I just got this email and since it had been forwarded a few times prior to getting to me, I assumed it was probably a hoax. It turns out it isn't.

The email states:
EMERGENCY CONTACT INFO IN CELL PHONE
Many of us carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory but nobody, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our closest family or friends.
If we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn't know who to call.
Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this " ICE" (In Case of Emergency) Campaign.
The concept of "ICE" is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As cell phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name "ICE" (In Case Of Emergency).
The idea was thoug ht up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mob ile phones with patients, but they didn't know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialing the number you have stored as "ICE".
Please forward this. It won't take too many "forwards" before everybody will know about this It really could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest.
For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc.
A great idea that will make a difference!
Let's spread the concept of ICE by storing an ICE number in our Mobile phones today!

It turns out this is true!
I found more info about ICE here.

Out of curiosity, I will be asking our local firemen if they are aware of it and what they think of it (I live across the street from a fire station.)

So, an interesting thing happened outside our house over the weekend. Saturday,I was in the kitchen trying to find something for lunch when my wife yelled to me to come look out the front window. There were a ton of bugs flying around in front of our house! Upon closer inspection, we found that they were bees. It was pretty cool to see, and I know I should have gotten my camera, but I was taken in by the sight.

We live near a library, so there is a lot of foot traffic on the sidewalk across the street. We were surprised that nobody else noticed the swarm. After a few minutes, they were almost gone. I ran outside to see what had happened and they were concentrating near a tree in my neighbor's yard.

I had heard that bees are not very aggressive when they are swarming. I still felt it strange to be standing 15 feet from a clump of bees, have hundreds flying around me and not one interested in me. I don't think any landed on me (but I still shook out my shirt before going inside - I don't want any black-oil-virus bees stinging me.) Eventually, they were concentrated in a tight clump around the queen (which I never saw.)
Anyway, after getting our neighbor's permission, we called our friend that is a beekeeper to come and get them. He wasn't able to come until yesterday but they were still there.

I learned that sometimes in a hive, a new queen will hatch and she will take some of the bees with her to go find/make a new hive. They will travel miles away so that they won't be in competition with the old hive. The bees cluster around the queen to keep her warm and to protect her. They usually won't move locations at night when it's cool (they try to keep the queen warm.) They will stay in a location for a day or so before deciding to settle down. The queen emits a pheromone that helps the other bees find her.
If anybody has any other interesting facts about bees, post a comment below.
Bees are pretty cool, maybe someday when I have more space (and time) I'll take up beekeeping as a hobby.

Okay, okay, the title is a little misleading.... It should really read, "Do you eat baby carrots?"

I came across this interesting blog post today:
Baby Carrots - The Frugal Idea That's Isn't.

I had always thought that baby carrots were just small carrots. It turns out that "...baby carrots are just chopped up, whittled down rejects, and we pay more for them..."
It's been a long while since I've eaten a normal carrot. It'll be interesting to see if I notice how much flavor they have (compared to baby carrots) when I eat them next.

Recently, I was chatting with a group of friends over lunch about launching things up into the air. Unavoidably, the whole Mentos/Diet Coke thing came up. I came across this Geyser Tube today and thought I should mention it here.

Our conversation was more focused on ways to get the bottle up in the air. We may run some experiments this summer to see if Mentos and Diet Coke is a sufficient propellant to lift the bottle. I'm pretty sure we'll have to reduce the amount of Diet Coke in the bottle to optimize the thrust to weight ratio.

It looks like they're currently sold out of the Soda Geyser Tube, but you can pre-order yours. For only $4.95, you can have loads of fun with your kids.

All I can say, is get ready to make a mess!

I have received another in the mail from OfficeMax. All you have to do is use it. It’s for “$30 off your purchase of $150 or more”

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Please post a “Thank you” comment to this blog if you use it and so that other people don’t waste their time trying it.

Well, the holidays are over and I think I've recovered from them as well as the winter camp with the scouts last weekend.

We went up near Solitude ski resort to go camping last Friday night. We built snowcaves and slept in them. I figure that the temperature outside dropped to near 0 degrees (F) but I was warm all night. The inside of our snowcave had a thin layer of slush on it when we woke up indicating that the temperature inside was somewhere above 32 degrees (F). Here's a picture of one of the snowcaves we built-

Now, it's time to get back to work in my nice warm office...

I recently acquired a Digital Rebel XTi. After patiently waiting for it to arrive, (I've been wanting a camera like this since Canon came out with the Digital Rebel years ago) I was a bit surprised to find that it is quite thicker than my Canon Rebel 2000 (35mm) camera. Oh well, I'm just happy I can snap away at my heart's content and not worry about the costs of developing film.

Soon after turning it on, I noticed a pixel on the LCD screen that was always green. I've tried to ignore it but finally came to the realization that it wasn't going to fix itself. Today I called Canon support to see if such an issue was covered under warranty. Working in the IT industry I'm aware that LCDs typically come with some sort of defined amount of acceptable bad pixels. Anyway, I call Canon to find out what their policy is on this. The first thing out of the rep's mouth is, "We need you to send it in so someone can look at it before we can say whether it's covered under warranty or not." Meanwhile, I'm thinking this is a pretty simple question. Maybe he thought I was talking about the CMOS sensor. I re-stated my question a few times in different ways and still got the same answer. I asked if I could speak with someone who made those warranty/non-warranty decisions. After a long wait, a woman from their California service center was on the line. She gave me similar responses and mentioned that it may be a result of the ISO speed (which would make sense if I was talking about the CMOS sensor.) I clarified again that it was the LCD display and got the same, "We'll need to look at it to see if it's covered under warranty."

Frustrated, I decided to give e-mail support a try. I used the address they sent me after I registered my camera. I sent the following e-mail at 2:47pm:

I've been trying to find out what the acceptable number of functioning
pixels is on the LCD monitor screen.  I have a new camera that has a
certain number of them that are not functioning properly.
In looking around I've found two different numbers referring to
guaranteed "good" pixels 99.99% and 99.97% from Canon, but nothing that
specifically mentions the Digital Rebel XTi.
Here are the references I found:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4399

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=3112

http://dvinfo.net/conf/archive/index.php/t-3112.html

Thanks for your help,

Mike

I then received this reply at 3:40pm (now that's a good turnaround time!):

Dear Mike:

Thank you for writing to us.  We value you as a Canon customer and
appreciate the opportunity to assist you with the Rebel XTi. We
apologize about the difficulty you are having with the camera.

Although the LCD monitor is manufactured with very high precision
technology with over 99.99% effective pixels, there might be a few dead
pixels among the remaining 0.01% or less pixels. These pixels are
normally displayed as red or black. They are not considered a
malfunction and do not effect the images recorded.

We hope this information is helpful to you.  Please feel free to contact
us again if you have any other questions or concerns  with the Rebel
XTi.

Thank you for choosing Canon.
Sincerely,
Liz
Technical Support Representative

Thus, with a straightforward answer, Liz was able to restore my confidence in Canon. So, there you have it. Overall, it's a slightly dissapointing to have an expensive camera with a small defect like this, but I'm just giddy to finally have one.