Purple carrots? You'd think it was the product of some weird genetic engineering or something, but come to find out, the world was once filled with these oddly-colored vegetables (which weren't odd at all at the time).

Read all about it in the CNN article. I learned about this from a Brit chatting in the #WOPN channel on the Open Projects Network IRC server.

Joblessness

This last Monday Mike and Dave — two of my Iodynamics partners — received word from their employer of their day jobs, Ingeo Systems, they were being laid off.

I don't know what is going to happen at this point. If Iodynamics can generate some business in the next week or so, there's a possibility we can support Mike and Dave full-time, but that all depends on several unknowns.

A wedding for the birds

Last Saturday, I took Christine and the girls down to Salt Lake City for a day trip to Liberty Park and Tracy Aviary. It was a fun day.

Lucy and Christine feeding a parrot at Tracy Aviary

The occasion for this outing was a wedding... a wedding we didn't attend.

My sister's (the one in hell) daughter got married on Saturday. Aside from the lack of wisdom in getting married at 16, she and her now-husband do not have jobs, lives, etc. It's just bad news all around.

Christine had thought my niece would be okay... and even told her she felt everything would be okay. That was before we found out about the joblessness, his being disowned, in a sense, by his father, his minor-in-possession charges, and other things.

If there's anything consistent about the situation with my sister's family, it's that it gets consistently worse.

24 July

Today was Pioneer Day, the anniversary of the Mormon pioneers arriving in Salt Lake City in 1847 and a state holiday in Utah.

We went to Christine's parents' place in Roy for a cookout. I spent most of the time with my brother-in-law Adam working on my in-law's computer. We did a long-overdue reinstall of Windows as the computer had developed several problems. In addition, Adam supplied an AMD K6-2 500 to replace the K6-2 300 that was in the motherboard.

Incidentally, the motherboard is my favorite socket-7 board: The FIC VA503+. I love that board! I probably bought 15-20 of those boards either for myself, family, or clients. So... it's nice to see one still in active use.

Being untrustworthy

After we left Christine's parents', we had to take some weird routes to avoid construction. I took a “long cut” through Ogden and stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank with fuel. However, once I got there I realized I had left my wallet (and my Handspring Visor, glucometer, and insulin) back at the in-laws' house.

Christine had my checking card with her since she hadn't given it back to me after running into the grocery store with it earlier. So, luckily, I had some way of paying for the gas.

After filling up, I went in to pay and threw my checking card down on the counter. The clerk — a young stoic black woman — asked me if I had identification. “No,” I said matter of factly.

She asked again and said that she needed it in order to accept my card. I explained that I left my wallet at my in-laws and needed the gas to go back and get it. She glared at me for a moment and I wasn't sure what she was going to do. Finally, she took the card and ran it through the reader.

When she handed it back to me, I glanced at the back.

“Look at that!” I exclaimed. “My signature is all smudged out.”

The glaring intensified as she handed me the receipt to sign and then I left.