No. He'll be an engineer.

Conversation of the century

· 11/29/2008 03:36 PM by Steve Gigl

“There he is, making his new funny face . And dripping drool all over the place.”

“Want to rhyme some more?”

“I ran out of ’-aces.’” [Pause as child does his scream thingy again.] “Ok, here’s one: can you discipline a child with mace?”

“Not if you spray them in the face.”

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

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Experiment

· 10/20/2008 11:52 AM by Steve Gigl

For the last couple of weeks, for various work and personal reasons (translation: busy), I have been reading blogs about as much as I have been posting. Which is to say, very very little.

Interestingly enough, I still like the blogs I liked before, and still get enjoyment out of reading them once in a while. But it has freed up some brain space to think about other things once in a while.

I’m not sure how long the full experiment will last past my end-of-the-month deadline, but I think in some form or other it will continue on permanently, in the form of reducing my reading down to a few sources that I really appreciate (they’re mostly already linked here).

Category: Blogging
Scope: Personal

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Really?

· 09/26/2008 05:36 PM by Steve Gigl

Has a biopic of a president ever been made while he was still in office? But I’m sure the timing is random.

[Why wouldn’t I be surprised if there was a small, unflattering part—a guy who can’t move his arms very well—added, oh, sometime during the summer?]

Category: Media & Entertainment
Scope: Personal

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The third row of doom

· 09/20/2008 02:30 PM by Steve Gigl

So today we heroically attempted to stave off the minivan scourge by trading our Chevy Trailblazer for a one-year-older (but much-lower-mileage) Honda Pilot.

The Pilot is very nice and has a lot of bells and whistles the Trailblazer (allegedly considered new when we bought it, but as it turns out very much not new, which is a long annoying story…) didn’t have, and we also have a reasonable expectation of it lasting quite a few more years, while the Chevy made us nervous sometimes. Hopefully the quality and reliability reputation was well-earned by Honda, but we did go ahead and spend money on a warranty, because I’m just that paranoid.

The main feature, though, is that it has a third row of seats, which means we’ll be able to visit the grandparents with a lot less hassle from here on out. Well, theoretically, at least. Yeah, it’s smaller than a minivan, but we’re willing to buy a cargo carrier for the top, and we already have a hitch-mounted one. And the poor dog finally doesn’t have to sit on the rear bench between two car seats for 5-7 hours on trips.

Hopefully it all works out well!

[And yes, John, we’ll keep up with the maintenance! Now on to replacing my car with a cheap high-mileage Honda/Subaru/whatever.]

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

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A quote for the ages

· 07/29/2008 09:28 PM by Steve Gigl

Think about the lousy choice steaks you’ve had, and then try to imagine all the things that have to be wrong with a piece of meat before they drop it four more grades.

Yipes.

Category: Health
Scope: Personal

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Conversation of the century

· 11/29/2008 03:36 PM by Steve Gigl

“There he is, making his new funny face . And dripping drool all over the place.”

“Want to rhyme some more?”

“I ran out of ’-aces.’” [Pause as child does his scream thingy again.] “Ok, here’s one: can you discipline a child with mace?”

“Not if you spray them in the face.”

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Experiment

· 10/20/2008 11:52 AM by Steve Gigl

For the last couple of weeks, for various work and personal reasons (translation: busy), I have been reading blogs about as much as I have been posting. Which is to say, very very little.

Interestingly enough, I still like the blogs I liked before, and still get enjoyment out of reading them once in a while. But it has freed up some brain space to think about other things once in a while.

I’m not sure how long the full experiment will last past my end-of-the-month deadline, but I think in some form or other it will continue on permanently, in the form of reducing my reading down to a few sources that I really appreciate (they’re mostly already linked here).

Category: Blogging
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Really?

· 09/26/2008 05:36 PM by Steve Gigl

Has a biopic of a president ever been made while he was still in office? But I’m sure the timing is random.

[Why wouldn’t I be surprised if there was a small, unflattering part—a guy who can’t move his arms very well—added, oh, sometime during the summer?]

Category: Media & Entertainment
Scope: Personal

Rantback

The third row of doom

· 09/20/2008 02:30 PM by Steve Gigl

So today we heroically attempted to stave off the minivan scourge by trading our Chevy Trailblazer for a one-year-older (but much-lower-mileage) Honda Pilot.

The Pilot is very nice and has a lot of bells and whistles the Trailblazer (allegedly considered new when we bought it, but as it turns out very much not new, which is a long annoying story…) didn’t have, and we also have a reasonable expectation of it lasting quite a few more years, while the Chevy made us nervous sometimes. Hopefully the quality and reliability reputation was well-earned by Honda, but we did go ahead and spend money on a warranty, because I’m just that paranoid.

The main feature, though, is that it has a third row of seats, which means we’ll be able to visit the grandparents with a lot less hassle from here on out. Well, theoretically, at least. Yeah, it’s smaller than a minivan, but we’re willing to buy a cargo carrier for the top, and we already have a hitch-mounted one. And the poor dog finally doesn’t have to sit on the rear bench between two car seats for 5-7 hours on trips.

Hopefully it all works out well!

[And yes, John, we’ll keep up with the maintenance! Now on to replacing my car with a cheap high-mileage Honda/Subaru/whatever.]

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback

A quote for the ages

· 07/29/2008 09:28 PM by Steve Gigl

Think about the lousy choice steaks you’ve had, and then try to imagine all the things that have to be wrong with a piece of meat before they drop it four more grades.

Yipes.

Category: Health
Scope: Personal

Rantback

Relaxing at work

· 07/16/2008 01:02 PM by Steve Gigl

You know what makes a reasonably-pressurized job seem calm, laid back, even relaxing? Spending the morning at various doctors’ offices for a bunch of (planned, so don’t worry) tests on a 2-year old and on a 5-month-old. (And then spending most of that time chasing the 2-year-old around trying to keep him from getting run over by stretchers in the hospital hallways.)

Yeah, I’ll play it up as much as I can—“Guess how late I worked last night?”—but really, since I already feel like I ran a marathon, how rough could this be? [Famous last words…]

Category: Home-Family-and-Kids
Scope: Personal

Rantback [2]

Watch engineers go crazy from the heat

· 06/30/2008 08:46 AM by Steve Gigl

Now that’s entertainment

I can’t remember where I read it, but someone recently wrote that an engineering reality TV show would be boring, just meetings and people staring at computers.

That could be partly true—it depends on the business they’re in; NASA engineering documentaries can be pretty interesting, and the business I work in isn’t exactly boring—but today, in my office, that would not be the case.

The air conditioning is out in our 9th-floor office space and it’s already 82 degrees in the room this morning (partly because it’s NE-facing, but still). Should be interesting.

Category: Weather
Scope: Personal

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Go buy it

· 06/27/2008 12:06 PM by Steve Gigl

I already harassed a few targets good friends about this, but if you ever feel the need to put your thumb in the eye of the Food Police—and laugh a whole lot in the process—then you need to go buy the updated version of Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man by Steve Graham. (If you’re wondering what the book is about, Steve posted a good introduction the day the book was released.)

I’m about 90% through it, and it’s a better book than the original for several reasons, not the least of which is that there are a bunch of new recipes that I am dying to try. And that makes it the best humor-essay book I’ve read in years, not to mention one of the few cookbooks from which I plan to make most of the recipes.

If any of that sounds interesting, go buy it so Steve can keep writing this stuff:

Category: Food
Scope: Personal

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And we're back

· 06/27/2008 09:00 AM by Steve Gigl

Sorry about that, but the server that hosts this site had a major meltdown about 3 days ago, and recovering the data from multiple damaged disks was apparently quite the chore. Luckily I didn’t change much over the last month or so, so the backups are good enough for me.

Category: Blogging
Scope: Personal

Rantback [1]

PowerPointless?

· 06/10/2008 03:31 PM by Steve Gigl

Chad The Elder misses PowerPoint. Seriously.

My slight anti-Microsoft bias aside, I think it depends on the type of information being presented, but I’d agree that Powerpoint is usually better than nothing. I’ve had several professors who could have benefited from the organization that PPT tries to force on you. Still, Bob Pease’s PPT-free presentation (remember transparencies?) is still one of the best light-technical presentations I’ve seen.

For more technical presentations, sometimes you need complex diagrams that would take freaking forever to draw on a white board, and for nontechnical ones, having the words on the screen tends to help with memory and for people who tend to drift off into their own heads during presentations. [Not that I know anyone who would do that…]

That said, I’ve been going almost 2 years now without making a PowerPoint presentation, and I don’t miss it a bit. If I need to show something to someone, I just show them the actual file/simulation/document/whatever. Makes life easier for all involved, and it doesn’t limit you to (what end up being) meaningless bullet points.

Category: Technology
Scope: Personal

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