"That's a Relief"

If you've never seen the movie "Spellbound", I recommend it if you want a funny, feel-good documentary. The movie follows a few young kids as they prepare for and compete in the national spelling bee. I never realized how intense the competition is for these kids, especially when you've got nutty parents requiring you to spell about 5,000 words a day all year-round.

This video is not from that movie, but it's a funny clip from this year's national spelling bee. This poor kid misunderstood the word they were asking him to spell, and from the sound of it everyone in the audience misunderstood the word, too.

This just in....

Rita's on Mars!

Tim G. did another interview here for Colorado Public Radio. Scroll down until you get to Colorado Built Space Craft on Mars.

I have to say, the good peeps of Philadelphia will be a bit confused by the possibility of "water ice" on Mars. (as opposed to dry ice which is made of CO2)

To them, water ice is a tasty summer treat that comes in a variety of flavors from a place called Ritas.

What a shock if we really did find water ice on mars?! I bet it would be grape. Or maybe lemon. Martians seem like a lemony sort of crowd.

Delaware Valley's Finest

Last night after LOST we watched the local news. This always ends up happening. LOST comes on at 10pm and then the news at 11pm, and like a horrible black hole we get sucked in when we should just go to bed.

I don't know about Colin, but for me it is the catchy little news tune. You know what I'm talking about, all news broadcasts have them. Think World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. I bet you could sing me that tune.

So the broadcast starts out with this amazing little ditty and instantly I'm 16 years old painting my face getting ready for the big game. Why? Because it sounds like a high school marching band. Snare drums and all. It is so awesome. I half expect to see some cheerleader back hand-springing through the studio giving sparkle fingers and busting herques. Hell, it makes me want to bust herques off of the coffee table.

Then we have the news reports, which are literally the love child of COPS and Reno 911. You know when the camera man chases people down and the picture is bobbling all over the place? Yep. It happens. Very amature documentary style. It kind of reminds me when I interview Colin on our camera and I have an imaginary microphone. The best was when this reporter chased down the Mayor of some small western PA town and the Mayor refused to talk to them and slammed the car door in the camera's face and told the reporter to beat it. so amazing. Such a good way to end a day.

Another classic was last night during the weather. The forecast for today was, and I quote "A BEAUT" And if that description doesn't kill you the fact that they then had the words "A BEAUT" appear on the screen in a flashing WordART banner (no joke) undoubtedly will. I'm not going to lie, they were spot on. Today is definitely a beaut.

Really, I'm not doing it justice. You should just come and experience it for yourself.

Revenge of the Nerds

This is what happens when nerds unite to take back outer space. They land a robot on mars....or something like that.

Check out this shot of my dad cheering:



This pic is from the Rocky Mountain News. I took some liberties here and did some editing since I am pretty sure these were the first words out of my dad's mouth.

Congrats to him on a job well done!

Listen to him talk about it on a podcast he did for Design News here.

Business cards

When I was working as an engineer, I amassed a large pile of business cards from colleagues, sales reps, contractors, inspectors, and did I mention sales reps? Most of the business cards looked about the same, very vew had any color, and none actually stood out from the rest.

If only some of those people had seen this site, maybe their business cards would have met a better fate than the back of my pen drawer:

http://reencoded.com/2008/05/20/42-awesome-business-card-designs-with-links-to-100s-more/

Tenant(s) of the Year

In case anybody was wondering Colin and I are tenants of the year. Well, actually, Colin G is tenant of the year, I'm just his side kick, which is fine since side kicks generally get to ride in that rad little side car.

We had a nasty little flood in our basement this weekend. There is one word to describe the 10"-12" of water that filled our "basement" and that is mut-a-rific. By that I mean the water was definitely capable of mutating whatever had the unfortunate opportunity to touch it. I'm pretty sure. I wouldn't be surprised if I start seeing 8 legged mice cruising around or if I'm lucky maybe a foot long roach. It was so very foul. Not sewage foul, just dank water foul. Like a stagnant, murky pond in our basement.

Long story short the contractors working on the adjacent house left the water on. Well I guess technically the water was not "on" in the typical sense of the word. There was no water flowing forth out of the hose since the nozzle was shut off. That is, until the hose decided to burst, spewing water all over the first floor which ran into the basement, which then flowed into our basement.

It poured rain all day which made it difficult to determine where the water was coming from. Good thing for super sleuth Colin G who discovered the hose in the house next door, and who also discovered the 2 ft of water in the basement next door. At midnight. Then our hero-tenant called the water company to get the water shut off. And got the sump pump that was floating on a pallet in our basement and started pumping the water out.

Enter side kick.

I did some investigating and found our landlord's home number on-line (we only had his cell phone). We called him at about 12:30. Poor guy. He drove down from his house about 45 min away. He was surprisingly not pissed at the contractors. Well, just a little. Especially since they weren't going to be back until Tuesday.

Colin and landlord had manly bonding time over sump-pumps and rancid water until 3:30am. What a model tenant. I, on the other hand, went to bed. But not without requesting that hero-tenant Colin G take a SHOWER before crawling into bed with his side kick, to which he obliged. Thankfully.

And that was our Friday night. Pretty awesome.

Public service announcement of the day

Dentists don't just make your smile look pretty, they can also save your life.

http://www.rd.com/living-healthy/how-your-dentist-can-save-your-life/article19084.html

Another great tribute to mothers

If this song doesn't bring a tear to your eye, then you are a cold, heartless person.

They never sold these when we were kids!

For all our friends out there with kids (or expecting them shortly), be forwarned that these road-kill stuffed animals are a potential gift from our family to yours.

Moms are the bomb

Why are moms so great? Because they love unconditionally. Case in point:

When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of the Calvin and Hobbes comic. For Mother's Day one year, I gave my mom a card with a poem that Calvin had written for his mom. It went something like this:

"I was going to buy you

a card with hearts of pink and red,

but then I thought I'd rather spend

the money on me instead.

It's awfully hard to buy things
when one's allowance is so small,
so I guess you're pretty lucky
I got you anything at all.  

Happy Mother's Day to you.
There I said it. Now, I'm done.
So, how 'bout getting out of bed,
and cooking breakfast for your son?"

Let's just say that my mom did not find it as funny as my nine-year old brain thought she would. She didn't say much, but the look on her face made me feel so bad that I made her a new card that very morning.  Thankfully, my mom also loves unconditionally!

Since that snafu, I've learned my lesson about plagirizing other people's tributes and poems. When I read this one, though, I must say that I was tempted:

Thanks, Mom, for leaving me in that grocery store aisle

- Colin

The Com-post

Monday night I went to a class about composting put on by the Mont.Co. extension office. Colin and I have been wanting to start composting for a while. We eat a lot of fresh produce and there is nothing worse than throwing all of those produce scraps in the trash. I was on the extension website a few weeks ago looking at gardening information and I happened across something very exciting. PA has a state wide initiative to reduce municipal waste by 35%! Part of the way they plan to do this it to teach people how to compost all of those leaves and yard scraps, in addition to food scraps. Awesome! Mont.Co. has a grant from the horticulture department at Penn State to purchase composters that they raffle off at free classes that they offer to teach people how to properly compost.

I couldn't pass up the chance to win a free composter, and get educated on how to properly compost. You can compost in pretty much anything provided you can mix and get enough air flow through the pile, but in our tiny little yard a big pile of decomposing material would be an eyesore. Better than the creepy white van parked in the backyard a few doors down, but an eyesore none the less.

The good news is I got a free composter..."The Earth Machine" I think I love it even more because that is it's name. They had 15 to raffle off at the class I went to and only 14 people showed up!

I can't wait to make some "black gold" for our little garden next year!

May the force be with you

As a registered Democrat, I'm not that thrilled by either of our candidates. But this video made me laugh: