We're on vacation in Monterey, going to the aquarium tomorrow and whale-watching on Sunday. We had some excitement last night — our upstairs washing machine overflowed, and we drained about 20 gallons of water through some holes I drilled in the living room ceiling!

That lawnmower I'm posing with is my new rechargeable electric mower. It's very quiet, works like a million bucks, and there's no cord. I couldn't find one anywhere locally, so I ordered it from Amazon, and the weekend after it came, I wired an outlet and an overhead light with a light switch in my garden shed so I wouldn't have to keep it in the garage.

The picture of the pool shows some strange items floating about called Solar Sun Rings — they're supposed to make the pool several degrees warmer, and I hope they work because I now own 14 of the things, and they are obscenely not cheap.

New Toy!	The Deluge	Ceiling Pee
Solar Sun Rings	Up a Tree	This space inten- tionally left blank.

Labels: cats, emily, home, mower, pics, pool, toys

posted by Chris at 9:08 PM Permalink

 
This could get addictive really, really quickly: Google Image Labeler. Google pairs you up with a partner who's on-line, and you try to label the image, and you have a set amount of time to hit on a match that becomes a defacto tag for that image. They have a list of forbidden most-obvious labels. It's pure e-v-i-l.

posted by Chris at 1:49 AM Permalink

 
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Is Back, but season 8 is a comic book. Oh well, I guess that's better than nothing. Still, I miss SMG.

posted by Chris at 1:36 AM Permalink

 
Radioactive Boy Scout

posted by Chris at 1:18 AM Permalink

 

"Anything not worth doing is worth
  not doing well. Think about it."

- Elias Schwartz

Labels: GTD, quotes

posted by Chris at 9:04 AM Permalink

 
The lead singer from Boston died yesterday. I really liked them back in the day.

I think what they've done with their website is pretty classy: Official Boston Website

posted by Chris at 2:53 PM Permalink

 
Click to go to this on YouTube™

Labels: you tube

posted by Chris at 12:40 AM Permalink

 

• Janet and Me in D.C.
  (I actually own this tux.)
• Remember Ken Jennings?
• The Archimedes Palimpsest
• Trippy Visual Illusion
• Growabrain's Beatles Archive
• adgoodness design blog
• Secret to Longevity
• 50 Writing Tips
• Listen to Beatles "Love"
• Psychology of Cognitive Biases
• Kids Draw Scientists
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Another Cool Illusion

Labels: beatles, illusions, links

posted by Chris at 12:13 AM Permalink

 
Here are a few pictures I took yesterday morning before I went to work:

Primrose Steps	Flowering Plum Tree	Daffydills
Fountain of Flowers	My New Garden	Broccoli in the Wild

Labels: flowers, gardening, pics

posted by Chris at 11:11 PM Permalink

 

"Reality is that which,
when you stop believing in it,
doesn't go away." — Philip K. Dick

Labels: quotes

posted by Chris at 11:01 PM Permalink

 

My healthcare organization is Kaiser Permanente, and this is an actual image from their "refill a prescription" page. Maybe it's just me, but something here doesn't seem right.

The good news is that they have adopted one of my best ideas — to print a description of the pill on the bottle. It's a great idea, even if they didn't get it from me.

posted by Chris at 1:56 AM Permalink

 

How to Cook a Steak (CAUTION: Graphic Slaughterhouse Pics) Awesome Sidewalk Chalk Guitars & Such out of Matchsticks PopURLs - Where do you think I get this stuff? Great Plagiarism Article Sad Calvin & Hobbes Parody Indexed - a very unique blog Eating Dirt is Good for You! Zappa does Walrus on YouTube

Labels: blogs, food, links, you tube, zappa

posted by Chris at 1:36 AM Permalink

 
So Oprah's been at it again, and the big new buzz is a book and a movie called The Secret. It's basically just a rehash of a bunch of old stuff like the law of attraction, positive thinking, affirmations, and karma. No great harm, but as my mentor Jim Rhon says, "Affirmation without labor is the beginning of delusion."

Well, here's a great big bashing review over at skeptic.com:
The Secret behind The Secret

(Scroll down when you get there.)

Labels: oprah, skeptics, the secret

posted by Chris at 12:33 AM Permalink

 

"He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head
is a craftsman. He who works with his hands
and his head and his heart is an artist."

--St. Francis, religious leader

Labels: quotes

posted by Chris at 12:02 AM Permalink

 
Here's a long NY Times article by Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma that I recommend you read, a further diatribe on the shortcomings of the American Diet.

His conclusion? Try to eat more food.

Labels: books, diet, food

posted by Chris at 11:34 PM Permalink

 
Our 2nd-grade daughter Emily was given the assignment to "Write a story about a soldier who sees a horse behind a tree -- use all the words in the box [soldier, story, behind]. Here's how it turned out:

Once I was a soldier in an old old fairy tale and in that fairy tale I saw a horse that got out of a farm. So the horse hid behind a tree so I ride it back to the farm. And that story was a good one wasn't it? The End.

(The teacher's red pen says "Yes.")

Labels: emily

posted by Chris at 11:09 PM Permalink

 

Gosh it's been so long, I could list hundreds of links here, but to keep it short, I'll just do a few recent favorites: Scott Adams' Dilbert Blog REALLY smart guy or??? Phil Keaggy Still Rocks! Periodic Table of Visualization Methods Ask a Philosopher Fear Factor's Joe Rogan Wolfram's Mathworld Deeply Weird Shit Incredible Can-in-wastebasket Video Rube Goldberg Variations Cool Drawing Lessons Calculate pi with Hot Dogs The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment 13 Places to Watch TV for Free

Labels: Joe Rogan, links, math, philosophy, psychedelics, science, tv

posted by Chris at 1:11 AM Permalink

 
I've been reading The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams, who, besides being friends with Henry and William James, and the whole Emerson family, was the grandson of John Quincy Adams, and thus the great grandson of John Adams. Speaking of himself and school, he said:

"He hated it because he was herded together with a crowd of boys and compelled to learn by memory a quantity of things that did not amuse him."

I think that's a real gem, but to unearth one of these, you have to wade through hours of tedious first-person history of the Union's legation to England during the Civil War.

Labels: quotes

posted by Chris at 12:46 AM Permalink

 
Last Thursday, we had our once a year every few years snowfall that actually amounted to enough to play in. I went out late in the evening and took this picture of our pool in the snow - it's a little grainy looking because it's a long exposure with available light. Click for a bigger version. (It was much prettier in real life.)

Labels: home, pics

posted by Chris at 11:37 PM Permalink

 

Labels: star trek, you tube

posted by Chris at 11:15 PM Permalink