This morning, Katie gave me and Sophia our birthday presents! Very cute pigs :3

Also, Katie returned the fork that had been stolen from Sophia many many months ago (she didn't pay ransom, though >: O)

The pigs were already named (Shuji + Akira!). I got Shuji :3

-- Teehee

It was at this point that I actually considered getting a mohawk, but thought against it at the last minute...

One day, one day....

--Chris Falco

It felt good to walk the halls of the Media Lab again, and to participate in another sponsor event put on by Professor John Maeda's Simplicity Research Consortium. These photos are from last Thursday and Friday.

We started the first day with a board meeting in the new (to me) Wiesner conference room on the second floor. They converted Walter Bender's old office. Outside in the hall was an array of Ambient Orbs displaying the state of world financial markets in various coded colors.

The sponsor workshop was titled "Eat Your Media" with guest speakers doing talks on food and media in the Bartos Auditorium on the first afternoon. Speakers included Professor Dan Ariely on ir/rationality in food choice and perception. Dan has recently signed a book deal with Harper Collins to write Predictably Irrational, which will encapsulate for the popular audience Dan's experients in behavioral psychology--most fascinating and often bizzare stuff. Dan's book will likely be a best seller in the tradition of Freakonomics when it is released at the beginning of 2008. And noted blogger Meg Hourihan presented on the ills of industrialized food production as well as trends in food innovation such as molecular gastronomy. John's blog off the first link above has some re-cap.

The students and some of the sponsors were grouped in teams to do a project about food and technology Thursday afternoon and evening. Pictured are some food sculptures done for warm-up. I stopped in to grab some of the buffet dinner, but didn't go to the happy hour or join a student team as I was still nursing a cold and decided to go to bed early.

Friday morning, I met Erik Blankinship and Bahktiar Mikhak (former lab people) for breakfast at The Kendall Hotel. They showed me the hours-old first functioning build of the main digital camera activity on the OLPC Children's Machine XO. Kids will not only be able to take photos on their laptops and store them, photos can be shared to a Flickr-like picture stream consisting of any images submitted by kids nearby on the wireless mesh network.

The rest of the morning were presentations of the student/sponsor team projects. As always there were some wildly creative results. iPod shuffles were awarded to the top winners. John will also re-cap the projects in his blog.

Lunch was with Walter Bender, who brought his XO machine to show off the camera app and the music synthsizer. He was checking and answering Google mail pretty easily on the laptop's browser via wifi. After Walter, I had a fantastic mind meld with guys who worked on LEGO Factory. LEGO is a relatively new co-sponsor of Simplicity at the lab. With my brain quite beat up on radical new ideas, I called back to my office to join in on a two-hour design meeting. I had a good nap on the flight home...

- mike lee - enjoying our icy inch of snow - wheaton, md

Got into National airport just about on time, despite the snowy conditions. (Yaaay, Continental.) Opted to get a taxi and waited for 30 minutes for one brave enough to go my direction. Got into the cab with a really nice Army guy who was checking into Ft. Belvoir for some training. 17 years in, and this is his first time to D.C., so we talked about the sites he couldn't miss while he was here.

After we got him to the billeting office around 8:30 (with a Dominos parked outside, which bodes well for his dinner), the cab driver and I started exchanging stories. He's a father of 15, 8 of whom survived, ranging from 34 down to 3. He was a political prisoner in Afganistan, and has driven a cab here for 15 years. The whole family lives together in the Lincolnia area, in three adjoining condos, and he's got two grandsons from his eldest daughter.

He was telling me how it's harder now to be a Muslim in this area with all the security consciousness, and he was relating a story about a series of tickets he received because another driver falsely accused him. Offers from lawyers started pouring in to defend him for $1500 or $2000, but he opted to defend himself, and at the end of the day, the judge dismissed all charges.

At this point, we're trundling down Route 1 at about 25 mph, and we noticed a truck. Careening sideways. As in perpendicular to the road. Which is going to definitely intersect our path since we're parallel to the road. And WHAM. The whole front end of the cab was smashed. The truck continued on its sideways path right off the road. I was on the floor, despite being buckled up, and somehow I managed to lose a shoe (additional note to self: boots with laces). Cab driver was banged up pretty good. He wasn't bleeding that I could see, but he'd hit his head, and he was holding his left leg. His door was sealed shut, so he climbed through on my side, and called 911. Dude in the truck looked dazed, but, then again, I probably would have been, too.

Cab driver handed me the phone. The dispatcher was wondering where we were located. I saw a cross street up ahead, and I sludged across the highway to pick out the name and read it off. She said she's sending a crew.

My cab driver had the presence of mind to call me another cab, and a few minutes later the rescue team arrived. Some asked questions, others assessed my cab driver and got him into the ambulance. I sat in the back of the cab to keep dry (but not terribly warm since it wasn't running or airtight any more). I checked in with the cab company, who took my number and said they'd give me a ring when they found a cab to send my way. An officer noticed it was freaking cold in the cab, and offered to let me sit in the back of the squad car while he filled out paperwork. He rocked. Opened the divider thing and cranked up the heat until I stopped shivering.

These are Fairfax County police officers, and I live in Prince William, so I'm not so much on their way home. Eventually I whimper, "I can see Fairfax County from my balcony. Does that count?" and another officer offered to transport me so I didn't have to wait for a possibly non-existent cab. He dropped me off at the top of Riverview, which was a good decision. We saw one car successfully traverse the downward slope, but squad cars are unwieldy, and on my walk downward I saw another car try unsuccessfully to make it up the same hill.

So. Now I'm sitting on the couch with Sug curled up on me. Just about everything aches, but I suspect that's a combination of being out in the wet cold and having my entire body infused with a lot of adrenaline that wasn't really necessary.

Annnnd that's it for me. Longest. Entry. Ever.

Planning a cross country trip to Aberdeen, SD, a photo of a purple plane and checking the fluids and instruments on the plane I'm flying tomorrow. More photos on Flickr.

Of course, its going right back into its pony tail once I figure out how to do it :D

-- Teehee

Sup.. Jus joinin. Jones 21 m, 613 canada. Munsh03 on aim....

EZ --taurus2685

Gonna go in for an over due cut! Nothing drastic, but probably about 3 inches will leave >: D! -- Teehee

Saw this on my break. One of the store managers (guy in the white shirt) ran downstairs about 2.15 and grabbed the tv that we use for training videos out of the locked cabinet, set it up, and had one of the employees try to get reception on it. You football people are silly. Like Karina said, "The only thing that matters is the last 5 minutes of the game."

------------------------ Bird (Graci) -tinyurl.com/yagdmz

"Style - it's a kaleidoscope in a funhouse, and you're always lost and wrong." - J. Lileks