Ready for the Trick or Treaters

Ready for the Trick or Treaters
Originally uploaded by geosteph

Here is one of the cool Halloween houses in my neighborhood. I'm sure the trick or treaters will enjoy going to the door here. And I have to admit this house is one of the reasons Frank and I did our custom pumpkin carving and I bought a string of pumpkin lights for the porch!

This photo is from on of my 10 for 30 sets "A walk in the dark"

Recycled Skeleton

Recycled Skeleton
Originally uploaded by geosteph

This is the second in a series of belated blog posts on my 10 for 30 photo sets. I chose this set because it has a Halloween theme.

I took the pictures in this set during a walk through my neighborhood with Logan on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I was quite taken by the skeleton made of plastic milk jugs...what an ingenious idea!

Yet another use for twitter

When I joined twitter in April I was interested in finding out how educators make use of web 2.0 and wanted to share some of the education projects that I work on at Goddard Space Flight Center. I am now a fully fledged member of the Socnet and tweeting is part of my daily life. We celebrate birthdays, pick football games, watch the world series together online and support our twitter friends in a variety of ways. Today I got to do something a little different--online power tool repair!

I just had returned from Lowes and checked into Twitter when Ashpreggo tweeted that her husband had just cut through the power cord of their new Skil saw. Here's the twitter conversation:

H just bought a Skil saw we can't afford to trim the cabinets in the house, 3/8 of the way through he cut straight through the cord...

is there any hope for the saw now, or do we just have to eat the $$$ and throw it away?

@ashpreggo you should be able to patch the cord back together with electrically tape..according to @fireton who has cut many a power cord

@geosteph really? he cut clean through it, that's safe?

@fireton said trim them back about 1/2 inch-match the colors-twist on set of colors together (same color) tape it. Do the same w/2nd color..

@geosteph hug @fireton for me, he's patching the cord together, just glad it didn't hit him when he cut it

@ashpreggo the wrap those two wires together with tape, then twist the third together, tape it then wrap all 3 together with tape pulling

@geosteph there are only two wires

@ashpreggo the tape tight so it stretches... don't do any of this until you unplug the saw!!!!

@ashpreggo so there was no ground wire...shouldn't be a problem

Maybe I should have the car running and ready to take him to the ER just in case? why did I marry Tim the tool man?

@geosteph is it still okay if I want to run screaming when he tries to plug this thing and turn it on again?

@ashpreggo I guess you should be prepared for anything... after all I'm a geologist not an electrician ;-)

okay he turned it on, it works... now he's about to cut wood again... how can I get through this without biting nails?

Cool!

Cool!
Originally uploaded by geosteph

My first day of taking 10 pictures a day for 30 days was September 25th-the day Frank and I flew to Alaska. We flew from Baltimore to Chicago to Seattle to Anchorage-(we had to stay on the plane) and finally to Fairbanks. Here is the view out of the airplane as we approached the Fairbanks Airport.

10 for 30 revisited

When I started 10 for 30 (ten pictures a day for 30 days) I planned on updating this blog with a daily picture of the day from my Flickr page. Thirty days later and here I am-finally. The picture here is from NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. According to Flickr it is my most popular photo ordered by "interestingness".

I just set up Flickr to post directly to blogger...I will try to pick one photo from each day and try a blog post from Flickr in addition to what I plan to be more regular posts. I think my chances are pretty good--I have a big proposal due Dec 7th and this will be a great way to procrastinate!