Space Oddity

I'd like to think my Halloween Costume had something to do with Chris Hadfield playing Space Oddity on the ISS being reposted on Youtube.  I'd like to think it.

His version is much better than mine.  So is his mustache.  And he did it without having to wear a spacesuit to convince everyone he was an astronaut.



But you have to admit, pretty close.  And my helmet is more on point.

Lights Out

Also for my sister in case she misses it elsewhere, Lights Out from The Atlantic.

Halloween 2014 and Commander Chris Hadfield

This post is sort of in two parts.  Part I is the pumpkin carving competition from work.  I'm not really part of that part of the post as I had a lot of interviewing to do for interns, so I wasn't at the party for more than a few moments. My co-manager told me my costume would have done well at the party if I could have been seen by more people.  His team costume won.  Guess who coordinated my meetings.  I knew they were likely - it's intern-interviewing season and Fridays tend to disappear and, out of all the things I do, I rate interviewing the highest.  Nothing sets the culture of a company (or department) as much as who you choose to bring in in the first place.

Part II is my costume.  Regardless of whether it placed at the company Halloween Party, I'm still sort of proud of it.  I based it on some DIY designs on line, and then modified it significantly.

Part I - The Pumpkin Contest

Team 12 was the team I was supposed to be on until interviews intervened.  The dropped-on-the-head motif was my idea.  Primarily because I'm lazy and the puking its own guts out pumpkin was done last year - twice - per Mike.  Mike thought they should have a category for no props in the future.  You'll see why soon - that toothpick toothed one next to Team 12 isn't even close to what he means.


Another picture of Team 12, but with Team 2's castle in the photo.  A little more prop, but still not the full extent.


The inside out pumpkin.  Very clever!  Props, but still minimal.  I think Team 6 won the competition.  I like team 11 - very minimal Nightmare Before Christmas.


This one got scariest.  Not the emoticon one, but the one eating a child.


A few more.  A couple teams went with a secondary mini pumpkin.  Team 5 has a 101 Sct. 1 citation pumpkin.  That's really only funny if you use online legal research products a lot.


Friday the 13th Jason pumpkin.  A pretty good behind the mask.  It looks a little like when Jason loses his mask in the movies.


Pumpkin Pi.  Nerd, developer/project manager pumpkin in the middle.  And the one closest in frame (on the right) is a police scanner pumpkin.  They spelled scanner wrong, but they made up for it by strapping a mobile device to the back so it would flash and make police scanner noises.  They were proud of having the most expensive carved pumpkin in existence.


Part II - My costume.

I think my costume ended up costing me more than it would have if I had just bought a finished costume on line.  There were two 12 volt battery packs as one was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and wouldn't be here on time, a painter suit, oven mitts, led lights, and several bottles of wood glue.  Ah, and a broken guitar string, a music purchase from iTunes, and an iPod portable speaker, and batteries.  And balloons.  And some wood putty I didn't need.  And paint, both white and silver spray.  And velcro straps.  You can see where it started to build up a cumulative cost.

So here's my helmet created from paper wrapped around a balloon that was supposed to be round but was more oblong.  I did not like the fact that it looked like a thorax on a bee or an ant, so eventually I chopped the top off and re-papered it so it was flatter/rounder overall.  Looked much better.


This is the piece that was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  8 AA batteries wired into an LED light strip.  I considered lights that changed colors, but that seemed like it would be a waste if I destroyed them.  And there's no getting them out of the helmet.  They're in there pretty solid.


Here it is with the top a little flatter and the LED lights installed against a silver spray-painted interior.  Believe me, with the batteries, it gets pretty warm.  Sort of like having your head in the world's most mild oven.


Test phase or Phase Selfie.  I post two pictures that are similar because...


...in this one it looks like my head is exploding with energy.  You don't realize there's that much light in there when you're in a bright area, although when you take it off, your eyes take a moment to adjust to normal.  But when it's dark, it's like there's a screen made out of light across the opening.  I'm sure it's not good for your eyes.  I tended to carry it under my arm and only put it on for a few minutes at a time, just in case it might be damaging to my vision.


And here it is so you can see my face.  I could have used half as many lights, but what would I have done with the other half?  A kid who came to the door to trick or treat told me my helmet was "on point."  I wasn't sure what he meant.  His sister wasn't sure either, so at least it's not an old person thing.


What's missing in that last picture is the mustache.  Why a mustache?  Because my costume wasn't just "astronaut", it was Canadian Astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield playing Space Oddity op his guitar on the International Space Station.  Now you know why I needed the iTunes purchase and portable iPod speaker.  The oven mitts allowed me to hide the speaker and iPod, although you couldn't really hear it over the music at the party.  My Canadian friends knew who I was, but most people thought I was some sort of Ebola hazmat doctor.  Why I'd be a Canadian Ebola doctor (I had patches for the arms) with a guitar is beyond me - I'm not sure that makes any sort of sense.


And here's the whole effect, although it pre-dates the mustache.  I hate the mustache.  Sorry Commander Hadfield.  It's itchy.  And I think the LED lights act like grow lights.  It got busy fast.  Fortunately I get to shave it tomorrow as a Movember kickoff event.  Unfortunately I then have to grow a new mustache for Movember.  I haven't decided what I want to grow yet.  No Shah Rukh Khan this year.  Has to be something new.

Pumpkin Head

I forgot I had these on my camera.  Some leftovers from Halloween.  My wife as Pumpkin' Head.



Eryn as Pumpkin' Head.  Although she was much more squeamish about holding on to the newly carved pumpkin.  She has issues with pumpkin guts.


The cat as Pumpkin' Head.  She has even more issues with pumpkin guts than Eryn has.  Shortly after this shot was taken, she bolted.  Refusing to allow the jack o' lantern to be placed over her head.

Soap Factory Haunted Basement

Last night Pooteewheet and I went to the Haunted Basement at the Soap Factory for the second time (annually). Last year was definitely more scary. Although this year, they claimed to have more "uncles", and we actually saw a woman being escorted out hyperventilating. I suspect the issues were 1.) they went to a lot of trouble to separate everyone individually (something Julie would have hated), and 2.) they put you in small boxes for a while. Scary if you give a **** about tight spaces. Irrelevant if you don't care. Most of the night I wandered in directions where they had to pull me back onto the main path, did as they requested (like sitting on a mannequin, which seemed to be an exception to the rule), wandered around the wrong side of the table of gross food, and laughed when I guy tried to use a stapler on me. Not that it wasn't a little bit creepy, but mostly it tickled. We were paired up with Julie and Alan and we used their names a lot, just to give the actors something to work with. I think the weirdest thing was the photo exhibit at the beginning which was an Asian woman in various states of bondage involving total nudity and ropes. Not part of the haunted house, but definitely a weird intro.

This has little to do with the haunted basement other than that we were walking from Aster to the basement near University.  Pedal Pub has a headquarters right along the street, so we saw all the pedal pubs finishing up for the night.  I have to do this.  Even if it means making more friends.

The bell they ring to announce you're headed into the Haunted Basement.  I asked the gentleman nearby if they tweaked the basement to make it more scary based on participant feedback.  No such luck.  That poster in the background is for the company that makes nasty smells for the haunted basement.  The smells didn't bother me until I got to the old ketchup, which they had nothing to do with.  Old ketchup makes me feel ill.
 

At the end or the haunted basement.  You can watch other folks freak out.  this was more fun last year when you could watch people wander around the maze for 30 minutes. 

Can't tell if this makes sense, but there was a fish dude who puked water.  Having to walk through a floor covered with a layer of water was pretty creepy.  Not because you felt all cthonic, but because you were worried about being electrocuted.

Probably a Lot Wrong with this Halloween Conversation...

Me: "See. We're getting teenagers now."

Pooteewheet: "We were getting teenagers before."

Me: "These were chesty teenagers. They're older."

Pooteewheet: "We were getting chesty teenagers before. They were Asian. But they were chesty for Asian teenagers."

Halloween Costume

My sister once posted about the little dead boy who lives at her house. He perished eating a bad potato. I'm going to lift the story and my comment from her blog and post it below so that you have some context around my Halloween costume decision. Lissy Jo, let my nieces know I'll be knocking on the door looking for a treat!


...

As soon as the toddler woke up, she asked with some concern, "How did the easter bunny get into the house?" I didn't know how to answer. Then she told me how he woke her up in the night.

3 yr old, coloring: "He's a little boy and he is soooooo dead."
Me: "He's what?"
her: "He ate a potato and it made him so dead."
me: "um...what?"
her: "When you eat a potato it makes you dead."

Happy easter, you've been warned!

Scooter said...

The bottom article is the most important. If Ame' met a ghost of someone who had died by solanine poisoning, it would have to be a little boy, because he would have had to have ingested an oz of poisoned potato for every 6.25 pounds of body mass. Ask her how big the boy is, and you should have a pretty good idea of whether he could have died by potato by comparing the weight. At 4 or 5, a boy would weigh about 30 pounds, not taking into account historical changes in weight and stature - so about 5 oz. of potatoes would have been sufficent. A medium potato is around 173 grams, which is in the neighborhood of 6-7 ounces, perfect for someone in that age. So...ask Ame'...was the boy about your age/size? If she says a little older, you're still in the ballpark. Nice ghost.

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Solanine is a glycoalkaloid poison found in species of the nightshade family, such as potatoes. It can occur naturally in any part of the plant, including the leaves, fruit, and tubers. It is very toxic even in small quantities. Solanine has both fungicidal and pesticidal properties, and it is one of the plant's natural defenses.

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Seventy eight schoolboys became ill after eating potato at lunch on the second day of the autumn term. Seventeen of the boys required admission to hospital. The gastrointestinal, circulatory, neurological and dermatological findings and the results of laboratory investigations were in keeping with solanine poisoning.

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While death from potato poisoning is rare, eight ounces of a green potato can contain high enough levels of solanine to affect a 50 pound person, and 16 ounces could impact a 100 pound person. Symptoms of glycoalkaloid poisoning include gastrointestinal upset, headache, fever, convulsions, drowsiness, rapid breathing, delirium, and coma. Three to six milligrams of solanine per kilogram of body mass can be fatal.

March 23, 2008 5:43 PM

Coughin Up a Lung - the Halloween Finale

Spoiler warning. Big warning. If you don't want to know what the end of the Halloween 2008 geocaching series looks like, then don't look. Eryn and I finally collected all the codes from the previous twelve Halloween caches, and took them home and ran the numbers to find the coordinates for the last cache. We were going to go yesterday, but ran out of time before Conner's birthday, so we managed to sneak it in today, if you can call tromping around in the snow and woods for over an hour "sneaking it in".

The cache was well worth the trip. This is what confronted us at the end. A snow-covered coffin. Wonder if anyone's in it? Was it all an elaborate ploy to do away with a fellow geocacher?


There is someone inside! Eryn had the school dog along with her, dressed in his snowsuit. He thought that coffin looked nice and warm. Wait until the kids at school see the scrapbook with Sparkie hanging with his new friend.


Interesting. What's that in his hand?


If we look a little closer, we can see that it's the Dead Man's Hand! I have it on good authority that he's hiding the queen of diamonds in that set.

Halloween's Not Quite Over

We found the second to the last Halloween 2008 geocache yesterday. After that, it's all math to find the hidden thirteenth cache. Eryn's excited, pondering what "Coughin up a Lung" might be referring to as a container. This was our third trip back to the same place to find number twelve. The first time it was dark and we couldn't find it, although I probably touched it in retrospect. The second time, I had checked the geocaching site the day before, which was too early to get the updated coordinates by the time we checked the next day (they'd moved it because neighbors were getting excited about seeing people in a park tree). The third time was yesterday, and I was sure I knew where it was, and yet still couldn't find it, even with Eryn and Pooteewheet acting as four extra eyes. So I called the other Scott over to help me find it (as I knew he'd already found it once before) and he couldn't find it either. Out came the Blackberry to check online and pulled up new coordinates. After that, it was a piece of cake. Or toadstool.

Here I am in a tree montage. Is it any wonder the neighbors' were concerned about what was going on? According to geocaching.com, they may have felt that the tree was on some sort of association property, rather than the city park, but still, it would be concerning to have people climbing around like this within sight of your windows. Maybe they're just very bad (obvious) peeping Tom's.


Eryn was also in the tree. She was excited she could get up there by herself, despite me falling off the far side and bleeding from near my ankle. Then again, that's how I knew I was in the right tree, because I lost my shoe twice, and Scott noted he'd also lost a shoe.


Scott in the tree, checking the same place I'd checked a dozen times for the first stage of the cache.


We persevered and found this guy hanging out on the edge of the lake, every near a muskrat feeding hole in the ice. Toads make bad muskrat scarecrows. Pooteewheet clomping through the brush makes a very good muskrat scarecrow.


Eryn, hoping for a prince.


Me, hoping for a princess. Maybe a British one who looks a bit like Minnie Driver, or a French one that looks like Sophie Marceau. Given Pooteewheet was geocaching with us, that might have made for an awkward situation had it worked.


It's been a long time since I touched a statue inappropriately. This isn't quite the same, but I don't think a real toad would have appreciated me touching his geocaching hole.

Where Eryn and Dad Walk Completely Around a Lake

Eryn and I went to Thresher Fields Park today to look for one of the two Halloween caches left before we can find the mystery cache. We parked in the park and our GPS said .13 miles away, almost straight in front of the car. Like idiots, we scrambled down this muddy, concrete-ridden hill. Idiots, because a.) the cache was straight across the lake and we could have walked down the road a ways and cut in somewhere easier and b.) there was trail about 100' from the car that avoided the "danger, loose rocks" posted area.


We got to the bottom of the hill safely, however, and began our journey. The first part involved grabbing rocks and throwing them onto the ice to demonstrate why we weren't walking across the center of the lake. Here's Eryn with a few sounding stones.


Sure...it looks like the rocks are in no danger of falling in, but there were a few that stuck halfway through the ice, and another that went completely in. The first half of the lake looks like a rock garden thanks to us. In the spring, any number of fish are going to get beaned in the head after a sudden thaw.


This is where we originally thought the cache might be. Good think it wasn't. I'd have never gotten Eryn to look in the mouth of this culvert. What frightened me is that it appears to be an entrance to Marioland. One of those places where you squat down and disappear into an underground world of coins and mushrooms.


Eryn. Concrete surfing. It's all the rage in Eagan.


Just before we saw the dead deer. Half of a dead deer, really. Maybe a quarter. And nearby another 1/8th or so. It made the Halloween cache extra creepy. I took it as an opportunity to show Eryn how some bones attach to one another. Eryn was trying to be sad for this picture. Originally, she was trying to think about how much her ankles hurt, but that wasn't working. I have a more angst-ridden photo where she thought about our dead dog as part of her method acting.


The goal of the around the lake trip. Find the cache. Wear the mask.


Eryn refused to wear either scary mask, so we compromised and worked a bit with perspective.


Here's the lake we walked around. It goes quite a ways in either direction. I didn't think it was so bad, but then I wasn't wearing boots and snowpants like some people were.


Eryn, happy to be back to the starting point.

Halloween Geoaching - Think Tank

We went to Ritter Farm Park in Lakeville to find a Halloween cache today. It was a bit further afield from our usual caching haunts, and I suggest determining a.) the trails and b.) the roads to get into the park before you get there. There's one route into the park because of all the farms/stables around the park and it involves crossing from the frontage road on the opposite side of the highway from the park. And if you're not prepared with a trail map, it can be a long walk up and down steep hills to find a geocache 6/10 of a mile into the park. Just ask Pooteewheet. But it was a beautiful evening for a walk, despite the 30-32 degree temperature, and the little bit of sleety-snow falling just as we were walking out made it almost pretty.

So here's what we went to find, Think Tank. Eryn didn't mind this as much as some of the other Halloween caches. The difference? No eyes still in the skull sockets.


See. She was willing to get close enough to poke the skulls with a stick while I signed the log.


But all was not well in the Ritter Farm woods. Dozens of strange rock cairns littered the deepest, shady depths. My sister knows what that means. The Blair Witch lives in Lakeville!


This is me, begging Mom and Dad to forgive me just before the Blair Witch gets me. I have very long arms. It's already too late for Eryn and Pooteewheet. I saw them standing in a corner near the cross country ski trail.

Halloween Geocaching

It was a nice enough day today that after breakfast we went out to try out the new Vista HCx handheld GPS and find a few of the Halloween 2008 caches we have yet to find. This was the one we attempted to find in the dark a few weeks ago and failed to locate because the GPS was bouncing all over the place, "Look Ma, No Hands." Here are Pooteewheet and Eryn hamming it up. I don't know what's scarier, the axe in the hand, or the fact that Pooteewheet looks just a little like Klund in this picture. I'm glad I married her before I knew him, or that would be embarassing.

This was our 100th cache! We're officially in the century club.


Here's a close up of the cache if you're interested. We looked in this log the night we missed it - we just didn't notice the opening where it resided. The log and pencil are in the axe handle.


Here's Eryn walking through an abandoned wheat field on our way to "Splitting Headache".


This is posed for effect and to get some appropriate light. It was hidden in the bole of that tree. Eryn hates skulls that still have their eyeballs. She was fine with touching the axe and severed hand, but wanted nothing to do with this cache.


However, she still stepped up and took a picture of me posing with the cache.