Top of the cliff

Here's Loyal Reader Number One at the top of that cliff he climbed at camp this summer. I believe a similar picture to this one has been featured here before, but not from this exact angle. Which makes this picture totally unique. Really.

I'm home! I had a comfortable ride back, worked a couple of hours, and drove home in the rain. Slowly. I'm seriously thinking of riding the train tomorrow. I definitely will if it's going to rain. Hold on a minute and I'll check.

-- Checking --

I'm back. There's a 30% chance of rain. What to do? I suppose I'll decide tomorrow morning. The suspense is killing us all.

My mother called me this afternoon and told me my uncle Morrell Snowball had a massive stroke and is in the hospital. His chances of coming back out are said to be small. I'm very sad. Morrell and my Aunt Ruth have been very kind to us and our children over the years. We're hoping for the best for them both.

See you tomorrow.

Accommodations

Here's a lovely little suite at the Alcatraz hotel. Plush. Picture courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

The meeting went fine. I learned a couple of important things and have a much better feel for the next few months' worth of work here at the base. On the down side, it was about 35 degrees with a rumored 50 mph wind early this morning. There's about a five-minute outdoor walk between the badging office and the building where the meeting was held. It was directly into the wind. Of course. Very chilly. It was a great day to stay inside.

Had dinner at a nice Indian restaurant. Enjoyed the meal. I originally planned to go to Outback for a steak, but it looked too crowded.

Already time for bed. See you tomorrow. From home!

Ferry Building Line

Here's a San Francisco Bay ferry at work. Photo from last summer courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Greetings from Lancaster! It was a pretty uneventful trip - smooth roads and no traffic. I got up to about 4,000 feet in the Tejon Pass, where the outside temperature went from about 50 to 35 degrees. Fortunately, though, there was no snow. Well, not on the road, anyway. Which was good enough for me. It's quite a bit colder here than at home right now. The hotel is nice and warm, though.

Speaking of the hotel. I got checked in and left immediately for my sushi dinner. Got back to my room, took off my shoes and socks, and . . . the carpet was wet. Yuck. It turns out it was shampooed a few days ago and hasn't dried yet. They moved me to another room. It seems to be dry. I consider dry carpeting to be a "must have" feature of a high-class hotel room.

By the way, the sushi was great. And the restaurant's floor was dry. I believe.

I'm driving a rented Hyundai Santa Fe on this trip. It's fine, I suppose, but not exciting. Likes: fairly comfortable driver's seat, good radio display (with 18 XM presets!), nice dashboard lighting, decent ride, all the power accessories needed for comfort, and two (count 'em!) sunglass holders in the headliner. Dislikes: underpowered, too much wind noise, and the multiple sunglass holders push the map lights so far back that you have to hold your map two inches from your nose to get any light on it.

Looking forward to tomorrow's meeting. It's one of those ones where I need to pay attention but have nothing to present. Should be a good day.

See you tomorrow.

Recital

Here's Loyal Reader Number One preparing for his recital last week. He did a great job. As mentioned before. Lo-fi photo courtesy of the exclusive RAZR-cam.

Bad traffic coming home tonight, for no apparent reason. Horrendous traffic going in this morning, due to rain. I never got rained on, but I drove on a lot of wet roads. Or more correctly put, I idled down a lot of wet roads. Sigh. Should have taken the train.

I'm off to Edwards tomorrow. There's a meeting on Wednesday. I'm leaving the office mid-day tomorrow and going directly back to the office on Thursday. I'll miss being home, but plan to drown my sorrows in a nice sushi dinner tomorrow night. And maybe I can get some more CSS tutorials done. And maybe watch those Ernest movies on my iPod. Now there's a valuable use of time.

I listened to the President's State of the Union address on the way home tonight. As usual, I agreed with most of it and disagreed with a little. At any rate, it was interesting. I like that President Bush continues to amaze the news idiots by not doing what they think he should do. They just can't figure out why he won't take their brilliant advice. I can figure it out, though. And so can all the rest of the normal people.

Anyway. Time for home evening. See you tomorrow, from a remote location.

Santa

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One and Three making sure they get what they want for Christmas. World peace again this year, Loyal Readers? How about a nice football instead? Taken at the House of Christmas Lights, of course. Low-fi picture courtesy of the amazing RAZR-cam.

Wonders of Blogger. No time to blog last night. We went to Loyal Reader Number One's winter piano recital pretty much as soon as I got home, and then watched an old Bob Hope movie called Alias Jesse James. It's from 1959, which is just on the edge between his earlier good stuff and his later cheesy stuff. Fortunately, this one lands on the good side. The interesting thing is that I had never even heard of this movie before. And I thought I was something of a Bob Hope fan.

LRN1's piano recital went well, particularly for him. All the performers were obviously talented, or at least skilled. A few weren't very well prepared, but overall it was an excellent presentation. They had a lot of performers up there, but the whole thing took no more than an hour, so it was solid music, which I like. No long-winded piano teachers between every song telling us how great little Johnny is and how sweet little Susie is. Just music. Not that I mind long-winded piano teachers, of course. Don't want to offend any long-winded piano-teaching Loyal Readers I might have. Heaven knows I need all the Loyal Readers I can get.

Gotta go help Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve with their move. See you on Monday.

On the move

Here's an action shot of Loyal Reader Number Twelve, taken back in her crawling days. Pathetic-quality photo courtesy of the exclusive RAZR-cam.

I don't feel much like spending the evening in front of the computer, so I won't. Suffice it to say that I got up (an hour late), drove to work, got to work (15 minutes late - not bad!), worked, left work (45 minutes early), drove home, got home, ate (good meal), and . . . that's pretty much it.

No problem working a short day today. Tomorrow's my on-off Friday. Meaning that I'm not being paid, but I'm working anyway. So it's okay to miss an hour today. Besides, I was at a good stopping point.

More interesting post tomorrow. See you then.

Home base

Here's our campsite from one of this summer's campouts . Do any Loyal Readers remember which one?

Greetings from the train. It rained all day again in Lardville. Not so much at work, but there were still plenty of puddles on the ground, so they must have had a lot of moisture overnight. Anyway, I'm beating the traffic, at least theoretically. Even though it's taking me more time. Hmmm. Well, with the pre-tax ticket vouchers, it's at least a lot cheaper now.

I just looked out the window at I-580. We're coming out of Livermore, and the road up the hill towards home is backed way up. So I guess I made the right choice today.

Horrors! I've run out of podcasts! I'm completely up-to-date on all of my audio podcasts. There's not even enough left for a one-way commute. I still have a few books and can get a lot more, but I've also been looking for a couple of new interesting audio podcasts. I can find all kinds of interesting video podcasts, but I definitely don't need any of them - I have well over 100 in my current queue, with more coming in daily. It just seems like people aren't doing audio podcasts anymore.

That's a strange trend, if you ask me. Homemade TV shows are great, but I don't think viewership is very high yet, probably because there aren't many people with devices like the AppleTV that make it easy to watch the shows on the big screen, and there aren't many people with the opportunity to watch them on their iPods. Those of us commuting on trains are pretty much the only viable iPod video viewing group I know of.

On the other hand, there are zillions of people who listen to their iPods when they commute, so the market for audio podcasts should be huge. It seems like the selection is getting smaller all the time, though, and the quality definitely isn't going up. Pretty much all the interesting new shows I've heard lately have been repeats of previous commercial and/or public (which is commercial too, as far as I can tell) broadcasts. And audio shows are much less expensive and difficult to produce. I guess the siren song of video is just too much for content producers to resist.

Anyway. Let me know if you've heard anything interesting lately.

Happy birthday to Loyal Reader Number Five! I'm hoping to talk to her on the phone after I get home, and we're planning on getting together on Saturday, either for them to move to their new place or to come over for a Very Special Morrowlife Birthday Dinner.

I'm told Loyal Reader Number Two is violently ill today. LRN2, you have my pity. Get well soon. And be careful out there.

Nothing else of note. Time to quit. See you tomorrow.

Top of the arc

Here's some statue or other in Paris. I found it on top of some kind of an arc.

Still no new Great Art. As you can no doubt tell. We need to go camping again.

But not today. It rained all day here in Lardville. It was clear most of the day at work, fortunately. The homeward-bound traffic was free and easy until I got almost home, at which time it started raining hard and slowed way down. Still, it only took and hour and a half.

That's right, I was back to work today. I probably shouldn't have gone, but the fever was temporarily gone at about 7:00, so I packed up my briefcase and box of Kleenex (actually, it was Scott tissues, now that I think of it) and left. I survived and really did have lots to get done, so I don't regret going. But I do regret not staying home. Sigh.

One thing that really seemed to help this time was Entex. Good stuff. I used to take it for allergies but have moved on to something else. Now I wonder if I should start again. I slept better than I have in a long time, and I could actually breathe when I woke up this morning.

Need to take the train tomorrow. My before-tax tickets have started arriving, which totally changes the financial equation. So I need to ride ten days a month, starting in February. I can get a little head start here, so I will. Besides, it's supposed to rain again, which uglifies the traffic like nothing else.

Time to get ready for my Tuesday night meeting. See you tomorrow.

Catfish

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve doing her catfish imitation. I don't think it's a really good likeness, but she's doing her best.

Another sick day. Sigh. I was miserable on Sunday and today - stayed home from both church and work. I have cold symptoms with a mild fever. Hopefully, I'll be better enough tomorrow to go back to work.

Otherwise, nothing new. The Honda went to the dealer today to have a few things looked at. They fixed the brakes (resurfaced the front rotors) under warranty, ordered a new sunglasses holder, and couldn't make the shifter get balky. It did it for me on the way home. Sigh. Well, it has to go back in a few days when the ordered part gets here, so they'll get another chance. Need to keep bringing it to them until they fix it.

That's all for today. Wish me better health. See you tomorrow.

Steam power

Here's one more locomotive from the Christmas Eve museum trip. This baby was built in Philadelphia and most likely sent to San Francisco by ship. I have no idea how they handled huge cargo like that with the primitive cranes they had. Maybe they just got a lot of people to pull on a big thick rope.

One interesting thing we learned at the railroad museum is that there was a difference between coal-burning and wood-burning locomotives. The coal burners had a narrow smokestack, while the wood burners had a great big wide one, presumably to catch the much larger numbers of burning embers produced by wood. Coal was the preferred fuel, but it was unavailable on the west coast, so they used wood out here. Check out this photograph and see if you can figure out which locomotive came from the east and which one came from the west.

Wonders of Blogger yet again today. And once again, I really have no excuse. We enjoyed a nice quiet evening at home, watched the new Monk and Psych, had a slice of two (two!) kinds of cake, and just generally hung around. And I didn't blog.

Not that there was that much to blog about. I got out of the office a little early, so I was home by about 5:20. It wasn't even dark yet! The Loyal Readers were in the middle of a book group meeting, which was followed by a delicious dinner and the aforementioned evening activities.

Speaking of not being dark yet, the days are definitely getting longer, aren't they? Spring is only two months away. In fact, the hills between here and the Bay Area are already starting to green up. It seems like winter just started. How time flies.

A few things are on tap for this weekend. The primary one is the need to do our taxes (or at least a preliminary version) so we can get a FAFSA done for Loyal Reader Number One's scholarship applications. I would like to have a look at the Honda's brakes - there's been some squealing lately - but that could wait for next weekend if necessary. Let's see, I ought to check the weather and compare/contrast today with next Saturday's prediction. Be right back.

I'm back. The Weather Channel thinks it's going to be 57 and sunny today, and 54 and partly cloudy one week hence. Today looks like the better option. And I have the time. I don't particularly feel like getting greasy, though. We'll just see how it goes.

Speaking of weather, I've been looking at the Weather Underground site lately. In spite of its horrendous design, I like it. They take inputs from numerous privately-owned weather stations. Presumably, anybody who cares to install an automated station can participate. In fact, a tiny bit of research reveals that you can get a weather station for anywhere from $200 to $1500, including software to connect it to your computer and connect your computer to the Weather Underground and other cooperative weather services. Very cool. I think the long list down at the bottom of the wunderground.com page gives you a much better feel for how the weather really is in your area. Check it out.

I guess if I'm going to fiddle with the Honda's brakes, I ought to look at the Miata's as well. There are no particular signs of wear there, but I have absolutely no idea how many miles they have on them. And I still need to replace those poor blown headrest speakers. So much to do. And I would really prefer to lie around and read all day. Sigh.

By the way, the decision has been made. The Honda is staying in the family.

Anyway. Those things aren't going to do themselves. See you on Monday.

Tentative

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve deciding whether to close her eyes for the flash. We managed to beat her to the punch this time.

Long shrift today. Assuming my Loyal Readers are still interested, let's have a look at last weekend before next weekend hits. Ummm . . . what did we do? After Friday's burst of productivity, I'm struggling to remember.

Really. I can't remember. Whatever it was, though, I'm sure it was fascinating. And very useful.

Not much happening today either. Loyal Reader Number Four is out on a visiting teaching marathon tonight, so she and Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two had dinner before I got home. They had some really good enchiladas. Fortunately, they left a few for me. Which I enjoyed.

Good news from this year's MacWorld! They didn't replace the Mac Mini with something way better! This is unprecedented, trust me. They did introduce a pretty cool notebook and some other cool things. Plus, the Evil Empire finally announced a new version of Office. I don't know if I'll upgrade. Probably, as soon as the $20 version comes available. That's the deal we have at work - we can get Office for home under the company's site license. They charge twenty bucks to send it to you. Not too shabby.

Speaking of Apple, I've heard from the Loyal Father. He just bought a MacBook and loves it. That's a relief, since I basically talked him into buying it. Windows Vista finally pushed him over the edge, so he was ready to switch to something better.

And . . . ummm . . . I guess it'll be short shrift after all. Don't worry, Loyal Readers, something interesting will happen in the next few days, I'm sure. See you tomorrow.

One more head in hole

Here's another in my famous Head Sticking Out of Tree series. Possibly the last one. Time to shoot some more pictures.

Another short shrift night. My brother-in-law Ken came over (from Las Vegas) for dinner tonight and we used up all the blogging time. Sorry about that. Rest assured, Loyal Readers, that we had a nice time and it was definitely worth it.

Still trying to decide what to do automotively. I could get a used one-year-old four-door American car for about the price my three-year-old used Honda would cost. But is that what I want? And the Honda's resale value will definitely stay higher than the Ford's. Decisions.

The weekend's exciting activities will have to wait one more day. See you tomorrow.

Squinter

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve avoiding the camera flash. Smart girl for such a young age.

I stayed home sick today. Spent most of the day just relaxing. I thought I was doing pretty well by this evening, but seem to have had something of a relapse. Sigh. I really need to go to work tomorrow, so I'll be there unless I absolutely cannot get out of bed in the morning.

Looked at a couple of cars this afternoon. My Honda's lease is ending in a few months and I can't decide what I would like to have next. Nothing really appeals to me from any manufacturer at any price. And the things I can easily afford are the worst of all, of course. I'm seriously thinking of just buying the Honda and being done with it. I still like the car very much, and it's been pretty trouble-free. I do need to have the shifter looked at in the near future, though.

That's it for today. The weekend's activities will have to wait until I feel better tomorrow. See you then.

The Mini

Here's the new computer in all its glory, fresh out of the box. What a beauty! I find the Apple Remote surprisingly useful in controlling Front Row, which I find surprisingly cool. I now have a pretty good-sized collection of those Apple stickers, but haven't yet found a place to put any of them.

Okay day at work today. I got a few things done, but not the one I most needed to do. I started feeling sick on my way home and haven't had a very comfortable evening, but that's life sometimes.

We had a nice home evening tonight. Played a round of Perudo and had fun. At least I had fun - I won. Other Loyal Readers' results may vary.

I want to go to bed early tonight, so I'll quit. See you tomorrow, with full disclosure of the weekend's exciting activities.

Clock shop

Here's another in my famous Workbench series. This is the watchmaker's bench in the clock shop at Greenfield Village.

Wonders of Blogger. Luckily, it appears I've managed to beat my old pal Anon to the punch. As mentioned earlier, it was my off Friday. I had plenty of opportunities to blog, but somehow never found the time. The later evening was pretty well occupied, at least. Loyal Reader Number One was over at Loyal Reader Number Twenty-four's house and Loyal Reader Number Two was at his friend Luke's house for the night. Loyal Reader Number Four and I watched the first half of Herbie: Fully Loaded on Disney (moderately amusing), spent half an hour or so in the jacuzzi, and then came back inside and watched the second half of the movie, along with the latest episode of Psych (amusing). Then off to bed.

Slept in a little this morning and have actually gotten a little work done. We got the garage door insulation project done (finally!) in the early afternoon, after which I cleaned the pool filters while the other Loyal Readers cleaned up Loyal Pet Number One's pooping grounds. Mine was certainly the more pleasant job. We also got the pool brushed and its water tested (it's fine, thanks for asking), backwashed the pond's filter, and fed the fellas. I was supposed to go visit someone with the missionaries, but they called and canceled just as I was supposed to be leaving, so we got in the car and went over and cleaned the church. Or at least part of it. We were the "pink" team. It went quickly. Oh, I also lightly updated our ward mission plan just before we left to clean the church. I had to send it out to somebody in the stake to use in some training tomorrow night.

It was a warmish (high 50's, which isn't really bad for mid-January), sunny day today. Perfect for all the outdoor things we needed to get done. We're not supposed to get any more rain for several days, which ought to give the yard a chance to dry out.

Now I have a little bit of writing to do (this, to be specific) and then I'll get back to studying my CSS book. Whew!

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

Peekaboo

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve playing peekaboo.

Greetings from the train! It was rainy today and (I'm guessing) the traffic was terrible, so here I am. Ridership was pretty light this morning and it's pretty heavy this afternoon. It's just like Friday traffic, and my question is the same - where do all these people come from? They don't drive to work in the morning and they don't ride the train, but they're clogging the highways and aisles on the way home. Maybe they stay in town all week and just go home on weekends. If so, they have my pity.

Speaking of which, I pity the fools who have to go to work tomorrow. It's my off Friday! All I have to do is generate some charts in the morning, conduct my 10:00 meeting via telecon, attend an 11:00 meeting via telecon, and do timecards in the afternoon. Other than that, I'm free as a bird. At least I can do all that work in my pajamas if I want to. On the other hand, maybe I could be wearing my PJs to work every day. Hmm. That's something to think about. I wouldn't ever have to worry about another promotion again!

Anyway. Loyal Reader Number Four and I are planning to finish the garage door insulation project tomorrow. I also ought to go to the library and return a few books.

Speaking of which, I just finished reading Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. It's a very interesting history of the guy who solved the longitude problem. As my loyal readers no doubt know, it wasn't too hard in the 1700's to figure out a ship's latitude (how far north or south of the equator it is) by solar observation. Direction was simple - compasses were available from a very early date. Longitude was a much thornier problem. Celestial observations weren't accurate enough to place a ship even within a hundred miles of its true location. Dead reckoning was no good - winds and currents took care of that. Lots of ships were lost because they couldn't figure out how far east or west they had gone, so they didn't know how close they were to land or even which direction it might be. Since ships had to sail at night as well as in the day, they were likely to run aground or just get lost long enough to run out of food and/or water. Eventually, the British government put up a pretty substantial prize for anybody who could solve the problem.

Two schools of thought arose. The first one was to refine the ability to make celestial observations and publish tables. The theory was sound - knowing the relative positions of the sun, moon, and stars at your current location versus their predicted locations at a reference location (which ended up being in Greenwich, although the French - typically - demanded that the world use Paris), you could tell how many hours/minutes/seconds east or west of the reference point you were and hence your longitude.

The other school of thought was the timekeepers. If you took two clocks with you and kept one set to the reference time and the other set to local time, you could figure out your longitude without all those messy star charts, long observations, and difficult math. Unfortunately, there were no clocks that were even close to accurate enough. The book is the story of the great race between the two factions, with all the politics and pettiness that accompanied it. Good read. I won't tell you how it turns out, other than to say that the good guy won.

Well, that was certainly a long explanation. Can you tell I enjoyed the book? Now let's talk about one I didn't enjoy. I also need to return The Little Book of Time. It certainly didn't work out the way I had hoped. I was in the mood for scientific history books and that's what this one sounded like, based on its title. It turns out to be the pseudo-scientific rantings of some two-bit, unimaginative, unoriginal, dumb philosophy major. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But don't bother with his book. And if you happen to meet him, run away. Fast.

Okay, that's enough for today. See you tomorrow.

Camper

Here's Loyal Reader Number One sitting in front of the trailer during one of our campouts this summer. Picture (obviously) taken with the exclusive RAZR-cam.

Fine day today. We're having rain every other day this week, and today was one of the no-rain days, so I drove. Tomorrow's a rain day and I'll be avoiding the inevitable traffic by taking the train.

Speaking of which, I've been kind of avoiding the train because I have one round trip left and I still haven't received my first before-tax ticket voucher. It should be here any day now. I don't want to buy another ticket before it comes. I guess there are always single tickets while I wait.

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two have been watching Country Fried Home Videos on the Country Music Channel while Loyal Reader Number Four is at book group tonight. Of course, they don't want to be associated in any way with the Country Music Channel, but the show is really funny, so they're willing to take the risk. Don't worry, Loyal Readers, I won't tell anybody!

It's bedtime for me. See you tomorrow.

Tokyo bridge

Here's a bridge in the big English garden in downtown Tokyo. It was a very pretty place, even if a rose garden in Japan is a bit unusual.

Short shrift tonight. My Wednesday meeting has been changed to Tuesday this year, and it's already late.

I had to give three layoff notices to subordinates today. It was not a good day. Hopefully, we'll be able to place all three within the company. We didn't want to lose any of these guys anyway. They're victims of layoffs on other programs. Sigh.

Anyway. I'm loving the new computer. It is way faster than my old one (sorry, Loyal Reader Number Four!). The Missing Sync finally syncs my Palm correctly. I ripped a couple of DVDs the other day; they took about two hours to convert, versus about 15 with the old machine. Those two fast Intel cores are really as good as they say.

And I need to quit already. See you tomorrow.

Pointing fingers

Here are Loyal Reader Number Three and a friend pointing out some glaring errors in the transcontinental railroad construction. I can see your problem right there! That guy in the background was a real stiff.

No time to blog tonight. We had a great home evening, topped off by a great chocolate cake with Cool Whip. Yum. The lesson was good, the activity was fun, and our calendars are fully coordinated for the rest of the month.

The weekend was fine too - it was stake conference weekend, so there were plenty of meetings to attend. Sadly, I've been feeling sick for several days, and I had a terrible day on Sunday, so I stayed home and slept all day. I'm feeling much better today, possibly because of all the rest.

The church has published a video correcting misconceptions about Latter-day Saints. For your enlightenment, I present it here in its entirety:



If the embedded version doesn't show up in your browser, try clicking here.

The video was originally used to help news people covering the 2002 winter olympics understand the church better and know who and what to believe and what to ignore. It's possible it at least partially served its purpose. Maybe not, though. News people aren't typically exactly the brightest stars in the universe, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I've only seen the first part of the video, but it looks pretty good.

And I really need to get to bed. See you tomorrow.

Birthday presents

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve showing off her birthday gifts. She's looking not too anxious to see the flash.

No time to post. I'm actually using the Wonders of Blogger at a little past 2:00 on Saturday morning. I've been mucking around with the Mac and it's late.

Mac mucking is going well, though. I have VMware installed, and it's really cool. I have virtual copies of Windows 2000 and Ubuntu Linux running. They both run pretty much perfectly. The only problem I've seen is that the Palm emulator doesn't beep right - I get a default Windows sound. That's a little bit unfortunate, since I'm working on my Morse code program, but I'll figure out a way to work around it. It may not be VMware's fault anyway - Windows has been known to be a little funky too.

I also have everything installed and working on the Mac itself. Printers are installed and working, all the applications are functional, and I've even replaced several of the PowerPC versions of apps with Intel versions. On top of that, I have the Android development system installed on the Mac and it's working great too.

One other thing I got accomplished this evening was to finally get Loyal Reader Number Four's old email messages onto her Mac. When her old PC was about to die, I copied her Microsoft Outlook files - mail and contacts - onto Larry. I was able to get the contacts imported into Entourage by bringing them into Mail and exporting them from there into Entourage. The emails were a much tougher nut, though. Outlook saves everything into a single file, and they don't offer any kind of migration path from there to Entourage (both products were made by Microsoft, by the way). I was finally able to import the Outlook file into Outlook Express on my virtual W2K machine. From there, I copied the files into a folder on which I ran a free converter some kind soul wrote to change them to MBOX files, which Entourage likes. I just had to change the file endings from .mbx to .mbox and then run an Applescript some other kind soul wrote that changes the .mbox text files to .mbox-style text files. That script was actually written for MBOX files exported from Thunderbird, but it worked here too. Then it was a simple matter to import the files directly into Entourage (transferring them from my virtual W2K machine to Larry to LRN4's machine first, of course). Whew.

It rained and blew like crazy today. The pool was full nearly to overflowing, so we spent a few hours draining it out. The pond's full too, but I'm not planning to go out there to drain it until the lawn dries out a bit. The rain's supposed to stay here for a few more days, but I think the high winds are over now.

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

Opening a card

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve opening one of her many birthday cards a couple of months ago.  Having a good time.

The new Mac's here!  Loyal Reader Number Two and I got it unboxed and plugged in late this afternoon, and I'm using it right now.  Sadly, I can't yet get it set up exactly the way I want it.  I had previously set up the new 500 GB drive to be my boot disk with the old Mac.  When I tried to do the same with the new Mac, it told me I had to reformat that drive before it would work with an Intel-based machine.  Can do, but I need to get all the hundreds of gigabytes of data off of it first.  Sadly, it's too much to copy it all to the same computer, so I'm in the middle of moving files all over the network.  Then I'll reformat the big drive, install OS X on it, and move all my files back.  It will take a couple of days.  Sigh.

On the other hand, it won't take forever, and I like the machine very much.  It looks identical to my old one, but it has a lot more guts.  And it can run Windows.  Simultaneously with OS X. Not that I really want to run Windows, but I have a couple of development platforms that only work there.

Decent day otherwise.  It rained most of the afternoon, and it's supposed to really start raining hard and blowing later this evening.  They're predicting gusts up to 65 MPH.  That's a strong wind.  I just hope nothing blows through the windows.

Nothing much else to report, and I want to get back to the file transfer, so I'll end.  See you tomorrow.

Facination

Here's an interesting sign from the railroad museum. The photographs were great, but the sign was merely facinating.

Back to work day. Things were fine there, if a little bit slow. Most people appear to be extending their holiday through this week. My boss was home with a broken house, so it was just me in charge. I responded to the challenge by going home a couple hours early. It was that dead.

Anyway. The commutes in both directions were the best they've ever been - an hour and fifteen minutes each way. I had seriously considered riding the train this morning, but things definitely turned out for the best. Still don't know what will happen tomorrow. How exciting!

The Mac is scheduled to arrive tomorrow! Oh, the excitement! The suspense! The honor! The valor! The buttor! (Link warning - SBemail sounds and animation.)

And since I don't expect to get much sleep tomorrow night, I had better get to bed tonight. See you tomorrow.

Girl and uncle

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers Two and Twelve enjoying each other's company. LRN12 may be having more fun than her uncle, though.

Happy 2008! It was another pleasant day. We got all the Christmas decorations down this evening and I got the two new motion-sensing switches installed in the hallway upstairs. Otherwise, very little productivity.

Our New Year's Eve with friends was fun. We talked a lot, ate some goodies, played a couple of games, and set off a bunch of fireworks at midnight. Then we came home and went to bed. This morning, Loyal Reader Number Four got up and turned on the Rose Parade. We enjoyed it.

Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen are heading back to Arizona tomorrow. Sigh. We had a great visit with them and are sad to see them go. Happy trails, Loyal Readers!

And tomorrow is back-to-work day. Double sigh. I'm not ready to go back yet, but nobody asked. So I'm back to work.

Better get some sleep. See you tomorrow.