Watson Family News

This is a little scary. I’ve been using Google Reader for a while now for reading my RSS feeds. All of us at work have started using the “share” feature to share items we find interesting. One day this week I was checking Google Reader and I had two thoughts about how the share feature could be better.

1. I wanted to be able to share any web article I came across, even if I didn’t find it in Google Reader.
2. I wished I could add a note to the items I shared so I could provide context for my somewhat-random choices.

I looked in the FAQ and searched the web to see if there were any hacks that would let me do this, but didn’t find anything. When I got home from work I started up Google Reader and was stunned to find that both features had been added since that afternoon! Not only can Google now read minds, but they work fast.

I just finished listening to The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.  It was a fascinating book.  Parts were tragic, of course, and hard to hear.  The actual events of 9/11 make up just a small portion of the end of the book, though, and most of it takes place long beforehand.  It start in post-WWII Egypt and follows the history of Islamic militants.  The author does a great job of mixing history with psychological portraits of the people involved and unlike many non-fiction books this one never feels dry.

In no particular order, here’s a list of other books I’ve read or listened to lately, all of which I enjoyed and recommend:

• Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden.
• The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde.
• In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.
• Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen.
• The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson.
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been anywhere close to in touch with popular music. I’ve bought one album in the last year — The Nutcracker by the London Symphony Orchestra. Not exactly hip, huh? That musical lethargy combined with the obnoxious RIAA lawsuits and DRM has led to a mostly intentional boycott of the music industry. My one source of new music is when I listen to the All Songs Considered podcast. I just finished listening to their “Year’s Best CD’s” episode and highly recommend it to anyone else out-of-touch but curious about good new music.

I read this interesting article in Scientific American about the best way to encourage your kids to learn. For parents out there it’s worth the read:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids&print=true

A few weeks ago we went down to my parents house for the weekend.  As usual, the moment we got there Evan and Davis wanted to play with the toys my parents have.  Among other things, they pulled out the Legos and I recognized some of the pieces from one of my very favorite  childhood Christmas presents - a Lego spaceship.  Today I got the following email from my Dad:

Rained all day Sunday.   This is what Mom did.

Sheryl’s Dad emailed this comic to her. I’m not sure where it’s from, but it’s too appropriate not to share — just substitute “Evan and Davis” for “Marcus”.

Update: the comic strip is Cul De Sac by Richard Thompson

I’m 81% Geek. In other news, fire is hot.

81% Geek

I just updated my Dell laptop to Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) the other night. I actually just reinstalled over my previous Ubuntu partition, and everything went without a hitch. I had a few moments of trepidation as I held my finger over the mouse. My nightmare is accidentally choosing the wrong partition and wiping out my Windows system.

Losing Windows wouldn’t be so bad, but losing all my saved games would be tragic. I’m only part way through The Orange Box and I’d have to start again from scratch. Now that I think about it, replaying Portal and Episode 2 wouldn’t be so bad. So far Episode 2 is the usual, polished Half-life game, but not much of a departure from the previous two releases. Portal on the other hand is something completely new (to me at least). A great, mind-bending puzzle game with a fun, funny sequence at the end that made me want to replay the ending as soon as I’d finished it. Or I would have if it hadn’t already kept me up until 2:00 in the morning. I choose sleep and waited a few days to replay it.

Back to Ubuntu — like Orange Box, it’s pretty great. So far everything just work in a smooth and integrated way. Both my ATI video card and my wireless card worked out of the box. It was easy to download the optional proprietary ATI driver and install it. The default apps are well chosen and work just fine. Mounting Windows shares is easy and I can even mount a remote system through SHH — pretty cool. In general, the best Linux system I’ve ever used and the first I’d recommend to a casual user over Windows.

My friend Bryn is in town this week and last night we met up for dinner at Dan and Trish’s house. Sheryl left to bring the kids home and the night was winding down. Either Dan or Bryn  brought up the Simpsons Movie. We checked the movie times and saw a show was starting in four minutes. Ten minutes later we were sitting down in our sits just as the last previews were ending. It’s amazing how spontaneous we can be .. when our wives agree to watch the kids.
Thanks Sheryl and Trish!

Evan finished up school last Wednesday and had his first few days of summer vacation. After finishing up his Karate class, little league baseball and school all in the last couple of weeks I imagine he’s ready for a little more free time.

For Fathers Day I got a copy of the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook. My parents came up and I made some actual green eggs and ham, which were surprisingly good. Here’s proof that I’m not making this up. More pictures are available here.