is a genius in his own right. But he is. So when I was tasked with coming up with 60 unique Baby Genius Bingo cards for Kate & Gino’s shower I sought out his advice. I had a list of 50 terms and I needed a way to randomly select 25 of the items, randomize the items and then output them with tabs and returns in the appropriate places so that the whole list would flow into the Illustrator template I created. Doing this by hand would have taken me hours and I’m sure laziness would have decreased the randomness. A couple hours later I got an email from Jack which said “I had been looking for a little project to motivate myself to explore the MS Visual C# Express Edition IDE so I threw something together that might suit your needs”. And thus the “Bingo Card Creator” application was born. And before I had time to use it version 1.1.0 was available! I decided to make the middle square always read “Baby Genius” and v. 2.0.0 was immediately released. If only Adobe responded as quickly! So the end result was I got my 60 lists in about 20 seconds. Here’s one of the final cards, complete with rules. And should you need Baby Genius Bingo cards of your own (or any kind of Bingo cards for that matter) you can download my original list and Jack’s application.* Just drop either Jack or I a note if you decide to use it.
Archive for January, 2007
You probably don’t know Jack…
Sunday, January 28th, 2007Kate & Gino’s baby shower
Sunday, January 28th, 2007Last Sunday we threw a baby shower for Kate & Gino who are expecting a bright little baby next month. Since all of us find traditional baby showers somewhat… (I’m trying to find a nice word and failing so I’ll go with my original choice of…) vomitous, we were greatly inspired when Kate laid down the rules: 1) must be co-ed 2) no-one has to stay for gift opening 3) there must be alcohol available to guests. Hard to go wrong. Given the intelligence of the new baby’s parents and Gino’s proclamation that the baby would in fact be a genius, we themed the whole shower “Baby Genius”. So Jen, Jeanne, Mel and I hosted at Matt & Mel’s house (complete with stunning new kitchen) and served brunch to some 25+ guests surrounded by medical books, beakers, Great Dane APA on tap and a big sign which spelled “Genius Baby” out of elements from the periodic table. Pret-ty clever, aren’t we. We also played “Baby Genius Bingo” in attempt to involve those who stayed for the gift opening, which I’ll elaborate on in my next post. The gifts were fun, the food was good and it was a great group. Gift-opening pics are on my Flickr account… follow the stream forward from here.
The ‘06 wrap-up
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007So here we are in the not-so-new year of 2007 and I’m finding myself once again in the ‘too-far-behind-in-blog-posts-to-catch-up’ situation. I hate that. Conspicuously absent are posts about all activities between the Jenil wedding and, well, now.
Most notably, in chronological order:
- I got out wakeboarding a couple times in Wisconsin in October and captured another cool slalom ski shot (although not quite as good as the one of Spanky. (And then became deathly ill from wakeboarding in Wisconsin in October)
- Took some fun photos of Dex
- Katie Ruth came to town and the college roomies congregated
- I took a woodworking course and learned how to build picture frames
- Celebrated a fun Thanksgiving at Aunt Pat’s
- Got the best Christmas tree ever
- Did the whole Christmas thing at the parents’ house, complete with Jeff’s exciting announcement that morning:
- He’s engaged to Molly!
- Celebrated New Year’s Eve in fine form with friends & family at Jeff’s and elsewhere. Dressler made it a point to be the last person in Lake Mendota in ‘06 and the first one in in ‘07. A few interesting video notes… Dress is 6-foot 6. He’s wearing his wife Lesley’s shorts. The water is roughly 38 degrees.
The upshot: it was all good. Well at least 90% good anyway. If you want to see all the October/December photos, start with this picture and follow the stream forward. Next current update forthcoming.