I have a new laptop at work -- a MacBook provided by NASA. Now my personal PowerBook can actually be a personal machine and stay at home. It's nice with a Mac, because I can read and write all of the MS Office files that I need, and still write and compile code thanks to the Unix underpinnings ( Read more... )

Just got back from a week's vacation ( Read more... )

So, we spent the week at a beach house on Galveston Island, with assorted trips to various tourist attractions. One day we went to Moody Gardens, which has several over-priced museum-type areas, plus a new outdoors pool area with several water play areas. After dragging the kids through all the education stuff, we headed off to the water park. And ( Read more... )

After four months of absolutely no activity, I got three offers on the townhouse in the past week. After some bargaining back and forth, I took the best one. It's good enough that I'm only losing about half what I've put into the place. That's what you get for selling a house a year after you bought it. Oh well, I'm told that I can claim it as a ( Read more... )

... is the sound of me exhaling after holding my breath for three days. whew!

They're going to launch the Space Shuttle Discovery this afternoon, weather permitting. This is either going to be the first of a lot of launches in the next four years, or the last one ever, if anything goes wrong. Either way, NASA -- and Johnson Space Center -- and my life -- will go through some definite changes ( Read more... )

In a meeting today.

Other guy: "We could use LexCorp technology to support that."

Me: "What!? What did you say!?"

Other guy: "I said we could use life support technology to support that."

Me: "Oh. Ohhh. Okay, never mind."

Good thing, I didn't bring my signal watch to work today...

... awlfully cute, in an ugly sort of way...


( Read more... )

I just wanted to give a big thank you and shout out to tfbretz and b3zsgirl for the house party and barbecue yesterday afternoon. It was fun to see y'all again, and to hang out with a bunch of gamer geeks, and watch my lovely wife saffster have an impromptu high school reunion with half the ladies there. It's a small world we live in. the weather almost got ugly, but the ( Read more... )

Amy:"I want to have sex with Billy!"Sarah:"But what if you get pregnant?"Amy:"Oh, that will never happen.”Sarah:"But what about AIDS?”Amy:“I'm not worried -- we'll use a condom.”Sarah:"What about herpes?”Amy:“I don't care, it's not like it's fatal or anything.”Sarah:“Chlamydia” Crabs? Hepatitis?”
Amy:“Don't care, don't care don't care... I wanna ( Read more... )