Bozone

My boss sent this around today. Definitely an LOL moment.

Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Containers of Clarified H20

When we moved last year, we were blessed with an above ground pool in our backyard. Its a bit of work but its nice to be able to tell the kids "go outside and get wet" when they are getting cooped up in the house.

I swear that the folks at the pool store must view above-grounders as second-class pool citizens. Ok, so I didn't put a $10K hole in my backyard, but I still need the stupid thing clean. I guess I'm just cranky from spending $65 for chemicals to clean it up 'cause we're too busy with the kids and other stuff to keep it clean! I shouldn't complain as $65 could probably feed an entire villiage of folks in Honduras {more info on this later} for quite some time.

Well, its 2342 and I need to run out and apply stage three of the chemical warfare on my pool. Then maybe I can hit the rack for some shut eye!

Silly Little Journals

Ok, I'm weird. My wife likes to remind me from time to time, however, she married me so what does that say about her? :-)

Anyhoo, as early as my b-school days, I was considered a geek compared to most folks. However, compared to the dudes in the CS and Engineering schools, I was rather tame. As a software architect, my thing is technology. I have a nice laptop with the latest Java goodies on it for work. I pay bills online, have broadband Internet at home with Wi-Fi, and have two weblog web sites. I have depended on the IT boom of the late eighties, nineties, and now the 21st century to pay the bills and feed the kids. Complete with buying a new mobile phone every 6-8 months and owning a PDA (which is rotting on my desk now because of the laptop), its safe to say I'm a geek.

Perhaps because of my age or some other ironic reason, I have and continue to use a paper-based notebook for note taking in various business and personal meetings. I've tried the PDA thing and have tried taking meeting minutes via laptop from time to time. Nonetheless, I still have a paper notebook. Generally, I like bound notebooks like the serious engineering notebooks that you may see. {Nothing says propeller-head like a grid-ruled notebook}.

Since I'm at the end of a current chemistry notebook from SU, I was at the local Staples looking for a notebook the other day. I wasn't able to find anything that suited what I wanted. {I know, just by a $2 notebook and be done with it!} Then I drove over to a nearby Barnes & Noble store and checked out the stationary department. There were a plethora of journal-like books. Then I stumbled on a Moleskine journal in two different sizes. I read the description and history (!) of the journal, examined the sturdy construction, and bought the "large" sized with ruled paper. Come to find out there is a small (or perhaps not so small) following of those who use these books. I even went back and bought the original pocket sized one for my backpacking journal! Its not waterproof but nothing a ziploc bag can't fix.

We'll see how the note taking goes with this non-so technical alternative.