Saturday, May 28, 2005

Link-O-Rama

One of the nice things about where live is that there are a number of state parks nearby. We've visited Moraine Hills State Park a number of times; last weekend we went to Chain O Lakes State Park; and today we briefly visited Glacial Park. Since one of the hot topics in technology right now is hacking Google Maps to create your own custom map, I decided to give this a shot. You can see the state parks that we've visited here. If you click on the red markers you should see a picture we took at each place. Doing this type of thing is still very new, but there are already some amazing applications of it. This one combines Google Maps with real estate listings.

Recently Wendy and I watched The Corporation. It's a very interesting, but somewhat disturbing documentary about the effects corporatization has had on our lives, on society, and on the planet. It does run a bit long (2.5 hours), but it is very well done.

Finally, one of the most incredible engineering failures/environmental disasters of all time took place at Lake Peigneur in Louisiana on November 21, 1980. You can read about it here, here, and here. One of my coworkers saw a program on the History Channel recently that covered this event and interviewed people that were there. In a nutshell, here's what happened:
- Texaco had an oil rig set up at the edge of a lake. The lake covered about 1300 acres, but was very shallow, only 3 feet deep.
- After drilling 1,228 feet, something started to go very wrong. The oil rig felt like it was going to collapse, so the workers abandoned it and headed to the shore.
- They watched as the lake started to turn, and a giant whirlpool formed that began sucking everything in the lake, including the oil rig, down a huge crater at the bottom.
- The lake was connected to the Gulf of Mexico by a canal. As the lake started draining, the canal lowered and began flowing in reverse. Water from the Gulf of Mexico actually started pouring into the lake in a 50 foot waterfall.
- Barges in the canal couldn't overcome the reversed water flow, and so they too got sucked down the lake.
- All of this mayhem was caused by the fact (unknown at the time) that the oil rig was drilling right above a salt mine. The drill punctured the roof of the mine, water flowed in, dissolved the salt pillars, which caused the mine to collapse, which caused more water to flow in, causing more salt to dissolve, etc.
- There were workers in the mine, but all of them managed to escape. No one was killed.
- The list of things sucked down the lake includes: 2 drilling rigs, 11 barges, 40+ acres of land from an island in the lake, a house trailer, a tug boat, and more.
- The lake, which was originally 3 feet deep, was now 1300 feet deep.
- Eventually, 9 of the 11 barges sucked to the bottom of the lake popped up to the surface like corks.

I can't believe I had never heard about this until now.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Husband

Today after dinner, Randy and I went for a walk at the McHenry Dam. We were walking along, mostly in silence, when he turned to me and said, "I think if I could play any instrument, it would be the bagpipes. That just occurred to me."

And that's why I love him.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Abby and the Aquarium

Abby's gone home now, and it's once again very quiet here during the day. It was great to have her visit. While she was here, we played Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the Sorcerer's Stone for Gamecube, and beat them both. (We actually started with Prisoner of Azkaban, then CoS, and then SS. No sense doing things in order, we always say.) We watched all of Buffy season one and two and about a third of the third season (in about 5 days). We went to the library and checked out a bunch of books, approximately 3 of which we read. We did some shopping. And of course we did some sightseeing.

This past weekend, we went down to Shedd Aquarium, which was good fun. It's big, and right along the shore of Lake Michigan. We saw a dolphin show and saw belugas and sharks and penguins. And lots of fish. Then we walked along Lake Michigan for a while, but headed back to our car when it started sprinkling a bit. Also, it was cold and I left my jacket in the car. Oops.

Abby's plane left at 8 a.m. this past Wednesday, which meant we had to be at the airport at 7, which meant we had to leave our house at 5:30 a.m. Just for the record, that's really early. There was a little confusion regarding which terminal her flight actually left from, but we got it all sorted out and she made it home fine.

Here's Abby with her new boyfriend. He's a punk.



Randy and me on the scenic shores of Lake Michigan. That's the Chicago downtown skyline behind us (obviously).



Abby and me. I think we were discussing how nice the cloudy sky was. Also how surprisingly chilly it was for May.



Also, I know many of you are waiting on pins and needles, so I won't keep you in suspense any longer: I went with T-Mobile.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Tales of Frustration and Delight

Wendy's cell phone has gotten fairly old, technologically speaking, so we decided she should get a new one. It has proven to be somewhat difficult. We wanted to add her to my Sprint account so we can share the minutes (and the cost). In order to do that we had to call Sprint; we couldn't just order it online. So, last Saturday, I called their customer support and our tale of frustration began. Without going into the details, there was confusion as to which phone was being ordered, how much it was going to cost, how to change the order after the wrong phone was ordered, how to return the wrong phone that was delivered to us even after the order was changed to have the right phone (customer support said go to the Sprint store, the Sprint store said call customer support), and oh yeah, the area code ("We don't have an 815 area code for Illinois. All we have is 303," they said. No, you can't have a 303 area code for Illinois; that's a Colorado area code).

The end result is that we're sending back the wrong phone that they sent us and giving up on Sprint. I'll keep my service with them until the contract is up. So: Wendy will be getting a new cell phone with someone other than Sprint. Any recommendations?

Finally, our tale of delight.

As you probably know, FLR provides books to K-12 school libraries. Occasionally, books get returned for various reasons. Those books often have school-specific bar codes or stickers on them which makes them unable to be resold. Thus, FLR every so often has an employee-only book sale. Employees are allowed to bring 1 guest, and all books are only a quarter. A quarter!

This morning they held just such a book sale. We got there a half hour before it started and there were already about 150 people waiting in line. It was totally worth the wait, though. I couldn't believe how many good books were available. The best part (for me) was that they had a lot of graphic novels. All told, we bought 53 books for a mere $13.25.

Here's a sampling of what we got:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett
Alan Moore's The Courtyard
Teenagers from Mars
Essential Fantastic Four
Essential Avengers
Daredevil Legends, Volume 1
The Complete Concrete

There was no limit to how much you could buy. We only wound up with a box and a half but we saw some people with 6 or 7 boxes. Now we just need to buy another bookshelf to hold our new books!

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Yummy Yummy! Right Here!

We had a great weekend. Abby's here, and we decided to begin exploring our new habitat.

Saturday we took a picnic down to the McHenry Dam and then hiked the 2-mile trail around the nature preservation area nearby. It was both woodsy and wetland-y and we saw a bunch of birds. There was a deck for observing black terns about halfway around that we enjoyed, although we're not really sure if we saw any black terns as none of us are quite sure what they look like. Canada geese, though - those we recognized. Also something that we're pretty sure was a crane. Or a stork. Anyway, it was really pleasant.

Sunday we ventured down to the heart of Chicago. We rode the Metra, which is a commuter train that offers $5 weekend fares to ride as much as you want on any of the lines. It was fun, and a neat way to see the scenery. Which, okay, was mostly trees (in the suburbs) and buildings (in the city), but still nice. We got off the train at Union Station, where that one scene in The Untouchables was filmed. It's a pretty busy station, with restaurants and souvenir shops. One restaurant, in a stunningly clever marketing ploy, was trying to attract patrons by having its (surely underpaid) employees yell, "Yummy yummy! Right here! Yummy yummy!" We decided not to eat there.

Instead, we walked to Sears Tower, which is only a few minutes from the train station. We had to wait in line, but not for too long, and then after a mere 60-second elevator ride, we were at the observation deck on the 103rd floor. The view is impressive, as you would expect. Kind of like going up in the Arch, only much more so.

Then we headed to lunch, where we ate real Chicago-style deep dish pizza. "It takes 30 minutes to cook, but it's well worth the wait," our waiter told us, and we agreed that he was right. After that we walked around downtown some, took a few pictures of St. Patrick's, Chicago's oldest church (it pre-dates the fire), and then decided it was time to head home. All in all, a very pleasant day!

Finally, a picture of our living room sans boxes!



This gnome came with the house. I think he's pretty saucy.



Sears Tower, from the ground up (tallest building in the US, second-tallest in the world)



The view from the Sears Tower, facing north



Downtown Chicago, near Union Station



St. Patrick's Church. The two different spires represent East and West.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Dune, Green Tea, and the Gap

One morning about a month ago, as the packers were just starting to pack up our belongings in Colorado, I realized I should find something to pass the time until they were done. I remembered a copy of Dune I'd bought once but never read (I did read Dune back in junior high but didn't recall much of it). So I grabbed the book before it got packed away, and started reading. It was very good.

I was close to the end of Dune by the time we arrived in McHenry. So we stopped at a used book store where I was able to find the next four books in the series. I paid for the books in cash, and as the lady handed me the change, a rogue dime fell out, bounced off my hand, and plopped right into her cup of green tea. It was quite funny, but also a bit awkward and embarrasing. She didn't seem too upset; I apologized and Wendy and I went on our way.

A couple of nights ago I was flipping through "God Emperor of Dune" (which I got at the bookstore) and came across a receipt. It's from the Gap, and is dated June 14, 1985. Just for fun, here's a picture:



Anyway, Abby is now here, and the weather has happily warmed up (a few nights ago parts of the Chicago suburbs got down to 21 degrees, setting the all-time low for the month of May in all of Illinois. It only got down to 35 where we live). We're planning a trip to Chicago this weekend, so we'll hopefully have more things to post after that.

PS - Happy Birthday, Joy!