Cheddarvision

Sure, you've seen cheddar cheese before. You may have even seen it at a dairy.

But...

have you ever seen cheddar cheese being made real-time? Huh? Well after you click here you can say that you have.

Average Color

Check out the nifty average color tool. You can take any photograph on your machine, or off of flickr, and determine its average color. This might be useful for web design, or just because you're a nerd and you like nerdy things. Like me.

Gov Kulongoski Goes On Food Stamps

I'm sure all of my Oregon peeps know about this but I just thought I'd share for my friends outside of this state. Gov Kulongoski went on food stamps to create awareness about hunger. Pretty great I think.

Brianna's 8th Birthday

Saturday was Brianna's birthday, and she had a great one. Jen made Brianna's cake, which matched the "Hello Kitty" theme of the party.



A bunch of Brianna's friends came over including some of the neighborhood kids, Kai and Keagan. There were some of Brianna's friends from school; Nika and Sasha, and one of Brianna's best friends (and my friend Paul's daughter) Paige.

We played a little cakewalk:



We also did the pinata in the garage:



When Kai broke the pinata open I think I was probably the happiest person in the room.



The games ended with animal charades, which as you might imagine was adorable.





Of course Brianna got way too many presents.



Amy got a really cute card from Amy:



And Brianna got a cute picture with her mom:

Boba Fett

Andrew is an individual. He goes through these obsessions that last for years. These are all consuming, single point of focus obsessions. There's no telling what will inspire the obsession or what course it will take. Sometimes there are head-fakes, something like spiderman will come along, but just as soon as any funding has been provided by the parents, the attention shifts, sometimes right back to where it was before.

You can't control the focus. You just gotta open yourself to the ride.

When Andrew was a little kid, maybe 2-4, the object of attention was trains. The only thing he cared about were trains. He drew hundreds of pictures of trains, talked about trains, loved train tv shows. Solomente trains.

Until dinosaurs, years 4-7. Particularly, but not exclusively velociraptors. To some extent this obsession was generalized to all kinds of carnivores. Herbivores were summarily excluded, and omnivores were tolerated, as long as they actually hunted.

Somewhere in there crocodiles were incorporated to this fascination, but that's kind of a separate category. Andrew learned at some point that crocodiles were very similar to the way they are now back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. When the "supercroc" video came out, Andrew nearly obtained nirvana.

Without warning dinosaurs were forgotten, replaced with Alien vs. Predator, age 7-10. This fascination presented new challenges for Andrew, because he couldn't actually watch any of the movies that would give him the information he so craved about his deepest love. Andrew resorted to asking every grown-up he met the following questions:

"Have you ever seen Alien or Predator?"

If no, he would set to ignore mode. If yes, "You know the part when..."

The questions would continue unabated until the person finally excused themselves, and sometimes after that even. Many, many, pictures of Alien and Predator were drawn. One pencil sketch of Alien decorated my cubicle at work, where unsuspecting employees would ask "Is that?" to which I would reply "Yup, sure is." I would have to hastily add that he had never actually seen the movie, that Andrew merely knew of it.

I believe we have met the next phase... Boba Fett. As I said earlier, these things cannot be predicted and are best experienced, but Boba Fett does present an excellent new candidate. As everyone knows, I love Star Wars. Every 30 year old male in America loves star wars. If not, there's something wrong with him. I bought a bunch of star wars action figures when I was in high school, which I kept in the original boxes. They used to hang on the wall of my old apartment.

When we bought our house Jen expressly forbid me from hanging up the action figures. As a result, my star wars stuff has languished in a box in the garage. This is where Andrew discovered Boba Fett. Jen warned him that the box was mine, and that he wasn't allowed to play with it, but the temptation was too great. We would walk into the garage to get laundry and Andrew would suddenly drop the Boba Fett back into the box, with a guilty grin on his face.

Eventually Andrew worked up the courage to broach the subject with me, asking me directly whether I would just give the toy to him. I demurred, offering other solutions. "Why don't you save up your allowance and buy your own Boba Fett?" I asked. Little did I know that there were no Boba Fetts available for sale in Portland. The local sci-fi shop Things From Another World had the inside info... there wouldn't be any more Boba Fetts until October.

Andrew recognized that his only hope of obtaining a Boba Fett was there in the garage, waiting for him. He worked the problem over in his head until he came up with his last-ditch best-hope option... a persuasive letter. I received it last Tuesday:





Tuesday night I told him I would think about it.

Saturday I gave in and gave him the Boba Fett.

Two hours later the dog chewed up Boba Fett's jet pack. Andrew, unfazed, made a new one out of duct tape.

Who is sick

Found online today... who is sick - beta. You can post all of the different ailments you are experiencing, discuss your symptoms with others in the discussion forum, and analyze a bunch of data in a bunch of different ways. This is truly a hypochondriac's dream.

So now when you're sick at home and you get sick of watching crap tv, reading, and sleeping, you can have one more thing to do while you wait for your illness to pass.

The time in between the time

Starting off with a garden update... we have lettuce, people. That's right, actual lettuce, not the rubber stuff you find in lesser gardens, operated by the corporations with their tireless need for profit. We also have a tiny bit of cucumbers. The pea pods are just beginning to sprout. For sure we're going to have lettuce. We're counting on the lettuce.


At work things are in a transition. The last couple of days the people who work for me right now have wanted to talk about how the change will affect them. It's been really nice because a lot of people have said a lot of really nice things. Tears have been shed in some instances. At the end of the day I'm a dude and I really don't want to talk about my feelings for eight hours, but I understand the need. I plan on printing the nice emails I've received to make a "feel good" folder for when I'm having a hard time.

Going through this now, I have greater empathy for what happened when my boss left a year or so ago. I can absolutely relate.

Also, I'm getting lots of stuff from my new job - decisions must be made - time lines are impacted. But really they've been pretty good about knowing that I'd need time to wrap things up where I'm at.

It's mostly simple things I'm excited about. I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to listen to my ipod while I check my email. I really miss having the ability to do that.

I like to think about myself that I can do any job I want and be successful, but I've been wondering lately if I'm really cut out for having a bunch of people reporting to me or if I like just being in charge of my little section of the world better. My mood has noticeably improved over the last few days which I think is some kind of indication. Maybe it's just fatigue setting in.

Superfoods

Good thing I'm going shopping today. Check out the list of Superfoods on "Adventures in Medical School".

I was a little surprised about some of the items on there. Avacados for one. I always thought they were bad for you but delicious. Now I understand that they are good for you and delicious. Same thing for kiwis. Kiwis are the bomb, and now I know they're a superfood.

I would like to learn more about the superfoods and their day to day lives fighting nutritional villians. They would all live in the Mall of Justice (this mall would have a New Seasons). Occasionally there would be interactions with bizzaro superfoods like butter and milk chocolate. The kiwi, for example, would have a fight to the death against the chocolate orange. Stuff like that. It would be fun.

New Shins Video

I've loved the Shins for a long time... I got their "Oh Inverted World" album for a trip I took to Colorado. I drove for 25 hours straight listening to that and Jack Johnson's "Brushfire Fairytales". Their new album is just as good as the first two. Well, their new video is out now. Check it out.

Easter '07

Jen came up with a really great Easter plan this year that the kids really enjoyed. We had procrastinated on decorating and getting ready so the night before we decorated eggs. Jen and the kids decorated while I busied myself taking pictures and doing a sudoku. I'm nuts about those sudokus.



Jen has this really big floor puzzle that's related to a book she read Andrew when he was little. The next morning we hid the pieces of the puzzle throughout the yard - in the bushes, trees, etc. The kids received instructions Easter morning that the puzzle pieces were hid throughout the front yard and that they would need to work together to find the pieces and put together the puzzle in order to receive a prize.

The kids had a great time going through the yard and looking for the pieces. They worked together really well. It couldn't have gone better.







The kids put the puzzle together. True to their natures Andrew kind of took over and got right down into it. By contrast, Brianna observed and wanted to talk about the progress that they were making.



When the puzzle was done the kids took turns reading the panels, which was really cute.



After they completed their task they received instructions saying that they needed to go find their baskets in the house... we had hidden their baskets in their rooms. They found their baskets and were very happy campers.

Dave Can Do Sudoku

Dave is Sudoku Champion
Originally uploaded by dave.worth.

Six stars, baby, and I've only been doing these things for a week and a half!

America's Next Top Model

Maybell the Model
Originally uploaded by dave.worth.

Chris' Birthday Party

Most of you already know that I'm pretty awesome. Last weekend, I think it was my awesomeness that caused my friend Chris to invite me to his birthday party. You see, birthdays carry with them a certain amount of awesome, just because they're your birthday. But they can also become a black hole of awesome if they suck, because nothing is worse than a crap birthday. As you can now appreciate, this is a very sensitive situation requiring planning and finesse.

In Chris' case, he overcame the awesome/crap issue by inviting me, knowing that I would bring my innate awesomeness with me to his party. In fact, he even had back-up awesome in case I couldn't come. Paul, Joey, Kristen, Eli and Josh were all there too. There were even some other people there, each with their own incremental amount of awesomeness.

It was a good thing too, because I missed the first part of Chris' birthday where he went to see the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Apparently it was awesome, but I didn't see it so I can't say firsthand. You may want to watch it yourself to find out.

The party then moved to Pietro's Pizza in Salem where Jen, Brianna, Andrew and I joined the festivities. I was absolutely shocked by the amount of awesomeness I discovered there.


Once I had time to get over the awesome-induced shock we had some pizza and chilled.

Chris got a bunch of cool presents, including like a billion gift cards to Borders and a ton of lottery tickets. I don't know if he won on any of them yet, though.


Pietro's has a video game thing, kind of like Chuckie Cheese but without the animatronics. Since all I do is chill I took my chill with me to help the kids play skeeball and stuff. Brianna got a few tickets doing the whack-a-mole game


Chris' daughter was also exhibiting quite a bit of awesomeness in the Game Land of Pietro's.


Being awesome is hard work and required some refueling on Kira's part. As you can see, all Kira does is chill, too.


We finished off the night by BOWLING! Brianna was a natural.


Paul was evil for a little while, but it was okay.


In the end, I'm glad I could contribute what awesome I have to Chris' birthday. I hope he brings his awesome to my birthday party later this year. Happy Birthday, Chris!

Brianna's First Sleep Over

Last Wednesday Jen organized Brianna's first sleep over with some of her friends. It was a "girl's night" slash "sleep over". A couple of Jen's friends, who are also the moms of the girls, came over too. Click on any of the pictures to see the full flickr set.

The very first thing they did was watch Princess Diaries.



After the movie, the ladies did "Hair Time" - braiding, brushing, and twirling each other's hair.



After that came beauty masks.



And then, sleepy time. Even though they didn't sleep too much. Here's a picture of the girls waking up (except for Brianna).



In the morning the moms came back over for manicures.



Where was I during all this? Well, I worked late... then I went to the gym... then I came home late... then I read the newspaper... then I worked on the website... then I tried to sleep....