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Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: 10 years ago today, I moved to San Diego to work for MP3.com. I left behind Vancouver, a decent job, a vehicle, and a new and interesting girlfriend. I went to a very fast-moving company in an exotic city with only a motorcycle and a small moving truck full of hand-me-down possessions. What a weird decade it's been. 10 years later, 3 jobs later, countless health issues and surgeries later, one multi-continent trip later, and here we are. Huh. Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: Our little boys love to chase moths. Sometimes they'll eat them. Today the fun was simply to carry said moth around the apartment. 
Sue with the moth in his mouth | 
Gromit with the moth in his mouth | 
Gromit, trying to bite the moth |
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Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: These are throwaway pics that I wanted to show Tamara. Instead, I'm tossing them on the blog because they are somewhat interesting.   Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: To scratch an itch, I built a popular website many years ago (apparently in March 2005). I managed to get revenue on it using Google AdSense. Here are some sample numbers for June. month amount impressions
June 2005 $ 250 424k
June 2006 $ 1160 745k
June 2007 $ 768 416k
June 2008 $ 11 9k
June 2009 $ 21 11k You can tell when I got rid of my big website, eh? (March 2008, FWIW) Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: Ted CS305 Ethics A
CS311 Comp Structures C+
PH213 Physics B
PH216 Physics Lab A-
STAT451 Statistics B-
GPA FOR QUARTER 2.91 I'm not surprised by the comp structures class; I'm just happy to have passed it. And I'm embarrassed by the stats grade- I did freaky bad on both the midterm and final. Tamara: BI253 Biology3 A
CH336 Organic chemistry B+
CH338 OChem lab A
PH213 Physics A
PH216 Physics lab A
GPA FOR QUARTER 3.83 Tamara knew she got a B+ in o-chem. Great grades! Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: Mission Motors is a high-performance electric motorcycle company. They introduced their first bike at TED- it's supposed to be ready in 2010, and they'll be selling for almost $70,000 (ouch!). However, what I care about is that my geek hero, Seth LaForge, left Google to work for them. He recently blogged and shared photos of him doing some ride testing:     Hey Seth- if you are going to be intervewed by any more news crews, get your leathers cleaned! Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: Today, the California Supreme Court upheld proposition 8 today. To borrow a phrase from Teresa Strasser, someday we'll look back on this and be as ashamed as we are now at the anti-miscegnation laws that weren't overturned until 1967. Keep in mind that as late as 1965, a judge said the following: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." I know there are some of our friends and family (mostly Mormon) that feel differently than we do on this topic. I'm sorry. But it's important for you to know how Tamara and I feel about it, and we feel it's important enough to ruffle some feathers to state our feelings on the topic. Having said that, there are some fairly new videos out. The first one was very touching to me- reframing the "debate" in terms of "voting on rights" and showing loving couples was moving: This second video is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but makes a very solid point- if it's put in the terms of "let's save the babies!" as DAG would say, what else should be put in those terms? And, finally, a spoofed Prop8 website header:  Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: CBSNews did a word cloud comparison of speeches delivered by Pres. Obama and former VP Dick Cheney today. Here's Pres. Obama's speech, reduced to the most frequent words:  Here's Cheney's speech:  The difference in positive and negative words is incredibly striking. One is very positive and human-oriented ("people", "American") while the other is incredibly negative and objectifying ("terrorists", "9/11", "administration"). Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: On Saturday I helped the Reach the Beach bicycle fundraising ride by motorcycling along with the ride. I spent a lot of time monitoring major intersections, warning bicyclists about rough rail crossings, and checking on riders stopped on the side of the road. Most of the problems were simply tubes and tires, but there were some more significant things- a broken chain and a pretty bad leg injury.  The leg injury was very interesting. I was 3 blocks past Amity High School when I saw two bicyclists on the side of the road. A woman had hurt her calf with her pedal and a large chuck of flesh was torn open- I could see into her calf almost a full inch. I knew I couldn't help her, so I decided to transport her (on the back of the bike) back to the high school, since there was an ambulance there. She got on the passenger seat, I instructed her to hang onto me, and we went back to the school. She was definitely fading- not fully conscious- so I had to make sure she wasn't falling off. When I got to the ambulance, three medics were standing at the back of it. I asked them to take her off the back, but I don't think they understood the urgency. So I demanded they take her. Once they realized what was going on, they got her off the bike, sat her on the bumper of the ambulance, then loaded her onto the stretcher. I hope she's okay!  On the lighter side, the weather was beautiful and the temperature at the coast was perfect. Somehow I didn't get my Reach the Beach hat, but it was still fun. Link to read, comment on this post
Automagically posted from my blog for my LJ friends: Brilliant statistician Nate Silver has a new article about the possible end of the car culture. Basically, he built a mathematical model to see if the lower driving rates can be completely explained by the time of year, unemployment rates, and gas prices: The model predicts that given a somewhat higher unemployment rate but much lower gas prices, the lower gas prices should have won out: Americans should have driven slightly more in January 2009 than they had a year earlier. But instead, as we've described, they drove somewhat less. In fact, they drove about 8 percent less than the model predicted. Additionally: There is strong statistical evidence, in fact, that Americans respond rather slowly to changes in fuel prices. The cost of gas twelve months ago, for example, has historically been a much better predictor of driving behavior than the cost of gas today. Finally: Between October 2004, when gas prices first hit two dollars a gallon, and December 2008, when they fell below this threshold, three cities with among the largest declines in housing prices were Las Vegas (-37 percent), Detroit (-34 percent), and Phoenix (-15 percent), each highly car-dependent cities. Conversely, the two markets with the largest gains in housing prices were Portland, Oregon (+19 percent), and Seattle (+18 percent), communities that are more friendly to alternate modes of transportation. I'm not at all surprised that there is a relationship between being transportation-friendly and housing prices. It's nice to see Las Vegas and Phoenix getting their bubbles burst. Link to read, comment on this post |
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