Awesome Hair

Today at work, we discovered this picture:

This guy's got it all going. The scarf, the scruff, and, most importantly, the hair. This is a guy who would be popular with the ladies. Maybe next time I go get my hair cut, I'll take this picture in so the hair dresser knows what I need.

But the real question is, who is this person? The picture is pretty old, as the image quality and clothing suggests, and subject is famous enough that I know everyone out there would know who he is if I told you. But telling you wouldn't be as much fun. So, time to guess: Who do you think this young rogue is?

Excel 2008

I hate Microsoft Excel 2008. With a fiery passion.

Today's angst is because I want to put lines on a graph. I just want to draw in some red lines. So I put one on and then decide to copy and paste it to duplicate it. But when I do, it pastes the line to the EXTREME left side of my graph, where I can't pick it up, because my mouse will only grab the edge of the graph. So, I am forced to go through the 7 or 8 extra mouse clicks for each line I want to get it to look the same, as the one I already have.

Add to this Excel's general inability to draw lines, and I'm just mad at is. I would draw the line not on the graph and then make copies and drag them onto the graph, but that isn't an option. Lines that aren't on graphs can't be vertical in Excel 2008. It won't let them. The ends of the line snap to invisible coordinates that force the line to be not vertical. And I can't drag my vertical line off the graph, because it just won't let me.

Oh, and if I copy my vertical line on the graph and paste it elsewhere, it comes out horizontal.

Can I please, please, PLEASE have Excel 2003 back?

Bug Book

Bug: the strange mutations of the worlds most famous automobile, by Phil Patton.

I borrowed this book from my dad, which is about the only way you could probably even find it. Even amazon doesn't have a picture of it. The book was ok, but certainly not what I expected. I thought I'd find a story about people in their teens and twenties driving bugs around southern California in the 1960s. (Probably because these are the sorts of Bug stories I've heard from my dad.) Instead, the first third of the book focused on two guys with familiar last names, but who most people probably don't connect with the VW Beetle: Porsche and Hitler. It turns out that Hitler really wanted a car designed that every german family could own, and Porsche was the guy who really believed it was possible and designed the car. All back in the 1930s.

It's not a bad book, but unless you're really interested in VW Bugs, it's probably not going to be high on your list.

Travelling

Other people are nice enough to blog about my life, so I don't have to!

Last weekend we went to Tucson to visit Brett and Sabrina. We saw big cacti, and enjoyed some very warm weather. Brett put up some pictures of the trip. (Of course they focus on his family, not mine. I guess I haven't trained him properly.) We live in a neighborhood of cactus street names. We've got cholla, barrel, saguaro, and others. So we got to see the namesakes for our neighborhood. One more comment on saguaro cacti: I was expecting to see desert scapes with a lone giant cactus out in the distance. Instead, the hills in the area have thousands of cacti on them. They're everywhere.

Julia is growing, but at an ever slowing rate. In the last 6 months, she has moved from being bigger than average, to decidedly smaller than average. Shannon posts the details.

Corn Bran

15 days since my last post, and I've still got stuff from Christmas that I haven't mentioned.

For Christmas this year (and last year, too, I think) I asked for the cereal Crunchy Corn Bran. My bewildered parents went to the store, bought some, wrapped it and gave it to me. They couldn't understand why I wanted cereal for Christmas, and I couldn't figure out where they got it from. For years I've been telling Shannon about Crunch Corn Bran, and for years we've never seen it in any store. Apparently they still sell it in Sandy, but not in Provo or St. George. The cereal is kinda like Capt'n Crunch; it's little squares of crunchiness, but instead of being made primarily of sugar, it's made of corn bran. It looks bran-y, it tastes bran-y, and yet, somehow, it's good.

Well, at least I like it, and Shannon says she does to.

Ender in Exile

Orson Scott Card has written yet another book about Ender, "Ender in Exile". This brings the 'Enderverse' up to like 10 books now. Because I enjoyed the original series so much, I keep buying (or getting as presents) all the new books. I wasn't expecting too much, as I worry that he's stretching the story too far to keep making new books, but Exile is still pretty good. The book is a direct sequel to Ender's Game and ties up all the loose ends that result from Shadow of the Giant as well. If you've read all those other Ender books, you'd better read this one too, because it would be a shame to have read all but one. And if you haven't read any of them, you need to read Ender's Game, because it is a really good book, but I wouldn't be offended if you never made it to Ender in Exile.

Come

This is not a word that Julia has learned yet. Since she's recently discovered the many powers of her new found mobility, she's always going places we don't want her to. (She's been crawling for a month, but only recently realized that this means she can go just about anywhere.) Rather than always telling her 'no' when she heads for the garbage can or something else we try to get her to just come to us. She always get soooo sad when you tell her no. But unfortunately, she doesn't come. I say her name, get her attention, and she turns around for a moment, ponders the sounds coming from my mouth, and returns on her course toward the Bad Object.

But we have a cunning plan. We get her attention, and then while she's watching, we start stacking things. Blocks, cups, anything. She can't resist it. She'll crawl all the way back across the room just to knock it over. I think you could start stacking paper and she'd come over to try to unstack them. She just can't stand to have one thing on top of another.

Unfortunately, today she crawled the 10 feet back to knock over my tower and then promptly turned right back around back for the garbage can. I can see we're going to be building a lot of towers to keep her distracted.

Books

Shannon and I have decided to keep track of how many books we read this year. And here seems as good a place as any to do it.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. Bryson is a very entertaining writer, who is not a scientist. He finds science books boring, and set out to write a book about well, nearly everything thing that would be more interesting. And it is interesting. Of course, one of the ways he makes it more interesting is to add biographical bits that have nothing to do with his discussion of the developement of Big Bang theory, evolution, the age of the earth, and other science topics. It interesting, and while he adds in odd trivia, he still remains serious and accurate. There was one or two areas where I had a quibble with how some information was presented, but over all, I liked it very much.

"What do YOU care what other people think?" This is another Feynman book, and is the follow up to "Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman," I guess. While "Surely you must be joking . . ." is full of short funny stories, "What do YOU care . . " is longer and somewhat more serious. The book is somewhat split into two main sections. The first is about his first wife. They met as teenagers, and by the time they married, they both knew she had a serious disease that would limit their time together. She died a few years later. The story is terrific. The second part of the book is about his involvement in the investigation of the Challenger space shuttle flight. This part is a bit slower and more detailed, but still interesting. Feynman was a very straight forward man, and wasn't afraid of anybody, and I love to see how such a "Curious Character" interacts with the world.

Sick Day

Today, I'm taking my first sick day . . . well, ever. While I could be mistaken, I'm not aware of having taken a day off work for being ill in my entire life. I missed a day of work at Target once because of a toe injury. But somehow, I've been remarkably lucky in life to not get sick, or if I do, not miss work because of it. (Or, is it unlucky that I apparently only get sick on holidays then?)

Shannon fared much better than me through the night, but now has taken ill, too. I'm personally blaming dinner last night.

So here I am at home, trying to keep my body running, watching the snow fall softly in sunny St. George. I'm not kidding about any of that, except for the bit about St. George being sunny. It's cold here, and it's snowing. Apparently we didn't move far enough south.

Our computer is now in the shop. By shop, I mean at KC's house, where he will hopefully fix it for us. Unfortunately, I don't always seem to have a lot of skills to offer people in return. But KC, if you ever need a trivial pursuit partner, I'll be there for you. (Unless we're playing against my sister, in which case, let's just give up. (Further, why are you playing trivial pursuit with my sister?))

Update

We have returned from the land up north. Christmas was good, the weather was cold, and there was lots of snow. We saw lots of people, and opened lots of presents. We barely got everything back in the car to come home.

Upon arriving home, we found that our computer has self destructed. Not sure yet what is wrong with it. There is some sort of error to the effect of "unmountable boot disk" or something like that. I don't recall the exact phrasing right now. We'll be looking into it more soon, to be sure. I just figured I'd let people know why our blogging absence will continue on a bit longer.