trip the light fantastic

nope, not a very good dancer but i'm pretty good at putting one foot in front of the other. and i did quite a bit of that this weekend in d.c. my parents came up for a visit and we all went to d.c. to see all the monuments and museums and the zoo.

we managed to get through the indian museum, ww ii memorial, korean memorial, lincoln memorial, and fdr memorial in the span of 5 hours (we also detoured and checked into our hotel during that time). i was quite impressed since it required quite a bit of walking and my folks aren't quite a spry as they once were.

sunday we woke up and went to union station (more of a mall than a transit facility) and the zoo. we spent about 4 hours walking around the zoo. i was hoping to see the hippo wandering about but he spent most of his time just swimming around his pool.

it's always good to get to d.c. and get that feeling of exactly how big and diverse we are. helps to keep all things in perspective.

a topic...about topic maps

i was reading in one of my trade rags the other day about topic maps. i don't recall ever hearing anyone mention them before so i thought i would read on and see if there was anything there of interest.

to my surprise, it was quite interesting. topic maps give you the ability to create associations between, well for lack of a better word, topics. see, in a topic map, everything is a topic. people, places, documents, web pages and the list just goes on and on.

so you create your topic instances and the you can create associations between two topics and add scope and all kinds of crazy stuff. it seems to me like a really interesting tool for linking all your information so you can easily find and follow a certain thread of knowledge.

the hard part now will be finding an easy way to integrate them into qualtrax and make our customers jump for joy!

ok, maybe not jump but at least wiggle in their seat.

a hiking we will go

this past weekend bethany and i went hiking with chad and susan. we decided to hike up the cascades as that is one of our favorite hikes (and it's easy). it was one of the first hikes we enjoyed over five years ago when we moved to blacksburg so it only seemed fitting to wrap up our time here with one last stroll though the woods.

chad and susan just returned from the grand canyon where they hiked 10 miles (1 mile vertical drop) to reach the bottom so the 4 mile round-trip to them was a piece of cake. and not one single time to susan get pouty or express and interest to give up.

we came across a snake (black with yellow racing stripes) and a bunch of *pedes (we weren't sure it they were centi or milli, none of us can count that high). we also saw many of the pedes' brethren along the trail that came under the wrath of someone's hiking boots. when squished, they kind of look like a really bad fake mustache.

we we reached the falls i mentioned to bethany that it would be the last time we would hike the cascades. she smiled and said yeah but that we could do it when we come back to visit. so until then...