Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Yo Yo Max

    New Pictures!!

    Max has discovered some of the joys of yo-yo-ing. Why some? Because he can drop it like the best of them; getting it to come back up is the trick. This problem is compounded by the fact that the string is longer than he is tall (hence him standing on the dining room table). He still loves it and laughs his little head off every time he lets go of the yo-yo and watches it roll down the string towards the floor. Last night, we ended up using the yo-yo as a fishing line. We caught six little fish and made a lovely fish pie out of flour, the fish, carrots, water, eggs and celery (Max and I came up with the ingredient list – he contributed the flour, water, eggs and fish – he’s smart).

    He’s so much fun now. He has a great little blooming imagination, a joy for play and is smart enough to come up with and get jokes. He’s devoid of cynicism and almost completely lacking in guile (almost… he tries to be sneaky, but he’s not very good at it yet).

    This morning, Max helped me water the flower Jen got for her birthday, and then wanted to take some pictures. Do kids come funner than three and a half? If so, I don’t know if I can take it.

  • Oh, I Meant To

    After an extremely productive day (you have no idea – a complete redesign of a major product in less than 48 hours), I expected to come home and want to work. Ummm, nope. I took some pictures of Max playing with my old Duncan Butterfly yo-yo (which will go up tomorrow), showed him some old pictures on the laptop, and then came downstairs, where I’ve been guiding the Aztecs to world dominance in CivIII.

    My boss ordered me a copy of Zeldman’s new book, and I thought I’d want to read that tonight. But, no. It’s building armies and workers and negotiating trade for me. I’m so freaking productive it makes me sick.

  • Readin’, Readin’, Readin’

    On another topic, I’ve been reading a lot lately. We subscribe to a ton of magazines: Smithsonian, Utne (free with my Salon subscription – yet more reading), Premiere, and there are a couple others. I always read Smithsonian cover to cover, and here’s why (all from this month’s issue):

    And yesterday, I read a great article on mushrooms and how they may be able to help clean up chemical spills, counteract chemical weapons, give us new medicines and generally make life better, a mother’s touching and funny love letter to her son, and David Byrne’s frequently confusing essay on good bad art and bad good art in Utne. Between those two magazines alone, I’m caught up on trivia for at least the next year if not longer.

    So, in doing all this reading, and with work as busy as it is, I haven’t been posting as much. I don’t think I mind all that much. I’m going to try to come up with one good post a day, and maybe do a sidebar blog of links and short subjects that I don’t want to spend as much time on. Yeah, I know everyone else is doing it – but it’s a good idea anyway.

  • Revolution OS – A Review

    I’m watching the Spurs/Mavs game, so this may end up chock full of basketball metaphors. Last week, I watched Revolution OS. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a documentary about the birth and rise of the free software movement and Linux. The film is full of interviews of such open source/free software luminaries as Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Reynolds, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin and others. It’s an amazing story, and done so well, and made so interesting that I think even non-geeks can understand it and be at least entertained by it.

    Why should you watch it? It’s a great example of geeks filling their own needs and everyone benefitting from it. It’s a story about the search for community, and real-world idealism. It’s a story about the extremes driving the middle, and how we can all affect change in our world. Yeah, it’s a big story, and I think the film did a great job giving an overview and providing an even-handed view of the players.

    Richard Stallman can be viewed as an extremist. He thinks all software should be free, and is decidedly anti-Intellectual Property. He’s an idealist. I can respect that, and I see the need for Richard and people like him. Without Richard, we may never have had the free software movement, all the great GNU software that drives a large percentage of the internet, and Linux may have never gotten off Linus’ hard drive and into the public imagination. His work on the GNU Project gave the Linux kernel something to run. The GNU Project provided the compiler for people to start porting other software to Linux. It just amazes me that things happened in the order they did. If Stallman had chosen to start on the kernel first, then Linux may never have happened.

    If you get a chance to watch it, please do. It’s informative and entertaining, and you’ll see what all the fuss is about. Heck, you may even jump on board and start using Linux yourself. Ok, maybe you won’t go that far, but you might start to see that there are alternatives to Windows, and that’s good enough for me.

  • Coming Attractions

    Oh so many things to tell you about and no time to do it. In order to be prepared for the hopeful avalanche of content this evening, you should all go watch Revolution OS before tonight so we can discuss it. And you might want to read up on mushrooms, bad bad art and good bad art, earthworms and their effect on small boys, love letters, and what you did this weekend. I will hopefully get around to writing about some or all of these topics this evening. Ok, at least one of them.

  • Bert And Ernie Call it Quits

    Yet blue, and I prefer them medium-sized and red. I mean the monsters.

    Weird, but really really funny. Make sure you do the voices in your head when you read it.

  • Do You Have a… ?

    This one’s from Jen:

    Heather, Kevin’s younger sister – note I didn’t say little – is starting to have multiple suitors. Max has met one, Jeremy, and has heard about the another one, Paul. Out of the blue, Max said to me, “Do you have a pa?” I said, “Pa? Yes, I have a dad, Grandpa Brian is my dad.” He said emphetically, “Paulllllll.” Then he said , “Jeremy.” I said, “oh, I don’t have a Paul or Jeremey, I have a Kevin. So, no, I don’t have a Paul. I just have your daddy. Paul and Jeremy want to date Heather. But I only date your daddy, Kevin.” It was a funny conversation. But I don’t know how much he got out of it.

  • Notes to Self

    1. When in meeting with Senior Vice President, find out that said VP is a VP before the meeting.

    2. JerkCity is really funny when you have a headache.

    3. It’s really hard to look cool when you have your leg propped up under your desk on an exercize, with an icebag and you’re leaning over trying to type. Oh, and it makes your ass hurt. Try not to do that again.

    4. Soul Coughing is so much more than Soundtrack to Mary. More bands should use stand-up bass. It sounds really really good in headphones.

    5. Someone needs to make a “Save to Blog” plug-in for jEdit.

    6. I don’t know how I lived before I found jEdit’s tag completion. It’s so hard to use anything else now.

    7. I need more Advil.

    8. Is it wrong to like Smallville? I know deep down that it’s cheesy. I know it’s corny. I can’t help it. I like the show.

    9. I need more ThinkGeek shirts. It’s an addiction, really.

    10. I must pick things up quickly. I can go back to code I wrote a month ago and see at least three things each time that I could have done better. Either that, or I was really really stupid and I’m just catching up.

    11. Doctor’s appointments are good motivation to get back on the FatWagon. I’m down five pounds in the last week and am back down to the weight I was the last time I saw him. The cool part is, I was only ever five pounds over the last time I saw him two months ago. My trainer says this is a good thing, to be able to maintain. Next on the maintain list? Sanity

    12. Jen wants a cheeseburger.

    13. I think I have frostbite on my knee now. But the inside parts don’t hurt as bad. The outside is all cold-stingy.

  • MRI Me, Baby

    My knee hurts still. It’s worse today than it was yesterday. I’m sitting here at work with ice on my knee trying to find a comfortable position to type in. I haven’t found one yet. Maybe if I move it this way… nope… this way? Nope, not that either. Maybe I should give up. Oh wait, I can’t. I have meetings this afternoon I can’t skip. I hope they don’t mind the grumpy tired me, because that’s what they’re getting. There will be no pleasantries when you ask me to squeeze 100 hours worth of work into 32. It can’t happen. Really, it can’t.

    I see the doctor on Friday. It’s not an orthopedist, but I’m hoping I can convince him just to order the MRI. I don’t want to schedule yet another doctor’s appointment, wait three more weeks, etc, when I could find out next week if I’m going to have to have surgery again. This is all so damned frustrating. I think you may not hear from me much in the next week or so. I haven’t been sleeping well; work is nuts (rhino-style, not acorns); this whole knee thing is pissing me off. So, anything I have to say would probably be less than edifying, uplifting, interesting or funny in any way.

    That, of course, is subject to change. Well, and Jen promised a big long post-Buffy essay that she said I could post here… if she does that, it’ll show up.

  • Happy Birthday

    Happy Birthday, sweetheart. How did she celebrate? She watched the finale of her favorite show (Buffy), went out to lunch, did a little shopping, ate some food, laughed and got some presents.

    Next year? We do something big. No, I mean it. Big, big, big, big… just you wait and see.