Irrelevance Glorified

At the end of last year, I visited Bruce and Tina up in Walla Walla. I forgot to bring my camera, but I did have my phone on me, so I took some pictures and videos with it. It came in handy when the kids did something amusing at dinner. Here they are…

Flickr Set here.

Nile likes to stuff animals down his pants. And they also like to wear cookware. Very nice. Also note the tendency to do something cute until the parents try and take a picture of it.

Cyrus is a grazer. So after some weak attempt at eating, he would scream to be let down, and then he would wander around and every once in a while eat something. Anyways, he would periodically shout “Up!”, asking to be picked up. Then Bruce or Tina would say “No Up!”, denying his request. And then he would cackle loudly, walk over to the other parent, and then repeat.

Nile pushed his toy something-or-other (maybe it was the lawnmower?) through the snow. I can only imagine what an experienced tracker would have thought if he came across these tracks in the middle of the woods.

I think this preceded some episodes where Nile pushed how close he could get to whacking Cyrus without getting in trouble.

A perfect metaphor for being a parent. In case you don’t notice, Nile is in the background, ready with a baseball bat in case Cyrus can’t finish the job.

When I visited, Cyrus had a bit of an awkward sleep schedule. He would get really tired at lunch. If they let him go to sleep, then he didn’t really eat much lunch, and he would wake up later hungry and pissed off. So the main effort was to try and get him eat as much as they could until he conked out.

I just can’t imagine how this is a comfortable sitting position for children.

There were times where he would fall asleep with food in his mouth.

Recently, both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show featured consumers who successfully took legal action against big banks when they were threatened with foreclosure. In one case, the couple didn’t have a loan with the bank in question, and they owned their house outright! I found it interesting that both shows found different people to interview, and took such different approaches to the subject. As one might expect, Stephen Colbert’s approach is a bit more absurd.

Back in April, during a contentious debate in the Senate over the budget, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) made an interesting but embarrassing statement. The federal government does not allow federal funds to be used to fund abortions. In arguing against any federal dollars going to Planned Parenthood, he said that it is common knowledge that abortions are 90% of what Planned Parenthood does. Of course, that was an outrageous overstatement — it turns out that abortions are about 3% of what they do, i.e. federal funds help fund the other 97% of what they do in the name of reproductive health. When this came to light, questions were addressed to his office asking for some sort of explanation. Kyl said that his claim was “not intended to be a factual statement.” An absolutely ridiculously excuse. Anyways, when Stephen Colbert heard of this, he had a field day. He took to twitter, writing tweets like this. But he started it off with this segment on his show, one of the few times where he’s laughing too hard to stay in character.

If you’re not familiar with Fox News personality Glenn Beck….well, then, good, actually. He is a conservative commentator who used to have a show where he would feverishly describe his conspiracy theories and lament the (imaginary) decline of the United States, usually due to something that libruls did. One of his greatest schticks is using multiple chalkboards to draw together the disparate strands of his theories, usually ending up with something like “Nancy Pelosi is brainwashing young children as sleeper agents for the Chinese Communist party in an attempt to overthrow the United States, and in effect, Christianity. I’m not gonna even post of the videos; I’ll just link to a Google search so you can look at the screenshots and marvel.

Anyways, John Stewart started making EPIC parodies of the rants-with-chalkboard-drawings, the first one back in March. He brought it back one last time after Beck announced he would be ending his show in April, and just in case you haven’t seen them, I thought I would post the videos. Better late than never, I guess.

Back in October 2010, I traveled back to Chicagoland for the wedding of one of my cousins. Due to the frenetic pace of school/work and the time/cost of travel, I rarely see any of my relatives. Because my Floridian sister can’t stand the cold (scientifically speaking), she rarely ventures North during the non-summer months. However, all bets are off for weddings. Family weddings are generally Rao-fests, where I see the relatives that I never see otherwise. This one was nicely timed, in that it was also my birthday. I forgot my camera on this trip, so I started taking pictures with my cell phone. It is a functional camera and can take decent videos, but the still image quality leaves a lot to be desired. So I’ve supplemented these pictures with pictures from my sister and my cousin Tara.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

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This one has been sitting in my Flickr account for a while, and I’ve just been too lazy to put it out. But I have enough other stuff that I want to post up that it’s time to man up and start posting.

Back last May, I visited Mount Tamalpais State Park, great wilderness area just north of San Francisco in Marin County. I’ve hiked in MTSP three or four times total, and each time has been fantastic. There is a nice mix of landscapes and wildlife that I just find really pleasant and relaxing.

My itinerary for this day was the Matt Davis – Steep Ravine – Dipsea trail route, a highly recommended one from a number of hiking guides. The trail starts out high, descending through a beautiful ravine centered around a creek (still flowing pretty well, as it was still May). The trail crosses the water multiple times, so there were a number of bridges. The trail emerges from the trees into a great view of Stinson Beach and the Bolinas Lagoon. The trail descends to sea level, and passes through the downtown of Stinson Beach, before heading back into the hills. After completing this ~ 7.5 mile hike, I took some scenic pictures of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin County Side.

Picture set on Flickr, here
Slideshow below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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This past May, I visited Maker Faire again. You might remember me posting about it two years ago. It’s an annual exhibition of artisans, hobbyists, tinkerers, etc. put together by MAKE magazine. I didn’t attend last year, but looking at the press coverage, it seemed that many of the exhibits were the same, so I don’t think I missed all that much. I was interested in seeing if a two year gap would provide more changes. Nicely enough, my manager Al was also interested in going, so we met up at the San Mateo Fairgrounds and wandered around.

I am more of a scientist than an engineer; I might be able to talk about the fundamental thermodynamics of how an engine works, but I wouldn’t be able to make even a rudimentary engine. The mere thought of putting that all together leaves me dumbfounded. That’s one reason I love Maker Faire — it’s full of people who can take an idea from the flimsiest (and sometimes stupid) thought all the way through to an actual object. Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures, so hopefully you will enjoy them.

Pictures here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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Back in May, I took a long weekend and traveled back to Chicago for my nephews very first birthday. It was the first time I had seen him since last August, so he had grown up quite a bit, and was on the very verge of walking. My other sister was traveling up from Florida, and a bunch of rugrats were invited over to ensure that chaos would ensue.

Interacting with Sachin is interestingly different from a lot of other kids. In the limited interaction that I’ve had with my other friends’ young kids, I feel like I’m met with a bit of skepticism. Like, they are not sure if I’m for real or not, and they take a while before they feel like they can address my existence. For Sachin, he took to me pretty quickly. I think that the most simple explanation is that unlike my other friends with little kids, I look a lot like his Mommy and Daddy. Sachin showed little hesitation in crawling up to me, pulling on my pant legs to bring himself to his feet, and then asking to be picked up.

In the pictures below, you’ll notice that there aren’t a whole lot of actual birthday party pictures. That’s because I was pressed into camcorder duty, and was thus unable to use my own camera. However, there are a lot of other pictures of doing cute little Sachin things that I’m sure people can enjoy. You can blame the graininess of the pictures on the fact that I used a high ISO setting to combat his fidgety-ness.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures and Descriptions after the jump.

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I don’t know of any recent food product launch that has gotten as much publicity as KFC’s recent Double-Down. In case you are unaware, the Double Down is a “sandwich” composed of two pieces of breaded & fried chicken surrounding cheese, bacon, and sauce. If you are watching your Lose Weight Exercise, you can substitute grilled chicken for the fried chicken. That was not a mistake by the way — it’s a sandwich with no bread (but breading optional). I normally read a bunch of tech and political blogs, and many of them have come out with opinions. Consumerist had their review, and also included a review by Consumer Reports. Gizmodo ate theirs while using their iPads, because they are hipster nerds. Even one of my favored political blogs, FiveThirtyEight, got in on the fun (with a focus on numbers and statistics, because that’s how they roll). If you follow me on Google Reader, I’ve shared a few items on it, because it’s hilarious in concept; you just get the feeling that it should be an SNL commercial (Taco Town!!!). Anyways, I saw a clip from the Colbert Report that includes it. It starts with mentally-ill food mascots, segues in to a Double-Down taste test, and caps it all off with a visit from the “German Ambassador to the U.N.” to try out some cupcakes. Pitch perfect