Soldier Ant 

Alright, I'm not really reading Captain America these days, but I thought this from Caleb was worth some linky-love:

In the ‘40s, Captain America used to punch out Hitler on the covers of his comics. I look forward to a cover in which the new Captain punches out the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

I mentioned this a while back when it was available for pre-order, but I just got word that longtime friend and colleague's boardgame Pandemic is now on store shelves!

And you can get a copy online at FunAgain.com too.

(Oh, and another friend and colleague Christian did a great interview with Matt a while back. Check that out, too.)

Ever since our son Edison was born, I haven't written a whole lot about our other (furry) kids. Natural, I suppose—tho' we continue to love them and dote on them, there's no denying that someone else in the house now enjoys the lion's share of our physical and emotional attention.

But I just wanted to say how damn comforting it is—as I write this at 4am, having woken in a fevered chill from the flu and deciding that I could not spend one more minute tossing and turning in bed where I've lain since about 5pm—to have the company of my trusty old Shepherd Kirby here in the office. He's up, with his typical heavy pant, lying as close to my feet as constrained floor conditions will allow.

I've written a lot about Kirby… have I ever mentioned how smitten he is with me? I just wanted to say, old boy—the feeling's mutual.

(For the record, Polly, too is up, but—in her typical conniving fashion—really will just take any excuse to go outside in the backyard. So she's hovering and hoping. But I love her, too. And Dozer? Laying near his mama, as usual.)

So… sometime in the wee hours last night… sometime after I wrote this (which doesn't sound at all insane, right? Pretty nice, in fact)… I remember tossing and turning, back in bed, and constructing an elaborate prank in my head. It somehow involved me calling the police (but dialing direct to the station house, not using the 911 emergency line. For some reason, this was critical to my prank.) I was going to report that someone had "busted in and stolen all my chocolate." Or something like that. The only thing that's not clear is exactly who the intended victim of this prank was supposed to be. Me? The police? My poor sleeping family when squad car 11 pulled up outside our door?

The horrifying denouement to this story is this: when I finally did come to my senses and awaken this morning, there was a lump underneath the covers beside me. It was our phone handset. Dear god, what did I do?

Now this is a great idea. Cubes & Crayons is a coworking space that offers daytime childcare!

If you only experience my blog through the RSS feed, you may not notice this (if you come to the site, you can't help but notice... it's BRIGHT PINK!) But I've put a little badge in the sidebar of the site to promote my upcoming speaking engagement at the IA Summit.

It should be fun—I'm working on an idea where, by way of example, I'll actually design some new reputation indicators for an existing product that conference-goers should already be familiar with. I've been in touch with the responsible parties and they're open to the idea so I'm rather pleased that I'll enjoy a grounded real-world example to illustrate some of the concepts!

Now just to grow two extra hours a night for the next couple of weeks and pull my talk into a presentable shape... sigh.