Working from home is going pretty well. I've been going into the office near Ann Arbor about once a month, which is nice to work face-to-face with my coworkers (plus visit Cherith!). Besides that, phone, email and IM keep us in touch pretty well. And our project, FossForUs continues to be going well. It's quite functional and useful now, so one of our main goals is to start driving more traffic there.

Here's a few pictures of my home office setup:

One of the nice things about the desk is that there's a retractable crank so I can raise/lower it by about 8 inches:

And the whole front ledge can go up/down about the same amount. So I can get the keyboard & mouse high enough that I can stand up for a while to work:

And here's my view out the window, a few days ago. Spring is trying to get here!

In the past week I:

• Walked around Chicago in really cold temps. Cherith & I went to visit friends.
• Almost burned down Cherith's house. I left a light on that had a cloth on it, and started a small fire. No real damage, fortunately
• Made red hot cinnamon apples. And a few pears! One recipe suggested it and they were pretty good too.

On Tuesdays, all faculty & staff are encouraged to attend the chapels at Cornerstone University, in addition to the students. Yesterday the steelpan band from Trinidad & Tobago Urban Ministries was there. They played some awesome songs on their steel drums, and their leader gave a short message. It was really cool. They are traveling around the US performing at many schools and churches. Here's a video of a steelpan drum being played, although it's not from the team we heard.

Here are two very good presentations about world health, politics, and economics.

The History of Violence

Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen And you can also play around with the data & graphs yourself with gapminder.

Watch them. They're incredibly informative and engaging, and only about 20 min each

Since my last post makes no sense to the majority of my readers, here's something else that makes me mad. Since Michigan moved their primary to Jan 15, before Feb 5, which isn't allowed by the Democratic National Committee (except for a few states that traditionally had them earlier) or the Republican National Committee, Michigan gets 0 delegates in the Democratic primary decision and they get half as many as normal for Republican. The major Democrats except for Hillary withdrew their name from the ballot, too. That makes me mad, so I found the voting record for MI senators, representatives, and the governor on this change. I know who I won't be voting for in the next MI elections.