Waterway

Here's the waterway they used to feed the waterwheel that powered the bellows at Hopewell Furnace. Pretty cool thing. And don't readers One and Two look nice?

Busy day today. I'm trying to coordinate the signoff of one of my launch vehicle Interface Control Documents (along with about a ton and a half of other things) and I spent most of the day twisting arms on the phone, via email, and in person. I'm making progress, though. Strange as it may seem, I'm exhausted from the mental effort. I don't want to think tonight. (Yeah, I know, why should tonight be different from any other night? Har har har.) Well, at least I'm home for almost all of the month of February. Gotta take my happiness where it presents itself.

Reader Number One and I visited the Beerys tonight. We're ashamed because it's the last day of the month, and we've promised ourselves to visit our Home Teaching families by the tenth. Our only excuse was that I was gone so much of the month and they were busy too. They're a really nice family. Glad to know them.

Time for a bowl of ice cream, my new (old, actually, but I've never read it) Dave Barry book, and bed. A word about the Dave Barry book, though: it's not nearly as good as his later work, which makes sense. It feels like he's trying harder for laughs, and it also feels like he has a serious lack of good judgment. Still, I like Mr. Barry's work in spite of what a dope he was as a younger man. Of course, he's probably still a dope - he just learned not to show it in his work. That'll have to do.

The blog is back

No posts for several days! Sorry about that, dear readers. As mentioned previously, I was in Denver for a couple of days, Cocoa Beach for a couple of days, and on a Scout campout for a couple of days. How the time flies. It turns out there was plenty of high-speed internet service in Florida, but there was too little time. It's always something.

Here's a picture of Reader Number Two (he has very reflective eyes!) relaxing on one of the comfortable cots in the leader's cabin at Camp Kirby, where Troop 262 spent the night on Friday before tackling the Klondike Derby on Saturday. Only it wasn't too Klondikey, with temperatures in the 50's on Saturday. Still, we did our best and had fun. Sadly, our numeric results were lower than last year's, but you can't win them all. We'll get 'em next year. Maybe. Number Two looks a little nervous here because the two big guys on the upper bunk looked like they might be coming through at any moment.

Florida's weather was nice. I stayed at the Cape Winds, which is right on the ocean. I like having an apartment there rather than just a hotel room for a long trip, so I'm willing to do without the Marriott points that would otherwise build up pretty fast during a launch campaign. I'm looking forward to my next campaign being here in the United States rather than some remote location. I don't have to be away from home for as long as usual, and it will be almost like normal life! Restaurants! Stores! People! Streets! Ocean! Comfort! Not too shabby.

Time for bed. Bye.

Ruins

Ruins. An old coal-fired iron-making furnace that never worked out financially.

No blogging the last couple of days. I was in Denver and couldn't get the free internet service in the hotel to work the first day and got home from dinner WAY too late the second. Not much tonight either.

I'm off to Cocoa Beach tomorrow, and I frankly don't have very high hopes for blogging from there either. I don't think my dialup account works anymore. Well, we'll see.

There's ice cream downstairs. Later.

Good and bad news

I have good news and I have bad news.

First the good news: I'm back. It was a busy week in Luxembourg, but the meeting went well, after a pretty slow start. We shortened it from three days to two and accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished. The weather was cool, with rain one day and pretty heavy fog in the mornings. The travel was as comfortable as it could have been - I traveled in first class in both directions - so I can't complain. Okay, yes I can. It takes too long to get there.

I don't work at hard at these meetings as I did when I was with ILS. That's a really good thing. I can get to the hotel from dinner at 10:00 or 11:00 and read a little bit and then turn in, as opposed to working until 2:00 every night just to keep up. We don't bring our computers overseas as a general rule, so I can't even work on emails. I check my phone messages and return calls as needed, and then an hour or two in the evening is free. On the other hand, I don't get that elation when the meeting is finally over like I used to. It's still a good trade, though.

Now the bad news. I forgot my camera! I was hoping to take a few pictures to post here. Not to worry too much, though - I'll be back there in a few weeks. This year's travel schedule is looking to be pretty heavy, and not just for me. We have four people in our group, and it doesn't look like we'll all be in the office at the same time all year long. The good thing is that we have seven launches scheduled this year, so we'll be making the company a boatload of money.

Anyway, in lieu of Germany/Luxembourg pictures, here's Reader Number One, with a glimpse of Number Four in the mirror. As with many photos featured here, it was taken during one of last summer's camping trips. Specifically, at the Hopewell Furnace.

I started reading The Gardener's Handbook, by Dr. Stefan Buczacki. At least he was the "consultant editor." It was really written by Tessa Paul and Nigel Chadwick. As you might guess from the names, it's from England. They write a lot of good gardening books there. Anyway, I guess Dr. Buczacki is world-famous in England as a radio and TV gardening expert. I'm only on page 20, but it's starting out fairly well as a clear, concise how-to book for beginning gardeners, which is what I expect to be pretty much permanently. The book and the spring-like warm weather we're having are making me anxious to see our garden start growing again, and for the fish in the pond to wake up. We're still two or three months away from that point, but I'm just about ready for it.

Another book I really enjoyed during this trip was Engineering in the Ancient World, by J. G. Landels. It's a well-researched overview of engineering accomplishments (and a few shortcomings) in ancient Rome and Greece. It covers power generation, water supplies and pumps, cranes, catapults, and sea and land transport, along with a few words on general technological development. There are many hand-drawn illustrations that, along with the clearly written text, give the reader a clear look at the state of the art a couple thousand years ago. In many ways, their work was quite advanced and they were able to accomplish amazing things. Sadly, their knowledge and skills were not passed on to subsequent European civilizations and things got much worse before they finally got better in the last 150 years or so.

Went to Costco for dinner tonight - hot dogs, french fries, sodas, and samples. It was great!

Enough for now. See you from Denver on Monday.

Valley view

Here's Reader Number Two having a look at a beautiful valley here in Pennsylvania. I really enjoyed that view.

Happy birthday, Gary!

As mentioned yesterday, no blogging next week. Check back in on Monday the 23rd.

Three of the four readers appear together

Congratulations to Reader Number Four for finally joining the fold of The Only True Blog in the World! That's her on the right, along with Readers One and Two and our non-reader friend. Number Three is outta luck.

I'm going to Luxembourg next week and not bringing a computer, so there will be no blogging. Whatever will my loyal readers do? Will they notice? Doubtful.

I only have two or three more weeks' worth of blog pictures waiting in the queue. That can only mean one (or both) of two things: either I need to choose some more pictures from my vast archive (a distinct possibility) or I need to take some more. Since I'll be in Europe next week, maybe I'll be able to find something to take pictures of. Maybe that can be next week's contribution to the blog. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Speaking of blog pictures and limits, I need to have a look at how full my website server account is getting. I have pretty definite limits, and I may be getting close soon. What then? The way I see it, this means one (or both) of two things: either I need to take some pictures out of the archives (horrors!) or I need to pay more more server space (more horrors!) or I need to find a free place to host pictures. Okay, that was three things, but my intentions were good and that should count for something, no? No? Anybody out there?

Another wintertime shot

Here's another in my famous fireplace series. You can almost feel the heat, huh? There's an interesting phenomenon going on with my digital camera in low-light situations - I get a lot of bad pixels. There's always a big green one right in the middle of everything, and then several other blue and purple ones, depending on how dark the picture is. It's nothing The Gimp can't clean up, though. I blow the picture up to 200%, use the eyedropper near the bad spot, and then use the fuzzy airbrush to touch up.

I absolutely HAVE to go to bed earlier tonight. So, bye.

Non-readers in the rocks

Here are a couple of non-readers in the rocks. We like them anyway.

The first Intel-powered Macs were announced at the Macworld Expo tonight. Joy reigns in Macland! I gotta get me one of them.

Monroe

We went to James Monroe's house, Ash Lawn-Highland, over the Christmas holidays. It's in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is very close to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house, and Montpelier, James Madison's house. Monroe, Madison, and Jefferson were not only neighbors, they were good friends. Monroe seems to have gotten the worst of it among the three, as he never really had much money, and his house wasn't all that great. Still, he was the president, so they have the place open to the public.

My favorite part of the tour was when we visited the part of the house Madison himself built. The floor was so crooked you could hardly stand up straight. I guess he was a better politician than a builder. Everybody has to be good at something. He did give us the Monroe Doctrine, which basically promised Europeans we would stay out of their hair and warned them to stay out of ours. It served us well for quite a long time. He also worked out the Lousiana Purchase when he was Secretary of State. Not a bad legacy there. So, I can forgive him for having a lousy house. He gave a lot of service and didn't get much of this world's goods in return.

Still, his statue is in pretty bad shape.

Aunt Sandy and the sea lion

As promised yesterday, here's Aunt Sandy and the sea lion (or seal or dolphin or mollusk or something in the ocean or a river or somewhere). It was taken at the Detroit zoo last summer. They have an arctic exhibit with a pretty cool underwater tube you walk through.

Number One and I went to our friend Ross's sixteenth birthday party at the Extreme Sports Center (can't find a link, sadly - maybe a reader can find it for me) tonight. It was a lot of fun and the place is very cool. It has two indoor soccer fields, one of which was reserved for us to play touch football. We had fun, although I'm in quite a lot of muscle pain today. I don't do much running around these days. Maybe I should start. Maybe not.

To the bedmobile! See you on Monday.

Number three

As promised yesterday, here's a picture of reader number three on his wedding day a little more than a year ago. Delightful, no?

They went home this morning. We got a call a little bit ago to tell us they arrived safely. I'm still sad to have them gone. I'm also so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open. Spent the whole day that way. I'm going to bed in a few minutes, that's for sure.

I took a little time this evening to try to organize my scouting stuff - I've been feeling like it's spread pretty much all over the house and I can't ever find anything when I need it. Hopefully, that will improve with tonight's little bit of organization.

I've been studying C++ and generally enjoying the textbook, but I don't think I have any applications inside me waiting to come out right now. I'm also looking into how to create Dashboard widgets now. Maybe a brilliant idea along that line will come to me.

I listened to a podcast today about a service called Pandora. It's a website that creates a streaming "radio station" based on your preferences. You enter an artist or a song you like, and it picks others it thinks you will like too. It's based on a quite advanced algorithm that takes into account about 400 variables for each song. I played with it a little bit after I got home from work tonight and must say it pretty much works as advertised. The user interface is slick too. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Tomorrow's picture: Aunt Sandy and the sea lion. See you then.

Campers

Here's a group of people watching a guy giving a presentation on racing pigeons in a Pennsylvania State Park campground. It was actually an interesting presentation, and both the people and the pigeons were fascinating.

Paul and Melissa are going home tomorrow morning. Boo hoo! I'm really going to miss them. Come back soon, Number Three and spouse!!

I'm too sad to write any more tonight. Besides, it's just after 11:30 PM at this point, and I have to get up at 5:00 tomorrow morning. Off to bed.

Uprooted tree

Here's reader number one beside an uprooted tree from a camping trip this summer. The tree had grown on top of the large rock Number One is standing on and when the flood came and the winds blew it fell down. Or something like that. The root ball looks pretty cool on its side.

Took the family to the Mercer Museum again tonight - it's the third or fourth time I've been there. It was free Tuesday, so it didn't even cost us anything. Of course, now that I'm a museum member there, it's always free for me for a year. We stepped inside the Spruance Library inside the museum, and it's pretty cool. They've got a lot of really old Bucks County history. I'm planning to find some time to go research what was on our property before it was a house. I know there was a sheep farm immediately beforehand, but I wonder what came before that.

Reader number three and Melissa are leaving in just two days. Their visit has been much too short!

The window series continues

Here's another in my famous Window series. This one isn't quite as dramatic as the workshop picture so well known to my readers, but I think it gives a nice effect. Let me know your humble opinion.

Had a nice Christmas holiday. So much so, in fact, that I'm dreading going back to work tomorrow. Oh well, at least my next holiday is coming right up at the end of May. Sigh.