Bad, bad bloghostess. It’s been a month since you’ve posted. What have you been up to?

1.  Painting a surf mural
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_helm/2360168752/
2. Celebrating Easter
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_helm/2359320497/
3. Not Christmas
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_helm/2360137784/
4. Raising the bars
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_helm/2359317085/
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_helm/2359315327/
5. Looking at cars (mine’s on the right)
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_helm/2360144666/

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13306-could-smart-traffic-lights-stop-motorists-fuming.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

THAT sounds good.

If a set of lights told drivers when they were about to change, “drivers [could] adapt their speed accordingly to avoid useless accelerations or react faster on green,

a. Isn’t that what the yellow light is for? To tell people when it is about to turn red?

For this to work, vehicles must transmit data to the computer system that controls a city’s lights.

And how long after we are transmitting that data to the city’s system will it be before law enforcement figures out they can use that to determine who is running a red light? Speeding? Tailgating? Shouldn’t do those things anyway, you say. Well, how about being investigated because you’ve supposedly been stopping at questionable street corners? Cruising low income neighborhoods? What if you were just handing out information about the local homeless shelter?

Here are some points of advice for next year’s auditions:
1. Tape yourself and watch it first. If you have any doubts, don’t audition. There were something like 100k singers this year, and only 164 made it.
2. No, they aren’t looking for something different. They’re looking for a pop idol. Pop=popular, as in “appeals to the masses”. That means your looks and sound should be predictable. When they tell someone they like them because they’re different, they mean a little different, not *really different*.
3. Choose your song carefully. and play it safe. Don’t ruin your audition by picking something you can barely manage. Let your voice show without theatrics. You can do harder songs later in the show, and it will look like you’ve improved.
4. If they say no, don’t beg. It has never worked, and just looks pathetic.

Even if you think you can make it, remember that there’s always the chance you’ll be on the reject reels. A good chance, in fact. So be prepared to fail gracefully, so it won’t haunt you for years.

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/01/24/stonebraker_dewitt_mapreduce/
Prediction: these guys have their own solution to sell.

Perhaps I would stick to a workout MADE for geeks in small spaces:
NASA WORKOUT: http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,,2240426,00.html

Two conferences I would LOVE to attend:

http://eatonconference.ucr.edu/
“Chrnicling Mars”, a Sci-fi conference with guest Ray Bradbury

http://www.startrek.com/custom/include/community/tour/
Star Trek: The Tour

WRITING OPPORTUNITIES/CONTESTS:
http://www.literarymama.com/interact/blog/archives/001859.html “Are We There Yet?”
Article for Skirt magazine: http://skirt.com/2008_themes 

“To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and…though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived.” –Schopenhauer

Samuel Butler wrote, “Arrears of small things to be attended to, if allowed to accumulate, worry and depress like unpaid debts…If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.”

Samuel Johnson: “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”

“People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals / that is, goals that do not inspire them.”
- Anthony Robbins quote

So, we’re sitting here around the campfire at Mike’s woods for New YEar’s Eve. (Actually, it’s been officially renamed “Camp Mi-Al-Pe” now. That’s for Mike, Alex, and Pete.) Alex has put forth a challenge: name your (personally) most memorable events of 2007.

Mike says: (1) Getting my motorcycle running again. (2) Fishing trips. (3) ATV trips, and taking Alex to the hospital. (4) It was a good year for the woods - lots of people came down.

Alex says: (1)The hospital. It was a good riding trip. (2) Riding my motorcycle with my friends, my stepdad, and my wife. (3) Our trip to Florida for Christmas. It was the highlight of my year.

Maria says: (1) The baby goat born on Easter. (2) Baby Kana being born. (My niece.) (3) Going out on Mike’s boat. (4) This is the first year Aidan is taller than me. (5) Being “Home for Christmas”.

 Of course, there are a lot of things to remember, and not all of them will make the list. There are probably others that should make the list.

What are your memories of 2007?

What memories do you hope to make in 2008?

Sports cars more dangerous than SUVsDec 21, 2007 13:44:00 GMT

Sports utility vehicles are vilified as being dangerous, polluting gas-guzzlers, but research shows that crashes involving sports cars cause more injuries

Here’s a little lifehack for people with long hair. I wear my hair down and “done” for work, but by the time I get home I’m ready for it to be off my face. I also need it pulled back to cook dinner.  But I don’t want to go upstairs to the bathroom to get a hair scrunchie. (Besides, I’m usually in the middle of cooking dinner when I decide I need it!)

Here’s the tip: I keep a bag of hair rubber bands in the spice drawer. When I need to pull my hair back, I just pull one out and use it. I usually don’t take it off until bedtime, and I leave it in a basket by my bed. Occasionally, I bring them all down and put them back in the baggie. That’s it. The 99cent bag strategically placed. Convenience=priceless.

This time of year is always full of mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong - I am about the most Christmas-spirited person there is. I love decorating. I love singing ye olde carols. I love crafting gifts, buying gifts - the whole process of really thinking about someone and trying to come up with something (you can afford) which will tickle their fancy. I love visiting with people. I love the time off work. I even love preparing for company and having a cookie party.  The mixed feelings come in because of the pressures - pressure to get things done, to fit in extra activities, to spend money, to have the house more presentable than usual, etc.

Cards: I have a huge extended family on my mother’s side. She was one of six children. I love every one of them. I don’t want to leave anyone out. But I decided a few years ago that the cutoff had to be three generations. (ie I give to my grandparents, parents/aunts/uncles, and cousins. I don’t give to my cousin’s children, grandma’s aunt, etc.) Once I add in my husband’s family, a few friends, and my coworkers, I end up with about 50 people to make cards for. Plus, Alex has about 75 customers. That’s a lot of cards, whether you buy them or make them. I like making them, and on years when the budget is low - like this year - I make them.

Cookies & Birthdays: My DH asked me last night why I insist on having a cookie party. It started a few years ago when I discovered his mother’s aunt had a December birthday the day before mine, and that neither of us had had a birthday party in, like, years. So I decided that if no one would throw us a party, I’d throw a party. And since I love making cookies this time of year to give as gifts, but have trouble finding time to make them, I’d make it a cookie-baking party. It’s a fun time for women of all ages to squeeze into my little kitchen/dining room for a few hours of chatter and emerge with cookies to justify their time. I’m there making the cookies anyway. I might as well have someone to talk to, which is really what every woman wants most.

Work: It’s also a tough time at work. It’s a time when a lot of projects get finished up. That’s awesome. But it’s also a time when anything that can’t be wrapped up before the holiday gets pushed aside. That’s a bummer. The closer you get to the holidays, the emptier the work plate becomes. I’ve just completed a rollout of a DEMO of Instant Messaging for my employer. (Lotus Sametime running with our other Domino/Lotus Notes servers. It’s awesome. We’re loving it. For the users, it was like “set your password and away you go”. There was more prep work on my end than that, but overall not too bad. A little more than, say, the email-to-fax or enabling ldap or something. ) However, there are a handful of things that are making no progress whatsoever, and that’s too bad.

UPDATE: It looks like I’m not the only one who has projects get pushed off until after the holidays:

Atlantis to Launch No Earlier Than Sunday
Dec 07, 2007 05:00:00 GMT
Targeted launch time is 3:21 p.m. EST.

Atlantis to Launch Sunday
Dec 08, 2007 05:00:00 GMT
Shuttle will take the European Columbus lab to the space station.

NASA Postpones Shuttle Atlantis Launch
Dec 09, 2007 05:00:00 GMT
NASA delayed Sunday’s scheduled launch of space shuttle Atlantis after a failure occurred in a fuel sensor system.

NASA Targets Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch on Jan. 2
Dec 09, 2007 05:00:00 GMT
Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-122 mission to the ISS now is targeted to launch no earlier than Jan. 2 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Gifts: Like I said, I LOVE giving gifts. But, you always wish you had a little more time or money so you could give the “perfect” thing. I’ve got a few people who will probably get their ‘perfect thing’ next year, and their ‘good but not perfect’ thing this year, because of budgetary constraints…and time constraints. I’m a very thrifty shopper and a creative thinker and a crafter. I have to think that makes budgeting easier. But it makes actual gifting more challenging! I know someone who can give a really cute set of tea towels or really nice expensive wool socks, and be happy with that. Not me. If I gave tea towels, I’d have to embroider them myself with your name or your favorite animal/symbol/saying, and wrap them on a tea tray with a pretty mug and bags of your favorite tea. If I give wool socks, it’ll probably be because I learned how to knit, or because they’re in a gift basket with a foot massager and lotion - but only because if said your feet were really bothering you lately, or because they were on your list.

But don’t go thinking that my perfectionist tendencies are the problem. I’ve learned from Flylady.net that I have to accept “done good enough” sometimes over “not done because it wasn’t good enough”. If you can’t tell that from the above, you should know that there are tons of other things I’d like to do around Christmas that I don’t. I’d like to be in a choir again, like I was in school. I’d like to take the kids caroling from the back of a hay truck. (They’d hate it.) I’d like to put on a Christmas pageant. I’d like to have something really awesome to give to my DH, who is getting to that stage of fatherhood where he says not to get him anything because if he needed it, he’d buy it himself. And I’d like to do something really special to acknowledge or help so many others…  And that’s just the list of things I think that I actually COULD pull off, if I really had my act together. In my dream world, there’s also plenty of time and money to give something modest but special to the mailman and my coworkers and DH’s customers. I’d like to make really awesome quilts to give as presents. Plus spend time sipping cocoa in front of the woodstove with a good book while snow falls with a feeling of peace because everything got done. Ummm…that would be nice. But it’ll have to wait until January.

OK, so it’s been awhile. Well, family comes first, and the holidays are fast approaching. I keep saying “I ought to blog something”, and I keep putting it off because other things are keeping me busy. Besides, after spending literally the whole day on computers, I don’t have much drive to look at a screen when I get home. At least, not beyond checking my email and balancing my checkbook.

So, have you heard they’re making a new Star Trek movie with an ENTIRELY new cast? This is one of those things that is bound to go badly, but in such a way that we’ll all be inexplicably drawn to watch. So, to summarize what I’ve read of the staffing plans thus far, I’ve created this quicky little piece of cut-and-paste: