One of my co-workers periodically takes his now-8-year-old Cub Scout around the office to sell popcorn as a fundraiser for his troup or den or whatever one calls a plurality of scouts. While the sales pitch was going on in the next office, the dad snuck into my office and whispered, "Turn your disco ball on ( Read more... )

I've been woefully behind in my posting, and you can thank David Allen for that. I recently read Getting Things Done and have been on a massive kick to get more organized. One result of this is that I can finally see the top of my dresser again, and another foot-high stack of old mail, magazines, and to-do lists from 2004 has been dispensed with ( Read more... )

• The Shining - The feel-good romantic comedy of the year. (QuickTime)
• How to create a 200 GB iPod Nano. Be sure to look at the chart comparing battery life.
• Million Dollar Home Page. I wish I were this clever.
• WikiTravel.org - a free open-source travel guide. I have to say that Frommer's free content has already earned my loyalty, though.
• ( Read more... )

I was looking through some of my past blog entries, and noticing that many of them are of the form "I've been meaning for years to {watch Angels in America, see Dead Can Dance, go to Iceland, be able to play Pop Goes the World}, and it was worth it."

It's nice to know I'm making progress on my Things I Ought To Do Sometime list.

One of these days I am going to finish writing about my trip (no, really,) but lately I've been busier reconnecting with the world and fighting off the Martian death flu that's running rampant at work.

This weekend my wife and I saw Angels in America courtesy of Netflix. I've been meaning to see this for years, and it was very much worth it ( Read more... )

I was not at all ready to leave Iceland. I think we did a pretty good job of seeing Reykjavík and nearby sights in the time that we had, but I already ready to visit Akureyri or take the Ring Road around the whole country. Going back to the US where the language and currency would be familiar to me seemed a bit on the bland side ( Read more... )

A few comments in no particular order:

• Trying to pronounce the words and names you see makes them far less intimidating. It doesn't take too long to remember the difference between 'a' and 'á', although we had to go online to find out how 'u' was truly pronounced. I think I've developed an emotional attachment to the 'ð' and 'þ' characters.
• The ( Read more... )

I slept until 11:00, a nice change of pace from our previous mornings. While my wife was shopping, I went to Ráðhús (City Hall) to see a 3D contour map of Iceland. The map is about 70 m2, and was built by gluing together 1-mm thick layers of cardboard. It took 4 people 4 years to make. If you were ever going to be impressed by a map, this would ( Read more... )

We went to sleep relatively late, and had to get up early to catch our bus for the Golden Circle tour. We (well, okay, I) panicked when our bus was late, but the staff at the hotel called and made sure that they were still picking us up ( Read more... )

At 04:00 I fell asleep for the third time in 24 hours. I think I actually dreamt about breakfast from sheer hunger, so I was quite thankful that our hotel package included it. After breakfast we changed rooms because cigarette smoke was creeping into our old room, and we liked our new room much better. It had more of the Art Deco theme that ( Read more... )