It's been a while since I've been to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It's too bad I missed Bill Gates' keynote this year though. Bill has been the regular keynote speaker for years; since he's retiring later this year, this is probably his last one. He kicked off his talk with this funny video full of celebrities about his last day. Wish I had been there. Check it out:

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

Wahoo! Stanford beat Cal in the 110th Big Game yesterday, 20-13! It's been a long dry spell for the Cardinal; we haven't won since I started blogging, in fact: five years.

Overall, Stanford had a pretty bad year, but we beat USC when they were ranked #1 in the nation, and we won Big Game. That's about all we really need.

More on the Axe from Wikipedia (obvi).

Well, I finally got rid of my little brother Ives two weeks ago. After 35 (almost 36) years, he finally found someone who can put up with him long enough to marry him. All jokes aside, Aimee is a wonderful woman with great family and friends. My brother seems very content now and is lucky to have her. I just hope Aimee knows what she's getting...

Aimee and Ives had the wedding in Evanston, a suburb just north of Chicago and the home of Northwestern University. This was the first time I'd been to Evanston. It's a cute town, right on Lake Michigan. I see now why my Northwestern alumni friends really like it there. We stayed at the Hotel Orrington, which was centrally located, so we could walk everywhere.

The rehearsal and the wedding were very nice. My brother has a habit of getting teary on days ending in y and was a mess at my wedding so long ago. Of course, his wedding was no exception. At the rehearsal dinner, he choked up while handing out gifts, but I do give him and Aimee credit for holding it together during the ceremony itself (although it looked like they came close to losing it.)

As the best man, I gave a short toast (4 min, 30 seconds as timed by my friends - I had a reputation for overly-long toasts. Under five minutes is OK...) I was doing fine through the toast, working without notes and was almost done when out of nowhere, my throat constricted and I couldn't speak. I had a a terrified thought that I might dissolve into a teary mess and wouldn't be able to finish, but I pulled it together and got through it. I honestly hadn't seen or felt the surge of emotion coming. Wild.

After my toast, our fraternity brothers (Ives and I were both Kappa Alpha at Stanford) sang Kappa Alpha Rose to Aimee, a tradition at KA weddings. Aimee was a good sport about it, even though she doesn't have the "wealth of golden hair" described in the song (we did change the "eyes of blue" to "eyes of brown" in the song though.) Despite the fact most of us haven't sung the song for 10+ years, it didn't sound terrible (I sent the words to everyone ahead of time as a refresher.)

The boys looked really good in their black suits. Andrew (10) was the ring bearer, and Michael (7) was an "honor guard" along with another little boy. Michael wanted to carry ninja swords to help protect the ring, but Ives wisely demurred.

The weekend was especially fun for me because I got a chance to see tons of family and friends. We had almost all of our cousins, aunts, and uncles from both sides. It's been a long time since I'd seen most of them, and this was the first time I'd met my cousin Alice's husband and daughter. I also went out with my cousin Gary for beers, which was a new experience since the last time I saw him he was still way underage.

Ives and I have a lot of friends in common since we were both in the same fraternity at Stanford (Kappa Alpha) and both worked at Microsoft, plus one of Ives' friends from high school came out. As a result, I knew almost all of his out-of-town guests and had a great time catching up with them all.

Anyway, I wish Aimee and Ives well. I'm looking forward to having nephews and/or nieces soon...

Please visit this site. For the children of America. Please.

(Thanks, Craig.)

Earlier this summer, the boys and I picked up a mess of PVC pipe and made marshmallow guns. Once you assemble the guns, you put a mini marshmallow in by the mouthpiece and then blow the marshmallow out. The marshmallow will negotiate all the turns in the gun and exit the muzzle - kind of cool really. The marshmallows melt in the rain, so clean-up isn't difficult either.

  

We got the initial instructions from Instructables. We used 1/2" (internal diameter) PVC pipe and cut the pipe into a few standard lengths (we used 3" and 7") for flexibility in recombining the pieces. Instead of the recommended hacksaw, we used a pipe cutter. This was easier and safer for the kids, didn't require a vice or bench, and produced cleaner cuts. This was the first time I've bought PVC; turns out you can only buy it in 10 foot lengths, so you'll have plenty. There was a hacksaw near where the PVC was in Home Depot so you can cut the long pieces down into something that fits in your car. (I got nervous when I saw the PVC initially...)

We didn't glue the pieces together (friction worked fine) so the boys were able to build all kinds of variants. They quickly learned that while the idea of a multi-barreled gun was attractive, dividing your limited lung power n-ways reduced the power.

The whole thing was super successful and very fun. We've since made water guns hooked up a hose and have been trying (unsuccessfully so far) to build a gun powered by compressed air (I've added a tire valve to a 2 liter bottle and pressured it with a bike pump.)

It's worth noting that I'm deadly with a four-foot section of straight pipe. I can hit the kids anywhere in the backyard with a marshmallow while sitting on the deck. Don't mess with Dad.

 

Of course, if it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing. Check out these crazy marshmallow guns...

My seats at the game tonight aren't bad. This is my hotdog resting on the visitor dugout. Lovely evening.

It's map day, I guess. I'm sure everyone has heard the expression "digging to China", referring to the notion that China is on the side of the world. Well, here's a site that shows you what is really on the other side of the Earth from you (known as your antipodal point).

In case you're curious, the antipodal point for Seattle is somewhere in the ocean southeast of South Africa. The antipodal point for Beijing, China is in Argentina.

Pretty cool, in a dorky cartographic way.

Check it out: antipodemap.com

(click for a larger view)

This is an interesting map that renames US states for countries with similar GDPs. It really puts the size of the US economy into perspective.

The full article is on strange maps.

Thanks, Adam, for the find.

Here's another attempt to blog from my T-Mobile Dash. I'm trying FlickR's post-to-blog functionality. Could be cool.



This picture is from today. Andrew (9) and I were power washing fiends. It's an impotant skill to pass down from father to son. Andrew decided to write his initials in the dirty chair. Bit gross really.

I finally got off my butt and made my travel arrangements to go to Foo Camp next weekend. Tim O'Reilly hosts this annual event at the O'Reilly Media campus in Sebastopol, CA. They invite 250 hopefully (supposedly?) interesting "Friend's of O'Reilly" (aka FOO) to get together for a few days to share ideas, debate, hang out, etc.

I was flattered to get an invitation; I'm impressed with the people I know who are going and am looking forward to meeting some of the others on the list. I admit I'm a bit unsure about how this will go since I haven't been before, but I'm excited to participate and learn.

I don't have an agenda I want to drive, but I'm still thinking of ideas of stuff to present. (Let me know if there's anything you want to hear from me.) Maybe I'll just talk about bacon.