A while back, I asked for Texas travel advice and y'all had good advice. Where by "y'all" I mean "Curtis" Thank you, Curtis! (I think Darcy told me to go to Austin; this advice was disqualified on the grounds of "My Texas travel guide drew a blank on things to do in Austin") So I went to Texas. And I came back with results.

Let me be clear: the main thing I found out is that my plan to use census data to pick a vacation spot was a bad plan.

• Dallas' Sixth Floor Museum was kind of like a nice biography of JFK in museum form, with big crowds of tourists looking at museum displays in an old storage area.
• Space Center Houston had a shuttle cockpit and other exercises in dubious usability.
• The Cockrell Butterfly Center was even warmer and more humad than the rest of Houston, but the pretty butterflies made up for that.
• Rice University had serious engineering

Anyhow, you can read the whole thing: Texas 2009. Or see it. It's mostly photos. I gave up on trying to impose a narrative on this one. I ended up leaving out some detaily stuff that I might normally include, but maybe wasn't so interesting. I ate at a Waffle House! That's pretty exotic cuisine for me. But maybe folks aren't so excited to read about it.

I know, you're still trying to decide which MIT Mystery Hunt puzzle was your favorite, but I nevertheless encourage you to go read David Hill's recap of Midnight Madness 2006. Torrential rain! RC boats! A man who can't see being directed by people watching through a camera mounted to his head! The acronymically unalterable smell of raspberries!