On the way into work this morning I was listening to NPR and I heard an article about the plant/weed remover called Roundup. Have you heard of it? I’ve used it at home. Apparently Roundup is very popular in the Agricultural world. Instead of plowing fields, farmers just spray roundup to kill all vegetation and then they plant their seeds. They were saying that this is actually more environmentally friendly than plowing the fields, and apparently Roundup is actually a pretty safe chemical. And it’s been around for 20-30 years.
Even better (for the farmer) is that Monsanto (who created Roundup) also helped engineer roundup resistant soybeen and corn seeds. This way the farmer plants his seeds then sprays roundup and lo and behold no weeds.
But something interesting started happening around 2000. Certain weeds (horseweed being one of the more virulent) have become resistant to Roundup. And they are starting to spread. Know what Monsanto’s response is? (Monsanto stands to lose BILLIONS if farmers stop using Roundup) enhance roundup with more toxic chemicals and then reengineer the seed stock to be resistant to that… Can you see a theme here?
I’ve been trying to eat more organically these days… It’s stories like this that make me think that NON GMO food is a good thing….
Ok… I’ll now admit that I have an XBox 360. I find it lots of fun… Although I don’t play it SUPER often, it was well worth the price. (Hit me up for my gamertag if you have one). Recently I picked up a game called Guitar Hero II. And I gotta say… It’s a blast… It’s a game I can play with my kids around. They want to play too and my oldest likes the whammy bar, so we play together, I play the music and she whammies when it’s time. The guitar controller also came with a bunch of stickers so my girls helped me decorate it. My oldest’s favorite song is the “Mommy’s allright, Daddy’s alright song” (surrender by Cheap trick).
Onto describing the game:
It’s really pretty neat the guitar controller has 5 colored buttons on the neck, a “pick” plate that you can strum up and down, and a whammy bar.
When you play the game, you basically select a song and you see a vertical representation of the guitar neck. As the music and lyrics play, colored notes (representing the 5 colored buttons) scroll from the top to the bottom, as the note hits the bottom of the screen you have to have the corresponding button pressed and you need to “pick” to hit the note.
If you can do this with enough success the crowd cheers you and ultimately you finish the song. However if you miss a lot, you don’t even get to finish the song as the crowd “boos” you off stage. As you successfully hit notes your score increases and if you hit 10 notes in a row you get a 2x score multiplier 20 notes in a row gets you 3x and 40 gets you 4x. (If you miss a note though… you lose the multiplier).
There are 4 levels of difficulty. easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. Easy starts of with 3 fret buttons and the levels quickly get really hard if you are musically challenged like I am 
The game also comes with a practice mode where you can slow songs down in order to get the fingering right 
Overall I give this game high marks. It’s a lot of fun.
My wife and daughter went back to school shopping yesterday… My oldest is heading to kindergarten this fall… My oldest is almost 6!… I just can’t believe it. She got a dress, another outfit, a spiffy new backpack based on “The littlest pet shop” toys, and the piece de resistance…
Wait for it …
Supergirl underware! She was very excited and when she came home she tried on the dress for me… and flashed her underware with a big smile on her face shouting “Supergirl!”… it was then I noticed she had all three pairs of the supergirl underware on !
Well we are back from vacation and we had a blast. We spent 10 days up in Vermont. For a week we rented a house on Lake Champlain, in North Ferrisburg with our friends the Swindells. We did a ton of stuff. Swam, Hiked, GeoCached (for the first time), went to the Vermont Teddy Bear factory, went to the Magic Hat Brewery, went to some wine tastings, went to the Lake Champlain Chocolate factory, went to the Ben and Jerry’s factory, spent time in Burlington, spent a couple of days in Stowe.
All in all we had a great time… If you are interested in seeing pictures… check them out at Flickr. I have made the pics private and viewable by friends and family… if you have a flickr account let me know and I can add you as a contact… If not I can get you a “guest pass.”
Vermont is a GREAT state, I really liked the scenery and people that I met.
Now it’s back to the grind, where I am working pretty hard at work to get ready for a customer demo. At home I’m spending time learning ASP.NET and Ajax. So that’s keeping me busy at nights.
