Brett and Debbie

Scientific discussion of the "5-second" rule

You know the rule, if food hits the floor and stays there for less
than 5 seconds it can't be dirty... right? Well, now there is a
reasonably scientific discussion of this to finally answer the
question. (found via Slashdot)

On a similar note I remember an incident where this rule narrowly
escaped being necessary. Quite a few years ago over at a Jon's house
we were eating and he knocked a fork off the table with his elbow..
and proceeded to react and catch it before it hit the floor! If only I
had a reaction time like that.. I could have .... ummm... ... well..
been able to *actually hit* moving baseballs or learned to unicycle
faster? On the other hand maybe I'm better off the way I am.

More puppy pics

Well, as might be expected with a new puppy every new adventure is
picture worthy! Since my life is boring at the moment, I'll try to
inject some more fun into my blog. Here's some more pictures of hugo,
just to make him more even more famous (all 3 of you regular
readers!). I can't wait to meet him!

This is a picture of Hugo visiting Becca's work, and Hugo's dad. Thanks, Becca!

Rebecca got a puppy!

My sister got a very cute yellow labrador puppy last weekend, and she
sent me some pictures! It's name is Hugo, and he's going to be a BIG
dog.. (look at his paws).

Friend's Blogs

I just figured out that some of my friends also have blogs, how cool that others have something to share too. I noticed by checking the traffic of my site.. that's a nice surprise and perhaps a funny way to find out about it...
Andrew has a livejournal site and a website too, and Timmeh has a fancy site up.

They're way less sane than I am, but I suppose it's all relative. We did all graduate under the same advisor...

Pictures from San Diego

Here are some pictures Rebecca sent me from our trip to San Diego! We made a
nice trip to the Hotel del Coronado, Mount Soledad, and had some fun at the
zoo also. (We did more but that's all the pictures I'm posting for now.) At
the Zoo we found these little foot massage machines that vibrated like crazy
for $.50, as a result our feet & legs were tingly and not tired anymore!
This picture is one of Becca's 2nd foot massage... We tried every one we saw
until we ran out of quarters.

And that last picture is of an Okapi, I think. It was cute in person and
even cuter as a stuffed toy in the shop, somehow we managed to avoid buying
one though.

Maybe I can start getting these pictures on here faster when Deb gets her
digital camera. (any day now..., come on buy.com)

Digital Cameras & such

There have been photos at recent events that I would like to post, but
since they are other people's photos I don't have them yet. We're
still working on getting a digital camera.. =)

In other news we're working on getting debbie a nice new Digital
camera. After much consideration we have chosen the Nikon Coolpix 3200
which is a reasonably small but high quality camera in the 3
mega-pixel range. We ordered from buy.com, but when we got it in the
mail it had an error that the lens wouldn't extend - a fatal
malfunction. So we've returned it and are still waiting....

Yesterday we went on a Green Homes Tour in Portland with some friends
and got to see some beautiful, energy efficient homes in the area. I
was most impressed with the systems that used a solar water heater on
the roof to pre-heat the water than went into the regular water
heater.. that saved large amounts of energy on water heating in the
sunny months and supposedly has big tax breaks at the moment also.
These are a much better deal than the expensive solar panels
(Photovoltaic) which are seemingly more common.