they'd have to get three small turds to cluster together and not fall of the roof. Again, not likely.

We do have a hawk who likes to munch pigeons in our backyard. He's my prime suspect. Possibly he needed to land on the roof, though he normally is hidden in our cottonwoods or our neighbor's pine tree. It'd be unusual for him to land on the roof. However, further evidence was found yesterday. We are slowly stirring to get our yard and garden ready for summer, and yesterday we were turning compost and putting mulch around our little spruce trees. While wandering through the lower yard, I noticed several piles of poop under one of our cottonwoods. They're about the same size as the ones on our roof, but looked a bit different.

Regardless of where it came from, I need to get rid of it, which involves climbing out on the roof with a broom. Should be fun times!

UFOs and Europe

2011-03-26T15:50:00.001-07:00

It's two exciting posts for the cost of one!

First off, UFOs! A couple of days ago, Lafayette was the location of a sighting of UFOs in the more literal sense of the word. Three unidentified flying objects hovered over Lafayette, and multiple people reported seeing the three red dots flying in a loose, varying formation. The lights were silent and slow-moving and of course, utterly mysterious. For video and the story, see this article from the Boulder Camera.

The second exciting news is that Jen and I have booked our flights for our trip to Europe! This is a bit more exciting to me than UFOs. We'll be flying into London, and then taking a regional flight to Basel, Switzerland to visit my friend from college Angie. Then we'll fly to Berlin to meet Jen's family before going on a tour of Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria together with them. Then we'll fly from Vienna back to London and back to Denver.

I'm so excited that finally my dream of going to Europe will be fulfilled. I've wanted to go for such a very long time, but never had all the factors of money, travel companions, and time coincide. But now, this is it. Jen and I are planning on starting to try for kids here in the near future, so we figured we'd get in one last travel hurrah before embarking down Baby Boulevard. I'm quite excited for the trip this summer. We'll get to celebrate our anniversary while we're over there and we're also making the trip a celebration of Jen's parents' 40th wedding anniversary. It'll be quite the adventure. I'll post more as the days get closer, but for now I just had to share the excitement. We're going to Europe! Thank you, God!

I Saw a Limb

2011-03-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

Cottonwood wood smells like sulfur. That's just weird. I found this out while sawing a limb off of the cottonwood in front of our house. We have a spruce tree in the same area that is ailing, and the arborists we've had look at it say that one thing we can do to help is to cut this limb off so the spruce can get more sunlight. So this morning we set up a ladder and took turns with the small hand saw. The limb was about 5-6 inches in diameter, so there was a lot of sawing going on.

When the limb broke, it did not fall the way I expected it to. This is probably a common element to many injury stories. Fortunately for me, Jen was holding the ladder, so when the limb fell and somehow vaulted backwards behind the tree and hit the base of the ladder, I was saved from an injury story. It did knock over our planter, but other than some spilled potting soil, no damage was done. Still, it gets the adrenaline going a bit, if you know what I mean.

After also knocking down a bird nest behind our basketball hope that was causing some noisy mornings outside our bedroom window, we headed to the store and then to Robby and Vanessa's for their son Luke's first birthday party. Then it was back here for some improvised chicken pastry packets and more mustard potatoes. It already feels like Sunday evening. I'm glad that is not true.

Friday, I did go over to the Plastic Chapel and picked up some of the Series 2 Android figures. I had seen earlier that week that they were on sale. Since I missed out on the first series, I vowed to get over and pick some up. It's a good thing I did it this week, as I scored the last four in the store. I got two I wanted and two I don't care for. I'll have to see how far I'll go to get the one I really, really want.

Girl Scouts and Corpses

2011-03-07T19:04:00.001-08:00

Not at the same time/place mind you. But I did buy Girl Scout cookies; Samoas and Thin Mints, naturally. I imagine some day I might try something else, but I doubt it. The Samoas did not last through the day, but the Thin Mints, being greater in number have lasted longer. The Samoas mainly were consumed on our trip to Nederland. We've been itching to get out of the house more. Jen suggested getting coffee in Nederland, and I recalled that the town was having their Frozen Dead Guy Days festival. What else could we do but go?

I'll let you click on the link for the story behind Frozen Dead Guy Days. Our encounter involved some lucky parking, lots of wind, and wandering around Ned in search of events. We saw a pastor in a three piece suit and a man in a full on chicken suit jump into the water of a frozen pond. Not together, mind you. We watched a bit of the documentary about the frozen dead guy, called Grandpa's in the Tuff Shed. We gawked at the hearses and characters scattered around the town, and finally saw some of the coffin races, which were pretty impressive. One coffin was decorated with a giant head of Justin Bieber. Well. What more could you ask for?

I should note that today, the traffic on the drizzly way in to work was pretty bad; slow, but moving. The freezing temperatures in the office weren't great. But the drive home was heaven, due to incredibly fluid traffic. I dunno what causes that, but it felt like some cosmic balance was in effect. Just had to point out that not all my commutes are awful.

Condimental

2011-03-06T06:55:00.000-08:00

I may have gotten carried away. I just wanted to cook. I had some rapidly expiring lemons and some small dense limes. What to do? What to do? Then I remembered lemon curd. That'd be worth a try. So I cooked up a double batch of lemon curd and made another batch that was half lime and half lemon. That gave us an inordinate amount of the stuff. The lemon curd was good and the lime curd was outstanding, and we largely just ate the stuff out of the jar.

You would think I would have learned my lesson. However, the current issue of Sunset has all these mustard recipes, so I felt compelled to try some of them. I made three different types from the magazine and one batch of the amazing sweet and sour mustard I've made in the past. We now have more mustard than we will eat in a year. I made some soft pretzels yesterday, and that will use about 1/800th of the mustard we have. At least we won't be eating spoonfuls of this straight from the containers.

Hawk, Fox, and Foxconn

2011-02-28T19:26:00.001-08:00

During the last week, I've noticed we've had more frequent visits from a hawk. I saw him eating something in the neighbor's pine tree, swooping out of our cottonwoods, and leaving pigeon feathers beneath those same trees. This weekend, I saw the hawk attacked by three crows. He sought shelter in our cottonwoods until the crows moved out of the area. During a chance encounter with a sort of ornithologist at a friend's birthday, I came to think that our guest hawk is a red-tailed hawk, just like I always saw back in Oregon. I didn't know they were out here. I also learned that great horned owls are jerks; the whole lot of them. Huh.

I've also spent this last week reading through the monthly surge of magazines. Tonight I set aside mustard recipes from Sunset and dove into my WIRED and National Geographic magazines. The latter had a really interesting article about domestication of animals, namely a Russian experiment with breeding foxes for domesticity. It's a fascinating read, and now I wonder about the feasibility of having a fox as a pet.

A fox of a different sort was the subject of one of two good articles about gadget manufacturing in China. The first article is about the working conditions at Foxconn's factories in China that make the iPhone. It's pretty interesting, but the article that grabbed my attention was the one about the shift of manufacturing back to United States. Brendan Koerner's article "Made in America" talks about the downsides of offshoring for a company's bottom line and image. The shift is to bring manufacturing to the US in order to manage quality better and get to market faster, as well as to better protect your intellectual property. It's a hopeful article, although the caveat is that most of the US manufacturing will be done by robots. But by gum, they'll be American robots ... which will be made where? Anyway, it was a surprisingly engaging article, especially for something about manufacturing processes. It's nice to see some more in depth, thoughtful articles from WIRED, which has trended towards fluff pieces, blurbs, and crime stories recently.

Ambrosia For One

2011-02-21T20:39:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to be better about my eating habits. Often after dinner I am struck by a desire for something more to eat. I know enough to avoid desserts, but I usually hit up the snack drawer with its Lara bars or I hit the yogurt, neither of which are exactly low calories. I've been rediscovering oranges, though. They hit the spot. They're sweet enough to sate that desire and flavorful enough to satisfy.

Today I decided to embellish the simple orange by chopping and toasting a handful of almonds, slicing up the orange, mixing that up and sprinkling with shredded coconut. It's a little bowlful of ambrosia, though without the cream. I think I've found a new dessert substitute. Yum.

The Couch on the Ceiling

2011-02-19T20:09:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit loosey-goosey right now, so there will be little in terms of structure and coherence. This weekend we helped Josh and Kara move into a new apartment. And that's when the couch ended up on the ceiling. The stairs into the new apartment are exceptionally tight. We carried boxes up them, bookshelves up them, and mattresses up them. The couch however was the challenge. It pretty much was exactly the width of the stairway, and with a railing or a door, well, things got trickier.

In the process of trying to maneuver the couch through the door at the top of the stairs, we got it up over the railing and were trying to turn it, when we ran out of room to work. The couch became wedged, and was upside down, on the ceiling, and stayed there without anyone holding it up there. It was rather stuck. Eventually we were able to pry it out and get it through, but it was looking a bit grim for a while. I don't think the couch is making the next move.

After a well-deserved shower and rest, I made us some meat loaf, mushrooms, and some horseradish mashed potatoes. The potatoes were the main focus, in order to use up a 10 pound bag, and turned out rather well. The horseradish is just at the right amount. Now my belly is full, I'm tired, and showered. No productivity can come of this.

Not As Advertised

2011-02-14T19:58:00.000-08:00

I'm typing on laptop number 4 now. The keyboard on number 3 had a gimpy space bar, so I took it in to get it repaired. The rest of the laptop was fine, so I wanted just to get that space bar repaired. Yet here I am with almost a completely new laptop. Rather than try to swap the keyboard from another laptop into laptop #3, they swapped the hard drive from #3 into laptop #4. So far, in the minutes I've been using it, #4 seems solid and the best of the bunch so far. Hopefully this is the end of my bad run of luck with these laptops. Still, despite the mainly glowing reviews of this brand and model (HP dv7-4285dx), I would not recommend it. This many problems in a row is hard to attribute to coincidence or bad luck.

Another thing I gave a try to was the Blackberry Stereo Gateway. I received one for free as part of my participation in some of the promotion for the free Playbook giveaway. Essentially the stereo gateway turns your stereo into Bluetooth headphones for your phone. You play music from your phone over the stereo. This is a great use for my little radio in the kitchen. If I want to play uninterrupted music, I have to play it off of my XBox and the TV or off one of the computers down in the office. That's not great if you're up in the kitchen or dining room. So now I can use my phone to play tunes over the stereo, which is particularly great if, like me, you have an unlimited data plan and Pandora on your phone.

The problem is, the Bluetooth connection is not great. If I set my phone close to the stereo, it plays with only a few hiccups. However, if I bring my phone over to the dining room table, the hiccups become unbearable. If I'm going to have to leave my phone over by the stereo to get good playback, I figured I might as well plug it in. And that's what I did. I used the Stereo Gateway's cable to plug my phone directly into my stereo, and now I can have streaming music any time. I will say in Blackberry's defense that the device does ask for a Blackberry phone with a particular software version, so I will withhold judgment until I try it with my Playbook. Until then, I'll be enjoying music from my phone over the radio.

A New Arc

2011-02-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Naruto Shippuuden is finally out of its filler arc and is back to the story. I'm really impressed with the developments in this new story arc so far. Naruto's message has mainly been the normal anime blather about being true to yourself, never letting your friends down, and never giving up. Yawn. It mainly was some spectacular fights punctuated by pep talks. But now, now Naruto is going in some interesting directions.

Looking back, I can see this shift in direction starting back in the story arc with Naruto's friend Shikamaru losing his master. It started addressing what it means to lose someone very important in your life and how it affects a person. Shikamaru addresses it with a cunning revenge plan. That germ of an idea has carried on through the story arcs as loss becomes more central and personal to Naruto until the break of the storyline before the most recent spate of filler content. At the end of that arc, Naruto has come to the point where he has a chance to exact revenge for his loss, but is confronted by the despair that the seemingly unbreakable cycle of vengeance and hatred produces. He is challenged by the main antagonist to come up with some way to break this cycle. In an act of mercy and forgiveness, Naruto changes the heart of the antagonist and ends up saving the lives of his friends and fellow villagers. That's still pretty pat. Just forgive and (yay) everyone's healed.

But now in this new arc, the series is going further. One of Naruto's friends, Sasuke, in his own quest for vengeance has caused serious loss and a thirst for vengeance in people from another village. Naruto asks them to forgive, and they say that's a nice sentiment, but what do we do with our hatred and rage and thirst for justice? Naruto says they can beat him up instead of exacting justice on his friend. But the show acknowledges that is not enough. The people from the other village are stilled ticked off despite Naruto's selfless act, and rightfully so. The question it asks now is: when our sense of justice cries out and we are asked to forgive, what can we do with our rage? How can we forgive when justice cries out for vengeance and punishment?

Unfortunately, I'm guessing the show is not heading towards the Christian answer of forgiving as we are forgiven by Christ who takes the world's deserved punishment on himself instead. I suppose Naruto's offer taking the punishment himself mirrors this a bit, but without the sense that we all are transgressors who have hurt others and we all need forgiveness. Still, I am curious to see where the character growth goes and whether the current story arc will continue searching for answers beyond platitudes.

Yes. I Can Hear You Now

2011-02-08T18:01:00.001-08:00

The temperature on my phone says it is 1 degree outside. I am glad that I managed to shovel my driveway before darkness fell in balmy 7 degree temperatures. Somehow I did not do my normally thorough job on the driveway. I can't imagine why.

I want to tell you about a book that is changing my life. The book is Can You Hear Me? by Brad Jersak. The book is about discerning the voice of God, listening to it, meeting with Him, and entering into a conversation with Him. My prayer life has been improving so much since reading this book. In fact, I am on my second go round with the book. I generally don't re-read books. I could probably count my re-reads on my fingers. This re-read is warranted by a couple factors. One, the anecdotes Jersak shares in the book are encouraging examples of how God is moving and working miraculously today. Two, the book provides good exercises and reminders of ways to help us hear God and trust Him.

The book has some fairly standard approaches, but also swings into more Pentecostal territory. There are some things that raise my eyebrows, even when they are backed up by scripture. At the end of most sections, he provides some things to try out. The key to this book is actually trying these things out. You can't read this book and gloss over these sections, as I am prone to do. Try out the exercises and you'll be surprised at the results.

The key things that this book seems to do differently is that it encourages using imagery in prayer, and letting God speak to you through your imagination. It also encourages the necessary step of applying discernment to what you see and hear. For me, this works so well because words alone are seldom enough to occupy my mind and it scampers off bunny trails and soars on flights of fancy. My prayers have been lists prayed at God, not a conversation with God. By mixing in the visuals, this helps my mind and heart to focus. In my prayer, I have experienced some powerful bursts of emotion and the healing of old hurts. It's really cool.

If you would like to add depth to your prayer life or totally resurrect it, this book would definitely be worth a try. Jen says you can read it until you get freaked out. I heartily recommend this book.

Another couple things I am excited about are two websites that I've been recently introduced to. One is Grooveshark. It's a free music streaming site with an awesomely extensive library. I've found some obscure stuff on there. I'll be using it for previewing albums before I buy them and making playlists of stuff I like, but not enough to buy. The other is Foodily (Food I Love You), which aggregates results from various recipe sites and presents them in a excellent format. I've already found a couple of recipes I want to try just from searching for things I have had a hard time finding before.

Happy Appy

2011-02-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

After spending my Christmas vacation mainly plying away at getting an app ready for the Blackberry App World, I'm happy to say that my app got accepted, and I will be getting a free Blackberry Playbook when it comes out. Not only that, but I also created and submitted a different version of my app to Adobe's InMarket. That version runs on the desktop. It got accepted there too, so that nets me a free code-signing certificate. I like this free expensive stuff thing!

So, now that my app is in the marketplace and available, let's talk about it. My app is called Floorplan. It is sort of a mini CAD program that allows you to draw out your floorplan and then drag furniture around it. It allows you to figure out where you're going to put your furniture before you actually try to move it. Beats lugging that sleeper sofa around several times. The grid right now allows you to draw furniture to scale.

Right now it is pretty minimal in its functionality. I want to add in a lot of functionality, but we will see how much I work on it now that the contest deadline is no longer looming in front of me. I should note that the deadline has been moved to March 15th. Yeah, maybe I'm a little bitter that the deadline changed, making my Christmas sacrifice unnecessary, but I'm sure that a free Playbook will help assuage my wounded pride.

So why don't you download it, put it on your desktop, and tell me what you think? By the way, if you get a message that says that it has a version of AIR that is no longer supported, before you install the app, you need to download and install the most recent version of AIR (2.5.1) here: http://get.adobe.com/air/.

Disaster

2011-01-31T18:38:00.000-08:00

The snow was falling already by the time I got up today. It was pretty light, but by the time I got on the road, traffic was quite slow right out of the gate. Rather than spend 2 hours driving to Denver, I turned around and came home. I am very grateful I brought my laptop home with me this weekend.

The day did not treat me well. Some bugs from a part of a project that has been dogging me for some time came back and they were not easy ones to fix. What made it worse is that I had to debug in Firefox. Ever since a change to the data services for the project were made, I haven't been able to test in Chrome. Everyone else's Chrome works, but not mine. Firefox is a pain to debug in, because it only lets you pause the application for a short period of time before it decides Flash has crashed and it shuts it down. It's also a pain because Firefox will occasionally freeze up and not let you switch to other programs that are behind it. Normally that's not an issue because at work I have two monitors. Not so at home.

Today, Firefox was being very aggressive and being an utter jerk about debugging. It kept freezing and was quicker than normal to prematurely end my debugging sessions. Combine that with some difficult bugs, and I was ready to explode. Unable to take any more, I thought I would try to see if I could get Chrome to work again.

I figured the best way to do this would be to reinstall Chrome. I exported my bookmarks and then uninstalled Chrome. I then went to reinstall Chrome. That went all right. I noticed though, that for some weird reason, Internet Explorer had opened up. I figured that was a byproduct of uninstalling Chrome and closed it. I then went to import my bookmarks. And that's when I discovered the disaster: My bookmarks were gone.

That may sound trivial, but my Chrome bookmarks are extensive. I have work bookmarks that quickly take me to resources for different projects. I have bookmarks for hard-to-find resources that required extensive Googling to find. I have bookmarks for blogs and webcomics that occupy me while compiling or during lunch. I have resources for my personal projects that I was saving to use in presentations. So ... many ... bookmarks ... gone.

This was overwhelming in my already dangerously frustrated state. Then I tried to install the Flash debug player in Chrome. It's a version of the Flash player that is necessary for debugging Flash applications. That makes it necessary for me to work. And it wouldn't install. I tried disabling Chrome's built in player. I tried restarting Chrome. I tried restarting my computer. Nothing worked. Not only could I no longer debug this project in Chrome, I couldn't debug in Chrome at all. Defeated and enraged, I went back to Firefox and struggled for the rest of the day, working much later than normal.

Now, having finally vanquished the bugs, I went back to see what I could salvage from Chrome. I tried installing the debug player a few more times, then finally restarted my computer again. Suddenly, magically, it worked, for no apparent reason. I had the debug player again! Of course, I had to try compiling my work project to see if my loss of my encyclopedic collection of bookmarks was all for naught. Yep. It was. The same problem still persists. It's Firefox from here on out.

What a disaster.

Retreat!

2011-01-31T18:23:00.001-08:00

Jen's dad was mighty generous and invited me along on the men's retreat his church was putting on. I took him up on the offer and we journeyed up to Estes Park on Friday night for a retreat at the YMCA camp up there. I was expecting a camp akin to summer camps I had gone to in my youth, but this place was pretty swank, and was like a nice hotel.

The retreat was like an extended church week, except with more jokes and snowshoes. We had teaching times, small groups, and worship. And we had plenty, more than plenty of food. I did not eat wisely. I also got to meet a lot of new folks. Steve was very good at introducing me to a lot of his compatriots. As nice as it was to meet a lot of new guys, I wish that it had been a retreat for my church so I could be bonding with the other men there rather than just making a lot of new acquaintances.

On Saturday a group of us went up to Rocky Mountain National Park and snowshoed into Bierstadt Lake. It was in the afternoon of a quite warm day and the trail went up a south-facing slope, which made for some interesting footing on the slushy snow. Once we got up to the top of the slope, the rest of the hike into the lake was really nice. On the way down, Steve and I both tumbled a few times on the treacherous surface. It was a good hike, though, and I felt I acquitted myself rather well for not having hiked for a long while.

Commuted Sentence

2011-01-18T18:23:00.000-08:00

This week the RealEyes office is getting a new boiler. This means no heat or water, which means we get to work from home. Working from home comes with its own set of hazards and perks. I don't have a second monitor, so work is less efficient, but I also don't have as steady a stream of interruptions as I do when coworkers drift in and out of my area. The biggest plus in my book is that I don't have to commute. So for three to four days, my commute consists of walking down stairs.

This is a particularly wonderful commute to have after a week of maddening commutes. On last Monday, the commute was in the 4 inches of snow that fell Sunday night. It was slow but traffic kept moving at a constant pace. It was in the rest of the week that the commutes got really bad. Out of the 10 total commutes last week, I would say 6 involved a traffic jam of some sort. Usually it seemed to be a problem caused by accidents. I would attribute that to the lingering snow, but even on Friday, when the roads were clear and dry, there was an accident-caused jam both ways. One was at 36 and 287 which jammed traffic back up through Broomfield. On the way back, there was one in the left lane of I-25 at about I-70 that made me late for Bible study. I'm rather mystified as to what caused this spate of accidents.

I wonder if there were some lingering effects from the snow. Early in the week, accidents were no surprise. A thin layer of slush still coated some secondary roads that was slicker than it looked. I myself had to blow through a stop light on 20th while honking my horn. However, late in the week, it was gone from even the side streets. Perhaps people had schmutz on their windshields that obscured their vision and lead them into harm's way?

Regardless, I have taken the hint and gotten my snow tires put on. This balmy Autumn lured me into complacency. And now my car, clad in its safety-conscious tires, gets to sit in the garage for most of the week. I can't say I'm sad.

Tech Tock Tech Tock

2011-01-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

The clock for my technological quests has hit midnight. My patience has run out and the hour has struck. Yesterday I went down to a remote Best Buy to put to rest my running background obsession with phones and laptops. I have been constantly checking up on phones, trying to find the awesome phone that will satisfy me for two more years. I've been off and on researching laptops trying to replace my current one that is freezing randomly.

No cool phones were on the horizon for T-Mobile and I was done with waiting. I decided to throw my lot in with the G2 and its physical keyboard and 4G speeds. On the laptop front, I had a few to look at and eventually went with the HP Pavilion dv7-4285dx. I suppose I can be smug that I bought this the day before it went up $50 in price, but that smugness would be deeply tempered by the fact that when I pulled the laptop out of the box, there was a large dent in the aluminum chassis that looked like something powerful had pinched it. That's not good. I took it back and got a new one, checking for any dents before I left the store. However, once I started loading programs on it, I noticed that the CD drive is not in securely. It sort of pops up and down and in and out when I pick up the laptop and it is a real challenge to open with this ridiculously hard-to-press button. The drive works, so I'm not sure this is something that would warrant a return. It is hardly satisfactory, though. That would not be quite as concerning except that at one point during my installations and fiddling with the CD drive, the computer randomly restarted. I can't replicate it, so I can't really use that as an reason to exchange. I'm not sure what to do here. The sermon today was on humility, and I definitely see choosing the "right" laptop as a mark of pride for me. Perhaps holding onto this laptop would be a good exercise in humility. The laptop is blazingly fast and has a great big screen. It just seems to have been put together with a lack of care. Ugh.

Well, if nothing else, my new phone is great.

Expectations

2011-01-10T19:45:00.001-08:00

Winter has finally started meeting some expectations. We had 4-5 inches of snow this morning. I shoveled it this morning as dawn crept over the horizon in some rather frigid temperatures. The commute in this morning was perilous. I slid through one intersection, beeping my horn all the way. Broadway was a mess, like it hadn't even been plowed. It was a long commute.

I finished up Mass Effect 2 this weekend and just cleaned up the extraneous missions tonight. That was a great game, meeting my expectations. The missions were varied enough to avoid the feel of repetition that came with the first Mass Effect. Bioware continued to build on the already lush story world they've created. The story was intriguing and is a good set up for the third game. Many hard decisions were made in this. In fact some of the decisions were the hardest parts of the game. I can't wait to see how they wrap it up. Oooh, I see the trailer for Mass Effect 3 is out! Only a year to wait ...

We watched the movie Salt this weekend. That far exceeded my expectations and was actually a good movie. Gripping, even. Our movie watching capped an exceptionally productive day. The Christmas lights came down, the kitchen was cleaned, chaos kept at bay for another day.

Unfortunately, one expectation that went woefully unmet was that T-Mobile would release some really cool phone at CES. Yeah, that didn't happen. They released a couple new tablets and said they'd up their 4G speeds, but the only phone released was the mediocre Cliq 2. All the really cool phones came out on the other networks. I am bummed I waited this long to get nothing for it. I think that as soon as this snow clears, I'll go out and pick up a G2, unless, of course, some new rumor makes me wait for another month. After all, the Mobile World Congress is only a month away ...

Things That Make Me Happy/Crazy

2010-12-31T11:32:00.000-08:00

Phones. I really need to get a new phone, if only so I'll shut up about it and stop devoting so much time to it. Currently I'm trying to decide between the G2 and the Nexus S, but neither is exactly what I'm after, so I'm waiting until CES to see if any cooler phones for T-Mobile come out.

Laptops. My current lappy is progressively getting worse and worse, freezing more and more often. I have Christmas money burning holes in my wallet, so I need to get this done and over with. I've got my eye on a few, but currently don't have mental bandwidth to spare to the process because of:

Blackberry Development. My app for the upcoming Blackberry Playbook is coming along nicely. I need to get it done and in the app store before the tablet launches, though. I suspect it may launch at CES, so that gives me a week to get it done and in. That's eating my time.

Smallworld. Jen got me this board game for Christmas, and it has taken over whatever mental resources that are not at work on Blackberry development. It's fun, quick, and very interesting.

Webcomics. A few I'm enjoying a lot right now are The Meek, xkcd, and three new ones (Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, and Sailor Twain).

Hearing God. In the frenzy of the holidays and all these other things exciting me, it's harder to fit this in. However, I'm reading a book called Can You Hear Me? by Brad Jersak. It's really excellent so far and tuning me in to ways of hearing God, some I wouldn't normally consider. The anecdotes are enough to buoy me by showing how God still speaks and moves today.

Okay, and now I'm going to go do more Blackberry Dev. Gotta get that free Playbook! And maybe see True Grit! Or Tron! Or Narnia! Or...

Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

Annual Christmas/New Year Letter Thing

2010-12-28T20:56:00.000-08:00

The holidays have been good to me so far. I'm feeling nice and relaxed after some frenetic last minute preparations. Christmas has felt good and restful, especially this week after. I even had time to work on our Christmas letter. Jen wrote it and I did the pictures and design. Please read it and enjoy! I hope you had a Merry Christmas and will have Blessed New Year! And if you want to see pictures from this Christmas, I've got some up in my gallery.

Bye Bye Brightkite

2010-12-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

I've been using brightkite as my social networking status update site. I could check in at locations and then post messages and photos to brightkite, Facebook and twitter. It was convenient to be able to update 3 different networks all at the same time, plus with geolocation. I liked being able to see the posts from people geographically close to me, as well as socially close to me.

Yesterday, however, that stopped. The posts section disappeared from the website and I could no longer post from the app on my phone. I filed a bug, because I figured something must have gone horribly wrong. The response told me that wasn't quite the case. The mediator told me that they were removing that functionality from the site and pointed me to this blog post as explanation. I think something went horribly wrong with brightkite, but it happened around a conference table. I am mystified by this change of direction.

So since they've removed the functions of the site I used, I guess I will be moving on. Anyone have a recommendation for a similar site? Does Foursquare do this stuff?

Unfortunately, my phone has stopped letting me download new apps or update existing ones, so whatever I move to for mobile updates will have to wait until I can figure out what my new phone should be. But that's a subject for another post. For now, bye bye, brightkite.

50 Years in Hawaii

2010-12-13T18:29:00.000-08:00

Until now, I had never been to Hawaii. Neither had my parents in the 50 years they've been married. That seemed like something that needed to be rectified, so my whole family (my folks, all 6 siblings, and their families) got together on Maui to celebrate.

Jen and I flew in on Wednesday and were the last to arrive. We chatted with the family and had dinner. The next day we wandered around downtown Lahaina collecting trinkets and taking in the sights. We then split up and some of us went to the aquarium near Kahalui. Although the aquarium was small, we saw a lot of awesome fish, many of which I had never seen before. They definitely had some excellent displays, including a tunnel through a giant tank filled with sharks and rays.

That night we went to a luau at the Hyatt Regency called Drums of the Pacific. I had heard a lot of the luaus offered pretty mediocre food, but the eats there were quite good and the dances were entertaining. This was the main celebration for my folks' anniversary, so we were glad that although the wind was blowing something fierce, the weather held and we had a great time.

The winds that were blowing on the night of the luau brought in quite the rain storm, just as our server there predicted. It rained hard for most of the day, so we played a lot of board games and went for a walk in the rain after our cabin fever got the best of us. We went along a nice path that lined the beach through hotels and bird sanctuaries.

Thankfully the weather cleared on the next day. Jen and I went to the beach and watched sea turtles swimming in the surf. I also tried my hand at swimming. I chose my location poorly and ended up being at the focal point of the little bay where the waves came in strongest. After being tumbled a couple of times, I decided that was enough. I went back up to where Jen was with our stuff on a berm above the tide line. However, it was not far enough beyond it and a big wave came up and washed over our clothes and my camera. Thankfully it emerged unscathed, because the best sights were yet to come.

We went en masse to Iao Valley State Park. It's a very small park with some cool rock formations and a little garden-like patch. After that we journeyed to the wet side of the island and hiked up to Twin Falls, which included a painful barefoot wade for the last 100 feet or so. That's what I get for not hiking in sandals. Of course, hiking in sandals probably would have given me blisters. The trail was lined with all sorts of cool flowers and plants growing in the wild.

After the falls, we split up and I was with the car that headed along the exceptionally twisty and intermittently terrifying road to Hana. Our target was the Garden of Eden botanical gardens. The garden is good-sized and packed with all sorts of tropical wonders, many of which I had never seen before, despite trips to other tropical botanical gardens. It also had a plentiful stock of mosquitoes, which proceeded to eat me alive. My dad opted to stay in the car. That explains the $10 cans of bug spray at the garden's gate. The show stealers for me were the painted eucalyptus trees and the amazing jade vine.

Then it was back through the curves, through Kahalui, into an amazing sunset and back to our rooms in Napili. After dinner we had to leave. We couldn't check in beforehand, because the hotel lacked a printer, so we set out early to the airport to catch our red eye to the mainland. It is a really, really, really good thing we did. There was a fatal accident on the road to the airport, and traffic was backed up and motionless. We sat and sat and fretted and prayed and sat for 45 minutes. Once we were through, we jetted to the airport. I bolted out of the car to the check in counter, not even bothering to close the door. Jen hefted the luggage out and then we ran to security and slung our bags through the x-ray machine. I was wearing my hiking boots, and didn't even stop to put them back on. Boots in hand, I ran in my socks through the terminal. Of course, we were at the gate at the far end of the concourse. I pounded down the hall to the agricultural inspection station and shoved my stuff through the scanner. We arrived breathless at the gate, where we were told that the crew for the flight had been stuck in the same traffic jam we were in. That gave us enough time to fill water bottles and catch our breath, but if they had not been delayed, we would have arrived 10 minutes before the doors were shut.

Then it was a long fitful flight to Phoenix and then to Denver. We crashed at home after a meal and started the long process of regaining our energy. After our nap, I awoke and was so groggy and out of it that had I not known what I just went through, I would have sworn I was drugged. Today I felt better, but still like I was running on half my normal sleep. Jen says she feels fine today, so we'll see how I fare tomorrow.

It was great to see my family again and get to celebrate my parents' 50 years of marriage. They're quite the inspiration. You can see a large swath of the pictures I took in my gallery.

Maui Christmas

2010-12-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

So, I'm back from Maui. We were there for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. That's a pretty impressive milestone. We got to see all my family and I got to see Hawaii for the first time. We're exhausted and glad to be home, but we had a good time and got to see a lot of cool stuff. Of course, pictures will be forthcoming once I recuperate a bit. We left on Wednesday and flew out on Saturday night, arriving back home about noon on Sunday. The travelogue will be up soon!

Getting Christmas Done

2010-12-07T21:37:00.000-08:00

The weekend, which is long past, is when Jen and I got stuff done. No, wait. We Got Stuff Done. There, that's better. Among our many accomplishments was getting the Christmas decorations up. The tree is up, the lights are hung, the garlands are ... garlanding? ... woven through things. It feels good. I do love Christmas lights.

Most of the Christmas shopping also fell to our productivity this week. Shazam! I only had to resort to a few gift cards. I still have my parents and Jen to buy for, but other than that, it is in the mail! Thank goodness for that.

I finally am feeling over the sore throat that has dogged me for the past two weeks. Perhaps I should have rested or something. Feh. I also got some quality coding time on my Blackberry project. It still seems to freaking difficult to get time to code, let alone actually do the coding. It makes delays in the coding, the regular snafus and bugs, all the more painful. And since it 'tis the season to be freakishly busy, quality coding time is in short supply. Maybe after Christmas?

Oh, and the rest of the time is spent obsessing about cell phones, in particular this one. More on that later, I imagine.

OK Vacation

2010-12-02T18:56:00.000-08:00

I just polished off the last of the mince pie from Thanksgiving, so I guess I should start writing about it. It all started in Boulder where we got together with Jen's local family and friends for Thanksgiving dinner, which was held at Jen's parents' place. We enjoyed plenty of good food (best yams ever!) and company, but that was just the beginning.

Quite early the next morning, Jen, myself, Jen's parents, and Jen's sister Christine all jumped into the van and started driving towards Oklahoma. The goal was to reach the Tulsa area to see the family from that neck of the woods.

The drive took us about 10.5 hours. I had brought along my laptop to play movies and downloaded radio shows. Unfortunately, what I discovered when we tried to play the media was that the speakers in the laptop were so weak that they couldn't overcome the road noise and we couldn't hear anything. I called ahead to a Radio Shack in Hays, Kansas and found some possibilities that could work. We ended up buying an FM transmitter for my laptop so the sound could be picked up on the car radio and broadcast through the car speakers. Of course I also had to buy a splitter for the cigarette lighter so both the transmitter and laptop could be plugged in. Our "free" entertainment had become quite costly. Still, it was quite a boon to have movies and This American Life to entertain us. Though honestly, it felt good for me to just sit, be still and space out while staring at the Great Plains whizzing by.

Once in Tulsa, we visited Jen's grandmother and met Jen's uncle Mark and his wife Theresa. The next day, we went out to Claremore, OK and met with Jen's Aunt Margo and her daughter who run The Pink House. It's a tea house style restaurant in a century-old houes, and they serve some fantastic food there. We worked most of the day helping out around The Pink House. I raked leaves, organized the garage, pulled Christmas decorations out of storage and helped decorate. It was quite a bit of work, but I got paid well with a fantastic ham salad sandwich, excellent potato soup, and some magnificent desserts.

On Sunday, we did a little more work at The Pink House before getting together for a second Thanksgiving dinner, which of course was smashingly good. However, I've been nursing a sore throat, and even before I ate anything I wanted to just lie down and sleep for the rest of the day. I'm afraid I was not the best conversationalist ... or even a conversationalist, for that matter. You can see pictures from the trip in my gallery.

That night we left for Salina, Kansas to cut our impending drive into more manageable pieces. We stayed overnight there and continued back to Boulder on Monday. That proved wise, since in eastern Colorado there was some nasty blowing snow and strong winds. We saw one van off the side of the road, backwards, and propping up the large highway sign it had removed a leg from. Yikes. Fortunately, most of the drive home was on clear roads.

Monday, besides being the day of our long drive back, was also Jen's birthday. Her family got her a bunch of small presents and doled them out along the drive, which was clever and I very much wish I had thought of it. My personal celebration for Jen was to take her out to Sushi Den last night for some inordinately wonderful sushi (crispy bincho roll = happiness), followed by dessert at d Bar. Jen had a waffle ice cream sandwich and I had this amazing concoction of vanilla roasted figs, a crisp cookie, and a rosemary-flavored brulee topped with hazelnuts and a port granita. Incredible. Just incredible.

This Saturday we'll get together with Jen's family for a proper birthday celebration which will roll in her dad's birthday too. I'm left looking at the rest of the month a bit bewildered. There are some cool things coming up, but I'm wondering where I'll fit in anything else. I've got an app to write, an epic game to complete, Christmas shopping, and more. How is this going to work?

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T08:59:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I've made a couple of pumpkin pies and some herbed almonds. We're getting ready to head to Jen's folks, and then Oklahoma. Let the Thanksgiving games begin!

Very Autumnal

2010-11-23T15:47:00.000-08:00

The application I'm working on is taking about 3 minutes to compile each time I want to test it, so why not write a blog post?

This weekend was quite the amalgam of activities. In the brisk morning we took care of the last of the leaves, dropping them off on the last day of the leaf drop off. We had a total of 42 bags this year. That doesn't count the thin carpet I left on the lower lawn and the leaves I later tried to mulch with the mower.

We had lunch with Jen's friends Andre and Vanee and got to see the very old farmhouse they are converting. A walk around that property is a good way to feel very distant from Denver and Boulder. Later on we got together with Lisa, Josh, Kara, and their friend Kelsey to see the new Harry Potter movie and knock back a few pints. The new movie is quite good and stays pretty true to the feel of the first half of the book. Unfortunately that means it's depressing as Harry, Ron, and Hermoine are figuratively and literally lost in the woods, sniping at each other. It had a really good use of sound though; more accurately, a lack of sound that went so well with the loneliness and tension of the story.

Before we went to the movie, we finally got a meal at Mumtaz. The food was decent. The gyros were good and the baklava was great but the rice was dry and the tzatziki was bland. I guess for what I paid, I would have liked to eat on non-styrofoam plates. Anyway, decent, but not worth the effort of trying to get there when they're open.

On Sunday, we got up way too early (considering the movie and beer the night before) to help out at church. We then had lunch with Jen's family and planned for Thanksgiving and picked dates for our trip to Europe next year. That's exciting! Afterwards we went home and made pumpkin tacos. I was skeptical as I made them, but once all the ingredients were in a tortilla together, they were quite good.

Now it's time to make a couple of pumpkin pies and some herbed almonds. The Thanksgiving cooking starts tonight!

Eye on the Blackberry

2010-11-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

Blackberry is coming out soon (Q1 2011) with their Playbook tablet. I’m stoked that it will be supporting apps built in AIR, among other languages. I’m glad to see that Adobe is carrying through with their vision to get Flash on as many screens as they can.

I’m also stoked to see that if you get an app approved for the Blackberry App Store before the Playbook launches, you’ll get a free Playbook. Now that’s a good incentive for me to get going, especially since Blackberry is currently waiving the fee for getting set up as an App Store developer. The device looks pretty sweet and sports a dual-core processor. It also weighs in under a pound.

I’ve gotten a start with the development for my app idea. I definitely recommend listening to the webcast series on developing for the Blackberry Tablet OS in order to get started. They have some good advice on setting up the dev environment. They also cover some basic development stuff. If you’re already familiar with AIR dev, you might want to also watch the MAX session on Blackberry AIR dev which focuses in on the Blackberry specifics. Another good starting point is to get the SDK and Playbook simulator.

My app I have planned is niche enough that I’m not worried about anyone duplicating it, so I can safely recommend to any developers reading this to get developing and get your free Playbooks. I will note that I haven’t had the easiest time getting the dev set up. I can’t get debug to work on the simulator, but I can run my app on it. Thankfully the Blackberry developer community seems to be quite responsive in the forums for Blackberry AIR dev.

Now get coding!

The Heavy Lifting

2010-11-08T18:20:00.000-08:00

It's November. However, on Saturday, I was mowing my lawn, wearing shorts, and enjoying an 80 degree day. It sure is nice to live in Colorado. Of course, of course, the snow will be starting tomorrow, but it was 80 on Saturday.

I'm grateful for the good weather because I spent most of the weekend outside doing things that my lower back would later regret. Jen and I volunteered this weekend with Heritage House, which is a home for at-risk girls. We helped them move a couple of tons of gravel leftover from an earlier landscaping project. Following that workout, Jen cleaned and I did a couple hours of weedeating. I became very proficient in rethreading the wires, which had a disappointingly short life span.

Following that, we took on the leaves on our front lawn. I experimented with mowing the leaves, which seems to have worked pretty well, though I may change my story when I check out my mower's air filter. It took a couple hours to mow and bag the grassy area of our yard, but things looked a lot better. We left and played some Catan with friends.

The next day, the wind picked up and all the work on the front yard was undone. The silver lining for that, though was that the cottonwoods in our back yard finally gave up the fight and relinquished their leaves to the wind and I could tackle the large weedy expanse of our backyard. We raked and bagged and got most of the leaves taken care of. It has been much easier to do before snow and rain have soaked the leaves and tripled their weight.

With all that and some laundry, we have been sore, sore, sore, and tired. Thankfully it seems like the "hair of the dog" principle works for soreness, and Jen and I both have more or less bounced back after exercising this morning. The sneak preview of old age, however, has left me unexcited about going through that stage of life. I guess it beats the alternative, though.

Mumtaz Mystery

2010-11-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

I'm having one of those days where I want to rip people out of their cars and shake them until they agree to never drive again. So, if I'm terse, well, deal with it.

There's this Middle Eastern restaurant near our house called Mumtaz. It's been recommended by friends. It gets good reviews online. However, as far as I can tell, it is never open. Jen and I have tried to go to it twice, and it has been closed both times. Once on a Sunday, and then yesterday. Their hours are Monday through Saturday, 11-6. They close at 6PM. 6PM! Frankly, if you're not open past six, there's no need to be open past two. They're not in a business district where all the customers would come at lunch. It's a mystery. How do they stay in business? I'd love to try their food if they ever deigned to be open to sell it.

We went to Pinnochio's instead. It's a good, solid Italian eatery that we've gone to before. The food, though not incredible, is quite good. Their tiramisu is one thing that stands out as far above others I've tried.

This is the Yum

2010-10-31T08:42:00.001-07:00

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Plum ice cream. Jen and I made some last night using this recipe from The Perfect Scoop by way of Not Derby Pie. It is fantastic. Jen's parents had given us a small mountain of plums and we were not making our way through them fast enough, so I was trying to think of a way to use them. I chose wisely.

The ice cream was sweet and tart simultaneously, and because I substituted almond flavoring for the kirsch, it had the glorious finish of almonds. It is difficult to leave that container of ice cream alone. We had a couple of scoops last night while watching Date Night, which is a pretty darn hilarious movie, and a nice departure from most of the cinematic cliches of a marriage in peril. It felt a little more real, even as Steve Carrell and Tina Fey's characters are spun into absurd situations. It's a shame this movie didn't get more promotion than it did. I went into it not knowing anything more than what the movie poster told me.

Another culinary find yesterday was some toasted herbed almonds from Sunset. It's super simple and awesomely addictive. I didn't have the rosemary the recipe called for so I substituted the thyme I had left over from my shallots dish, black pepper, and smoked paprika. It's a great reward for such a small effort, something that makes cooking so rewarding for me.

Yep.

2010-10-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

This last weekend we watched Secretariat with Jen's family. It's a Disney movie of the old school: sentimental, full of pithy pearls of wisdom, and a bit bland. It was all right. We followed it up with some Thai food at Busaba. I'm always on the lookout for good Thai food, and Busaba is a solid purveyor of it. It's not as good as my Colorado favorite (Wild Ginger in Littleton), but it is nearly as good and much closer. If you're in our neck of the woods and hankering for some Thai, I recommend it.

I heartily recommend Euclid Hall. It sounds like a college building, but it is a great and creative restaurant. It's in downtown Denver and has a variety of creative foods. I'll skip every single detail, but I do have to highlight some items. The spaetzle and poutine I had was fantastic, but the grilled cabbage was incredible. I can say that it was unlike anything I've ever had. They boiled it in a bag with juniper and other exotic seasonings before throwing on a grill and topping it with a currant vinaigrette. So incredible! Also the sourdough waffle ice cream sandwich was incredible. It is a large slab of salted toffee ice cream between two crisp sourdough waffles. Incredible!

Okay, I've fulfilled my blogging obligations. I'm going to go salivate now.

You Should Read This

2010-10-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a bit about webcomics recently, and I feel I need to give props to my favorites; the ones I feel deserve more attention.

Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell. This is my favorite webcomic. The story is great, and the writing is truly excellent. The tale is about a girl attending a mysterious school of technology across the river from a forest populated by Faerie. The art starts out a little odd, but morphs through the course of the story into a terrific style that mixes some very funny stylized emotions to gorgeously rendered pages with fantastic layout. On top of that, it's kid friendly and regularly updates 3 days a week.
Lackadaisy by Tracy Butler. The story doesn't necessarily have any elements of the fantastic. It's a historical tale of speakeasies and bootleggers in the 1920's. Everything in it could happen, except all the characters are cats. Other than seeing emotions differently (bristling tails, pinned back ears), the characters could be humans. The writing is great, but what stands out the most is the art. Tracy Butler is an incredibly gifted artist; probably the best out there. One thing that comes to mind is that she has drawings of her characters as humans. They are instantly recognizable as counterparts to the feline characters. Simply delicious art. I just wish she updated more often, but given the beauty and intricacy of her drawings, I totally understand.
Platinum Grit by Trudy Cooper and Danny Murphy. The writing and pacing of this story is awesome. It is cinematic. It captures the characters' emotions and quirkiness so well. Unfortunately, it is currently on hiatus, and it didn't update often anyway. It would go months between updates, but it would be an entire issue on each update. It is so worth the wait, though. It's at a rather climactic point too, so read at your own risk. It is a bizarre story about odd people being drawn into a weird skein of plotting by people doing something I don't understand, and it is quite addicting. I've reread the series a couple of times. Be warned: It has some very racy bits.
Freak Angels by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield. I've come to this one recently. The art has a very different style that I've come to like a lot. The writing is quite good, though sometimes I feel like I'm missing bits. It tells the story of 12 powerful psychics linked together somehow. They live in a post-apocalyptic flooded Whitechapel, England, holding together a survivor society and trying to discover what they are and what has happened to world around them. Warning: there's nudity and profanity and gore.
Questionable Content by Jeph Jaques. I'm sort of surprised that I am drawn in so well by a comic about self-centered, sex-obsessed indie music fans, but gosh darn it the characters are quite engaging and (other than the sassy robot) pretty realistic. It's like a soap opera for music nerds, and it is addictive. It's got enough of the fantastic/improbable to give it a good flavor. The art starts out sort of 'meh', but gets excellent as the comic moves on.

These are my top favorites right now, but I'll also plug some other comics that are wonderful:

Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew. Self-aware comic set in a D&D world. Funny, witty, and featuring delightful "stick art".
xkcd by Randall Munroe. Extremely nerdy and the best, most expressive stick art (sans quotes) you'll see.
Axe Cop by Ethan and Malachai Nicolle. Written largely by a 5-year-old and drawn by his 29-year-old brother, this comic vaults into the absurd. It is delightfully insane.
Girl Genius by Kaja and Phil Foglio. Husband and wife team spin a long (and still ongoing) story of mad science and steampunk empires.
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja by Chris Hastings. He's a doctor. He's a ninja. This comic uses some of the old pulp comic art style and is wonderfully absurd.
Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton. Funny comics, usually historical. She's Canadian.

There's many more wonderful ones out there, and I'm afraid I won't be able to list them all here, so you should go to my links page and check out the ones I have listed there.

Orange and RED

2010-10-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jen and I carved pumpkins with Jen's sister Christine. We took Christine's car to the store, and on the way back I saw a little widget on the sun visor. It looked like a sun glasses holder, but I couldn't open it. I asked Christine, and she said it was. She pushed on the button I had tried earlier, and the holder popped open. I closed it and tried it again, but I couldn't open it. Christine reached over and easily opened it again to show me how. Consternated, I tried again, saying, "okay, I guess I wasn't pushing hard enough. I just didn't want to break it." No sooner had these words left my mouth that I pushed on the button hard and snapped it clean off. Yeeaah. Sorry about that.

Today we went with Christine to go see RED, which was a lot of fun. It's got a slew of great actors: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Hellen Mirren, and John Malkovich. John Malkovich is great, doing what he does best: craaaaaaazy. Also, Mary Louise Parker plays the love interest in the movie, and I now have a small crush on her, in no small part that she doesn't play the dumb and screaming heroine. She's funny, resourceful, and strong. The movie isn't particularly mindblowing, but it is fun and well done. I can see owning this on DVD.

On the way back from the movie, I commented on the bright lights on a far away hill. Since last Christmas, I've noted while driving around our area, especially down 287, that there are these structures up on a hill in Broomfield that are really lit up. Since I first noticed them at Christmas, I assumed they were a Christmas display. However, I noticed that they stayed up long past Christmas. When I would drive in the daylight, I couldn't see anything that looked like it would have that kind of display. Finally I realized that the lights were coming from what looked like a couple of water towers, the large flat cylinder types. I didn't think they could possibly be water towers though, with that kind of lighting. I thought they might be fancy apartments or something to be so lit up at night. Maybe they were a church or offices? I've been wondering about this for a while.

Tonight, however, we seized the moment, and decided to go check them out. We wound our way through Broomfield and found our way to the structures ... which really were water towers. Unlike other water towers I've seen though, they had structures shaped sort of like the Star of Bethlehem attached at a distance to the outside. Those structures had lights on their insides facing the tanks. I'm not sure if this is an art installation or what. I didn't see anything on a quick Google search, so I may have to hit up Broomfield city government to find out.

While we were gawking, we also saw a red fox prowling the grounds. It was moving rather arthritically and seemed completely nonplussed by our presence or the giant light display next to it. It added one more note to a sort of surreal evening adventure.

On the food front, I made pesto this weekend. I had tried to transplant our basil last weekend so we could bring it in for the winter, but I only succeeded in killing it. Jen and I denuded the plant and I made a batch of super delicious pesto and put half of it away in the freezer for some winter day that needs a touch of summer.

We also went to lunch after church with Emmy Lou and David and some friends of theirs. We had some Lucky Pie pizza in Louisville, which was a pretty good Neapolitan-style pizza. We followed it up with Sweet Cow ice cream, which is literally next door. They have quite the selection of unusual flavors: honey maple grape nut, oatmeal cookie, popcorn, candy corn, and almond joy. They also have the standards, but I had to go with the candy corn, which was surprisingly delicious. The popcorn ice cream was not good, unless you like soggy popcorn. Jen told me some of her Midwest relatives would dunk their popcorn in milk, so I guess this would be the ice cream for them. So odd.

Now That's A Science Project

2010-10-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

I don't normally just repost others' blog posts, but this is just so cool, inspirational and nifty that I have to. A father and son (with help from a few others) sent a video camera and an iPhone into outer space. Check it out here: http://www.gizmag.com/father-and-son-send-camera-to-outer-space/16650/.

I can hear Apple's ad now: "Space exploration? There's an app for that."

Should I Avoid Traffic?

2010-10-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm getting to the point in my commuting life where I am occasionally burned out and frazzled by my commute. A large part of this has come from trying to avoid traffic jams. I'll check Google Maps to see what traffic is doing. If I see a jam, I'll take a route that gets around it. However, this may take longer than actually just driving through the jam, especially because I've noticed that sometimes those jams clear up while I'm driving. Recently I took a long route to work because there was supposedly a bad jam on 36. It looked really bad when I was at home. I checked again when I got to the intersection of 36 and 287, and it had cleared up some, but still looked bad. Way into my detour, I checked again and the jam was gone.

Of course, other times I have been told traffic is clear only to get into a traffic jam. That's even more frustrating. So either way, I'm frustrated because traffic doesn't do what I'm expecting and I lose time because of that.

I'm thinking I should just forget about it. Just drive. If I hit a jam, I can try to react to it then. If I have escape routes planned for the places where a bad jam might hit, then I don't have to try to find a route on my phone while in traffic. This would at least spare me the added frustration of finding the opposite of what I expected and losing time to trying to circumvent it.

The Weekend in Food

2010-10-03T19:19:00.002-07:00

I guess I needed to have some catharsis from the week. We had a deadline at week and I had worked some early mornings to late nights. Strangely, for me lying around does not do the trick for relaxing. I need to have some sort of business that makes me feel productive and responsible, even if it is not necessary. So I cook and bake. It's this wonderful world where if you follow the rules, usually you are rewarded with tasty victuals at the end. It has enough challenge where it almost becomes a game. You can play within the rules without following the instructions to the letter and end up with something cool or original, and there's enough challenge that you can end up with a disaster if you are not careful or skilled.

So, this weekend, to shake off the stress of the week, I cooked. I turned on NPR, went to my cooking zone in my head, and worked through the day. I started off with caramel rolls and dinner rolls. They share the same dough. I used my mom's cinnamon roll recipe and combined it with the caramel sauce from a friend at church. The dinner rolls were pretty standard. I don't know what it is about that dough, but they are fantastic rolls, if I do say so myself.

I also did some meatloaf, throwing in some extra garlic and fresh thyme, which made it outstanding. While that was cooking, I tried out an odd recipe from my most recent Sunset magazine. It's from their upcoming cookbook, so it looks like it is not on their website. The recipe is caramelized shallots and walnuts. It's an unusual combo that I had to try out. It turned out to be good. It's not mindblowing, nor will it be a staple, but it is different enough and feels somewhat fancy that it will probably find itself on the table again. I don't think I've ever cooked with shallots. I'm not sure I've ever had them before. With this recipe, though, I am sure to have them again.

Those dishes and some green beans were the menu for dinner when Jen's parents came over. They brought some wine and ice cream and we had a great evening. Combine that with some other chores, and I felt nicely productive, yet relaxed. The task of shaking off the week was accomplished.

We also found this great wine as part of the ingredients for the shallots. It's a Bartenura 2007 moscato. It's almost completely clear and a little fizzy. It's really good; not cloyingly sweet, but not very dry. I wanted to drink the entire bottle immediately.

Today we ate the caramel rolls and this evening I baked some cookies for a coworker's birthday. It has been a full culinary weekend. It feels good.

Mass Effect 2

2010-10-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

I used some of my birthday money to get Mass Effect 2 for the XBox 360. It's been fun getting into the highly detailed world of this game again. So far though, I haven't had a lot of time, so I've just barely scratched the surface.

My first impressions are that the game is well done, and I'm stoked to be able to bring my character and her decisions from the first game. However, I do have some gripes. One is that as soon as you complete the objective for a mission, you are whisked back to your home base. On one mission I was given an optional submission. I came to a fork in the paths I could take. I decided to go one way and then come back and finish whatever was left undone. The path I chose ended up being the path to complete the main mission. Once I finished it, I could no longer go back to the area and finish the other mission. This is highly lame. Now that I know it is the case, I will be more careful, but it shouldn't be the case.

Another complaint is the controls can be rather frustrating. I imagine this will fade with time as I become more proficient, but one firefight recently left me hopping mad, literally. My character would jump up on top of the item I was trying to hide behind. When behind cover, my character would spasmodically pop out of cover and back in when I tried to fire my weapon, but without ever firing a shot. In other attempts on this firefight (and there were many), the character would also take cover on the wrong side of a crate or column and be crouching right in enemy fire.

Also frustrating is that targeting of enemies, especially by members of your squad can lead to a lot of wasted effort. If an enemy is obscured from my vision, but in clear view of the other squad members, I can target the enemies with my squad's powers, but the squad members end up firing their attacks at the point in the wall my character was staring at, rather than the enemy behind it that I highlighted. It also took a while to learn that sometimes my character won't even directly attack enemies when I tell her to if the enemies are partially obscured. After some screaming and jumping up and down, I finally got through that firefight, though I may have partially traumatized Jen with my reactions to the frustration.

I think I'm suffering a bit from overhyping of the game. Everyone's told me it is so freaking awesome. So far it has not wowed me, mainly due to the aforementioned issues. The story is compelling, and I'm just at the beginning, but it still has to completely win me over.

Well, I Hope You Like Trees

2010-09-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

It's a shame that when I'm presented with some really awesome and beautiful scenery to take pictures of, I tend to get so excited that I forget to actually compose my shots. I take pictures and am only seeing the blazing glory of a golden aspen, and I miss the branches, shadows, and whatnot that are obscuring things or throwing off the composition. Regardless of this, I managed to get some good shots recently.

This weekend Jen and I went up into the mountains with Gavin and Sarah and hiked through the aspens. It was a gorgeous trek along the Hell's Hole trail in the Chicago Creek area. It's much nicer than the name implies. We topped that with a drive by Mount Evans and down to Beau Jo's creekside in Evergreen. That is a good way to do a weekend.

I also have some pictures of some recent spectacular sunsets and our trip along the Peak to Peak Highway for some more aspen viewing. I've put them all up (just for you!) in my gallery. So take a look ... unless of course you don't like trees.

That Takes Some Gall (or Gaul)

2010-09-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

Has anyone else been disturbed by the news coming out of France lately? I'm thinking here of the expulsion of Roma from the country, and the slow erosion of religious freedom with an emphasis on Muslims. When did Western democracies start condoning this stuff? You would think that France own experience with Nazi Germany would make them more sensitive to the persecution of or discrimination of ethnic and religious minorities. Yet the French government seems to be leading a xenophobic charge in Europe.

The ban on religious dress in schools shows that the French government is losing respect for individual rights and basic freedoms across the board, and not just against unpopular groups, such as the Roma or Muslims. I'm heartened to at least hear that there are protests in Europe against such policies. However, I think if similar actions were being taken in dictatorships, there would be denunciations on the floor of the United Nations. It's unsettling how little condemnation I have heard from our government or American groups. It's disturbing to see the freedom many fought to give France being denied to those who live there.

Now That's Procrastination

2010-09-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been more than 13 months since I put this task on my to-do list. And tonight, I finally got it done. And now I'm not sure it was such a great idea.

See, for my graduate program, I had to make a big project. For mine, I made a website to help seniors learn how to use computers and the Internet. I've had it in my portfolio, but for a long while it was mildly broken. Then the idiots at Uplink Earth (who finally after a month plus of nagging canceled my account) made it really broken. I moved over to GoDaddy, but it took me a long time and some customer support to get the database set up with them. Now, I finally have gotten the site back up and running.

Boy, is it awful.

On one hand, it is nice to see how much I've progressed in my design ability, sense of good user interface, and general competency, but it is painful to look back and see how bad something that was supposed to be my capstone project really is. There are things that are unfriendly to everyone, not just seniors. The size of the site changes from page to page, making for visual distractions. I have navigation that requires both use of the keyboard and mouse. It can't be navigated by mouse alone. What the heck was I thinking?

Right now I am thinking about hiding this site ... which would be a shame after the work I've put into getting it running again. However, I noticed last week that my coolest project from my graduate studies, a multi-player strategy game, is not working. Time to put getting that up and running on my to-do list.

There Goes the Sun

2010-09-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's not news, but the sun is setting earlier. That's, uh, that's normal, I hear. So anyhow it's spurring me on to get some things done. This weekend saw a lot of yard work, cutting down the dead landscaping and the like. Then today Jen and I went along the Peak-to-Peak Highway to check out the aspen changing color. We made a caramel apple run into Estes Park and did crossword puzzles along the stretches that were not sparkling with gold and orange.

We're planning on taking another trip to see them next weekend with some friends of ours. I guess we're making up for missing them last year when a big windstorm took the leaves out before we could see them. The weather today was fantastic; even a little warm. Pictures will go up after next week's trip.

When not touring the aspen, we played a lot of Lego Harry Potter. Jen got me that for my birthday and we've been playing through. It is fun, though not as competitive as previous ones. It mainly is exploration and puzzle solving. It is fun and has an innovative split screen view. How the screen splits is based on your position relative to the other player. The screen also can split diagonally, vertically, or horizontally. It can be confusing at first, but is pretty cool. I just need to lay off it a bit, as I am seeing it when I close my eyes.