I’m going to take the unusual step here of recommending that people don’t go on the Klondike Gold Rusher at Wild Waves Enchanted Village in Federal Way. It looks like a fairly easy coaster, but it has abrupt reversals of direction that, as they increase in speed, increase in pain level as well. I admit it is neat the way you look like you’re about to fly off the rails before turning, but I really was not having fun by the end: there was one turn that threw me hard into Ael as she sat next to me.

The Timberhawk, on the other hand, gets more fun every time I ride it. :-) It’s a wooden coaster, so you are frequently diving into a great deal of internal structure. :-) The turns are smooth, and the dives are fast.

If you’re taking kids, you might want to see if you can still find Danimals with the free Six Flags kid’s admission coupon on the bottom: that drops the price of attendance way down.

Microsoft breaks its normal security release schedule today to address the download.ject vulnerability, among others.

Patch it while it’s hot! :-)

When I was taking CS classes at Brown, there was a neat algorithm simulator that would show us what the good (and bad) points of different sorts, for example, were.

A postdoc at UBC did much the same thing on his web page. I recommend checking it out. Kind of makes me regret the ORDER BY clause… :-)

Mark@BoingBoing tried to link to an interesting piece of playground equipment, but he had to keep correcting himself as to what it actually was. :-) See the updates in red for a neat topological discussion.

I don’t do much (read any) .NET development, but thought the title of this article was catchy enough that I should pass it on.

Ten Must-Have Tools Every (.NET) Developer Should Download Now

Thanks to Scoble for the link.

If a newspaper had been smearing my family for months, I probably wouldn’t have been as polite as Heinz Kerry was. :-)

“Daddy, I don’t want to go out with Mommy, I never see you! I want Mommy to do your job!”

Is Jimmy Carter really the person we want criticizing current foreign policy? :-)

The Baen publishing house has been making some of its most popular titles available on the web for free at the Baen Free Library.

A couple of titles you might want to look at are Lois McMaster Bujold’s “The Mountains of Mourning” and Misty Lackey’s The Lark and the Wren. There are also stories by Niven and Pournelle, Eric Flint, and David Weber, of Honor Harrington fame.

Ael and Donna are watching Firefly behind me. It just got to the credit sequence of the second episode on the disc, when suddenly I heard an extra voice singing along with the opening.

Take my love,

Take my land,

Take me to where I cannot stand…

I don’t care,

I’m still free.

You can’t take the sky from me.