Nerd test

Technorati Tags: nerd+test

Jiggled out?

What to do about Jiggle? That's been the question plaguing me lately, and is also responsible for the deafening sound of silence from here. I've enjoyed doing it but I'm not sure there's a point The Internet certainly doesn't need Yet Another Diary blog, where I blather on about what I did over the weekend. And it isn't like I don't have enough other places to write:

• Daemon Dancing in the Dark : My FreeBSD and Linux blog. I started it May 2003 in order to keep track of the mountain of information needed to keep one of these alternative operating systems going. I love working with FreeBSD and I keep lots of notes. It gets plenty of hits and is reflected in a few different spots. I go through spurts of effort on it, depending on how much I use my BSD boxes. I have a big backlog of posts I should get to for it, and plenty of other things I want to try. It's a nice, focused, personally useful site, where I keep all my BSD notes.
• The Game Chair : a group effort, sort of a high end amateur web site where I write video game reviews and other musings. We specialize in what we call "Progressive Reviews", where you write up three or four reviews as you play through a game. I contribute bits and pieces and am due to dive into a new game. I might be getting Lego Star Wars II for review, which should be fun. My girls and I have have a great time playing Lego Star Wars.
• Wanderings of a lost [game] mind : This is my video game diary blog, hosted on Gamespot.com. I use it to keep track of my video game playing habits, just to track what I play for how long, as I don't usually play to the end of anything. It too has sunk into disuse.
• Incredible Brightness of Seeing : My movie blog, where I used to put up lengthy reviews and log my movie viewing habits. I still watch plenty of movies, but I haven't been keeping up with it, either.
• In Absinthia : My drinking buddy and I have started up a new blog about all things absinthe. It's a fascinating subject, and a fascinating drink to boot. Again, I have a big backlog of articles I have to put up for it.
• A Trifle One-Sided : a new blog I started in order to play with Six Apart's new community blogging site, Vox.com. I was experimenting using it as my culture commenting spot, talking about movies, books and music. There's some pretty nice Web 2.0 features on it, like dropping in thumbnails of movies, and book covers from Amazon, and the like. It's got some shortcomings, not surprising in a beta product. It will only list like the first 10 hits of a search string, so you have to play around to find your stuff sometimes. And you can't use HTML, and there's only a few schemes available. By the way, if anyone is interested in trying it out too, drop me an email as I have two invitations I can hand out. I'm not exactly sure how far I'll go with this, but it has been fun dabbling in it.

So, as you can see, I don't lack for creative writing outlets. So Jiggle's purpose in life has come into question. I could continue to use it for posts that don't naturally fit into these other places, like my cocktail postings. I have always felt that a blog should be useful to someone, even if just the author (like my FreeBSD blog). If others find it useful, so much the better. And a personal diary blog like Jiggle just doesn't offer that. So, while Jiggle will remain online, I'm not exactly sure if I'll be posting much here in the future.

Perseid Meteor Shower

The best meteor shower  of the year is coming to your town this weekend.  Peak viewing time is going to be from 1-5am EDT.  Here in the 'burbs of Boston, it's hard to see this sort of thing.  And it is probably too late (or too early) to hit the road for viewing in the country.  Too bad our vacation wasn't this weekend, as I'm sure the viewing from the deep dark White Mountain National Forest would be ideal.

The Perseid Meteor Shower

Chopsticks and kids

Cute little video showing how to rubber band two chopsticks together and make it easier to use for kids. It becomes like using a giant pair of tweezers, so it is cheating a little bit, I guess. It reminded me that we had gotten a couple of rubber thingies from our local sushi shop that are specifically for this job - to tie them together and make them easier to hold. I wonder where they went?

In fact, here are the little things to connect the chopsticks: Fun Chopsticks

And here are ZooSticks found at SillyGoose.com

These links all come courtesy of ParentHacks.com

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Twisted Wires

This is why I desperately need a wireless headphone that has a mic:

I'm Baaack!

I went up to my friend Mark's house to play some boardgames on Saturday night. Unbeknownst to me, right around midnight Saturday night, my machine that is co-located at his ISP (MV.com), croaked. I was within ten minutes of it, but instead I blithely drove home after watching Casablanca yet again, sending me an hour in the wrong direction. On Sunday morning, I get an email from someone trying to use one of the servers I host on the box and, uh uh, it was down. Of course, it had to be on a busy Sunday, so I couldn't do anything about it. But MV sent someone in and tried to reboot it. But the box was dead Jim.

So Mark brought the box home with him on Monday and I drove on up there for an emergency power supply-pendectomy. I picked up a cheap US$30 250 watt power supply (gee, I wonder why my boxes keep dying...) at CompUSA and did my first power supply transplant operation on Mark's table. Plugged everything back in, turned the power on, it rebooted, all is good, right?

Wrong. We paid the price for being confident and when the box was actually plugged in at MV and turned on, massive numbers disk errors showed up. So many, in fact, that even fsck -y couldn't fix them. Now what...

Some Googling around found others complaining of the same error, but no help was forthcoming. The Mark wrote a little utility that performed some disk magic, re-ran fsck and I'm back in business. Well, it took a few more tweaks, of course, and I'm still not sure exactly how bad the collateral damage is, but its good to be back up and running.

By a weird bit of synchronicity, Lifehacker just posted a bit about Backing Up Your Weblog, using a new service called Backupmyblog.com. I think I may just check them out!

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Bad Sign

Another funny link via Whatever. Oh man, I hope it never comes that here!

EDIT: Okay, so it probably isn't "real life" (probably viral marketing) but it's still pretty funny.

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The Middlesex Fells

I got in my first bike riding exercise today. I'm blessed to be living within walking distance of one of the world's finest urban parks, the Middlesex Fells. The Fells is over 2,000 acres of park land, with quite a bit of it located here in Medford. There's a wide variety of things to do in the park, including hiking and biking. The biking trails are varied and interesting, as you can go on any of the old fire roads that criss-cross the park.

The park is, unfortunately, bisected by Route 93, which makes getting across the whole park problematic, especially for me here on the eastern side of things. Luckily, there is one road that takes me underneath Rte. 93, so I don't have to risk life and limb trying to get around the Roosevelt Rotary that goes over 93.

So I like to take a ride during lunch. I have a Schwinn Sierra GS, which is a nice, easy to ride, hybrid. My wife and I each bought one for a wedding present to ourselves, and it has worked well. It is, however, probably time for me to get a new one, and when I bring it in for the annual tuneup, I might look around and see where I can go from here.

So I take a ride up the road and then turn off onto one of the many fire roads that link up to the pavement. I wasn't looking for a challenging ride today, this being my first time out. So I took the first one and headed off into the woods. I did try a short detour down a marked for bikes trail but it soon petered out, and I was left carrying my bike along a pretty narrow trail. Not sure what they were thinking! But I got out and made it back after a pretty good 30 minute workout.

One thing that is sadly lacking in the Fells is any legal swimming holes. There's a few ponds on the grounds, but none of them have swimming allowed, as they are all emergency water supplies. But luckily for Medford residents, there is Wright's Pond, which is a park area nestled in the Fells, with some pretty good swimming, and even lap markers laid out. So I'll often end my bike riding there, and swim a few laps, which makes for an excellent workout. But today, as I got started late, I decided to just come home and float in our new pool. As it is only 15 feet round and 42 inches deep, I'm not going to get much of a workout in it. But the water was cool and refreshing, so I'm not complaining!

Big Kid pool toys

If only my pool were bigger (and set up...), I'd want one of these - a floating bar! You can also get a floating blackjack game! But I suppose, seeing as our pool is only 15 feet around and 40 inches deep, we might all look a little funny at the bar...

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Tuesday Golf, chapter 1

Unicorn Golf Course

Hole	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	T
Par	4	4	4	3	4	5	4	3	4	35
Handicap	2	7	6	9	1	5	3	8	4
M	8	4	5	4	6	6	7	5	6	51
J	5	4	8	4	6	10	7	6	7	57

Our first weekly Tuesday morning golf round of 9 was pretty much a total disaster for me. It started off pretty well, with two very nice drives. But then the wheels started to fall off, and the final four holes were completely forgettable. Ah well, I suppose it was better than work.

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It's Baaaacck

Jeez. Just when you thought it was safe to go in the pool...

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Morning exercise

Unicorn Golf Course

Hole	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	T
Par	4	4	4	3	4	5	4	3	4	35
Handicap	2	7	6	9	1	5	3	8	4
M	6	7	4	6	8	6	7	3	6	53
J	6	6	6	3	5	6	6	3	8	49

Now that summer vacation has started for the kids, I can start to play my morning golf. We usually play every Tuesday, because Gabrielle doesn't go to work Tuesday or Thursday, so there's no need for me to rush back and help pack everyone up. We meet by 6am and can usually get our nine holes in by 8:15. So I'm back home and ready to work before anyone even notices.

This morning was a perfect morning for golf. Cool, humid and virtually empty - no one in front of us slowing us down, and no one behind us, making us speed up. Just the two of us, playing at our own speed. It started off badly for me, as I topped my first drive. But after that, my drives were pretty solid, both in distance and accuracy. I was really striking the ball well. And we both had very makable birdie putts on the 8^th hole, but we just missed. Still, two pars on the par 3s is pretty damned good for me.

Then came the final hole. If I had only shot my usual 6, I would have finished with a very respectable 47. Par there would have given me a remarkable 45. Instead, I solidly hooked my initial drive way left, completely whiffed my next two attempts at a tee shot, and then sliced the last one far off to the right. Yup, that's right, I whiffed on two swings at the end. Oh boy oh boy, when the wheels come off in golf, they can come off in a hurry... I ended up with my first "snowman" of the year, but even that was a struggle, having to make a tricky 5 foot putt to pull it out. Still, I'm pretty happy with the results and I'm looking forward to beginning the weekly Tuesday morning ritual next week.

I used my new golf shoes for the first time. Last fall, my U6 soccer team gave me a gift certificate to Modell's, a small sports store chain. That was very nice of them, and I finally remembered to use it when I decided it was time for new golf shoes. They worked out pretty nicely, although I need to spray some waterproofing on them, as the golf course is usually pretty wet in the morning, both from watering and the dew.

Speaking of soccer, my U6 coaching career came to an end last Wednesday. It was my fourth season doing it and I enjoyed every minute of it. I brought along my digital camera for that last game and I hope to have a nice slideshow ready soon. I had a good group of kids this year and, even more importantly, a good group of parents. All we try to do at this level of soccer is to maintain a positive atmosphere, and sometimes parents, even for U6 teams, can get a little too intense. But I've been lucky and have had some wonderful parents, both as spectators and helping out. I'm going to miss my time with the littlest soccer players, but I'm looking forward to coaching the U8 Galaxy in the fall. It should be much easier having both girls back on the same team. This past two seasons, we've had soccer four nights a week! Finally, back to "only" two.

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Father's Day loot

I've been in the middle of a summer lull, haven't I? We've had some pretty spectacular weather here, leading us into summer, so I just haven't had the time (in the morning) or the energy (in the evening) to post much. I do actually have a bunch of partial posts, but haven't found time to pull them all together.

I had a very nice Father's Day. I got my usual handicrafts from school. Rhiannon gave me a nice, hand framed digital (black and white though) picture, while Adrienne did the same thing her sister did last year and gave me a poster with some "fill in the blank" sentences about me. Let's see how they both did:

• My Dad's name is :
  • Rhiannon: Jonathan
  • Adrienne: Jonathan
  Well, they started off with an easy one, and they both aced it!
• His hair is :
  • Rhiannon: brown
  • Adrienne: black
  Rhiannon got it right, while Adrienne exaggerated the darkness of it. Gabrielle said that many of the kids said their Dad had black hair, irregardless of reality. Wonder why?
• His eyes are :
  • Rhiannon: brown
  • Adrienne: some kind of green
  One again, Rhiannon aced this one, while Adrienne confused me with her mom, who does, in fact, have eyes that are "some kind of green".
• His favorite food is:
  • Rhiannon: Chinese food
  • Adrienne: roasted chicken and potatoes
  I'd have to give the edge to Adrienne on this one, although I do in fact love Chinese food. I'm surprised neither of them said sushi, which is the family favorite food.
• Dad's favorite restaurant is :
  • Rhiannon: The Rainforest Cafe
  • Adrienne: a Mexican restaurant
  Rhiannon's answer cracked me up. I had never visited the Rainforest Cafe up to that point, although it is a void in my life that has since been filled several times since. It's a great place to bring the kids, although I can't for the life of me imagine why we are always seeing couples in there. So once again, the nod goes to Adrienne, who knows just how much I love Mexican food. We had recently been to Mexico Lindo, a very reasonable Mexican restaurant in the neighboring town of Melrose, so maybe that helped. My very favorite one is El Sarape, down in Braintree,but I haven't been there in ages.
• My Dad's favorite T.V. show is :
  • Rhiannon: the Patriots game
  • Adrienne: soccer games
  I'd have to say this one is a draw. We've all been watching a lot of the World Cup soccer games, so I'm sure this is very fresh in Adrienne's mind, while they both know just how much I love to watch the Pats play. I'd have to say if I had to pick a favorite TV show, it would, in fact, be a Patriots football game.
• Dad is happy when :
  • Rhiannon: I do what he says
  • Adrienne: I watch soccer games with him
  Like I said, we've been watching a lot of soccer games lately, and it looks like it has made quite an impression on little Adrienne. And Rhiannon surely gets to the heart of the matter.
• He is frustrated when :
  • Rhiannon: I don't do what he asks
  • Adrienne: I interrupt him
  As you can see, I wish I had more patience with my girls:-( They are good, smart, pretty little girls who deserve a mountain of patience, while I can often only generate a molehill. As John Scalzi says, it is a real bonus when you genuinely like your kids, and I do, and I'm looking forward to many exciting adventures as we go along.
• When Dad is home he likes to :
  • Rhiannon: cuddle with me
  • Adrienne: play with my dog
  Both a very accurate sentiments that reflect their personalities. Rhiannon is a little more self-centered, with a long view of things, while Adrienne watches more what is going on and is more immediate. So the fact I enjoy cuddling with them both strikes a real chord with Rhiannon, while the fact we play with the dog every morning before school resonates a few hours later with Adrienne.
• My Dad relaxes :
  • Rhiannon: on the couch
  • Adrienne: on his computer chair
  Maybe I'm working too much these days? Or maybe my blogging is taking up more time, as it didn't really take off until after Rhiannon's quiz.
• He loves to go to :
  • Rhiannon: the Red Sox game
  • Adrienne: the park with me
  Once again, both are excellent, and accurate, sentiments. Do you think my girls know I'm a sports nut?-)
• Dad cooks ___ best.
  • Rhiannon: bacon and eggs
  • Adrienne: hot dogs
  I'd like to think I'm a little more creative than these answers, but you can also tell which kinds of foods they like best.
• If I were rich, I would buy my Dad :
  • Rhiannon: a waterslide
  • Adrienne: a soccer ball and a video camera to tape him
  Both answers are very cute, don't you think? I've been coaching both girls in soccer now for 4 seasons, and I often video tape and take pictures. I guess Adrienne would like to turn the tables on me.

And I also got a new grill, so I can show off my best cooking! We bought a new grill when we moved in, which was 6 years ago, and it was time for a new one. This one, by Vermont Castings (the wood stove people), was the Consumer Reports top-rated one, and a very nice one indeed. The girls all went out to Home Depot and bought it, bringing it back in a box. I was a little scared about putting the thing together, but it actually was a pretty easy effort, mostly involving putting the legs on.

And we've used it twice since then, with great success. Sunday, we had my mother-in-law and brother-in-law over and I cooked up a batch of salmon steaks and baked potatoes. The salmon were just rubbed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. And yesterday I cooked up some sausages (both hot and mild), baked potatoes (they work very well if you pre-cook them in the microwave) and some cauliflower, all on the grill. Yummy!

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My Dad

My Dad is a good guy. We have always gotten along, except for the brief periods of my "wild" teenage years. I've always appreciated this quote, attributed to Mark Twain:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Lucky for me, the period where I thought he was "ignorant" was much shorter than seven years:-) We had our quarrels, but he was always fair. He worked hard and helped to bring up four pretty responsible adults. If I can do as well with my two wild childs, I'll feel like I will have done a good job.

He was also a lover of the outdoors, which is amazing for one brought up in the urban wilderness of Hartford, Connecticut. He met my mom there, and lucky for him, she was a Maine backwoods girl, with plenty of connections with the deep dark wilderness up there. So he would often take off to go hunting with the in-laws. Some of my fondest memories of growing up are of going deer hunting with him, as I would take a few days off from school and spend it with my cousins, who I just adored. They had a huge family, and with three boys older than me, I found it exhilarating to have "brothers" to play with. Not that I minded my three younger sisters, but it was nice to have some fun with the boys. I'd get dressed warm and trundled along behind my dad, as we crept around the snowy woods. We've spent many a day since then, hunting together, although it has been a couple of years since the last time we did it. Time to do it again, I think.

I also spent many a day up in the "back 40", going trout fishing with him. We had a wonderful little trout stream up behind our NH farm and we would douse ourselves with bug spray and even spray Raid on our hats and cuffs to keep the clouds of black flies at bay. After catching a pail full of nightcrawlers the night before (just pluck them off the grass as they come up at night), we'd head back into the woods. It was great fun, and we'd almost invariably catch our limit of 10 - 12 inch "brookies". The limit was eight, if I remember correctly. And then we'd have ourselves a nice fish fry for dinner.

He also has an incredibly sharp mind. Very incisive, making for a tough opponent at board games. We grew up playing Jeopardy around the dinner table; me, Dad, Mom and my oldest sister, who is a little less than a year younger than me. The "click click" of the clickers to say you have the answer is an indelible childhood memory. As is remembering him squirm as he strained to remember a particular actor - "ooo, I can picture her, rolling in the sand with Burt Lancaster... Oh, what was her name????" (Deborah Kerr in From Here To Eternity). He is a great card player. I've always wanted to teach him how to play bridge, although I've never been confident enough of my own game to do that. I'm sure he would be a world class bridge player. Instead, he's practically unbeatable at Sixty Three, which is, strangely enough, a game I've never really played. We used to play Thirty-One all the time, though. Everyone would start with 3 quarters and the ante would be a quarter. Once you lost your three quarters, you'd get one play "on your honor" but if you lost that one, you were out; winner takes all! Great fun with 10 people or so playing.

We've also been on the same page politically too. He's always been a real "New Deal" Democrat, always voting against the Republicans. That political world view hasn't always been a good idea, as he lived in the South for a bit, but it is one we've always shared.

So, all in all, I've been pretty lucky. If I can grow up to be anything like my Dad, I'll be very pleased. Happy Father's Day, Pabs.

Technorati Tags: fathers+day

A Day of Golf

Hole	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	T
Par	4	4	4	3	4	5	4	3	4	35
Handicap	2	7	6	9	1	5	3	8	4
M	5	6	7	5	6	7	6	5	7	54
J	7	6	6	6	5	6	6	3	7	52

Took the day off yesterday and got in my first round of golf for the season. Michael and I play at Unicorn Golf Course, a fairly easy 9 hole course just up the road in Stoneham. Nothing too challenging, but a nice course to play. We try to get out every Tuesday morning before work, so if we hit the links by 6am, we're done by 8:30 or so. It works out pretty nicely. But yesterday was forecast to be such a gorgeous day, I thought I would take the day off and play some golf. I tried to talk Michael into playing 18 somewhere, but he wisely counseled that we should just play 9, it being our first day out.

So the end result wasn't too bad. As you can see, we're both pretty much the very definition of "duffer". We'll do better as the season goes on, but even at our best a score in the low 40s for 9 holes would be a great score for either of us. I can get some good distance with my drives, but they are not always accurate. And my second shots are usually too erratic. I can wield a pretty mean sand wedge from within 80 yards or so of the green, and I can usually putt pretty well. But the fact that neither of us got a "snowman" (an 8) counts this as a good 9 holes of golf.

Then I went and got the girls from Grammie's and we splashed around in the pool for a bit. I lasted about an hour, but they only got out when pizza showed up 90 minutes later. I think they're enjoying it so far! And given predicted temperatures up near or past the 90 degree mark today and tomorrow, I'm sure we'll be spending lots more time in it. Then I'm going to tear it down and try to get it more level and smoother.

Technorati Tags: golf

Word of the Day - suckspicion

Tossed over the ol' email transom:

suckspicion: a guess that turns out to be wrong

Moshi Moshi!

Technorati Tags: bush

Pool time!

So we finally installed a pool. I have been resisting the siren call of a pool from all three women, but it was a vain resistance. And when I saw someone offering up one of these "easy to set up" pools for US$100, I had to grab it. So then me and my brother-in-law spent all day Sunday digging out an area in the backyard to put it down, and trying to get it level. And before you say it, yes I already know it isn't level. We tried to eyeball it, and thought we got it "close enough", but not really, as it is probably 4"-6" out of level. And the women have been letting me know every time they look at the pool too. :-(

It is 15 feet by 42 inches deep, and the first pool I've ever had. I'm a New England pond swimmer myself. I hope it doesn't require too much maintenance. It should be okay. They will try it out today. It's a little scary, and we're going to have to keep a close watch on our little daredevils. They think just because they've been taking swimming lessons that they are Mark Spitz reincarnated or something. And, like most kids, they are fearless - too fearless, really. But I hope they get plenty of use out it.

Technorati Tags: swimming+pools

Word of the day : magniloquent

I'm doing some research for a series of posts I hope to start doing in the near future, and came across the word magniloquent used to describe over-the-top imagery found in 1800s French poetry.  A very cool word, don't you think?  It means exactly what it sounds like it should :

Lofty or grandiose in speech or expression; using a high-flown style of discourse; bombastic.

Dictionary.com/Word of the Day Archive/magniloquent

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Yet Another TSA horror story

Here is yet another TSA horror story. They are legion out there, all about this idiotic quasi-official agency with no oversight, no controls and no worries. They can do what they want, whenever they want, and there's simply no place to go for satisfaction if they should overstep their bounds, whatever those might be. Sounds a little bit like a police state, doesn't it? I'm warning you, don't read this if you don't want to get all worked up. It's a great story, slowly increasing your blood pressure until you just scream in anguish at what our country has turned into, all in the name of the War On Terror. It's can be too much.

Thanks to Bruce Schier for the heads up on this story. And I'm glad to add The Practical Nomad to my blogroll.

The Practical Nomad blog: Unanswered questions at Dulles Airport

Technorati Tags: tsa war+on+terror

Broken Umbrellas

This is why you should remember to put down your newly purchased US$60 umbrella after you've finished dinner:

We go through umbrellas a lot around here. And do you know how hard it is to buy a stand-up umbrella after about June 15th? Virtually impossible, because all the big stores are already gearing up for the fall season. One year, we needed to get one the end of July and the only one we could find anywhere was a dusty one hidden away in storage at the local K-Mart. Big Box stores piss me off.

Playing with the kids

I had some pretty good times with the girls today. It was another rainy, drizzly Sunday (both soccer games were canceled this weekend), so we did some indoor things. Yesterday, I wrote. I worked pretty much the entire day on my Ken Brett short biography for the upcoming book by the Boston SABR chapter on the 1967 Red Sox. It always takes longer than I think it will, and it's lucky it was a rainy day yesterday, as I could stay focused on the effort.

Today, me and the girls played video games for several hours. Lego Star Wars for the XBOX is a brilliantly conceived cooperative game, whereby the Star Wars episodes I, II, and III (yeah, I know, the wicked lame ones) are sort of replayed by miniature Lego characters in a Lego Star Wars world. And it is a blast to play with my 5 & 6 (soon to be 6 & 7) year olds. You can only play two play (mores the pity), but Adrienne enjoyed watching and offering up ideas while Rhiannon and I played.

We even made it past a level that had been troubling us for a while. It was a flying level, where you had to fly XWing fighters through a battle. It proved to be too tough for Rhiannon last time we played it, but this time we pretty much made it right through. Which meant we finally got to add R2D2 to our character library.

Because the best part of the game is when you go back and replay levels using new characters you've added. This "Free Play" lets you do just that - free play and try anything. So the two of us tried to solve puzzles in order to find special pieces, and score more points the next time through the level. They both offered up excellent ideas for solving some of the puzzles and it was, in general, a wonderful way to wile away a few rainy hours. I think maybe we'll watch Star Wars, episode IV next time, to give them a feel for the milieu.

Then we were able to get outside and play a bit. It was still kinda drizzly, but we had fun anyway. The big news was taking the training wheels off of Rhiannon's bike! She did excellent, a real surprise to me, as we just don't bike ride that much. But she worked hard and was doing a pretty solid job of riding around the circle by the end of the afternoon. I was so proud of her!

I also took the training wheels off of Adrienne's bike, but that was a much more mixed success. I got to exhaust myself pushing her around the circle, as I don't think she's quite up to balancing a two wheeler just yet. But it was fun to see them work at the next step in bike riding. I wish my camcorder wasn't in the shop getting repaired, though.

Word of the Day - feculent

The word of the day is feculent:

feculent

Main Entry: fec·u·lent
Pronunciation: 'fe-ky&-l&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin faeculentus, from faec-, faex
: foul with impurities : FECAL
- fe·cu·lence /-l&n(t)s/ noun

Thanks to John Scalzi for using it in this Whatever post. Careful, other, stronger, words in the feculent line are used.

Morning Meme

1. Do you use an alarm clock to wake up? Yes.
2. What time does your alarm go off? 5:03 hockey mornings, 5:47 otherwise. I figure if I have a digital clock, I might as well set the alarms at arbitrary times, right?
3. What sound does it make? I wake up to NPR.
4. Do you hit the snooze button? How many times? Usually once or twice. I wish I could adjust the snooze time to be much shorter than the 9(sic) minutes my clock uses.
5. If you have a partner, do they have a separate alarm? Nope. It's been my responsibility since I was in high school to get everyone else up. It's a cross I have to bear as a morning person.
6. Does your partner get up at the same time, earlier or later? After me, obviously:-) Often much later.
7. Is your clock set ahead? If so, by how much? That is such a bizarre thing. My brother-in-law has his clock set like 1 hour fast! Sorry, but I can't suspend disbelief enough to set my clocks fast - I'll just adjust the time in my head anyway. And my alarm clock is automatically set via some sort of magic airwaves to be the atomic time, so I couldn't set it fast even if I wanted to.
8. What's the first thing you do when you get up? Start the coffee machine, grab a cup of OJ and jump in the shower. I've taken to getting the coffee machine ready for brewing the night before, as it is sort of a catch-22 - you need coffee to be awake enough to make coffee. The coffee doesn't seem to suffer much being ground the night before, and I am capable of switching on the machine before my first cuppa.
9. Do you eat breakfast? If so, what? I try to. Usually the kids' leftovers, but sometimes a bagel, toast, crunchy granola bar or a bowl of cereal.
10. How long does it take you to get ready? Working from home, there isn't much "ready" needed. But I'm showered, dressed and ready for the day in about 20 minutes. Even though I work from home, I've taken to dressing up, just to feel ready for the day.
11. On the weekends, what time do you get up? I usually still get up pretty early, and actually leave the alarm on the non-hockey time. Of course, one or both of the girls are up by 6:30 anyway. But I like to get a head start on everyone, so I can get a little time for myself before the gong goes off and craziness hits. Maybe get a little writing in, some surfing, whatever.
12. Do you lounge or do you jump into action? No time to lounge around here, but if I can get up and started early enough, I like to lounge at the keyboard for a bit anyway. Or read the sports pages.
13. In an ideal world, what time would you get up? Even if I had no pressures, I'd probably still get up early. Again, the curse of a morning person. BK (Before Kids), we liked to sleep in sometimes, but now I probably couldn't.
14. How many hours of sleep do you typically get? 6
15. How many hours of sleep do you want to get? 8

(Thanks to Geeky Mom for the meme idea)

Technorati Tags: morning+meme alarm+clock

Motorcycles

When I did my list of cars I've owned, I didn't include the other mode of motorized transportation I've used on many an occasion - motorcycles. I had always been around around two wheelers, minibikes and the like, and after I'd gotten started in programming for a bit, I picked up a Suzuki 450. I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to get one. Maybe it was my friend having one; I don't quite remember who got one first.

I had the 450 for a few years, and it was a solid learners bike. But it left a little to be desired for the long haul, and I finally upgraded to a Honda CB900F, very much like the one pictured above. What a beautiful, powerful and flexible bike. It could go plenty fast enough, yet was comfortable enough for the long haul. I drove it from Boston to Baltimore a couple of times, non-stop, without a problem. Well, save for the stupid Garden State Parkway tollbooths, where you had to stop every 5 miles to pay a quarter toll. It is a real drag fishing quarters out of your pocket every 10 minutes. I tried putting some quarters on the faring shelf, but one would pop off every expansion joint.

I was in one big accident while on my CB900F. A teenaged girl ran a red light and hit me broadside. Never even saw her, as I was pulling out from a parking space. Next thing I remember, I'm under the front bumper of the car, running inventory on my limbs. Luckily, nothing major was wrong with either me or my bike. Well, maybe not so much luck, as the fact I always rode "dressed for disaster", with a top notch helmet, leather jacket, heavy pants and leather boots, pretty much no matter what the weather. I had a slightly fractured ankle, and my bike needed some repairs, but that was it. I guess I flew up onto the hood of the car, smashed the windshield with my helmet and then rolled off. My guess is those girls in the car still see me flying around in their nightmares.

Other than that, no other accidents. I dropped the bike once in a rotary when I was cut off, but I just picked it back up and kept rolling. My girlfriend at the time thought I was a much better driver on the bike than in a car. She wasn't much of a motorcycle fan, but she got very comfortable riding with me and we did lots of riding around, using an intercom system for talking. She would even go so far as to nod off while sitting in back; I'd be driving along when I'd feel her helmet hit mine as she leaned up against me! The accident probably wouldn't have happened had it been later in the spring. I had just started riding again and my self-preservation instincts weren't completely honed to a razor's edge yet. I've always said that every driver should be forced to ride a bike for a bit. They'll learn!

She had some Harley driving friends, and we exchanged some good natured barbs. They'd chide me for riding a "rice burner" and I'd wear my t-shirt with the "I'd rather ride a rice-burner than push a Harley" imprint. We got along great, because when you get right down to it, they're still motorcycles. I would usually ride mine until it got too cold for it to start, and then I'd wheel it into the garage until spring.

But I made the mistake of selling my CB900F without already having a replacement for it, and now I'm not allowed to get one. My wife is petrified of them and never rode on mine. Her parent's fears had been too deeply instilled in her. I always think of that Harley commercial where the guy pumping gas into his minivan admires the Harley driven by another guy and says that he was going to get a Harley, but instead got a living room set. Sigh.

And tonight is the absolute perfect riding weather. Mid-70s, a little humid, with dry roads and no wind. I used to just take off on nights like these and find fun roads to ride down, and be gone for hours just riding. Ahh, I can feel it now. Some day again I'll get a bike again.

Anyway, here's the closest I get to doing that these days - riding with the windows down and the sunroof open, playing some tunes. And tonight there was a perfect story playing on the CD to go along with it - Richard Thompson's Vincent Black Lightning, 1952:

Oh says Red Molly to James "That's a fine motorbike.
A girl could feel special on any such like"
Says James to Red Molly "My hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952.
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme"
And he pulled her on behind and down to Boxhill they did ride
Oh says James to Red Molly "Here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man.
For I've fought with the law since I was seventeen,
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine.
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you.
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride"

"Come down, come down, Red Molly" called Sergeant McRae
"For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery.
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside.
Oh come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside"
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
He said "I'll give you my Vincent to ride"

Says James "In my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl.
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeves won't do,
Ah, they don't have a soul like a Vincent 52"
Oh he reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
Said "I've got no further use for these.
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome,
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home"
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride.

Technorati Tags: motorcycles honda+cb900f

Gardening Pratfalls

Spent another gorgeous day in paradise here yesterday, doing more yard work. As you can see, the back yard annual flower bed came out pretty nice. I love the way everything looks with fresh mulch. Those impatiens will really fill in the entire flower bed and look nice the rest of the summer. We also got in our tomatoes, although we haven't had much luck with those since we moved to Medford. We had a very nice spot for them at our Weymouth house, where they got full sunshine. But there is no spot in our backyard with sun during most of the daylight hours, except for our deck, so the tomato plants, being the sun worshipers they are, suffer.

But, as a famous man once said, "For a price, Ugarte. For a price." And the price I had to pay for my diligence is a case of poison ivy. While our yard itself doesn't have any, the small, untamed patch of woods behind the back fence is rife with the vile plants. So they try to make inroads into our backyard and I guess I must have pulled up one too many "weeds".

I've had a few run-ins with it in the past. I remember working outdoors on a place one summer as a teenager when the owners asked if I "got" poison ivy. I said I didn't know but within the next few days it became painful obvious that I very much did. I'm not wildly allergic to the stuff, though. One childhood friend of mine was so allergic to it she could catch it just being windblown. But I have had some serious altercations with poison ivy and other related noxious plants. One winter, visiting the folks in Oklahoma City, I got a bad rash from some plant or another after going to pick mistletoe. My arms, legs and neck were covered in the stuff. Some pretty funny (in hindsight) pictures of the time, with all the white lotion on me.

I venture out beyond the back fence in a yearly ritual of trimming the tops of the trees, which gives us a very nice view of Boston to the south. The first year I did it, I blithely went about my tree climbing in shorts and a t-shirt and paid a serious price in poison ivy rash. Ever since then, I wait for a cool day and wear long pants, long sleeve shirt, gloves and a hat. I come in and my wife treats me like I've just come back from a radioactive waste site. I slip in and dump all my clothes directly into the washmachine, where they get washed a couple of times. Even better, I wear old clothes so I can just throw them away, as the oils from this pernicious weed are amazingly tough to remove.

My wife is understandably terrified of the plants. One summer day, she spent the afternoon tearing down vines from the front of our old house, proudly showing off the results. However, when they turned out to be poison ivy, she paid a terrible price, and spent many days with lotions and potions, trying to ease the itching. So now she is extra careful and avoids anything even remotely resembling the oily, reddish leaves of the plant.

One year, some guys came to cut down some trees behind our house. As they were nice oak trees, I asked if I could have the wood. They said sure, and I started carting it into the garage to dry it out. After I finished lugging the pieces, they asked if I "got" poison ivy. Oh oh. Turns out the trees had a couple of vines wrapped around them. I didn't get it too bad, but I treated them like a toxic waste dump. I let them sit unmolested for a year, and then I carefully, using a pole, pried off the dead vines and put them in the garbage cans.

I'll probably head off to the drug store to pick something up for it. I've seen some new treatment advertised from some big skin creme company (forget who), so maybe I'll give that a try. It isn't too bad though. A hot shower usually does the trick for me for a bit. Those impatiens had better bloom nicely this year!

Update: It was Cortaid with the new poison ivy treatment, But their Poison Ivy Care Treatment Kit was nearly US$40! And the other highly recommended lotion, Zanfel, was US$38 - yikes! Didn't realize curing poison ivy was so expensive. I guess if it is killing you, it is a small price to pay. But my rash isn't $40 worth, so I bought some Tecnu Extreme, which still cost $13. I've been using some Tecnu Outdoor Skin Cleanser, an more basic lotion, and it seems to work okay so far. I'll let you know how it works. We always used to use the old standby, Calamine Lotion, which cost about $5. Ah, the price of progress.

Technorati Tags: impatiens poison+ivy gardening

Memorial Day

It is the Memorial Day holiday here in the US today. It was originally called "Decoration Day", when citizens visited the graves of fallen American Civil War veterans and placed flowers on them. It was officially proclaimed in 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union soldiers in Arlington National Cemetery. These days, it is the Monday holiday that marks the unofficial start of the summer season. And it has been remarkably summerlike here in New England too!

I have some connections with the armed forces, although my own personal brush with them remains the year I spent in Air Force ROTC (Reserver Officer Training Corps) while going to RPI. It's a great deal - full tuition, room and books, plus a small monthly stipend. I only had to dress up once a week, and go to a short class, where they mostly showed "wowie" films, like airplanes taking off straight up and the like. I did also get a memorable trip to Cape Canaveral in Florida in December, which made it all worthwhile.

But ROTC was just one of the many things I couldn't hack in college and I dropped out my sophomore year. I wonder whatever happened to my uniform? My Mom probably has it carefully folded away, as my Dad cries over the lost opportunity:-)

Speaking of my Dad, he is a veteran of the Air Force. As a smart fatherless kid, his prospects after graduating high school in Hartford were slim, I imagine. He even had a close friend die of a heroin overdose - that's the kind of crowd he hung out with. And talk about a small world - the girlfriend I had after I dropped out of college, her father graduated from Hartford High the very same year as my dad! They didn't know each other though.

So he went into the Air Force and picked up a trade which would support us until he retired - air traffic controller. It was a good career, although it meant moving quite a bit growing up, even after he got out of the Air Force. And while he worked at Kennedy Airport in New York City, it made for a great place to go to work with him. I'd get my own radar screen up in the tower, and watch the airplanes with binoculars. Great fun for a ten year old!

Luckily, he was between wars - too late for the Korean War and too early for the Vietnam War. I had several cousins who also used the armed forces as an escape from the doldrums. One is still in the Navy, a lifer currently serving down in New Orleans. I think he is an airplane technician, actually.

I do have a nephew who currently in the Army. He is a member of a Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which meant he was on the front lines of the urban warfare in Iraq. I was worried for him every day. And he is due to go back in July, and I will worry for him again, while fighting in the useless and unnecessary "war" over there. I don't know how we're ever going to extricate ourselves from that morass. It was a lie and a mistake from the beginning and it is only going to get worse.

Technorati Tags: stryker air+force memorial+day

Workin' 'round the hosue

I suppose after complaining about the weather here, here, here and here, the least I can do is give a shoutout when the weather is simply spectacular, like it was yesterday and promises to be today and tomorrow. Partly sunny yesterday, with temps near 80. One passing thunderstorm made us stop our yardwork for about an hour, but that's not so bad is it?

In typical New England fashion, we've gone directly from early spring (cold, wet, rainy), right into summer, as temperatures were expected to be in the low 90s on Memorial Day. Hmm, but now that I check the weather forecast, the prediction is back down to the upper 70s, and partly to mostly cloudy. Well, one weather site has it upper 70s, the other has it upper 80s. Guess we'll just have to see. Sounds like the weather pages are "nowcasting", where they succeed in telling me what the forecast is now.

Yesterday, as mentioned, was a work in the yard day. After having been neglected for most of the spring due to inclement weather, we're in catch-up mode. Mow the lawn, get some annuals in, put down mulch, that sort of thing. Today will be more of the same.

The girls were busy busy busy all day. The "toy" of choice for the day was caterpillars. We have the furry ones that keep showing up and they have been collecting them. Don't enlarge the picture at the right if you are at all squeamish about caterpillars! They moved them from container to container, named them, put in leaves and grass, and in general, had a high time of it with them. Of course, once they found out that their mother and the next door neighbor girl were one of the squeamish ones, the fun just increased! The picture on the right is Adrienne, showing off the current collection of five wiggly 'pillars. That's my girl!

The other picture is them on the front porch, during the brief rain shower. Lunch on the porch, with their caterpillars in the box on the right and their mother safely ensconced behind a closed door. As Rhiannon said, "Isn't this the life?"

Technorati Tags: caterpillars

Summertime Libations

I went into the liquor store yesterday to stock up on some missing libations. Of course, I completely forgot to buy the main thing I went in there for - a new bottle of Tattoo for the freezer. My memory is even more suspect now than it ever has been. You shoulda heard my youngest lecturing me about "taking my time" and "not being in such a rush" when I complained about forgetting some things on our way to soccer pictures. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Anyway, I decided to look into buying a new rum. Since I've been making the rounds at the cocktail blog circuit, I've noticed some disenchantment with Bacardi Silver. It is my favorite rum, as it is smooth and flavorful without being too sweet. Because its primary use is in a rum & coke, it can't be adding even more sweetener. But I was surprised to find there isn't another "top shelf" silver rum available. I cannot stand any of the "Ron" brands, like Ron Rico or Ron Virgin. Is "Ron" a Caribbean word for "Bottom Shelf"? And that's about the only other silver rums I could see. There were plenty of fancy dark and gold rums, but I've found them to be too sweet for an R&C. Fine for sipping, but not really for mixing. So I've stuck with Bacardi for now.

What did completely bowl me over was the astonishing variety of flavored rums. That was another one of my quest items, to try one of these. I am a big fan of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, but that's not really a flavored rum. I think there were more flavors for rum than there were for vodka! Just about every imaginable tropical fruit was well represented - pineapple, mango, coconut (of course), banana, orange, berry. Bacardi itself had six or seven, including the new "Melon Blast" or something, that was a watermelon-flavored rum - yech! I have tried the Limon on occasion, as it isn't too bad in a R&C. I didn't want to get too wild, so I picked up a bottle of Cruzan Orange Rum. I tried it in an R&C last night - not all that wonderful. Too much orange. I'll have to try one of the recipes it came with, like the one with pineapple juice and cream of coconut. But I just didn't know so many varieties had exploded onto the scene.

For the Carnival of Drinking, where the theme is drinks that you like to serve at the barbecues, grill outs, picnics or what not that you'll be attending this weekend, or in the summer months in general (phew, that's a mouthful!), I thought I'd throw out a couple of long, tall drinks I make when I'm looking for something simple and refreshing. After a hard day in the garden, or mowing the lawn, or a full weekend working on that "Honey Do" list like I anticipate this weekend, you don't want some kind of fiddly drink to make, with measuring and mixing and blending. Just throw some stuff together and go relax already.

First up is my very favorite summertime drink - the "Pimm's Cup". Pimm's is an English herbal concoction just brimming with refreshing flavors. During the height of its popularity around World War 2, they made six different kinds, No. 1 through 6, each using a different base liquor. These days, there's only No. 1 left, which is based on London gin. I've heard rumors of No 2, based on vodka, still being around, but I've never seen it.

So you take a tall Collins glass and top it with ice (not chopped or crushed, as it will get too watery). Fill the glass 1/4 to 1/3 full with Pimm's No. 1 and then top with your favorite light colored soda. You could use Sprite, Fresca, or, in my classic version, ginger ale. Garnish with a slice of cucumber and enjoy. Easy to make, easy to drink, and very refreshing!

My second libation is very similar in some ways to the Pimm's Cup. Fill a tall Collins glass with big cubes of ice, fill 1/4 to 1/3 full with your favorite berry flavored vodka, and top with lemonade. I'm partial to raspberry, but you can use whatever kind that wets your whistle. I've tried it with cherry and it works pretty nicely. I have a big bottle of Stoli Beri just waiting for a pour at some point during this long holiday weekend. Of course, the lemonade you use is very important too. Newman's Own is an easy to get favorite of mine, while the one from the local organic supermarket chain (Wild Oats) is also a very nice one.

The raz & lemonade drink isn't very sophisticated (it doesn't even have a name!), but it sure is refreshing. It also goes better with food than does the Pimm's Cup, which I tend to drink by itself later in the evening. I'll try to add some pictures once these drinks get poured. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: cruzan bacardi pimms+cup cocktail

Lawns...

Just got back from a lunch time lawn mowing over to my mother-in-law's. The grass had grown an incredible amount in just over a week, as it does here in New England during the springtime. And I'm going to need a machete to hack my way through our backyard if I don't get out and cut it this weekend, again after less than a week. I should really get one of those push rotary mowers, for both ecological and physiological reasons, but I still like whacking my way through with my lawnmower. Hey, at least it is a four stroke engine. Up until a few years ago, I had an old Lawnboy two stroke, which is about as polluting a device as you could buy. I don't even think they sell them any more.

Anyway, all this lawn mowing brings to mind a favorite joke I've kept around:

GOD: Francis, you know all about gardens and nature. What in The world is going on down there in the USA? What happened to the Dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a Perfect, no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, Withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of Songbirds.

I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are These green rectangles.

ST. FRANCIS: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers "weeds" and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

GOD: Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms. It's Temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass Growing there?

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and Poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow Really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it, sometimes twice a week.

GOD: They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?

ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

ST. FRANCIS: No, sir -- just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

GOD: Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will Grow. And when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

ST. FRANCIS: Yes, sir.

GOD: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and Saves them a lot of work.

ST. FRANCIS: You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

GOD: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stoke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in The spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and Protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to Enhance the soil. It's a natural circle of life.

ST. FRANCIS: You'd better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great Piles and pay to have them hauled away.

GOD: No. What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the Winter and to keep the soil moist and loose?

ST. FRANCIS: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy Something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in Place of the leaves.

GOD: And where do they get this mulch?

ST. FRANCIS: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the Mulch.

GOD: Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore. St. Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us Tonight?

ST. CATHERINE: "Dumb and Dumber," Lord. It's a real stupid movie about -

GOD: Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis.

Technorati Tags: lawns lawn+mowing humor

Rechargable Life

As a sort of adjunct to my Backlogged Life, I've come to realize just what a slave to rechargable batteries I am. I mean, think about it - how many different rechargable items do you have? I spend far too much time worrying about my batteries running down.

Stuff I Gotta Recharge

• My cell phone. And as I'm an relatively infrequent user of a cell phone, and none of our cars have a power outlet that gives power with the key off (the Explorer at least had one of them that did), it means my phone is always running low on charge, because I just never remember to put it on the charger.
• Four (yes four) cordless phones. These usually aren't a problem because you can just "hang them up", but they always seem to be running low on charge anyway. And then they all too quickly stop taking any recharge any more. It got so bad with my office phone, my boss even offered to pay for a regular corded phone so I would be available!
• My mouse. I have, and really love, my Logitech MX700 cordless mouse, even for highpowered online shooters, but it's always crying out for a recharge. In fact, right now it's little red light is blinking at me. And I will amost certainly forget to put it on its charger tonight and then I'll be out of luck. I try to throw it on before I call it a night every night, but often forget. And I'm probably screwing it up somehow by doing it anyway.
• My electric shaver. This one is annoying because I'd rather just leave it plugged in, but the instructions warn against it. In fact, I screwed up my previous one because I left it plugged in. And the shame of it is, I rarely, if ever, really need a cordless razor, as I'm almost always by a plug.
• My Palm Pilot. Again, it's a shame because I rarely actually use it, but it is particularly useless if it isn't charged.
• My camera flash. I have a "heavy duty" battery for my external flash, giving it extra juice and quick recharge times. But it is currently dead anyway, I think :-(

And that doesn't count the two things Gabrielle has (cell phone and palm pilot), which I sometimes have to worry about. Or the gazillion rechargable batteries we have around for toys, remote controls, etc. Or rechargable toys, like the drivable Corvette the girls have, or my little toy RC car. Or the anciet laptop I have for playing DOS games.

Technorati Tags: batteries

How I Work

One of my frequent stops these days on the blog circuit is LifeHacker.com. Lots of cool things to do, both at the keyboard and in life. Recently, a couple of questions about How I Work were put to a number of productivity experts and their own staff, and I thought I'd give the questions a try

What desktop software do you use every day?

• GNU Emacs : I'd say I spend probably 75% of the time in this text editor. Although that barely scratches the surface of what Emacs can do. I've been using it since it first came out, all those years ago, and I'd be lost without it. It gives me a common "desktop" on which to work, and works across many different platforms.
• Firefox : My browser of choice. I probably spend 10% or more of my time in this web browser, both for work and for play.
• Thunderbird : for years I used the Mozilla suite, but found it was getting creaky around the edges. Thunderbird gives me the same email client, only modernized and sleek. It has very powerful filters for carefully filing away the hundreds of emails messages I get every day.
• Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 : There isn't much "visual" about it, and I think it is a ten year old development platform, and basically I hate it, but it is the industry standard, so that's what we use. We are slowly, every so slowly, making our way over to Visual Studio 2005, but who knows when that effort will begin in earnest. My favorite Windows development platform for personal projects remains Borland's C++Builder, although I haven't moved up to 2006 yet.
• Cygwin : the Unix compatible commandline environment for Windows. Like Emacs, it keeps me from going crazy as I hop from one platform to another. I use the Bash shell, rxvt terminal and the Cywin/X X server. I still use JPSoftware's 4NT shell. It has taken great care of me for many years, every since the 4Dos days. If you want a real commandline and don't want to bother with the beast that is Cygwin, go for 4NT.
• PowerPro : Windows utility extraordinaire. I'd be lost without it. I use it mostly for the easy shortcuts it gives me. You can set up your own personal toolbars that can be put almost anywhere. I have one that goes in the title bar of the active window. But there's a million and one things you can do with it, as it has a very powerful scripting engine, adds all kinds of special Windows UI tweaks, notes, virtual desktops, keyboard and mouse macros, you name it. It used to be called Stileto and was one of the few shareware programs I've ever actually used enough to pay for.
• Perforce : the SCS (Software Control System) we use at work at my prodding. I've been carrying it along to various jobs, and I still have a single user personal copy. It has a wonderful client/server model that works incredibly well for us work-at-home types.
• Rhapsody : My music player of choice. I was seriously dismayed when they were acquired by Real, who remain, in my book, one of the worst companies out there for installing junk on your computer. I have some computers I'm still trying to erase their remnants from. I use Media Player Classic, an OpenSource program, on those rare occasions when I need to play an RM file.
• Palm Desktop : Don't really use my Palm much, but I do use the Desktop as my address book and calendar.

What web sites do you use every day?

• Bloglines : My RSS reader. Easy to use, nice interface and available where ever I am. Perfect.
• RememberTheMilk : I've started using this site as my "Getting Things Done" list application. It doesn't really have hierarchical items, but other than that I've found it to be easy to use and very flexible. By using Javascript, you get nice keyboard shortcuts (if you turn off the Firefox "search when you begin typing" feature, which I miss).
• Wikipedia : It is a rare day where I don't end up at the Wikipedia.
• AllMusic.com : I leave this open to further investigate interesting bands that I hear on the Rhapsody radio stations.

What PDA/personal organizer/system do you use to keep organized?

I have a Palm Treo Color, but I don't use it all that much. Just as a portable address book, really. I spend most of my time at my keyboard, so a portable organize just isn't that important.

Technorati Tags: lifehacker software emacs powerpro cygwin

More name dropping

Some more name stuff, to follow up on a recent entry. First, from the World Wide Words mailing list:

NEVAEH It's just been announced, based on US social security data, that the girl's name that's growing fastest in popularity is this head- scratchingly hard-to-pronounce moniker. "Nevaeh" is now the 70th most popular US girl's name, sandwiched between Evelyn and Madeline. Word buffs will immediately note it is "heaven" written backwards, surely among the oddest creations in the history of naming. There have been occasional examples around for many decades (I've found it recorded as far back as 1921 and it's presumably older) but the start of its rise to fame more or less coincided with the announcement in May 2000 by Christian rock star Sonny Sandoval that his daughter had been given that name. Nevaeh first appeared on the list of most popular girl's names at number 268 in 2001 and has been rising ever since. It's popular in particular with African Americans and evangelical Christians. The headline on the front page of the New York Times on Thursday summed up many people's view of it: "And if It' s a Boy, Will It Be Lleh?" It's this whole backwards bit that bothers me. In witchcraft, isn't saying the Lord's Prayer backwards a recipe for calling up the Devil? If so, what are you supposed to get when you say "nevaeh"? A little imp with attitude?

Zoiks! I hate gimmicky names like that. Spelling things backwards, or otherwise twisting normal words to make a cutesy name makes me quesy.

And Mark was kind enough to remind me of a "wicked cool site"® that shows name popularity visually and dynamically as you type letters. It's really an amazing achievement, but it does require Java. One time when it is worth it. I don't allow Java in my normal browser (Firefox), but I turn it on for Internet Explorer, figuring how much more of a pig could it get? But the graph is way cool, showing you the name across time in popularity. What a great toy.

Oh, and if you ever need to name a horse, you can go here. Once again, hat tip to Mark!

Technorati Tags: names

Pondering the imponderable

• Why is it any obstruction on the windshield wipers is always at eye level?
• Why does the car in front of you, after riding their brakes all the way up to a green light, always make it through the intersection, leaving you stuck at the red light?
• Speaking of red lights, why would a driver, after waiting through a red light and pulling forward ten feet, decide now is the time to put on their left turn signal? Come to think of it, this is about the only time I ever see turn signals used any more.
• Why would the President's official Press Secretary decide it was a good idea to use the phrase tar baby in an interview?
• Why would a group of people who claim to support freedom from governmental interference like the right-wing nutjobs out there, still unquestioningly support a president invovled in some of the most invasive (and illegal) domestic spying since World War II?
• And finally, is there a more heartwarming sight to behold than morning sunshine streaming through your window after it being absent for over ten days? Sure, we were back into rain today, but for one glorious instant, it felt like spring.

What's in a name?

Gelf Magazine has an interesting short article doing what it does best - tweak the Main Stream Media for being lackadasical. In this case, it is the reporting done on the annual Social Security Administration list of the most popular baby names from last year. The media says dumb things like :

"When kids born in 2005 head to kindergarten in a few years, a lot of them will be raising their hands when the teacher calls out 'Emily' or 'Jacob'"

Which is, as you might imagine, a vast overstatement, seeing as how it is only about 1% of the boys were named Jacob and a similar percentage of girls were named Emily. And, in fact, the percentage of babies named using the top 100 names has fallen rather dramatically over the last 60 years:

2005:
Percentage of Boys given a Top 100 Name: 48.0%
Percentage of Girls given a Top 100 Name: 34.2%

1985:
Percentage of Boys given a Top 100 Name: 67.1%
Percentage of Girls given a Top 100 Name: 51.6%

1965:
Percentage of Boys given a Top 100 Name: 72.7%
Percentage of Girls given a Top 100 Name: 57.9%

1945:
Percentage of Boys given a Top 100 Name: 75.4%
Percentage of Girls given a Top 100 Name: 65.8%

Geflog: Keeping Up With the Jacobs

When it came to naming our babies, we had two very different processes. The first, like the process of labor, was long and arduous. The second, again very much like the birth, was relatively quick and easy.

For our first, we read books, talked about it constantly, surfed the web, checked lists, you name it. With a last name of Arnold, we really needed a consonant at the end for it to flow easily, so that help whittle the list down. We eventually narrowed it down to ten names in each list, boy and girl. We did as recommended, and actually practiced using the names during the day, just to hear how it sounded out loud.

I don't remember all the names in the girls list. I'll bet Gabrielle has it written down somewhere. We wanted a name that was different, yet not too far out there. The most helpful book was the classic "Beyond Jennifer and Jason", with all kinds of great lists and comments. Both of us love our own names but have also had issues with them. For mine, people have tried far too hard to spell it. There are a few variations on "Jonathan", but I'd have to say mine is probably the most common. Other ones include "Jonathon", "Johnathan" and "Johnathon". So we were certain we weren't going to go with a unusual spelling of a common name. For my wife, "Gabrielle" is reasonably easy to spell but you'd be surprised at exactly how hard it is to pronounce for many people. It isn't the case as much any more, because it is becoming more common, but, much like the spelling of my name, people try way too hard to pronounce it.

So we practiced names on the list. Some from the girls list I remember include Spencer and Bailey (which had the extra attraction of it being my mother's maiden name). We also refused to discuss it with anyone else. You only get into trouble when you ask the opinion of others. When word leaked out about us considering Bailey, my sister got all up in arms because she was thinking of using it (and she eventually did with one of her twins). You get all kinds of unneeded comments if you try bouncing it off other people. We kept it pretty close to the chest and didn't regret it in the slightest, despite pressure from all side.

But we just couldn't get to one name. It wasn't like I had a favorite and Gabrielle had a different favorite. We just couldn't decide on one. It's a very early indication of the pressure you get as a parent, making lifetime choices for your child, and so it was a good introduction for us. We actually didn't decide until the middle of the night, during the long, hard labor, when Gabrielle said to me "It's going to be Rhiannon". Which is a cool name, don't you think? And it fits in a lot of ways. While she isn't named "after" the Fleetwood Mac song, we probably wouldn't have heard of it otherwise, and the song has the added benefit of making it familiar to others. I always thought it was a cool name. And her oldest brother was something of a Celtic scholar, who died the previous year in a fishing boat accident off the coast of Ireland, so it seemed a fitting tribute. And the folklore Rhiannon is something of a moon goddess (as well as a fairy tale witch), and her horoscope (which is, of course, a crock) sign is the Moon; they often call it "Moon Child" now, instead of Cancer the Crab, for obvious reasons. So it is a lovely name and fit in a number of interesting ways. And the day we brought her home from the hospital, there was a Rhiannon pictured on the front page of the local newspaper! She was a high school student, pictured working on something. Too funny!

Rhiannon's middle name was much easier. Both of us wanted to avoid those middle names that you are embarrassed to talk about in school, that become something of a talisman to guard against exposing. And "Elizabeth" was perfect - her mom's name, my sister's name, and a good solid name all around.

But for our second child, the process was much smoother. I'm not sure where it came from or who first proposed it, but "Adrienne" was an immediate hit, and we never varied from it. We each had one other top contender. I liked the name "Cam", for a boy or a girl (or "Cammi"). Cam Neely was, and probably still is, my favorite hockey player and it is a great name. Gabrielle wanted "Lucy", but I wasn't crazy about it. Funny thing is, I don't think any of those names, but especially Adrienne, was on the top ten list for Rhiannon! But "Adrienne" was the top pick all along, and when she showed up 20 minutes after we got to the hospital, we were ready with a name at least. Gabrielle still says, though, that Adrienne would make a good Lucy too. And it does give you a pretty clear picture of her personality.

And her middle name also was pretty easy. Christine is my mom's name, and relatives on both sides have the same or variations on it. And, oddly enough, Rhiannon Elizabeth and Adrienne Christine have the same number of letters - 17. I hate the idea of some kind of cutesy pattern for names, like Roger Clemens' kids' names all beginning with the letter K, but it just worked out that way.

And another thing we liked about the first names - there are no obvious nicknames. Gabrielle and I both have obvious ones, but both prefer to go by the long version of our names, although we're not sticklers. But with Adrienne and Rhiannon, the default is the full version, and so far it has worked. Rhiannon used to call Adrienne "Ay-Ya", and it is still in occasional use. But luckily, Adrienne's early name for her sister, Rhi-Rhi, hasn't come up since then.

Technorati Tags: names rhiannon adrienne

Blogger's Fuel coffee review

So we finished up our four 8oz bags of Bloggers Fuel coffee beans from Boca Java. To reiterate, they sent me the beans free in exchange for reviewing them on my blog. They even included a couple of tchotchkes - a nice hat and a mug (that was unfortunately broken during shipping). I love to try new coffees and I was looking forward to trying out the beans. See this post for a complete introduction to the process. Also, the two bags of flavored coffee beans, which we don't drink, are still available. Just drop me an email with your name and address and I'll ship one off to you (can't seem to give the darn things away).

• New Media Mavericks

  'Unfiltered Truth' Lead the information reformation with this medium roast from the prized Tarrazu region of Costa Rica with excellent body and robust richness.

  It smelled and tasted vaguely flavored, which I can't stand. It also tasted a little bitter, while missing a full coffee taste. I'd give it a 6.

• Blogger's Boot Up Blend

  'Blogging Rocks.' Log on to an amazing medium blend of African, Central and South American Coffees. Rich taste and smooth finish for the perfect breakfast blend.

  Still vaguely smelling and tasting of a flavored bean, although much less than the New Media blend. I'll agree with the smooth finish part, but only because it still wasn't that big a taste. Rating: 7

• Late Night Log-In

  'Bloggers Fuel.' Blog on with a very bold, dark roasted blend of South African and Island Coffees. This coffee is rich with flavor and has a smooth finish.

  Oh oh - a "dark roasted" coffee, and I knew it as soon as I opened up the bag. I'm really not a fan of the dark, shiny "Charbucks" bean, and so I approached my coffee with a great deal of trepidation. And so yeah, dark roasted still isn't my cuppa joe. I love the aroma of a freshly ground coffee bean, but a dark roasted grind even smells too bitter for me. In my personal pantheon of coffee beans, dark roasted remains only a small step ahead of a flavored (shudder) bean. Rating: 5

• Blogs of Bravery

'The Real Story in Real Time.' Front line fuel from a blend of South American dark and medium roasts to create a well balanced smooth taste.

This is half dark roasted and half regular roast. Had the "dark roasted", slightly burnt aftertaste, but not too overwhelming. Again, rather underwhelming. Rating: 6

So, all in all, nothing to take over from my regular Armeno Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, which has a "big" taste, full of coffee without any of the bitterness many other coffee drinkers seem to crave these days. I say if your tastes run towards a smoother, more mellow cup of java, then check out BloggersFuel.com. I appreciate Blogger's Fuel giving me the opportunity to taste their beans, and sending me the swag (it'd be great if I could get a new mug - hint hint!).

Technorati Tags: bloggersfuel coffee

Walkin' on sunshine

(Sorry to have to put that classic pop jingle into your head today!)

Hard to believe, but sunshine was actually streaming through our window this morning. Let the record show it was over nine days since we last saw the sun, although it did brighten up a bit yesterday, allowing the girls to play on the playground after school. It's even supposed to reach 70, so I'm wearing shorts and gearing up for a U6 soccer game. What a nice change! Of course, it won't last. There's a good chance of rain beginning late Thursday into Sunday, but at least it will be warmer.

I thought I'd give you a short run down of some other blogs I regularly read, besides the ones in the sidebar on the left. I use Bloglines.com as my RSS reader. It works very well, with lots of features still untapped.

• The Regligious Policeman : The blog of a Saudi ex-pat living in Britain, it is a scathing, ironic, hilarious look at one of the US's favorite allies, and just how bizarre a Mohammed-driven crypto-Fascist royal regime can be. WIth friends like the Saudis, who needs enemies?
• The Liquor Snob : Despite the name, they are something of cocktail heathens, saying that they don't like to mix their cocktails and talking about using Rose's Lime Juice, but they do give a sprodic heads up on some interesting libations.
• Joel On Software : Opinionated writer on software engineering subjects.
• Mark's Sysinternals Blog : Mark is Mark Russinovich, the man who uncovered the Sony rootkit debacle, and Sysinternals.com is the site for a bunch of indispensible techie tools for Windows.

Technorati Tags: blogroll bloglines

Riders in the Storm

The above image is the total rainfall since the storm began, I think since Friday. We're on the edge of the very dark red, right around probably 6" of rain. My sister and her family live in Concord NH, which is in the purple, putting them about 2" more even than us. Three towns around us (Stoneham, Melrose and Winchester) have canceled schooll today due to flooding concerns. We had to detour around the main road at the bottom of our hill because the local swamp flooding over it. Not too deeply, mind you, but still maybe a foot or so. I can't even imagine the shape of the cellars of the homes across the road. And still no clear end in sight. I believe it has been one week since we last saw the sun at all. I think last Monday morning the sun showed up, but disappeared by lunch time and that's been it.

I didn't do my usual "Friday Random Ten" last Friday because I'm still listening heavily to my new CDs. Dresden Dolls "Yes, Virginia" is in heavy rotation, but also my Winterpills CD. I put it on downstairs, on the main system, and it really shines when played through the good speakers. I have an infrared repeater, so I can control the system from upstairs. Turned up loud enough, I can hear it fine from my home office. And I don't have to put up with tinny computer speakers or a loud CD player.

I've also been listening to both CDs of The Go-Betweens "16 Lover's Lane", as well as my Spider "This Way to Bitter Lake". Just haven't had time for a Random Ten!

Technorati Tags: rain winterpills dresden+dolls go+betweens

Raindrops Keep Fallin'

Day 7 since we last saw the sun. And it is still pouring rain out there. In the map above, the weather pattern is usually west to east. But when we get into this weather pattern, the areas of rain that are to the southeast are actually moving up towards us in a big counter-clockwise motion. And thus we have much more rain in our immediate future.

And with it comes the record for most rain in the month of May. And the month isn't even half done with yet. Boston has had almost 7" of rain as of last night, with the threat of up to 5" more. It is more than making up for a relatively dry March and April, that's for sure.

The Red Sox game was canceled last night and is almost certainly going to be canceled this afternoon, meaning there's going to be a few doubleheaders in their future. It's especially tough with the games being against a non-divisional foe, who we don't play as much, making the rescheduling much trickier. I did watch a little bit of the Revolution game last night from Foxboro. I used to love playing soccer in the rain - you could make some long range slide tackles in the wet grass.

Didn't get as much indoor work done as I had hoped. I took the girls off Mother's Day shopping and we took our time about it. Now to run off and get some bagels for a breakfast in bed for Gabrielle. She works very hard for us. A short list of her regular every day duties for includes:

• Deliver the girls to school and pick them up after
• Laundry
• Make snacks and lunches
• Bring the girls to swimming and dance
• Dressing, combing and Putin's bows in their hair
• Make sure the girls have their homework and other stuff ready for school
• Do homework with them
• Practice piano with them

The above list doesn't even include going to work three days a week and working plenty from home. Happy Mother's Day, Gabrielle!

Technorati Tags: mothers+day rain

Came Again Another Day

(title stole from Boston Globe front page weather blurb

Still raining out there, now day 6 without sunshine. And this time, I mean raining - no fake drizzle today. Soccer is, of course canceled. But it should make for a good day to get stuff done inside, which has been put off for a while. I've already been up and cleaning off my desk. Of course, I cheated by dumping the huge pile of papers on it into a big box for later sorting. That's where I'm going to dive into next.

It's been so dark, damp and dreary nothing can get dry. My hockey stuff didn't have a chance to dry out, so I got to put on slightly damp gear yesterday morning - yech! And it is moisture laden indoors too. My washcloth, hung up to dry on a hook in the bathroom, was still wet when I took my shower this morning.

I imagine the chances of them playing the Red Sox / Rangers came is slim to none tonight.I still can't believe they were playing at Fenway yesterday in the pouring rain. I knew they were going to work very hard at getting the game in, because there was simply no hope of postponing the game to a makeup doubleheader this weekend. It was raining as hard as I've ever seen at a baseball game still being played. Of course, given the final score of 6-0 Rangers, with only 6 innings being played, I'm not the only one who wishes the game had been canceled from the start!

Speaking of the Red Sox, there's a new toy on Google called Google Trends, which shows a graph showing the frequency with which various search terms are being searched. Not sure it really means much, but you can see an obvious trend in here, which shows the graph of Yankees/Red Sox searches. Note the spike in October 2004, a beautiful month for us BoSox fans!

Technorati Tags: rain google+trends red+sox

Police state just around the corner

Welcome to the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) "Constitution-free" zone.  This is a horror story about one of those quasi-legal governmental groups whose mandate is nebulous and control absolute.  They can pretty much do whatever they want, whenever they want, and you and me, as USA citizens, have little recourse.

This story reminds me of the time my wife got stopped at a metal detector, luckily pre-9/11.  It seems I left behind a .30-.30 shell in the carry on she was using and it set off the detector.  She literally almost fainted when they pulled it out (a single shell).  Nowadays, this would get her detained, questioned and fined up to $1000.  And more if they felt like it.

To me, it is looking more and more like the terrorists are winning, as their whole point is to disrupt our lives.  And the bullies in Washington are more than happy to take advantage of the chaos.

Terrorist watch list follies, and my time in the TSA's Constitution-free zone

Technorati Tags: tsa constitution

Rain Rain Go Away

Day 5 of cold, drizzly, damp weather. And it'll get worse before it gets better, with some places here in Massachusetts predicted to get over 6" of rain tomorrow! And the forecast is for at least a 50% chance of rain over through Tuesday anyway. So it doesn't look good for the U8 soccer game tomorrow or U8 soccer practice on Monday. Luckily, we don't have U6 soccer practice scheduled for Sunday, so we can stay home and take care of Mom.

I certainly do not miss our wet basement in Weymouth. It was a very nice, little house, right across the street from a small beach on Boston Harbor and a boat launching ramp. And yes, it was swimmable, but it was an especially exciting place for our Labrador Retriever. He just loved to go swimming, fetching his street hockey ball (the only kind of toy that had any staying power - he'd rip up all the others). I'm not sure our current Lab mix, Spenser, has ever been swimming. There just aren't as many places around here for him.

But the house was at the end of a long slope and the basement would always get wet in this kind of weather. I tried a few things but nothing really helped. It never was a complete disaster, like the Great Basement Flood of 1990, where the basement in my rented duplex filled up with water when the stream across the stream got clogged. But pain enough, keeping everything up on pallets. But here in Medford, we're at the top of a nice big, rocky hill, with a finished basement. We've never had a drop of water in it (knock on wood).

I wonder how many games the Red Sox will get in against Texas this weekend. They say the Fenway field drains very well now, but it's going to be some kind of miracle if they get in a game. And I'm glad I don't have tickets for the game - yech! I'm always reminded of a Bob Newhart show where Emily asks Bob, who is peering longingly out the window at a downpour, why they can't play baseball in this weather if they can play football. He does a classic attempt at explaining it, stuttering through a few abortive explanations, before finally giving up and just saying "I don't know, they just don't."

Of course, the girls are not slowed down at all by the rain. Splashing in puddles is one of the great joys of childhood, I think, and our girls are experts at it. Basically, they just don't care about getting wet. And it is so hard in the morning, as they race about in the rain. You don't want to rain on their parade (nyuk nyuk), as it were, but you also don't want them to get soaked through either, just before heading off to school! Just another one of the little juggling acts you have to do as a parent.

Technorati Tags: rain weather

SHAM scams

Very readable take on the SHAM (Self-Help and Actualization Movement) scam, where speakers like Tony Robbins and Mark Hansen (of Chicken Soup fame) sell the same drivel over and over, making themselves rich at others expense.   Some pretty funny stuff, and some sad stuff too.

extensive market surveys revealed that "the most likely customer for a book on any given topic was someone who had bought a similar book within the preceding eighteen months."

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: SHAM Scam -- The Self-Help and Actualization Movement has become an $8.5-billion-a-year business. Does it work?

Weather Whining

Day 4 without seeing the sun and, as you can see to the left, the forecast looks pretty grim for the next ten days. We didn't have our U6 soccer game yesterday, which makes two games in a row canceled for the Stars. This is much like last spring, where Rhiannon's U8 team played got in most of their practices and games, while the U6 Stars missed a majority of their schedule. Weird.

Of course, I can't overemphasize just how big a chunk of salt to take a 10 day forecast with, but that doesn't make it any less depressing. I remember reading something about the miserable accuracy forecasters have beyond about 48 hours. I think that is especially true during the spring here, as they just can never predict how long the rain will last. It got so bad that the business owners on Cape Cod asked the local stations to stop predicting the weekend's weather on Monday or, indeed, any time before Thursday. Because if they predicted rain, even if it didn't rain, business dropped precipitously (pun intended).

But it still makes the over all feel for the day to be oppressive. Everything just has that extra edge, and everyone is just a little more prickly. I hear the sun is supposed to be out up in Burlington, Vermont, which is a very pretty little city. If it weren't for the fact it is Mother's Day this Sunday, I would seriously suggest taking a drive up there, if only to see the sun for a bit. I blame my parents, as the same thing happened last year when they got back from their annual sojourn to Florida. It rained and rained and rained. The have a nice little place on a lake up in Maine, and it practically got flooded out. So far, the rain hasn't been steady, just a gray, overcast, drizzle. Yech.

And to make the day even more depressing, the Red Sox had a 3-0 lead, with Curt Schilling on the mound, and ended up getting thumped by the Yanqui Devils 7-3. Not a pretty game at all. It was one that got away, for sure. At least my favorite team left in the NHL playoffs, the Oilers, won their game 3-2 in triple overtime, to bring the series to 2-1 in favor of the San Jose Sharks and a battle of ex-Bruins Thornton, McLaren (Sharks) and Samsonov (Oilers). I made it to the end of regulation, which was after 12:30am. I wish I could've stuck around to the end, but that's probably another hour and half of hockey.

Technorati Tags: weather rain

Geek Sleepover

Now this sounds like fun - a sleepover for geeks like me!  You bring a sleeping bag, offer to give a small presentation or even a 5 minute "Lightning Talk" and get to talk geek with a bunch of other like minded folks.  I might have to see if I can clear off the weekend for this!  See as how I can't go to Ottawa this weekend, this might just fill the geek need.

BarCamp / BarCampBoston

(thanks to Joho for the pointer)

Technorati Tags: bar+camp geeks

Weather - ugh!

Man oh man, can New England weather get depressing. The above is our weather forecast for the next 5 days. And, if you go out even further, it looks exactly the same. Cloudy, periods of rain, temps in the 50s. I doubt we'll get in our U6 soccer game tonight.

But that's just the way it goes around here, especially in the spring. We get crunched between two warring fronts and neither is willing to leave, so they just sit over us. Usually what happens is that the forecaster try to put a rosey picture on things and promise a clearing "tomorrow". And they say that for a week. I was surprised to be watching the Red Sox / Yankees game last night and there was any rain at all in New York. This is pretty localized, I guess.

Technorati Tags: weather new+england

Coffee GIve away still going on!

I still have the 8 oz bags of "Blogger's Pajama Passion" and "Bloggers Beach Blast" beans to give away to any lucky emailer. Just drop me an email with your name & address and a bag will be yours! See this page for a complete listing of the Bloggers Fuel beans: Blogger Blends.

Technorati Tags: coffee bloggersfuel boca+java

Grant McLennan, 1958-2006

It's funny how life works.  I was working out at the Y yesterday and my shuffling MP3 player moved on to one of my all time favorite songs - "Clouds" by The Go-Betweens.  I've raved about the album, 16 Lovers Lane, before, and I realized I hadn't listened to it recently. So before heading out to hockey this morning, I dug through the disaster that is my desk and found the first CD from the dual CD package and listened to it on the drive this morning.  And still agree it is "simply breathtaking", as AllMusic.com says. Just some great all around stuff.

And it was in this very frame of mind that I was reading the paper this morning, as I ate my bagel.; Maybe once a week, or even less, I actually sit down to a breakfast with the paper, instead of just a quick glance at the sports pages.  And as I flipped through the paper, I glanced at the obits and there, at the top, was the sad announcement that Grant McLennan, one of the co-founders of The Go-Betweens, had died yesterday of an apparent heart attack at the all too young an age of 48.  He's the one who penned the "dark side of romance" songs for the Lovers Lane album, as he was fresh from his breakup with one of the other band members, while Robert Forster penned the more "upbeat on romance" songs, as he was just beginning with the other member of the group!

So maybe there was some kind of psychic vibe going on here. Ha!  But still, I think I'm going to have to flesh out my Go-Betweens collection, as 16 Lovers Lane remains my lone possession in their oeuvre.  Maybe I'll run out and get the recent DVD from them, That Striped Sunlight Sound.

allmusic ((( Grant McLennan bio )))

Grant McLennan, 48, singer and founder of Go-Betweens - The Boston Globe

Technorati Tags: Grant+McLennan the+go-betweens

Backlogged

Via Lifehacker comes a link to a blogger talking about his "Backlogged Life". You know, those piles of information that you have been meaning to get to, but haven't?  It's a scary thing to think about.  Here's my "backlogged" life:

• Read inbox & Unfilter emails : 450
• Filtered email (unread/total) : 61,600 / 62,500 (I'm not kidding)
• Unread RSS messages : 23,685 (sic)
• Read work inBox emails : 523
• Voice-mail, home : 2
• Voice-mail, work : 3
• Unread Library books : 6
• Books in my nightstand : 23
• Unread magazines : 34
• Unfinished installed computer games : over 40 (Comcast Games on Demands feeds this addiction)
• Unfinished, uninstalled, computer games : over 50 (and that's after giving away a box full when we moved!)
  
• Books in my "want to read" list : over 150
• CDs in my "want to buy" list : about 75
• Movies in my Netflix queue: 132
• Unplayed boardgames I own : must approach 500, if you include magazine games. I gave up my subscription to Strategy & Tactics after getting about 30 issues and never playing any of the games
• Height of paper pile on my desk needing filing : approaching 12"
• Open bugs : 110
• Bookmarks : over 1000
  

Pretty sad, scary, stupid list, isn't it?  Although I suppose as long as I don't let it get to me, it should be okay. I mean, most of the emails I have are for mailing lists I joined but have never actually read, like of OpenOffice.org (over 13,000) and wxWidgets (nearly 9,000). I suppose I could unsubscribe, but that would probably take even more effort than it does to just ignore it.

But I have to admit, the unread books, unplayed games and desired CDs can weigh me down. And with the plethora of information available on the web, there's always a new movie, CD or book I want to check out.  And one of my favorite pasttimes is to flip through Maltin's guide and highlight interesting sounding movies.

I was reading something (maybe again from Lifehacker), where they were talking about sorting stuff like email and mail, into piles.  If you weren't sure you would want it, put it into a "Death Row" folder.  If, after like three weeks, you still haven't gone back to it - poof, it's gone. I may have to do this, just to feel "cleansed".

Luckily, the phone doesn't play a very central part in our lives.  Almost no backlog there. And my cell phone is about 90% outgoing, and very little incoming.  And I hope to keep it that way.

But it all feeds into a desire to simplify our lives.  It is a tough balancing act as a parent, though. You don't want to take away opportunities for your kids in a misguided, shortsighted drive to simplify, but you want to make sure everything "counts". But if we can just weed out the chaff, get rid of the stuff that just lies around the house, getting in our way, we would go a long way to easing the pyschic burden we bear.

But check out Greg's screed. It's very interesting and thought-provoking.

An Entirely Other Day : The Backlogged Life

Technorati Tags: backlogged lifehacker.com

Coffee Schwag and Giveaway

Thanks to a pointer by Peggy over at ·:[ Blabber Heads ]:·, I looked into BloggersFuel.com, a coffee bean site run by Boca Java. They have a publicity deal whereby I filled out an application for them to send me a "Bloggers Review Pack" of beans, along with a couple of other promotional things, in exchange for mentioning them on my blog and reviewing their beans. I had kind of forgotten about it when the box from them showed up on my doorstep yesterday.

And plenty of cool stuff it is! Six 8oz bags of their coffees, a nice hat and a big mug. Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, the handle of the mug got pretty well shattered during shipping :-( I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it's such a nice looking mug I'm going to ask for a replacement. This is some cool viral marketing, if you ask me.

The six coffee bags, and the blurbs on the front, are:

1. Blogger's Pajama Passion "Life's short, blog hard." : Blog the night away with this exotic flavored coffee featuring vanilla, Kahlua and caramel.
2. Blogger's Beach Blast "Go ahead, make my blog." : This luscious flavored coffee will make your blog! Featuring a tantalizing combination of chocolate kiss and caramel.
3. Blogger's Boot Up Blend "Blogging rocks." : Log on to an amazing medium blend of African, Central and South American coffees. Rich taste and smooth finish for the perfect breakfast blend.
4. Blogs of Bravery "The real story in real time." : Front line fuel from a blend of South American dark and medium roasts to create a well balanced, smooth taste.
5. Late Night Log In "Blogger Fuel." : Blog on with a very bold, dark roasted blend of South American and island coffees. This coffee is rich with flavor and has a smooth finish.
6. New Media Mavericks "Unfiltered truth." : Lead the information reformation with this medium roast from the prized Tarrazu region of Costa Rica. With excellent body and robust richness.

It's a little quirky, but I'm willing to try out some new coffee beans. Good timing, too, as our last five pound bag of Armeno Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans just ran out. Look for some reviews over the coming week.

Oh, and as a special bonus to both regular readers of this blog, I'll send one of the flavored bags to the first respondents who ask for one. We don't do flavored coffee here, and the thought of actually drinking a "caramel" flavored coffee gives me the willies. So shoot me off an email at jdarnold@buddydog.org, tell me your preference ("Pajama Passion" or "Beach Blast", or either one if you don't care) and your address, and I'll get you out a bag on Monday. Good luck!

Technorati Tags: boca+java bloggers+fuel coffee

Thither and Yon

What has a middle-aged (ouch!), upper middle class, techno-geek father of two young daughters been up to, you might ask? Well, hold on to your keyboards, because whether you like it or not, I'm gonna tell you:

Mostly, I've been working, like most of us. Luckily, I love my job, and I say that even though I know no one in my company reads this blog (heck, practically no one reads it period). I always counted myself as blessed to have stumbled (literally) upon a career choice, computer programming, that I would do for free. I do it in my spare time, I did it when I had no job, and I will be doing it until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands. And, even better, I get paid a pretty good chunk of money for doing it.

I've been programming now since I dropped out of RPI in 1979. I was working for a friend of ours, doing roofing, on the roof of another friend who knew I was interested in computers. My main qualifications for the job was that I knew what a keyboard looked like. I had tinkered some with hand made computers in high school (built a counting 8008 "computer"), and was in the middle of a FORTRAN course in my sophomore year when I dropped out. And that's it. But he took me in for an interview, and this being the height of demand for programmers, I somehow got the job. I'll never forget riding home with Gary and him being embarrassed to offer me a job for what he thought was the paltry sum of US$12,000 a year, while to me, making minimum wage luggin 80lb packs of roofing shingles up tall ladders, it sounded like more money than I could ever spend. And I got to hack around with one of the earliest 32 bit computers with another neophyte and it's been a bonanza ever since.

My current job is for inSORS Integrated Communications. We do "high end" video conferencing and collaboration software. By "high end" I mean we sell only to Fortune 1000 companies, concentrating our efforts as a small privately held company on the most profitable sources. So I get to work on some cool video and audio technologies, with some great people, from home - how neat is that? I've been working from home for ten years or so, and I don't think I could ever go back to commuting. I work on lots of different projects, which is good for someone with my personality, as I don't get stuck on one thing and, being easily bored, get into trouble. I'm constantly jumping from task to task, keeping me hopping, which I also love.

The other major effort this time of year is soccer. I coach the co-ed Under-6 Stars and my daughter Adrienne, while I'm assistant coach for the girls Under-8 Galaxy and my daughter Rhiannon. Soccer was my sport in high school and, although I haven't played it competitively in years, I love to coach these kids. But it does use up four days a week - Saturday morning game for the Galaxy, Sunday afternoon "practice" for the Stars, Monday evening practice for the Galaxy and Wednesday evening games for the Stars. I figure I'm going to be at all of these anyway, so I might as well be involved with the coaching.

Working outside around the house is also a big thing this time of year. Cleaning up from winter, getting the lawn back into shape and putting in flowers is a major effort in the spring. While I don't use any pesticides on the lawn, I do put down fertilizer and seed it; I'm not one of the "natural" types, as we like to use our lawn too much. I think I might get one of those push rotary mowers this year, for the economy, ecology and exercise.

I've been reading before bed at a pretty good rate. I will be posting a reading update soon. Nothing too special so far though.

Another favorite activity is watching movies. I have a blog called Incredible Brightness of Seeing that is supposed to report on my movie watching, but it's been pretty quiet there. I have been watching some movies and will report on those too. Some recent viewings include Stray Dog(a little boring, but the commentary track is great), Little Black Book (okay, with an amazingly cute Brittany Murphy), and Crash (the recent one - okay, but I felt too manipulated).

I've also been busy writing two new biographies for the next project by the Boston SABR chapter. I did a short one on Juan Beniquez for the 75: The Red Sox Team that Saved Baseball book. It wasn't a stellar effort really, so I was glad to get another chance. The new book will be on the '67 Impossible Dream Red Sox team, in time for the 40^th anniversary. I was originally going to do the Dick Williams bio, but I think they ended up giving this important bio to someone more experienced. So my main bio is on Don Demeter and for this one I think I did a pretty good job. I worked much harder at it and did more research. I think it came out pretty well, although I still have a couple more things I'd like to do on it: a phone interview with Mr. Demeter (we've played telephone tag for a couple of weeks now) and some research at the Boston Public Library, as the online archives for both Boston papers are completely lacking for the '67 season.

I also took on the task of finishing up the Ken Brett biography. Someone else did most of the early work, including writing up a few pages on it. So I'm going to try and finish it up. He was the youngest pitcher at that time to appear in a World Series (19 years old) and also holds the record for most consecutive games with a home run for a pitcher at four (he said it should have been five, but an ump blew a call and said an HR was just a double).

And finally, I play computer games. More than just our usual Wednesday evening cocktails and computer games. I'm just an inveterate player of computer games. Mostly, I played Day of Defeat, an online first person shooter set in World War II. I'm a member of the 95th Rifles Clan, which is a first for me. It's a good group of players, who run a clean, safe and hack-free set of servers. It's nice because you can just pop in, play for 10 minutes or 10 hours, and it doesn't take any real thought. I like to play a few rounds at lunch time. I even wrote a poem for it for The Game Chair, a computer game review and notes site I do the odd bit of writing. You can find this masterpiece here: Ode To Online Mayhem. I'm supposed to be writing a followup Progressive Review on Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, but I'm far behind on that commitment - gee, I wonder why?

I've also been playing the hottest new game in a while, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It is a single player CRPG, in a vast world with spectacular graphics. I've played for a number of hours. Heck, I even have a blog where I'm writing up my adventures : From Here To Oblivion. It's been kinda quiet there, although I have been playing it some. I've run out of steam a little, which often happens with me in computer games. I'll play for a bit, have a great time, but get a little bored and move on to the next game. That's why Comcast Games on Demand is so cool for me - a pretty big library of computer games I can play whenever I want. Admittedly, they are trailing edge games, but it isn't a big drawback to me. I wrote up a short article comparing some of the online game providers for The Game Chair here: Games Without CDs.

In many ways, the preceding paragraphs show my problem - I get spread too thin, and don't concentrate on any one thing. You might say a jack of all trades, master of none, and you wouldn't be too far from the truth.

Technorati Tags: insors oblivion soccer sabr

Talking About Cars

So we've had the Mazda3 for about a week now, and it's quirks and personality are beginning to jell. Here's what I think so far:

Cool

• Giddyup : What a fun little car to drive! Especially when you use the quasi-manual shifting, where you tell it when to up and down shift. Those 160 ponies really move it. The first Explorer we owned had barely more horsepower and weighed probably twice what the Mazda weighs. It's not the fastest car I've owned, by a long shot, but it must have the best "dollars to fun" ratio of all time.
• Room : there's more room than I thought. With just one of the 60/40 rear seats folded down, it fits my goalie bag and everything.
• Light show : The dashboard has quite the light show going on. It is bathed in red, and when you adjust the sound system, you get visual effects. It might get tiring after a while, but so far it is cute. Also, the interior lights phase on and off as you get into the car, and there are plenty of lights when you first open the door, for things like the ignition spot.

Not Cool

• Speedometer : The speedometer goes to a ridiculous 140mph, leaving very little room for the more useful range from 0-65. As it only goes about 2/3 the way around anyway, there's a scant 2 inches or so left for the legal speeds. I would have stretched it out further around the circle, and only gone to 120 at the most. It's very hard to judge at a glance whether you are going 40 or 50.
• Seats : I haven't yet found the perfect seating position. There are plenty of adjustments, so the sweet spot must be there somewhere.
• Color : While it is a nice blue, our previous two cars were blue, so I'm a little bored with it. As I wanted a car in the lot, my color choices were limited, and I wasn't particularly keen on the regular red, but still...
• Rear windows : The rear windows go all the way down, which isn't really a good thing with two little kids. But the girls fit okay in the back, especially if I have Adrienne behind me, rather than the taller Rhiannon.
• No cassette player:-( Thus, no books on tape. While you can get books on CD, I only have a in-dash 6 disc player. The minivan has a separate 6 disc changer, and a single CD in dash player, so it is possible to mix music with books and not lose your place. But that can't happen with just the changer.
• The headlights have a very sharp horizontal cutoff line. It was mentioned in the Consumer Reports review of the Mazda5 as well, so it isn't just me. They light up just fine, but if you are going up or down a hill, it can be hard to see far enough ahead under low beams.

No word yet on the gas mileage. Given the nearly US$3 per gallon cost, I have high hopes! But I suppose if I can get 25-30mpg, I'll be pretty happy, given the short around town trips I usually do.

Dodge Charger 2.2

Cars I've Owned

1. '67 Mustang Convertible (blue): Bought by my father for a song, we hoped to get it fixed up. I drove it for a bit, until we tried to get it inspected and found that the frame itself was pretty much rotted through. We had fun using it in the fields after that, anyway.
2. Toyota Corolla (blue): Picked this up pretty cheap and it was barely worth that. My dad tried to warn me off it, noticing the excessive dark smoke coming from the tailpipe, but I was too entranced with the fancy metallic blue paint job and the top end car stereo. By the end of the summer, I was pouring 50 weight oil into it every week.
3. Plymouth Fury III (blue): One of the few cars I ever made money on. Bought it for US$300 in the spring and sold it for US$600 before heading off for college. Huge car - I could stretch out in the back seat. Had a nice little 308 V8 that ran like a charm, got 25mpg and was the perfect summer car.
4. 3/4 ton Chevy pickup truck (blue): Pretty new pickup truck. Once I banged up the side, it became the perfect car for driving into Boston. Nothing scarier than a 20 year old at the wheel of a big, heavily dented, pickup truck barreling into a rotary!
5. Dodge Charger 2.2 (red): My first new car, an early part of the Chrysler/Dodge recovery. I always said it was one of the best engineered and worst manufactured cars I owed. The engine, when it was running right, was beaut and it handled well. But I started having problems with it at 250 miles and it never stopped being a lemon.
6. Mazda GLC (tornado silver): Finally got rid of the Charger by trading it in on the GLC. A Great Little Car indeed, with good gas mileage, sharp metallic silver/gray paint job and just a solid car all around. A refreshing change from the trouble-prone Charger.
7. Mitsubishi Starion (white): turbocharged heaven. An absolute blast to drive - tight handling and incredibly fast. It didn't last long enough to give me the kinds of trouble my friend had with his, as I slammed it into a guardrail and totaled it with, luckily, no lasting physical damage to any of the occupants. The oddest thing about the accident was just after it happened, on a winding country road, some neighbors ran out to see what happened. First thing they asked me was if I was drinking. When I said no, they yelled over to call the police! How considerate. I think.
8. Due to getting screwed by the insurance company, I owned a couple of junkers for a couple of years, getting by mostly on my Honda CB900F motorcycle.
9. Mitsubishi Montero (red): Probably the car that elicited the most comments. An early SUV, boxy and fun to drive. I used to cruise around looking for people to help out on snowy roads. People would be walking by it in a crosswalk and would stop and ask us about it. Not sure why it was so interesting.
10. Suzuki Sprint (blue): The most economical car I ever owned, by far. Paid less that US$5,000 for it, and it got nearly 50 mpg. The 1 liter, 3(!) cylinder engine was barely bigger, with one less cylinder, than my CB900F! I drove it into the ground, until I was rear-ended on Rte. 128 by an out of control Explorer (ironic, given our future car purchases). I actually drove home after it, albeit with a broken seat back, while the Explorer had to be towed.
11. Acura Integra GSR (green): I'd have to say this was the best car I've owned so far. A beautiful metallic green, with the most horsepower of any non-turbocharged 4 cylinder engine. A silky smooth 6 gear manual shift mated with an engine the red-lined at over 10,000 rpm made for one heck of a fun driving experience. It also made for a very good car to teach Gabrielle how to drive a stick, as you could do 0-60 in pretty much any gear. An absolute blast to drive.
12. Ford Explorer (green): But we needed more room, so we picked up an Explorer. Our big Labrador just wouldn't fit in the back of the slim hatch of the GSR, and Gabrielle's Chevy Blazer was dying a slow, ugly death. The Explorer is a great car to have with a dog. Plenty of room, flat folding rear seats, and Homer just loved to sit up between us.
13. Ford Explorer (blue): Yup, for awhile there we were a two Explorer family. I was resisting the move to a minivan and, after checking out all the cars at the local auto show, found that the Explorer was still the only one offering things like flat folding seats, opening rear window, etc. And Ford made some nice improvements - full time all wheel drive, better gas mileage, as well as beefing up the horsepower (my main complaint with our first Explorer). A very nice car.
14. Honda Odyssey (blue): Finally broke down and got a minivan and we don't regret it for a moment. Much easier getting kids in and out of the car, cavernous storage area with the fold flat third seat and just a better family car all around. We've been very happy with this car. Good power. My biggest complaint has been the poor gas mileage; less than 20 mpg. Very reliable as well. I only wish the power points would work with the key off.
15. Mazda3 (blue): Hmmm, no wonder I'm a little bored with blue! My first four cars were blue and the last three cars have been blue.

Technorati Tags: cars mazda3

New Car!

W00t! We got a new car yesterday. I've been agitating for a new car for a couple of years now, maybe even ever since we got the Honda Odyssey minivan, which made our Ford Explorer not quite as necessary, given the minivan's utility. And with the gradually decreasing reliability of the Explorer, I was looking to downsize.

The Explorer has a lot of good things going for it, despite the bad rap put on it by SUV-haters. In fact, Dora the Explorer was our second straight Explorer. It's main attraction is that it is an excellent dog car. The back seats fold down flat, allowing the dog to be in the back, but sitting up between the front seats. Our previous dog, Homer, just loved to travel this way. Spenser isn't quite so keen on traveling.

It also had a number of other features which are remarkably lacking in many other cars, besides the easy to fold flat back seats. The back window opened separately from the gate, which is a nice little feature you only notice if you don't have it. My brother-in-law poo-pooed this feature, but he grew to miss it in his Jeep Cherokee. This new one finally had some "oomph", which was sorely missed in our first one. With AWD, and switchable 4 wheel drive, it was very useful in our New England winters, and yet it still got nearly 20 mpg, or about what we get in our much less maligned minivan.

But, at six years old and 57,000+ miles, it had gotten to that point where the repairs were beginning to cost as much as paying for a new car. It had been paid off for three years, so it had more than paid for itself. My guardrail accident in the winter was almost the last straw. I shopped it around, all dinged up, and almost pulled the trigger on a Ford Focus. But in the end, my wife convinced me that we didn't need another payment, and I felt the Focus was too small, so we bit the bullet and got it fixed up.

And Fantasia did a fantastic job on it. It came back looking much better than it had before the accident, as they also fixed a previously dinged up rear bumper. It was clean, polished and felt like a new car. So I was very happy. For about a month...

Then, this past weekend, all of a sudden the brakes went on it. You know the sound of metal on metal, as dollar signs fly out from your wheels? That's what was going on here - boom! So I'm thinking it might even be the huge caliper problem I had with it at about 35,000 miles, where the calipers froze and it was a nearly US$2000 job. And then, while it was sitting in the driveway as the minivan was in the body shop (a story for another day), I began to notice small puddles of oil showing up too. That was the last straw.

So even Gabrielle's resistance began to fade. Not disappear, mind you, but ease a little bit. And it was a good fear, too, because a car that is paid for can carry a lot of problems before it outweighs the heavy cost of even a cheap new car. But the idea of putting in US$1000 or more on the Explorer right now was just so off-putting, I started to look in earnest before I took it in for the next round of repairs. And I had been enamored with the Mazda3 ever since it first came out - good looking, gas efficient and a blast to drive, all for under US$20,000.

So I went up to 128 Mazda and said if you give me US$5,000 for my Explorer, I'll buy a Mazda3. As the NADA was around $6,000 or so, they jumped at the chance. They even gave me the car yesterday afternoon, while they looked at the Explorer. My guess, they never even bother to look, figuring $5,000 for the Explorer was a bargain, while I was figuring $5,000 was a steal. Good deal all around! So we closed out the deal last night, and now I get to spend today running around dotting the I's and crossing the T's. But at least I'll be doing it in a new car!

Technorati Tags: new+car mazda mazda3

Cocktails of the Week : Blue Monday and Whiskey Sour

Still finding recipes where I can use my fancy Curaçao of Curaçao blue curaçao. It is usually pretty easy to find them - flip through the book and find a blue cocktail, or look up in the back under "Blue...".

Blue Monday

• 1 oz tequila (nothing fancy here, just Jose Cuervo)
• 1 oz Drambuie
• 1 oz blue curaçao
• 3 oz lemonade

Shake the liquors over cracked ice, then strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Top with lemonade.

A disappointing effort. Plenty of different tastes, but nothing really worked together and it ended up tasting mostly like a weak lemonade, oddly enough. Can't say as we'll revisit this one.

Whiskey Sour

• 1.5 oz Scotch whiskey (we used Jack Daniels, actually)
• 1 oz lemon juice (almost done with my frozen Meyer lemon juice:-()
• .5 oz sugar syrup

Shake together over cracked ice. Pour into a tumbler with ice.

This is one of those "classic" drinks with a million different recipes. My little black book, with a gazillion recipes made for the bar, has it simply 1 oz whiskey with sour mix - yech! Michael has a recipe with both lemons and limes. Even what glass to serve it in is controversial, from tumbler to chilled cocktail glass! This particular recipe worked okay, but I can't say as I was wild about it. I guess just not being wild about whiskey in general would explain a lot of that!

We did do a taste test on a couple of whiskeys I have here. Forced to pick a whiskey, I would go with Dewars White Label. That's what I use in my Rusty Nails, and it makes a great one. So we tasted it "neat", side by side with the Jack Daniels. The Dewars was definitely "smoother", but the JD would stand up better in a mixed drink, like the Sour.

Michael was going to make one for his girlfriend, who isn't much of a drinker. I told him they should watch Days of Wine and Roses before embarking down that trail! In the movie, executive Jack Lemon introduces secretary Lee Remick to booze via a Brandy Alexander. Things eventually turn into an alcoholic haze for them both, and only Lemon finally, and barely, pulls out of it. A dark tale of drink, but an excellent movie.

Jack Lemon: You remember how it really was? You and me and booze - a threesome. You and I were a couple of drunks on the sea of booze, and the boat sank. I got hold of something that kept me from going under, and I'm not going to let go of it. Not for you. Not for anyone. If you want to grab on, grab on. But there's just room for you and me - no threesome.

Then we finally got through the level we were playing on Serious Sam 2. It was a tough one, and Michael is a tough game master. He made us do it, and do it, and do it again until we got through it with only 2 lives, at the hardest level. We quit for the night after making it to the next level and watched another episode if Nowhere Man. Sorry to say, but it seems to be going nowhere for us. I'm not sure we'll even try another episode. This one had an interesting twist, where he was kidnapped to a city hidden away, populated by other "Disenfranchised" people like himself. But there was a dark secret that he uncovered. Weird, and ultimately unsatisfying.

Technorati Tags: cocktail+of+the+week cocktails whiskey tequila

More Getting Things Done

I was pointed to a new posting on LifeHacker.com, called List your life in .txt (hat tip to Michael!). It is an interesting article on how to have a straight text file be your ToDo project file. In this case, it is an even simpler way than PyGTD that I talk about here. You type in a line (using a simple markup scheme) and use grep to search it and sort to sort it, via the command line and pipes (once again, thank Zeus for Cygwin).

It's an interesting idea, and I could definitely do this if I wanted to, as I live at the command line (bash, via Cygwin for Windows), but it still suffers from requiring a weird, messy markup, albeit a simpler one than PyGTD. It also requires some manual work to move around and remove tasks that might make it harder than necessary to work with. I still think I can get PyGTD to work if I can ever find the time to tweak the program and streamline the markup.

That page also led me to a couple of other interesting pages extolling the virtues of plain text files, and of using text editors. I liked the 43Folders wiki page on Plain Text. It delineates many of the exact reasons I want to use a plain text file - ease of use, portability, flexibility, etc. But there are no "cons" listed on this page - it ain't perfect by any means!

I also read the Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient article linked to at the bottom. I can't say as I agree with all of what Cottrell is saying, although I agree with his main thesis, whereby the creative process of writing should be separated from the typesetting of it. I don't think that the wildly ugly TeX markup, smack dab in the middle of my text files, is the correct approach either, though! While there is some small benefit to marking text as "Header" as opposed to thinking "I should bold this and make it 24 points", it still makes the writer deal with the presentation aspect of the writing, pulling me out of working on the important stuff, which is the content. And it has the added drawback of mucking with my content in a very obvious way, while the word processor at least hides the mark up when I want to look at just the content, ignoring the layout.

All of this talk about text-based GTD is getting me fired up to jump back into the fray. It obviously isn't going to happen without a little elbow grease, no matter how much I whine and complain!

Technorati Tags: getting+things+done gtd pygtd

Word Of The Day - transgressive

The word for today is : transgressive. I was skimming an article on the new ICA and they described a new exhibition as "balancing high-end beauty with more lowbrow and transgressive work." I had no idea what that meant, so I looked it up. It means

Exceeding a limit or boundary, especially of social acceptability.

So I guess that is a good thing, for a "contemporary" art exhibit to be transgressive, don't you?

Technorati Tags: contemporary+art transgressive

Coldplay Concert

So I had a good time at the Coldplay concert last night. I talked David into not leaving until about an hour before concert time, not taking into account rainy, weekday evening traffic :-( So we arrived about 15 minutes after Richard Ashcroft got started.

Ashcroft put on a pretty good show. I thought the rendition of Bittersweet Symphony was a rousing success. He dedicated it to "all the fawkers who aren't paying me money", harkening back to my post from the Freedom of Expression book. I would have played the small sampled sound in question isolated and loud. Although that might be too painful! He was on for about 45 minutes.

Coldplay was fun, and the light show was really really nice. I wasn't too familiar with too many of the songs, but the one I really did know ("Clocks") was really rocking. The lead singer sound like Bono, maybe a little too much. A very earnest group, but it was quite fun. Coldplay came on about 9pm, after about a 45 minute wait, and played for about an hour and a half. What is the history behind encores anyway? Why not just play the extra couple of songs and leave? Don't the groups always come out for another couple more?

Sound was a little mushy. Couldn't really understand too much of what was said. Getting out of the Verizon Wireless Center was a mess, taking a good half hour or more, although we could have saved ourselves some headache by moving over a lane and going north before going south. And I think had I been just a tad more familiar with where it was in Manchester, I could have directed David to some side roads, keeping us out of the mess entirely. But it has been awhile since I've been there, so I didn't feel comfortable trying out new directions.

Technorati Tags: coldplay richard+ashcroft

I Drink Alone

Michael couldn't make it over last night, so I was forced to entertain myself. Oddly enough, I did the same old things - play computer games and try a new drink. I didn't watch anything afterwards, though, so I'm not completely a creature of habit!

For the cocktail, I tried a variation on my favorite "simple" drink, the rum and coke. Normally, here at Chez A-n-A'ze, we use either Bacardi White rum or Captain Morgan's Spiced rum, depending on the mood and sometimes merely which bottle is easier to reach. Much like vodka, certain rums hit that sweet spot between being rotgut and being too fancy to mix, and for us Bacardi and Captain Morgan do the trick. Anything cheaper, and it begins to taste pretty awful. Anything more expensive, and it tends to sweeten up and not really mix well with coke.

The other day I noticed a new kind of Captain Morgan, called Tattoo. It is, I believe, a dark rum (or rums) given the "spiced" Captain Morgan treatment. I thought it would be fun to try, so I picked up a bottle. And so I figured last night would be a good chance to give it a try. My recipe, such as it is: fill a big glass full of ice cubes, pour in about 1/3 rum and top with Coca-Cola Classic (not Pepsi, or any variation on Coke here). Plop a lime wedge in there, drop in a bendy straw, and you're good to go.

And I thought the Tattoo worked very nicely. It wasn't too sweet, although it came close enough that this would probably be something I would start the night with, before swapping to one of the regulars. It stood up very nicely to the Coke and will remain in my liquor cabinet.

For gaming, I've been hooked, as I mentioned earlier, on The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It's bloom has faded somewhat, though, as I'm not sure my character is going to work out in the world. And I'm not sure I'm gung ho enough on the game to begin anew with a new character. But still, I've been playing it pretty much any time I have a bit of free time, and it has been pretty fun, so I guess I can't complain yet. I played until about midnight last night, actually getting partially through the first major quest.

Technorati Tags: captain+morgan+spiced+rum baccardi captain+morgan+tattoo the+elder+scrolls oblivion

Life, Forgetfulness and Oblivion

Not too many updates lately. I've been sucked in by a new computer game - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a vast computer RPG. It's not that I haven't been writing, as I've been blogging my experiences in the game in Yet Another Blog, called From Here To Oblivion. I've always written better with a nudge in a particular direction. I used to be aces when it came to my high school compositions, which required us to use the words from the spelling list. On more than one occasion, I would whip one up for a classmate before class started! So this gives me a hook to write about. Check it out!

On a more depressing note, I had intended to go to see Spider (aka Jane Herships) last night at the Lily Pad, but completely forgot about it. So sad indeed. So I've been drowning my sorrows in Bitter Lake all day instead. It's an awful thing, this getting older and even more scatter-brained than before, something I never thought possible (getting more scatterbrained, that is).

Next week, I'm going to see Coldplay up in New Hampshire with a friend. I'll be sure to put that in my Palm, or I'll forget yet again. I'm not really all that familiar with Coldplay, but I'm willing to go to a show. It'll be opened by Richard Ashcroft, former lead of Verve. I talked about their awful copyright battles here.

I did finally get a new set of headphone for the computer. For some reason, the mic on my fancy Plantronics USB headphones, which I really liked, just stopped working. The sound worked okay, but no voice. Kind of important in my line of work (video conferencing software). So I picked up a pretty expensive Logitech headphone last week but, just like the previous Logitech headphone, it was dreadful. So uncomfortable, squeezing my ears with hard plastic. Yech! So I returned them today, and ordered a Sennheiser PC160 late last week, and those just happened to arrive today as well. Wow, what a difference! The sonic quality is spectacular in these, and yup, they are even comfortable. Not as comfortable as the Plantronics, though. And they use the olde fashioned plugs, just as I was getting used to using USB. Now I have to get a switch that switched between the headphones and speakers.

I also picked up a new Toshiba portable DVD player. For Father's Day last year, the girls bought me a Nextbase tablet DVD player. It worked really well, especially in the car on long rides to keep the girls entertained. Best Father's Day Present Ever. But just before our last long journey, it stopped ejecting the dvds. The tray just won't come out. And with another trip planned to NH this weekend, I needed another one!

So I picked up this Toshiba 8.5 in. player for less than US$200 at Best Buy. It isn't a tablet player, but I think it might actually work out better, as it can sit on the tray between the front seats. And with two headphone jacks, my wife and I won't be forced to listen to the Care Bears' theme music any more! It's almost like cheating, to let them watched "tv" for an hour like that, but it is worth it for the peace and quiet!

Technorati Tags: jane+herships spidersongs elder+scrolls oblivion crpg

Kid books

A friend of mine asked me for some kid book recommendations, so I thought I would just post them here. We have a ton of books, and story time is an integral part of our bedtime routine. My wife has been a stickler for a regular time (7pm) and routine for bed, and I think it is the major contributor to our girls' excellent sleeping habits. They tend to go to bed reasonably easy, and are usually sound asleep before 8pm. And they sleep until 6:30 or so, no matter what time they actually go out. And rarely wake up during the night. And it has been that way ever since they were very little. Can't ask for anything more!

The final step in the routine (after things like toothbrushing, bathroom, washing, and the like) is for all of us to gather together on our bed and read a book or three. We borrow plenty of books from the library, and each girl has a full bookcase. This list doesn't include any classics, like Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd), Pat the Bunny (Dorothy Kunhardt) or anything by classic authors like Dr. Suess, Sandra Boynton, or Eric Carle (you can't go wrong with any of them). These are more obscure books that I think really work well with any child up to about 6 or so, but are also interesting enough to read (over and over and over and over) again and again by adults. Often this means some good rhyming action, but not always.

• Click Clack Moo Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin. We haven't found the sequels to be nearly as clever.
• How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. On the other hand, we've found all the books in this series to be outstanding. One of my fondest memories of our youngest are of reading this book and her answering the question "Noooooo".
• Bubba and Beau Go Night-Night by Kathi Appelt, Arthur Howard (Illustrator)
• Oh My Baby, Little One by Kathi Appelt, Jane Dyer (Illustrator)
• The Water Hole by Graeme Base. This one has some cool illustrations, with hidden animals on each page. We're still working on finding all of them
• The Complete Adventures of Big Dog and Little Dog by Dav Pilkey
• Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, Marla Frazee (Illustrator). Babies love babies and this one has a bunch of them, with some really nice rhymes too
• Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. The whole series remains a favorite, with sparkly illustrations that really attract the eyes, and very nice fables with solid morals.
• Sally Goes To The Beach by Stephen Huneck. All the Huneck Sally books are big colorful books on a Labrador Retriever's adventures. This one and the mountain one are favorites.
• The Everything Book by Denise Fleming
• Kiss Good Night by Amy Hest, Anita Jeram (Illustrator)
• My Car by Byron Barton. Probably the best for the youngest set, very bold bright colors and easy words. A real favorite of the girls when they were younger. The author has a bunch of books and all are good.
• Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown and Leo and Diane Dillon. Clever rhyming in this one, with typical odd Brown patterns.
• All By Myself by Aliki. If I were forced to pick just one book, I think this would be it. Clever rhymes about growing up and trying to do stuff yourself.
• I Love You Like Crazy Cakes by Rose A. Lewis and Jane Dyer. A poignant book about adopting a Chinese baby
• Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret Chodos-Irvine. For any parent who has tried to convince their kid about clothing choices. That means all of us.
• When Sophie Gets Angry...really, Really Angry by Molly Bang. Very clever book about a little girl who can barely contain her anger.
• Alpha Bugs: A Pop-Up Alphabet by David A. Carter. There's a whole series of these pop-up books, but this was a favorite.
• I Love You, Blue Kangaroo by Emma Chichester Clark. All of these are very cute stories about a little girl and her stuffed animal, Blue Kangaroo

As for buying these, I can heartily recommend AllBooks4Less.com and its sister site BookCloseouts.com. I think they may actually be the same company, but the prices can't be beat, although as you can imagine from the names, the selection is hit or miss. I always start with AllBooks4Less and then try the other major online vendors.

Technorati Tags: childrens+books kid+books

Getting Things Done

Getting things done - or not, as the case is here. I've been casting about for a 'task management system' to use, but haven't settled on anything. I'm going to use this post to explain what I'm trying to do, and what I've looked at so far.

There is a GTD cult out there, based upon the bestselling book, Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Search the web for it, and you'll see plenty of posts, applications and ideas on how to use it. I don't have the book, but I like what I've taken to be the basic tenets of the process:

1. As soon as you think of a project, get it written down and forget about it. Don't let your mind get cluttered up with a half-remembered ToDo list. Have a minimal number of ways to record these thoughts. One low tech way is to just carry around a stack of 3x5 cards, write down the idea and drop them into a box. The GTD groupies call it a HipsterPDA.
2. Once a week or so, go through all your notes and categorize them, gathering them together into one place. Give the note a "context", something I'm a little unclear on, but what I choose to think of as a mindset. Usually, when you are thinking of what to do next, you have some general category of things you want to work on; say, for your job, work around the house, a computer project. This is what I call a "context".
3. Second in importance only to jotting down the project is to decide on the very next action you need to do on it. I like to think of it as the most encompassing amount of work you could imagine doing as an atomic action. Something you are sure you will finish once you start. Around here, with two active kids, a dog, and lots of interruptions, that's a pretty small work unit!

There, that's it. Pretty simple stuff. And simplicity is an important selling point in any organizing process. Like working out, everything that complicates matters makes it less likely it will actually happen. So the process sounds very workable to me, and I like lists. But I haven't settled on a real process here yet.

To go along with the simplicity of the process, there needs to be simple data entry. Preferably, something very easy to learn, requiring few steps, and easy to get nice ToDo lists. I suppose I could handle a reasonable learning curve, if I felt the end result was going to be easy, but I'd rather not.

One Really Cool Technology that I've talked about here before is TiddlyWiki. This is a single HTML page (for better or for worse) that contains all your info and displays it in a very friendly fashion. I'm not sure why I find this work so fascinating, but I just love it, even if I haven't found a real application yet. There are a couple of nice looking GTD implementations: GTDTiddlyWiki Plus and MonkeyGTD. While the technology and the GUI are really neat, I feel the data entry is too clunky. I have to fire up my browser, click a few dozen times and enter in the data. A few too many steps, and I'll tend to let things slide. It does have a nice portability option, in that you can throw the HTML page onto a USB data stick, along with a simple browser, and you can look at it and enter data on any computer.

There are plenty of Windows-based note taking apps out there. I've mentioned a few of them in my web links posts. But they all have GUIs that I need to learn and are too tied to Windows and/or my computer. I just don't have the patience to learn them, or to integrate them into my own personal process.

I decided I wanted a simple text-based tool. I spend probably 80% of my time at the computer while in Emacs, a venerable text editor that has been expanded to do most everything. I like using it because it is available on many different platforms, and so I don't need to learn a new set of keyboard commands as I move from one platform (Windows) to another (FreeBSD) to another (Linux) to another (Mac OSX). It has saved me countless hours with its consistent UI. So I'd love to use something based on Emacs. It is always running on my computer (in the Startup folder) and has nice stuff like spell checking, indenting and the like.

But upon further investigation, I found two serious problems with a text-based GTD scheme:

• The text markup is necessarily weird. You have to mark certain info as the importance, how long it will take, the context, etc. So you need to mark up the text, or flag it or something. And so it gets weird and ugly in a hurry.
• It is hard to get a quick, easily digestible report showing what I need to do today. You have to go looking for a file or files, open them up, etc. And again, if there are too many steps it ain't gonna happen. And by too many steps, I mean like more than one or two things that I have to do.

One option available to Emacs is Planner Mode. It is a big Emacs package, with a ton of options and lots of possibility. But I found it hard to get started, the text markup was mysterious, and it just seemed like too big a deal. They make a big point about how flexible it is, but if you can't figure out how to use it, maybe it is too flexible!

Another option I've looked into is PyGTD, a Python-based script that parses text files and puts out a todo file. While the markup is a little strange, a few Emacs macros could fix that. But the process to go from adding a task to getting a nice ToDo report is too convoluted, with inconvenient output. Not sure how I can get a nice, easy to read report every morning. Plus I've run into a couple of serious bugs, like it seems to insert a bunch of blank lines at the top of each of my context files. And it is very very picky about the markup, even going so far as to be case-sensitive, so "T=1h" (for a task taking one hour), results in a strange stack backtrace from the Python interpreter. It's easy enough to fix, I guess, although I'm quite a Python-noob. But so far it is taking me more work than I want - I don't want it where getting a GTD process to work is the number one project! Still, it has some potential. I've already written a few Emacs things to make working with the files a lot easier, and can envision a bunch more. If I also wrote a simple program that read in my ToDo files and displayed them in a nice window, maybe that would fix the reporting problem too. But again, I have enough projects already!

So I still haven't found the perfect tool. I envision a perfect set up to be something like this:

• Show up at the keyboard in the morning (luckily, as I work from home, my work keyboard and my home keyboard are the same!). Quickly generate a report, listing in descending importance, the tasks for my three contexts - Work, Home, Fun.
• As I complete a task, make it very easy to remove it from the appropriate ToDo list. Maybe keep a record of it as Done.
• Without needing any thought, make it easy to add a new project, or add another Next Action task to a project.
• Easily add uncategorized projects as I think of them, or enter them from my 3x5 cards. A couple of keystrokes should generate a basic project or Next Action, complete with reasonable defaults.

So I'll probably continue to work on PyGTD, and see how that goes, until I find something better. Unfortunately, I think it isn't under development any more, which isn't surprising for a personal project. You get it working well for you, and that's where it stops. I think the last post on it was from January 2005, and my email about it went unanswered. Oh well, a chance to brush up on my Python skills, as I delve into the twisted, uncommented code!

Technorati Tags: gtd pygtd getting+things+done

Word of the Day - lucubrate

Just came arcross an interesting word : lucubrate : To write in a scholarly fashion; produce scholarship. Some synonums include elaborate, expound, expand and flesh out. Who can use it first today?

Site updates

I've done a little housekeeping on my blog here. I finally got comments working once again. I had added a MovableType plugin to try and cut down on the immense amount of comment spam I get on my various blogs. And it worked too well, especially if you don't have it set up correctly! After much going 'round and 'round with MovableType support, I finally figured out it was all my fault and, after getting the plugin set up correctly, comments are back working and spam is gone!

I need to add that I am heartily impressed with MovableType support in general, and 'lisa' in specific. She worked long and hard, trying to figure out why my comments weren't working. And this for a non-paying customer who uses their free version! Certainly, support above and beyond the call of duty. And after that display of professionalism and courtesy, I probably should spring for the "Personal Basic" version, which would allow me to add additional authors to my blogs, as well as get listed on their "Recently Updated" list. To learn more about MovableType, the very popular blogging software I use on all my blogs, see here.

I also added three new Cocktail entries, and I cheated on two of them. this one and this one are backdated to more correctly track when we actually tasted these libations, as opposed to when I finally got around to typing them in. I especially recommend the latter entry, as it talks about a wonderful new Curaçao I was finally able to track down.

Technorati Tags: movabletype

Back online!

Phew! Jiggle The Handle is back online after a catastrophic hardware failure. Not sure what went wrong, but the old server was beeping sadly, like R2D2's death rattle might sound like. So I created a new server, taking this opportunity to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.0 and MySQL 5.0. It went about as well as could be expected, I guess. Still not completely up, but we're getting there!

Technorati Tags: freebsd mysql

Dawkins quotes

Some more Dawkins quotes, from his book A Devil's Chaplain ^amzn, which I just found on Bookcloseouts.com for US$5 (sorry, I got the last one:-):

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further

and

To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real-world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons, and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.

And quoting HL Mencken:

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Technorati Tags: richard+dawkins

Cocktails of the Week - Banana Custard, Lynchburg Lemonade, Spiced Sidecar

I received a bunch of cool cocktail books from Santa this year, so I was anxious to try out a few new recipes. My favorite new book so far is New Classic Cocktails by Allan Gage. Within the glossy pages are beautiful photos and recipes for 80 "classic" cocktails, each combined with one that has a slight (or big!) twist on the classic recipe. Very nice book, with great pictures and interesting recipes, along with flaps on the inside of the covers to hold the book flat.

First up was the remix for the classic Egg Nog:

Banana Custard

• 1 oz brandy (I used a pretty cheap brand, E&J Brandy)
• 1 oz golden rum (in this case, Sea Wynde)
• 1/2 oz banana liqueur (basic Leroux)
• 1 egg
• 1 oz light cream
• 1/2 ripe banana, mashed

Put everything into a shaker with crushed ice and shake well. And then shake some more. And then a little bit more for good measure, to get a good froth worked up. Pour it into a red wine or brandy goblet and decorate with a couple of banana slices.

Well, this didn't work out very well, for any number of reasons. The brandy isn't that good, I forgot how much I disliked this rum, I used pieces of frozen banana which didn't add enough flavor, and I couldn't find the banana liqueur I was looking for (99 Bananas), so I had to settle for a low tier brand name. All in all, it wasn't that good, although there was enough potential in the taste that I still would like to try it again.

Then we went for something completely different. This on is actually the "classic" cocktail part. The twist to this recipe was to use kiwi schnapps. Not sure I've ever seen that in any of my local liquor stores.

Lynchburg Lemonade

• 1 1/2 oz Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey
• 1 oz Cointreau
• 1 oz lemon juice
• lemonade to top up

Put the JD, Cointreau and lemon juice in a shaker with crushed ice and shake well. Pour into a nice tall highball glass filled with ice cubes. Top with lemonade and decorate with lemon slices.

This one worked quite a bit better. It sure went down smoothly. It promises to be a great summer time, late afternoon drink this summer! I especially like the Wild Oats organic lemonade. It's a great lemonade. Another good one is the Paul Newman brand.

We brought our Lynchburg Lemonade down to the computers and made it through another level of Serious Sam 2, although I was then, and am still, feeling quite a bit under the weather. Rotten head cold that will neither get worse nor get better. And we watched episode 4 from season 3 of the Sopranos. Some pretty wild goings on these days!

Bonus Cocktail!

And as a bonus, I'll throw in a cocktail that I made last night. I was anxious to give this one a try, as it was a very good looking riff on one of my favorite classic cocktails, The Sidecar, and called for one of my favorite rums, Capt. Morgan Spiced Rum.

Spiced Sidecar

• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 1 oz Captain Morgan Spiced Rum
• 1 oz brandy (this time I used a much better brand, Hennessy Cognac)
• 1 oz Cointreau

Put everything into your cocktail shaker with crushed ice and shake well. Strain into an old fashioned glass filled with ice and decorate with orange twists.

Now this worked out pretty darn well. It takes the basic ingredients of the Sidecar and adds Captain Morgan, which isn't a bad thing at all. I used Meyer Lemon Juice from a cool bottle of it I got from Santa. I'm still looking for fresh Meyer lemons, but this will do for now. I also put it into a chilled cocktail glass rimmed with Lemon Drop Rimmer (what a smart Santa!), which worked out pretty well, I thought.

Technorati Tags: cocktail drink+of+the+week

High School meme

I've co-opted an interesting blog meme from Pharyngula about High School Daze:

Where did you graduate from and what year?

Mascenic Regional High School, 1978

Who was your significant other?

Vicky, from Jaffrey's Conant High School. She was a friend of a friend and we met at square dancing(!). I ended up breaking up with her after leaving for college (or was it vis-versa? - yeah probably that way), but went out with her close friend Janine for years after that.

Was your Prom a night to remember?

It sure was! We had a good time, and did our usual trip for a class dinner at a local restaurant. We spent alot of time picking on the people who scheduled it, because it was set for the Saturday/Sunday that the clocks spring forward, so we lost a whole hour of partying.

What was your favorite song you danced to the night of Prom?

Jeez, I'm not sure I remember after all these years. Maybe our class song, "Can't Stop Thinking About Tomorrwow"?

Do you own all 4 yearbooks?

I did, at least until the Great Basement Flood of 1990, where I lost them all :-(

What was your favorite movie in high school?

Star Wars. We also watched alot of Richard Pryor Live in Concert and Kentucky Fried Movie - hey, what can I say, we were high schoolers!

What was your number 1 choice of college in high school?

MIT. They didn't accept me, although later they hired me as a programmer! I ended up going to RPI, not a bad second choice.

What radio station did you jam out to in high school?

WCOZ, 94.5. For a time there, it was the most listened to rock station in the country. It is now called WJMN, a "jammin'" station playing hip hop and rap, so it isn't on any of my speed buttons any more:-) I also listened to WAAF, 107.3, which still plays album rock.

Were you involved in any organizations or clubs?

Plenty of them. I was Honor Society president (in one of the quietest years in their existence!), in the chess and math club (yup, major geek), drama club, and played soccer.

What was your favorite class in high school?

Probably English. By the time I was a senior, I'd run out of classes to take in my small (graduating class of about 60) high school, so I was taking things like Home Ec and an "independent study" in chemistry. But I always loved reading and writing, and the English teacher was dynamic, so I'd have to pick that.

Who was your big crush in high school?

I always wished I could've dated Lise Bourgault, but never did.

Would you say you’ve changed a lot since highschool?

Jeez, it's been almost 30 years - I hope I've changed!

What do you miss the most about it?

Not a whole heck of alot. I'm not one who looks misty eyed back to those days.

Your worst memory of HS?

Nothing too traumatic, I don't think. A few heartbreaks, a few clashes with teachers, but other than that, nothing major.

Did you have a car ?

Yes. I had an old beat up Toyota with a stereo system worth more than the car. I used to pour 50 weight oil into it nearly daily. When it finally croaked, I picked up a Plymouth Fury III for $300. I could lay down in the back seat, which came in handy a few times:-) I sold it before leaving for college for $600 - the only car I ever made money on.

What were your school colors?

White and maroon.

Who was your favorite teacher?

Mr. Densmore, the aforementioned English teacher. The only one to really challenge me in high school. I owed my survival in my first semester at RPI to my calculus teacher, as that was the only subject I was even remotely prepared for.

Did you own a cell phone in high school?

I was very proud have having a huge 4 function calculater.

Did you leave campus for lunch?

No. There was nowhere nearby to eat.

If so, where was your favorite place to go eat?

There was a small lunch place just up the road, but I never went there.

Were you always late to class?

Never.

Did you ever have to stay for Sat. School?

Never.

Did you ever ditch?

Never

When it comes time for the reunion will you be there?

Obviously written for one much younger than I! We did have a 25th year reunion, and I probably would have gone to it except it was on one of the two or three weekends we already had something planned. Oh well. I keep in touch with one or two ex-classmates.

Technorati Tags: high+school+meme

Christmas note

Hit the pedestal on the wall with a 3 screw (such as 3 x12BA) X 4 as follow photo, do not may wrong the bearing,so you can hitch your main unit on the wall if you need.

(punctuation, spelling and gammar all from the original)

Nice help from the instruction manual, eh? This is from a cheapo AM/FM/CD player I bought for the living room. Presumably, it is telling me how to mount it on the wall using the enclosed "pedestal" but I'm not sure exactly what else it is trying to say!

We had a very nice Christmas, even if the oldest daughter was a little sick. She did alright while the children's ibuprofren was effective, but she ran out of steam early and spent most of the afternoon laying in bed, watching the TV. I got lots of lazing about clothing like sweat pants, t-shirts, and sweatshirts, but I'm still waiting for my Red Sox 2004 World Series DVD - c'mon c'mon already!

Otherwise, lots of loot for the kids. My Little Pony for the youngest, and Littlest Pet Shop for the oldest. I'd love to count how many pieces they actually got total; it'll be hundreds I'm sure, maybe in the thousands. Zoiks! We'll be cleaning up around here for days...

Technorati Tags: christmas redsox

My (scientific) hero

A great interview with my favorite scientist, Richard Dawkins, done by a religious site of all things! Some audio clips and typical straight talk on evolution, "intelligent" design, and god:

Interview with Richard Dawkins

Technorati Tags: richard+dawkins evolution intelligent+design

Journey to Care-A-Lot

We took a journey to Care-A-Lot, the land of the Care Bears. The Care Bears are a big deal in this household, and the chance to see Care Bears Live was too much to pass up, even if the closest the show got was two hours away in Amherst, MA.

The weather was not looking good at the start of yesterday; one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" storms we get here - a little snow, sleet, freezing rain but mostly rain here in the Boston area. But I wasn't sure what it might be like in Amherst, which is out in the western part of the state. But by the evening the bad weather had gone away and the trip was pretty uneventful. We did stop for some McDonald's take out and it was about as bad as I've ever gotten from them. Cool greasy hamburger and fries that had probably been sitting under the "warming" light for an hour - yech! It's good to get one of these reminders that, in general, it just isn't good stuff. Not that you have too many choices, riding down the Mass Pike.

The show was fun and the girls had a blast. Grumpy Bear finally convinced the rest of the slack-abouts that the "Rainbow Meter" really wasn't broken and more caring was needed. After a few hugs and a rousing closing number, the meter pegged out and all was well again. The crowd was mostly a little younger than ours, but it was a good show and they got some loot and we made it home without incident.

Technorati Tags: care-bears care-a-lot

Christmas Pictures, 2005

Ahh, the Christmas portraiture session! An annual rite more akin to wrestling with greased pigs than it is to a calm picture session. But this year I had a new plan - we'll use all that modern technology can do for us in order to ease the normally excruciating pain. I figure by using our digital camera (a low end Fuji FinePix A330), we can immediately get "dailies" to view and see if any will work for the holiday card. And we can even print them out on our little photo printer to get real feedback.

First step is getting the girls all cleaned up. They were both worked into a lather because we had, earlier in the day, set up and decorated the Christmas tree. It's a little smaller than normal; not sure why, it wasn't planned that way. I take great pride in picking out a good Christmas tree, so it is a shopping trip I usually do solo. The local Home Depot had reasonable prices on the trees (US$27 - I think I've paid as much as US$40 in the past), and it was surprisingly uncrowded in the tree section. I wandered down to the back and slowly took out some trees, tore off the wrapping and checked it out. After about 6 or 7, I found my tree, and brought it home Friday.

We let it stand for a day or so, and then I did the lights. I also bring up the multiple boxes of Christmas tree decorations, and then all three women tackle the job of putting them on the tree. It's too stressful for me, as there are kids and hooks and breakable bits flying all around the tree. In the past, I've been called in to put some near the top, but as this tree is a little shorter, I was only need for the star on top. It looks real nice and the girls still can't keep their hands off it. No tinsel, thank you very much. It makes a mess all over the house, and if I have to pull another strand out of a pet's butt ever again, it'll be too soon!

After dragging them into and out of the shower, getting their hair combed, and putting on the latest Christmas fashion, we are ready to start taking pictures. They don't normally slow down for anything, never mind after being all wound up for Christmas, so I sometimes feel like a sports photographer, cranking the shutter speed up on my camera to try and freeze the action. But we took a few shots, adjusted positions, took a few more and let them rest. Gabrielle printed out a bunch and really liked several of them. It's hard getting one that has both girls with reasonable expressions, looking at the camera, hands down and the lighting correct. But we got several we liked, and we whittled it down to one.

Then we utilized modern technology some more. I uploaded the picture to Snapfish (because my cable Internet provider has a deal with them) and we picked out a folding card, a border, added some some pithy saying and voila - we'll be getting them in the mail sometime later this week. Add a personalize message, address and a stamp and we're good to mail! You can even have them address and mail them for you, but we had already bought fancy Christmas stamps, and we like to had a quickie note to each one before we send it out.

The picture included with this post is not, in fact, the Official 2005 Arnold/Accardi Christmas Card Picture ^tm, but an early test picture, before we got them dressed up. Ya gotta have some surprises for Christmas, you know! Nice smile from Adrienne, isn't it? That's the sort of thing you have to deal with when taking a portrait of a six and five year old...

Technorati Tags: christmas christmas+picture

Ice Hotel

I was doing a little channel surfing earlier this evening, right after the little buggas had gone to bed and I stopped for a bit on a show called Fine Living. Well, I'm not much of a fine liver, although I can aspire to it, now can't I? But this show was dedicated to all things ice, and was a top ten list. I really only caught #1, and was fascinated by it.

On TV : The Insider's List : 10 Top Icy Items : Fine Living

A the top of the list was Ice Hotel Canada, a hotel that only stands from January to March. It is built entirely from ice! Located just north of Quebec City, in Quebec Canada, it is truly a sight to see. Mind you, it really is as cold as it sounds - they brag about the temps staying around 25 degrees (F), no matter how cold it gets outside (down to about the spot where C & F meet). And yes, everything in it is made of ice, except for the fireplaces, which are specially designed to not throw off heat. Everything else, from the beds, to the desk, to the cocktail glasses, are made from ice - too cool!

Of course, this much coolness comes at a price, Ugarte, a price. Nightly stays range from CAD$500 (about US$415 as of this writing) to nearly CAD$2000, so it might be cold, but it ain't cheap. Still, it sounds like quite a kick!

Technorati Tags: travel quebec ice+hotel

'Tis the Season For Deception

Honesty is very important to me. It's a quality I value above all others, in my friends, my co-workers and my family, and one I take great pains at exhibiting myself. It's also one that we, like most parents, insist on from our kids. Trust comes along with honesty, and the two make for a solid relationship, whether its between spouses, friends or the parent and child.

I think that's one of my major criticisms with the movie Sideways, an otherwise enjoyable and funny movie - the main characters were neither honest nor trusting. It made me uncomfortable even watching how the two "friends" would lie so easily to each other, and how all of them tended to leap to bad conclusions. That's not how I would want to live my life, and I like to think I work really hard at living up to that ideal.

A story my Dad tells about me as a kid is kinda funny. I was about 10 years old, and he came home from work one evening to find the snow bank on the side of our house littered with broken glass. He couldn't figure out what had happened, so he asked me, as it was outside my window. He was very impressed that I immediately owned up to it, explaining that "I liked the way they smashed". He figures many kids would try to deny it, or weasel out of it, but I fessed up immediately and avoided any payback.

And so we work very hard at insisting our kids be honest. Lying is a serious taboo around here, and while it does make for some tough decisions, it is an important sticking point. It makes it hard when your child does something wrong but then is honest about it - you don't want to be too mad, as you want to reward her for her honesty, but on the other hand, there should be some kind of consequences. But if you are honest back to her, and explain the dilemma, while praising the honesty and doling out reasonable punishment, I think it works out okay in the end.

And yet we as adults spin a fancy set of fairy tales. Around here there are three of them - the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, and the whopper of them all, Santa Claus. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are just gussied up lies, and I get very uncomfortable this time of year.

The Easter Bunny isn't too bad. It isn't all that integral to our family, and there isn't a long buildup. Easter Sunday (an otherwise uncelebrated Sunday), they wake up to fancy Easter baskets, with lots of cool stuff and they get to eat almost as much candy as they do on Halloween, only this time it is in the morning. Gabrielle goes out and hides some plastic, candy-filled eggs on the lawn and we have a grand time going on an Easter egg hunt. We aren't force to fib for too long, or spin elaborate fantasies about traveling the world. I think even the girls don't buy into it too much at this point - they just enjoy the loot.

The tooth fairy is a little more serious of a lie. In these days of falling teeth, it is big business. We gave each of them US$10 for the first tooth and have ratcheted it down to US$5 now - still a pretty impressive sum. There was almost a complete and utter disaster last month, after Adrienne lost her first tooth. Gabrielle usually does up a nice letter from the "tooth fairy", and makes a big deal out of each one. But this time, as I was taking my shower early the next morning after we made a big production of putting the tooth under her pillow at bedtime, it occurred to me that Gabrielle hadn't said anything when we did our late night final tuck-in. Usually, we talk a little about the process. So I jumped out of the shower, and shook her awake. Sure enough, we had both forgotten to do it! And Adrienne could awaken at any moment, only to find the tooth still there - holy shattered illusions, Batman! Gabrielle just barely got in there as Adrienne was groggily coming to, and we escaped with the fantasy still intact, for better or for worse.

But now we have Santa Claus. I'm am turned off enough by the overt religiousness of the whole thing ("attack on Christmas" notwithstanding), but the elaborate Santa Claus myth means that I spend nearly all my waking hours for a month spinning a web of lies and deceit. Now, the appropriately famous "Yes Virginia" editorial brilliantly captures how I try to approach the season - one of giving, seeing family and enjoying good times. And everyone tries not to make a big deal out of these lies we tell our kids about Santa Claus delivering presents at 650 miles per second, but it still bothers me to no end. I don't see an easy way out of this one though. It seems churlish to explain to the girls about how we buy presents for them, and that "there ain't no Santy, little girl..."

And make no mistake about it - Christmas is a big thing around here. And the combination of myths and religion surrounding it make it a very uncomfortable time of year for me. I figure it'll only be a couple more years and we can be honest with them, and I can once again relax and enjoy the season. I have to watch myself all the time, lest a truth slip out and "ruin" it for them. And so what kind of lesson is that we teach them? Is this one of those "Don't do as I do, do as I say" times? The Advent calendar is a particularly ironic piece of Christmas tradition we obseve, it being probably the most overtly religious thing we do in this household. Shiver

So I'll be glad when we can come clean with the girls. I'm still trying to figure out the religion angle, but that's a post for another day. I assume we all get over the shock of learning just how elaborately our parents can lie to us, despite their admonitions to the contrary. I don't hold it against my folks at all. But still, it can't be all that great an example, can it?

Technorati Tags: christmas santaclaus toothfairy easterbunny

Not Random Today

Today isn't a random ten for listening. I bought two CDs last week, one I've been wanting for awhile and one newly released, and I've been listening to those two quite a bit since then. So I'm doing a complete play through of the two for today's "Random 10".

First up is the one I've been wanting for awhile - 16 Lovers Lane by The Go-Betweens. I picked up the "Extended" version, which is remastered, adds 3 video tracks and adds a second disc of even more music.

If I had to pick a genre of music as my favorite, it would be music like the Go-Betweens do so well. Maybe you'd call it "Power Pop", or "New Wave Rock", whatever. Famous practitioners that I like include The Cure, The Smiths, The Police. Other not so famous ones include Swans, Hoodoo Gurus, The Cranes, and Yo La Tengo. Great hooks, impeccable craftsmanship, and intelligent lyrics are all common to these bands. And while I've been a fan of this genre forever, and a Australia-phile from way back, I'm have to admit to having never heard of The Go-Betweens before about six months ago.

I've been using Rhapsody.com as an online radio station for quite some time, because both my former ISP (Speakeasy.net) and my current ISP (Comcast) have it as a free perk. It's great to listen to music sans commercials and talk, and I hear lots of cool groups I've never heard of before. Another cool thing you can do is to set up your own radio stations, and it plays music based upon your choices. You can either listen to a radio station based upon a particular artist, or set up your own by giving it up to 10 artists. It matches up the songs and plays a selection from their pretty vast library from these and similiar artists. For instance, I have a station called "Power Pop" that has:

My "Power Pop" Rhapsody radio station
• Yo La Tengo
• The The
• The Smithereens
• Mission of Burma
• Hoodoo Gurus
• The Chills
• James
• The Go-Betweens
• A3
• Silencers

Well, I think it was while I was listening to their shortlived New Zealand Pop radio station, when this song kept showing up that I absolutely adored. It turned out to be "Clouds" by The Go-Betweens. Further research showed it came from an album considered by many to be one of the seminal albums of the 1980s, described using words like "superb", "breathtaking" and "nothing less than searing", by "[a]rguably Australia's greatest pop group ever". Not sure how I missed these guys, but with words of praise like that, it immediately went to the top of my extensive "Want to Buy" list.

And it is as good as advertised. One brilliant track after another. One of those CDs that I find hard to pick just a couple songs to rip. They had a minor alt-radio hit with the song Streets of Your Town and that is certainly highlight of the CD, along with the aforementioned Clouds. I guess the band members were going through some messy inter-band romances, very much like Fleetwood Mac during their Rumors recording session. And so the songs alternate between highs and lows of romance in a wonderfully intricate manner, all backed with great rhythms and solid guitar playing, along with Amanda Brown's intriguing backing vocals and violin playing.

The music videos are good too. There are three, including two versions (Australian and US) for Streets of Your Town and one for Was There Anything I Could Do?, another winner from the album, about a lover leaving him and going 'round the bend:

She went out with her paint box
Paints the chapel blue
She went out with her matchsticks
Torched a carwash too

And the bonus second disc has even more sonic goodness. The remixed singles version of the album opener, Love Goes On! really rocks, and then there are several nearly finished songs, some demos, and a live song. This is one great CD and one that will get played alot in the future. I'm going to really give it some credit and listen to it on the stereo system tonight. 100 watts of clean Marantz sound, going through some serious Phase Technology Teatro 7.5 speakers.

Blue air I crave, blue air I breathe
They once chopped my heart the way you chop a tree.
Told to equate achievement with pain
I took their top prize and paid them back with rain.

Visions of blue
I'm angry I'm wise and you.
You're under cloudy skies.

My new purchase is the latest from the wünderkind, Kate Bush. Her story is simply amazing, and I've been hook on Kate ever since her first album, Kick Inside. I had a co-worker who was an true Kate Bush fanatic, who knew and did everything Kate. Still does, I guess!-)

Her music is often a translucent passageway to another world, intimate and warm. Her Cloudbusting song, and the accompanying video, is a true classic. I saw on AllMusic that Cloudbusting, the 12in version, was released on a cool sounding 4 disc set called Back to the 80's: The Long Versions, which is unfortunately out of print and hard to find. A real stickler for production, Aerial, a two disc release, is her first CD in over ten years, and is well worth the wait.

Disc One is a collection of "domestic" songs, with her waxing poetic and beautifully over everything from her son, the number pi and even a washing machine. It must be an incredible freedom to have the ability to express yourself in song. I would surely love to write an elegiac to my daughters that is 10% of the heartfelt beauty she expresses in Bertie. And on the flip side, it must be quite a release to be able to really dig at a person like Sting did when he wrote Every Breathe You Take about his ex-girlfriend!

Bertie

Sweet kisses
Three wishes
Lovely Bertie

You bring me so much joy
And then you bring me
More Joy

Mrs. Bartolozzi

And all your shirts and jeans and things
And put them in the new washing machine
Washing machine
Washing machine
I watched them go 'round and 'round
My blouse wrapping itself in your trousers
Oh the waves are going out
My skirt floating up around my waist

Disc Two is a full story arc, covering a Day In The Life, as it were. From early morning (Prelude) til late at night (Nocturn), it once again brings out the beauty in everyday life. Her voice is a breathtaking instrument, and the arrangements are impeccable. All in all, another winner, and one that will bear repeated listening, and is also looking for the full stereo treatment, as I've listened to each of my new CDs only on my computer and in the car. I sometimes will put on the stereo downstairs while I am working, and just crank the volume to 11.

It's good to get two winners. Recently, my CD purchases have been disappointing. Despite the ability to play songs directly from the CD on Rhapsody, I still haven't really enjoyed the entire discs from most of my recent purchases, just enjoying the cut I bought it for. But these two (really four!) CDs are enjoyable from start to finish.

Technorati Tags: friday+random+10 random+10 music

More coffee tasting notes

We dabbled in new coffees for the first time in quite a while. As I mentioned earlier, we've settled on the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe bean from Armeno Coffee. It's the perfect bean for us - robust without being bitter, making a full-bodied morning "wake me up I have to face the day" coffee. It's a reasonable price (approximately US$45 for 5 pound bag, delivered) and really works for our morning cuppa.

So this last time when I ordered, I decided to try some of the other Free Trade coffee beans they offer, as the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe is one of these. The other three were Mexican Organic, Peru Organic and Sumatra Takengon.

We started with the Sumatra blend, and I was worried right away. As I opened the bag, I noticed a very dark, bitter smelling bean - our least favorite kind of bean. And yup, that's what kind of coffee it made - dark, bitter, strong coffee. Not a good pound, and I couldn't wait to get through it. Probably a 4 on the scale of my earlier posting.

Then we moved on to the Mexican Organic. A better smelling and looking bean, but probably too far to the other extreme. As the web site says, it makes a very light bodied cuppa, and even at the strengths we make it, it lacked character. Not strong enough but still a very pleasant coffee, so I'd give it a 6.

Last of the new beans was the Peru Organic. Again, a very nice bean, making a solid cup of joe. More body than than the Mexican, but in no way, shape or manner a bitter coffee. Still not "big" enough though. It approaches greatness, but falls a little short, especially by the second mug, when it no longer offers the kick I still need. This one gets a very appreciative 7.

Then we went back to the Yirgacheffe for the last pound and yup, it is the winner and still champeen. About as strong a coffee as you can get, with a complete lack of bitter aftertaste. Snaps the eyes open in the morning, yet is still drinkable after the second or third mug. It still gets the 9, and is still the coffee I order by the 5 pound bag. And we have a fresh bag awaiting us in the morning!

Technorati Tags: coffee

Thanksgiving Play

It was the annual kindergarten Thanksgiving Day play today, and Adrienne played the same part that her sister did last year - an Wampanoag squaw who shows the Pilgrims how to pick fruits and berries. She looked remarkably cute in her little Indian costume, if I do say so myself!

We definitely need to take a trip to Plimoth Plantation, the "living museum" for the time. It is one of those places I have been to since I was in grade school. Along with Old Sturbridge Village, it is a mainstay of historical class trips for any school kid south of Concord NH. I'm sure the girls would be fascinated with both, as they are very curious about history. And that opens up lots of places we should go that I've never been to, like the USS Constitution and the Bunker Hill Monument.

Technorati Tags: thanksgiving

Anti-religion Bumper Stickers

Some very funny bumper stickers. If I put bumper stickers on my car, these would be some of them:

" So Many Right-Wing Christians So Few Lions "
" God: A Make Believe Friend For Grown Ups "
" Evolution is a FACT God is just a theory "
" MILITANT AGNOSTIC I Don't Know And You Don't Either "
" Don't Pray In My School And I Won't Think In Your Church "
Check'em out!

Religion (Anti) Bumper Stickers

Technorati Tags: atheist bumperstickers

Red Sox / Yankee joke

A forwarded Red Sox / Yankee joke (thanks, Mom!). Warning - offensive to young ears and Yankee fans (don't care about the latter!):

A New York family of Yankees fans heads out one Saturday to shop for the youngest boy's birthday. While in the sports shop, the son picks up a Red Sox jersey and says to his older sister, "I've decided to become a Red Sox fan and I would like this Boston jersey for my birthday."

His big sister is outraged by this and promptly whacks him upside his head and says, "Go talk to mother!"

Off goes the little lad with the jersey in hand and finds his mother. "Mom?"

"Yes, son?"

"I've decided I'm going to be a Red Sox fan and I would like this jersey for my birthday."

The mother is outraged at this, promptly whacks him around the head and says, "Go talk to your father!"

Off he goes with the Red Sox jersey in hand and finds his father. "Dad?"

"Yes, son?"

"I've decided I'm going to be a Red Sox fan and I would like this jersey for my birthday."

The father is outraged and promptly whacks his son in the back of his head and says, "No son of mine is ever going to be seen in THAT!"

About half an hour later they're all back in the car and heading towards home. The father turns to his son and says "Son, I hope you've learned something today."

The son says, "Yes, Dad, I have."

"Good, son, what is it?"

The son replies, "I've only been a Red Sox fan for an hour, and I already hate you Yankee bastards."

Technorati Tags: redsox yankees humor

Rhiannon's evening

Rhiannon is missing two teeth now. The Tooth Fairy visited last night, coughing up an outrageous US$5 for her fourth dropped tooth. This time, like her last one, she didn't already have replacements lined up, so she got a very cute little gap. As the song goes, "All [she] wants for Christmas is her two front teeth!". You can't really get a good look here (click on it for a bigger view), but I'll try to get a better picture tomorrow This one shows her in her ballet outfit, as they had just gotten back from their ballet/tap dancing class..

She also regaled us with a couple of rhymes tonight. Not sure exactly where they are coming from...

Mary had a vampire bat
His fur was black as night
He followed her to school one day
And promised not to bite

She brought him out for show and tell
The teacher screamed and ran
And school was cancelled for a week
Just like Mary planned

And, in the same vein:

Hush Little monster
Don't you cry
Papa's gonna give you to Frankenstein
If you and Frank
Can't get Along
Papa's gonna send you to old King Kong

Technorati Tags: kids children

Adrienne's evening

Adrienne was very quiet tonight, as she headed off to the bathroom for the nightly ritual of washing, bathroom and teeth brushing. One of us will go in with her, to help out with the brushing. They do a very good job themselves, but we like to get in a little scrubbing ourselves.

But tonight she went in herself and was in there for quite some time. And it was quiet - too quiet for our little Adrienne. I got a little worried, figuring she was up to no good - flooding the bathroom, unraveling all the toilet paper, you know, something. But when I went in, I found out she had been a busy little beaver, only it was moving all their Care Bear (tm) toys that had been on the side of the tub drying out. She set up a little bridge for them to go acroos the floor, then they climbed up onto the counter and carefully lined themselves up in matching color order:

Red and orange, yellow and green,
Shiny blue and Purple (and pink!) too.

And then, because she's always thinking and her mind is going along a kerjillion miles a second, she quickly realigned them. This time, she said they were in the shape of a snail. She can be mighty tough to keep up with, especially at bed time. Her mind never slows down and it takes her awhile to get settled into sleep. Tonight, she was going and going and going until well past her nominal bedtime, which should be 7pm but is generally considered to be 8pm.

Technorati Tags: kids childrenpix

Interior decorating

Phew! These blogs sure suck up a lot of time! I just spent several hours on this blog, trying to clean up the formatting and add a couple of things. Didn't seem like it would be all that much work, but before I knew it, time had just slithered on by! Here's a short run down of the changes:

• Biggest one - I got the formatting of comments working! I've gone away from the "deprecated" popup comment window, and now you just do comments right on the individual entry page. I've also added links to sign in via either TypeKey or OpenID.
• I went to the three column listing on all the archive pages: monthly, category (see right sidebar for these two) and individual.
• I added a "Best of..." collection in the left hand sidebar. Just a few posts I'd like to highlight.
• Our weather sticker in the lower left. This shows our current weather conditions, with a link to our page on Wunderground and a direct link to the fancy weather page.
• I tweak the format of the title bar a bit too, plus some other minor formatting fiddling.

And that took like 4 hours worth of fiddling, and I still have some more to do. Double phew!

Technorati Tags: blog

Weather

The big project for this weekend, besides the ongoing interior repainting, was the installation of a new weather station. My wife Gabrielle is a real weather weenie. She used to be one of those that had the Weather Channel running all the time. We had a Weather Monitor ][ for many years, but the rain gauge hasn't worked since we moved, the temp gauge was badly installed and the anemometer seemed to have died.

She's trying to raise a new generation of weather weenies, and Rhiannon in particular seems to be getting the weather bug. So as a sort of early Christmas present, I picked up an Oregon Scientific WMR968 wireless weather station. It includes the 3 basic sensors - temp, wind and rain, all connected to the touch screen base station via wireless technology. I bought it from AmbientWeather.com, a very good site selling lots of different brands, with lots of good info too.

I haven't had all that much luck with wireless technology here. Not sure if it is because of the big antennaes just down the road, other interference or a too-solid house, but wireless computing technology has been a dismal failure, unable to connect two rooms away. So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I installed the sensors and was gratified to find out they connect just fine with the base station.

The software worked out very well, and in includes pieces to add updates to Wunderground.com, as well as to create an entire weather web site with one click. So now you can find out exactly what the weather is here in Paradise, otherwise known as Medford, Massachusetts!

Medford,MA 0155 Local Weather Conditions

Technorati Tags: weather ambientweather oregonscientific weatherstation

Cocktail of the Week - Jack Rose

The cocktail of the week is yet another classic cocktail. It is an especially appealing Christmas time drink, looking very cheery:

Jack Rose

• 1 1/2 oz. Applejack
• 1 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1/2 oz. grenadine syrup

Just mix it all together in lightly crushed ice, and strain into chilled cocktail glass, decorating with a lime slice. Now you have a very pretty red and green drink. I should've taken a snapshot of our drinks, as they came out very nice.

Some notes on this very delicious cocktail:

• You can make it with any apple brandy, including Calvados, a French apple-based brandy. But I find the Lairds to add just that right touch of sweetness and stick with that.
• You can make it with lemon juice as well, just shrink the amount to 1/2 oz. But the lime juice version tastes and looks best to me.
• Don't use Rose's Grenadine. It's truly awful. I had a very delicious French (I think) grenadine syrup, but unfortunately I didn't keep track of the brand and I've been on a fruitless (ah!) quest for it ever since the bottle ran dry. My current favorite is the Fee Brothers brand, but it is still just a pale imitation. But please, do try to find some other brand besides Rose's. It'll ruin this wonderful drink. It'll require some work, but trust me, it is worth it.

We also started season three of The Sopranos. The season opener lack a strong hook, which we both found odd.

Technorati Tags: cocktail drinkoftheweek

Questions to ponder

(yeah, some email humor - a cheap way to get new postings!)

1. How do blind people know when they are done wiping?

2. Could it be that all those trick-or-treaters wearing sheets aren't going as ghosts but as mattresses?

3. If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?

4. Is there another word for synonym?

5. Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do practice?"

6. If the "black box" flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole airplane made out of that stuff?

7. If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

8. Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

9. Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

10. If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

11. Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?

12. [... edited out ...]

13. How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?

14. What was the best thing before sliced bread?

15. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown too?

16. Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?

17. If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

18. Whose cruel idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have a "S" in it?

19. Why are hemorrhoids called "hemorrhoids" instead of "asteroids"?

Technorati Tags: humor questions

Oxymorons for fun

20. Government Organization
19. Alone Together
18. Personal Computer
17. Silent Scream
16. Living Dead
15. Same Difference
14. Taped Live
13. Plastic Glasses
12. Tight Slacks
11. Peace Force
10. Pretty Ugly
9. Head Butt
8. Working Vacation
7. Tax Return
6. Virtual Reality
5. Dodge Ram
4. Work Party
3. Jumbo Shrimp
2. Healthy Tan
1. Microsoft Works

Technorati Tags: oxymorons

Cocktails of the week - Jolly Rancher and Evan

We had two different cocktails last night. First up is one from the Pick of the Week list found on DrinksMixer.com. I used to check out the drinks at Cocktail, but that site has fallen into disrepair. It's really unfortunate, because the writing was fun, and The Alchemist told some great bartending stories, recipes and hints. Each week, there would be a new cocktail to try, with suggested recipes for accompanying food and the works, but no longer. Oh well....

So now I check out DrinksMixer. The proposed drinks (there are three cocktails each week) are not quite as sophisticated, and there is little or no accompanying commentary, but it's a push into a new cocktail sometimes, so it's worth a visit. The drinks are often not that interesting, like two of them this week are for some kind of frozen mudslide thing and another concoction with 5 different liquors, topped with 7-Up - yech! But the first one in the list I decided to try, and Michael is always willing to join in.

The Jolly Rancher

• 2 oz. Vodka (Three Olives)
• 1 oz Midori
• cranberry juice

It's a little sweet and the color is unappetizing (a light brown), but it went down smoothly. Midori is a typical ingredient in many of the DrinksMixer cocktails, and to me is indicative of its lack of sophistication. It is a vibrant green liqueur, tasting of sweet melons and tends to overpower most cocktails. I use it sparingly, but it worked pretty well in this cocktail. But I could only take one of them, so we moved on to another one, this one a classic from the Cocktail site, suggested in the Cosmopolitan recipe (which again, given the disarray of the Cocktail site, you can't get to any more), where they said that it was a fine standby, but why not choose other, more modern cocktails, like the Lemon Drop, Petit Zinc and the one we tried:

The Evan

• 2 oz. Citrus Vodka (Ketel One)
• 1 oz. Cointreau
• 1 oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
• splash of cranberry juice

This is a really good cocktail, one of my favorites. I like the sweet and sour cocktails that use lemon juice and Cointreau, and this one is very pleasing to the palate, and not nearly as overpowering as The Jolly Rancher. I highly recommend it.

After playing an XBox game for a few hours, we wrapped up the night with the season 2 Sopranos finale. There were a few too many dream sequences in it for me. I really don't like reading or watching dreams - they are often licenses for excess to the author or filmmaker. They get to do all kinds of symbolic voodoo that never seems to resonate with me, and instead comes off as awkward or just plain dumb. These weren't too much better, I'm afraid, but so far, The Sopranos on DVD has been a real winner.

Here's an interesting bit of foodlore I just came across while reading the Cocktail entry for The Evan - they like to make their own citrus vodka by steeping 100 proof vodka in lemon rinds, and they like to use the rinds of Meyer Lemons, which are a variety I've never heard of. I'm going to have to see if I can find a source here in the Northeast for these lemon/tangerine crosses.

Technorati Tags: cocktail meyerlemon lemons theevan cosmopolitan

Ahhh, coffee

Coffee

Ahh, coffee. Here I am, sipping that first delightful cup o' joe, a little after 6am. The sun is rising, the coffee is piping hot and it's going down smooth. We make a good strong cuppa, using some lightly roasted beans, not the overcooked ones found at your local Starbucks (Charbucks to us!). I can highly recommend Armeno Coffee Roasters Ltd. They are just down the road in Westborough Mass, but I do mail order with them and they make some great coffee beans. I used to order beans from Coffee Revolution in Ottawa Ontario, but I started to have some problems with the order, so we tried a bunch of other mail order and local places and settled on Armeno..

I didn't really start drinking coffee until I was in my mid-20s, when I worked at Compugraphic. The whole software crew would head down to the cafeteria for a morning break, drinking coffee and shooting the breeze. So just to have something in hand while we were doing that, I started to order my own coffee and the addiction was born.

At that time, the by now mythical Coffee Connection chain was at its peek. Started by coffee connoisseur extraordinaire George Howell, Coffee Connection was a New England institution, teaching millions in the area what good coffee really tastes like. He coined the term Charbucks to described the overcooked, burned beans popularized by Starbucks.

But the Starbucks money and competition was too much for George and he sold the chain to them for mucho dinero. All us CC aficionados were horrified, despite their claims to keep Coffee Connection as a separate brand. As we feared, things quickly changed and Coffee Connection first lost its name over the door, then even the Coffee Connection brand beans disappeared, leaving nothing but a dark oily stain on our memories.

He had signed a non-compete agreement and when that finally ended, he began Terroir Coffee. I have tried a bag of these beans, but haven't really dived into them yet.

Aremeno is a great roaster and makes some great beans. When we first started ordering from them, we sampled each different kind of bean. Here's my tasting list, with each bean rated 1-10:

Mexican Coixtepec - 6
Guatemala Antigua - 7
Costa Rica La Minita Tarrazu - 9
Costa Rica Tres Rios 7
Costa Rica Indios 6
Puerto Rico / Yauco Selecto 7
Jamaica Blue Mountain $34.95 $18.95 109 / 1095   
Colombia Supremo Narino 6
Brazil Bourbon Santos 6
Brazil Vista Alegre $13.50 $6.95 113 / 1135   
Hawaiian Kona Extra Fancy $25.50 $12.95 114 / 1145   
Kauai Reserve 7
Kauai Extra Fancy 6
Kauai Peaberry 7
Maui Kaanapali Red Catuai 8
Maui Kaanapali Yellow Caturra 7
Maui Kaanapali Moka 
Kenya AA 7
Tanzania Peaberry 7
Pride of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania 6
Zimbabwe Code 053 Pinnacle 6
Ethiopia Harrar 6
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe 9
Yemen Mocha Ismaili
Yemen Mocha Mattari 8
Yemen Mocha Sanani $12.25 $6.25 160 / 1605   
Zambia AA Terranova 
Papua New Guinea Sigri AA $10.25 $5.40 120 / 1205   
Sumatra Mandheling Pawani 7
Aged Sumatra Pawani $10.75 $5.60 128/1285 (V)   
Sumatra Gayo Mountain Organic (V) $10.75 $5.60 126 / 1265 (V)   
Java Jampit 7
Indonesia Java 6
Celebes Kalossi 7
India Monsoon Malabar 6
Timor Organic 7
House Blend 5
Black and Tan Blend 6

We settled on the Yirgacheffe and have been ordering it in 5 pound roasted bags for a couple of years now. We have our burr grinder set at 10 1/2, and we use almost to the 10 mark on pot for water. I usually grind just before making it, but I have taken to grinding for our first pot just before I go to bed. It's kind of a catch 22, getting the coffee ready in the morning - you need coffee to be awake enough to make coffee! So I cheat a little bit and have it all set to just turn on in the morning. I haven't really noticed any serious degradation in the quality of our cuppa, so I'll continue doing it. And we can even send one of the kids down to start it now! After it gets made, we get it out of the pot as soon as possible, and put it into a thermal decanter, to keep it from getting burnt.

So, if you don't grind your own coffee, I urge you to do so. It doesn't really take all that much more time than any other method and the taste is simply head and shoulders better than using a pre-ground coffee. We always get raves when we serve coffee, and yet I'm still surprised at how few make it from scratch.

Technorati Tags: coffee coffeeconnection georgehowell Yirgacheffe

parable

Something I got via email. It's a little sappy, but its heart is in the right place!

THE MAYONNAISE JAR AND 2 CUPS OF COFFEE

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee...

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.

Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full! The students responded with a unanimous yes." The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things -- your God, family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions -- things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

The sand is everything else -- the small stuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups.

Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18 There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first -- the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

Please share this with someone you care about.

Technorati Tags: parable mayonaise

Fall Harvest

A set of pictures celebrating Autumn in New England.

U8 Soccer, Fall 2005, The Galaxy

First up is the team picture for my daughter Rhiannon's U8 (Under 8) soccer team, the Galaxy. These are girls between the ages of 6 (Rhiannon's age) up to 8 years old. I'm the assistant coach, so I help out Coach Phil where needed. While the U6 level (where my other daughter plays) is co-ed, the U8 level is all girls. They play on a half-sized field, with half-sized goals, 5 on 5 with a goalie and a ref. We still don't officially keep score but the games are pretty competitive and a good time was had by all.
From left to right, back to front:
Me and Coach Phil
Bella, Olivia, Molly, Abbie, Emma
Shannon, Sofia, Sarah, Evelyn, Rhiannon

Rhiannon did very well, considering she was playing against girls up to 2 years older than her. She really loves to play soccer, to run around, and she got along great with all her teammates. She scored two goals in one game and looked really good doing it. I asked her if she wanted to try t-ball or something else in the spring, but she said she wanted to play soccer, so we'll keep at it. She played goalie the second half of the last game, and didn't get to handle the ball at all, poor kid!

Snow in October

It was some cold for this last game, as you can see by these pictures, taken later that afternoon. Some heavy wet snow came down and the girls could hardly wait to get out and play in the snow. Spenser enjoyed it as well. They even got to make a miniature snowman. Of course, today it was in the 70s! Ahh, New England in the fall!!

Trick or Treat!

And finally, the finest of the fall holidays - Halloween! The girls get nearly as excited about this as they do for Christmas. They've been counting down the days to it since last week. Grammie got them dressed up and ready to go. Rhiannon is the sharp-looking cowgirl, while Adrienne is the adorable pumpkin. We were out for quite some time, collecting more candy than any of us will eat. Adrienne isn't a huge candy eater, and Rhiannon is even less so. And I always buy too much candy. Four bags was two bags too many, as we don't get all that many visitors. But nobody fell down, and they got lots of candy, so I'd call it a grand success!

Technorati Tags: halloween candy soccer snow

Kid Words #1

The first in a long series:

Rhiannon was getting her coat on the other day and said she was putting on her "kill wind". We puzzled that one out for a bit and then remembered we had all been talking about wearing windbreakers, given the 'orrible weather we're having here in the northeast. Rain, clouds, wind, absolutely dreadful.

So she was zippering up her windbreaker jacket - her "kill wind". Works for me!

Technorati Tags: kids

Drink of the week

The Perfect Jonathan

• 1.5oz Vodka


• 3oz Orange Juice


• .5oz Grand Marnier


• dash of orange bitters

I made two different variations on this theme, by trying a couple of Grand Marnier substitutes. First we tried one with Galliano and then one with its more obscure cousin, Strega. I've always found Galliano to be too bitter and overpowering, even if it does come in a very nice bottle. But I can highly recommend Strega. It's more subtle and slightly sweeter and made for an excellent Perfect Jonathan.

As for the orange bitters, you'll find it is used in some very good cocktail recipes, but you probably won't find it on your local liquor store shelf. I get my supply of bitters and other cocktail mixers from Fee Brothers. They make an excellent Angostura (or classic) bitters, as well as the orange (you can also get peach and mint bitters). Their cordial syrups are also highly recommended. Their Grenadine is an excellent version, much better than the standard one you usually see on your store shelves. I still haven't found the great French Grenadine I bought a few years ago, and unfortunately, I don't remember the name. You'd be surprised at what a diference a good grenadine syrup makes.

An interesting note - Fee Brothers must ship to bars and the like more than to just folks like myself, because they send it to you Net 30! In other words, they send you the product with an enclosed bill and you send them a check back. Now that's Old Fashioned!

Technorati Tags: cocktail drinkoftheweek

Getting Things Done

I'm looking at some organizational tools, and I'm seriously considering jumping onto the Getting Things Done bandwagon. There's lots of neat tools, and it really appeals to me as I love to make lists, and the GTD system is all about lists and categorizations. I'm not really much into systems, but if I can make it work on a simple level, then I will be happy.

One of the best web sites for GTD info is called 43Folders, a reference, it turns out, to the GTD idea of having 43 folders to file stuff in - 31 Daily and 12 Monthly ones. In the Comments for his "Hipster PDA" (a loose collection of 3x5 cards), he talks about a great way to break out of a boring conversation:

I like to carry a single playing card in my wallet. Often the 8 of clubs.

If I get stuck in a conversation that’s going nowhere, I’ll furrow my
brow like I’m trying to remember something, whip out my wallet and,
with a flourish, produce the 8 and ask in a very loud, arrogant voice:

Was this your card?

Always kills.

Introducing the Hipster PDA | 43 Folders

Technorati Tags: gtd 43folders gettingthingsdone

Sci-Fi Movie list

John Scalzi, author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies has a list (of course!) of the 50 most "influential" science fiction movies of all time. Now, I no longer consider myself a card-carrying member of the science fiction fan club, either in book or movie form, but I am a movie geek (see my movie / home theater weblog here), so I've seen plenty of these. I'll put them in bold:

• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
• Akira
• Alien
• Aliens
• Alphaville
• Back to the Future
• Blade Runner
• Brazil
• Bride of Frankenstein
• Brother From Another Planet
• A Clockwork Orange
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Contact
• The Damned
• Destination Moon
• The Day The Earth Stood Still
• Delicatessen
• Escape From New York
• ET: The Extraterrestrial
• Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
• The Fly (1985 version)
• Forbidden Planet
• Ghost in the Shell
• Gojira/Godzilla
• The Incredibles
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
• Jurassic Park
• Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
• The Matrix
• Metropolis
• On the Beach
• Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
• Robocop
• Sleeper
• Solaris (1972 version)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
• The Stepford Wives
• Superman
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day
• The Thing From Another World
• Things to Come
• Tron
• 12 Monkeys
• 28 Days Later
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• La Voyage Dans la Lune
• War of the Worlds (1953 version)

Not too bad, and a couple movies I'll have to add to my Netflix queue (by the way, if you have a Netflix account, feel free to add me to your Friends list). Mind you, several of the movies I've not marked as "Watched", I've seen bits and pieces of, including Buckaroo Banzai, whose ommission might require that I turn in my nerd membership card! I'm also pretty sure I've seen Bride of Frankenstein, another ommission that might make some question my true geekdom!

I was disappointed that T2 and not the original Terminator made the list. I'm not sure I'm interested enough in the subject to buy the book, although I am a real sucker for movie books.

I have to get back to watching more movies. As you can see from my movie blog, I've haven't been watching too many lately. Too busy, which makes me too tired to even watch a movie.

The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies -- Officially Out!

Technorati Tags: scifimovies scalzi movies

Wire job

The cable wiring project went without a hitch. It's nice to have someone around who isn't afraid to drill holes in outer walls! If it were me, I'd be petrified, but Steve does it all the time. We ended up running two of the wires along the outside sill of the house, and one of them we moved over about 3 feet so it would come down with the rest of the wires. We ran the Internet cable through the garage, as we did the cable from our bedroom box. So now we have 5 cables, all without splits, running to the corner of the garage where the main cable drop comes in. Now I just need to get the cable guy to come back. They were nice enough to give me a direct line to his supervisor; unfortunately, there is no answer and his voice mail box is full:-(

Technorati Tags: wiring

Here comes the sun?

Red sky in the morning
Sailors take warning
Red sky at night
Sailors delight

The last time we saw the sun was also the last time we saw the Red Sox play - Friday, October 7. No exaggeration. In fact, not only was that the last time we saw the sun, it has been pretty much raining steady ever since then. Sometimes, especially in the spring, we'll get long periods of gray overcast skies, with some rain. But this time, it has been steady rain as well. And for the most part, I mean rain. Not just drizzle, but a steady downpour. This last stretch of hard rain started Friday morning and continued unabated until late yesterday.

So everything is soaked. Super saturated. Luckily, we don't have any flooding problems here in Medford, but all around New England, there's been some serious damage done. But we all feel waterlogged and gray. We haven't played soccer since the rains started, with yesterday's U8 game canceled as well as today's U6 practice.

But it looks like the sun might be putting in a long awaited appearance today. It hasn't yet shown up (6:42am), but our east facing bedroom window shows some real promise. It is a bright, albeit red, looking sunrise. But I guess it is going to be a cloudy day, with some real winds (gusts up to 50 MPH). But as long as we see some sun, it'll be a good day, I think.

Big project for today - fish wires through the walls. My middle sister Liz and her family are coming down and me and Stephen, her husband, are going to rewire the cable TV and Internet cables. I bought 500 feet of "quad shielded RG6" at Home Depot and we are going to try and bring the 3 TV drops and the 1 cable modem drop all the way through the house over to where the drop from the telephone pole comes in. We have spotty cable reception, although the Internet connection has improved since the cable guy's first visit, when he put in new splitters. But a new guy came last week and said we need new wires, preferably run through the walls, which they don't do. But I have some really incredibly nice brother-in-laws and Stephen immediately volunteered to come down and do the job. I'll do the grunt work, as he's an alarm installer and knows how to do this stuff.

So if you don't hear from me for awhile, you'll know the job has been botched:-) But I trust Steve, so I'm sure there will only be a momentary interruption. And we might even have sun while doing it!

Technorati Tags: rain weather cable

Alarm clock blues

Why is it so hard to get an alarm clock that just works? I had the perfect alarm clock for years, but I don't ask for much in an alarm clock. Two alarm settings (one for 5:20 for a normal day and one for 4:55 for a hockey morning), ease of setting, an FM radio - that's about it. My old alarm clock worked great. It even had something I've never seen on another clock, and that is a number pad, which meant setting times was a snap. Have you ever noticed that when you need to set a time, you always have to go 12 hours from the current time? So you hold down the forward button and wait. And wait. And wait. With my now deceased alarm clock, you just punched in the number you wanted and you were done. But unfortunately, I spilled, smacked and dropped my old one just once too many, so it went to that alarm clock graveyard.

My new alarm clock has some nice features. The coolest one is the fact it is self-setting. From somewhere in the ether, it grabs the current time and just sets itself. This is a very handy feature, as the outlet it is plugged into is a switched one and sometimes the switch gets turned off. Turn it back on, and it immediately sets itself to the correct time. Really cool!

But it has a horrible user interface. There are these nearly identical looking buttons along the side that turn on and off the alarms, so it is well nigh impossible to remember which one turns on alarm 1, which one for alarm 2, while ignoring the other identical switches that change the dimmer and toggle AM/FM. To turn off an alarm, you have to hit one of the middle buttons in a bank of about 7 identical buttons. You can't change how long it "snoozes" for; it is set for 9 minutes, but I prefer a much shorter snooze, like maybe 4 minutes. To me, 9 minutes is way too long, because after just a couple of those you're about 20 minutes late! To even toggle the snooze, you have to find a contoured button, albeit it is big enough any way.

So, the short of it is that I missed hockey this morning. Not sure what wrong button I hit, but I was awakened by the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was the backup goalie calling to see if I was going to make it. Seeing as face off time was in about 10 minutes, the answer was a groggy "No". I hate starting my day that way.

Technorati Tags: alarmclock sleeping

Drink of the week

Dumpster Juice

• 1 oz vodka


• 1 oz 151 rum


• 1 oz orange juice


• 1/2 oz each Midori and Chambord

Michael and I had a couple of these last night. I did not make it with the 151 rum. It was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away that I last did 151 rum, and I'm in no hurry to repeat it. I do not mind it in my zombie, but that's about as far as I go.

The drink was a little "heavy". The orange juice (not fresh squeezed, unfortunately), Midori and Chambord combined to make it a little cloying on the palate, especially the one that used the cane sugar rum that Michael brought over after their trip to Tortola. So mabye the bite of 151 would have help cut it a bit. But they went down without too much complaint, and I think I can recommend it as a pretty decent drink. I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Reader Recipe: Dumpster Juice | Liquor Snob

Technorati Tags: cocktail drinkoftheweek

Long Long Weekend drive

What a weekend we had! It was my Aunt Pat and Uncle Donnie's 50th anniversary party on Saturday. My mom's family has a pretty good marriage track record. My parents celebrated their 50th in February, her brother Donnie's was in September and her youngest brother, my Uncle Rodney, is currently in year 47. Nearly 150 years of marriage - amazing!

Anyway, that part of the family lives in Down East Maine, Princeton to be exact. It's not too far from the Canadian border, about as east as you can go in the United States. And quite a long haul from our humble abode here in Medford, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. In good weather, the drive can be done in about five hours. But it was not good weather when we headed out - a little bit of rain, slick roads and slow traffic. By the time we hit Portland, it was pouring out, requiring hi-speed wipers, and it didn't let up for the next two days. In fact, since the pitiful Red Sox season-ending lost last Friday, which barely beat the rain, it has been cloudy and rainy. And it turned cool a couple of days ago, just about the worst of New England weather - long stretches of clouds, rain, drizzle, with 50-60 degree temperatures. Yech.

The drive is mostly highway, and now that both New Hampshire and Maine accept my Mass "Fast Lane" transponder for the tolls, it easier than ever before. It takes about 4 hours of some of the most boring driving imaginable to get to Bangor from here. Thank Zeus for my Father's Day present - a portable DVD player. We strap it to the back of my seat and the girls are actually encouraged to watch TV all day! I borrowed three DVDs from the library and they watched two of those - "Max & Ruby's Halloween" and "Preschool Power". Also on the viewing schedule was lots of "Looney Tunes". They've become real fans since I got the first "Golden Collection", and I see that they now have two more. These are the real thing, uncut and uncensored, so maybe it's a little too much for them, but they seem to enjoy it. Their favorite episodes are the Bugs Bunny versus the Bull one and any of them with Tweety Bird. Adrienne especially got a kick out of the Rabbit Season one, where Bugs keeps talking Porky into "blasting" Daffy during rabbit season.

It feels like cheating to have them watch the DVD the entire time, but given the alternative, it's a little slice of heaven. Gabrielle and I can talk, or listen to the radio or whatever. It works out very nicely for all involved. Other viewings include various Care Bear videos (huge Care Bear fans) and one Thomas the Tank Engine video.

After hitting Bangor, you head due east on "The Airline" (Maine Rte. 9). This used to be a real nightmare: a two-lane highway across very hilly terrain. Get stuck behind a huge truck or a poky driver and you were doomed to an eternal ride. But now it has been repaved, and plenty of uphill passing zones added, so it is much easier. Still, it took well over six hours to arrive in Princeton, arrving right in the middle of the party.

But it was a good time to see lots of cousins, second cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. There were a couple of other kids there and the girls had a grand time. Rhiannon enjoyed meeting Raeanna (a "second cousin once removed" says Gabrielle, who loves to figure these things out). She called Raeanna her identical twin, because "their names were so alike and they both had music class on Wednesdays!"

And then we headed back Sunday afternoon. Rain still pouring down, but the drive got lots better for me when I was finally able to find the Patriots game on the radio. We stopped for dinner at a Tex-Mex place in South Portland and still got home in about 6 hours. It sure was nice to collapse into my own bed!

Technorati Tags: princeton+me looney+tunes driving

Why I.D. is dangerous

Here is an excellent article on just how dangerous pushing the corrupt religuous principle once called "creationism" and now called "Intelligent Design" onto unsuspecting school kids really is. It is nothing more than a religuous philosphy, and I for one would like to know how the IDiots would feel if Native Americans began demanding their version of creationism get added to the science cuuriculum. Or the Purusha god of India. Or any of them - for a good list of creation myths see:

History of CREATION STORIES

American Scientist Online - Being Stalked by Intelligent Design

This is Pat Shipman's article in the American Scientist, and nicely spells out how dangerous ID truly is:

Technorati Tags: creationism id intelligent+design evolution

Googling

Google search tips! Some cool things in there, for a page I rarely do anything very elaborate with. Give some of them a try!

ResearchBuzz: Google Search Tips Jam

Technorati Tags: google searchtips

Drink of the Day

When Michael comes over on Wednesday nights, we:

1. Have a cocktail
2. Play a co-op video game
3. Watch a Sopranos episode

I usually try to mix up a cool drink. This time, I made a Blackhawk, although it looks like I messed it up. Seems it wants Creme de mure, while I used Creme de noyaux. Oops! Still, it tasted pretty nice: I'll call it a "Redhawk" instead:-)

Redhawk Recipe

• 1 1/2 oz vodka


• 1/2 oz creme de noyaux


• 1/2 oz lime juice
  

Technorati Tags: cremedenoyaux cremedemure cocktail

Patriots Game, 2005

We did our annual "Family Day" at the New England Patriots football game this past Sunday. I think this is the third or fourth year we've been doing this, and once again we had spectacular weather. Not really football weather mind you, but perfect weather to bring the family to a game - mid 70s, sunshine, just a gorgeous early autumn day.

We got started late, not an uncommon occurrence for a family of four I don't think. We probably should have not gone to piano lessons, or at the very least moved them up a little bit. We got to the parking lot at about 11am (for a 1pm kickoff), and didn't get our first choice for lot. This was the first time we parked on the south side of the stadium, which actually worked out better than our usual northern parking lot, as our seats are on that side of the stadium.

We've had season tickets to the Patriots for about 12 years, or ever since Drew Bledsoe's first year. Or maybe it was the year before that. We are part of a 10 share "consortium", owning 6 tickets, which works out to be 3 pairs of tickets for each share (8 regular season games plus the 2 pre-season games that are foisted upon the season ticket holders). We've owned 2 shares for the past few years, so that, come the ticket picking "auction", I have a pretty good chance of getting 2 pairs to a game. I usually sell off any pre-season games, as well as one or two other pairs. I'll go to one or two other games, and, given the Pats success lately, even a post-season game. It works out pretty well, even if it is damned expensive at nearly US$90 a ticket these days. But demand is still very high (Sunday's was the 119^th straight home sellout), and I hear the waiting list for season tickets is over 50,000!

But we got there in enough time to fire up the grill, throw on some chicken pieces and wings, and have a little bit of a tailgate party. It would have been nice to get there about an hour earlier, but we did pretty well nonetheless. We let the crowd thin out at the gates and got into our seats without missing too much.

Unfortunately, we were a little late leaving and, due to the blowout loss, the crowd was a little early, and we got stuck in a tremendous traffic jam. It took us nearly an hour and a half before we even started moving, and it was three hours after we got into the car before we finally got home. Usually, we leave at the end of the third quarter, as the girls have had about enough. But they were having such a good time, and our browsing in the Pro Shop took up too much time, so we got out late and man, did we ever regret it.

Still, it was a fun thing to do, and we are all looking forward to next year's Pats game.

Technorati Tags: newenglandpatriots tailgating

Hectic Schedule

Here's our regular weekly schedule:

• Sunday:
  • 9:30am - Piano lessons
  • 1:00pm - U6 soccer practice (I'm coach and Adrienne plays)
• Monday: 5:30pm - U8 soccer practice (I'm assistant coach and Rhiannon plays)
• Tuesday:
  • 6:30am - I play pickup hockey
  • 4:30pm - Dance class (tap & ballet intro for the girls)
• Wednesday : 5:30pm - U6 soccer game
• Thursday : 4:45 - swimming lessons for the girls at the YMCA
• Friday : 6:30am - Pickup hockey
• Saturday : morning (time varies) - U8 soccer game

It's amazing we can actually get it all to fit in! No clashes, especially with soccer - that's pretty amazing. We might drop swimming the next time around. And replace soccer with one day a week for ice skating. That should ease things up a bit. The girls are pretty amazing too. They do a great job of getting ready and doing all this stuff; that plus school makes for a very hectic schedule for them too. And we almost never have to poke and prod them to get going. They especially love soccer, swimming and dance. I'd love to get them involved in karate, but I don't see when. Another thing I'd like to try is to get them into a foreign language class, maybe Spanish. From Dora the Explorer, they already know how to count in Spanish and a few other words. I think that a language like that would come in handy some day.

Technorati Tags: soccer pianolessons dance

Drinking With Hemingway

I'm crazy about two things, foodwise - coffee and liquor. I love to mix drinks, try new liquors, and I make a great extra-extra-extra dry martini if I do say so myself.

This story combines two of my favorites - drinks and "For Whom The Bell Tolls", one of the best books I've ever read. It is a very funny tale of someone trying to drink Hemingway under the table. It didn't happen:

For Whom the Booze Tolls

Technorati Tags: hemingway booze drunkard

Medford Public schools

Here's a posting I recently made to the medfordmass Yahoo mailing list, in response to an inquiry about the state of the Medford school system:

I'm a parent with two children in the Medford school system. We've only just started our long educational process, as the girls are in first grade and kindergarten, so we don't have too much experience with the system yet. That being said, here's what I have to add:

• The facilities are incredible. The new schools are very beautiful and functional, airy and optimistic. While that doesn't a respected school system make, it sure is a great foundation to build on.




• We've been very satisfied with the teachers so far, in an admittedly tiny sample.




• Full time, free, kindergarten is an amazing thing. While we are blessed with two girls who love school, which makes it easier, I think it is a great idea and am glad it is available here, unlike many other neighboring towns.




• I'm worried about the "lowest common denominator" problem in public schools. Both of my girls are very very bright and I am already seeing the oldest getting bored. It will probably take a little bit of time for the teacher to get the students sorted out, but even last year, in kindergarten, I could see how a few troublemakers could really drag the entire class down.




• I don't like the idea of going to a charter school, as I believe they are an unfair drain on the public school resources, but we have to keep it as an option for them. Charter schools have the option of turning down a student, as well as promising more involved parents, as they have already taken a big step. Uninvolved parents are, I think, an even bigger drag on a school system than rowdy kids.




• Although Medford does not have a great academic track record, esp. compared to many of the surrounding towns, I believe that an influx of parents like us who will demand excellence from the school system, and not be happy with the status quo, will force improvement from within, the best kind of improvement. We're hoping to stay involved and push both the school system and our children to work harder and be smarter.

War on Science author speaking

Chris Mooney, the author of the new book "The Republican War on Science", is speaking locally at Porter Square Books in Cambridge MA. His blog, The Intersection, is a frequent stop of mine, as well as reading his posts on the Sciencegate blog. I wish I could go, but it starts at 7pm and Adrienne's soccer game doesn't end until 6:30 and we probably won't get out of there until almost 7 probably. Darn it all!

Porter Square Books

Kids soccer

Adrienne and Rhiannon's soccer season has begun, and now that they are on two different teams for the first time, it is even more chaotic than normal. Rhiannon moved up to the U8 (Under 8) league, while Adrienne remains on the U6 (Under 6) team. So that means Saturday (am games for Rhiannon), Sunday (pm practice for Adrienne), Monday (pm practice for Rhiannon) and Wednesday (pm games for Adrienne) are soccer days!

To add to the work, I coach Adrienne's U6 team (The Stars) and am assistant coach for Rhiannon's U8 team (The Galaxy). I was originally penciled in to coach U8 as well, but, probably luckily, it turned out I didn't have to. But as Rhiannon's coach is going away for 10 days in a couple of weeks, I'll get my stint as coach there too!

I love soccer. It was the sport I played all through middle and high school. We had some good junior varsity teams, but the varsity teams were generally pretty awful. Even after our JV group moved up to varsity, it was still pretty non-competitive. One year, when I was a junior in high school, we had an excellent team, and went 8-1 the first 9 games. But then one of our teammates stopped playing, as he was a hockey player first (he ended up getting drafted by the New York Rangers, so yeah, he was pretty good). Our school was too small (graduating class of about 60) to support two varsity teams, so he had to play in a league in Fitchburg, MA. Well, we went I think 1-8 after he left and there went my only chance to play in the post-season. But I loved playing, and got to play a lot of soccer.

And I really dig coaching the kids. The U6 league is coed, and we don't keep score. It's enough just to keep the little ones pointed in the right direction! I'm on the field with them, turning the around, picking them up, and in general offering as much encouragement as I can. We play 3 on 3, with little goals, no goalies, and have rolling substitutions, so everyone gets to play. It's a blast and I love doing it.

U8 is a small step towards "real" soccer. They play 5 on 5, in a half-sized field with goals that are also about half-sized. As in U6, there are real refs, but they too are just beginners, although, again, they are a step further along. There's still plenty of subs, but it has to be done on a whistle, and each team has a goalie. Again, there is no "official" score, but of course the girls (it isn't coed at this level) know the score. Rhiannon said that with only one goal scored, it wasn't very hard to keep score :)

Yesterday evening, Rhiannon's team had a pretty solid practice. They just work on some drills, like short passes, dribbling and the like. It can be hard to keep 12 girls, ages 6-8, paying attention, but we try hard and they seem to have fun. Tomorrow, I coach the Stars in their first "game", which is probably the most fun of all my soccer involvement.

Rhiannon is turning out to be a really good player. Her last season in U6, she was a real monster out there, taking control of the ball, and really trying for goals. She really began to shine towards the end of the previous season. She broke free from the usual scrum and dribbled down to score. It really perked her up! She did pretty well in her first U8 game, coming close to scoring. It'll be interesting to see how well she adapts to playing with bigger kids now.

Adrienne, on the other hand, is slowly getting into it. She started at the same time as Rhiannon, so she's still pretty young, even for the U6 league. We couldn't keep her away as she watched her big sister play. She's going to need to adapt as well, as her big sister won't be there on the pitch with her. When we had our first practice last Sunday, she did very well. There's a big group meeting in the middle at the start of the practice, where the pros that help out get all the kids together. They run around a lot, and get warmed up. Previously, she was very hesitant, not wanting to get mixed up in a big (maybe 40 kids) group like that, even if her sister was there. But this time she went right along with the rest of the team, without a complaint. They sure do grow up fast, don't they? It will be very interesting to see how she does in their first game tomorrow evening.

My soccer coaching even saved me from a ticket the other day! I was coming home and ran into some traffic, so I turn left at a light where there is a sign that says no left turn. Not really sure why it is there, but it is a well known spot for the Medford police to catch you in the act. I should've known better, and I sure regretted when I turned left right in front of a Medford police car! Well, he pulled me over and came to the door. He said,

"Seeing the hat [I was wearing my Medford Soccer Coach hat], I suppose you know where you are and what you just did?", he said very sternly.

"Yes officer," I said very contritely "I usually go down another block and turn left there, but...".

"Well, I tell you what. I'll give you two choices", the cop explained. "You can either turn around and go back into that traffic, or you can promise me you won't do it again and continue on."

I immediately agreed that I would never do it again, and thanked him for his consideration.

"Okay. I'm going to go back and listen to the Red Sox / Yankees game. Have a good night!", he said as he walked back to his car. Only his trip back was interrupted by another car making the illegal left turn. I got out of there before he changed his mind! Saved by being a local for once!

I'm going to try and get some soccer pictures up. We took a bunch last year, but with the digital camera, it should be easier this year.

Boston Organics

We got our Boston Organics box yesterday, and as usual it is an eclectic mix of fruits and vegetables. It comes every Friday afternoon in its own plastic bin and includes whatever is available from organic farms, local, national and international. I learned about them from the medfordmass mailing list, and we've been subscribers now for about 6 months, maybe longer.

In today's box, we have:

• Arugula
• Avocado
• bananas
• Bell pepper
• blueberries
• green beans
• kiwi fruits (the girls are particularly wild about kiwi fruit!)
• green leaf lettuce
• 3 oranges
• plums
• acorn squash

So a pretty nice selection. It's hard to get a feel if it is "worth it". There are two different boxes, US$25 and US$35. We've been going with the $25 box and it works out pretty well. We usually manage to eat everything we get, and have been thinking of moving to the $35 box. You get it automatically delivered every week and the quality has been good (as you might expect from an organic source!). We are not, by and large, organic buyers, but we try to buy healthy stuff and to keep the girls' intake of sugar and salts to a minimum, so this has been a very happy experience.

Kinda-Sorta-NotReally Friday Random 10

My Not-Really Random Songs for a Friday:

• "Breath In" - Frou Frou
• "Clouds" - The Go-Betweens
• "Our Way To Fall" - Yo La Tengo
• "Candy" - Martin Sexton
• "California" - Flash and the Pan
• "Beds Are Burning" - Midnight Oil
• "Sorry Somehow" - Hüsker Dü
• "Waltzing's For Dreamers" - Richard Thompson
• "Stormtrooper in Drag" - St. Etienne
• "Ambergris" - Died Pretty

random10, fridayshuffle, random ten, friday random ten

(Thanks to Geeky Mom's Completely Random 10 for the meme)

Friday morning questions

* Why have milk containers with pop tops, instead of screw top caps? Why would I buy these? Am I a glutton for punishment, just looking for them to get dropped by little hands and explode all over the kitchen?

* Why would a "driver" (and I use that term loosely) put their brakes on when coming up to a green light, only to speed through it when it finally changes to yellow, leaving me holding the bag at the red light?

* How come graham crackers don't come in resealable bags? Ditto with most boxes of cereal.

* What did Bush answer when asked about Roe versus Wade? "I don't care how the blacks get out of New Orleans. Just leave already."

* Why would anyone but a complete moron leave Mike Myers in against a right-handed batter, no matter how poor a RHB he is?

* Why can't Judge Roberts just answer the damn questions?

Personal Disaster Planning

I suppose it is hard to think about, but personal disaster planning is a very good idea, and one I hope to act on in the near future. This post at the excellent blog, The Well-Timed Period, got me thinking about it, and it makes alot of sense.

By personal disaster planning, I just mean a few simple things, as mentioned in the post. Put together a box of goods, and store it away. Of course, you have to both remember you have it and remember where you put it:-) And even though we live in New England, away from the coast, an area not prone to huge disasters, it still makes sense. It is very conceivable to lose power for a few days after a big snow storm, and we have been known to have minor earthquakes, so why not be ready?

Here's a list off the top of my head:

• Canned, ready-to-eat foods (and can opener!) like soup, beans and the like.
• Flashlight. Maybe get one of those "forever" flashlights that charge by shaking it, as batteries have a shelf life and we're trying to make a "file and forget" box here
• Radio - one of those hand-crank ones for the same reason
• Swiss army knife
• Wipes. A friend of mine gave me a couple of boxes of "adult" wipes that they use at the Boston Marathon for body cleansing. Not sure where you buy these. And maybe throw in a box of regular wipes.
• A couple of gallons of water
• Small bag of dry dog food, as we have a dog and probably always will. And we're not going anywhere without him, either!
• Granola bars. Those sealed packages probably will last a long time too.

See, nothing huge and everything pretty much something you can put away and forget about. Find some kind of box to put them in - not a cardboard one, though, something a little sturdier. Stash it in the cellar or attic and you'll be ready to hunker down for a few days.

Adrienne's First Day of School

In a continuing theme, Adrienne headed off to school today. Her sister, Rhiannon, goes to first grade, and this is the beginning of her second week at school. They (wisely) start the kindergartners a couple of days later, as things are crazy enough the first week even without another 100 5 year olds adding to the chaos.

Adrienne has been looking forward to her first day of kindergarten since her sister started last year. She wasn't happy that Rhiannon got to go a whole day, five days a week, while she only went for a couple of hours, two days a week to preschool. We have a model kindergarten system here in Medford, where they go the full school day, five days a week, something that other communities are beginning to do. It's a long day for the little ones, I'm sure, but Adrienne's been looking forward to it.

She surprised us too. The big concern was what to do with PJ, her main "guy". She's never gone this long without him, but they aren't allowed "guys" in the classroom. We figured that we would just put him into the (huge!) backpack, keeping him at the bottom, and at least knowing he was nearby would be enough for her. At breakfast, Adrienne announced that she would do that for four days, and then on the fifth day she would leave him home. But as we were climbing out of the car, and her big sister was leaving her guy (Bubbles, the fish) in the car, she decided at the spur of the moment to do the same. So PJ stayed in the car - I hope she doesn't regret that decision!

Here's our little girl as she heads out to class. Big backpack, with a big snack and lunch on board. Luckily (I think!), she has the same teacher Rhiannon had last year, and both the teacher and her aide were looking forward to having Adrienne in their class. I'm not convinced it's a great idea going forward, as teachers may have preconceived notions based upon Rhiannon, but I think for this first year, it will add some to the comfort level, which can only be a good thing.

Here's our two little girls, walking to school - gulp! School is a few miles away, so they get driven and then we walk over. Generally, Gabrielle will be doing it, but for now, because the kindergartners have a different entrance, I'll go with them and stay with one while we get the kinks worked out of our morning routine. Are they too cute or what? Rhiannon is taking her job as the school veteran very seriously, offering Adrienne all kinds of useful tips, and ways to avoid "getting a strike". Probably doing a much better job than I ever did, as the oldest brother to three sisters.

The Witch is Dead!

Michael Brown is out:

TheBostonChannel.com - News - AP: FEMA Chief Michael Brown Removed From Katrina Relief

More Katrina Notes

• The best commentary on the criminally inadequate Federal response, dead from the head down, is, by far, found on The Daily Show. You absolutely need to see many of the posted vignettes from the show, found here on the Comedy Central web site. I suggest you view them in this order:
  1. Inarguable Failure -- Was there bureaucratic bungling? The short answer is: yes. The long answer is: YEEEEEESSSSSS!
  2. Meet the F**kers -- An introduction to a new breed of public servant.
  3. Bush's Timeline -- As Katrina's waters broke through New Orleans' levee, Bush headed into the eye... of San Diego.
  4. Beleaguered Bush -- Ed Helms takes a look at the efforts to save our beloved and beleaguered president.
  You'll need to be able to play Windows Media, but trust me, it's worth it!
• Did you know that yesterday's grand prize on the Price is Right was an all-expenses paid trip to New Orleans? And if that wasn't rich enough, they also gave the "lucky" winner a powerboat - doh! Of course, it was filmed months ago, but talk about bad timing..

Katrina eyewitness

Here's a harrowing account of a pair of EMS paramedics who were in New Orleans for a conference when Katrina struck. It is a sad tale of official imcompetence and blatant racism. I'd say the ones who sank the lowest were the law enforcement, not the poor lost souls stuck in New Orleans:

Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences

Medford Clothing for Katrina Drive

Posted to the medfordmass@yahoo.com mailing list today:

PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS. 

The clothing drive scheduled for Sunday September 11, 2005 is on. 
Arrangements are now being made so that the clothing can be 
transported down South. We are carefully monitoring the Federal 
Emergency Management's activities in Massachusetts so that we can 
actively participate as the opportunities allow. At this time we ask 
for clothing donations only because there are no organizations 
looking for food donations.


CLOTHING DRIVE INFORMATION

Place:  Camuso Household
           107 Century Street Ext. (Across from Playstead Park)
           Medford MA

Time:    Sunday September 11, 2005 from 3PM to 6PM	


Please follow the guidelines listed below when dropping off clothing:

Clothing has to be separated into different bags. (new with tags and 
used)

New clothing (with tags) will be delivered to "Boston Lends a Hand" 
for the Hurricane relief effort down South. They will be delivered by 
us to Marine Industrial Park on 6 Drydock Ave in Boston. 

Used clothing (In good condition) will be delivered by us to the 
Greater Lowell Family YMCA which is working to get the items shipped 
also to the victims down South.

The remainder of the used clothing will be donated to the Salvation 
Army here in Massachusetts.  

Katrina timeline

An excellent, seemingly objective and chilling timeline of Hurricane Katrina. Note especially Bush's "response" while the situation rapidly deteriorated on Sunday and Monday....

Think Progress » KATRINA TIMELINE

Baby Turns Five

================

Baby Turns Five

Adrienne Christine Arnold turned five years old today, which means she has begun her sixth year here with us. I guess in some places (like Japan?), they would say she turned six today, which in some ways makes more sense. Hard to believe it was five years ago that we began this journey together! Like the hoary cliche goes, it feels like it was only yesterday that we were rushing off to the hospital.

It was a little after 1am when Gabrielle said she felt we probably ought to go to the hospital now. Rhiannon was already at Grammie's, so we were ready to just head out. We grabbed our bags and jumped in the car. Luckily, traffic is pretty light at that time of the morning, so the trip south into Boston was a breeze. We pulled up to the front door of Brigham and Women's Hospital and turned the car over for valet parking. Gabrielle will never let me forget how I originally turned down the offer for a wheelchair. She had been very quiet on the ride in, as the contractions were coming very quickly, so I mistook the silence for complacency, not urgency.

Well, we got a wheelchair and began the process of registration and getting checked in. The hospital staff shared my complacency, and moved along at a sluggish pace. However, Gabrielle understood the time pressures and kept insisting we'd better move along. Of course, I'm sure the staff has heard it all before, so I'm not sure the pace quickened at all.

Finally we were in our room and a doctor came over to take a look. Gabrielle was wondering about the epidural, as the process with Rhiannon was long (nearly 24 hours) and painful. She had decided to not try to tough it out this time, and was ready for all the help modern medicine could throw her way.

The doctor glanced down and finally the things began to happen. She told Gabrielle to not worry about the epidural, as the baby's head was already on its way! A couple of pushes later and I was cutting the umbilical cord for a very healthy little baby girl. We were checked in at 1:50 and Adrienne popped out at 2:09. And she hasn't stopped flying around since!

And so she turns five today. I took a few quickie pictures and actually updated Adrienne's photo album, which can be found here.

First Grade

My oldest, Rhiannon, headed off to her first day of school this morning. She's really looking forward to first grade, although most of her friends from kindergarten are in different classes, much to her chagrin. She just loves school and we're going to do our best to keep her enjoying it.

She goes to public school, and it seems to be going pretty well. We were faced with a tough decision last year; heck, it is a tough decision every fall, and an incredibly important one - where do our kids go to school? Medford schools do not have a very good reputation; much like the city itself, they are solid yet unspectacular. My wife, an Arlington (a next door town) native, spent her life looking down on Medford, as Arlington has a very high scholastic reputation.

But it seems like Medford schools are improving. Nearly all the schools themselves are brand new, having been built over just the past few years. Of course, buildings are only part of it, but still a good base. And, being a (relatively!) inexpensive place to live so close to Boston, there are plenty of educated, motivated yuppies like ourselves who will push both our kids and our schools to be better. So we're going to stick with the public schools for the immediate future.

I've always felt like the home environment was more important than the school environment, given some base level of competency. But as I get more involved with it, I'm not so sure any more. Here in Massachusetts, we have charter schools, which are privately run schools that are publicly funded. The local school district pays a set amount for every student that goes to one of these (an amount that many call onerous and unfair, btw). This is an interesting option for us, as we have a pretty highly regarded one not too far away. And as we drive the kids to school anyway, it wouldn't be that big a change. But I'd like to support our public schools, and we'll continue to do so.

One thing that a charter school has over a public school is that it doesn't have to accept a student. And even in kindergarten, there are very disruptive kids who make learning difficult. Rhiannon had a pretty good class, but towards the end of the year, some of the kids got out of hand and had a real detrimental effect on everything. And in a charter school (or a private school), the kid or kids could be kicked out. In fact, that is what happened to one of the troublemakers, thus he ended up in Rhiannon's class. And that's a powerful tool to keep things positive at school.

Another, less concrete, advantage charter schools and, to an even greater extent, private schools have is that the parents have made a real effort to send them, as opposed to public schools which happen by default. So presumably, you'd have a more generally committed group of parents, which makes all the difference in the world.

But we'll stay involved and keep the whole learning experience a positive one. Gabrielle is involved in the PTO (the Parent Teacher Organization, a community involvement group), while I coach both girls' soccer teams. So I'd like to think we're giving back. Of course, we can do more, and I think we will.

Anyway, here's a picture of her heading out to school. Her mom takes great pride in having dressed up kids, and that includes nice clothes and, just as important, pretty bows. Rhiannon is six years old and is growing up too fast!

Malice Aforethought

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Alabama, meet Katrina

My parents have been wintering down in Alabama for quite some time; maybe 8 years or so. There's a very nice stretch of beach just west of Florida, and it has better prices. The weather, while not summer-like, is very moderate and the crowds are small. They liked it so much that, two years ago, they bought a new house just north of the Gulf Shores beach. It was a small "slab" house, with a couple of bedrooms and in a nice little neighborhood, all new houses in a new development. House building there is a real boom industry and demand is high.

We visited them in February of 2004 (perhaps I can scrounge up some pictures). We had a great time, and got very lucky with the weather, as it had been pretty miserable up to that point - 70s and sunny. It's more of a summer time beach place than a winter beach place, so it is pretty quiet in February. We had been thinking about using the house for a week or so during the summer and seeing what the beach life was like. The house was a few miles from the beach, but still pretty close.

Last September, Hurricane Ivan made landfall right at Gulf Shores as a Category 3 hurricane. Luckily, my parents had not yet made their annual migration south, so they were in no danger. But Gulf Shores itself took an appaling beating; many of the places we had hung out at just six months before were totally gone, and lots of the high rise beach condos were destroyed. The storied bar The Florabama was washed away, as was one of our favorite bars, Fat Tuesday (a bar chain originating in New Orleans, I think). All along the Ft. Morgan Road, off which was my parents' development, was debris and destruction. Fortunately, their house itself only had minor damage - a few shingles off, some roofing problems, etc.

My parents had been concerned that the neighborhood was falling away already, as people were buying up the houses as rentals. Ivan was the last straw for them, so in June they sold their house at a tidy profit. As they didn't have any new place in mind yet, they put all their furniture in storage at a place in Foley, Alabama.

They called the storage place the other day, and to their relief found that their stuff was okay. An expansion that was getting built had been destroyed by Katrina, but the original buildings were still okay. The owner there complained that all the coverage was about New Orleans and, to a lesser extent, Biloxi and Gulfport, but that Alabama had taken a pretty hard hit as well. In fact, he said that the area of my parents' house had been "completely devastated". So it looks like they got out in the nick of time.

Here is a picture taken at the beach on Dauphin Island, a pretty little island between Gulf Shores and Mobile, in Mobile Bay. It had already taken some serious damage thanks to Ivan, but Katrina seems to have finished the job. When we visited out there, we took a long drive all the way around Mobile Bay. There used to be a small ferry that would take you from Gulf Shores, across a short stretch of the bay, and put you on Dauphin Island. Ivan made short work of that, and I don't think service had been restored even yet. It was a beautiful place, and we drove all the way out to the end of the island, admiring the pretty beach houses up on stilts. Well, Mother Nature put the smack down on that:

Also, here is a link to the WPMI home page, which is a TV station in Mobile, Alabama, covering the area. Suffice to say, it's going to be a long effort even there:

NBC 15 :: Close to Home

Dire Predictions

Interesting article predicting dire consequences if the Louisiana bayous aren't taken better care off - from the Oct. 2004 National Geographic. George Bush says:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Some day soon, he'll learn to read too....

Louisiana's Wetlands @ National Geographic Magazine

Nagin is one angry man

An angry Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, in an interview with WWL-AM. I particularly like the "no more press conferences until we have resources promised" line:

New Orleans Mayor Interview

Katrina help - direct

David Weinberger, over at Joho the Blog, points out a PayPal donation account to donate directly to a local person helping out in Lake Providence, just outside of New Orleans. If David says Brendan is okay, he's okay with me. Sounds like some place where money might get to someone more directly than just a Red Cross donation:

Lake Providence Help

Aerial pictures

Incredible slide show of aerial photos detailing Katrina's destruction:

Hurricane Katrina - Aerial views of the destruction - Boston.com

Technorati Tags: katrina neworleans biloxi

Amazing

Amazing - live web video from downtown New Orleans:

NO2

See also the live blogging going on there:

The Interdictor

I love the understated strength found in the note on the DirectNIC home page:

Due to Hurricane Katrina we have an usually high volume of support requests. Please be patient and we will be back with you as soon as possible.

(from Broken Toys)

Technorati Tags: katrina neworleans

Econmics of Katrina

Nice post on the after effects of Katrina and why it some folks didn't leave:

wicked_wish: Disjointed thoughts on the socio-economics of disaster

Once again, President Boffo has no clue. He shows up a day late, a dollar short, and talks about nothing in particular, guitaring away while New Orleands floods. Even the New York Times gave him a bad write-up. Alright already, he's clueless, okay?

(thanks to Geeky Mom for pointers)

Dawkins & Coyne weigh in on evolution

I have an earlier post (found here in an earlier blog) about "Intelligent Design" and some other sources for evolution truth. One thing I can say is the Richard Dawkins is my kind of writer and he adds more fire to the scorching heat that should be burning any "Creationist" out there:

Guardian | One side can be wrong

Evolved from Sheep

Can you believe it? 42% of Americans "hold strict creationist views"... my head explodes at the mere thought that 42% of my fellow Americans believe "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.".

The Power Liberal: While P.Z. Myers Sleeps...

Coevolution

As the concerned father of two young daughters just beginning to make the long journey through our educational system, I have very strong opinions about religion and politics getting mixed up with a good strong secular education. The whole creationist / ID fad has luckily stayed far away from our home here in eastern Massachusetts, but it has me worried more generally about the future of the US.

One thing that drives me most crazy is idiots who can't enjoy the beauty of how nature evolves to solve specific problems. The latest doofus to express uneducated blather about evolution is the PBS snake oil salesman, Deepak Chopra. Once again, he falls back on the hoary old "If we can't currently explain it, it must be God" "theory" of ID. One of his main talking points is the very specific evolution of flowers and bugs to pollinate them, and how there can be one single moth capable of pollinating one single type of flower. Somehow, this is "proof" for ID, rather than an amazing case of natural evolution.

Here's a great article explaining the simply stunning symbiotic relationship between a fly and an orchid. It is called "Coevolution", and is simply beautiful:

The Beauty of Deceit

Also, be sure to check out the book The Botany of Desire, by Michael Polan. It is an amazing book examining the interactions between people and plants, and how each species adjusts to make itself more enticing to the other. The chapter on apples is most amazing. Did you know that apple seeds do not grow up to be the same kind of tree as the apple originally came from? I forget what it is called, but if you take a bunch of seeds from a single apple, and plant them, you will get many different kinds of plants, from bushes to trees. Everywhere that you see an apple tree in an orchard has come from one single ancestor tree, grafted onto a growing apple tree. Strangely beautiful, wouldn't you say?

Busy busy weekend

I wrapped up a busy weekend by watching the news of Katrina (of course), sitting in bed with the whole family, discussing weather, eyes, wind, floods and the like with Adrienne and Rhiannon. They were both fascinated, and really enjoyed the weather radar pictures. Rhiannon especially had some great questions, about past hurricanes, what is the difference between a tornado and a hurricane, how high will the water be, there must be quite a traffic jam, etc. While we don't generally watch the news with them (it is usually just too depressing), we figured that Nature is okay:

Katrina makes landfall, moves north - Hurricane Katrina - MSNBC.com

Otherwise, I was face deep in paint - I am repainting the upstairs hallway and spent virtually every daylight hour doing just that. It is important to paint in the day, as artificial light tends to cast harsh shadows that make it very hard to see what you are doing. By Sunday evening, I was feeling woozy and light-headed, I think because of all the fumes, although they didn't seem to be too bad. But it is coming out pretty good, and I should have some good before and after pictures.

I also got to watch some movies for the first time in a while. I picked up a new remote (a friend said that it must be a guy thing to want a $60 remote:-) from Woot, a Universal Remote Control Inc. Home Theater Master MX-500. While Woot deals are often not quite the amazing bargains they first seem to be (for instance, the MX-500 had an original list price of US$190, but can now be bought new for about US$80, and I paid US$60 for one), this seemed like a good deal, and I've wanted a more powerful remote, so I picked it up. So I spent some time programming it, and to test it out, I popped in my rental of The Station Agent, just as a test mind you. But it was so enthralling I watched the whole thing, even though it meant I was up until 2:30 in the morning! By the way, kids don't care how late you were up - they still wake up at 6:30am and insist on you joining them in their early morning revelry:)

You can view my movie watching log on my home theater review site, Incredible Brightness of Seeing. I usually try to post more complete reviews, but unfortunately have let it slide for awhile. I do try to keep track of everything I watch in the Log entries, anyway. I hope to do a ful review of The Station Agent though. I will also add a review of the MX-500.

Skating on the thin edge of life

I'm freshly back from my second morning of hockey, and it was a bad morning at that. Well, any morning playing hockey is better than most, but when you are a goalie, as I am, and you get beaten like a rented mule, like I did, it gets a little frustrating. It's just pickup hockey, and it's with a great group who's roots go back for 30 years or more. Luckily, we just go back on the ice next Tuesday morning and start over.

By the way, have I mentioned just how bright my girls are (hey, if I can't brag on my own blog, where can I?-)? The other evening at dinner, Rhiannon, the oldest (just turned 6), wanted to know what the word "chicanery" meant! I almost spit out my burger! Turns out, the characters on their favorite kids show, Cyberchase, were worried about "Hacker's chicanery" - and who says watching TV is bad? Anyway, we've all been practicing using the word. Very funny to see Adrienne (almost 5) talking about "falling for my chicanery" - I think the kindergarten teachers might be pretty impressed:-)

Speaking of an impressive Adrienne, in order to keep up with her big sister, she works very hard at doing the same stuff. So she's reading the simple books and doing very well at it. Last night, we were reading Dora's Picnic, a book written like a rebus, but with plenty of words. In one case, she was reading about "The bread is filled with blueberries and nuts" and instead started to read "full of blueberries". When she backtracked and reread it correctly, she explained that if there was only one kind, it would be "full" and with two things, it was "filled with" - too funny!

I hope the new blog works out. I upgraded my server to use the brand spankin' new MovableType 3.2. And I was glad to see that the free version has really been expanded. Now you can have as many blogs as you want, but only one author. Before you were limitted to just 3 blogs. And the price for the full, Personal version has dropped to US$39, which lets you have up to 5 authors and tech support.

Moved again

Okay, I moved again. This time, it is to my own machine, hosted by my very own self. I will be pointing out the other blogs that I either run or help out at. Many of them are hosted here on my colocated machine, which runs FreeBSD 4.x on a 1.4ghz AMD. You can see more system info here:

Amazing Dev System Info

By the way, a big shout out goes to MV.com, my friend Mark's ISP in Manchester NH. They not only maintain my hostnames, but graciously allowed me to colo my machine there. Thanks again!