Random Thoughts 9/25/07

• I tend to resist fads. Especially ones that are known to be ugly mid-fad. So I've determined to be the last person to wear Crocs if at all possible. However, if anything were to sway me over to the dark side, it might be these so ugly they're almost cute Jayhawk Crocs. Maybe. Just make sure you hide pictures of you wearing Crocs from your kids – that's blackmail material on the order of parachute pants, mullets, and leg warmers. We did buy Crocs recently for Graham; he wears them sunup 'til sundown, including naps. But the under-two crowd is not known for their fashion sense.
• Note on Croc dangers from Snopes.com.
  
• Brennan's birthday is tomorrow. Our little boy turns seven! That's hard to believe. He's already able to talk over my head on his silly Bionicles.
• I'm watching Ken Burns' documentary, The War (2007), a little bit each night. Of what I've seen, it's not mesmerizing like his Civil War and Baseball documentaries, but there's still a lot of good in it. In just the first episode there were half a dozen new things I'd never heard before–and I'm terribly nerdy when it comes to World War 2. Ken Burns should be commended for finding new material, and presenting it in a new way, on a subject that otherwise has been documented to death.
• We live in a Microsoft world. You really need to have Word (and it's good to have Excel and Powerpoint) or something compatible to it to survive. Word is powerful and ubiquitous. But it's also costly: Office 2008 for Mac is coming out in January for $400 (or $300 for an upgrade). What do you do? I've been meaning to try the available open source knockoffs that are mostly compatible but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I just don't think I can bear forking over that much money to Microsoft.