I spotted this article on Kevin Schofield's blog from this week's Boston Globe Sunday Magazine about being a gen-X dad. It's interesting to me for 3 reasons: (1) I pretty much fit the description of the guys in the article, as do many of my friends, (2) the guys profiled all live within 2 miles of where I did when we lived in Watertown, Ma almost 9(!) years ago. (3) the bar they meet up in once a month "Conley's" used to be "McFlys" our favorite in town bar. Lisa and I spent a pretty fun night there during a big blizzard in 1993. We walked down a deserted Belmont Street, climbed over a huge snow bank, and drank Murphy's with 3 or 4 of the regulars. A classic Boston winter memory...   .:

at: 3:39 PM

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My mother/sister/aunts/cousins/nieces have a tradition. Each year they make a Christmas ginger bread village. They're a creative bunch, so the dioramas are detailed and amusing. This year they took the curse cracking Red Sox victory as a theme and built a ginger bread Lansdown Street complete with Fenway Park (including green monster) and idle drunks by a miniature Cask 'n Flagin. My sister sent a picture to the Globe and it was published online. Check out Boston.com; at the moment the picture is on the front page.   .:

at: 2:50 PM

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From USATODAY.com (thanks Jonathan): Single-serving coffee can heats itself. I bet the coffee sucks, but the technology is certainly cool (ha!). The right way to do this is to have the heating element boil water (current tech doesn’t get hot enough) and brew the coffee right in the can (extra points if you can steam the milk in a separate chamber too). That way you get nice fresh, hot coffee with a flip of the pull tab and no baristitude (just made that word up). Of course, Lisa thought of this about 5 years ago and I told her it was a silly idea, proving once again that I should listen to my wife more.   .:

at: 2:29 PM

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Turned 39 today. I'm not sure how much longer I can say I have half my life in front of me and keep a straight mental face. Then again, the baby boomers might have a work around for the whole death thing before I get there, right?

Which reminds me, a few days ago the AARP sent me an invitation to sign up and "enjoy the benefits of being over 50". How's that for a way to kick off my last year as a thirty something?

  .:

at: 4:23 PM

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Every once in while Lisa (who still doesn't blog) and I get a funny idea - well, we think it's funny. Rarely do we act on the idea; in general we both prefer the idea to the execution - it's amazing we managed to produce a child. This time Lisa couldn't resist and created the Cheney/Old Man Potter debate page. She says it was my idea, but it started from an off hand comment prior to the debate, and Lisa developed it. I guess that's why we're a team.   .:

at: 1:19 PM

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Some times my blogging gene just kicks out. I lose momentum and the longer I go without posting, the harder it seems to take to get back to it. I miss not writing and not having some record of my thoughts and things I see and eventually that makes me want to start again. That or, Ned goads me back into it. Time to start back up.   .:

at: 1:08 PM

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We don't have many electrical storms here in Seattle, but we don't have many perfect 80 degree June days either, so maybe this is just the new, new weather. Go global warming. We certainly had quite a thunder storm last night as these pictures (not taken by me) show. No, that's not a shot from The Day After Tomorrow, that's Seattle.

More pictures from KOMO, the local TV station.   .:

at: 7:08 PM

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My friend Per is off and running with, Sunfrog, a film scheduling software application. Are you planning an indpendent film? Check out Sunfrog. Go Per.   .:

at: 7:03 PM

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It seems like I’ve had a few things to write about, even though I haven’t.  First off; I did get to see the new Seattle central library in person. Not on the actual opening day, but a week later over Memorial Day weekend. It was surprisingly crowded. All the glowing reviews really drew the crowds, and it was a diverse crowd at that. Lots of families and children; the kids section is just great – books, toys, puppets, little m&m shaped cushions for kids to climb/sit on. No shortage of twenty something hipsters either; just cruising the sleek interiors and basking in the modernity of it all. There were even a few people reading.

Hey, that would have been me too except I’m well, thirty something, and I was spending most of my time chasing my 2 year old daughter around.  Her favorite spot is the “teen” section (I know, 2!). It’s a quiet, off to the side location on the main level with funky low, hard-looking chairs that are actually soft, computer stations at bar stools, and (if you are a 2 year old girl) a captivating bright orange floor to run around on.  She’s still talking about it.  So maybe Herbert Muschamp isn’t crazy (btw, isn’t Herb too old to say “bling-bling” more than 3 times in a NYT architecture review?) when he called it the best building he’s reviewed in 30 years.

I need more non-2 year old time in the building with a camera before I’ll make my conclusions. First impression though is that it is first class fun. Fun angles, fun materials, fun colors, fun light, fun views, fun, fun, fun. It will be interesting to see how all of those Koolhaus saturated colors and clean edges hold up over time, but I’m rooting for him.  The bright yellow escalators are going to keep the shoe scuff crew of the janitorial staff employed for a life time.

The second thing I wanted to write about is that a giant meteor exploded over Seattle last week and woke me up. Ok, it was really only “the size of a computer monitor” (don’t remember where I heard that), but it did shake the house with the sonic boom it produced when it plunged into the atmosphere. It was a regular close-encounters experience for me; I woke up when I heard my bed side lamp shaking at 2:40am. Only the lamp. I didn’t see the big flash of light, and I don’t remember hearing the boom (lots of others did). In a sleepy haze I tried to convince myself it was an earth quake, but the pieces didn’t add up. Only the lamp, I kept thinking. Why didn’t the bed shake, the dishes rattle, car alarms go off (one did), like the last earth quake? It ruined a good night’s sleep. I was relieved to hear on NPR when I was leaving for work that it was just some “space junk” or maybe a meteor falling to Earth; in other words, they don’t friggin know.  It probably won’t happen again. They say it was a 50 year meteor (no I just made that up).   .:

at: 11:45 PM

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The quality of service here in Coffee Czar land will be touch and go as I mess about with the new blogger features over the next few days. They finally support comments(!), so soon you'll be able to leave your witty responses to my (un)inspired postings. Hey, with any luck, you don't come here enough to notice the down time.   .:

at: 10:51 PM

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Did I ever mention my teenage obsession with Cryptobiotic tardigrades? Nevermind.   .:

at: 11:05 PM

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I can't believe I haven't run across this before, but option3 is a crazy kind of photo experiment by Phillip Torrone who took "1 picture, every 30 minutes, every hour, for 24 hours, 7 days a week, for 3 weeks, no matter what." and he means it. I like to call this, 3 weeks, no smile, more money than time.   .:

at: 6:42 PM

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I have a work oriented blog now; well, not just mine. I'm joint authoring with two other guys from the FrontPage team. Check out FrontPoint and learn about how FrontPage and SharePoint are changing the world.   .:

at: 11:01 AM

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Some Brit silliness - Extreme Ironing. I guess everone has to be good at something, and if you're not extremely good, it's just not worth talking about today, is it?   .:

at: 10:59 AM

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This Sunday's The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine has a great article about the controversial and soon to be opened Seattle public library designed by Rem Koolhaas. What looked like a gamble a few years ago turned into prescience for Seattle when Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize a year after getting the commission.

I can't wait to check out the building from the inside in late May. And I like this quote from the article: "the bizarre shape could not have been agreed to a year earlier or a year later. A year earlier Seattle lacked the sophistication for the gamble, and a year later the dot-com boom had gone bust. This is a time capsule of civic chutzpah."   .:

at: 12:47 PM

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Steven Johnson (Interface Culture and Emergence guy) takes on toddler psychology and the age old question of why does your darn 2 year old want your cell phone (or other more dangerous appliance) when she has a perfectly good mock cell phone of her own. His readers' comments are funny enough.   .:

at: 7:48 PM

Check out Amazon’s new search site. It’s built on Google, but they did a much nicer job on search results, search history, book results and neat feature called site info which gives you some stats on the site, including people who visited this also visited, and speed of the site (that was my idea!) in a ballon-help style tool tip (flame away). And if you give it your Amazon logon it tracks your search behavior and notes you make about sites in a portable way. They also cloned the Google toolbar including pop-up blocking.

What’s with the number 9 any way? www.a9.com www.channel9.msdn.com ? Is 9 the new black and nobody told me?   .:

at: 10:58 AM

Easter Peeps time - Rachel Deahl writes about why we eat Peeps at Easter, on Slate. And don't forget to check out this year's Easter Peeps line-up in Peepsville.   .:

at: 10:56 AM