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# Thursday, January 31, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008 1:13:22 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Baby | Fun | Personal )

A quick story to add to Pamela's announcement. After we got back the news that they didn't find amniotic fluid, I went to check with the doctor what the plan was. She told me that we were waiting for a call from our doctor, and if he doesn't get back in 15 minutes, she would do a check and probably send us home. I told her that I was glad for the more time because we still had some more work to do on choosing a name. At this point she looked up at me and said. "It won't help". The nurse next to her also looked right at me and said, "No, it won't."

After the delivery, Pamela was fixated for hours on finalizing our choice. At that point it was her highest priority (before the birth, there were a couple things on her mind too). I was focused on staying awake and getting some pictures in and I also knew that sans sleep I wouldn't be much use. Caitlyn was pretty much a done deal by that point (but I still sorta liked Chloe). However, the middle name was in flux. I did some more name searching and we slowly converge on the name from a list of about 5. I started over analyzing the combinations trying to figure out how some common sounds at ends of names "work" and some don't (need different count of syllables to add some balancing asymmetry to symmetry of the sounds?). At this point we took a step back and just went with what we had. Later, when I told the name to my mother, she went "Arwen? like in Lord of the Rings?". Sure enough the top web search hits where for exactly that (if we have another, I'll make sure to do a search before telling anyone the name). Further down the list was a link to the 28 most geeky  baby names with an entry that read "Arwen - Again, it could have been Eowyn. Plus, it’s quite a pretty name." and a comment from an Arwen, "Nice thing about “Arwen” is that it is geeky to those who are geeks, and flies under the radar for others." Other sites had similar comments. That comment plus how I really liked the name decided the issue, so we kept it.

# Thursday, November 01, 2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007 2:00:23 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | Microsoft )

While Live Maps haven't copied the eye-popping drag and reroute feature of Google maps, there is a number of really cool improvements in the latest release. The Live search blog has a list of ten improvements that haven't got the press of other features like the "model your own 3d building on a map" one. My personal favorites from this list are the End/Start details where you filter down driving instructions to allow you to ignore the stuff you don't need to see (like how to get out of your neighborhood), the new black color on the traffic map for dead in the water congestion and some of the extra business information they now have.

# Thursday, May 17, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007 7:08:18 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )

If you buy frozen blueberries at Costco, do NOT and I repeat do NOT cut open the bag on the dotted lines if you want to be able to reseal it later.

# Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 4:16:18 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )

This is goodness and it puts The Diamond Age back towards the top of my re-read list :). [Kevin Schofield

# Thursday, January 04, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007 1:18:59 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | Journal )

In the Seattle Airport, the police had mountain bikes, in Chicago they have segways. I'm also conviced we are the only parents in America flying without a portable DVD player.

# Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Wednesday, January 03, 2007 3:12:03 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | WMFE )

I am often hit with a what feels to me to be concepts that should have a word but do not. I am also not good at coming up with new words, so I'm going to see if the LazyWeb can help. This will (hopefully) be a series where we come up with words that are apparently missing from the english language, because lord knows we need more words. We shall start with a silly one:

The temporary momements of nasal clarity when one is congested.

Here is two attempts to start us off:

  • AirFlowBreak - attempt to riff off of sunbreak
  • AirShowers

Do you have any ideas?

# Thursday, April 20, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006 1:35:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | Microsoft | Tech )

My Favorite unadvertised benefit of working for Microsoft is access to the various speakers that come through campus and give talks to MSR. It is great to here that many of them have made it to the public on ResearchChannel. I've bookmarked on del.icio.us a number of talks I've seen and enjoyed and a couple that I haven't seen and want to. Special notice to the two MSPAC ones, David Brin, Mandelbrot, Bruce Campbell, Malcolm Gadwell and Cory Doctorow.

# Thursday, March 16, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006 2:30:29 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )

This appears to be an awesome alarm clock.

# Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006 8:38:39 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
Ever thought that truck horns were annoying? Well, they have a musical side too, as NPR explains:
One musical act that didn't make the halftime show at this past weekend's Super Bowl was Alexander Pollack's truck horn symphony. We spoke with Pollack in November about his plans for the National Anthem and other songs to be performed on the air horns. Now, we hear the results.
# Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 6:32:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | Journal )

The New York Times has a great article about Rob Moore and the creation of the new Battlestar Galactica series:

To be fair, though, there are androids. As in the original show, the humans of the Galactica and its fleet are relentlessly pursued by evil robots called Cylons. But in the current version, conceived by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, most of the evil Cylons look like people and have found God. Ruthlessly principled and deeply religious, the Cylons have been compared by fans and critics both to Al Qaeda and to the evangelical right. And the humans they are relentlessly pursuing are fallible and complex. Their shirts are not clingy or color-coded; the men of space wear neckties. They are led by Edward James Olmos as the Galactica's commander and Mary McDonnell as the president of the humans, and their stories revolve as much around the tensions within -- between the military and civil leadership of the fleet -- as they do around the Cylon threat. As Eick described the show to me last month with evident, subversive pleasure, ''The bad guys are all beautiful and believe in God, and the good guys all [expletive] each other over.'' Moore, who is also the show's head writer, put it more simply: ''They are us.''

Carrie and Keshav were nice enough to host for the Season 2 Priemere last friday night and this might quickly become a rotating house (or just my house?) thing for the length of the season. Special props for the Battlestar Galatica theme'd drinks Carrie put together.

# Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Wednesday, December 01, 2004 8:54:35 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
# Monday, November 15, 2004
Monday, November 15, 2004 5:16:59 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )

I created an RSS feed of Malcom Gladwell's article archive. I've been meaning to follow his work ever since I heard him talk at Microsoft about "The Tipping Point".

Monday, November 15, 2004 4:42:19 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )

The ZoomQuilt, one of the better uses of flash.

# Friday, July 16, 2004
Friday, July 16, 2004 3:20:25 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | Seattle )
This Seattle Times article is wetting my appetite for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Symphony I'm attending this weekend.
# Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Wednesday, July 10, 2002 5:26:08 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
# Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Tuesday, March 19, 2002 5:50:07 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )

Uh oh... Dave is bundling. :)

# Wednesday, February 27, 2002
Wednesday, February 27, 2002 5:18:23 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
An amazing Tugboat.
# Monday, February 25, 2002
Monday, February 25, 2002 2:50:03 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
I went to install the .NET frameworks killer app, Terrarium, and found that it requires admin rights to run it at least because it wants write writes in program files. I wrote my feedback and will have to wait for the people behind it to get a clue. At work I don't run as administrator, do you?
# Friday, February 15, 2002
Friday, February 15, 2002 3:58:50 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
My cat, Tegan, would like to sign up for this protest.
Friday, February 15, 2002 3:03:34 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
Enron could have gone a lot differently if they had gone with sprint.
# Friday, January 25, 2002
Friday, January 25, 2002 12:09:08 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
"Picture to HTML" - This certainly is an incredible render machine. Drop in a jpg or gif, get ascii art in html back. Very slick. [Adam Curry: CurryDotCom]
# Wednesday, January 09, 2002
Wednesday, January 09, 2002 3:10:58 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
Korean's can be weird when it comes to Clubs and Dating
Wednesday, January 09, 2002 2:06:31 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | Microsoft )
Here is a story going around about The Lord of the Rings and Windows XP
# Monday, September 10, 2001
Monday, September 10, 2001 3:07:50 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
I'm looking forward to this
Neverworld to debut next Fall on Fox
# Wednesday, August 29, 2001
Wednesday, August 29, 2001 2:48:46 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
Steve Jackson has a new role playing game, Munchkin which is an RPG with cards.
# Tuesday, June 12, 2001
Tuesday, June 12, 2001 1:39:42 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun | Political )
As usual... for lee: :)This Modern World. What oil crisis? It's just our capitalist system operating at peak efficiency! [Salon.com]
# Sunday, June 03, 2001
Sunday, June 03, 2001 8:46:50 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
Lee... You are not alone :)Gates strip joint secret out?. MS billionaire named in Gold Club trial [via The Register] [Adam Curry: CurryDotCom]
# Sunday, May 13, 2001
# Thursday, May 03, 2001
Thursday, May 03, 2001 3:46:24 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
/* I would like to think that this would give the NSA a real headache
* but I am not THAT native
*/
# Monday, April 23, 2001
Monday, April 23, 2001 4:23:44 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
# Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Wednesday, April 18, 2001 5:30:59 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
Wednesday, April 18, 2001 1:31:55 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Fun )
This Story refers to a pretty fun flash racing diversion.