Blacksmith shop

Merry Christmas week! We're in the Virginia mountains this week, so there won't be the normal number of posts.

Here's a seventeenth century blacksmith's shop from Northern Ireland we visited this morning. At the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, they have farmhouses, barns, and shops from seventeenth century Germany, England, and Ireland, as well as a mid-nineteenth century farm from Virginia. The intent is to show the conditions people left behind in Europe when they came to America, and what they had to look forward to here. It was a fascinating visit. The best part was that you're welcome to look around nearly everywhere, pick things up, and generally act like you belong there. We walked up and down the stairs, rubbed our hands in front of the fireplaces, and got a real good look at the place and feel for how it really might have been.

On a sad note, we didn't find an interesting vacation home to buy yesterday. Everything was either too expensive or (much more frequently) too disgusting. No loss, though, other than a little time. We'll either look here again some other time or try somewhere else. No hurry. In the meantime, we need to fix up the travel trailer a little bit for the next few years' vacations.

By the way, today's pictures were taken today by Reader Number Two. Thanks, Mark! I have to show just one more:


I love that picture. Have a great rest of the week.

Number three is here!

Yes, I know it's a weekend, but it's Christmas Eve and I want to welcome Christmas properly. Here's the famous Christmas Kettle on the front lawn of the Mercer Museum. Now what could be more festive than that?

I have a third reader! Congratulations and welcome to Paul. You'll be the featured artwork Real Soon Now.

We went to the Da Vinci Museum in Allentown today for our Annual Christmas Adventure. Like most science museums, it was really aimed at kids younger than ours and it was kind of a small museum anyway, but there were some cool things there and we had a fun time. It just opened a couple of months ago, so the museum is in great shape and most of the exhibits work. There's a bonus for you.

Plus, we had lunch at Perkins, which is always a treat, huh? They had a Breakfast Food Special that got us into the restaurant, and then we found out it only applies on weekdays. So, the food cost a lot more than we expected, but Perkins really does breakfast food well.

Conference center

It's Joseph Smith's two hundredth birthday today. To remind us of what he started, here's the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. What a great building!

Art lovers

Here are Reader Number Two and his friend appreciating art at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown. It's so uplifting.

Cape lighthouse

I'm going to Cape Canaveral for a launch campaign in February/March/April this coming year. Plus, I have a meeting there in January in preparation for the launch. In honor of those trips, here's a picture of the Cape Canaveral lighthouse. It's on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station property, so it's not too easy to get a closeup picture like this. Although it's not too hard, since anybody can pay a few bucks for a bus tour that takes you right by it. In any case, here it is.

When dinosaurs attack

As promised yesterday, here's reader number two, looking oddly demonic. Maybe he's just crazy about legos. Or could it be that he IS a dino? You be the judge. Either way, we love him anyway.

Nothing interesting today. More tomorrow.

Our Esteemed Reader

Here's our highly-esteemed reader number one. Numero uno. El queso grande. El pelucon. Look for numero dos tomorrow. You too could be featured here. Become a loyal reader! Number Three! Operators are standing by. You have everything to lose and nothing to gain!

We went out on our traditional Christmas adventure tonight, looking at Christmas lights. Drove around a few nearby neighborhoods. Saw some really cool ones, a few funny ones, and a lot of medium ones. There's quite a spectacular one right here in our neighborhood - alternating red and green lights outlining the entire house and every window in it, plus lots of other stuff out on the lawn. Cool in a delightfully tacky way. Or tacky in a delightfully cool way. Or delightful in a cool, tacky way. It's one of those, anyway.

Only four more days before Paul and Melissa get here. I can't wait! They won't be with us for nearly long enough, but any visit is better than no visit at all. Maybe I could talk Paul or Melissa into being Numero Tres. The position is still open.

We decided to go to a museum in Allentown featuring Leonardo Da Vinci for our annual Christmas Eve adventure. It's kind of a long drive, but we're hoping for good things there. We've pretty much given up on going to outdoor museums in the middle of winter. I don't know why. None of us has ever actually frozen to death. Sure, maybe we've come close a time or two, but freezing to death is not like hand grenades and horseshoes. Although I don't think I'd discuss it with the Willie and Martin handcart people. Anyway, we're afraid Paul and Melissa's blood has thinned out sufficiently in Arizona that they might like to stay indoors.

Just heard "The Boys are Back," by Thin Lizzie. It's always been a favorite, for inexplicable reasons. I just like it:

The nights are getting warmer,
It won't be long.
Won't be long 'til summer comes,
Now that the boys are here again.

Check back with me on that in April. Hasta manana.

Indian Chief

I took this picture at the Mercer Museum on Tuesday evening, while the barbershop chorus was singing Christmas songs. It was wonderful, and the Mercer is one of the coolest little museums I have ever seen. It's a fascinating concrete building that looks like a castle, and it's packed full of everyday tools from early America. It's right in downtown Doylestown, across the street from the Michener Museum (not my favorite, but worth a visit on a free day) and around the corner from both the public library (worst service in America - I'll have to write a few words about it one day soon) and the Scout shop (small but nice, and very friendly people). I highly recommend a visit to the Mercer Museum.

Got back from Denver late last night; I pulled into the driveway shortly before 2:00 in the morning. It was raining hard. Fortunately, it warmed up a bunch during the day and was in the upper 40's by the time I hit the road. There was lots of flooding, but no ice, for which I was grateful. I passed an SUV on its side on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, with stuff strewn all over the road. I hope the people inside it were buckled up and thus not strewn all over the road. It looked pretty bad, although certainly survivable for seat-buckled occupants.

The trip to Denver was pretty good, by the way. My meeting was over in half a day with very good results and I went to the temple on Wednesday evening and saw several people there I know. The weather was sunny and cold - kind of like it was in Gardenville. My hotel room was comfortable, the sushi was good, and the flights were comfortable. I got first-class upgrades in both directions, so I can't complain. Except about the airline food. Yuck. First class doesn't mean what it used to, I guess.

Apologies to my reader for missing a couple of days. I was busy.

Busy weekend ahead, too. See you Monday.

Endangered species

I really need to take some pictures of wintertime things. All these warm-weather pictures are getting depressing! I guess it's better to get them out of the way now, though, rather than waiting until February when I'm really sick of cold weather. Right now, it's still kind of charming to have a foot of snow on the ground. I promise, though: some cold pictures are coming. Anyway, I really like all the covered bridges around here.

As I was walking out to my car after work yesterday right around twilight, I saw and heard a few large groups of Canada geese flying by. They're certainly beautiful birds, although quite a problem. I had always believed they were on the endangered species list for a long time, so I Googled them this afternoon. Come to find out, at least one subspecies was indeed considered endangered, but not anymore. They've been successfully restored. Apparently, the one that was endangered was native to the Aleutian islands. Many years ago, foxes were introduced onto their islands, and they took care of pretty much all the geese.

They're certainly back with a vengeance, though. They overrun golf courses, farms, ponds, and pretty much every other piece of open ground. They leave huge amounts of excrement on the grass and foul the water. They get aggressive when they're nesting. They just generally make a nuisance of themselves.

I think it's time to expand the Canada goose hunting season. What does my reader think?

Sled Dogs

Here's a quick picture from our family reunion vacation last summer.

I'm looking forward to hearing from my reader again.

Nothing more tonight. It's late and I'm tired. See you tomorrow.

The End of Summer

Here's the last in my "Essence of Summertime" series. This one is a little more standard than the others. Like the campfire picture, it was taken at Worlds End State Park on a beautiful, warm summer day. We were on top of the mountain about to see a pigeon racing demonstration and I thought the view of the valley was pretty. Turns out I was right.

We went out and did some Christmas shopping this evening. The crowds were certainly manageable where we were, if not nonexistant. Not a problem as far as I'm concerned. The weather is wintry, there's a thick layer of snow on the ground, the roads are mostly clear, and everything is right with the world. Merry Christmas.

How's my reader doing today?

Canal boat

The Essence of Summertime, part 3. This one's from New Hope, Pennsylvania. I don't remember whether my brother-in-law Scott or I took this one. Not that it matters much, though - I would like to have taken it in any case. Besides, he has a better camera than I do and a very good eye.

I think I'm starting to understand my own summertime theme here: warm, easy, lazy days. Of course, the guy driving the mules is far from lazing around, but neither is he Struggling Against the Elements. And at least he's not running or pulling the boat himself. And we watchers were definitely taking it easy. Anyway, it's a picturesque scene and I like it.

As promised yesterday: Adventures with Microsoft!

I needed to do some work on a project to which I am not normally assigned. I'm trying to help a couple of guys out a little. So we, being a security-conscious company, have locked down all our internal servers on a by-folder level, so that you need to be granted access to each individual folder you need on the server (they can, and do, let you into a given folder and all its subfolders, but it's still locked pretty tight). I went through all the proper channels to get into this project's folder, and I can now navigate through the folder structure and see all the files, but I can only open a few random files. The rest of them say I don't have permission. I went through a few hours of having an Admin change a setting followed by me rebooting my computer. Over and over again. Nothing worked. I got on the phone with a server monkey, who basically tried the same thing again. Surprisingly, it didn't work either. So he opened a trouble ticket with an advanced server monkey. I haven't heard from that guy yet. So I've spent about 4 or 5 hours working on this project and have produced nothing because Microsoft's highly-advanced server software won't let me in.

In all fairness to Microsoft, we're probably overstressing the system with our level of access control coupled with the number of people using the system. Still, it ought to work. Maybe we should consider biting the bullet and changing everybody over to Linux.

Which is what I'm pretty close to doing at home for all of our PCs. Yes, I know we have a lot of software that will only run on a PC - mostly games. However, Microsoft is in the middle of phasing out support for Windows 2000, and I'm not going to buy an upgrade, so they're pretty much forcing my hand. I can't run Windows without regular Microsoft security updates, and I won't give them more money.

Linux will be fine. What do we really do on Windows anyway? We use Microsoft Money to maintain our checkbook - and we only use that because it came with something else and we finally gave up on Quicken in disgust because it had become bloatware full of "features" we didn't want or need and its basic functions no longer worked. Unfortunately, Money is pretty much in the same boat. There's an excellent checkbook manager in Linux that will do the job just fine.

We also use Microsoft Word. OpenOffice.org works pretty well, once you get over its short learning curve - although I have to admit I recently bought Microsoft Office for the Mac because the OpenOffice implementations for that machine are inadequate and because my company has a deal where I could get Office for twenty bucks.

We also use Windows for web browsing. Linux's browsers are excellent; the only worry is when websites require Internet Explorer. My general answer to that one is that I just don't look at those websites. However, a site comes along once in a while that I need to access - such as a banking site, for example. In that case, I've heard that there are IE emulators or plugins that might give me the functionality I need. I'll have to do some experimentation on that one.

Printer sharing is the other big one. I've gotten it working for certain printers in Linux before, but I don't think Shannon's HP all-in-one printer has drivers out there for Linux. I don't really know how to get around that one. However, new drivers come out all the time, so I'll just have to watch for something that works. Maybe everything will come together to make Linux work before everything falls apart and makes Windows unusable.

Well, that was certainly long-winded. Take a deep breath. Let it go. Ommmm.

Okay, I'm fine now.

It was pretty cold out this morning - down in the lower teens. It's still only 21, according to my computer. That's winter weather, but there's still another two weeks or so before winter starts. Dang global warming. We're supposed to get a few more inches of snow tonight and tomorrow morning too.

I invite my reader to see if he can recruit somebody to read this drivel. I think we have just enough room for one more reader.

Zootrain

Here's summertime picture number two. We're on vacation in Detroit (doesn't everybody vacation in Detroit?). We just got off the Zoo train. No worries, no cares, no problems. Sigh. How refreshing. I don't know why I think this particular photo screams summertime to me. It just does. Maybe it's because of all those summertime Detroit Zoo train rides during my early years. Judging from appearances, the boys don't necessarily agree.

By the way, cool train, no? I'd like to see the full-size version, if it exists. Which it probably never did.

Today was my brother Tony's birthday. He's 40? 41? Maybe 42. Something like that. I called him at home. No answer. Called his cell phone. No answer. Happy birthday, Tony.

It's late and I have to get up early. Remind me tomorrow to mention today's wonderful Microsoft experience. For now, though, to bed.

Summertime

I was looking back at some photos from Summer 2005, and I think I boiled the essence of the summer down to four pictures. Here's the first one. We were at Worlds End State Park, the place was beautiful, the weather was warm, we had a great time, and it was a good fire that night.

Back to reality. Last night's snowstorm pretty much fizzled out on us. There was probably a little less than an inch on the driveway at Swampy Bottom this morning, versus the six or so we were expecting. There were a lot of disappointed kids around here this morning who found out school wasn't being cancelled. Fortunately for them, there's another chance this week - we're expecting another snowstorm on Thursday night/Friday morning.

I have to say, though, that it was an absolutely beautiful day. After last night's dusting on top of the weekend's few inches, the sun came out this morning and turned everything brilliant white and clean-looking. On top of that, the streets all melted. Sweet. Why do I like the snow so much before Christmas but only tolerate it afterwards?

I have a great idea for this website - I want to write a Java script that will list all my readers' first names in the rightmost column of the page. My user (or each user, eventually) would have his or her name in the column for a week or a month or a day or some reasonable amount of time. It might make it look like somebody actually reads the page! I wonder how hard it would be to create.

Summertime pictures two through four tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday.

Retrobits

Oops. No posts for a few days. Sorry about that, Reader. I found an interesting website tonight - the Retrobits Podcast. It's on the iTunes music store, so I subscribed. There are already 23 shows up, so it's apparently not just a flash in the pan. I'll post my impressions soon. I've been disappointed by so many great-sounding podcasts that failed to fulfill their promise that I'm reluctant to recommend this one until I listen to a couple of shows myself. So stay tuned, reader.

Added a couple of new pictures to the random display on the gardenvillesoftware.com website. One's of some purple flowers (which almost never comes up - I can't figure out why) in Michigan this past summer and the other is a yellow fungus from a state park. Does that one count as a flower? I would appreciate it if my reader would try reloading the gardenvillesoftware.com website a few times to see if the purple flower one comes up. Here's what it looks like:



By the way, we're still looking for Reader number three! Where are you?

Workshop

Here's another picture I took at Hopewell Furnace during a family camping trip this summer. I like this one so much it's now the desktop image on my work computer. As usual, click to enlarge.

Eclipse

I've been fooling around with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) called Eclipse. It's a cross-platform environment that uses the Gnu family of compilers and debuggers. I have mine set up to recognize Java, C/C++, and Fortran. Sadly, I can't get the Fortran environment to launch the debugger, so I can write Fortran programs, but then I have to go outside of the IDE to execute them. I could fool around with it a little more and try to get it to work, but I think I'll just switch to C instead. I have lots of documentation and some experience (certain more recent experience with C than with Fortran!). I just thought it would have been cool to write some Fortran code again.

Why, you may ask, am I using Eclipse rather than Xcode, the wonderful Mac OS development environment that comes free with OS X? I dunno - I just don't feel like climbing the Mac (or Windows, for that matter) GUI learning curve just to do some programming for fun. So, it's command line for me, and that means Eclipse. Besides, Eclipse also seems to be a good platform for writing Java Widgets. That might be fun. I just need to get a good Java book and a good idea and go wild.

Anyway, stay tuned for a simple little program or two.

Number two is here

Amazingly, I now have two readers - Andy and Mark! And don't let the fact that they're both members of my immediate household lead to you believe they're reading morrowlife out of any sense of obligation. To the contrary - they know quality content when they see it.

Now searching for number three.

We will line you up against the wall and shoot you

The title above is from a book about the early days of the Soviet space program. Well, the president of the Khrunichev State Production and Research Center, Alexander Medvedev in Moscow was fired on Tuesday of this week, according to news reports, by the President of Russia, no less. I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet all of his many pictures have already been taken down from the production facility, which I've visited many times. I know somebody who is at Khrunichev in Moscow this week, and I've asked him to check out the picture situation for me. I'll report on the findings when they get here.

I hope Mr. Medvedev can console himself with the knowledge that, even if he has become a non-person in Russia, at least they're not likely to shoot him.

I have a reader!

I'd like to give a big thank you to my reader. And thanks for identifying yourself. We do it all for you!

Now that I'm off to a blazing start, I'm going all-out for reader number two. Let me know when you get here!