Our beloved Sheila has jumped into the web log sphere in a big way. Check her thoughts, and pictures. Thanks for giving us the window in...

Happy New Year everyone. Gail and Alan had their baby! It's a girl. Sydney! 7 pounds, 11 ounces, born 12/27/2002, and beautiful. Guy and Natalie had theirs too! This on our answering machine - 12/30/2002 1:39pm "Hey this is Guy. We...uh..had the ...uh...baby. Luke William. Obviously it's a boy. Luke William Duncan. 8 pounds, 6 ounces. Good looking kid. He looks solid. So you said to call, so I called. We had to move out of our room because there's a tornado warning, so we are in the interior of the hospital. Anyway, have a good new year. Bye."

Yeah, This about sums it up

Today Connor would have been 4

NOW ACCEPTING DONATIONS! Just click on the button to the left. "Save the Milliken's.

Ladies and gentlemen: Opera Baby. (Non Parents: Move along. Nothing to see here)

If you are unsure how to celebrate Halloween, Here are some ideas from your Irish brothers and sisters.

This article is on the memory development of 2 year olds. Apparently longer term memory begins to develop during the terrible two's. Yikes I seriosuly need to work on patience and my potty mouth.

Happy Halloween

Hehe. There must be something wrong with me, but I find this hilarious.

I'd seen this before, and thought it was funny. Behold the plush Cthulu

Does anyone else think priorities are a little off when stores will sell video games where you attack people with axes but draw the line at nudity?

Flea pointed this article out to me about a business philosopher name Flores.

Found a decent article on resolving 2 yr old <--> parent conflicts.

Ok. Who here is too grown up for good potty humor? That's what I thought.

Today my internet mood is VHE

Wow...This is a neat looking site... Gric

I've been remiss...but I'm trying to get caught up. I put up some more pictures of the Conman in action. :)

yep buck popping his head in again. you art lover types might like a photographer and (I think this is the same guy) installation artist Masao Yamamoto

Wow. It's been a while since I posted anything. I just finished re-reading the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings... . Now i have moved on to a book called: Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre. After the introduction it included about 60 pages from Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. Wonderful. I really enjoyed reading this piece. Next section is Kierkegaard...hehe

Star Wars fans in New York.

Word of the day:ephemera. Corresponding site of the day.

I just moved another step closer to being a vegetarian.

A couple quick things today. Perry reminded me of this site at Karina's birthday party. TopoZone. Good Stuff While driving early Sunday with Conrad I heard three great spots on NPR's "The Savvy Traveler". The first on Geocaching (an obsession amongst a few friends), the second on creating collages from items collected while travelling. (which adrienne and I have done for years, starting with our honeymoon), and a peice on journaling, which was inspiring.

Adrienne found this pretty funny site. ZeFrank. Click on all the stuff of the left side.

Hehe...Ipaulo has some funny links up to corporate anthems. Including this one for IBM...

Hehe...found these on wired this morning... Ot-to - very child dreamlike, I dare you not to smile. Here are a bunch more...wow I discovered a nice little treasure trove. Another collection I'm done now...I swear.

I saw this article yesterday on some scientists who wired a rat to a joystick. I suprised at least one friend by my lack of real concern over this state of events, but with so many crazy fundamentalists running around this just seems so tame.

The ren fair is back. I must say I was completely underwhelmed by my one experience there.

Adrienne got me a baby backpack (thunder-bolt-3-slapper) for my birthday this year. So... This Saturday at 6:50 Conrad and I saddled up and headed for the falls in Monrovia Canyon Park, after the compulsory stop at home depot of course. The canyon was cool and empty. Spring is at work in our mountains and the hills are green with scattered flowers. 1.5 miles round trip. On Sunday we felt the need to try it again. This time the Mt Wilson Trail from Sierra Madre found me sweating with my papoose. (They are having a race to Mt Wilson next month, as if) Conrad got to see his first blue bellied lizards, as well as the occassional squirrel and red tailed hawk. We made it as far as 1st water. 2.6 miles roundtrip.

Ran across the Teddy Borg on Ars-Technica. This is a wonderful use of your spare time BTW. I want to make my own now.

Last night I saw the last episode an interesting documentary series on PBS called Commanding Heights. The entire series is up on their site for 30 days. If you want to know where the modern economy is from, and where it is going, I highly advise a look.

Today I am 34.

This guy is making a fully animated movie on his mac. And it looks cool. Rustboy.

Every once in a while I find something on the internet that I just don't have the words for. Check this and supply your own.

Who's hungry?

Some interesting conversation with Christopher Hitchens on The Charlie Rose Show. Its in Real Audio party people.

From the gospel of Calvin and Hobbes, January 19th, 1986. A response to the silliness below.

I think we all know about Eric's banishment of the TV. I think he threw the baby out with the bath water. In this case we might both be right.

Conrad won't sleep. We decided early along on this parenting trip that leaving your child alone in a dark room to cry himself to sleep was tantamount to poking him with a sharp stick. So, we do other things. Walking, reading, and especially driving. Last night on our drive we were on Sierra Madre in Sierra Madre =) when Adrienne points to the center divider and says: "Wax the spring horse" Perhaps more information would be useful... We were listening to John Coltrane and talking about jazz. So here I'm thinking she's making some jazz reference or some free form "jazz-like" word association and I'm desperately trying to figure it out. My mind twirls about this phrase, dissecting it, running it through every iteration, looking for meaning. Finally I throw in the towel, admit my mediocrity, and ask her "WTF does 'wax the spring horse' mean?". Of course she bursts into laughter. She had said something entirely different and I had mis-heard what she had said. Typical guy.

Oh I forgot! Anyone know anyone in Pittsburgh? (sound of crickets) I want to get one of these stadium giveaway bobbleheads of Willie Stargell from the game coming up on 4/10. I think that baseball is falling into a mode of nostalgia, and not actual progression as a sport. I think it about other things now. But Willie Stargell. Even though I grew up in L.A. in Little League I windmilled the bat before the pitch because "that was what hitters do." Later on my Mother who was an occupational therapist working with the handicapped, asked me if I ever heard of a baseball player named Willie Stargell. Turns out his daughter was under my Mom's care. At an event, I got to meet the man, and showing him my windmill, was rewarded with a star similar to the ones on his cap. Email E if you can help.

I had dinner tonight with Eric. This is kind of a joke for his behalf because I said that all bloggers are really about "what happened to me today, and other similar navel gazings." I mentioned these two guys to him again- Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan. Don't agree with always, especially Andrew with Condoleezza Rice (whom I think is the woman most likely to get us into war, oh wait we are.) but thankful they are around.

I hate HTML. I despise all coding. anything that isn't intuitive is a failure in design. but that is neither here nor there. this quote was sent to me by a friend in the u.k.: "Computer games don't affect kids... If Pacman affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." B

Orale! What people should realize about Homies is that unlike most stereotype products (the product that immediately comes to mind I saw in a Ralph's on Foothill in one of those .25 machines called "Hillbilly Teeth" which were fake plastic teeth that were malformed yeelow and black. Having been to West Virginia, I can assure you that the rate of tooth decay is the same there as the other 49 states) is that they were lovingly and playfully created by a rather big Latino artist named David Gonzales. He has a website set up at: http://www.homies.tv/ They are fun, I know those guys in those figures, but I prefer my icons to be real. Like Rueb�n Martinez, a barber who loves books so much he started a bookshop next to his barber chair. The bookstore slowly won over. Even tho he still cuts on occasion. He has had the President of Mexico and the Governor of California read to kids there. The literary greats like Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende show up to hang. Amazing stuff. And David Soltis interviewed him. http://www.boomtownmag.com Proud to be a citizen of Aztlan. Buck

Well Adrienne and I decided that hamburgers were in our our best interest yesterday sooo.... She toddled of to J&B on Myrtle in Monrovia whilst I kibbitzed with the Conman and got two double cheese burgers, chili on the side, fries and shakes. While she was waiting for the objects of our future colonoscopy she noticed in one of those $.25 vending machines, something unusual. You know the cheap trinkets you can get from those vending machines (plastic bracelets, mini football helmets, temporary tattoos, etc)? Well this one has "Lil Homies". No kidding. "Lil Homies". These are small plastic representations of Chicano life. I'm serious here. Adrienne got me two. One is a gang member looking guy with a stocking cap pulled down to his eyes. The other is an obese police officer eating a donut. No seriously. AND There are 18. I now have to collect them all.

We finally got the picture back that were taken by the LA Marathon organizers. Here is a picture of my dad just after he crossed the finish line. Once again pop, you are the silverback.

Create While Here Before and after we are the colors of night, And in between we cast light upon those we may never see. �I have a cello piece he did in 1959 for radio� �She painted as if her life depended on it.� �You hang on every word.� �I saw my life in his stone.� And all these are true- String slip, curving phrase, pushed brush. Users and owners here then gone. But catches in heart they make. Filled eyes, lovers sighs, easy mouths on bodies.

Ok...so you only get opportunities like this every once in a while. Last night was date night for Adrienne and I. After a very average dinner at Rudy's mexican food we walked up the resurgent Myrtle to Coldstone Creamery to get some ice cream (Mint with M&M's and snickers). Well we met this nice couple there with a 1 year old and we started talking. The guy was studying to be a teacher at APU and he was just finishing up a class in teaching young children to read. We started talking about something called phonemic awareness. Adrienne decided to do a search on the internet about the topic and asked the guy how to spell phonemic. To which I replied "Sound it out". Ahem... You live for moments like that.

Got this link from Buck yesterday. Apparently the dump at Fort Bragg was near the ocean (yeah silly huh) and there is all this sea glass on the beach there.

Do you ever have one of those moments where you realize as the moment is happening that you will remember it forever... Almost every night around 9:00pm we put a sleepy Conrad in our car and go for a short drive. Conrad will quietly and slowly drift into sleep, at which time we'll turn around and head home. Adrienne and I have this whole ritual surrounding this nightly event. I'm usually driving. When we pull into the driveway Adrienne will reach over and unhook the house keys and head inside to turn off the lights and get the bed ready. I'll get out and as quietly and gently as possible get Conrad out of the seat and transfer him to my shoulder where he will melt into me and go back to sleep. As I was carrying him back in side last night I realized that when I look at him as he gets older, through high school, college, whatever, a piece of me will always see him as this tiny human warm and quiet, asleep on my shoulder with his head turned into me, breathing warm magic onto my neck. I reluctantly put him into the bed next to Adrienne, check the doors, and ready myself for sleep. I'm just so overwhelmed...so overwhelmed...

What do you think the world would be like if everyone's tv's stopped working?

OK there isn't any yellowing yet, so I thought I might plant some seeds from here instead... Bit of a cross post from a su casa but hey, thought I would share. Now go listen to Che-Fu! Shoo! Be well.

I think it was Lemmy from Motorhead who said, if I move into your neighborhood, all the grass in the front yards will go brown. A plea for more content? A massive cultural polinization scheme? Someone else to kick around? Well Eric has exercised the "friends" portion of this webpage, and (peer pressured ? :) ) asked me if I wanted to blog on his page. Eric is a brave brave man. Sure. Why not. But I can't guarantee that the grass won't be yellow here in a week. Whilst we watch grass turn color I thought I would mention this interesting article from The Atlantic on Artificial Society Animations. Aloha.

A couple of things this morning: 1. Congratulations to Kelly and Carl. We held a wedding shower for them on Saturday. Good food and fun. They are off to be married on a cruise ship in the Carribean. 2. Conrad said clearly "Hockey Puck" this weekend. 3. This morning he got up at 5:30am. I think he felt bad though because he started singing to me, and kept on singing to me as I carried him around the house. Almost squeezed him it was so damn cool.

Got some new Magelo profiles. Astenar Ikpyl

Huh. My boss gave me this book to read called Assembling California by John McPhee. This is hard geologic science stuff. Of course I love it. This is a description of the Sierra Madre from a geologists point of view: "This is the Sierra Batholith. (One REALLY large rock). The one in California has a surface of about twenty-five thousand square miles.It lies inside the Sierra like a big zeppelin." They think it goes six miles down. "If so the batholith weighs a quadrillion tons, and its volume is at least a hundred and fifty thousand cubic miles." That is a pretty big peice of granite.

I know I've mentioned this before, MIT has been hired by the GOV to make some high tech battle armor. First of all this stuff is cool and it reminds me of a great book Jim turned me on to. Armor. When Steakley was asked about its similiarity to Heinlein's Starship Troopers. He acknowledged that and said if he thought Heinlein could write action he would have never written this book. Heh. It has some of the best action writing I've read.

Found this article on Ars. This guy dropped his digital camera in a pond and it takes the most surreal beautiful pictures now. You have to see them.

My DAD ran and finished in the LA Marathon this weekend. Way to go POP! Bulletpoints I watched the very beginning, including the Kenyan team warming up, which was impressive. I was scanning 23,000 faces trying to see my dad. It was trance inducing. My mom hugging my dad saying "You did it honey" Kissing my dad on the head at mile 18 and tasting the sweat on my lips as I drove to the finish line to meet him. At mile 18 (where i moved to after the start so I could give my dad some encouragement) I watched literally 1000's of people move by me in varying degrees of pain. These are people that aren't going to win, that had already been decided. But I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of determination I was getting from this stream of humanity. Each person slogging on with some dream pushing them. Man, I was moved. Still am.

Ars-technica has a link up today to a bunch of recipes gathered from it's geek membership. With titles like Velveeta chicken and Dorito soup, they HAVE to be good.

Found this great site on the Eastern Mojave desert.

Wow this sucks

Here is Urda

And another link for Kayliena

Some links to friends Everquest characters (until i can make a permanent link) Eryck Dirkafindel Duurk

Who else loves westerns?

Wow, this cool set of links I found on the KCET website is to local arts and culture.

PBS is showing a Mark Twain Biography tonight. I may actually have to have someone tape this one for me.

This was some interesting art Buck turned me on to.

Hey folks since this is the giving season I thought I would remind you that i have a paypal account (ericmilliken@earthlink.net). Feel free to give generously to this needy cause. ;-)

Found this on Ars today, an article with the head of the Mars Society.

Today Connor would have been three.

A Time photo essay focusing on the women of Kabul.

If you guys get a chance check out the following e-stores i set up: Another Milliken Production Logo Xmas watercolor 1 Xmax watercolor 2

I opened up a virtual store for some of Adrienne's items. i only have a couple of things up, but i want to grow it. Let me know what you think, and by all means order something :)

i enjoyed this article on a relatively new form of anti cancer drugs. specifically, how they are creating some of these things is like science fiction

Autumn is here... I have posted a couple new pictures of Conrad and a second part to the poem Adrienne wrote about Connor. Oh, and I bought a truckload of Christmas lights today so the neighbors don't egg our house (although the egg might help our paint job...sheesh)

I found a cool everything you wanted to know about math type of site.

Wired pointed me at this site by and Afghan expatriate. It includes articles by Afghani's, art, poetry, etc... Good Stuff. While politics is frequently filled with lies and people pushing particular positions, I find the art, poetry, and music to be a much more personal perspective and one that frequently makes it impossible to hate.

Flea has a short story up that just cracked me up. Also check the status and excerpts from her novel writing madness.

Got this website from Ed. People are hiding treasures all over the place with GPS coordinates so you can use your handy GPS unit to find them. 91016 had 323 hits. Tempting...

{i've decided to avoid using caps for a while. i figure in my line of work, postponing repetitive hand injuries is prudent} flea turned me on to this poem today by anne bradstreet. last night while eating adrienne's lastest art piece [she rather quaintly refers to it as dinner, but i know better.], i started thinking about the creative process. see, one of the things that drew me to adrienne was the way she seems to be in touch with an inner light that i have always associated with creative people. everything she ,and these, people do is infused with this light. it smells better, looks better, and feels better. i stand mostly in awe. but i stand close hoping to find the secret. it occured to me last night and more this morning in my discussion with flea, that magic, inner light, and troubled boiling cauldrons actually have little to do with the process. it's more fleshy/sweaty/real than that. for me its more about dealing with self doubt. it's probably no good, no-one cares, people won't like me. sheesh. what do you think?

We found this guy trying to auction some of our rivets on Ebay today. Of course it's illegal and they were sold to the government, so I forwarded it to the legal people. So if you want to see them look quickly they may not be there long.

This little program takes your name and asks you some questions. It then tells you what your viking name should be be. Thanks Buck.

Yeah! We have another satellite circling Mars. 1 step closer to a manned mission.

I had never heard of Dave Hickey. Hmmmm. Now i have and I'm going to keep an ear out for the name.

Buck forwarded this comic strip to me today. Politcal humor with a blue streak. You were warned.

Another good article today. This one the text of a speech.

It's this kind of article on the Saudi monarchy that keeps me convinced I really have no idea what is going on in the upper echelon of politics.

Adrienne, Conrad and I went to an opening of a single man show for Steve Huston thanks to the tip from the Zucco crew (next door neighbor). I enjoyed the work. Especially a large one of a guy in a field with giant yellow billowing clouds behind him.

The Journal of American Medical Association has a bunch of articles posted on 5 different bioterrorism agents: Anthrax Smallpox Plague Boutlinum Toxin Tularemia Unpleasant reading, but EXTREMELY informative. I haven't been able to read all the way through them (they are LONG)

ok...those guys at the pentagon are comedians...I'm going to try to collect funny things they say. here are the first two. Donald Rumsfield: we're not running out of targets. the taliban is running out of targets.

Saw this today on MSNBC. About how eye contact stimulates the same portion of the brain as rewards. Make sure you look people in the eye to get your fix.

Hey Steve B.'s website. I've got it. Here

Buck pointed me at this site. Free Lunch I think I'm going to subscribe

Adrienne asked me to post this to the poetry page: The warm weight of you but growing cool head turned away eyes shut tight against this life (what color were they?) delicate skull curved and sculpted proud holding you smelling your sweet hair like peaches your fist curled tight holding our future is now a starfish open and unmoving on my breast they come to take you away

This article appeared in the September Wired Magazine written by William Gibson. He still speaks to me...in it he revisits Tokyo post bubble.

100 Afghan Proverbs

Ok...so I'm having a hard time caring about all this stuff lately...call it depression...I don't really care (heh). Here is a page put up by Wired that has some background on Afghanistan. I've taken to visiting this site every once in a while just to relax...and found this one following links.

This solution to the Bin Laden problem from my boss: If we kill him we make a martyr, if we capture him we encourage them to take hostages, so... We capture him, fly him to John Hopkins, get him a sex change operation, dress him in traditional Taliban female garb and put him back in Afghanistan. What do you think?