Recession chocolate

We've been doing our part to help bailout ailing companies. In particular, we've been buying gifts for ourselves from all the frou-frou mail order places we'd heard of but never actually bought from. I imagine these poor retailers had a desperate holiday season -- at least, if their 70-80% off promotions were any indication.

So far this recession, we've enjoyed recession popcorn from the Popcorn Factory, a recession gift basket with fancy pears and chocolate-covered cherries and such from Harry & David, recession sausage & cheese from Hickory Farms. Up this week, Fedora's favorite: recession Godiva chocolate. We also got recession pants at Target, but that's another story.

Our conclusion: at 70-80% off, these gift food places are tolerably priced. We don't know how they sell things at full price or even mild discounts.

We're still working our way through the bounty, so come on by if you want to sample some. :-)

All hail the chief!

Congratulations to President Barack Obama on this historic day.

The blogosphere is buzzing with both positive and negative reviews of the President's inauguration speech. I myself found the speech inspiring and a necessary reminder that government can only do so much to solve the many serious issues we're facing as a country.

• As the son of immigrants, I identify deeply with the ideas of personal responsibility, working hard, and not expecting the (union, company, government, party) to take care of all our problems.
• As a Christian, I believe that while God can work through governments to help carry out his purposes, God also expects us to assume personal responsibility in helping the less fortunate.
  

Two other quick items about the inauguration speech.

First, courtesy of a high school friend (thanks Cecilia!) who shared this link on Facebook, here is an interesting word cloud visualization of the President's address. Check out this link to see similar visualizations of some former presidents' speeches.

Second, some of you may be curious about the Bible reference in the President's inaugural speech. President Obama said, "We remain a young nation, but in the words of scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things."

This reference comes from 1 Corinthians 13, a letter Paul wrote to the church at Corinth which includes the so-called "love chapter" which is commonly used in weddings. Many people are familiar with its proclamations about the nature of love from this letter: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs."

Less well known is Paul's description of what we'll know when we meet God in person. The text reads:

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (Emphasis mine.)

Most Christians understand this verse to mean that we will know things when we meet God in heaven that we don't know -- or only partly understand -- today.

Just as we look back with some chagrin at the things we thought we knew as kids ("when I'm a parent, I'm never going to yell at my kids"), we'll also get a good chuckle about the things we thought we knew here on earth once we're seeing things from the vantage point of heaven.

As I read it, President Obama used this verse in his speech as an exhortation to get beyond partisan bickering -- what he calls "the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

To which I say, amen. Let's get to work.

And thank you President Obama, for the reminder that each one of us needs to part of the solution.

Family in blue

 

Miracle of miracles; everyone is looking at the camera. 

Never mind Katye's slightly crazed smile: that's about typical for her. The astounding thing is that Cameron is actually looking at the camera -- probably because he's staring at the warning lights that go off right before the timed shot is snapped.

Cool shots you can get with a DSLR

 

Still very excited about my Nikon. Even with the 28-200mm lens, which is not the best lens to take closeups with, you can get pretty cool bokeh effects. I was slightly off-balance when I snapped the picture too, which means the vibration reduction is working too.

Geeking out with energy data

Our local utility (PGE) has been steadily adding interesting analysis tools to their Website. You can look at things like:

• Whether you're using more or less power (gas & electricity) compared to the typical customer
• Why your bill went up or down this month (e.g., was it weather-related, was it rate-related, was it you just using more or less)?
• How your bills compare to any other period (I like comparing the same months across years)

The latest widget I found graphs your gas and power usage against "degree days" -- an interesting concept that basically describes cold or hot a given month was relative to a comfy 65 degrees.  Here's our gas consumption (blue bars) mapped against the weather (gray shaded area). You can see our gas usage tracks the weather pretty well, though you'll see we were particularly masochist this past November and December by not turning on the heat much in the house.

Mini coaster

Our kids -- like us -- are not big roller coaster fans. They thought the mini coastr in Toon Town at Disneyland was a little too much -- and the Matterhorn was definitely too much. The slight drop at the beginning of Pirates of the Carribean is more their speed.

So we were pretty surprised when they declared the mini coaster at Discovery Kingdom a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure all the screaming you hear is from Katye and cousin Leann.



As usual, higher quality version on YouTube. (I shot the video on my Canon point-and-shoot as the Nikon D90 did not accompany us to the amusement park, in case you're wondering.)

This is the first video we've uploaded through the Mac port of Picasa, which is now available in beta. We were big fans of Picasa on Windows, and though iPhoto is very similar, there are definitely things we miss about Picasa -- mostly to do with the tight integration with Google's Picasa Web Albums and YouTube. Uploading videos via Picasa sure beats doing it over their Web based uploader.

(You need 3.0.1.321 or later -- the first beta they published a few days ago never successfully uploaded to YouTube.)

Dennis the Menace park

If you are ever in Monterey with school-age children, definitely spend an afternoon at the Dennis the Menace Park. It's an impressive playground with a maze, an actual steam locomotive, a long suspension bridge, a tall climbing wall, and other cool equipment designed by Hank Ketcham, the creator of Dennis the Menace.



Colin and Katye have been reading mommy's Calvin and Hobbes collection and haven't read any Dennis the Menace. We tried to explain how Dennis was kind of like Calvin in that they were both mischievous -- but somehow Calvin is much funnier, probably because he's much more subversive. Anyway, it's time to check out some Dennis the Menace anthologies from the library.



OK, enough Monterey pics on the blog. See the complete album on Smugug.

BTW, I'm loving the Nikon D90 and the 18-200mm lens. It's not a perfect lens by any means, but you can't beat the convenience of this focal range (i.e., it's a "super-zoom") with fast auto-focusing, and good-enough optics to take some eye-popping pictures.

Jellyfish at the Aquarium

The British biologist J.B.S. Haldane is famously quoted as saying, ""My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." Most of the time, that quote is used by sub-atomic physicists talking about the completely non-intuitive behavior of quarks and bozons and whatnot.

But some sea creatures are improbable at the biological level as well: the impossibly ornate sea-horses and the glowing fish, and the chameleon-like fish which change color and markings to better blend in with the sand behind them, and this too-cool jellyfish (visit the video on YouTube for a higher-resolution version).

(The original video was shot on a Nikon D90 DSLR, in case you are curious.)

Day trips

We took a few day trips during the holiday shutdown, including an overnight run to Monterey. Of course, we stopped by the Monterey Bay Aquarium to marvel at the sea creatures living in our oceans. Thanks to David and Lucille Packard for making the aquarium a reality!

We walked a bunch that day (probably 5 miles altogether), and the kids were champs. To reward them, we stopped by a nearby candy shop. And here he is, the proverbial kid in a candy store: