I've posted photos from our vacation in The Green Bag Gallery

I tagged this page on del.icio.us last week, but haven't had time to blog about it until now. This map of the Eisenhower Interstate System is one of the most interesting maps I've ever seen.

When you disregard the actual distances between cities on the map, the relationships between the different Interstates becomes immediately clear. Thanks to some history bits on the radio, I recently learned about Henry Joy and his relationship to the Interstate 80 transcontinental route between New York and San Francisco.

The steep spiral staircase in the lighthouse at Iroquois Point has 72 steps. I climbed them. Twice.

I haven't blogged our Family Fridays in a couple of weeks, but we've still had them. Two Fridays ago, Teri and I geocached our way across Route 30 on our way to Orrville, then joined the girls, and the whole Johnson clan for Emily's Graduation Party and a whole Independence weekend of fun. Last Friday started out with more geocaching and a picnic lunch at Pontiac Lake, then we picked up Saturday afternoon with enough hours at our friends' pool to turn me into lobster man for most of last week.

This week, we started Family Friday a day early, with a drive to my inlaws' cabin in Grayling on Thursday evening. This gave us a good head start on our weekend trip to Sault Sainte Marie.

Dad and Mom have Fridays off all summer, and we wanted to make sure that we didn't just sit around and do nothing, or fill up those Fridays with busyness, so we've declared Family Fridays for the summer. A few Fridays are scheduled for us, like Emily's graduation party, but on our way back from Tom and Tiffany's wedding, we decided to go ahead and plan as many Friday activities as possible. We stopped at the Michigan Welcome Center in Monroe and picked up a whole bunch of flyers, and then added in other items we've wanted to do as well.

Today's activity was a trip to Lansing, where we visited the Michigan Historical Museum. We walked through a couple of centuries of Michigan history in a fairly short time. It would be nice to go back and spend a little more time in a few areas, but at times we were dodging some school tour groups.

When we were kids, there was always talk about digging a hole (through the center of the earth) to China. Thanks to the sandwich tool at zefrank.com, I now know that wouldn't work out so well. In fact, from just about anywhere in the continental US, you'd have to hit some small island in the Indian Ocean in order to dig through to dry land at all. (Best bet looks to be right along the northern border of Montana.)

This is incredible:

http://vwisb7.vkw.tu-dresden.de/~treiber/MicroApplet/

The first thing that I noticed while watching the default view of the simulator is that I've been right all along. It only takes one idiot who doesn't know how to merge to cause the daily traffic jam. The effect of a single vehicle on traffic is really pretty amazing to behold.

I'm at a work-related conference this weekend - and more about that in another entry, I think. One of the perks of this trip is that I have a snazzy new laptop for a few days. I was hoping to be able to bring an old spare one, or something. When I asked if one was available, I got a brand new one still in the box. I'll have to turn it in at the end of next week, but in the meantime, I'm having some fun with it.

The first thing that I noticed was the fingerprint pad. How cool is that? Granted, sometimes it takes enough tries to get a clean scan that I could probably type the password faster, but hey, it's new, it's cool, it's bionic - er, biometrics.

Gee. All of a sudden I feel pretty dumb and narrow-minded in all my preconceived notions about space travel.

From Business 2.0: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Outer Space - Feb. 27, 2006:

Ever heard of 3554 Amun? It's a space rock about 2 kilometers in diameter that looks as if it might have fallen straight out of The Little Prince. There are three key things to know about 3554 Amun: First, its orbit crosses that of Earth; second, it's the smallest M-class (metal-bearing) asteroid yet discovered; and finally, it contains (at today's prices) roughly $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion of cobalt, and $6 trillion of platinumlike metals. In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates. And if you time your journey right -- 2020 looks promising -- it's easier to reach than the Moon.

Four lanes, four cars, one speed limit.

I would have to say that the makers of this short video truly proved at least one of their points. They may not have proven that the speed limit is too low, but without strict enforcement to protect those who do follow the law, following the law is truly a dangerous stunt.

Watch Video

Note: Video should be considered PG for some mild profanity.

This came to mind last night, and Sheri's Superbowl email reminded me of it again. It's a simple winter driving tip (that would also work on the "black ice" of Florida's oily roads during the rainy season) that I'd never heard in all my years of driving:

If your car starts to skid, don't look at something you're hoping to not hit. Look where you want your car to go.

I think I heard this for the first time either last year or the year before, and I've tested it enough times (deliberately and out of habit) to prove it true. The car tends to go where you're looking, so once you realize that you're in trouble, look where you want to go to be out of trouble, and you will generally do the right things to make the car go that way.