I just got back from my first ever business trip.  My company sent me to Seattle (technically Everett, WA) this week to visit our good friends at Boeing.  You may have heard, they are a little behind schedule.  But I can’t say too much about the business purpose of my trip here.  Fortunately I wasn’t flying solo, there were several others from my company (two others from the Charlotte office).  I was the only developer there; everyone else was support.  In any case, here are a few highlights in convenient bulleted form:

• The area is pretty.  Unless you happen to hate evergreen trees, in which I guess you wouldn’t care for it.  Because there are lots of evergreens.  When you look out the window of the plane, it looks kind of like you are about to land in a Christmas tree farm.

• The Boeing plant is big.  Really big.  The biggest building in the world by volume, as a matter of fact.  If you imagine a garage where you might get your oil changed, with about six garage doors in the building, it’s kind of like that.  Except the garage doors are big enough to hold full-sized airplanes.

• Security is tight there.  Since they couldn’t confirm that I was a US Citizen, I got a temporary badge requiring an escort anywhere other than the conference room.  Including the bathroom.  So I had to act like a five-year-old and ask people to take me to the bathroom.

• I got to visit my friend from the Amazon.  It was nice to catch up with you.

• Due to a layover in Phoenix, I got to see the Grand Canyon from the sky.  I think it was the Grand Canyon anyway.  In any case, it was a large canyon somewhere north-northwest of Phoenix.

• On the flights to Seattle, I got to experience first-class flight for my first time.  I didn’t think it was that great, until I flew coach on the way back.  Then I remembered what coach was like.

• Most of our nation is a barren wasteland.  That’s the impression I get from thirty thousand feet.

• It was my observation that there are no black people in Seattle.  Some quick internet searching seems to support this: only 8.44% of the population in Seattle versus 32.72% of the population in Charlotte.  That’s a pretty big difference.  And in Everett it is only 3.35%.  That was a little weird.

• There is some kind of circular farming that they do in the flat states, where they just don’t use 21.5% of the land in a square plot.  See many examples here.  This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this but I thought I’d mention it.  I’m not sure how it is cost effective to waste so much of your land, but since there is so much of it done I’m assuming it must be more than 21.5% more efficient for some crops than traditional farming techniques.

• They still like grunge rock in Seattle.  At least the station I was listening to does.  In four half-hour drives (two trips to and from Peter’s house), I think I heard: 4 Nirvana songs, 3 Pearl Jam songs, 4 Foo Fighters songs, 2 Alice In Chains songs.  And then some new stuff like that terrible Finger Eleven song about clubbing.  I really hate that song.

• It didn’t rain all week.  Garrison had the same experience when he visited.  I’m beginning to think that “it always rains in Seattle” is just a myth.

• No signs of Sasquatch.  That also might be a myth.  But if so, then how do beef jerky enthusiasts mess with them?

I guess that’s all I’ve got to share.

If you’re like me you knew there was a writers’ strike but didn’t really understand what it was about.  It finally made sense to me after reading about it on Jenna Fischer’s blog and watching the YouTube video she links to, which shows Greg Daniels, Ryan, Kelly, Mose, and Toby on the picket line (they are all writers on the show).

The gist of it is that contracts were written in a time before the Internet and before TV shows were sold on DVD.  So when someone watches a show on NBC.com, for example, the network considers that promotional material and gets to keep nearly all the ad revenue (whereas the writers/actors get paid whenever a show is rerun on TV).  Similarly, the networks keep nearly all the proceeds of DVD sales.  Ten years from now, digital downloads and DVDs could very likely be the main ways people watch television shows, and it’s not exactly fair that the networks get to keep all that cash for themselves.

And if that’s wrong, then I guess I still don’t understand it after all.

We’re having a baby GIRL!

Kip and I went to the doctor’s office on Tuesday and we learned that our baby is a girl.  It was exciting until they got started and we found out that Emma (that will be her name by the way) had decided to be camera shy.  It took about thirty minutes to get a decent shot of her face in the “4D” view.  I actually thought that the 2D view looked better than the 4D view.  (You can judge for yourself, but we think it looks weird.  In fact, Kip thinks the fourth dimension they are referring to must be creepiness.  Sorry, he made me put that in here.)  The technician kept shaking and poking my belly to try to get her to roll over, but somehow it gave her the hiccups.  It was actually really cute to see her with the hiccups because her whole body would spasm, but I still can’t feel it.  It is amazing just how much I love her already, just from seeing her on the monitor.  We think she is going to have my nose, chin, and (sadly) my feet.  You can see for yourself in the picture of her feet.  I had fun today getting out all of the baby girl’s clothes that we already have (from numerous yard sales over the last few months) and washing them so they will be ready for Emma’s auspicious arrival next March.

Other exciting news on the baby front
I actually felt the baby move Friday night.  She decided to finally let me know she was down there.  It feels a lot like somebody is thumping you, but from the inside out.  She is especially active in the last hour or so before I go to bed in the evenings.  She also will roll around if I wake up in the middle of the night.

And in case you haven’t noticed, the pictures link to larger versions of the sonograms.

Over the weekend (Saturday in fact!) yours truly completed his twenty-sixth lap around the sun.  The only thing I know of that changes on your twenty-sixth birthday is that you can no longer be drafted.  Of course, they aren’t drafting anyone nowadays, but if they started doing it again I’d be safe.  Unless of course Congress changed the rules, which I believe they are perfectly capable of doing.  In any case, I’m continuing to get older.  Somehow on this year’s birthday I actually felt more than a day older.  It seems absolutely impossible that a full year has passed since I passed the quarter-century mark.  And it’s not that I haven’t done anything all year.  I guess it’s that I have done a lot of “grown-up” stuff in the last year.  I bought a house, for example.  I went on a business trip.  I started making mortgage payments.  I filed my own taxes.  And the big one, of course, is that I’m going to be a father in four months.  A dad.  This guy is going to be responsible for the life of another human being.  I mean, we are talking about a person who not only created a drawing of a guy in a giant toilet riding a turd, but he posted said turd cowboy onto the various internets.  That’s just craziness.

Maybe, just maybe—with the help of her seemingly sane mother—my daughter will turn out to be more than a demented sociopath.

Yee-Ha!

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail with the following at the end of the message:

Please don’t print this message unless you really need to.  Our forests will thank you by providing the oxygen your children will need to survive.

What a brilliant idea!  All that paper that I’ve been using to print e-mail messages really adds up and hurts the environment.  And to think I’d never thought of it until I saw this message.

But then I got to thinking: why stop there?  Maybe I should stop printing out webpages too.  I don’t know about you, but I used to print out the entire Wikipedia on the second Tuesday of every month.  You just never know when the whole site will go down, or when some vandal will vandalize your favorite page with obscene vandalisms.  When that happens, it’s good to have a hard copy to turn to.  I used to think this was a victimless habit, since I would print it from work.  (No way I can afford five hundred reams of paper per month!)  But now I see that there is a victim.

The Earth

From this day forward, I pledge that I will no longer print out the Wikipedia or any of the other Internets.  I estimate that this will save seventy-four thousand, six hundred acres of rain forest per year.  (My office only buys paper made from endangered rain forest trees.)

But I am just one person.  What if someone else wants to print out websites?  Is there anything I can do to stop him or her?  Well, if I am the administrator of a website I can.  And so can you!

Just create a new file, named save_the_earth.css.  In that file, just put this little snippet of code:

* { display:none !important; }

Save that file somewhere on your site.  For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you put it in the root of your website.  Now, in the HTML for every page on your site, just put this somewhere in the <head> tag:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/save_the_earth.css" media="print" />

Voila!  Now whenever someone tries to print out a page on your website, they’ll get something like this:

Go ahead and do a print preview on this particular website.  You’ll see that I am not lying!

Unfortunately, the header and footer will still be printed on each page due to a browser “feature.”  Since this can harm so many trees, I consider it a major bug, but none of the browser manufacturers agree with me.  Yet.  But until this bug is fixed, at least there will be minimal ink wasted.  And no matter how much data is on the webpage being printed, it will all fit onto one page.  That’s pretty neat!

And the best part about all this is that it is 100% standards-compliant.  In addition, it has been tested on all major browsers, without any workarounds.  Now that is something web developers can really get excited about!

But here’s the part where I need your help!

I need the help of you, the reader.  I’m only one guy, but there are a lot of trees out there to save.  Sure, I’ve saved the trees required to print this website, but we need more websites to do this.  It’s so easy, anyone can do it!  So spread the word to any and all you know.  Tell them, “By allowing users to print, you are allowing them to destroy the earth!”  Write your Congressmen and/or Congresswomen.  Tell them, “We need to do something about earth-hating eco-terrorists like Google and Wikipedia!  Please pass a law requiring them to prevent users from printing their webpages!”  If we all work together, we just might be able to save this planet before we run out of trees!