./ just pointed me at an article in Newsweek where they found that about 48% of Americans don’t believe in evolution and answered no to ‘Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?’ in their poll.
Are science and religion about to start a civil war? With how pervasive technology is getting and the level of scientific understanding of the world it’s a possibility.
Cool - my grandpa’s hands are famous!
The German site Politik-digital.de appears to be focused getting seniors active in technology and other tech-related issues is using this photo on their website - I’m sure my grandpa will be pleased to hear it given that German is his native tongue.
An old shot I found while combing through iPhoto to clean out crappy photos to make my AppleTV screen saver more interesting. It was taken at Gasworks park a couple of months back and I like the way the machinery in the background fades away before the chains in the foreground.
“Chain link” by sparktography
Things are pretty crazy at work - we are going through some growing pains in a new project and things are hectic from a PM perspective as a result. It’s great experience on how to manage rapidly changing requirements as well as an opportunity to learn more about new methodologies. A big part of the stress is coming from my groups conversion to the Scrum methodology.
So far I like Scrum, and will be interested to see how things turn out. It seems much more focused on getting rapid results than waterfall and suits my personality better. I like being able to work through issues in real time (so to speak) and focusing on delivering features rather than documentation. I’ll be interested to see what my take away lessons from Scrum are after we have gone through a few sprints and I feel more confident and educated about the process.
Luckily the week is over half over. Last weekend I didn’t get much ‘me’ time between visiting my grandpa and getting my car taken care of so I’m really looking forward to spending some quality time with my couch this coming Saturday and Sunday.
The above photo is of the finished product of Mirrorworks amazing job restoring and detailing my car. They did a full clay bar and polish treatment to get the paint back to it’s former glory and then did a fantastic job treating the leather in the interior and steam cleaning the floors and mats. The paint is silky smooth and has its former inner glow. I’m simply stunned at the difference the treatment made - even though it was expensive I figure it’s the best thing I can do to protect such my treasured Pimpmobile
It’s one hell of a detail job and I’m now a convert - I won’t let anyone but Mirrorworks touch my car from now on! For a better understanding of the miracle they accomplished check out the before picture, or my new Pimpmobile set on Flickr for some of the photos I took during the restoration and detailing process..
Today I drove up to Abbotsford, BC to join the rest of the family with my Grandpa Vernon for dinner. I don’t see him as often as I would like, and it troubles me. I love my Grandpa for many good reasons, and hate being around him for equally good reasons.
He’s a genius - speaks 7 languages, understands fine art, and grew up a professor of language as an open man - embracing of all cultures and walks of life. Grandpa was a role model to many of his students, and as well for his two children.
Sadly when he retired he moved back to the Mennonite community in Abbotsford and has been gradually becoming bitter, bigoted, racist, and homophobic. His Christian moral values are becoming more extreme, and his world view is becoming more and more negative.
Losing Grandma last year was very hard on him. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be married to someone for 60 years - it’s so much longer than I’ve been alive - let alone lived with someone. I sympathize for him and have appreciation for he’s lived through - he’s experience everything from WW2 and the great depression to losing Grandma after a life of pain.
I love him and realize that he’s lonely and should visit more often, but it’s really hard to do when everything around him seems to center around negativity and hate. The decline I’ve seen in both his outlook on life, as well as and end to his feeling of swamped and love for all human being fade has left feeling that It’s simply no longer fun to be around him.
“Grandpa” by sparktography
My cousin Heather was in town this evening with one of her friends so we went out to hit the town. Her 23rd birthday is tomorrow so I took her out for some Sushi and a birthday drink at Blue C. It was good to see her, and a good start to a family-tastic weekend: tomorrow morning I’m headed up to Abbotsford to see my Grandpa, Uncle, Aunts, and other cousins. Sadly Grandpa has not been doing as well, so I think it will be good for the family to get to hang out with him for a while.
In technology news I’ve been on one heck of a spending spree - I need to stop! In two days I’ve purchased both a GPS unit for my car, and one of the new Apple TV’s. The GPS unit is cool (and might help keep me from getting lost), and makes up for one of the two missing features in the A6. The other missing feature is rain sensor wipers and I doubt if there is a way to hack that in after market.
In a way I’m looking forward to the drive tomorrow as it will be my first long haul in the A6 (now affectionately named the PimpMobile (in honor of Bender)), and a great chance to play with the GPS unit. I already asked it to calculate the route up to Abbotsford and it is a different one than I’m familiar with. Looking at the details in Google Earth it actually looks to be a faster and shorter way there so I think I’ll give it a go.
The Apple TV is great so far. Exceptional and simple out of box experience (like all Apple products in recent years), and the initial setup was a breeze. I plugged it in to the wall and to HDMI and I was off. After selecting my 802.11n network, entering the WPA password, and selecting the computer I wanted to sync with it was ready to use. Total time from plugging it in to me watching an episode of the Colbert Report: 2 minutes.