...with Katie and Erin tonight.

Samples on Flickr.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

The Toy 'R Us down the street from my house is closing. In these last days of their final sale, I snagged a bunch of Nintendo DS games and an Eye Toy for $10 each!

- mike lee - wheaton, md

I can't believe it's been a year since the president of my company said, "Mike, you must go to TED." TED 2006 starts next week

in Monterey, CA, and today, I got the last shipment from their year-long book club:

What We Believe but Cannot Prove : Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, edited by John Brockman. This book title's question was posed on Edge.org (an online intellectual clearing house), challenging more than 100 intellectuals of every stripe—from Richard Dawkins to

Ian McEwan—to confess the personal theories they cannot demonstrate

with certainty. The results, gathered by literary agent and editor Brockman, is a stimulating collection of micro-essays (mainly by scientists) divulging many of today's big unanswered questions reaching across the plane of human existence.

The Untied States

of America : Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future, by Juan Enriquez, who is a former Mexican government official and fellow at Harvard's Center for International Affairs. He says growing political, racial, and economic divisions in the U.S. could provoke secessionist movements in the South and New England.

Control Room

(2003), a documentary on perception of the United States's war with Iraq, with an emphasis on Al Jazeera's coverage.

Infinite Vision: Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy. This is a documentary on Dr.

V, the legendary eye surgeon from South India who made it his mission to restore sight to the blind and whose work has resulted in one of the world’s most extraordinary models of service delivery.

The video on Dr. V was 35 minutes long, just right for watching while I ate a sandwich at the National Building Museum. His is a deeply inspiring story.

- mike lee - washington, d.c.

One of my managers, Sandy (pic 1 at right), has been on maternity leave. She returns to work in a couple weeks and brought her newborn baby girl in for a visit today. It was fun holding a newborn again as my last memory of that has faded quickly now that Cianna is 2y 3m.

- mike lee - washington, dc

We explored the 8" snowfall around the house this morning noting all the fallen tree branches. After just a little bit of shoveling, the emerging sun warmed the air enough to cause snow bombs to start falling out of the trees. We retreated back into the house.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

The snow is really coming down now. People must be hibernating because the streets and stores are pretty empty. Wine, fireplace logs, and valentine balloons are home now.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

As the big weekend blizzard begins, a fire is lit, cookies are baked, and birds convene for dinner.

- mike lee - wheaton, md; lots of weather chatter online

This is my wife's new Verizon LG VX9800 EV-DO phone. It has everything but the kitchen sink: two color LCD screens, 1.3mp digital still and video camera with macro lens and flash, speaker phone, mini-SD slot, clamshell opens to QWERTY keyboard and stereo speakers, bluetooth wireless, USB cable to use the phone as an EV-DO modem with laptop, POP/IMAP e-mail, web browser, IM chat, MP3 player, MMS, and broadband streaming video and games from Verizon's V Cast service.

Here's MobileTech's review. Amazon currently has a $99 deal after rebates.

I'll see how this phone works out. Maybe it's finally time to drop-kick my Sidekick.

- mike lee - wheaton, md