Hah, a year ago I was on my way to Florida for the STS-134 NASA Tweetup!

Anyway, I just had an update from Timehop emailed to me regarding an interesting Facebook post of mine from exactly a year ago (I don’t think I had publicly shared this otherwise):

British couple behind me is looking out the window and ask a nearby flight attendant if that’s the Grand Canyon below us and to our left.

She says yes, so I look out the window and see that it’s actually Valley of the Gods in Southern Utah (neeeeerd). I turn around to say something, right as the husband says, “Oh, that is so great! I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon!”

Alright then. Just smile and turn around, Dave. 🙂

I made some vegetable kebabs tonight, based on this recipe (with slight modifications below). I found this via “What The Fuck Should I Make For Dinner?”

Ingredients

• 1 medium zucchini
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded
• 1 green bell pepper, seeded
• 1 red onion
• 1 box of cherry tomatoes
• 8 red potatoes
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• ½ tsp dried oregano
• Pinch of crushed hot red pepper

Special Equipment:

• Wooden or metal skewers

Directions

1. Boil the red potatoes for about 10 – 15 minutes so they slightly soften. Trim the zucchini and cut into 8 chunks. Cut the peppers into 1 inch (2.5cm) pieces. Peel the onion, and cut into wedges leaving the root end intact so that the wedges do not fall apart.
2. Thread the zucchini, peppers, onion, tomatoes, and mushrooms in equal amounts onto 4 large or 8 small skewers. Whisk the oil, garlic, oregano, and hot pepper together in a small bowl with a fork.
3. Position a broiler rack 6in (15cm) from the source of heat and preheat the broiler. Place the kebabs on the broiler pan and brush generously with the garlic oil. Broil, turning often and brushing with the remaining oil, 10 to 15 minutes, until the vegetables are just tender. Serve hot or at room temperature, with any remaining oil drizzled over the kebabs.

We also cooked a side of quinoa as well. Serve with a red wine and it’s good to go! 😉

Via: http://ideasillustrated.com/blog/2012/04/01/visualizing-english-word-origins/

I have been reading a book on the development of the English language recently and I’ve become fascinated with the idea of word etymology — the study of words and their origins. It’s no secret that English is a great borrower of foreign words but I’m not enough of an expert to really understand what that means for my day-to-day use of the language. Simply reading about word history didn’t help me, so I decided that I really needed to see some examples.

Using Douglas Harper’s online dictionary of etymology, I paired up words from various passages I found online with entries in the dictionary. For each word, I pulled out the first listed language of origin and then re-constructed the text with some additional HTML infrastructure. The HTML would allow me to associate each word (or word fragment) with a color, title, and hyperlink to a definition.

Oakland is pretty fun!

This weekend, I went back to Redlands for my cousin’s wedding. A few of my close friends growing up were also in the wedding party.

We decided to sort of recreate a photo we took together at our high school prom in May 2000. Here are myself, Nate, and Nic.

Here we are, 12 years later in April 2012.

This is something I’ve often wondered, especially lately as we’ve been watching “Game of Thrones.” Why do people in these fantasy / medieval worlds (e.g., “Lord of the Rings” and “Game of Thrones”) always speak with a British accent?

Martin has said English accents work best for fantasy, as the genre is rooted in the Middle Ages.

“It’s full of castles and lords and swords and knights and all the other trappings that we associate with England in this country. It seems natural. It would be hard to do with a group of actors who had thick Southern accents,” he has commented.

Hah, seems to make sense to me!

My cousin is getting married, so Kerry and I came down to Southern California for the weekend and are staying with my parents in Mentone.

A few friends on Facebook left me some comments that said, “enjoy the beach!” Kerry was confused at what this meant. Apparently, I never told her about the history of Mentone Beach! The LA Times explains:

At least 60 miles from the coast, where the San Bernardino Mountains shoot through clouds, a signpost painted on a weather-beaten water tower beckons like a desert oasis: Mentone Beach.

[…]

Mentone, named for a Mediterranean resort in southeast France, seemed destined for coastal status: Its founders noted that “the climate and vegetation were the same; only the sea was missing.”

That’s right, this is where I’m from. See also, “In search of Paul Bunyan.”

Recently, I picked up a Guthrie Cubebot for my desk at work. It’s a pretty rad little toy / puzzle that starts off as a cube and turns into a robot-looking creature. It has a bunch of articulated joints that allow it to pose in a bunch of different ways.

This is tragic. The fact that we’re still arguing over whether or not our society should watch out for the collective health of everyone is barbaric.

On Feb. 8, she was a healthy 32-year-old, who was seven and a half months pregnant with her first baby. On Feb. 9, she was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down by a car accident that damaged her spine. Miraculously, the baby, born by emergency C-section, is healthy.

Were the Obama health care reforms already in place, my brother and sister-in-law’s situation — insurance-wise and financially — would be far less dire. My brother’s small employer — he is the manager of a metal-fabrication shop — does not offer health insurance, which was too expensive for them to buy on their own.

Via: http://www.7×7.com/tech-gadgets/180000-del-popolo-pizza-food-truck

There’s only one possible reaction upon first seeing Jon Darsky’s pizza truck: Whoa. Hitched to a mighty rig that weighs 14 tons, Del Popolo begins serving Neapolitan pies this spring from its 5,000-pound oven. This much muscle comes at a cost—over $180,000 in all. The good news: Del Popolo is inimitable. “You’d have to be a fool to try and copy it,” says Darsky. “This thing was f*cking expensive.” Here, a few of the highlights.