During a volunteer gig I was talking with a friend when he suddenly remarked, “You have to see this on TV. A young boy is in this helium balloon at like 6,000 feet and they are trying to figure out how to get him down.” So I turned on the TV and sure enough the news coverage was second by second as the saucer-shaped balloon glided through the air and down gently into a dusty field. Then the helpers frantically pitchforked the edges and piled dirt on the balloon so it didn’t take off, all the time calling out the boy’s name, “Falcon, Falcon, Falcon!”

But Falcon wasn’t inside the balloon. And the rumors start that there might have been a missing piece to the balloon and the boy could have fallen. OMG. Fallen from as high as 8,500 feet in the air. Where was Falcon?

And then it ends in the second worst way possible. Not that Falcon is found dead from the fall inside some homemade balloon container that fell from the sky – that would be the worst — but hiding in his own attic by design.

Add the Serlingesq twist that the mother and father coaxed their own children to lie to authorities and the rest of the world:

In the affidavit sworn out by sheriff’s investigator Robert Heffernan, Mayumi Heene said she and her husband knew all along that their son Falcon, 6, was not on board the balloon but rather hiding in their home, and that the motive for the hoax was to make their family "more marketable for future media interest."

Now comes the blame game phase. For most. Not for me. I got duped by what seemed like a horrific, harrowing tale. April Fool’s in October. Bitter? Nope. A little more jaded about what I see on TV? Absolutely.

Stories like this have contributed to my pulling back from blogging and covering the world at large as much as I have for the last 6+ years. At the end of the day it seems like too many of the supposed big stories in the world are phony. The attention that gets paid to non-events and celebrities who live way past excess is depressing not hmm-inspiring. Or maybe it is and I’m just tired and have needed an extended break to be reminded what really matters in the world.

In case anybody reading is wondering and/or cares, I’m still spending dozens of hours a week volunteering at a local non-profit, charitable organization. It’s not going to gain me something as unimportant in the scheme of life as fame like these foolish parents seemed to have been seeking, but it is warming my heart that I’m doing something good on a local level. That matters in a way that Balloon Boy never could.

Next time a friend calls with something that seems too fantastic to be true, I think I’ll leave the TV screen black.

Last night we were sitting with some other self-employed folks and the subject of business came up. We were sharing that this month so far has been extremely busy and we’re putting in 12+ hour days. I’m loving how busy things are but at the same time am feeling a number of other things are being neglected.  We pointed out that when the iron was hot in a sales-oriented business you need to act and then someone said:

“God first, family second, business third.”

Been thinking about the whole God first thing ever since. Why must God be first – for anybody? Is God going to pay your bills so your family can keep the roof over their heads? Does God put food on the table? I suppose if you pray for your garden and believe that God will provide a bigger crop than someone who doesn’t pray, then maybe God could help. I don’t recall some God bank account that we could withdraw funds from to pay for everything.

In the practical, real world sense, forget how religious or not you are, how can any reasonable person truly put God first? The way I see it, unless I’m missing something huge here, putting God first puts nearly everything that follows at risk.

I could see putting your family first, and work second. If you pull together as a family and work together you can take care of the real world bills. Putting work first all the time is not that wise unless you have no family. Some jobs don’t allow you to have much other life. For me the order of life works as follows:

1. *Family
2. *work
3. friends
4. other

This month in particular, #2 is #1. At times the first two are interchangeable. Since we are rebooting our business in 2009 and our children are all teenagers we are spending more time working at the moment. Once/if/when we get things stable again financially, we can go back to the preferred order above.

You might note that God isn’t named on my list.

This blog is down in the “other” column, BTW. If a friend or work or family member needs me for something, my blogging duties will have to wait. Where would God fit? The other column.

Don’t get me wrong, in the spiritual sense, I understand completely why God must be first. He could be your guiding force, energy, and provide that needed lift when everything seems to be falling apart. Those who need or desire something or Someone to believe in to live more full lives, hey, God being #1 on that list is logical.  But even on my spiritual list, God wouldn’t always be first. He’d be in the top three.

Let’s say you get a call to go write a piece of business tonight that is a one time only deal or you can eat dinner with your family or head to the church to pray, which would you choose? Sorry God, I’m going with #1. Now if one of our kids was having a once in a lifetime event versus a once in a lifetime business deal I’m taking our child’s event every time and hoping that the business deal would understand that I have to put family first in scheduling conflicts like these. I’m not sure I could sleep at night putting business ahead of family every day. Some times in some situations, yes, but every time?

And God? Not even in the top three for me. A friend in need would come first. Just saying that in the real world putting God first doesn’t make sense to me. Does it to you? What am I missing here? I guess maybe if your church is a part of or is your business say as a pastor or preacher, but for those who don’t work in the church?

Cultism is creepy

Religion and cultism are two separate things, but sometimes their paths cross. Like what we’re seeing on the web right now with Steve Jobs medical condition and his job at Apple. Cultism creeps me out.

There are way too many people who have a cult-like following of Steve Jobs. I feel sorry for Mr. Jobs that there is this much cultism surrounding him. Lots of stories about him taking a medical leave of absence from Apple and the price of the stock and people wanting to know a bunch of things about his personal health and life. What Steve Jobs wants to share with us about his health and his personal life is up to him. If he needs to take a medical leave of absence, then people should accept that and move on.

All this weird speculation, conspiracy theories and demands that he tell the world his health for the sake of shareholders is nonsense. I’m an Apple (AAPL) shareholder and I didn’t invest in AAPL because of Steve Jobs. I invested because I liked what the company was doing and saw promise in the future. The stock is down from it’s high of around $200, but hey, I still think there are positive signs for the company and these are hard economic times for many, many companies. I’m not selling my AAPL stock because Steve Jobs isn’t piloting the ship any more for health reasons.

And yet I can’t help wondering if Steve Jobs is putting God first? I know nothing about the man’s spiritual guide but I’m guessing from a real world practical sense, he’s looking at his family and health first, his job second and God is down the line.

It’s not about atheism or being anti-religion

I’d like for the discussion that follows, if any, not descend into a religion vs. anti-religion discussion. I’m not trying to stoke or promote some anti-religion agenda by wondering aloud why God must be first. I respect people’s religious beliefs I’m simply asking about the practical, real world side of life. How can one put God ahead of family, work and friends? I wanted to ask this question last night but this came up as we were leaving and time wasn’t there to get into it plus I didn’t know the people well enough to make the discussion about practicality and not faith. They are two separate things to me, but that’s not the case for everyone.

So this is Christmas morning number 40 for moi and before the kids wake up and we do the traditional presents thing, I had one very important present to send.  Oh and you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been taking a holiday blogging break. Lots more to write about when the yuletide smoke disappears. But enough of that, this post is not about me or for me, it’s for a very special friend – actually it’s for a lot of friends but being sent to one specific friend.

I hope it’s not too late for this present to make it to its intended recipient. It’s an email for a friend and fellow associate in our offline business. He may not want his name on the internet so out of respect in this post anywhere his name would appear I’ve replaced with the words ‘my friend’.

A little backstory to bring you up to speed. After 9/11 my friend was so deeply moved by the event that he joined the National Guard. Fast forward seven Christmases later and I’m at home in a warm house with fresh snow on the ground outside – our first white Christmas in many years here – and where is my friend?

Somewhere in Iraq.

Like so many other folks friends, fellow workers, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers and even some grandparents. The rest of this post is the email I wrote this morning and am sending out.

Dear my friend,

It’s Christmas morning 2008 here in snowy Washington – can you believe it’s snowing here? - and from what I’ve always heard, seen and read thoughtful, kind military folks like yourself really appreciate mail. Please forgive me for not writing you until today, but hey, I’m doing this before the kids are up yet and thought that writing this any sooner wouldn’t be as heartfelt or special. Write me back when you get time and we’ll carry a more active dialog in 2009. I have plenty of things to tell you about the business side of things but will save that for a future email. Passed along your email to Bruce and hopefully he’s written to you already. You’re in our thoughts.

Strange that being 6:36am the kids aren’t up yet but I guess when you are teenagers staying up too late playing videogames Christmas doesn’t mean as much as it once did. I know you are probably thinking of your children, wife and rest of your family a lot today and I’m sure they are thinking back of you even more. What you are doing for this country is among the greatest gifts given to all of us and I want to thank you, my friend, from the bottom of my heart for your selfless service to the United States of America.

After 9/11 I haven’t done anything nearly as important and noble as what you are doing right now. It is my hope that the final third – or fourth if the great unknown doesn’t happen first – of my life is spent giving more back to others. It’s sort of that one great, unfinished chapter of my life and I’m honored and humbled to personally know some special people like yourself showing me the way of how an important part of one’s life should be spent.

Hey, forgive me if this email sounds a little syrupy from a guy to a guy. Guess I get this way this time of year. Anyway, I’m going to end with a story of a ticket I got on the way down to the beach earlier this year. Have shared this with some other friends around the world and received some positive feedback. Feel free to share it with your buddies in the service if you like. It’s long, like nearly 5,000 words long, but in the spirit of sharing with brave men and women serving in the armed service something entertaining to read, I hope you enjoy it over there.

Before getting to the story though, do me a favor and get your butt home soon safe and sound so we can jam on that shiny new bass guitar of yours! And hey take care, mon, and Merry, Merry Christmas to you and all others serving. We all miss you!

[snip – insert blog post titled: How I fought a following too close ticket in Oregon]

Merry Christmas 2008 and happy holidays to all who celebrate. And thank you for taking time out of your busy lives to read Make You Go Hmm.

This likely isn’t a problem if you live alone and/or have some super unique toothbrush. But most toothbrushes to me look the same and when I go to brush my teeth among a bunch of other toothbrushes from family members, I want the fast and easy way to grab the right one. Turns out from my blog reading this morning I’m not alone.

Fellow techie, blogger and long time hmm reader Sterling writes:

Several months ago, I came up with a reliable, low-tech solution.  Put a Band-Aid around the handle of my brush, but not on hers.  It provides both tactile and visual identity confirmation.  I can be sure to grab the right brush in the morning, even when I can’t yet distinguish the faces of family members. They all laugh at my crazy innovation, but it works.

For years, toothbrush after toothbrush I’ve been using a rubber band wrapped around the handle like the picture above to the right to identify which toothbrush is mine. Do you have some special way to mark your toothbrush from others?

Update 10/10/08 11:20am PST: Be caught in the web of my new toothbrush:

Please pardon this morbid post. I would argue that death is among the top make you go hmm moments for all human beings.

A week ago Monday I turned 40 years old. On that birthday I wrote this historical blog post and before publishing decided to do something different: post it in the future. Wait, not a nearby future date, heck a lot of bloggers already future post posts. Not just any future date but past my death date per the actuarial table:

At 40, the table shows that I should live 37.28 years longer. For an additional challenge, I decided to round up, rather than down, to 38 years. My wife who coincidentally is 38 years old should still be alive even if I’m not to be able to read that post, as the table shows she will live 43.35 years more. It’s fairly well known that women statistically outlive men, sorry guys.

Blog software 38 years from now

It’s extremely unlikely this blog will be using the same blogging software 38 years from now, but text is text and dates are dates. So even if we’re using some sort of uber futuristic publishing platform, I should be able to copy and paste this post into that platform.

Note to Wordpress users: you cannot post future publishing dates beyond Tuesday January 19, 2038 as of this writing. If you try to do it, you’ll see your date reverted by Wordpress to the day before Epoch time January 1, 1970:

A techie aside: by switching the timestamp libraries to a 64 bit integer would take us into 2139 (actually, it would take us 292 billion years to/from 1/1/1970), which is the most likely next fix. Assuming Wordpress is even in use any more in 2038 (and still being updated) — which is unlikely — there will be something that handles the current 32-bit timestamp date limitation. I’m reasonably certain the Wordpress team hasn’t thought about this too much yet, but someday if they are still around and updating the Wordpress blog software, they will.

What to do in the meantime if you’re using Wordpress and want to post blog posts beyond 2038? Easiest, non-programming way would be to publish before that date and simply mark in the post body what the actual publishing date should be. Something like the timestamp shown to the right.

Better solution: use the year 2037 (since it’s a complete year before the Epoch) as Wordpress post publishing date and use the minutes as the year (e.g 20:46 = 2046) and day/date for the actual day date.

E.g let’s say I’m making a post on December 3, 2050, it would look like this:

December 3, 2037:
time: 20:50

Of course the real solution would be to mod Wordpress or use some other blog publishing platform that doesn’t rely on 32-bit integer UNIX timestamps for dates.

Beyond the technology concerns, this raises a number of intriguing questions though. What will you be doing in 38 years? I was 2 years old 38 years ago and don’t remember much. A lot can happen in 38 years.

Something tells me that we won’t call this type of publishing ‘blogging’ in 38 years. What it will be called, I don’t know and don’t want to venture a guess right now, but it doesn’t matter.

But what if I’m dead 

Being a betting man of sorts, I’m willing to bet against the reaper. My health is good and I don’t have a risky lifestyle. I smoked many, many years ago for about 3 years total and then quit to smoke nevermore. I am within my BMI normal levels. Had to reapply for life insurance recently as my term life was nearing expiration and got the best preferred rate. My dad is alive and well in his 70s and my mother could — and should — have prevented her death. Relatives on both family side tend to live longer than normal. Add to all this the fact that statisically people are living longer.

Heck, if John McCain wins the presidency for two terms, then he’ll be older than I would be in 38 years old by the time his second term closes.

Can never rule out things like accident or being in the wrong place at the wrong time (homicide). Hopefully none of that will apply, but for the purposes of this section let’s say the reaper wins and I’m gone.

Assuming this website will continue to be maintained after my premature death — and I’m asking for this to be done of my survivors — and it is using the same software, then automatically this post will publish as if I’m still here, heart a pumping.

In 2008 anyway there is no reason not to continue this blog beyond my death because it is profitable and more than pays for itself.

More 2046 posts

You really didn’t think I’d stop at one blog post and call it a day, did you? I’m planning on adding more posts from time to time. Assuming the reaper doesn’t win, I think it will be fascinating to return nearly 40 years into the past and read things that make you go hmm.

Join MakeYouGoHmm.com in September 2046

Is this the ultimate make you go hmm? What could be more hmm inspiring than blogging beyond death? Or planning to blog beyond that?

So for those of you who are still alive 38 years from now in October 2046 you’ll be able to read this post written on my 40th birthday in all its glory (or lameness if you think it sucks).

What about those of you older than me?

I think it would be neat to be able to setup a reader version of beating the actuarial tables. This way hmm readers who are older than me could read these posts published 2046 and beyond. Sure, somebody could simply lie about their age, but what’s the fun in that? Maybe there will be a more reliable technological way to verify age within the next 38 years. Hmm.

A good point to eject.

Being our 19th wedding anniversary this Friday, I’m in the shopping mode. Can’t write about what I’m doing for my wife as she reads this blog and would see the telegraph. Will say that I won’t be buying her anything through GiftGirl.

The idea behind GiftGirl is straightforward: just pick options from a dropdown menu like how much you want to pay, who the girl is (wife, long time girlfriend, friend, colleague, sister, mother, etc.) and you’re shown a selection of gifts that match. There are preset templates for things like ‘west coast girl’ and ‘bohemian girl’ — somebody please tell me what a bohemian girl is?  I know Bohemian Rhapsody is a great Queen song that was in Wayne’s World.

Google informs that the definition of bohemian is: "unconventional in especially appearance and behavior" so answered my own question. Can safely say there aren’t many (any) bohemian girls that I know very well. Do you know any and, more importantly, would they be into any of the gifts.

Looking at the screenshot I’m not sure my wife would have wanted any of the things suggested above, but I’m wise enough after over 20 years together not to try and put any words in her mouth or thoughts in her head — ever. Not to get too sappy here, but one of the things I found appealing about her was that she couldn’t be programmed into some box-like algorithm like GiftGirl offers. Don’t think you could put me in a box service like this either.

Still, I’m guessing this type service will appeal to some folks. At least has to appeal to the webmaster who could tag all these gifts with his/her affiliate code.

As mentioned back in November 2007 and despite being within hours of the ocean, we usually only get out to the beach about once per year. We’re beach bound again today, this time not to Lincoln City, but to Ocean Shores. I collected pictures from the last Lincoln City trip that haven’t been posted and shared yet online and uploaded to my Google Picasa web space.

Slideshow embed (you will likely have to click thru from RSS reader to see this):

We are traveling to Ocean Shores with my sister and law and her two girls, one of which has never seen the beach before. Should be a great time if weather cooperates. According to Weather.com, it’s going to be a bit on the chilly side (high of 61F) tomorrow. The sun is supposed to be out both today and tomorrow, but it’s going to rain on Wednesday.

See you on the other side.

As a parent with three teenage boys and our oldest at 18, I’ve seen and experienced a lot to date. Still, the parental surprises keep coming: good, bad and indifferent. Recently our oldest son asked me to help him lose weight. I’ve tried to help him with weight loss before, but not under the circumstances or, frankly, pressure facing us today.

He’s been steadily gaining weight and it’s gotten to a point to where this is no longer wishful thinking like it was 3 years ago. Can’t say any more that he’d like to lose some weight like so many of us say when spring rolls around, he must lose some or could begin to start suffering some health consequences.

Weight is also limiting his job opportunities. He has been thinking about going into the service, but he doesn’t meet their current maximum height/weight charts. He had a meeting with a recruiter but backed that off so he could dedicate more time to getting into shape.

I’d do anything to help our children and would gladly take 50 pounds from him and figure out how to work it off myself, but that’s not within my powers. I’m not a spiritual person, but would consider being more spiritual if this would help. Right now, no ideas that are safe and sane are off the table to help reach these weight loss goals.

Start tracking calories, diet at the forefront
Last time I think a major reason we failed to stay on track is because we didn’t alter and track our diet. About every dieting plan on the planet involves keeping track of calories and food types. No excuses, we’re on it this time. It already started when we looked at the chain restaurants we like to eat at and shared back the nutritional links for our common haunts.

First thing done was getting us both set on daily tracking what we eat using TweetWhatYouEat.com and keeping track of our weight using traineo. There are a ton of different calorie trackers out there, I picked these two for us because they were new to me and have sharing functionality. This way he could view my progress and vice versa and, if he desires, get his friends online involved.

Exercise and the Wii
We’re keeping our eyes peeled for the Wii Fit and will be buying that soon. My son likes playing Wii Boxing and has been working out several times a day with that. You can burn some calories with that. We also bought him a bicycle and have made a plan to walk daily. For days when the weather sucks, we’re planning on buying a treadmill. We already have a stationary bicycle and the plan is to break that out.

I have a new deal going with him that every time there is a task that requires going anywhere (in walking or biking distance) to get on the scale and if he weighs the same or more than the last weigh-in, he has to go do the task. Yesterday that didn’t work in his favor, but today it did. This might seem a little corny, but seems to be reinforcing using the scale as an ongoing benchmark of progress.

Week #1 progress
This week so far I’ve lost 3.5 pounds and he’s lost 4 pounds. My goal is to lose 15 pounds and get down to 160 or less by my birthday in September and his is to lose about 75 pounds over the next year. That’s about 6 pounds a month or about 1-2 pounds per week on average, which from what I’ve been reading is a healthy amount of weight for an overweight person to lose. A diet where you are losing huge amounts of weight every week could have serious health consequences, so we’re taking things slow and steady, not trying for any dramatic drops.

If all goes well once I get to my goal weight, my plan is to build some more muscle strength and tone while I continue to work with him on reducing his weight. He’s got a lot harder job since he has more pounds to shed and it’s been several years since he’s been at the weight where his BMI level was normal, but I believe in him. I believe he can do it.

While I’m not planning on increasing my fatblogging frequency, I will try to pass along updates on our progress once in awhile as well as share back any tools, sites, services, etc., that help us in our journey towards shedding the pounds.

Watching and tracking what we eat plus daily activity and exercise is only the beginning.

What else can we do, or should we be planning to do, to accomplish our respective weight loss goals? If you’re reading and been successful losing weight before, especially if you have lost more than 50 pounds with some sort of (safe) plan, how did you do it?

It’s not often that we see 98% movie review scores from the Rotten Tomatoes collective. WALL-E is getting lots of reviewer love.

This morning skeptical, but curious, I told our recently graduated son who has been working with me in our online business: “Hey, you want to go see this really quick?” At first he wasn’t that interested, but then he read some of the reviews and changed his mind.

The single line synopsis of this movie is irresistible:

What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off?

Off to the 10:45am PST showing we went, intrigued.

There was a deaf person with her family in front of us buying tickets who were having some animated sign language about the movie. We ended up sitting behind the family during the movie. About 30 minutes into the movie I realized just how great a movie this is for the hearing impaired. How many movies are made that don’t need subtitles?

The first 40 minutes of the movie have almost no dialogue and the final hour have very little dialogue. WALL-E is one of those extremely rare films that don’t need much in the way of dialogue or subtitles and yet can not only sustain interest but entertain. While we’re on the “how many movies …” kick, how many movies can get laughs out of sporks?

Sporks!

WALL-E is Pixar’s latest compelling animated tale. A science fiction love story about a final remaining trash compactor named WALL-E operating on a trash-ridden future version of earth somewhere around the year 2800. Where did all the people go? And what happened to humanity? WALL-E offers a bleak, and somewhat believable premonition of mankind 800+ years from now. Without spoiling the movie, I’ll just say we haven’t become the most sedentiary beings. You’d think mankind would learn not to leave too much control to robots. This is a well-trodden path many science fiction writers have been writing about and warning us against for the last 75+ years.

The only company WALL-E has on earth is a cockroach (who doesn’t speak thankfully) until a probe droid named Eve (”Eva”) is sent back to earth. WALL-E who spends his time making cubes out of garbage and picking out the good stuff like old VHS tapes (what, no DVD?), watching movies through an old iPod, and popping bubble wrap, takes an immediate liking to Eva to stave off his loneliness.

Can’t say I ever imagined liking a romantic story involving a trash compacter but WALL-E fires on all cylinders. This is the best animated movie I’ve seen in a long time. No animated movies come to mind to compare it to, which is a high compliment. I’ve written hundreds of reviews and never given an A+ to anything. I have no problem giving WALL-E the first A+. It’s that good. It’s family friendly too. The 98% Rotten Tomatoes reviewers are giving it is well-deserved. My son gave it a B-, but his only other favorite animated movie was Toy Story. WALL-E is better than Toy Story. Get out of the heat and into the air conditioning. Take your loved ones to see this film. Grade: A+.

Last year we bought one of those above ground swimming pools and after setting up in mid July were only able to enjoy a dozen or less good swim days.

This year the weather has been so crappy to date and with June almost over there was some consideration that we may never set the pool up in 2008. I mean, why set something up for only 10 good hot days? A hot day on Wednesday and rumor of 90 degree weekend days coming this weekend quickly changed my mind. Time to switch into pool assembly mode.

Leveling the pool in our backyard proved to be challenging last year. This year I dug a bigger trench than last year and used the dirt from that to bulk up the lower side. You can see the trench in the picture above which was big enough to put the pump in. What happened this year is the pool ended up dipped on both ends and higher in the middle. At least we don’t have the sloping we had last year, but man, why is leveling earth so difficult a concept for me?

What’s buried in your backyard?
A side bonus from the excavation was finding a 1948 shilling. My son went to the internet to research the coin.

Tools for leveling land?
There must be some sort of tool for excavators to be able to easily level land, yes/no? I remember when being in the restaurant business and seeing some laser red light used by contractors to show a level line across an area. I wonder if there is something like that contractors use to get the ground level?

Anywhere, here is how it looks from the side. You can see it’s not a great leveling job:

Guessing I won’t get any pool setup jobs any time soon, but the process did go much faster this year than last. We were able to setup the pool in less than three hours, including digging the small trench. Filling the pool took about 8 hours and cost us $25 extra on our water bill last year.

Our three sons took a dip yesterday when it wasn’t even 70 degrees outside. The pool water in the morning was at 50 degrees but had warmed up to 56 degrees by the time they climbed in. I told them they were nuts. How they managed to last in that frigid water for 30 minutes is beyond me, but they splashed around and had a good time. My son’s girlfriend was the only smart one of the bunch, like us parents, she stayed out.

The final picture at 6:59am PST.

The skies are blue, it’s gonna be a scorcher. Glad that the work is done. Now all we have to do once the heat sets in is get in and enjoy.