Ut phoenix, ex cineribus resurgam

Like the Phoenix, I will rise again

Life called, and I answered.  Every year, when summer winds down and fall ramps up, I feel steamrolled by stuff to do.  Work has been busier than usual, and when I haven’t been at work it seems like I haven’t paused for a moment.  At one point I was at home for 36 hours out of 280.  While I haven’t made any progress on my Phoenix model, there has been some fun and games.  I spent a week having and awesome time with Justin and Becky, doing things like playing Castle Ravencroft, attending a ren faire, going to the world’s largest arcade, and stalking Stephen King’s house.  I messed around quite a bit with the Caanoo.  The kids are running us ragged to soccer and scouts and everything in between.  We raised over $1600 for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation and participated in their local annual event.  I played and beat Metroid: Other M and Halo: Reach (solo Heroic … and now about 1/3 thru solo Legendary).  And we ditched the Blackberry’s and got new Android phones (a T-Mobile G2 for me and a MyTouch 3G Slide for the wifey).

The long and short of it is that I haven’t spent any time with the blog, which has been bugging me.  I’ve been thinking about some modifications I’d like to make, though.  I’ve also been setting up the G2 with the thought of how I can best integrate it with the blog.  No radical changes, but there may be some tests as I get things up to speed again.

Isn’t This Lovely?

Someone had “fun” with my office window over the weekend.

ZarkSeven.com is 2 years old!

It’s been a long but fun ride since my clumsy first beginnings on July 4, 2007.  My blog readership has grown bigger than I ever expected, and I want to thank everyone who stops by to see what’s new.

Gooey Butter Cake

You won’t find me posting much about cooking, because I’m better at eating than at cooking.  And baking…. forget it.  I’ll leave that to Jenny.  But if you’re looking for something delicious, I came across this recipe for Gooey Butter Cake.  Any self-respecting St. Louisan will know exactly what that is, but if you’re not from the area, now you can bake one up yourself.  Enjoy (immensely)!

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Nuke It!

Ever wonder what would happen to your town if someone dropped a nuclear bomb on it?  How about your country with an asteroid strike?  A morbidly fascinating combination of Google Maps and javascript called Ground Zero now lets you do just that.  Just select your desired location and weapon of choice, be it a “Fat Man” or a “DF-31” or a host of others, and let the destruction commence.

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Fastest Growing WordPress.com Blogs

Even though I have my own domain mapped to it, my blog is hosted by WordPress.com.  I find their blog tools easy to use, and flexible enough to make a customized looking blog without having to use blogging software or have any extensive knowledge of website creation and management.  They have a good backend too, with a lot of useful tools, stats, etc.

I was poking around the stats section, and when I looked at some of the general WordPress.com categories, I was blown away to see my blog listed in the “Fastest Growing WordPress.com blogs.”  Wow.  All I can say is thanks everyone for visiting, and I hope you subscribe and come back often!

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Dumbing Down the News

So I see this article today, and I get to the third paragraph…

Huh?  What??  Mass is “like weight”???  A 5th grader could probably tell you mass is not “like weight.”  A two second Google search for the definition of mass reveals that mass “the property of a body that causes it to have weight in a gravitational field.”  Mass is the amount of matter that a body contains.  Apply that matter to gravity, and you have weight, which varies by the strength of the gravitational field.  In other words, you might weigh 100 pounds on Earth, but you’d only weight 38 pounds on Mars, with has 38% the gravity of Earth.   But your mass wouldn’t change.  Mass is a description of the object.  Weight is a description of the force of gravity on the object.

Wikipedia says regarding mass that “the distinction between mass and weight becomes important for measurements with a precision better than a few percent (due to slight differences in the strength of the Earth’s gravitational field at different places), and for places far from the surface of the Earth, such as in space or on other planets. (emphasis added).  Too funny, given the article above.

Are we too stupid in this country to know the difference?  Do we really have to have it explained to us as “like weight?”  Let’s look at it another way.  Newton’s Second Law, dealing with inertial mass, states in equation form that  F = ma (force equals mass times acceleration).  So if a pro baseball player threw a baseball at you, the force of it hitting you is equal to the mass of the ball times the acceleration of it coming at you.  Quite different than if I lobbed one at you.  I bet if the author was hit by the lobbed ball, and then by the 100 mile per hour fastball, he wouldn’t think that they were like each other at all, even though the mass of the ball is the same.  Hmm…. let’s try it and find out!

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Free Time

Who doesn’t enjoy a little free time? Well, today you’re gonna get it. At 11:59:59 Universal Time (6:59:59pm EST), atomic clocks around the work will add one “leap second” to the day.  The last one was December 31, 2005.  Do you remember what you were doing when it happened??  No??  Well, make plans now to make the most of it!  Enjoy it! Don’t be all doom and gloom like some naysayers!  Make it a joyful and memorable experience.  You’ll be glad you did.

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Employer Confidence

My brother and I went to the Apple store in the mall this weekend, and while walking in through Macy’s, my brother noticed the banner above the door:

How confident would you be in working for a company that can’t even spell right on its own “hiriing” advertisements??

Santa Mail

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time for “the holiday season” to swing into full force.  Time to start thinking about getting in those donations for Letters from Santa.  As I mentioned last year at this time, a local parent group runs a fundraiser every year called “Letters from Santa.”  The St. John’s Mercy NICUPS (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Parents) are a group of graduate parents from the hospital’s NICU that provide support for families of babies in the NICU.  The donations provide assistance with such things as disposable cameras, gas cards, one-on-one talks, and weekly parent support group meetings.

You can order a personalized letter from Santa at www.miraclebaby.org.  We’ve done it every year, and I just placed our order once again for this year.  Support a good cause and put a smile on your kids face at the same time!