|
Happy Thanksindians!
J: For work on Thursday
and Friday I attended an international conference called the
Calibration/Cross-Calibration Workshop for the AM Constellation. My
back was still bothering me enough that I had to leave early on
Thursday, but I saw a lot of familiar faces and heard a lot of
presentations referring to satellite instruments I've helped
characterize and calibrate over the years.
On Friday I ran into Stuart Biggar at the conference. Stuart had
followed my calibration work at Ames Research Center last week. A few
days after I finished with my instrument, he brought his instrument in
and scanned the same radiometer source. He showed me his numbers, they
agree with mine to better than two percent at his lowest wavelength and
much
better than half a percent in the rest of the spectrum. In layman's
terms this means I'm very, very happy. I've been using my instrument at
Ames for over two years now without any validation from other
radiometric specialists. I've felt a bit alone. Now my data integrity,
at least the latest stuff, is vindicated.
Annaliese gave us a surprise appearance at the the
Looneys'
on Thursday night; we caught up with life stuff and shared info on
mutual friends.
On Saturday the Jehovah's Witnesses came around. I handed a nice cult
member a copy of my Apatheism
tract. I told her I would read hers if she'd read mine. She declined,
and gave me the tract back. Whew, that was close, I almost had to read
a whole Watchtower.
G: I visited
Luisa for a
couple of hours on Friday. She is recovering quickly, and that's a
good. We chatted for a while, and another visitor, Amanda, showed up,
and the three of us took a little walk around outside. It was a nice
day out.
Saturday we went to Janet's house for her birthday party. We missed out
on helping rake her leaves (darn!), and we played a bunch of games and
ate and chatted. It was fun.
On Sunday John and I decided to go look for some furniture. We didn't
get any, except for 10 compartmented wooden cd holders, which John
mounted on boards that he attached to the sides of our entertainment
center. It looks neat and we've now got a nice place to store our many
cds.
J: Leo,
Lucy, and
Kory came over and spent the evening chatting and kibitzing over my cd
shelf construction.
On Monday after having a drink with my dad and his girlfriend Catherine
at a nearby bar, Gina and I whisked
over to the New Deal Cafe for a surprise party for Alan Turnbull, one
of the two city council members who resigned his post this year. There
were lots of free food and lots of people there to tell Alan
thanks. He looks happy with his newfound freedom. Luisa showed up, and
Paul Downs and Susan Barnett, and Dorian and TV Tom all joined us at a
table for lots of intense party conversation.
TV Tom, who has bought a
few Looney Labs games and taught them to many of his unklings, was
thrilled to learn that we're friends of the Looneys. I told him they
occasionally come over to our house for our monthly parties, where we
often have people upstairs playing games in the gameroom. He's one of
those guests who attended a couple of our parties but passed by the
gameroom, not knowing it was there.
I also discussed tree politics with Paul and Susan. I'm thinking
seriously about joining the Forest Preserve task force, a group of
citizens that will decide how to manage wild areas (my immediate solution - leave them
alone) and suggest other areas to include in the city's preservation
ordinance (my immediate reaction - include all of them).
Got one of those chain emails the other day, the kind that asks a bunch
of questions. This time instead of just reading the sender's answers, I
actually edited the opening paragraph, answered the questions and sent
it out to a few folks. The subject line said "funny questions" but I
didn't think they were very funny at all. Whatever, I enjoyed some of
the questions, and had fun reading responses from some of my familia. The one I had to think the
most about asked, "If you could meet 1 person (Dead or alive) Who would
it be?" I put my
answers on our site, maybe I'll check back in a few years to see
what I was like.
Gina's
cooking a buncha foods for a big dinner tomorrow. Smells good. Have a
happy Thanksindians (thanks, Indians!) and remember this Friday is International Buy
Nothing Day!
|
THE HEAP
where we wade the web
buy nothing day
triumph:
i keed
escher
in lego
80's
lyrics quiz
one and
the same
car
of the year 2004
al
gunther's eggshells
|