We finally got Margaret’s loom all hooked up and going. She is already getting better and better. Our big obstacle now is figuring out a good way to wind the bobbins so we can keep her moving. Also, we need to tie her down because as she weaves she moves across the floor.
Today, I got to ride on a zeppelin. My old company Unwired Planet (also Phone.com, Openwave) got some of the original people at the company together to celebrate our invention of the wireless web.
The zeppelin was really cool, a lot like being in a boat, but 1000 ft or so above the ground. We flew over Stanford and parts of the Bay. All in all, it was a great trip.
There are full size images located here.
After seeing the annular eclipse, I had all my photographic stuff to take ok pictures of the sun. Well, the transit of venus which only occurs every 120 or so years occurred. I was able to get a few pictures. I plan on having the right equipment for the next eclipse, but I guess i missed my chance for good pictures of the transit of venus.
Today at school, Sam’s grade did a wax museum. They were all famous people. When you touched them, they came to life and told you who they were and what they did. Sam was Claude Monet.
I went and saw the annular eclipse in Tahoe this weekend. I went along because I was kind of interested. It turned out that it was MUCH cooler than I thought. I am planning on the whole family going and seeing the full eclipse that will pass by just north of here in about 5 years.
Elizabeth and I went to see the Tour of California again this year when it passed by. I was able to see the finish in Santa Cruz as well as the start in San Jose. It was pretty neat being able to walk around the pit area before the start. The ToC has varying levels of teams, from the large pro tour teams with fancy painted up buses, to the development teams mostly based in the US that were changing out of the back of their car.
Katy has had another year of diving at the high school. She was varsity this year. The team was much better this year, largely due to the fact that Katy coached most of the team and helped them learn the dives.
The Van Meter Play this year was a Pinocchio rip off. Sam was a street entertainer. He even had a monkey (it was another student, not a real monkey).
Lego is finally over for the year. We have had the Lego field setup kit in our living room since August. This year was our most successful ever. We made it to the regional championship. We won the project award this year as well. The kids project was the Lunch Tockz. It was a little electronic device that monitored time and temperature of food in your lunch box to tell you whether it was save to eat or not. The kids worked really hard. Overall, they did extremely well. At the competitions, they generally only give 1 award to a team. Otherwise, I think that we may have one more than one. The kids did really well in all the presentations (Robot Design, Teamwork, Project).
There was no snow in Tahoe, so we spent the time after Christmas nearer to home except for a trip for Elizabeth and the kids to visit Cal Poly SLO and UCSB. I met them at Disneyland. We met Samantha there and spent about a day and a half at the park. The first day was split between Disneyland and California Adventure. The Wonderful World of Color was really impressive. Disneyland is an interesting place. They spend a lot of time and money making it the happiest place on earth. We spent a day and a half waiting in lines for rides, but left not thinking that we spent that much time waiting in lines.
Katy had been lobbying to go to Disneyland for a while. She really wanted to get her picture taken with Ariel (Little Mermaid). She had this done years ago, but I guess the 16 year old really needed another picture. Sam had never been (or at least didn’t remember), so it was good that he got to go as well. Margaret didn’t remember a lot about it. A good time was had by all.