Geek Habitat

Monday, September 29, 2008 — The single largest drop in the U.S. stock market in a single day was today (no wonder we all hate Mondays!) 778 points, equating to roughly $1.2 TRILLION dollars in value that disappeared overnight.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm

I’m still not sure the bailout as-written was really going to stave off the bleeding enough to restore bloodflow (capital) to the market and send that capital to the right areas, but the uncertainty in the wake of the bailout dying on the vine is no good for the economy either.

We left for Corpus Christi, Texas, midday Friday along with much of the Moore and LaRocque clans (including Jason and his daughter Jillian from the Dallas area). Destination: the 5th annual Conquer the Coast bicycle ride comprised of a 25-mile course, a 65-mile course and a time trial course. Justin and brother-in-law David did the 65-mile course, while Justin’s father, Jack, brother Jason, and nephew Tanner did the 25-mile course. Sara and I were among those there simply as spectators and moral support for our riders. Sara got to spend some good quality time with her cousins Kendal and Jillian, and a good time was had by all.

Those in the doomsday camp will be thrilled to hear the end of the world has been postponed for two months while the Large Hadron Collider is down for repairs. Their description of the problem? “…a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let helium out.” Sounds pretty exciting, in the way that NASCAR crashes and Winter Olympics luge crashes are exciting to watch; it was, in fact, probably more exciting than the LHC typically is to the untrained eye, given its high-tech research is with things we cannot see without the aid of lots and lots of computers, giant magnets, lots of power and a 17-mile tunnel chilled to near Absolute Zero.

Gotta love real life rocket scientists. Enjoy Steve Jurvetson’s TED talk. (check his Flickr, too!)

Check out the TED site, too, if you aren’t familiar with it. It’s an organization that pulls great minds in Technology, Entertainment & Design (TED) together to give talks to folks. And they’re all available online. Good for inspiration when one needs it -> http://www.ted.com/

I came to the rather embarrassing realization yesterday that I’d somehow tacked on an additional month to Sara’s age, making her 18 months old when she was in fact 17 months old. So now it’s a little anti-climactic because three days ago she officially turned 18 months old. (Lost yet?)

This shouldn’t surprise me too much since I’ve been known to forget how old I am (35 in December… don’t ask me how that happened!)

Another embarrassing reality is I’ve been so busy and uninspired (blog-wise) that I never went back and finished Sara’s 17 month birthday post. /bad mom

I don’t think there’s that much cross-pollination between my Wild Texas: Parks, Nature & Travel Guide website and here so I’m reposting some of the Ike information I’ve posted there as a blog entry to help/inform: