He told me about a gift he made for his mother-in-law.  It was a very involved project.  He took a great piece of Onyx, cut it like a heart and polished it up.  Then he mounted it in a necklace.  I forget the exact number of hours he spent on it, but it was quite a few.  When he was done it was beautiful.  It got a nice jewelry box and put a little note it in, then mailed it to his mother-in-law.

When she got it she called him to say how much she loved it, but she was a bit confused about the note.

“Why do I need to keep it in the freezer when I am not wearing it?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “onyx is a very hard and darkly colored stone.  So if you keep it cold, then I can tell everyone that my mother-in-law has a very cold, hard, black little heart.”

She thought it was very funny, and it is one of her most treasured pieces of jewelry.  She even keeps it in the freezer too.

It is good to have family with a sense of humor.

BTW, if you have a mother-in-law with a good sense of humor you can buy an onyx necklace for her.

“Everything but the kitchen sink.” was the text attached to this picture from my wife. I am sure I mentioned we are moving from sunny Nampa, Idaho (close to Boise) to rainy Mukilteo, Washington (close to Seattle).

FYI, Mukilteo is pronounced like Muckle-Tea-Oh (like Buckle). Took me a while to get that right.

I’ve actually been here (in Lynnwood, where I work) since October 1st (flying home on weekends) and Dawn has been busily packing. She drives up today, and then we fly down and bring the kids up Sunday.

Looking at the picture I am not even sure what some of that stuff is. The chairs and suite case are obvious, but the rest is sketchy.

One thing about Flying Pie is they have a 170+ pound foil ball. They are going for the world record, and even have a tracking number from Guinness. This really cool foil ball is made from donated foil and foil resulting from the operation of their restaurant. The foil ball has a name, Flora, and a blog.

I had the opportunity to meet a lot of really cool Boise bloggers. If I were to try to list them I would certainly miss a few. Hopefully this dinner we become a regular Boise event. Maybe we can bring Shel back again.
While we were talking Shel mentioned that his speaking engagement was in the AM, but his flight wasn’t until late, so I asked if he would be open to coming by my work and talking to our VP about internal blogging at Washington Group International. More on this later.

• Time/Date: 6:30-8:30 pm, Monday, May 15 (TONIGHT!)
• Place: Flying Pie Pizza, 6508 Fairview, Boise, Idaho
• Deal: Pizza and soda for $4.00

In addition to local blogosphere members, Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations, will be there.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Boise] [Idaho] [Boise, Idaho] [Dinner] [Event] [Naked Conversations] [Blog] [Blogger] [Blogging]

Robert Scoble is the other author of Naked Conversations. He linked to my BSDG blog when I posted about PDC, and then I met him at PDC 2005. I look forward to meeting Shel. Maybe I will get him to autograph my book. For some reason I am really into autographed books.

Sen. Bunderson points out that not only is our major export no longer potatoes, but is instead High Technology, but potatoes are not even the top agricultural export.  More milk and livestock are exported then potatoes.  We also export a very significant amount of cheese.

My thoughts?  It would be nice to have Idaho recognized for its major contributions to the high technology industry.  At the same time we do have really, really good potatoes.  As far as uniqueness, there are a lot of exporters of technology, Silicon Valley is the first place that comes to mind for most.  But when it comes to good potatoes, everyone thinks of Idaho.  To be the best of a small battle is worth more then an also ran in a large battle.

Maybe we need a cyborg potato to represent the fact Idaho is a leader in both agriculture and technology. . . .

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