Campfire

Now there's the way a campfire ought to be. Nice and tall. This picture is from a few years ago, somewhere in the east. We sure loved all that green. But we sure didn't love all that humidity.

Reason for yet another old camping picture: we're finally planning a family campout. It's not until April, but it will last the better part of a week. We'd love to go towards Yosemite and the mountains east of here, but it appears that everything worth visiting is snow-covered in April and thus uncampable. Instead, we're looking into Big Sur and its surrounding area. Giant redwoods, the Pacific Ocean, and other such landscape stuff. Sounds great. We'll hit Yosemite a little later in the year.l

Nothing else tonight. I didn't have my church meeting today because it's the fifth Wednesday, and we don't meet on the fifth Wednesday, so there was no church meeting. I remembered this on my way to the meeting, of course, but I made the trip useful by gassing up. There was no time for blogging, though, because Loyal Reader Number Four wanted my opinion on campgrounds. If we're going to go, we need to make a decision and get a reservation pronto, I suspect. Even though April is definitely not prime camping season around here, we're talking about going during spring break week, so it may well be busy.

Didn't feel well this afternoon and evening. It must be something I ate. So, I'm heading for bed. See you tomorrow.

Electronic campout

Here's a shot of Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two from a campout many moons ago in Virginia. The Loyal Readers are engaging in the typical outdoorsy activity of playing games on their Palms. Good Loyal Readers. This picture was definitely taken with my original lousy digital camera. Very poor quality, yet outstanding content, I think we'll all agree.

I believe that campout was at Jellystone Park up in the Virginia mountains near Luray. It was a beautiful area. We went to see the caverns, which were okay but not on the scale of Carlsbad or Timpanogos. They were the only caverns I've ever seen with their own stalacpipe organ.

The thing I remember most about that trip, though, is that the campground wasn't far from a restaurant called Cooter's Place. It was owned and operated by Ben Jones, who played Cooter on The Dukes of Hazzard. That particular weekend there was some kind of General Lee-fest. There must have been fifty General Lees in the parking lot. Very impressive.

Short post tonight, as it's already late. I just got back from my new member discussion with my friend Danny. Danny's a relatively young guy - probably about 21 - who is very pleasant and really likes to talk. He's just beginning to get a grasp on what we believe in. We had a really nice talk.

Drove the Miata to work, as scheduled. I did a little bit (well, seventy miles) of top-down motoring on the way home. It was just a little cool. My leather jacket does a great job of keeping me warm, but my head was just slightly uncomfortable. I kept the heater vents blowing on my hands, so they were fine. I drove the old Miata top-down in much colder weather than this, so I can't complain. It's supposed to be a little cooler tomorrow, so I'll probably keep the top up. Either way, the car's turning out to be a pleasure to drive. Not as comfortable and luxurious as the Sable, certainly, but a pleasure nonetheless.

Not much else to report. I was pretty busy at work today and accomplished very few things from my list. I need to drag out of bed early for a few days and get there at 7:00 or so if I want to avoid the workload getting overwhelming. Sigh.

So, I'm off to bed. See you tomorrow.

Dinosaur

In keeping with the spirit of last Friday's post, here's another one of those strange statues from Monaco. I have more. And I'm not afraid to use them, so don't cross me.

And by the way, I just checked and discovered that yesterday's and today's pictures were actually taken by my friend Doug with his very nice Olympus camera. He just set the file sizes way too small. Sorry for the confusion.

Good weekend, all things considered. I got a few things done, strangely. Saturday, I tore the Sable's brakes back apart and put anti-squeak goo and high-temperature lubricant on, as discussed previously. They still squeak, but not nearly as badly. I have no idea what else to do other than buy different brake pads. These were Napa's best, though, so anything else would be a step backwards, at least in theory. Sigh.

I also - dum, dum, de dum! - got the HRVA website up. Have a look! Register if so inclined. Sadly, formerly registered members will once again have to re-register. I really think this will be the last time, though. And tell me what you think about it, especially design-wise. There are all kinds of things I can do, and it's quite plain now, so ideas are most welcome.

Made a little more progress on the Gardenville website too. It's fully operational. Now it's time to start adding content. It's getting a little hard to maintain all these websites, and I haven't even started on Spinfo. I don't even know what its topic will be. Any ideas?

Early Sunday morning, I attended my first Stake mission correlation meeting. Actually, it was the first one to which they've invited the Ward Mission Leaders. It was a pretty useful meeting and helped me focus on a few administrative things I need to keep up with. I managed to get our Ward clerk to give me the correct permissions on the ward's computer on Sunday afternoon, so now I can do what I need to do.

Add three home teaching visits, an hour of jacuzzifying on Saturday evening while Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two had a few friends over to watch Nacho Libre, and that about covers my weekend.

Drove the Sable to work today, but the Miata's going tomorrow and probably the day after. I really like having the choice. Call me strange, but I find the Sable comfortable, powerful, quiet, and reasonably luxurious. It handles surprisingly well too. I really like driving it. As a contrast, there's the noisy, windy, great-handling, relatively primitive, cool, fun Miata. Life's good right now.

And I need to go to bed now. Thanks for reading and I'll see you tomorrow.

Silver guy

Here's some Great Art I saw in Monte Carlo a few years back. They were having a Weird Outdoor Sculpture competition, apparently. The substandard photo quality is due to the use of my very first digital camera, which was unmitigated junk. But it was cheap. So that's something. Look for other Weird Sculptures in future posts

Drove the Miata to work today. It was warm enough on the way home to put the top down, but that had to wait until I was coming into Tracy. It was raining in Sunnyvale. Curses! Found a few little things that need attention, but that's to be expected.

We went to Loyal Reader Number One's piano recital in a nice performance theater at Modesto Junior College this evening. It was really nice! There were about twenty-five students, each of whom played one piece. The unique thing was that they were all quite advanced students and each of the pieces was beautiful. It was basically a very pleasant concert. The individual performers weren't announced, so there was very little non-music time and zero blathering piano teacher time. All in all, a very nice evening. Loyal Reader Number Four likened it to a minor-league ball game. Apt simile.

By the way, the MJC campus was kind of nice. The buildings all seemed old but in good repair, which is the way I like 'em. Except for houses. Unless it's a mansion, give me a brand new house every time.

Big Saturday plans. Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two are going to the Merit Badge Midway in Tracy and LRN4 is going to a Relief Society luncheon. I'm staying home and reworking the Sable's brakes. And then I might do a little bit of something on the Miata - perhaps replace the cruise control switch, or maybe replace the driver's door lock on the Suburban. So many options.

Better head to bed. Watch for updates to Gardenville and maybe even some action on the HRVA this weekend! See you on Monday.

It's here!

In honor of today's Blessed Arrival of the old vintage Miata, here's the view from all the other cars on the road. Now that's Great Art. The car's just crude enough to feel like an old British roadster, but nice enough to be reliable and pretty cool. There are a few things that need fixing, of course, seeing as how it's fifteen years old, but it's in remarkably good condition. And did I mention it's beautiful?

And that's about all the news this evening. I worked on the Gardenville website a little bit this afternoon and evening. Got Loyal Reader Number One's Arduino article playing the movie we made and he made some other updates and corrections. I also noticed that Loyal Reader Number Seven had registered, so I approved the registration and you're good to go, LRN7! Strangely, the system never notified me you had registered, or I would have approved it right away (of course). I'll have to figure out why I didn't get the email. Probably some setting that's not quite right. Or maybe something else.

The other thing I can't seem to figure out how to make it do is let me use multiple fonts in a single article - LRN1 wants his code snippets to show up in a non-proportional font, as is the standard in programming textbooks. I'm trying to do it in what we like to call The Right Way, using styles defined in Cascading Style Sheets. I can define the style I want just fine, but I can't figure out how to tell Drupal to change styles in the middle of an article. My fallback position is to go to the HTML tag, but that's deprecated, don't you know. How gauche.

Anyway. Time for bed. See you tomorrow with a report on the first drive to Sunnyvale.

Timur

Here's Timur, one of our secretaries at Baikonur. The interesting thing about this guy is that he was a Russian medical doctor, but he made more money working as a secretary for us. Sadly for us but happily for him, he eventually got a visa to move to Germany and work as a doctor there. He's in the money! Photo courtesy of somebody at Baikonur - maybe my pal Doug.

Wonders of Blogger today. There just wasn't time to write last night. So I'll keep it short.

I'm planning to pick up the Miata on Thursday evening. Yea! It'll go to work on Friday.

Meetings went well on Wednesday evening. I've been trying for a few weeks to figure out how to update and print the New Member Report for the bishop. Finally got it figured out. Now I just have to go actually do the update. Maybe Sunday morning.

Which reminds me. I have to start attending a Stake meeting on the fourth Sunday at 7:30 in the morning. That will make it just a little bit tricky to get to church on time. Don't worry. I'll get by . . . somehow.

Note to Loyal Reader Number Five: I need more baby pictures! Send them! Thank you.

And now I'll quit. See you on Thursday.

Ho La La

While we're on the subject of Cannes restaurants, here's my favorite one. Ho La La! They served Central American food. Yum.

Happy birthday to Loyal Reader Number Five! If my calculations are correct, she's somewhere in her mid-twenties by now. Many happy returns, and we're sorry you're not here to celebrate with us.

Non-exciting day today. I still haven't heard from the Miata Lady, so I emailed her this evening. Saturday, hopefully. I want that car. No, wait: I need that car. No. But I do want it. Now.

Felt much better today and went to work. Several of my colleagues have also been out sick, including one who went home at about noon. Something's certainly making the rounds.

I've been working on salary adjustments for my direct reports. We're going to be able to do pretty well by everybody, I think, and very well by a few. It's tough to decide who gets what, so the company has thoughtfully provided an automatic raise calculator for everyone based on current salary, percent of "market" that represents, performance rating, raise money available, and probably the price of tea in China. We can adjust the automatic level up or down a little bit, but not by much. That probably keeps us from getting sued too much, and it certainly makes it easy to decide how much everybody's going to get, but it does cramp one's style just a little bit.

By the way, just to follow up on an recently-reported story, Loyal Reader Number One successfully disassembled his computer, inserted the apparently-loose-but-highly-necessary magnet, and got it back together again on Saturday. Hooray for LRN1.

It's late already! I'm for bed. See you tomorrow.

Le Scoubidou

Here's my favorite snack stand in Cannes. Le Scoubidou. No more need be said.

Rough day today. I had a splitting headache yesterday evening - quite unusual for me. It kept me tossing and turning in bed for probably two to three minutes, which is also unusual for me. I felt pretty reasonable when I got up this morning, so I got in the car and went to work as usual. After I'd been there for about half an hour, I suddenly felt terrible. Not much was going on today, so I opted to come home and rest for the remainder of the day. Hopefully, I'll feel better by tomorrow, since it's a very busy work day this week.

The weekend was fairly good, other than the headache. I finally got the brakes on the Sable changed on Saturday morning. It was a very easy job, which is good because, while they're working perfectly, they're squeaking to beat the band, so I need to take them back apart again next Saturday and apply anti-squeak goo. Sigh.

In tragic but also very good news, Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve have gone home for good. They decided on Friday evening that they really needed to be home and they left mid-day on Saturday. It's absolutely the right thing for their family, but we'll really miss having the baby here. We need to make sure we get together on a very regular basis from now on. It's a half-day drive each way, so perfectly doable on a long weekend.

Loyal Reader Number Three has been talking for a little while about quitting his job in Arizona and finishing college full-time. I think it's a very good idea if they can swing it financially, which he thinks they can do. In the meantime, I heard this weekend that he may be quitting his current job and going to Big Bear to work for Loyal Reader Number Six on his house. Personally, I would rather work in a nice comfortable office doing stuff I don't particularly enjoy and going home every night than be standing out in the weather pounding nails and living in a remote location, but there are many people who feel just the opposite, possibly including LRN3. We'll see how it works out. We're kind of waiting to hear what he ended up doing, but there's no word so far.

I worked some more on the Gardenville Software website yesterday. It's now a Drupal site, on the correct server, and looking much better than before. There's still lots of work to be done, not to mention lots of content to generate, but it's finally making some progress. Now I need to get back to work on the HRVA. Not to mention Spinfo, which as of today is just on a GoDaddy parking page. I'm thinking of at least making it point to this site, but I'm open for suggestions.

Not much else memorable in the last few days. Loyal Reader Number One and I did a little home teaching yesterday afternoon and we otherwise spent the Sabbath quietly at home. I'm planning to spend the remainder of Monday quietly at home as well. See you tomorrow.

iPhone

Here's a picture of the new iPhone from Macworld the other day. The back side of it, anyway. Very artistic, says I. Dopey, says you? What do you know?

Disaster! The Miata's not ready yet. Sometime next week, they say. What is left for me to believe in now? Still, I suppose I would rather have it be right than quick. But I want it now.

It's the weekend! Time to stay home and work on the Sable. And not drive the Miata. Dang. And do a bunch of other things too.

Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve are heading for Big Bear tomorrow for LRN5's birthday celebration. They'll be gone until Wednesday. It'll seem kind of quiet around here without them. LRN12's other grandparents need to see her every once in a while, though.

The DVD for Aunt Misty appears to have worked out just fine. At least it plays on my DVD players. We'll have to see if it works on hers. She's certainly the star of that show.

The boys went on a temple trip today. They're still not home yet, so it's impossible to tell whether they enjoyed it or not. I'm betting on yes.

And it's time to quit. A new episode of Monk is on. See you on Monday.

Repair shop

Here's Loyal Reader Number One up to his elbows in his iBook, getting ready to install his new hard drive. All those guts look pretty gory to me. Oh well; no guts, no gory.

And no, Loyal Readers, that wasn't a typo. I was trying to be funny. Sheesh.

And please disregard my statement of a few days ago that I bought a new Toshiba hard drive. Photographic evidence proves it's a Fujitsu.

No post yesterday, and I didn't even find the time to use the Wonders of Blogger. I didn't attend my church meeting, though. My brother-in-law Ken called in the afternoon and told us he was in town. He came over for dinner and we spent a few hours chatting while LRN1 worked on setting up Ken's new Smart Phone. It's a really nice phone, but it was pretty hard to set up and begs the question asked at Macworld Expo - if these phones are so smart, why is it so hard to make a phone call with them?

It's finally starting to warm back up here in Lardville. The cold snap's not quite over, but it's actually predicted to be in the mid-sixties on Saturday. That's a huge improvement, and quite possibly just in time to bring the Miata home. Wouldn't it be nice if it was good top-down motoring weather? I thought you'd agree. Especially my Loyal Readers in Cold Country.

I'm working on making a DVD for Loyal Reader Number Six's Aunt Misty tonight. I ripped one of LRN6's DVDs of Airwolf for him and extracted the episode featuring Aunt Misty. I wasn't quite sure how to get that one episode on the DVD he wants to give her, but I finally just decided to try importing it into iMovie. It seems to be working - it's been crunching for about 45 minutes so far with 15 minutes left to go, so I can't guarantee anything, of course, but I fully expect my trusty Mac to reward me with unmitigated success. As usual.

Tomorrow's a work Friday, alas. I managed to finish my Top Secret clearance application today. I put it off for about a month and a half because it was such an unpleasant job the last time I did one. Imagine my pleased surprise when I discovered that the online system remembered all my answers from my last application. All I had to do was make a few minor updates and it was good to go. Now I'm sorry I procrastinated it for so long. Only about a year to wait now and I'll be eligible for a few additional programs.

Saturday is Miata day, as mentioned before, and it's also Sable brake job day. It needs it pretty badly - metal scraping sounds are so disturbing on the freeway - and I've decided to do it myself, for better or worse. It really shouldn't be too hard, assuming the rotors will come off with any degree of ease. Fortunately, I can afford to leave the car in the garage for a few days if things go Horribly Wrong. Which probably won't happen.

Anyway. Time for dessert and bed. See you tomorrow.

Inside view

Here's what the driver sees just before he gets into my new/old car. Check out those highly-optional chrome sill plates. Wow. That's a thing of beauty. Truly Great Art.

It's a sad day for Loyal Reader Number One. His beautiful hard disk installation job has to be undone - sort of. You see, there was this unidentified magnet just sitting in the case near the optical drive. It dropped out when he was in the middle of the teardown, and since the wonderfully clear instructions didn't say anything about a magnet in that particular location, we decided to leave it out when he put it back together. Bad idea. It turns out that the magnet lets the computer know the top is closed so it can go to sleep. No magnet, no sleep. He's going to take it apart again Real Soon Now. You're always taking a risk when you take on a project like that, but there's every reason to believe it will go very well again.

On a positive note, the new hard disk definitely cured the problem, so hooray for that.

I got a note from the Miata lady today. She's hard at work on getting the car ready for me; she's fixing everything we agreed on and the few things I noticed on Saturday as well. Seems like a really nice woman and a True Enthusiast to boot. I'm excited to get the car.

Took care of Loyal Reader Number Twelve for a few minutes this evening. The boys went to Battle Axe lessons a little after 7:00 and Loyal Reader Number Four got home about half an hour later. In the meantime, I was on my own. I'm surprised they trusted me, but I guess you'll do just about any crazy thing when you get desperate enough.

It's not quite 9:00 yet, but I think I'll quit and actually have a life this evening in the short remaining time before bed. See you tomorrow.

Modded Minis

Here's a beautiful pile of Mac Minis from the Macworld Expo the other day. What a thing of beauty. Great Art? You be the judge.

Boy, the Loyal Readers are getting restless! Two typo corrections in one day. And by my dear old friend Anonymous to boot. I appreciate my Loyal Readers' ongoing quest for perfection. After all, that's why they're Loyal Readers. Of course.

Fine weekend. Dropped off the deposit for the Miata on Saturday afternoon. It sure looks nice. We think it will be ready to pick up next Saturday. Woo hoo!

LRN1's hard disk died on him on Friday and Saturday. It was a slow and painful death. He tried everything to get it working right, to no avail. He found an excellent website explaining how to get the hard drive out of an iBook, complete with printable sheets to organize all the tiny parts. Sunday was teardown day. Success! Nothing broke. I dropped by Fry's this evening on the way home from work and found a nice 120 GB Toshiba (tried to make a link to their website, but it freaked out my browser, so no free advertising for them!) for a very attractive price - the exact same amount as an 80 GB drive, in fact. As of this writing, he already has it installed, the machine is back together, and OS X is just finishing up installing. On top of getting the fix done, he's upgraded from 30 to 120 Gigs, so it's all good. We're still keeping our fingers crossed, just in case there's something else wrong, but we're pretty sure we pinpointed the problem. After he took the old one out, we hooked it up to my Mini to check it out. It worked for a few minutes and then crashed the Mini exactly like it had done to the iBook. QED.

While I was at Fry's, I finally bought an enclosure for my DVD-RW, allowing me to permanently hook it up to my Mac. Sadly, while it works great in USB mode, it doesn't work at all in FireWire mode. Since I sort of want to get what I paid for, I'm planning to exchange it later this week. Dang. It sure works great when it works, though.

Not much else to report. Loyal Reader Number Six came up this weekend. He and Loyal Reader Number Five went to a Napa Valley bed and breakfast for his birthday weekend. Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve are going down to Big Bear next weekend (I think that's when, anyway) for LRN5's birthday weekend. Lots of travel for those three. I'm staying put.

And that's it for a cold, sunny Monday on Lardville. See you tomorrow and thanks for the typo reports.

Macworld

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two at Macworld Expo in San Francisco this morning. We had a great time! We saw lots of neat Mac and iPod stuff and just enjoyed the atmosphere.

We saw perhaps the ultimate iPod accessory:


That's definitely for the person who already has everything else. We heard it play, so we can at least confirm that part works. Somebody else will have to confirm its other functions.

The trip was made possible by this being my day off from work. I hope things went well for those guys at the office.

In the afternoon, Loyal Reader Number Four and I went to Riverbank and looked at another Miata. It looks just like this one, except that it's not brand new. Otherwise, identical - color, accessories, and trim. Anyway, I bought it. Or at least promised to buy it. The woman who owns it (and many other Miatas for sale, by the way - she runs a Miata business out of her house) still has a little bit of work to do on it, so it won't be available for another three or four days. And of course I have to give her some money. But not too much. I'm looking forward to getting it and starting to have fun, fun, fun. As I believe I mentioned yesterday, when you spend most of your free time in your car, a car is a pretty good hobby. That and my computers. And my websites. And my reading.

Anyway, this will be my fourth convertible. I really like this one. It's a black '92 special edition with leather, cruise, power windows, BBS wheels, headrest speakers, wood shift knob and parking brake handle, power antenna, and maybe a few other optional extras I can't remember. They just put a new windshield and top on it, along with a bunch of other things. It doesn't need anything right now - or at least it won't need anything by the time I get it. Of course, it's old enough that I'm sure it will need some things soon, but that's all part of the fun.

It's late and time for bed. Have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday.

Bring it here

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve ordering one of her minions to bring her nourishment. "You there! Bottle! Now! Or prepare to suffer the consequences!" Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five, as you might have guessed.

No post yesterday. Wednesday nights are just hard these days. Fortunately, the Loyal Reader outcry has been restrained.

Not much to post today either. It's late already and I'm afraid the Loyal Readers will just have to be happy with little more than another cute baby picture. But isn't that enough?

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two and I are going to the Macworld Expo tomorrow at the Moscone center in downtown San Francisco. It's something we've often wished we could do in the past and now that we live nearby, we're going. LRN1 scored us some free tickets, so we'll just have to pay for gas, parking, and meals. We'll take some fascinating Great Art pictures and maybe even post something here if it's sufficiently interesting and Artistic.

I'm thinking of buying a hobby car, but am having a hard time making up my mind. It's a 1999 Miata, just like the one I used to have except white and with more wear and tear. It also has fog lights (one of which is broken) and a hardtop. It only has 46,000 miles, which is a big selling point. Very low for its age. The price is excellent but it's still a lot of money for a hobby. Still, pretty much the only time I have for a hobby is my driving time back and forth to work, so it's appropriate. We'll have to see.

And goodnight. See you tomorrow.

Staring

Here are Loyal Reader Number Two and Loyal Pet Number One staring at the camera. LPN1's eyes always freak me out in photographs. Devil dog. LRN2 is kind of prone to the same thing too, although not nearly as badly, of course.

Nothing else to report today. I looked at a few old sports cars online this afternoon but didn't buy any of them. A few look promising. We'll have to see. I'm kind of looking around for a fun project car - not a restoration, but a tasteful modification. Miatas seem like likely subjects, as do Rangers and Jeeps (totally different uses, but the same basic idea in my warped mind). Porsches don't seem promising at this point - too much money to buy and WAY too much money to fix/modify. There's no hurry, though. In fact, I'm not theoretically ready to buy for another year and a half, but when did I ever let a little fact like that get in the way?

Nobody was home when I got here this evening. The boys were away at Battle Axe lessons and the girls were away at Book Club. The Loyal Pets and I were it. We made the best of it.

And it's already time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Say what?

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve looking at her mom (or is that Grandma?) in unbelieving amazement over some slight, real or imagined. "Did I just hear what I think I heard?" Check out that arsenal of feeding tubes in the background. She's got nothing to complain about. But that doesn't necessarily keep her from complaining. Photo once again courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five.

Gotta Blog Like the Wind tonight. It's already almost 10:00 and we're just finishing Home Evening. I get home later than I used to, so we have dinner later than we used to, so we start Home Evening later than we used to, so we finish later than we used to. It's a vicious circle.

Loyal Reader Number One got his driver's license today! Congratulations, LRN1. Be careful out there.

Spent a good part of the weekend working on the Gardenville Software website revamp. Instead of being nothing but a links page, it now features actual software! It needs a LOT more work (doesn't even have a banner at the top of the page yet and isn't hosted on the right server yet, just for two examples), but it at least gives you an idea of where we're planning to go with it. Have a look and give me suggestions!

I ended up using TikiWiki to make the website. I'm still not sure it was the right idea, and I'm thinking of making a demo website with Drupal. If I do end up doing that, I'll put them both someplace where my Loyal Readers can find them and ask for a vote. That sure seems like a lot of work, though.

And then again, there's WordPress. Hmmm. What to do (other than bore my patient Loyal Readers)?

Okay, you've suffered enough for my art for today. See you tomorrow.

Driver

Here's Loyal Reader Number Two trying out his new RC car the other day. Both Loyal Readers Number One and Number Two got RC cars. As a matter of fact, they're outside enjoying them right now.

Speaking of driving, keep your fingers crossed on Monday for LRN1. He's taking his driving test, along with a final or two at school. Busy day. Good luck, LRN1! We need you to start running errands for us.

Wonders of Blogger again today. I can't even remember why I was too busy to blog last night, but I definitely was. It's been busy today too. We finally took all the Christmas decorations down, which took hours. I went to Home Depot and Orchard Supply to find one of those shelves you hang from the garage ceiling. Finally found one at Orchard. They cost seventy bucks! What a ripoff. They're worth twenty bucks as far as I'm concerned, so I didn't buy one. Put the decorations back where they came from and called it a day.

It was quite windy yesterday and last night. Recycling day is Friday, so everybody put their stuff out. However, we all should have realized that they weren't coming until Saturday because of the holiday on Monday. Hence, there was paper and plastic blowing all over the neighborhood by this morning.

The pool was chock full 0' junk when we got up. The pump was running but it appeared that the vacuum wasn't working. I went out to take a look and appearances were indeed correct. Turns out it had run over a newspaper, which was jamming it up. Then I noticed that the skimmer didn't appear to be doing its job either, so I checked its basket and found three plastic bags, along with numerous leaves and pieces of paper. After I got everything cleaned out, the pool did a great job cleaning itself back up.

Otherwise, we've been watching Loyal Reader Number Twelve all day while her mom works on people's taxes. And now I'm going to get to work on creating some new websites. See you tomorrow.

Burnout

Due to popular demand, here's another shot of Loyal Reader Number Twelve, looking a little tired at the end of a long Christmas day. I'm sure she's not the only one who felt that way. She's just the most expressive one. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five.

Blogger seems to be working again! I had checked their Google "Help" group, and I was far from the only one who couldn't post pictures and couldn't post blog entries. Darn Blogger.

I took Loyal Reader Number Two's online quiz this evening. I'm not sure where he got the idea, but it was twenty questions about LRN2, his life, and his likes and dislikes. I'm pleased to report that I got 70% right, giving me high score! It's the only electronic game I've won in I don't know how long.

I received What About Bob? for Christmas and finally got the chance to watch it the other day. I had been led by the advertising to believe it was going to be one of those Bill Murray movies where he overacts and ruins the show. Fortunately, I was totally wrong. It's a cute movie with several very funny moments, and Murray comes off as human. I like him when he's human, like in the not-very-well-liked-but-I-thought-it-was-okay Groundhog Day and the barely-noticed-by-anybody-but-I-really-enjoyed-it The Man Who Knew Too Little (which I believe I received last Christmas!). When he's not human, as in the absolutely repulsive Caddyshack, he's horrid.

Anyway. I recommend What About Bob?

I'm frustrated with my inability to come up with websites for the new and improved Gardenville Software (now containing actual software!) and the HRVA. I'm kind of paralyzed by not being able to figure out what I want to do on the technical end of things; chiefly which Content Management System to use. After doing a lot of research, I had decided on Drupal, which is very flexible, very powerful, and not too hard to customize. When I tried to implement it on Larry, though, I found that it doesn't seem to work on 64-bit Linux installations. It gets about 75% installed and just quits. Now I'm back to square one.

And don't even get me started on coming up with a cool design for either site. So far, I can't even come up with a lousy one. I'm hoping Loyal Reader Number Two can give me some ideas, preferrably in the form of color sketches. I want them to look nice and clean and Web 2.0-ish. Soon. Very soon.

And it's time for bed. Sorry about no post last night - those Wednesday church meetings take a lot of time.

Junk bags

Here's some Great Art from a few days ago. The boys were driving their RC cars in an under-construction lot late in the afternoon. I had a look in the garage and saw these bags full of junk. I like the colors and hope you do too.

Short post tonight, especially since I used the Wonders of Blogger yesterday (actually, this morning).

Easy rides to work and home today. I think a lot of people are still on vacation this week. No problem as far as I'm concerned except that I'm not one of them. Several of my coworkers were, though. It was like a ghost town around the office, and just about everybody I talked to said they had a real hard time getting up this morning. Me too. As usual during the break, I went to bed way too late and had to get up way to early for my taste.

That's it today. See you tomorrow.

The True Spirit of Christmas

Here's a look at the Disney version of the True Spirit of Christmas. That there's one big tree.

Happy New Year! In spite of the fact that I'm using the Wonders of Blogger today. It was a fine weekend and a great New Year's day. The Eve was on Sunday, so we didn't do much except go to church and associated things. We had a nice little family party (I was going to say get-together, but we're already together, so I guess it should be stay-together, no?) consisting of a few fun games and a bunch of appetizer-type snacks. We toasted the new year with our traditional Martinelli's and went to bed.

Some neighbors very close to us went pretty extreme with the New Year's Eve fireworks (link warning: noisy!). They shot numerous really nice ones over about an hour period, I would guess. They weren't the uber-high-powered ones from commercial fireworks shows, but they were only one tier down. They went up maybe about a hundred feet and produced effects of a proportional size. Other than the very real danger that our house would catch on fire, we thoroughly enjoyed the show. There were also some very loud firecrackers (at least I hope so - they didn't sound like gunshots to me) coming from an undetermined-but-very-close location. Those Lardville people really know how to party.

I've been playing a lot with my new super-cool combination laser pointer and flexible LED flashlight. I got it for four bucks at a Kragen auto parts store. Great Christmas present to myself. It really came in handy over the weekend when we were digging under Loyal Reader Number One's dashboard. Checking out the link above, I just discovered that the thing's base is magnetic. Another cool feature! I can stick it to stuff!

Well, the holiday is over. I believe Loyal Reader Number Six is planning to go home on the Second or Third, depending on when a highly-important DVD he ordered arrives. I'll be sorry to see him go - we've enjoyed his visit. I'm sure he'll also be sorry to go, since Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve are staying behind for a little longer.

Anyway, the holiday is over. Not to worry, though. My next paid holiday is coming right up . . . on May 28th. That's only six months away. Sigh. Can I retire and start up Gardenville Software yet? Luckily, I at least like the current job, if not the longish commute so much.

Time to go. See you tomorrow. More cute pictures of LRN12 soon, for all you clamoring Loyal Readers.