Mr. Clean

OK, I know most of you will have a good laugh about this... I decided to cut my hair a little shorter than normal yesterday. Well, I actually cut it all off. Lisa and the kids definitely don't like it and Surya was even mad at me for doing it. I don't care either way, but I probably won't do it again since it took way longer than I expected to shave my head. Once I start going bald naturally, I may go this route again, but probably not before that.

It's weird because the top of my head feels a little numb compared to the rest of my head when I touch it. I am out of town for a week at a conference so I figured this would be the perfect time to try it. Personally I think I look like the Mr. Clean guy. What do you think?

Look Out!!!

As a parent, this is one of those things that I have been both dreading and looking forward to. Last week Ariyanna went for her drivers test. Needless to say she was a little nervous. Lisa and Ariyanna arrived early enough for the test that she got a chance to drive around the area a little. She was so nervous that when she tried to drive around for practice, she nearly 'freaked out' when the car wouldn't move when she hit the gas. Lisa had to explain to her that she needs to turn on the vehicle first and then give it gas. :)

However, when it came to actually taking the test, she passed with flying colors. She has been living in the car my parents gave her as a 16th birthday gift (1997 Honda CRV) ever since. I try to remind her numerous times a week (she probably thinks I tell her a hundred times a day) that she can't be paying attention to what her friends are talking about and needs to concentrate on the driving. I think she is getting the message, but it is hard to say since she is still a teenager.

The nice part about her getting her drivers license for a parent is that she is now added to the registered taxi drivers in the house. Especially with summer coming and the kids being involved in baseball and soccer, having Ariyanna around to drive the kids to their practices will be very helpful.

If you get an opportunity, make sure to congratulate Ariyanna on getting her license.

April Fools Day

Ahhh, one of my favorite days of the year. The kids are usually scared when this time of year rolls around...it might have something to do with me waking everyone up a few April Fool Days ago and telling them we were going to get a puppy. Unfortunately, everyone believed me too much and I had three crying kids on my hands when I told them April Fools.

Since then I've concentrated my efforts at work. Two years ago we got my buddy Sweeney with the alltime classic prank, aluminum foiled cube. Last year, we followed up by redoing his cube in colored saran wrap...for some reason I can't find the pictures of this...they may have been on my old server. Sweeney was extremely nervous coming into this season and he scheduled his team to work this past weekend so he would be onsite (he'll tell you that the dates were set by the business...but I know better). Instead of getting Sweeney again this year, we decided to go after Cletus.

Cletus is the Chief Network Geek and can speak fluently in binary, CatIOS, and TCP/UDP. He also happens to be a chicken farmer in his spare time. After weeks of coming up with ideas for this year, we decided to go green. The folks at Lowe's wanted us to send them a picture after they found out what we were doing. Sweeney will be following up by taking them a picture.

I'm still looking for ideas for next year so send me any ideas you may have.

March Madness...My Annual Illness

UPDATE: I finished 22nd out of 80, so not as bad as I thought I would finish...well out of the money though. I did pick the NCAA Champion Florida Gators to win it all, which is why I jumped up about 30 spots in the final tally. Here's to next year.

Every year about this time I throw $10 down the drain. I get into an NCAA basketball pool and use my vast college basketball wisdom to pick who will win each game. Once again, I am on pace to finish outside the money. Why I continually put $10 in, I don't know. My record the past few years is less than stellar:

2007 - 31st out of 81 (After Round 1)
2006 - 17th of 65
2005 - 27th of 58
2004 - 17th of 67

However, it's one of those rites of Spring...similar to Groundhog Day...it just wouldn't be right without doing it. So every year I get my picks in, take a couple of half days off from work and meet Dave K, Chris, Gary, Jon, Keith, Bob, Dave S, and a slew of others for two days of watching games, gorging on food and drinking a few adult beverages.

For those of you that want to know who you shouldn't have picked, here we go.

Sweet 16: Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Wisconsin, Kansas, Southern Illinois, Pittsburgh, UCLA, NC, Texas, Washington State, Georgetown, Ohio State, Virginia, Louisville, Memphis

Elite 8: Florida, Wisconsin, Kansas, UCLA, Texas, Washington State, Ohio State, Memphis

Final Four: Florida, Kansas, Texas, Ohio State

Champion: Florida over Texas

Time to go root for my teams as round 2 begins today. After this weekend if things don't go as planned, I may have to start talking more about the Milwaukee Brewers prospects this year. :)

Book Review: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

I recently completed reading this novel and really enjoyed the way it crosses real science with science fiction to make a book worth reading. Wilson uses real world research to create a world that is believable under the fictional circumstances. Spin received the Best Novel Hugo Award last year, which is how I heard about the book.

The story starts in present day US, where three kids happen to be outside on the night the stars go black. An alien force, the Hypotheticals, have placed the Earth in a protective barrier, the Spin, that knocks out all satellite communications and hides the moon, stars, and sun (although there is a fake sun that rises and sets as normal). However, the biggest threat to the Earth is the barrier also places them in a 'stasis', since the cosmos outside the Spin is aging at a rate of 3 years for every terrestrial second. This means every terrestrial decade is nearly 1 billion years in real time.

The novel goes on to discuss how Tyler, Diane and Jason cope with these new circumstances and try to find out more about the Hypotheticals. Since the Sun is expected to last only two to three billion more years (twenty to thirty years terrestrial time), Jason develops a plan to seed Mars with life over a couple hundred million years real time (about two years terrestrial time) to allow humans to colonize the planet and look forward to millions of years to grow and evolve. However, will the Hypotheticals allow that.

This is a very well written novel, though the main charaters seem to be too idealistic. Jason is only motivated by solving the Spin; Diane is exactly the opposite, having no interest in learning about it and spending her life looking for a religious outlet; and Tyler seems almost apathetic...whatever happens, happens.

Overall, I recommend Spin since Wilson does a great job of mixing science fiction with real world science and medicine, creating a story that is not only interesting, but also makes you think. I give it an 8 out of 10 stars.

2007 Adventure Trip

The Planning Committee for the 2007 Adventure Trip made the decision to change the location and times for this years trip. The new dates and times will coordinate with Deepu and Priti's wedding at the end of August. The location this year is Yosemite National Park which is a few hours east of San Francisco.

The current plan is to have everyone arrive on Tuesday, August 21 and head to Yosemite that evening. We hope to spend one day on the water, either rafting or kayaking, a second day hiking though the park, and a third day rock climbing.

I am starting to put together some committees to take care of all the necessary steps to make this trip as fun as the previous ones. I will be sending an email out shortly to discuss who will be attending so I can get a headcount for housing, cars, etc. Look for the email coming within the next week.

I will need a response back by mid-March to make reservations and get other things in motion. Let me know if you have any questions.

I'm Back

I know I've been telling many of you for years that I would update my site...well, I finally did it. The main problem has been finding the time to try to do this on my own (researching the tools, getting them installed on my server, creating a design, and then finally posting). I finally realized that I'll never have enough time to do it on my own so I went to Blogger and created the blog there. I'm still learning all the intricacies of the site, so please let me know if you see any problems.