I guess my daughters are only thinking of the environment...

Some bricks, some bricks, my kingdom for some bricks!

Remember when you used to keep little kids around just so you had an excuse to buy LEGOs and build with them? Okay, okay, maybe you had/have little kids around for other reasons, but a good one was so you could buy LEGO sets and not seem silly. Well, now you don't need kids to be able to play with whatever LEGOs you want! Just go to http://ldd.lego.com and download their LEGO Digital Designer program. With the program, you can build either from LEGO's own sets, or you can build from scratch and let your imagination run wild! In fact, there's even an option to let you upload your creation to LEGO. I can guarantee you'll waste countless spend a few well deserved hours off building some nifty models.

Happy Belated Birthday x86!

I'm a little late with this, but 30 years ago on June 8, 1978, Intel introduced its first 16-bit processor called the 8086. For those of you too young to remember, or too non-technical to care (I'm old and a geek, so I do know about this), the 8086's architecture would be the heart (and brains) of the laptops and desktops you work on and the servers that power the internet.

In 1981, a little company called IBM introduced the PC Model 5150 using a variant of the 8086 called the 8088. From there, other companies like Compaq sprang up using the 8086 and other improved processors like the 80386, 80486, Pentium, and so on. The base architecture of the processor, which became known as the "x86", now drives most of the "personal computers" we work on daily. This even includes the Macintosh computers which switched from IBM's PowerPC chips (yeah, that same small company. A story for another day...) to Intel's x86 chips.

So anyway, wish the chip in your computer a slightly belated happy birthday!

For Sale: Cheap! 1984 Pontiac Firebird with a few mods

For those of you old enough to remember Knight Rider, I present to you KITT! Now on eBay Motors, and on sale!

UPDATE: The bidding is over and winning bid? $53,000. For a friggin' 24 year-old glorified Firebird... :P

So *that's* how you get kids to do chores...

If you're a kid, STOP READING RIGHT NOW! This entry is only for adults and you should stay away. It's a secret that only parents should know, so leave this site right now!

There, that should do it. Only us parents now.

Think you can't get your kids to do chores? Are they only doing a small percentage of what you've asked them to do? Well, here's the answer, nice-n-neat in a FoxTrot cartoon. I love FoxTrot if for no reason than for Jason, the son. A true little brother to his big sister and brother. A total nerd in the best sci-fi tradition. If you can find some of Bill Amend's old collections, I suggest you read them. I think you'll be amused.

Anyway, without further ado...

Did you ever have one of those days?...

Well, it appears that this guy did. A French skydiver named Michel Fournier was planning to break the world record by jumping from 25 miles (!) above the earth's surface. I'll let you read the story here. Of course, a jump like this is full of risks to begin with. Not only is there great physical risk, but his own French government wouldn't let him jump, presumably due to danger to other people. Finally, he was able to get approval from the Canadian government. Then comes a whole unexpected risk. Just as he's getting ready to go up, his balloon -- get this -- floats away without him, or anyone else aboard, for that matter!

I must say, I feel really bad for the guy since he sold all his possessions to finance this attempt, but really, I think I've seen this episode on the Road Runner or some other such cartoon. If he gets another shot at this, I'm sure one new item on the pre-flight checklist will be "Make sure the friggin' balloon is tied down!!!".

Buy one, get one free!

Oh, dang. I missed out. It expired on May 31. But really, it was legit. Check out the link in the website here. At least the link was there as of a few minutes ago... :)




But I definitely can't take credit for finding this deal! Thanks for this go to your friends and mine at Gear Diary.

Just a small helping, if you please...

As much as I ate yesterday, this is what I should be eating out of today.

A Moment of Weakness

Okay, maybe it was two, or five, or... Oh, what the heck, it was the WHOLE DAY!

As I've mentioned before, I am on a diet. Not a drastic one mind you. Just watching my calories a little. Well, today, I watched the calories all right. I just watched them keep adding up and up. Higher and higher. Fatter and... You get the picture.

The day started out just fine. For breakfast I stopped by McDonalds and got an Egg McMuffin. Not the picture of health, but not too bad. Then my troubles started. One of my co-workers brought in his dad's "World famous" carrot cake. I had to have a piece. Then it was lunch. Chinese food. Fast food Chinese. And it was Lo Mein (noodles) -- a lot of noodles. And to make matters worse, I decided I needed some rice with that. White rice. Not brown, white. At least I left some of my lunch in the bowl (a small consolation). Good thing I left that because I came home and promptly had some snacks. Then for dinner, I took the kids out since Alisonwonderland was having a book club over at the house. The kids' restaurant of choice? McDonalds. (Hey, that sounds familiar...) My choice for a meal? I don't want to talk about it. Then I came home and ate a giant sugar cookie left over from book club.

Well, that feels better to get that all off my chest. Now I just have to hope it doesn't end up on my belly.

The coolest music server you've never heard of...

Or at least I never heard of it.  It's called Pandora.  Maybe you've heard of it, but for me -- who obviously is just 'out of it' -- it's brand new and now my favorite way to listen to a variety of my favorite music & musicians and learn about new artists.

So what is Pandora?  In the words of the Wikipedia article, Pandora 'is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project.  Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar.'

I really can't believe it's been around since mid-2005 and I'd never heard of it.  But then again, as my younger daughter says, "Dad, you're old."  (Sigh...)

Anyway, pay a visit, sign up for an account and try it out!  I think you'll like it.

Thanks to Alisonwonderland for the heads-up on this!