Wear your helmet

I am on vacation with the family in the Outer Banks in North Carolina this week. Michele and I rented bikes and were riding back to the rental house when I heard a noise behind me. I glanced back to see another rider splayed in the middle of the road. He’d been clipped by a car.
I ran up to him and flagged the traffic to stop. He didn’t respond to what I was saying to him at all. I called 911 and a woman ran up from a stopped car. Luckily for him (and me) she was a trauma nurse and held his head in place.
I held his hand as we waited as what seemed like a long time, but what actually was under 5 minutes for a team of paramedics to arrive. He kept squeezing my hand but couldn’t respond to our words. The nurse and I talked to him and he only spoke once, telling us his name was Steven.
I have no doubt that without his helmet, I would have run up to him and found a dead man. Last year, my friend Lilo died in a bicycle accident when he wasn’t wearing a helmet.
Please, please wear a helmet while riding your bicycle.

Pooh Camp Story, ver. egoboost

At the office, I helped (with a bunch of other people) get a version of the O’Reilly Foo Camp launched. Some people know the concept as an Unconference or Barcamp. Since we are Disney, we tweaked the name a bit to Pooh Camp to put our own spin on it (and to avoid infringing on O’Reilly IP 😉 ). Actually we spoke with Tim O’Reily and Sara Winge when we did the first one. Sara explained that many of the concepts are from the book Open Space Technology.
The story covers the second Pooh Camp we threw. You can see the Pooh Camp Flickrstream for all kinds of pictures.
For my part, actually I mainly sat in a comfy chair pontificating while others did all the work to make it happen. Obviously, this leads to me being quoted in an article for Corporate Meetings and Incentives, a magazine for people that worry about Corporate Meetings and Incentives.
You can read the article online at the Meetingsnet.com site or you can download a PDF version of the story.
The PDF version is good with pictures of yours truly and a nice layout. You’ll dig the nicely staged cover photo and the image of me with a bullhorn…
In either case, my mother will be happy.

Green Shrek Cheetos

Today I was heading home with Mira and we stopped by 7-Eleven for a snack. We were in the savory aisle when we spied this.


Yes, look closer…

Turn Thy Tounge Shrek Green!
This was impossible to resist so we picked up a couple bags and headed home. Food that changes the color of your body simply must be tested.

Taking a look, they look like normal Cheetos with the unnatural orange color and crumple shaped. Upon close examination, there is no hint of green.

Zoe snapped one in half and we saw a normal Cheetos color with no greeness.
So, into the mouth went the Cheetos.

Sure enough, Zoe’s tongue was green after just 4-5 Cheetos.

I ate a half dozen and smushed them around my mouth. Again, the green tongue was in evidence. The Green Shrek Cheetos do turn thy tongue green!

We couldn’t stop at this and had to get Piper the dog involved. We gave her a small bowl of Cheetos. She looked up at me as if to say, “This is a trap, right?”

Of course it was a trap, as I wrestled with the dog, braving her fangs, to get a photo of her green tongue. The Cheetos worked on the dog as well!

Zoe figured out that it was water activating the hidden green dye. Here you can see a couple of Cheetos floating in water with the green dye leaking out.
Well done Cheetos! The girls and I love them.

His Majesty’s Dragon

Michele and I have been reading several of the Dresden Files, but Michele told me to slow down and let her get ahead in the series.
At the office, my co-worker Cyril, brought in a few extra books for anyone to read. One of them was Temeraire (known in the US as His Majesty’s Dragon, Cyril had the UK version, obv) which I had actually seen in stores before. I picked it up and took it home.
His Majesty’s Dragon – Naomi Novik
This book introduces the central concept of the Temeraire Series, intelligent dragons coexisting with humans in the Napoleonic Era. I am a huge fan of novels of the Napoleonic Era also know as the Age of Sail. I’ve read all eleven Horatio Hornblower novels, a few of the Patrick O’Brien/Jack Aubrey novels and even a few of the Dewey Lambdin/Alan Lewrie books.
Starting off as a naval story, the plot quickly takes us into the fantasy of the Aerial Corps, the men, women, and dragons that form the military force in the air. Ms. Novik does a good job of slowly rolling out ideas and concepts in this area keeping the reader happy but without revealing answers to every question.
The writing is easy to read with and you can speed through without some of the usual jargonistic sentences that often mar the typical naval novel. There are some mental leaps like believing that a crew will man a dragon like a ship and crawl all over in flight with the use of carabiners to stay attached in flight. There are even boarding attempts from one dragon to another.
The first novel doesn’t dwell much on the issues surrounding dragons and mainly focuses on the relationship between the rider and dragon and the viability of the world in which they exist.
After finishing the book, I wanted more. On Saturday morning I went to the library and picked up the next book. By about 11PM that night I had finished it. Yes, I read fast, but the book was fast and kept the plot rolling along.
Throne of Jade – Naomi Novik
This book continues the adventures of Temeraire the dragon and Laurence the rider. While also packed with action, the book dives into the issues of the rights of dragons and their place in society. The European take on dragons is one of focus on them as military weapons with little regard for their desires. Contrasted with the Asian view of dragons as not only citizens, but as valued members of society with many roles from commerce to politics to the military. The author also reminds the reader that at the time, the enslavement of humans was still a matter of real debate and legal in some of Europe at the time.
Ms. Novik doesn’t take the easy way out and incorporate some quick fix to the problem. She sets the issue up as a continuing plotline in the series. There is a third book in the series with a fourth on the way. It will be interesting to see how these issues are dealt with in addition to the action scenes.
I recommend the series to anyone that likes historical fiction or fantasy.

Why is it boring?

On occasion, I get email via this weblog that is a bit outside the normal email.
Yesterday I received this:

That’s it, a four word question.
Leslie, I will do my best to answer.
It is boring because you know the main characters will win in the end.
It is boring because you are not in love.
It is boring because you didn’t study.
It is boring because you touch yourself.
It is boring because you didn’t see the first episode.
It is boring because they used the three act structure.
It is boring because it is not bedazzled.
It is boring because it does not have chili powder on it.
It is boring because you are too young.
It is boring because you are too old.
It is boring because you are tired.
It is boring because you are not doing what you love.

Preferred means of contact

Several people have been discussing how to handle communications these days (Sean, Jason, Tantek). All suggesting that email is a bad way to communicate. I agree and thought I’d throw in my 2¢.
I get a lot of email, so I would like you all to bend to my specific desires to reduce my email stress. At the office I get 300-400 non-filtered emails a day and often don’t check my personal email for days at a time.
So, that said, here is how I prefer to be contacted:

  1. Human Courier – You will hand write a letter to me, seal it with wax and your personal seal, then have it personally delivered by a human courier. The courier will present the letter to me on a silver tray. The courier will then wait for my reply, waiting the hours or days it takes me to come up with my thoughtful reply. Be aware, if you send bad news, I reserve the right to physically harm the messenger.
  2. Telegram – If you don’t have the time for a handwritten letter, I will accept a telegram. Yes, you can still send a telegram to me. Western Union got out of the game, but there are several other companies providing service.
  3. Battlefield 2142 – Get a copy of Battlefield 2142, install and start a character. Then track me down to a time I’m playing and join the server I’m on. Next, hop into my squad. I’ll be happy to VOIP chat with you in game, while we play. I like to play engineer, defending Toll Station on Gibraltar, so please spawn as Support to resupply as needed.
  4. Adam Carolla Show – I listen to the podcasts of the Adam Carolla show fairly regulalry, so find a way onto the Adam Carolla show on-air and I’ll probably hear what you have to say in a day or so. Be aware, that I don’t like the Angel Adam/Devil Danny segment, and tend to skip those.
  5. My Secretary – The first rule of corporate life is “Listen to your Secretary.” That being said, if you can track her down and convince her of the urgency of your message, she will be able to track me down wherever I am and get me out of any meeting I may be stuck. Of course, she is aware that Wednesday Lunch is Comic Book Day and I am not to be scheduled before I have picked up my books for the week.

Obviously, this leads to me creating a new community called mypreferredmeans.com where you can register your preferences and that other people can check. I will be Web 2.0, run on Ruby on Rails, be Ajaxy, we’ll have a corporate blog, it will be open sourced, the community will get a vote on everything, and it’ll have a large presence in Second Life…

The Block – CES Cru

My best friend Martin, who left LA for the greener pastures of Kansas, recently produced a video. Please take a look.
Update: I had hosted the video at Revver and Revver died. I don’t have the original, so the video is lost to the interwebs.