September 2008 Archives

Or not. Just a couple of random thoughts for this weekend. It’s been a crazy weekend of college football so far, with at least 4 Top 10 teams losing, a couple of huge underdogs (Navy, Maryland) winning, and my alma mater Rice scoring 77 points in a game (they won this time). Even Duke won an ACC game (yes, the one that earlier argued it was the worst football team in America). Yup, this is why I like rooting for the underdog (at least, most of the time — I’ll still root for Rice if they are favored).

But I also wanted to leave you with this note. I’m working on a very large program (over 9-figure total expenditure) at my current place of employment. The program manager (a good guy) has posted one of those demotivator posters near his cubicle, hopefully as a joke. The poster is shown below. The punchline is that our program is actually nicknamed Pyramid.

Today is Will’s 6th birthday. He woke up so excited this morning about his birthday. (Actual quote: “I’m not going to be 5 any more.”) So, he got Krispy Kreme donut holes for breakfast, and Mommy brought cupcakes for lunch at school with him and his class. (This was an exiciting thing to do, too.) Dinner was more low-key (Moe’s), but it is exactly what he requested. Then it was back home to finish opening gifts. Matchbox-type cars are the big hit this year (as is the giant rug/map that he got now to drive them on).

We’ll get the photos and video up from the birthday party this past Saturday. (Still trying to recover from the lost hard drive — lots to redo.) But Will is now 6, and while he doesn’t look too different from yesterday, I think he’s relieved that he’s not the only kid who’s 5 years old in his class any more.

Now, here’s the scary thought — he’s one-third of the way to his college years. Yikes!

Just a quick update (as this is birthday party weekend for Will): got the AC fixed today, so we now have cool air on the first floor again. Luckily, the past week has had average temperatures for Richmond, so things didn’t get too hot downstairs. (I’m glad this didn’t quit during the middle of the summer.) But it’s nice to be back in a cool situation. The temps inside today were heading back toward 80 before the AC was finally back working.

Now, about that Pump-It-Up party tomorrow…

Actually, I guess this makes 3:

1. Don’t get any of your expensive stuff near me. Things keep failing. First a laptop, then a hard drive seizure, and now the first floor AC is kaput. Ugh! Yet another unexpected expense.

2. Speaking of that hard drive seizure, we got the bad news today. Data recovery will require a clean room operation to try to get it back. We’ll see how much can be recovered. (Recovery is not cheap. Lesson learned.)

3. Kellie has her new call sign. It is KJ4GRE. Time to get her on-the-air.

Just a quick bit of news from the better half. Kellie sat down yesterday to take a test to receive her Technician class license for amateur radio privileges from the FCC. She was a bit nervous about the test, but all of her studying to this point paid off. She passed the test. And guess what? She didn’t just pass the test — she aced it.

(If you didn’t know it, my dad and I are long-time amateur radio license holders — he’s held his a bit longer. And my mom went and passed her test back in May of this year. Mom also aced the test.)

So, congrats to the newly minted ham. I’d say she’s more excited about this right now than probably I am with my licensed privileges. Heck, I’m not sure what license I hold right now, as I held an Advanced license back in the age when you had to take a Morse code test as well.

Yes, that’s right — no code test requirements any more, even for the top licensing level. So, you too can get your amateur radio license. Why don’t you?

Looks like Ike is trying to line up Houston for a strike. Good luck to everyone down there.

Flashing back to a posting I had a while back about Duke University’s lawyers successfully arguing that Duke’s football team is as bad as you can get. Now, we have footage from the arguments where Duke’s lawyer says, “Duke is probably the worst football team in Division I football. Everybody knows that. That’s no secret.” Wow. I guess that’s how you win a lawsuit, but it sure doesn’t make the football players feel any better.

It’s with a bit of trepidation as I watch Hurricane Ike decide to take aim at Texas and possible even head for Houston. I still have a bit of a soft spot for Houston, where I attend college for 4 years at Rice University. I still have relatives, friends and classmates in the area (and elsewhere in Texas, like Austin and the Hill Country), so I pray that they are able to stay safe during this storm, wherever it decides to make landfall and proceed inland.

This is true for any storm that comes along.

I’m also a bit of a weather nut (just like Will and one of my cousins, who is a meteorologist), so when there is a storm, I particularly like to look at the prediction models for the path and try to see what I can deduce from what those models are saying. (Just the inner geek, I guess.) Two sites that give a lot of information are StormPulse, which has an awesome interactive map and lets you check back on some of the previous storms of the season, and Weather Underground, which has a plethora of maps and history on each storm. I especially enjoy the Computer Model Verification, which shows the daily predicted path for the different models versus the actual path.

Again, I don’t want to make light of the death and destruction that unfortunately comes with these storms. But as we attempt to understand the storms better, hopefully this allows us to better protect ourselves in the future. We’re praying that everyone who has been affected so far in the Caribbean and those who eventually find themselves in the path of Ike (or any other storm) will be safe and sound.

Sorry if you get tired of the Rice football entries, but it’s an easy way to post my thoughts.

For the second straight weekend, the Rice Owls football team was on TV. And they were not looking as good as last week. They were down 28-13 at the start of the 4th quarter (and outgained on offense 2 to 1), and even under 7 minutes, they were still down by 35-20. But then they scored a touchdown, made a defensive stop, then went 93 yards for another touchdown. Then the tying 2-point conversion.

But there was over a minute left, and Memphis got the ball back and was driving for at least a field goal when this happened:

So yes, Rice is now 2-0, heading to a showdown at Vanderbilt (also 2-0) this weekend. One of these “traditional” doormats is going to be 3-0 after this weekend. Hard to believe, to be honest. The highlight reel of touchdowns (and a couple other key plays) can be found on this highlight reel from CBS College Sports.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Actually, the interception made ESPN’s Game Changing Performance vote. Vote before Thursday for the Week 2 entries (Rice is the third video). Here’s the summary videos, for longevity sake.

OK, nobody in the family is hurt. Just the electronics — the main family computer. The hard drive just went and decided to freeze up. It’s not recoverable at the local shop and is going to have to go out for full-blown disaster recovery (cost still pending, depending on what they have to do and if it is even salvageable). Yup, tons of family files on there that we really do not want to lose. This is why there weren’t any updates over the weekend.

Lesson learned — schedule your backups. Speaking of which, if you’re tech savvy and already doing this, what is your approach? Online backup service? Second hard drive? DVD? What program(s) are you running to coordinate it? All suggestions appreciated, because I won’t be making this expensive mistake again. (And the drive was only 2 years old and gave no signs of being ready to fail, such as the clicking it ultimately showed.)

On a happier note, you can view this amazing video about Christian the lion. It breaks through my sour mood about the computer.

I previously noted Rice’s win from this past weekend, but wanted to call attention to some publicity the team got today on ESPN. Chase Clement and Jarrett Dillard, the likely record-setting QB/WR duo for Rice, were interviewed today on ESPN College Football Live. Very well-spoken examples of the scholar-athletes at Rice.

(I’m not going to defend the moustaches. However, I think some of us have equally bad examples from our past.)

They also noted that Jarrett has a weekly blog posting at the NY Times this year. Here’s his first entry. (Unfortnately, he doesn’t get his own feed, but it’s blended in with the rest of their college sports blog.) Pretty cool stuff. Good luck guys as you chase that NCAA record.

Well, it was not without a little trepidation that Will started his second year of elementary school today. That’s not to be unexpected. But after getting over that little distraction, he was gung ho to get to school. After all, he’s an expert at going to school and getting on the bus. (Yes, that is him in the middle of the picture on the right, somewhat hidden by the reflection on the bus window. I actually think it’s kind of cool, because he can be seen.)

By all accounts, he’s got a great teacher this year (Ms. Stone), so we look forward to lots of learning on his part. While I couldn’t extra too much detail on what he did today, he did say that he enjoyed school today. So we start yet another year of him growing up. I can’t wait to hear about all of the new things he’s going to learn about.

Well, the thermometer may say that it will continue to be warm, but the neighborhood pool is closing up and school starts tomorrow. That means that summer, for all intents and purposes, is over.

So, it was with a bit of shock that Will suddenly declared yesterday that he wanted to go out and ride his bike. Yes, that same bike that we couldn’t convince him to ride all summer. Go figure. So after filling up the tires with air and giving Will some quick instructions on pushing the pedals and using the hand brake (instead of the feet) to slow down the bike, he was suddenly off. And he wasn’t too bad, not even complaining too much on the uphill before our driveway.

So, now we’ve got (I hope) a kid who will get more and more into his bike. He’s still a bit skittish when cars are coming, but we’ll get him through it all. We’re just excited that he’s showing interest in riding his bike.

Some new pictures for our new nephew, Nicholas. The picture to the right is of Grampa with Nicholas this past weekend. And they had a professional photographer take some photos at 2 weeks. Some of the better photos are here on the photographer’s blog. (And not to embarrass Dena too much, but she also had some photos back in July that are very beautiful.)