Daddy's xmas present
- Saturday, 31 December 2005, 16:49
I finally got tired enough of my old coffee and end tables, so I went by 2 Danes and got my new ones. They gave me a deal (I think they felt bad because they've still not delivered my last piece of bedroom furniture that I ordered back in October!); I talked them down even from their sale price (which, the sale ended yesterday)
I like the change. The old wooden set was too big, and always in the way. Walking around it, especially between it and the chair, was a chore. I've bumped my shins on it more than once! The new table just about floats out of the way. While it looks a lot less obtrusive, the surface area is almost identical.
My old coffee and end tables.My new coffee and end tables!
Now to sell the old set of tables.
Post Xmas relaxation
- Friday, 30 December 2005, 13:20
Well, if you can call it relaxation. Let's see, we got all kinds of new technology -- 3 new laptops, a new printer, and I got some cool new software that turns the video capture card in the desktop PC into a really nice PVR. Far better than the old proggy I had.
Unfortunately, it's been problematic getting to this point, and my week quasi-off (I've been working half days to use up the vacation time I can't roll over) has been sucked up with more Windows problems than I care to recount.
(more...)
What a miserable day
- Monday, 19 December 2005, 18:25
Both kids got back from Clanton last night, and were wicked sick today.
(more...)
My T'giving vacation
- Tuesday, 29 November 2005, 12:53
It's lunchtime, and rather than mindlessly roam the Internet, I thought
I'd write about my recent trip to the folks' home.
(more...)
Del.icio.us
- Sunday, 23 October 2005, 11:05
I just found this cool feature on del.icio.us where you can generate
HTML from your links. This would allow me to completely revamp
the front page on my site, using links that I can store from
anywhere. By using the right tags, I can easily categorize stuff
there also. It will take some kind of a background process to
update the HTML, as they don't want you accessing their site for every
page hit. I guess I can understand that -- what would be really
nice would be a button on the page I could hit that would generate the
background process to do the updates.
Very brief documentation on the page generation tags is available on del.icio.us' site.
Gimme cache
- Friday, 21 October 2005, 09:53
I should have done this a long time ago, but didn't really think about it. I've added a meta tag
in the page display of the photo gallery to have the client browser
cache the pages. This speeds up the display of a page you've seen
before tremendously. I've currently only got it set on the actual page display, and it's only set for a max-age
of 1 day. Once I'm done with more of the development, I may
expand that to include all of the gallery pages, plus extend it out to
a couple weeks -- I really don't want to get cached results when I'm
trying to repaint a page while testing my code.
Clicking through the gallery now is super fast!
Fall Break Vacation
- Wednesday, 19 October 2005, 10:46
We're baa-aack! What a great trip! Let me tell you all about it...

(more...)
Birthday time
- Saturday, 08 October 2005, 10:34
Deanna turned 14 the other day, so we had a birthday party at my place
last night. She had a mix of boys and girls over, and I think
everyone had a fine time. Even me. Although we've got so much leftover food, I don't know what to do with it all...
(more...)
Fun weekend
- Sunday, 25 September 2005, 09:14
Nah, I've not done much, just learned a lot!
(more...)
Super supper
- Tuesday, 06 September 2005, 18:40
We had a great meal last night. Kevin did us up right! For
Deanna and me, he made salmon stuffed with crab, scalloped potatos, and
steamed broccoli. Since he's not a fish fan, he made some
mesquite grilled chicken breasts and mashed potatos. Sure, I
stood over his shoulder for most of it, but he did everything, from
preheating the oven to putting the garnish on the plates.
What a chef! Next he wants to bake me a cake. I can't wait!
Hurricane Katrina
- Tuesday, 30 August 2005, 07:27
The old girl blew through here last night. I had to bring the
garbage can back up onto the patio to ensure it didn't blow away, and I
took down the tiki torches and moved the plants on the back patio, but
that was the extent of the prep work I did.
Things started howling about the time I went to bed, they quieted down
a little, then they peaked again about 3 AM. This was the first
time I'd heard the frame of the house creak. Wind gusts were
forecasted to exceed 50 MPH but the highest I've seen recorded so far
has been 48; now I know what that sounds like. Perched on the
hillside as I am, I'm sure my house took the full brunt of whatever
gust hit it then; winds are still gusting to 36 MPH as I write this,
but the house is quiet.
I only had one potted tree knocked over on my back patio, and the tie
holding my maple to its planting stake broke. There was no damage
at all to my property, nor anyone else's around here that I could
see. Well, other than my neighbor behind me whose screened canopy
tent over his back patio is kind of blown apart. I do see a few
potted plants tossed assunder, too.
I lost power twice last night, both times for less than a minute.
That's the first time I've seen the power go out here due to weather
conditions. I'm glad I had both of my computers on battery
backup! I would have been ticked if I'd lost the nearly 200 days
of
uptime on Yoda!
I'd take some pics, but there's nothing to show. I ought to check
the local news to see if there's anything going on around town. I
don't have to go in to work today -- I can work from home. But I
do have an ortho appointment to replace my upper retainer, and I'll
probably head back in to the office after that.
Fine weekend
- Monday, 29 August 2005, 09:36
I spent most of the weekend cleaning up around the house. I'd
gotten a rash of spiders on the outside that I had to wash away, plus a
couple mud dauber nests. Decker did his job while I mowed the
back hillside with my manual reel mower, but I never got around to
repositioning the one sprinkler head behind my neighbor's new fence --
it just got too hot, too fast. Oh, and something's up with
Decker's charging circuit -- I can plug him in, but he starts
complaining about a charging problem shortly thereafter, both with an
audible alarm and also with a warning on his display. I may need
to tinker with the charging circuit.
One of my other neighbors got a new sprinkler system installed
yesterday; the installer was quite nice and considerate of Decker's
fence. The workers got a kick out of watching him mow while they
were working, too. Speaking of sprinklers, I also sent a note to
Hsv Utilities to get them to add a second meter onto my system -- I
didn't realize until recently that they'd not done that when they
installed the system. That should save me a few dollars on my
utility bill!
I ripped a few more of my CDs, too. I've still got another box
to go, but once I'm done, I'll be looking forward to getting all the
CDs put into storage!
Car maintenance
- Monday, 22 August 2005, 09:26
The computer in the Benz told me it was time to have my Service B
performed -- it alternates back and forth between a simpler A, and the
more thorough B, every other 10K miles or so. Since I'd passed
the 40,000 mile mark, I figured this would be the first one I'd have to
pay for. And then, they started finding other things wrong, too.
(more...)
3D TV
- Friday, 19 August 2005, 12:42
Forget your HiDef set, the
next generation's going to be 3D! And in only 15 years!
The sad thing is, this is being worked on in Japan -- yet another sign
that the US is no longer interested in innovating. This goes
hand-in-hand with reports of the demise of the US space program, high
tech jobs going to the Far East, and the poor grade the US gets for
technically literate students.
Instead, we're raising a bumper crop of service industry zombies. "Would you like fries with that?"
Sprinkler sweats
- Monday, 15 August 2005, 19:15
Today was day #3, so the sprinkler system came on and did its
job. Everything looked like it did its job just fine, but as I
backed the car out of the garage, I noticed that zone 1 was still
leaking. And not just a little, but a pretty good stream out of
each of the sprinkler heads.
(more...)
New phone
- Saturday, 13 August 2005, 13:32
I got my new cell phone finally, after waiting my obligatory 2 years.
It's a Motorola e815,
and although it's kind of big and clunky, it's
got the features I want. I can make phone calls with it (a
priority), it includes Bluetooth, a memory expansion slot, and even has
a 1.3MP camera Wow, it plays MP3s, too (just what I needed -- another MP3 player!)
Okay, only the first 2 were real priorities. The memory expansion
slot is handy because Verizon cripples their Bluetooth to prevent you
from using OBEX to move files around. Sucks, but there are hacks.
But that
hasn't prevented me from using the phone to connect to the Internet,
even from my Zodiac, which is one of the main reasons I wanted a BT
phone. What was really cool was using ssh to
connect to my home server, from my PDA, over Bluetooth, via my cell
phone! (That's geek-speak to say that I established connections
between multiple products from various vendors and service providers,
using 2 wireless technologies, through multiple encrypted layers, to go
from my dining room to my study. Via New Jersey.)
It's also got a great speaker phone, and does a pretty darned
good job with voice recognition! Overall, I'm pretty impresed
considering my net price works out to be about $4.
Global file access using WFB
- Friday, 12 August 2005, 12:57
I've setup shared areas for my files and my kids' on this server, using this really cool script
I found on SourceForge. This is so neat, 'cuz it will allow us to
save files and access them anyplace, anytime, as long as we can get to a web
browser! It's easy to manage, a cinch to setup, provides a
variety of authentication methods, and also allows us to share those
files (without fear of browsing) once we've posted them! It's
really cool that it's a single script, too, which makes it so much
easier to manage. Big thumbs up!
My Smart House
- Thursday, 11 August 2005, 21:16
Check out HP's OpenVMS site for a Success Story about your's truly! After you read it, be sure to head over to OpenVMS.org and vote for my story as the best, so I can win the DS10L that Island Computer is giving away!
I'm so tickled that I'm in such a close race for the lead!
"Humanists Concerned by Bush's Anti-Science Stance" leads Aaron anew
- Sunday, 07 August 2005, 10:40
In a press release from the American Humanists Association,
a lucid and progressive statement was made about Dubber's continuing
crusade against the betterment of our society. What was really
inspiring to me was the rest of their website.
I've heard of this organization for many years now, but have never
found their website (probably because I've not taken the time to look
for them). This press release
that I picked up through my RSS aggregator gave me a portal into their
site, and quickly opened my eyes to the parallels between their goals
and my own.
I may have finally found a like-minded group of humans that I can feel comfortable
with. Not a militant anti-theistic group, nor an organization
with no clear direction, AHA's manifesto reads like someone peered inside my head and stole my deepest desires for our society.
I've got some more learning to do. I wish the Dubber could admit that.
I am not me?
- Saturday, 30 July 2005, 00:15
Found out this week that at least one of my credit cards had been compromised. Here's a good page from the FTC about ID theft that's got some useful info on it.
Still
watching accounts, filed a police report, contacted credit bureaus, the
FTC, my banks, and am now waiting for the FBI to call. If this
wasn't so stressful, it would be interesting. And I've got more
to do next week. Not fun and a big waste of time. And it's
only starting.
And I try so darned hard to make sure that all my
stuff is secure. It will be interesting to see what my CC company
shows as being the source of the fraud.
Fun weekend goofing off
- Monday, 25 July 2005, 17:43
Catch up
- Saturday, 16 July 2005, 00:45
Let me catch up on the past couple of weeks...
(more...)
Movie time: War of the Worlds
- Friday, 08 July 2005, 22:13
I saw
War of the Worlds
tonight, the new one with Tom Cruise. Pretty cool flick, there
was something about it that made it very real. Perhaps it was the
disaffected single dad, although it did seem kind of surreal that he
would walk all the way from NY to Boston with his kid just to get her
back to her mom. What made him think that Boston was even still
there?
But then, it may have been the human perspective, and I could see a lot
of realism in the portrayal of the family and the way people
responded. What wasn't real was the separation of the father and
son (I'd knock my son out and drag him away before letting him walk
into a battlefield!) and the idea of burying an invasion force for a
million years or so didn't quite make sense to me.
I'll give it a 4 out of 5. It was fun, kept me on the edge of my
seat, was somewhat faithful to the earlier versions, and kept the
perspective restricted to just what the hero knew.
I hate Slaughter
- Sunday, 03 July 2005, 13:47
I've slacked off a bit in my exercising, so after the F1 race broadcast
from Magny-Cours, I went for a nice bike ride. After a couple
laps around the neighborhood, I took off for the Greenway.
(more...)
My Florida New England vacation
- Wednesday, 22 June 2005, 09:25
Busy weekend
- Sunday, 19 June 2005, 13:54
I thought I was going to get to relax this weekend. Ha.
(more...)
Where the sun never sets...
- Saturday, 18 June 2005, 08:05
I was reading this week's JREF commentary, the SWIFT newsletter, when I
came across this excellent speech given by Phil Plait, the author of
the Bad Astronomy
website. For anyone who is interested in reality and what the
scientific process can offer humanity, especially versus
pseudo-science, magic, and superstition, this is an excellent, brief,
and to the point synopsis.
Hot summer coming
- Friday, 17 June 2005, 07:30
Amid emotion is heard science's voice
- Thursday, 16 June 2005, 06:59
Do you think that
the voice of reason
will do anything to stop the absurdities that were thrown about the
past few years in Florida? I'm afraid not -- watching FOX News
last night (sorry, I was a captive audience in a restaurant -- I know,
I probably should have boycotted them for having FOX on in the first
place), Terri Schiavo's
brother refused, repeatedly, to admit that they were wrong
on any of the points in question. They are now investigating what
legal steps they can take. Who are they going to sue, the
ME? The state? How sad to live in such denial of
reality. I kind of doubt we'll hear an apology from either of the
Bush brothers for their unconstitutional and unwarranted behaviour,
either.
Slow start to summer
- Monday, 13 June 2005, 11:53
It's been really quiet here, and I apologize to those who'd like to
read about all the exciting things I've done lately. But, I'm sad
to say, there's not much to report!
(more...)
Dog days no more
- Friday, 03 June 2005, 17:52
I got the news from Seeker today, that an old acquaintance and a person I looked up to, died earlier this week.
(more...)
Now, sign the petition
- Friday, 27 May 2005, 19:55
So, did you find that the previous article
echoed your sentiments? Do you like what Amnesty International is
doing? Do you hate what the US Government is doing in your name?
Then sign the petition and let's see if we can do something positive about it!
AI is brave enough to say what others won't
- Thursday, 26 May 2005, 12:05
Some fascinating insight on the Secretary General's message. Some quotes:
"In 1973 AI published its first report on torture. It found that:
“torture thrives on secrecy and impunity. Torture rears its head
when the legal barriers against it are barred. Torture feeds on
discrimination and fear. Torture gains ground when official
condemnation of it is less than absolute.” The pictures of
detainees in US custody in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, show that what was true 30
years ago remains true today."
:
:
:
"Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the
application of the Geneva Conventions and to “re-define”
torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation
techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees”
(people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the "rendering"
or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise
torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the
gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and
indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by
military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process."
"The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic
hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When
the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of
law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse
with impunity and audacity."
I'm
ready to join their cause. If this is the only organization not
afraid and willing to stand up and decry the abuses carried out by the
Bush regime, then they have my support. You can join too.
Episode 6. Errr, 3...
- Thursday, 19 May 2005, 21:11
Just got back from watching Star Wars Episode 3. It was everything
I expected, and everything I hoped. All the pieces fell into
place so tidily, right down to Obi Wan picking up Vader's light saber
and walking off with it. I even enjoyed the "guest appearance" by
Chewbacca.
The most fantastic part of the whole thing is that I think I've seen
every single episode on opening day. What a great time to be
alive, where one can watch an epic like this over a 30 year period and
it still be as fresh and exciting at the end as it was at the
beginning. Thirty years ago, when I was in college...
And now it's over.
Well, not really. I need to buy the director's cut of the first
trilogy and watch that again, this time with the kids. I guess I
could be watching this for many years to come. It hasn't gotten
old yet!
Disrespectful and deliberately rude
- Monday, 16 May 2005, 19:40
What is it about Xtians that makes them think that they can be deliberately rude to other people?
(more...)
A couple new items
- Saturday, 14 May 2005, 11:30
I've added another album to my photo gallery --
My Favorites. This is a collection of my favorite photos that I've taken.
Also, be sure to check out my
Link Dump -- you'll find that on
the left column of my blog's main page, down towards the bottom.
Even if I don't post an article, I'll often add links to stuff that I'm
reading or following in there.
Final Enterprise
- Saturday, 14 May 2005, 11:26
It's really hard for me to come to grips with the fact that there is
currently nothing planned for Star Trek. No more series, no more
movies. With a big moneymaker like this, that's got a loyal fan
base, huge syndication overseas, and raking in tons on DVDs of TV
episodes, the idea that they're giving up on it due to financial
reasons just doesn't make sense.
But the final 2 shows were just so contrived, so rushed, and so poorly
thought through, that it appeared obvious to me that
UPN/Paramount just simply didn't know what they were doing. For
example, they've been building up a relationship between T'Pol and Trip
for over a season now, and what's the culmination of it? They
have a baby and then drift apart. Then they kill off Trip.
Duh.
(more...)
Yet another week
- Friday, 06 May 2005, 17:39
Another week slips by in our lives. I've not written much lately, so let me catch you up.
(more...)
A tough lesson
- Saturday, 30 April 2005, 08:36
Kevin's birthday was Wednesday. He was so excited when he
realized he had saved enough money, together with his birthday money,
to buy something he's wanted for several months. It wasn't cheap,
but he had enough to buy it on his own. So I couldn't tell him no
Wednesday night when he asked to go to the store to buy his own Sony PSP.
(more...)
IE stinks
- Wednesday, 27 April 2005, 07:22
Especially when displaying my photo gallery! I got a chance to
look at it using Internet Exploder for the first time the other day and
realized that IE does a horrible job at displaying a lot of the
really simple CSS I've written! Hopefully the new IE v7 that's
supposed to come
out next year will have a lot of bug fixes in it so that the page will
render properly on Micro$oft machines, too -- at least some of the
early articles describing it have indicated that fixing CSS bugs is big
on the agenda.
In the meanwhile, I don't think I'll be putting a lot of effort into
hacking together kludges just to support a feable, broken IE, so if you
use it to view my
site, accept my apologies up front, and then go get Firefox.
Who wants activist judges?
- Wednesday, 27 April 2005, 07:08
Why the buy-bull thumpers, that's who. They just want to replace
the ones in there now (you know, the ones who protect the freedoms of all Americans, not just the majority) with their own brand that support their narrow minded bigotry.
And that is what all the hoopla about filibusters
is really all about. If King George has gotten 95% of his
nominees, I'd say he's been pretty successful and should just quit
whining!
Decker
- Saturday, 23 April 2005, 10:18
Check out the photo gallery: I've added a handful of pics of my RoboMower out in the yard working. I've also got
a 3MB movie of him edging around my AC unit and a bush, too.
Check out the new style I've applied to the gallery, too. I like
this over the earlier blue, but please let me know if you've got any
suggestions on how to improve it even more.
Found and lost
- Friday, 22 April 2005, 18:21
The big veep from Atlanta came over this week. We hit him up for
pizza, and he graciously bought a bunch of pies for us at lunch.
The person who ordered made sure there was a veggie pizza in the bunch
for me, but when they delivered them, the veggie was a total mess --
all the toppings and cheese had slid off. The baker speculated
that the ingredients had been put on "upside down", preventing the
cheese from adhering. Either way, they wound up bringing us back
another veggie later in the afternoon.
(more...)
I Miss VMS
- Thursday, 14 April 2005, 16:24
No, I don't, not yet. But this UNIX admin guy sure does. For
those familiar with UNIX, this may come as a shock: yours is not the
best operating system. It's not the most secure. It's not
the most reliable. It's not a lot of things. Sure, it's a
lot more than Windows ever will be, but while you're smugly enjoying
your view down upon Windows, you might take the time to look up --
because there's plenty of OpenVMS admins looking down on your kludge of an OS from an equally higher perch.
I Miss VMS
Unitarian Jihad
- Monday, 11 April 2005, 16:21
Fear this, America!
The Unitarian Jihad manifesto.
Watch out, or you'll be overwhelmed with pockets of reasonableness and
harmony! The threat of "calm, well-reasoned discussions" by
"non-idealogues who have carefully thought through the issues" should
send a shiver up the spine(less) Fox News!
Well, it's good for a laugh.
(more...)
Work at work, work at home
- Saturday, 09 April 2005, 08:47
I can't get away from it! Last night, I was elbow deep in
computers -- you should see it, my den looks like a workshop! I
took my RX apart in hopes of getting a replacement ID0 drive in it,
which I took from my SX. Well, that wouldn't boot because the
SX's HAL wouldn't work on the RX. So, I took the disk cage out of
the RX (with both the ID0 drive and 1, which was my "big" 18gig
Hitachi), along with the QLogic SCSI controller, and stuck it in the
kids' PC. I was determined to get my data off that big drive!
(more...)
The End of Reason
- Monday, 04 April 2005, 22:36
Here's one of the most profound pieces I've read in a long time in a major
public forum. Herein the author says the emperor has no clothes,
and as I have labelled it for a long time, religion = superstition.
>The End of ReasonWhat a sad counterpoint to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.
The
majority of the comments appear to be positive and supportive of the
author, although there are the folks still posting who just don't get
what the author's saying -- and in the process, just prove what he's
saying! More people talking sense like this in public may help
keep the
bible thumpers (aka religious zealots) where they belong -- in church,
not in congress.
Out of the past
- Saturday, 02 April 2005, 09:40
It's been just over 2 years (23 March 2003) since I first sent
this around. Reading it now really saddens me that people could
have been so blinded by the propoganda machine as to ignore reality --
a reality that is no less real today, just being conveniently hushed
and blamed on bad intelligence.
So, why did we invade Iraq? Read on...
(more...)
So it's the intelligence agencies' fault...
- Friday, 01 April 2005, 08:08
Or is it? While
some report simply what the report said, there are others who look at
what the report didn't say.
Whatever happened to the old maxim, "
the buck stops here"?
It's not just about decision making, it's about taking responsibility.
Or is that something only a courageous president says? The time has come to start
the second phase
of the investigation, about how the administration responded to or even
helped create the lies they told the world about why they wanted to go
to war. Dubber promised it, will he keep his promise?
Carrera GT
- Saturday, 26 March 2005, 19:56
We were heading out to eat dinner when my folks told me about the new
garage in the area. I thought it would be nice to swing by and
check out their inventory, to see if there was anything exceptional.

I was not disappointed. It's not every day you get to see one of these.
The salesman was very gracious, and not only allowed me to take photos,
but also took down the ribbon around the car so that I could get an
unobstructed view.
Check out all of the photos in my gallery.
Trip prep
- Wednesday, 23 March 2005, 07:37
I'm getting ready for my upcoming trip to Florida. It's only
going to be a few days, but the weather down there is quite
promising! It will be a relief to get out of the 50's!
(more...)
Folding kayak
- Tuesday, 22 March 2005, 16:55
Who remember's Uncle Mike's Folbot? Well, lookie what Seeker just
sent to me! This is so cool! One bag and it would fit in my
hatchback! The Cooper is a single seat version, and they've got a 2 seater. You can also get the optional rudder, just like Mike had...
Ice>Link
- Sunday, 20 March 2005, 11:37
Now
this is
very
cool. It allows you to replace the CD changer in your car with an
iPod! That takes you from about 80 songs max to over 1,000 --
even with an iPod mini! And it just so happens that the new iPod
Mini with the 6 gig drive handles more than what I've currently got
ripped and d/l'd on my laptop. And Target is still selling them
online, where you can get a 10% discount! The only downside I see
(besides the price) is the fact that you can no longer use your CD
changer. MB's come out with
an iPod interface that does work with
the changer in place, plus it's cheaper, but it's not available on
anything less than a 2005 model. Shoot...
Kevin and Deanna's reader awards
- Saturday, 19 March 2005, 12:17
I took a handful of photos yesterday when Kevin got Classic Reader 3; you can view the whole collection
in the photo gallery. Yesterday's photos start at 3794.
There were only two other kids in the whole school who got the level of
award Kevin got, and he's got 2 others ahead of him
He's almost done with The Fellowship of the Ring which is the first of 3 he needs to finish for Classic 4.
If video games kill, what about the Bible?
- Friday, 18 March 2005, 06:54
If video games kill, what about the Bible?
is an interesting piece that says "the emperor has no clothes".
As I said in my comment on CNET's site, video games are no different
than movies or books or music, and the classic principle of GIGO
applies here as much as it does in computer programming. However,
any computer program worth its price will process garbage as garbage
and not crash.
But will that make any difference to the Bible thumpers?
Probably not. It's hard to look at oneself with a critical light
when you've god-given powers to control the rest of the world!
Teeth Time!
- Monday, 14 March 2005, 15:04
Well, today was the big day -- I finally got my braces off! This
feels exceedingly strange -- it's like my gums are too big for my
teeth, and my front teeth are too big for my head! But everything
lines up very nicely and contact is good!
I just ate an orange for the first time in over 2 years without having
to cut it up in tiny pieces. Now to find a good New England
apple!!!
Stupid mistake
- Sunday, 13 March 2005, 22:05
One silly mistake cost me an entire day's worth of effort. What a
waste. Last week I'd changed a setting on my system. Today,
I restarted the Apache web server, and got hosed by the change I'd made
last week! It took me a long time -- several hours -- to find the
one setting I needed to allow the Apache startup program to tell me
what was wrong! I am soooo tired right about now, but I got it
working.
And I wanted to finish my taxes today. Ha.
Well, I did get some things done today, like oiling my deck box,
putting foot pads under it, vacuumed the kitchen (oh, yeah, like that
was a lot of work!), and a few other things. And yesterday, I got
the front door sensor moved, the front patio furniture oiled, the lawn
fertilized, and several other rooms vacuumed. Okay, okay, it was
a moderately productive weekend Still, I feel like today was
mostly a waste; it would have been if I hadn't gotten the calendar on
this blog fixed! Did you even know it was broken??
I'm tired and rambling. Sorry. Signing off now...
Sick baby
- Friday, 11 March 2005, 10:15
It was last week, during a heavy downpour, that I first noticed signs
of trouble. Well, it was kind of hard to miss it, sitting right
there in front of me: the normally soft, passive amber was replaced
with a bright red screen with even brighter, redder lettering and
graphics -- "
Battery/alternator problem. Bring car to workshop."
(more...)
Conjunctivitis
- Thursday, 10 March 2005, 17:29
Yup, that's me. Mr. Pink Eye. I've been suffering (hmmm,
that sounds too strong) putting up with a mild case of it. See, I
went to have lunch with Kevin at his school the other day -- just a
little treat for him and a chance to get away from the office for
me. Big mistake. Some snot nosed little brat came up to me,
asked me something, then proceeded to sneeze right in my face!
Not 2' away from me, didn't even turn his head, didn't try to cover it,
didn't even freakin' apologize. Two days later, my right eye was
glued shut when I awoke in the morning. So, I'm on eye drops now (
Tobramycin), 3 times a day.
Stupid children. Stupid parents who don't teach their stupid children about diseases.
News Hounds
- Thursday, 10 March 2005, 12:21
I got a kick out of the tagline for the News Hounds blog: We watch FOX so you don't have to. I admire their tenacity to put up with such tripe! What else would you call it when a "news" program advocates bombing a free country that's held democratic elections, solely because they voted in a government that the US government doesn't like?
Gallery feature added
- Monday, 07 March 2005, 12:29
I just had a minor epiphany at work -- heck, I wasn't even working on
the photo gallery at the time! But lately I've been musing about
the problem with the non-existent image sizes (you know, not
everything's yet been converted to Small, Medium, or Large sizes yet),
when it hit me -- just add a link on the top navigation bar for each
Page display that would take you directly to each size! Piece of
the proverbial cake, there... You'll now find a handy little
"S|M|L" on the nav-bar. Enjoy!
Chores
- Monday, 07 March 2005, 07:53
I've implemented a new set of chores for the kids, with directly linked
monetary rewards for each of the 6 items. (Okay, okay, that's a
bloated way to say "allowance"!) Deanna took off with the idea,
and before you could say "get to work", her part of the list was done
and the place was sparkling! Kevin was a little bit slower, and
while he got most of his chores done, he did miss out on cleaning up
the computer area.
The funny thing is, he called me up last night and said he wanted to
come over to my house today to clean up. If you could see his
room at his mother's place, you'd be ROTFL at the irony!
Dad needs to do his chores now. I've got a huge pile of laundry
waiting for me! It's funny what the kids found when they started
cleaning up!
(more...)
Digital Timeline Trivia Quiz
- Friday, 04 March 2005, 14:26
Gordon Bell's got a
Digital trivia quiz
on his website at Microsoft. I scored 19 out of 25 -- try and beat
that! No fair cheating by looking at the status bar, either!!!
Abolish the IRS!
- Thursday, 03 March 2005, 11:08
FairTax.org
(NB: that's .ORG, not .com!) advocates a national sales tax to replace
the current income taxation system that unfairly burdens those too poor
to pay while providing loop holes for those rich enough to afford an
accountant. It also shifts the burden from taxing people who earn
and save money to those who spend it (including those who earn money
illegally!) Alan Greenspan
today testified before Congress that this is a good idea and America should move towards this goal.
Be sure to check out the
learn more link at the bottom of the page and FAQ, too. More info is available on the
FairTax Volunteer site.
What's fascinating is to look at the proposed legislation:
HR 25. Contrast this small 165K document with the volumes of IRS regulation!!!

I've long advocated this organization's efforts -- it's nice to see
Greenspan come around to my way of thinking! <chuckle> If
you agree too, please send a link to your friends! Spread the
word -- there is a better way!
Imagine that -- no more April 15, no more tax accountants, no more tax
software, no more IRAs, no more 401Ks, no more tax shelters...
Just a check in the mail made out to you each month!
The Yankee or Dixie quiz
- Tuesday, 01 March 2005, 15:16
Take this quiz for a laugh,
but I dispute the results. Most of my answers indicated a strong
northeast origin, but it wound up scoring me at 58% Dixie the first
time through! Blecch! That's okay, I took it a second time,
corrected my speech, and got a 36% "definitive Yankee" out of it!
Sunday
- Sunday, 27 February 2005, 09:07
I'm hoping to get the car washed before it starts raining (no, the real car,
not the virtual RX7). I do need to do some grocery shopping,
too. But it's so chilly outside -- it's 47 -- and I'm not liking
the idea of getting out in the cold and getting wet! And my nose
is still stuffed up, and I woke up with a headache, and my toes are
already cold, and... oh, heck, enough excuses! I'll just
get bundled up and get it done. At least the wind's pretty calm
this morning.
I dislike Alabama winters. At least in Seattle we could easily drive to the snow.
Update: I'm bummed. No, I got the car washed
(sloppy job, but I got the brake dust and grime off), but the big disk
on the kids' PeeCee/DVR has gone bad. 120 GB of photos, music,
and video appears to have been lost. I'm in the process of
repairing the drive now, but it may need to be reformatted, from the
looks of the hundreds or thousands of bad areas. It may just be
the file system that's corrupt, so I'm going to try to retrieve as much
as possible first.
You know, when my VMS box was losing a disk drive, it gave me plenty of
warning, and I didn't lose a single BYTE of data. The same isn't
true for Windoze, is it?
Gran Turismo 4
- Saturday, 26 February 2005, 18:20
So, if you don't hear from me for a few weeks, rest assured I'm busy playing
Gran Turismo 4 and trying to score enough credits to get my
Mercedes Benz SLR...
This is an
incredible game! It's got a wonderfully huge selection
of cars and tracks, and the animation is leaps and bounds above
anything else out there! It's awesome to see people on the side
of the track wave at you or take your picture as you drive by!

It's pretty sad -- it was a beautiful day outside, and I wound up
spending a lot of time inside driving a virtual MB... Not all of
it, mind you: part of the time I was driving an RX7. But
seriously, I did get outside for a few hours. More on that topic
late April or early May. <wink>
Star Trek Fans United to Resurrect and Fund Enterprise
- Friday, 25 February 2005, 13:06
TrekUnited.com
is trying to resurrect Enterprise, which UPN has killed after this
season. I don't know that this approach is right, however --
trying to raise $30M(US) isn't going to work without some deep pockets,
and then there's the question of whether UPN will listen (even to $30M).
There are some rallies planned around the globe for today, you can find more info
here on the StarTrek.com site. I'll keep my eyes on the news for anything more.
Funny, but it was Star Trek that spawned the genesis of UPN. Without Enterprise, they look more trashy than Fox.
Rocketplane, Inc
- Friday, 25 February 2005, 07:47
Rocketplane, Inc. looks to undercut
Scaled Composites' and Virgin's
pricing by about 1/4 by using existing technology. Their
spaceplane is based on the standard LearJet 25, reconfigured as a
delta-wing vehicle with a rocket in the tail in addition to the 2 jet
engines! Pretty elegant solution, with a large portion of the
design, qualification, and testing already done.
Unintelligent Design
- Thursday, 24 February 2005, 11:24
A pretty nicely written article about the religious extremists and their absurd attempts to force their Judeo-Christian religion into US public schools.
Intelligent design ... leaves the purposes of the designer
wholly mysterious. Presumably any pattern of data in the natural world
is consistent with his/her/its existence.
Must
be nice to have all the answers in one -- "God did it, now
what was the question?" That's not science, and anyone who says
it is must either be lying to further their socio-political agenda or
are themselves deceived. Science is just the
opposite -- asking questions and accepting whatever answer best fits
the data. When better answers come along that fit reality better,
throw out the old and accept the new. There's nothing wrong with
admitting you were wrong -- more people should do it!
Just like we should throw out the "God did it, now what was the question?" lack of reasoning.
New tires
- Monday, 21 February 2005, 18:15
Time for some new tires on the Benz -- the old ones are really long
gone on the rear. This time, I got a pair instead of 4, as I've
already got 2 pair for the front sitting at home in my garage. So
I picked up two 245/40 WR 17
Pirelli PZero Rosso Asimmetricos,
what the manufacturer put on the car originally. According to
UPS, they're in Nashville; I suspect I'll have them in my hands -- and
then on the car -- tomorrow.
I still like the
Bridgestone Potenzas
I had this last go 'round. They lasted a bit longer than the
others I had (the Sumitomos), but I'll have to check my records to see
exactly how far they went.
Kevin's turn
- Sunday, 20 February 2005, 10:10
Kevin started last night, just before bed, saying that he felt
nauseated. I let him sleep in my room, as that would allow him to
get to the bathroom quicker in case of an emergency. As it
turns out, it didn't make a whole lot of difference; he got to the
toilet room, but the lid was down. I may have to repaint that
room now.
That was at 3:30. He threw up again at 4:20 (about 2 minutes
after he took some tylenol for his fever). He got another dose in
right after that and slept through until almost 9. He now just
feels a little queasy -- I think the tylenol's doing the trick on
keeping the fever in check. Oh, the battery in my thermometer has
failed to the point where I can't get an accurate reading. Is it
a standard battery? Nooooo... It's a quarter size button
cell. Crap.
Gotta go move the laundry to the dryer. I like the delay start on
my washer -- I'd set it to 2 hours after the 3:30 episode and was able
to add the 4:20 clothes to the load later.
Bug...
- Friday, 18 February 2005, 13:04
I just found a bug in the Gallery. The links going from page to
page (next & prev) are formed incorrectly, using dots in the path
instead of slashes. Oops. I'll fix that, but right now,
I've got to get back to work. (I had a nice lunch at Aroma's
while working on updating the photo links in the
New England Wrapup entry.)
Testing upgrade
- Friday, 18 February 2005, 07:11
I just upgraded
Pivot to v1.22, so I thought now would be a good time to post a test entry.
Surprisingly, most stuff looks intact, but something does appear to be
wrong with my photos and other embedded images on this page. I'll
look into that if this post gets placed correctly!
Flu time
- Monday, 14 February 2005, 15:25
Deanna's been going downhill over the past week. It started with
a sore throat and has now progressed to 103.1 degree fever and
vomitting. Sounds like the flu. Her mom stayed home with
her today; I went by there this morning to drop off some medicine for
her, and she looked like a wet ragdoll. I hope she gets over it
soon, she sure doesn't deserve to be suffering like that.
Now I'm concerned about myself, however. I just today got a sore
throat. I'm trying to make sure all my tasks at work are in order
in case I have to take a few days off this week. I am not looking forward to a bout of the flu!
Gallery
- Sunday, 13 February 2005, 23:46
I've done some more updates on the photo gallery -- it now supports multi-level galleries (see
NewEngland for an example), plus I've added another bunch of photos --
WDW Polynesian 2003.
I wanted to add this, as it's one of the most intense collections I've
got, at over 500 images. This gives me a good benchmark for
performance; it takes between 6 and 8 seconds to generate the web page
(wall clock time, not CPU), although it does take a lot longer to
download the 500+ thumbnails!
The beauty of the multi-layer galleries is that I can take the 500
photos and divide them up into multiple sub-galleries, reducing the
time it takes to paint each gallery.
Now that I've got this done, I'm going to spend some time working on
building ImageMagick. I've got a buddy in Scotland working with
me on the project -- he's got a good start, and you can follow our
project (if you're really into that kind of thing) on his
VAMP board.
A new, more powerful Yoda
- Saturday, 12 February 2005, 21:11
Yay. I got the new system all setup and in place. It's
really nice -- nice and quiet and nice and fast! The only
downside is that I lost my 187 days of uptime. Oh well...
Yoda's demise
- Wednesday, 09 February 2005, 11:57
Well, it looks like this system may be on its last legs. One of
the disk drives is starting to log errors -- 21 at last count -- and
the User0 disk is making one hellacious racket. I'm afraid that
it won't last much longer, so don't be surprised if this system drops
off the net for a couple days.
If the drive does fail, I'll be taking this opportunity to upgrade the
whole system to my AlphaServer 800 if I can get it working. It
suffered a pretty nasty fall from a UPS truck, so I'm really hoping the
electronics are in better shape than the case! Given that it's a
Digital-era Alpha, I'm sure that it's more than strong enough to have
survived such a drop.
If all goes well, the system shouldn't be down for more than a day or
two this weekend. If the disk dies before then, it may take me a
bit longer to replace it.
Oh, this blog is located on the afflicted drive; if it dies
unexpectedly, I may lose a post or two, but not the whole thing.
I've increased the frequency of my blog backups to daily (they were
once a week).
Neutral
- Tuesday, 08 February 2005, 07:20
I've shifted into neutral, what with the passing of the peak of my
server upgrade at work, my brain needs a rest. Tonight, Kevin
wants to start watching the
LoTR trilogy, now that he's finished
The Hobbit.
I've got some ideas on how to get ImageMagick working, and what failed
in my prior attempts. Once I get that done, I'll be back into
high gear on the photo gallery project.
But don't expect much activity from me for the next couple days!
I was busy enough this weekend with some preliminary spring cleaning
(you wouldn't think I'd be doing spring cleaning in the middle of
winter, but there's only so much filth that I can stand!) Not
that cleaning around here is really that difficult, mind you!
"Roomba, go!" while I do the rest...
On another note, I'm tickled that my home computer is right now passing the 1/2 year mark for
uptime. Booyah! OpenVMS -- it works, so I don't have to!
Sigh, time for work. Talk to you later.
Rummie afraid of Germany
- Friday, 04 February 2005, 07:38
Rumsfeld says he offered to resign twice,
but both times, the Dubber turned him down. Now, he's not going
to go to a meeting in Germany for fear of being arrested on war crimes.
What
a great country we live in, where abuse is ignored and our heads of
state are afraid of being arrested because of their actions! I'm
proud to be an American, but am sadly ashamed of our leaders.
Eliminating the Need for Transistors
- Wednesday, 02 February 2005, 06:29
The Crossbar Latch
-- although it sounds familiar -- is a whole new concept in
molecular-scale computing. This could increase the number of
computes per volume dramatically. Since it's just a pair of wires
crossed with a third sense wire (ooooh, sounds like core memory,
doesn't it?) the potential for shrinking it is fantastic. The
power consumption should be radically low, and with HP's emphasis on
healing circuits and chemical synthesis, easy manufacturing scalability
and higher yields should be possible.
Just think -- we could be sitting on the threshold of a new computing
breakthrough. The increase in scalability and drop in power
consumption will make for radical progress in compuing, whether it's
powered by the crossbar latch or something else.
For those interested in deeper details, be sure to check out the other
articles linked on the referenced page -- they offer a lot more info
there than just this press release.
RIF'd friends
- Monday, 31 January 2005, 16:54
It sucks, but we lost 5 more people today across our entire division (1 locally), due to "involuntary departures". We lost one more person locally through a voluntary departure. Those of us who remained behind applauded her -- she was all smiles and happy on her way out the door. One friend said it was like we were a bunch of prisoners cheering on a fellow inmate who'd slipped past the guards and barbed wire.
And I was all up-beat when I came to work this morning -- I'd an ortho appointment, and the doc said I'd get my braces off either next month or the one after that. Of course, he then proceeded to tighten them up like never before to the point he had me wincing! But to compensate for that, he said I no longer need to wear rubber bands. Phew! I hated those things!
Photos live!
- Monday, 31 January 2005, 06:56
What a weekend! I spent nearly the entire weekend working on the
photo gallery software. It comes to over 500 lines of code, HTML
templates, and CSS so far, and I've still got a lot more I want to do
with it.
I've started moving the photos over from the old SPGM based gallery;
the link on the main page of my site will take you straight to the new
one. Oh, that reminds me, I need to fix the link to the gallery
on
this page, too!
I know you'll agree that it's a lot faster than the old one, and I've got plans to include more features:
- Slideshow
- MPEG movie support
- Photo information display
- Automated creation of alternate size images
- General cleanup of display
- Support for multi-level galleries (galleries inside galleries)
I'm not sure when I'll get around to these features, but I'd
sure like to have them. I think the slideshow may come first, but
automating the creation of the images is high on my priority list --
it's really quite burdensome to have to create them on my laptop, then
ftp them to the server in all the right directories. Blecch.
So, if you find any bugs in the software, please please please let
me know! You can easily leave a comment here -- the system will
email it to me straight away.
Overall, I'm feeling really good about the new software -- I've been
wanting to do this for months, and it's good to see it up and running,
even in its somewhat clunky current form. Hurrah!
Kerry's legacy, or how bad marketing screwed the world
- Saturday, 29 January 2005, 08:49
Here's a fascinating interview with Naomi Klein on how Kerry screwed
up, what needs to be done to bring peace to Iraq, and where the anti-war movement should go
from here.
What Are We Fighting For?
So what the Republican Party has done is that it has
co-branded with
other powerful brands — like country music, and NASCAR, and church
going, and this larger proud-to-be-a-redneck identity. Policy is
pretty low on the agenda, in terms of why people identify as
Republicans. They identify with these packets of attributes...
You have to answer the language of faith with the language of morality.
You can speak in powerful moral terms about the violence of war and the
violence of an economic system that's excluding ever more people...
When the siege in Fallujah happened (days after the election), and the
violations of the Geneva Convention were at a completely new level,
there were no questions raised in the mainstream press. The New York Times
reported these incidents without even an editorial or interview of
experts on international law about whether it was legitimate to attack
all the medical care facilities and so on. This to me is Kerry's
legacy. I blame Kerry for this more than Bush because we expect this
from them. We expect them to do whatever they can get away with. And
Kerry let them get away with it. An election campaign was the one time
there was a real opportunity to put the war on trial. And even if a
principled anti-war campaign had lost, these issues would still be on
the agenda.
Gallery work
- Friday, 28 January 2005, 06:55
I know I've been quiet lately, so I thought I'd let you know what I've
been up to. I've been writing a new program to do my photo
gallery the way I want it done. There are tons of programs out
there that do a lot of the functions, but many of them are slow and
clunky, some don't do videos, most don't link to a variety of photo
sizes (especially the largest original size), and most are very
restrictive in their customizability. Ergo, I'm starting a new
program from scratch. (I'm currently almost to the halfway point
-- of the first part! I've got a lot more to do!)
So, if you don't hear a lot from me the next few days, don't be
surprised. After all, it's a weekend without the kids, and the
weather forecasters are projecting a horrible winter storm for this
weekend with up to a 1/10th of an inch of ice!!! Omigawd Martha,
it's a blizzard!!! Buy some milk and bread! What better
way to spend a weekend than cleaning up the house and putting my photo
gallery together??? Ah, just me and my computers...
Another weekend
- Monday, 24 January 2005, 18:41
Ah, another weekend slips by. This one was a bit fun and a bit
tiring. I took the kids, including Steph, up to Opry Mills in
Nashville. I think this was the first time I made it through the
65/440/24/40/40/Briley Parkway nexus without getting mixed up, at least
in a very long time. It's horribly confusing, having to take 24
West to go East and such -- then there's the construction to deal with
-- blecch!
We ate lunch at Wolfgang Puck's (I like that place), then went to Opry Mills, where the first thing I did was make reservations for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe.
We then wandered around the mall. Actually, I've never been
terribly impressed with the mall -- it's a long hike from one end to
the other, it's a loop design, with no connection in the middle from
one side to the food court on the other -- you've literally got to walk
nearly a half mile to get around the silly thing! I think it's a
bad design, but the kids have always enjoyed it.
Personally, I think they enjoyed Jillian's the most, as that's a
pretty big arcade. We did something a little different this trip,
and went bowling at Jillian's. When we came out of the bowling
alley, Kevin noticed that it was snowing outside! It was really
coming down, and everything was covered in a blanket of white.
Fortunately, it was a fluke, and it was all gone long before we had to
drive back to Huntspatch.
But boy, did it turn cold! The temp dropped to 21 by the time
we left, and the wind must have been hitting 20+. We were really
glad to get back into the car and start driving back home.
The long Saturday made for a short Sunday, as we all slept in
late. Overall, not a bad weekend, and the kids were good together
-- not a single fight all weekend long.
Phew!
Lousy Saturday
- Saturday, 15 January 2005, 17:25
Oy! What a day! I thought I'd go in to work for a
couple hours and be done with the system upgrade... Ha! I
spent a full day in there! While the basic upgrade went well, I
ran into some problems with a couple items not working the way they
should afterwards. I've put a kludge of sorts in place, but
there's still something fishy.
I had a good time watching some SF shows last night, both Enterprise
and the new BattleStar Galactica. They were both good
episodes. I can see BSG becoming a regular item, but I'm kind of
sad to see it come on Friday nights. I wish it was on a different
weeknight so that I could space my viewing out over more than one
night. That's the breaks...
I'm at the coffee shop again. I saw Rachel here last night.
She said that she and Senter were still wanting to hook up; maybe one
of these days I'll get to have them over! Did'ya read that
Senter? I saw your wife last night!!! Ha!
And I still can't find a screw to use on my airplane. I may go to
Lowes next, but really don't expect them to have one this size.
Based on my search at the hobby shop last night, I think it's a 4-48 or
4-56 -- a really odd size thread. I may have to tape the door
shut in order to get to fly the plane. Which, of course, I was
hoping to do today, but I got stuck working instead. Nuts.
Dad's toy & Kevin's Award
- Friday, 14 January 2005, 14:33
I got my plane last night. Finally, after 2 weeks of
waiting! It's a tad smaller than I recalled, and it's almost all
made out of styrofoam, but that helps to make it extremely
lightweight. I've got one problem with it -- the screw to close
the nose gear and battery compartment is too short, so I've got to find
a slightly longer one. Unfortunately, it's an odd thread (very
fine), which is making finding one difficult. Sadly, today's too
windy to even attempt to fly it. Maybe this weekend...
I took some pictures with the camera that came with it this
morning. Kevin called me early to remind me of his Reader Award
ceremony, and I was in such a rush to get out that I forgot my big
camera. Since I had my plane in the car with me (so
that I could show it off at work and also see about finding a screw for
the nosegear door), I grabbed that camera and took a couple
shots. Here's the best one I got; as you can see, the color's
good, but the shutter speed is slow -- I'm worried that it might just
take a bunch of blurry images in fight. Time will tell, I guess.

But I couldn't be much more proud of Kevin's reading
accomplishments. He's attained Classic Reader 2, and there's only
one more level above this for him to reach. Considering he's now
reading
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein, I'm sure he'll get that before
the end of the school year!
The unifying force of catastrophe
- Monday, 10 January 2005, 07:13
I found this piece entitled " The unifying force of catastrophe"
on the Boston Globe's site. Read it and pass a link on to your
friends, before we return to our normally scheduled man-made horrors.
As always, I'll also refer you to the PBD.
More of the same
- Saturday, 08 January 2005, 08:05
I just read this excellent opinion piece from the St. Pete Times about the confirmation hearings for Alberto Gonzales called "Tortured answers".
People like this guy help to reinforce my opinion that the government
of the US has gone down a very dark path, similar to those travelled by
some of the most reviled governments in history. It's interesting
to note how few people on the inside of this country's borders refuse
to acknowledge that this is a bad thing, but somehow twist the evil we
do into a right that we have.
Get real, America. I mean torture??? Flouting international law? Invading other countries for oil? These are not, or at least should not be things that America is known for!
Amazon links
- Monday, 03 January 2005, 21:59
Hi all. I've started putting links to my Amazon Store in the
Link
Repository over on the left hand side. I'll put links to
books and
movies that
I write about there. I've had this store for a number of years
now, but haven't updated it in quite a while. This is so easy for
me to publish them using this blog, and your purchases will help to
ensure that I stay motivated to keep this up to date! If you've
got specific requests, you can either use the Amazon search box in the
Navigation section or let me know, I'll find what you want and will
publish a link for you!
New Year Week End
- Sunday, 02 January 2005, 22:37
What a weekend. It was 3 days off for me, of sorts. I
managed to stay busy the whole weekend, especially today. I
finished putting the opaque glazing over the front door sidelights
yesterday and put a bunch of stuff in my new travel scrapbook.
Today, I got
all the xmas decorations down, outside and in. The tree was a
real chore, but worst of all was trying to get it shoved up into the
attic! It seemed weird to have the living room empty again, so I
left the monorail up. I finally got my chinup bar up -- no mean
feat, as I had to cut both ends off to fit in my closet doorway.
Oh, I also got the Xmas2004 pictures up in the
gallery. Not too many, but they pretty much summarize what
happened around here. Like I said, busy...
I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy again -- one episode each day
of the weekend. I only watched about half of the Two Towers last
night -- seems I messed up making supper and gave myself a mild
case of food poisoning! Blecch. Nothing serious, just
enough to give myself a headache and a little queasiness. So, I
gave up watching it last ngiht, and finished it off this morning.
I was so busy cleaning up around here that I didn't get to start the
Return of the King until almost 7 PM; I just barely finished it now.
It turned out to be quite a nice day today -- the temps hit 70, and
made for a great afternoon to sit on the back patio. You know, I
don't miss having the xmas tree block the living room windows!