Thanks to my Dad for this one

This will warm your heart...

In 1986, Mkele Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mbembe approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mbembe worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments.
Mbembe stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.

Mbembe never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Mbembe was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teen aged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mbembe and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mbembe, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.
Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mbembe couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mbembe summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.
The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Mbembe's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly...



Probably wasn't the same elephant.

Unix Lovers to Party Like It's 1234567890

Thanks to my friend Mel for passing this along. The original story can be found over at Wired.

By Dylan Tweney February 12, 2009 | 3:34:16 PMCategories: Geeks

Unix weenies everywhere will be partying like it's 1234567890 this Friday.

That's because, at precisely 3:31:30 p.m. Pacific time on February 13, 2009, the 10-digit "epoch time" clock used by most Unix computers will display all ten decimal digits in sequence. (That's 6:31:30 Eastern, or 23:31:30 UTC.)

Unlike time systems intended for humans, Unix time simply counts the number of seconds since midnight UTC on January 1, 1970. It's a convenient way for computers to measure elapsed time, provided the start date wasn't before 1970. On Friday, the number of seconds will hit 1,234,567,890. Celebrations are planned in San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, Los Angeles and about 10 other locations worldwide, so don't be surprised if it takes the guys in IT a little longer to respond to your calls tomorrow afternoon, or if the Gadget Lab crew is hard to find.

We couldn't find any watches that display Unix time, but the above desk clock from ThinkGeek, will do the trick. It will also display the time in binary, octal, hexadecimal or Roman formats. Mark your calendars: It's only 11 and a half years until XX:XX:XX X/XX/XX day.

Another Eventful Weekend

This was another weekend full of celebrations. On Saturday night Jay and I drove up to the cities and met my parents at The Cheesecake Factory for Jay's birthday. People at work had been telling Jay what a great place it was, so he took them up on the recommendation. My Mom had a meeting nearby, so she drove from there, and my Dad came from home. The restaurant was insanely busy, but I think Dad had called ahead for a reservation, so we only had to wait about fifteen or twenty minutes to be seated.
The food was really good, and there were lots of choices from burgers, to pasta, to seafood, to steak! We were all pretty much stuffed, and wound up taking desert home with us. When we got to my parent's house, and dinner had a little time to digest, we all tried to finish up desert. Jay and I headed off to bed shortly after that.
Sunday morning we got up early to get ready for my niece's baptism! My parents and Jay and I drove separately, and head over to my brother and sister-in-law's townhouse. It was my first time there so I checked the place out. Once everybody showed up and was ready, we headed over to the church. There were actually three baptisms that day, but the whole service only took about an hour. Afterwords we all headed back to the townhouse just to hang out, talk and have lunch. After socializing for a few hours, people started deciding it was time to head out, Jay and I included. More pictures from the baptism can be found here.

So Now Roxanne's a Caribbean Prostitute?

What happens when you run the lyrics for Roxanne by the Police through Microsoft's Songsmith?

Holiday Wrap Up

Now that the holiday season is completely over I should cover the last couple events. Bill invited us over to his place for New Year's Eve. Some people rotated through on their way to other parties, but there were a good number of people there the whole time.
One of Jay's aunts had Christmas at her place this year. She set up a game where you had to guess who people were by their baby picture. When you're not a member of the family, and you've never seen the photo albums, it hard to tell who's who. You could guess based on black and white, seventies color photos, and recent color photos. There were some good family pictures from the party available here.

Gift From the Mother-In-Law

Jay brought home a gift from my mother-in-law. A jar of peanut butter! I told her our door was always open if she ever needed someplace to stay. I even offered her the mother-in-law apartment, but apparently she wasn't impressed...
Before anyone gets bent out of shape,

no, it's not serious!

Party Weekend

This was a fairly busy weekend! My friend Cory had a birthday party Saturday evening. Jay and I headed over there when he was done with work and we wound up hanging out there until 11:30 pm or so. Sunday evening Paul had a Super Bowl party over at his place. I could care less about football, but it was nice to hang out with friends. Paul was proud off all the snacks he prepared, since Erin was out of town and couldn't make the usual mountains of food! There weren't a lot of good commercials, and Bruce Springsteen performed the half time show. Several people thought Springsteen looked like Tom Jones! We didn't stay much past 7:30-ish and neither did a lot of other people. I think people were all really tired that night for some reason!

Groundhog Day

That stupid rat had better do the right thing today, I'm sick of the cold!