My family just spent the weekend at Disneyland in Los Angles. I sure do love going there. I think I had more fun at the California Adventure theme park than the main park. I like the rides better and the shows are good also. I must recommend the Aladdin show. Here is a trick to get good seats: get in line early! If you can’t do that do what we did. Get in line late, very late. Then when you don’t get in to see the show they’ll feel sorry for you and take your name for the next show. Now you have 45 minutes to have a quick dinner. Show up in line very late again, eventually you’ll work your way to the podium, give your name and you’ll be whisked away to the front of the line and be let in first. Before even the VIPs who paid extra for special treatment. That’s sweet. This is the second time I’ve been to California’s Adventure park and think it is highly underrated. The California Screaming roller-coaster is a very fun ride. Soaring Over California is a great “experience flying” kind of ride — very hard to describe. It’s sort of like hang-gliding with 45 of your best friends. They also have the best water ride I’ve ever been on. But then again, I don’t get around much!

My daughter and I finished the air foil experiment. We ended up building two different wings. One would fly with a lower wind speed. The experiment was to predict which wing flew better and explain why. We got a “participant” ribbon. The judges couldn’t get the wings to fly at all. Even though we tested them many times at our house and Bethany demonstrated it successfully during class. I tried to get the wings to fly during the science fair and they didn’t work at all. The wings looked fine. They just didn’t fly anymore. This made Bethany really mad. Megan also entered an exhibit. Her exhibit was on diabetes. Of the four first graders who entered a project, Megan got not the first prize, nor second, nor third, but an Honorable Mention ribbon. This infuriated Bethany, but we didn’t want to tell her why Megan did so well. Because we didn’t want Megan to feel bad about coming in last. She really liked the honorable mention ribbon.

Here at work we began printing Star Wars calendars about a week ago. An Episode III and Darth Vador calendar. Both are really nice. I especially like the Episode III calendar with the really cool pictures from the unreleased movie. I felt it was weird that we were printing two different covers for the Episode III calendar. The second cover was totally different and made it seem like it came from a different publisher. The inside of the calendar used the exact same art. So I asked what the deal was. The production planner informed me that the second version will be printed on thinner paper and sold thru WalMart. The normal calendar would be printed on thicker paper and sold through all other channels. Part of me wasn’t surprised. WalMart prides itself on selling items for less. One way to sell items cheaper is to make them cheaper.

I setup a new Dell PC for my mother-in-law and found out they still come with PS/2 mice and keyboard connections. For some reason I thought the largest PC manufacture in the world would have totally switched over to a USB standard by now. This doesn’t bode well for the Mac mini. People really will have to buy new mice and keyboard if they plan on switching. I believe there are USB adaptors for PS/2 mice and keyboards so maybe Apple stores should keep a stock of those as well.

My mother-in-law decided recently to get her own Dell and gave back the iMac I loaned her. My wife and I decided that Megan should get the computer. So I spent yesterday installing Mac OS X 10.3.8. I dumped a copy of They Might Be Giant’s No into iTunes. And now she is the happiest little person in the world.
She types in TextEdit. She plays Jewel Toy like a pro. If the computer had a CD burner I am sure she’ll mixing her own CD.

So after I finished The Rat mouse it seemed like time to revisit the Diecom Light Gun interface. Two years ago Joe Zbiciak shocked me by suggesting that the the interface needs to be polled once every scan line, not every frame like I had thought. Then after I had dissembled the supporting code from the game Iron Forest. I discovered the the device was not being reset on every scan line. It turned out there wasn’t enough time time during the the horizontal refresh to cycle thru all sixteen states. But Joe reassured me that it just meant that there was a constant drift that should be eiasly accounted for. I am in the middle of that problem right now and have should have it solved soon.

I was scanning some old baby pictures and decided to post one of my pictures here. For all you to see!

A few weeks ago Bethany asked my father for help doing her science fair project. She had heard that Lyndie (her cousin) received help last year. My Dad bought me a model kit of the Wright Flyer. His idea was to build the kit for the project. The project would be on modern flight.
I liked the idea but the model would have been too large to fit in the allotted space during the fair. I explained to both of them that building just a wing would be more than sufficient. They ignored me and decided to build the plane anyway. That was OK with me. But I decided to build the wing just-in-case. The wing is about five inched long and rides on the plastic shaft up and down. A fan is used to provide the wind. My father currently doesn’t have the time to finish the Wright Flyer with Bethany so everyone is fine with the work I’ve done. It is now Bethany’s job to learn all about air foils and the Bernoulli effect.

Bethany (my oldest daughter) said something wonderful today. She was trying to convince her friend to play the board game Sorry!. with us. She said, “At first I didn’t like the game either, but it is much more fun when my Dad plays.” I have no special attachment to the game either, but it is more fun when I play with her.

A few weeks ago my friend from work mentioned he was going to spend a whole day and watch the Lord of the Rings (extended Editions) back to back. Eleven hours and twenty minute of nonstop entertainment. I just got back from the event. Boy, was it fun. The crowed consisted of Me, Rob, and his two daughters. My daughter was suppose to go, but chickened out at the last minute. I arrived at his house at 7:45 A.M. and didn’t leave until 8:00 P.M. Those sure are good movies!