Water found on Mars

NASA just released in a press conference that water has been scooped up and is being analyzed by the Mars lander “Pheonix”.  While scientists point to this as another step to proving macro-evolution, I say… hey cool! there’s water (ice) on Mars.  To see more, go to www.nasa.gov and search for Pheonix mars lander.

This is a test of posting to my blog by e-mail

I’ve never tried posting to my blog by e-mail, so I’m testing it J

What I've been working on

Today is the day… the day my department “flipped the switch” on my new streamlined spreadsheet. I’m having a blast today fielding questions and seeing the last couple months of work actually being used by the department. I can sometimes have trouble getting others to buy into changing the way they do things. It’s been said “Change is much easier when it’s done by you than when it is done to you.” I wholeheartedly agree. It’s also been said that when it comes to change, people fall in a statistical bell curve with 3% saboteurs of change and 3% change drivers, 17% resistant to change and 17% liking change, 30% don’t like change but can be convinced, and 30% like change but need to see the benefit in it. I’m on the 3% change driver section. Since I work in finance with a bunch of analyst type people, they all need to take time to digest and analyze the change before they buy in (they’re all on the 30% don’t like change side). This can be frustrating at times.

So today is a good day. They’ve flipped the switch and I’m thriving off answering questions and fixing little issues that are getting found by all the analyzer types.

The big plus is that I think I may have shaved off 2-4 hours of the entire department’s financial close time.

Google Sketchup

I've been searching for a while to find some free software that will allow me to model our new house (inside and out), and use it to figure out how to position furniture in our room and landscaping, so on and so forth.

I realize I could spend less that $100 on some landscaping & home planning software, but I majored in finance and feel that I should be able to find something for free in exchange for being bombarded by advertisements on every website I visit.

About a week ago, while looking at Google's "even more>>" section, I stumbled upon the program that they use to model all the 3d buildings in Google Earth. If you don't know what google earth is, you haven't been spending enough time with me....

The program is called Sketchup. Using it made me recall some old childhood memories. Some of my first experiences with computing were in elementary school. We started a computer class in the 5^th grade. It was fairly simple and I don’t really remember much about it other than learning some BASIC programming. You know, simple programming for 5^th graders… Anyway I learned how to write music with the beeps of the computer. One of the best things I remember is a little CAD (computer aided design) program that was the first experience I had to 3 axis stuff. I had lots of fun drawing all the lines and making a 3d house or whatever else I could think of.

Sketchup is by far the simplest modeling software I’ve ever seen, yet it’s robust enough for real designers to use. Google did it right on this one. Somehow they managed to make software that’s so easy, my four year old can use it, yet powerful enough that designers use it too.

It’s a little tough to explain in print, so I’ve added a link to a youtube video that shows you just how easy it is.

If you haven’t tried it and are the least bit interested in designing your own stuff (carpentry, room design, etc…) you should give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.