+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Toys for Tots
Morning news at slashdot has the required dose of testosterone with the disucssions of the Bugatti Veyrone. (a car) The Marshall Brain Blog has the instructions to get to the videos. How Stuff Works .com also has some easy to read details.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶North vs South
 |  |
| Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison | Texas State Capitol in Austin |
| Madison everybody says the letter "O" funny | In Austin everybody says Y'all |
| The Badgers are the college mascot with Red and White | The Longhorns with Burnt Orange. (takes a while to get used to, but its actually not that bad. Subsequently it is also the color of burnt nacho-cheese) |
| "Heavy Traffic" day means it takes 20 minutes to get across town | "Heavy Traffic" is normal and it means 2 hours for the same distance. |
| Music goes into hibernation in Winter | The Music never stops |
| January means exposed skin becomes solid | January means they bring out the patio warmer and sip warm drinks |
| February means "Kites on Ice" when everybody walks onto the lakes and flies a kite | February means putting up the jackets and getting ready for spring |
| People are friendly if they know you | Everybody thinks they know you (I was waved at a half dozen times and that was just he second block |
| A rain storm means spitty/misty stuff | Austin storms mean run for cover and unplug your valuables |
Tons of Rainbow Stickers
Both are islands of liberals surrounded by a sea of conservatives
Every restaurant has a vegetarian option
I have lived in both :)
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Out for a Stroll
Nothing like taking a break at a "scenic lookout" when you have been cooped up in the car for a few hours. Then getting shocked that when you left Austin, it was 75 and somewhere between there and the Oklahoma border the temperature dropped to 50. PHEW!
Originally we were going to look at a sign, but that was a good 100 yards away.. With the temperature that low and an even lower attention span between Ryan and I we just ran around in the field instead. I meant to take note of where this is but I cannot remember exactly. It is in the hills just across the TX/OK border on I35.
*click photo to zoom*
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Gone Quacky
a picture says (reads?) a thousand words...
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Kitchen Sink
On the geek front, I added a the blogs of Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman of Ximian Gnome, now part of Novell (see left column).
Next, the K desktop Environment is making major inroads for getting Linux "user friendly".
...
On the home front, Ryan sang his ABC's to me this morning while I was changing his diaper. That was cool. He is trying to go potty too. Mostly practicing the motions at this point but he has the general concepts down. (we sit down too, less mess maybe?)
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Communications 2
We regret to inform you that the censorship committee has determined that the previous post was inappropriate. That post has been sacked. The poster of the unmentionable post has also been sacked. If the people in the peanut gallery would kindly inform the people in the nut house it would be greatly appreciated by this fruit loop.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Little Red (Yellow) riding hood
weekend in haiku
Okahoma in a day
then back to texas
went to grandma's house
ate dinner with family
I feel close to home
no wolves crossed the path
We did meet a few cookies
We won that battle
. Continued..
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Thirty Years and One Day
My birthday went pretty darn swell. I talked to my several family members in ring 1 (immediate family) as opposed to ring 2 (friends) or ring 0 (wife/kids). Some of you may relate that to an Operating System Kernel. Its the same, only different.
...
Ate Sushi last night, at a restaurant called Koreana Grill and Sushi Bar. Which we just happened to stumble into because neither one of use knew where a place was that served Sushi. Very reasonable.
...
The Kim had Sweet and Sour Chicken, which came with rice and 6 bowls of other stuff including: bean thread, soy chunks, potato chunks, cabbage chunks, and something else long and stringy I can't think of right now. Ryan loved the rice, but he is a sport and tried most of the things in the bowls although not many met the expectations of his refined almost-2-year-old palate. I had the Spicy Salmon roll and the regular Salmon roll with Hot Sake.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Three Decades
I am thirty today, or as the card from my sister and bro-in-law reads "pushing turdy". :)
I feel the same I did yesterday, but I feel the same I did about 5 years ago. One of the guys here at work said I still look 23. Which is probably why I get funny looks when I tell folks my age. Regardless, at this point, I still like aging and am not too woried about getting old. Growing older means a whole bunch of things to me:
- Accomplishments.
- If I am getting older, that means I am still alive
- That is a good thing
- Closer to finding out what that Duck is talking about with AAFLAC
- more patience
- Almost being ready to settle down and figure out what I want to do now that I am a grown up
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Zinger
My Name is Luca Nathan,
I live work on the second floor...
But really. The building people decided to reboot the power to the building I work in this past weekend. Fortunately all my servers came back up afterwards. However, in the more critical category, the vending machine on my floor did not recover. To make matters worse, they had just refilled the machine last Friday, including the Zingers. Exactly what I was craving. So while the vending masters figure out that they have a wounded soldier it was my goal to score a Zinger regardless of the casualties.
So I hit the third floor vending area. They did have a working vending machine, so I scanned in my dollar, hit 166 for the Chocolate w/Chocolate Icing Zinger and the bloody thing says "Enter exact change". ~DRAT! I suspected it was out of nickels or dimes, so I pressed one of the .50 cent items, and low and behold it chucked out the Mocha Cookies and returned 2 quarters back to me.
This meant I had to locate .85 cents exactly to score a Zinger. (yes, I came up with that ON MY OWN) The first several passerby that I accosted, did not have either two nickels or a dime much less both. Brilliantly, I recalled that I keep a good bit of change in the 'ol truck. So I hiked back down the three flights of stairs (I try to not use elevators, I will save that for a different post). Grabbed two dimes (one for backup, you know, sometimes these machines have a tendency to eat small change and deny that you gave it to them).
Anyhow, I did get back to the third floor in time to get my 3-pack of Zingers, never know somebody may decide to buy all of them at once.
p.s. My google skills may be draining, but in 30 seconds I was not able to locate an Official Dolly Madison site to link up. If you are the holder of such information I would be willing to part with half of an uneaten Zinger for any news regarding such site.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Storms Brewing
Up north, the only thing that brews is beer. Down here, there "ain"t" much beer but there are plenty of storms. Especially this time of the year. If you see the site today, the Austin WUnderground on the right has an "advisory". This sounds really cool:
The potential for heavy rains and flash flooding exists over South central Texas this weekend. Model data projects a large storm system producing a prolonged chance of rain. The first round of thunderstorms are expected late Friday night into Saturday with another round by Monday.I will let you know if I run across any flash floods in "hill country" Austin TX!
An upper level low currently off the northern Baja California coast will move east to along the Arizona and New Mexico border Thursday and Friday. This will result in increasing southerly flow... moisture and instability. As the upper level low approaches on Saturday... the upper level flow will become increasingly diffluent. This will promote strong upward lifting of the unstable airmass resulting in the development of heavy rains.
Rainfall over the past several weeks has led to ground moisture being above average for this time of year. With the additional rains expected... runoff will be rapid and flash flooding will be possible.
Visitors planning weekend travel to the area should understand the rapid nature of Hill Country flooding. Avoid planning activities around Rivers... streams... and other low lying or flood prone areas.
Residents of and visitors to South central Texas are advised to monitor NOAA Weather Radio or local media outlets for the latest on this developing weather situation.