What Earthquake?

I woke up to find a txt message from Tom asking about an earthquake.
I felt nothing.
There are many things about this story that don't make sense:

1. I am a light sleeper, if my bed was shaking I'd be in the know.
2. Lucy "Thunderclap" would have jumped right into bed with us if she even heard an earthquake let alone felt it (she slept right through).
3. Zach was up getting ready for work and felt nothing.
4. My house is between Tom's and the earthquake.
5. It just seems weird that a 5.2 earthquake SW of Louisville would shake houses in Ohio.

So I started doing some Geology searches on Google and created this map.
I used a Geology map of Ohio and Google maps to eyeball our locations as best I could. I'd really need some long/lat data to confirm this.


My theory is this earthquake traveled this deep vein of bedrock that did not go by our house. Based on this map I made I would predict that ONLY Tom and Meghan would have felt it (which is true now that Dale confirmed he didn't feel it).

Most of the people at work who felt it live near Lawrenceburg, IN which looks to be close to this vein as well as a lot of the west side.
This map includes roads and towns which may help or be too much info:

What would be neat is I bet the new owners of Karen and Jim's old house had a good chance of feeling it since it looks like this vein runs close to Fairfield.

Cube Life

My work group moved across the street into open office cubes for increased collaboration.
I'm adjusting OK, Bose QC3 headphones certainly help. But some people are still ridiculous despite our etiquette training. They still talk loud and have conference calls on speaker phones and cell phones not on vibrate.
So I created a Demerit system (using a Whammy from Press Your Luck) and this sliding scale from the Office:

Movie Endings

Movies with the best endings (my opinion, please add):

Usual Suspects

Ocean's 11

Fallen

Sixth Sense

Se7en

Memento

2 Days in the Valley

23


I'm sure I am forgetting some really good ones...

Last Lecture

This is really good if you can make it to the end (Thanks Henley)



Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium.

Auto Salon in Sharonville

I love my car. I wouldn't even know where to look for a new car if mine was stolen. My plan is to keep my car for at least 10 years (I'm over 4 now).
With softball and the winter my car was pretty dirty.
I had seen this detailing shop in downtown Sharonville (near Blue Goose) and thought about going for years. This weekend the weather was so nice I cleaned everything out of my car and made an appointment to have my car detailed.
I couldn't be happier with the results, my car hasn't looked this good since I bought it. The guy who owned the shop was really nice too. He called me during the day to let me know it was taking longer than he planned due to other deliveries. He even called me at home after because he forgot to tell me he put my XM radio in the globe box and didn't want me to think that he lost it.
If you need your car done, I highly recommend this place.

SkyScout

Back from Vegas and Toronto. I think Lucy got used to me being out of town because she is a bed hog again.

Vegas was great and Toronto went very well for my new process that had never been run on plant scale equipment. Vegas was mostly about college basketball and the only thing on TV in Toronto was the World Curling Championship. You know you are watching too much curling when you can see the flaw in their shot selection before the TV announcers mention it.

My first trip to Toronto came back in Dec. At the time Rachel told me she had already picked out my Christmas present. It turned out to be the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 noise canceling headphones (5 out of 5). I am actually wearing them right now w/o an ipod. I like to wear them at night on the computer to help me relax before bed.
Anyways...back on the plane in Dec, I was trying to guess what Rachel chose for me. I no longer guess out loud after our first Christmas together when I thought the "guess the presents while they are still wrapped" game would be a lot of fun. It wasn't.
Seriously back to the story... there was an ad for an item in the magazine I was reading on the plane. For some reason I thought this was possibly the present that Rachel had picked out for me. It was a great item but very far removed from anything I had ever discussed needing. The Bose noise canceling headphones I had talked about before. Really anything Bose is safe.

So, when I discovered we were getting a tax refund, I decided to buy this item.

It is the SkyScout by Celestron, a hand held planetarium. Using GPS and Accelerometer technology it knows exactly where you are and in which direction you are holding the SkyScout.
To make it short, I looked through the viewfinder at a bright star in the sky and hit "target" and it told me I was looking at Saturn. It then gave me some scientific data on Saturn's distance, period etc and an audio on the history of Saturn.
The other thing you can do is ask it to locate an object for you like Mars, and using red directional lights it will guide you around the sky until you are looking at Mars. It also has a mode where you can see Today's highlights and see what objects are in view for you at the time you are looking in the sky.

Rachel and I have been talking about going to Hocking Hills this summer for vacation, I can't wait to try this out in a really remote, dark, area. I was using it in our front yard and we have a lot of light pollution from Cincinnati. Using the Sky Scout I would guess the Apparent Magnitude limit in our neighborhood is about 5.0. The Spiral Galaxy was in in my field of view but w/ an Apparent Magnitude of 9.0 it was too faint to see. This is going to be fun this summer.

You weren't meant to have a boss.

As I jump from Vegas to Toronto (giving up 40°F), I found this great essay...

You weren't meant to have a boss