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In-laws head home

3 Comments
Gabe

Well after 3 weeks the in-laws have gone home.

It was nice having them around, they did a lot around the house: gardening, cutting the grass, helped put the up the gutters, recycle the boxes in the basement.

I think I learned a few new portuguese words. I knew, cega/cego, but I thought it was spelled sega (because of the company probably). I learned pode, though I don’t use it much. I really do suck a foreign languages.

Life should return to normal. Cooking/cleaning/transporting 4-6 people (when we went out with my mom and step-dad) seemed like too many people. We only have 8 dishes and they rarely seemed clean at the same time so there was lots of dishes going through the dish washer often.

Home Owner’s Club

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Gabe

Well, I officially joined the “home owner’s club” (I made up the name) by injuring myself while doing home repair/improvement.

While drilling a hole for a rivit, I continued to drill a little hole in my thumb. Luckily its not too deep. Only blead for a little while. Isn’t owning a home great?

I need to be more careful with my hands as they are indirectly my source of income (without my hands/fingers, I can’t type, therefore I wouldn’t be a very effective tech lead).

Detroit Science Center

3 Comments
Gabe

I love physics, but the Detroit Science Center was rather disappointing. I guess the part that bothers me is the stuff is all the same. I was there over 10-15 years ago, and all the stuff they have is almost identical. They updated the building but about 50% of the hands on things are probably older than me.

If I’m not mistaken, they didn’t have one thing about computers! You know that amazing invention that has revolutionized the world?

The Titanic IMAX show was incredibly bad. The sound effects added when a photograph was taken where horrible! The person holding the camera picked strange things to point it at, especially the close-ups of the crew’s faces.

However, there was this cool tornado simulator:

All in all it was not really worth the $7 adminission, nor was the IMax movie worth an additional $4!

Dan Jones’ Career is Over

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Gabe

My friend from high school (Berkley High School) Renny Barris called to tell me about his movie being featured at the Planet Ant Film Festival (look at 6.4.2003 and 6.3.2003). Its called “Dan Jones’ Career is over”.

I talked to him before I went to Brazil for 6 months so I missed the premier (I think it was Jan 2002 or so). He co-starred in it with his friend Dan (I think), directed, produced, etc. I think they did everything themselves except edit the final copy onto VHS. Unfortunately I left before I got to see the finished product. I’ll probably be busy the night the movie is playing (June 7th) so I might not get to see it then either.

I hope any of you in the area will go see it to help support him. I guess I’ll have to buy a copy of the movie to see it as it seems I’m never available to go to the special showings.

DDR Max

1 Comment
Gabe

DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) is great at making exercise fun.

I don’t understand the “secret” to this game though. My guess so far is to master it, you need to memorize all the steps for the song. Right now we (my wife and myself play versus, at the same time) play 4-5 songs, on light and standard difficulty. Therefore I’ve only memorized 1 maybe 2 songs on light.

Light is pretty easy now that we’ve played them through a few times. We can get the “AA” score which means we hit every step (either Perfect or Great) and a combo with every step in order without any misses.

Standard on the other hand is HARD! Holy crap! Well, it depends on the song, but usually it involves 2-3 times as many steps as the light version, the steps now fall in between the beats (syncopated) and its usually FAST!

Seems this country likes to sit on its ass and watch TV, play video games, etc. Luckily this game involves exercise, allowing you to “have fun” by playing a video game. Works good at distracting my mind away from the fact that I am exercising. I’ll never go to a gym just to work out. I have to be playing a sport or in thise case playing a game so I’m not JUST exercising…too boring.

45th Parallel

2 Comments
Gabe

So my mom, step-dad, mother-in-law, father-in-law, wife and myself go to Traverse City (see Luciana’s web site for the pictures…I took a couple of them!). Its a very nice city, but I can’t imagine how much snow they get in the winter, not to mention their summer is probably 2-3 months maximum.

I was too tired to wake up in the middle of the night to try to see the northern lights, but some how I doubt they are visible (though my mom read a story that someone saw them from Ohio, which I find impossible to believe). Definately something that must be done is seeing the northern lights: Aurora Borealis.

All of Michigan is covered with lakes and rivers, great for canoeing. Even for my parents and myself as seasoned canoeing experts, this river at Ranch Rudolf was fast compared to what I’m used to. But we still had fun, didn’t fall in, saw some birds and a raccoon (though he ran away before we got to take a picture). It was a great weekend, except for the car sickness. I can’t wait till someone invents a better way to travel.

Being in Traverse City means we were half way between the equator and the north pole, so we were at “The 45th Parallel”.

Winning/Losing Mentality

6 Comments
Gabe

From my “Take me out to the ball game” post, the comment left by Tereza made me think. Is it common for (certain types of) people (or people in certain locations) to think their team will lose? Being a Detroit fan, I have come to learn that the Tigers will suck and lose most of the time, when they win it is a surprise. This wasn’t always the case, they did win the 1984 World Series. I’m not a big hockey fan, but the Red Wings won a few Stanley cups recently. My favorite sport: Basketball, the Pistons won 2 Championships in a row not too long ago. The Lions (football) haven’t won jack shit in my lifetime!

Is it because of my (pessimistic) personality that I assume the team I want to win will lose? – Do optimistic people always think their team will win, regardless of previous record?
Is it becasue I live in Detroit and most of the time our teams don’t win all that much? – Do people in places like L.A. believe their team will win (because they won 6 basketball championships recently, though were knocked out of the running this year, rather surprisingly) because their team does win more often than losing?

The part of Tereza’s comment that made me wonder is in Brazil, seems they win a lot of soccer games (sorry, futeball!). I don’t keep close track of Brazil’s record, but I assume they win more than they lose. If that’s true, does it mean that Tereza is a pessimist?

Design your shoes

2 Comments
Gabe

My buddy from college, Glenn sent me this URL: www.cmax.com. Its a cool idea to allow people to design your shoes (as my wife might tell you I looked at a LOT of shoes before finally buying some…mostly because Brazil’s basketball shoe selection is rather small) but the implementation is pretty sad. You just pick your shoe and color it. I think we did that as kids using permament markers and white shoes.

Anyone else have any “design your own” web sites that are worth looking at?

Take me out to the ball game.

2 Comments
Gabe

The Tigers won! I can’t believe I went to a Tiger’s game and they won! Usually when I go, actually for as long as I can remember, every Tigers (baseball) game I’ve been to, they have lost. Oh, some games they are ahead and magically lose at the end.

Today they started out behind, got ahead by 3 points, then managed to get tied, but amazingly the catcher with a horrible batting record hit a homerun to take a 6-5 lead which is how the game ended.

I still have yet to catch a foul ball. I don’t know how many games I’ve been too (I’d guess about 10-20). I’ve had (in my poor memory) only 1 chance and the ball hit below my reach (of course I didn’t have my glove with me that time). If someone knows of a study of where the highest percentage of foul balls are hit (in Comerica Park), let me know so I can buy seats specifically in that section to catch me a foul ball. Better than that would be to catch a homerun, but knowing the Tigers that doesn’t seem very likely (though they did have 2 or 3 today).

If there are any good pictures I assume my wife will post them.

Birthdays

7 Comments
Gabe

Statistically speaking, is it extrodinary that EVERY time Luciana and I go out to eat there is someone having a birthday? And of course at places like Olive Garden, the employees sing loudly, clap their hands and are generally annoying.

It just seems so amazing that for the 1-2 hours we are there (and we eat at unusual times for Michigan/USA, more like Brazilian time: late), for the 8-10 times a month, that someone is having a birthday.

Unbelievable.