Photo of the Portable Poop Management Products omitted from the previous post due to multi-tasking with the baby.

In addition to using the long plastic bags that our home-delivered newspapers arrive wrapped in to pick up dog poops, we bought a Bags On Board Dispenser with Doggie Clean-up Bags to attach to the leash. The little white capsule holds a roll of 12 bags that you pull out individually. It's a handy gadget.

Today at Target, I picked up a Munchkin Diaper Duck Dispenser, which is the same product but with a plastic duck attached to the cap and sold as a way for parents to compactly store bags to contain soiled baby diapers while on-the-go.

I wonder if I'll have one of these dispensers attached to my wheelchair when I'm old.

- mike lee - baltimore

Baby met Blinky The Mutant Three-Eyed Squishy Fish this week but isn't too impressed. Instead she squealed in delight when bright red Elmo came on TV. We're going to have to teach her not to discriminate against three-eyed creatures.

- mike lee - baltimore

I'm half way through Ken Silverstein's book The Radioactive Boy Scout about a boy whose obsession with chemistry and atomic energy led to his attempting to build a nuclear reactor in his backyard as a way of fulfilling a scout badge requirement. The kid accumulated so much radioactive material by scrounging that the EPA ended up raiding his house. The book is based on the author's article which appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1998. I like the book so far because it greatly expands on the science behind the story and adds many sidebar discussions on how subcultures of technological optimism appeared after the discovery of radioactivity in the late 1800s and the splitting of the atom in the 1940s. The book is a pretty quick read, but if you don't want all the background info, I highly recommend reading the original article linked above.

- mike lee -

At exactly four-months-old, baby's first solid food is a tasting menu of Gerber goops consisting of rice cereal, pureed carrots, bananas, and pears. She didn't like the pears at all. Her favorite is the carrots.

- mike lee -

My daughter and I are winding down a beautiful weekend walking the dog in the warm Baltimore twilight. At the end of each block, we pause to wonder at the trees and the Moon. I can't wait to explain the universe to her.

- mike lee -

I moved my weekly production team meeting to the rooftop patio of our building this Friday morning because it was a glorious seventy degrees outside. I learned that my group of eight designers and developers barely fits around the round tables on the deck. So next time, I'll twist their arms to come to a meeting on the National Mall.

- mike lee - washington, dc

I'm here at UserWorks with a bunch of co-workers and consultants to test an early prototype of a web site. A mock-up of the prototype, minus graphics and content, is being presented one-on-one to a carefully screened group of users by a facilitator in a controlled environment (pic 2). The test participant clicks through the site while "thinking aloud" or speaking his thoughts as they come to mind. Video from the computer screen is combined with a view of the participant's facial reactions and digitized to a hard drive (pic 4) for later review. A technician (pic 3) is logging notes to a spreadsheet that is synchronized to the video's time code. Some of us are viewing the activity in a conference down the hall (pic 1), and a few of us are seeing the session directly from behind a one-way mirror (pic 3). This is the third day of testing a total of 12 participants and we've gotten some excellent feedback on the prototype design. Most significantly, we are hearing that we are largely on the right track with the current design.

- mike lee - silver springs, md

Seen today: An interesting pattern in the oil and vinegar bread dip during lunch at the Hotel Monaco in DC, and my reflection in a push-to-cross button in front of Baltimore's Penn Station.

Received this at work today:

I think she's channelling snakes now. We go outside and she sticks her tongue out, tasting the air.

Ok. It's a contest now for the best title to go with this picture.

--amy

This tongue thing isn't in the baby books.

- mike lee -