Ford's Ford

Here's Henry Ford's personal Model T. Note all the custom features. That guy believed people should be satisfied with simple, basic transportation. At least he practiced what he preached. Photographed in Henry Ford's personal garage at Fairlane.

No post yesterday. And Short Shrift tonight. As mentioned previously, we went to The Theater last night. The show was very nicely done. Lots of good points - the acting, the singing, the musicianship, the sets, and the direction. I had a little trouble staying awake during a few of the quieter songs, but nothing serious. We all enjoyed it.

But we got home after midnight, so there was no blog.

Almost no blog tonight. It was my turn to go to work on my off Friday, and then I went straight to the Oakland temple and met Loyal Reader Number Four, who had gotten a ride from some friends. It was stake temple night tonight, and there was a pretty large crowd. We filled up the biggest room in the building.

On the downside, I got out of the office later than I had intended, and missed my dinner. I was pretty hungry, but I suppose it helped keep me awake. Have no fear, Loyal Readers; I made up for lost food upon arrival at home tonight.

Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve are coming over tomorrow. It's stake conference weekend too, so there will be plenty of meetings; less time at home than usual on Saturday and more than usual on Sunday. Can't complain.

The truck, went back to the shop today to have its defective front brake job fixed (they've been overheating quite seriously, including once when they faded badly (link note - I may have to get some of those things) and again two days ago when they faded slightly - not good!). They replaced everything (pads and rotors) they did the first time. We're picking it up tomorrow and are very hopeful for better results this time.

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

Plane guy

Here's a cool logo from an old WW I warbird at the Henry Ford Museum. Winged skulls must have been just the thing to spook the enemy.

Greetings from Lardville! That's right, we made it home today. As with the trip out there, our first flight (Detroit - Denver) was right on time and our second flight (Denver - San Jose) was two hours late. No permanent harm done, but we were a little annoyed by the delay. Still, our bags were all there and we made it in one piece. On top of that, all was well with the house. So our complaints are few and brief.

Still, we don't feel in any hurry to fly United again. Really.

There were 256 new email messages waiting for me when I connected my laptop to the server this evening. That'll give me something to do on the train for the next few days.

But not tomorrow, alas. I can only work half a day or so, so it's the car for me. We're going to see The Phantom of the Opera in Sacramento tomorrow evening. We've had reservations since Christmas, and we're looking forward to it. I'll provide a brief review tomorrow.

See you then.

Weinermobile

Here's Loyal Reader Number Two enjoying the coolest exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum. Picture taken last Friday.

No post yesterday. I was . . . thinking.

Actually, I was busy at a nice family picnic at Loyal Reader Number Eight's house, which is where we're now staying. Moved on Saturday night.

Went to Greenfield Village on Saturday, as planned. They were having their Civil War recreation weekend. It was nice, but not why we went to the Village. We went for the cool old buildings, recreation of early American industry, arts, and crafts, and the general classy ambiance. It was there in abundance.

We watched a Jacquard loom in action. The loom's been there for quite some time, but this was the first time I've seen it work. Apparently, they had nobody who knew how to work it until a couple took on the job. They figured it out and are making some nice stuff. It's pretty cool to see it in operation. Many people consider the Jacquard loom to be the first true programmable computer. When you think about it, they just might be right.

Also hung out in the locomotive roundhouse for a little while. I got a lot of pictures, some of which will be featured here in the future.

- Much later -

It was at this point that LRN8's wifi went dead and never came back to life. Don't worry, Loyal Readers, we checked with her by phone after we got home and it's back up. More in Wednesday's post.

Treasure house

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two checking out the treasure house of happy vacation hours. Picture taken today at the Henry Ford Museum.

Lots of fun at the museum today. We saw tons of cool stuff, including several things I either own now or have owned. Such as the Speak and Spell, Simon, a Taurus, and an Escort. Scary. The Loyal (but non-blog reading) Mom came, which we enjoyed too.

Nice family dinner tonight. We had several nieces/nephews/etc. and chicken.

Greenfield Village tomorrow morning. That will make three out of three Official Vacation Objectives accomplished. Wish us luck.

I'm being mocked for spending too much time blogging, so it's time to quit. See you Monday.

Bears

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two in front of the Detroit Zoo's famous bear statue, now a part of my famous Statue series. The bears are on the right. Picture taken this afternoon.

Greetings from Detroit! Well, from Royal Oak, anyway. We arrived - only two hours late - at about 2:00 this morning. Stayed up talking until 4:30 or so and finally got to bed. Everybody's a little sleepy this evening.

The plane from Chicago was delayed nearly two hours because of a problem with the cabin lighting system. They had a tech in there fiddling with it for quite a while. The lights would dim, go off, and come back on. Over and over again. I imagine he thought it might start working right if he just turned them on and off enough times. Finally, he signed them off and we were on our way.

Watched a bunch of Chris on Camera shows on the iPod while we were waiting. Also saw Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. I had downloaded that one from the Internet Archive, I believe. It's an old Soviet Russian science fiction movie that was poorly dubbed into English. It was (unintentional) ridiculous nonsense from beginning to end. Recommended, but you won't want to see it more than once. Trust me. At least it's free.

Went to the zoo today, as you know. The weather was cool and cloudy, and it had been raining earlier. Perfect weather for hanging around outside. We wore sweaters and had a great time. We're off to the Henry Ford Museum tomorrow, which was one of our three objectives for the trip. The others being Greenfield Village and visiting with family (link warning: this is perhaps the most unreadable website I have ever seen - proceed at your vision's own risk). So far, so good.

Time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Thin head

Here's a guy with the thinnest head I've ever seen. Part of my famous Statue series. Taken in Pisa.

Extreme Short Shrift yet again. Worked until 8:30 this evening. It always happens on my last day before a vacation. There are things that Simply Must Get Done. So I stay and do them.

Anyway. The Detroit trip (doesn't everybody go to Detroit for Memorial Day?) starts tomorrow, so bloggage will be non-existent tomorrow and spotty for the next five days. If the relatives have WiFi, I'll be there.

In the meantime, just be glad we're not going to Gough Island.

See you ...umm... soon.

Surfers

Here are a couple of guys surfing at Big Sur. Taken during this year's spring campout there, of course.

No post last Friday. I don't know why. Thanks for noticing, Anon.

Okay weekend. We enjoyed Loyal Reader Number Four's birthday (link warning: birthday song) on Saturday. Loyal Reader Number Two went to the beach that day with about 175 of his friends. They (and he) had a great time.

Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve came over on Saturday morning and stayed until very early this morning. They were here for LRN4's birthday, as well as to escape the heat in their non-air-conditioned apartment.

And the weekend was certainly a scorcher. It was over 100 degrees every day. The upside was that the pool was plenty warm for swimming, which we did a few times. Very enjoyable.

LRN4 and I went to an adult activity at church on Friday night. We tasted The Foods of Many Nations. Several of which were good. Then we listened to a little live entertainment - singers, a flautist, a ukelele player, and a poet. All of which were great. I especially enjoyed the ukelele player. He sang some delightful Hawaiian songs, his wife did a little hula-ing, and his ukelele was electric! Very cool.

Anyway. I accomplished nothing. The weekend was about relaxation.

Oh, I did do some work on getting Larry to serve email and particularly the Mailman list server. My hosting service's many service outages have finally broken the camel's back. I'm dumping them forever. Real Soon Now. Since GoDaddy doesn't do mail lists, I have to host the McCulloch family mail list myself. I think I have a mail server and Mailman both working now, but I have no idea how to use them. Need to do a little more studying and hacking. No problem.

Time for bed already. See you tomorrow.

Sunnyvale sunset

Here's the view in front of my office building on the evening of the 14th. Photo courtesy of the low-fi RAZR-cam. It was about 8:30 PM when I finally left the building - there was just way too much to do that day.

Which explains why there was no post. I got home a little before 10:00, ate some cereal, and went to bed. Sorry about that.

Wonders of Blogger today. Sorry again. It was Loyal Reader Number One's high school graduation on Thursday night! I decided to attend rather than blog. Not a regrettable decision. But I certainly do feel for my lonesome Loyal Readers.

Anyway. Back on track today.

The graduation was nice. Many (well, really most) of the parents and family members were loud and obnoxious and a few (well, really most) of the graduates were tasteless and silly, but that's how high school graduations are supposed to be, no? LRN1's speech was very nice and well presented and there was one young man who performed with his brother and somebody else (cousin?). He played the guitar and they fiddled. They were really excellent.

They read a 2-3 sentence statement from each graduate telling what their immediate plans are. Out of about 150 kids, there must have been fifty girls who plan to become cosmetologists. That is not a small number. That is a big number.

Home from work Friday. More bloggage this evening. See you then.

Plaque

Here's Loyal Reader Number Two striking a pose beside an ex-plaque. I wonder what they were previously commemorating. It must have been pretty good for somebody to grab it.

Greetings from the train. I'm counting on it being right on time after last night's debacle repeat. Tried connecting to the wireless without success. The network seems to be here, but I can't get a good connection to the router, and then it's definitely not clear whether the router has a connection to the Intertubes. Sigh.

Pretty day here in the Bay Area. It's sunny and warm without being hot. As opposed to a couple of days from today. When it will be both sunny and hot. Although I'm not complaining.

I mentioned yesterday that I've downloaded a few new podcasts. My very extra-special favorite new one is Chris on Camera. It's done by a British publication called Autocar. It features a very personable, interesting guy named Chris who shows a different interesting car each time, talks about it in some depth, and then drives it fast. Sometimes he's actually on a racetrack, other times he appears to just be on back roads. The perspective on the cars is excellent, the host is interesting and obviously enjoying himself, and the podcast is highly recommended.

Of course, it's a video podcast, which is exactly what I wasn't looking for. I'm quite short on audio podcasts these days. As mentioned before, I've gotten very sick of Leo Laporte's podcasts, except for the always-excellent Security Now and the quickly-becoming-tiresome Munchcast. Other podcasts just don't seem to be updated anymore. Anyway, I got onto iTunes to look for more. Actually found a couple:

BYU Kennedy Center Lectures - talks on foreign affairs by invited speakers.

New BYU Speeches - replaces my old BYU Speeches podcast, which appears to have petered out - BYU has a strange habit of suddenly changing its podcast links, which seems to me to be murder on downloads. Anyway, it features recent Devotional and Forum speeches - always excellent.

PodCacher - A podcast on Geocaching, which I had tried before and dropped. I'm thinking I might like it now that I can actually do geocaching. This one is on probation, though.

The MacObserver's Mac Geek Gab - Yet another Mac show, several of which I've tried and rejected. This one is definitely on double-secret probation - it needs to be really good to stay on the iPod.

Anyway. I haven't yet listened to any of the audio podcasts, so the only one I can really vouch for so far is New BYU Speeches. Updates as events warrant.

I saw yet another version of the worst music video ever. Judge for yourselves, Loyal Readers.

Time to go. See you tomorrow.

Cherubs

Here's another in my famous statue series. This one, like so many others, is in Pisa. Cute little guys, no?

No time tonight for much blogging. I stayed an hour and a half late at work and the evening is just gone. On the other hand, I really didn't get home any later than I would have otherwise - I got two email messages before I left the office telling me the last two trains were seriously delayed by a broken down freight train. Again. I saw what I believe was the second train coming into Lardville just as I was about to get off the freeway, and the third one (my usual train) seems to have arrived shortly afterward. Monday evenings have not been good for the ACE people.

Why did I stay late at work? Other than the fact that I have way too many things piled up, that is? Well, I was coding. That's right, actually coding for money, just like I used to do. I think I haven't coded at work since at least 1998. I really enjoyed it. I only added about six or eight lines of code to a Perl script, but it took a little effort because I had to study the tool, which had been written three years ago by somebody who is no longer working there and I had to learn enough Perl to get it done. It works!

The weekend campout went just fine. I got home in plenty of time to pick up the trailer and get set up long before dark. I built a nice campfire, took care of the charcoal for the Dutch ovens (delicious chocolate pudding cake - need to keep that recipe), and relaxed a little while the Young Women did their planning for next year's Girls' Camp. In the morning, I made myself slightly useful taking down a few tents and cleaning up and managed to sneak in a little more relaxation. Everything considered, it was a pleasant evening and morning.

Let's see, what else did I accomplish this weekend? Not much that I can recall. I didn't even use the Wonders of Blogger on Saturday, as sort of promised. Need to do better next week at making a list and checking it three times. Heaven knows there's plenty to do. Even if it's no more than getting a car washed and waxed.

The Weather Channel tells us it's going to be over 100 degrees in Lardville on at least Thursday of this week, with temperatures well into the 90s before and after. Yikes. Maybe the pool will be warm enough to swim in by the weekend.

I was delighted to receive a comment from Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Two on Thursday's post. Sadly, I have to answer that the new GPS doesn't plug into a computer. It has only one connector, which is for an external antenna. We're talking basic, mil-spec unit here. However, I have to agree with LRN22 that it would be cool to have one that did that.

Still hope to find my first geocache sometime this week. Friday seems like a likely candidate.

I followed a link to an interest website today - Clutterers Anonymous. I've been trying to figure out ever since whether this is a serious website or a joke. Any opinions from listeners? I could certainly use some help reducing a little clutter in my world. I guess I should really surrender to my Greater Power in that regard.

Here's another interesting website I found today. How to go about making a movie, and not just how to point the camera. As with most things, the mundane aspects of the job consume most of the time and energy. Kind of like blogging, no? The site hosting this tutorial seems pretty interesting itself. Lots of classes.

I found those websites when I was digging around on Lifehacker. It's a pretty cool site dedicated to personal productivity. It's normally a beautiful-looking site too, but it appears right now as if their CSS files have disappeared. I hope they're not another victim of the Chinese hackers.

Speaking of productivity sites, I also like 43 Folders. Highly recommended for people who want to get things done. Also for people who like Macs - that's where I found Quicksilver.

Anyway. Time for bed. Remind me to mention a few new podcasts tomorrow. See you then.

Hiker

Here's Loyal Reader Number Two walking down a hiking trail at last month's campout. All that beautiful green undergrowth doesn't look very California-y, does it? At least not like the California mountains. See if you can detect any Leaves of Three in there. They were certainly abundant. I've never been more motivated to stay on the trail.

Oh, dear. Loyal Reader Number One finally has his own server (see yesterday's comments). Even if it's just Old Moe's motherboard and has only 20GB of hard drive space, it's still a server. The world will never be the same. Of course, he has always had unrestricted access to Larry, but that's completely different.

Nothing else to report today. I've been exhausted all day and need to get up early tomorrow so I can go to the Girls' Camp prep campout with Loyal Reader Number Four, so I'm off to bed.

Oh, I got the GPS today. It's cool. As mentioned earlier, I wasn't looking for a GPS system with a bunch of maps and driving directions (although I have certainly considered such a thing...). All I wanted was something that would give me my current location and help me get where I wanted to go. This does that very well, and the five buck price was right. Cheap as free.

No bloggage tomorrow. I'll be at girls' camp. I'll try to use the Wonders of Blogger on Saturday. Survive without me for a day, if possible.

Off to bed. See you tomorrow.

Trail

Here's a trail at Big Sur. This is another in my famous "looks like the camera wasn't straight" series. I can assure you, however, that it was perfectly straight. It's just a really crooked trail.

New Moe lives! We got FrankenMoe's motherboard transplanted into Moe's case tonight, as planned, and it's working great! I had a little trouble getting the 100GB and 200Gb drives working - I believe it was caused by a marginal power connector on either the power supply side or the disk side of the 100GB. Fiddled with it enough to make it work, though. Hooray! It's now running at a speedy 1600 MHz, as opposed to its former speed of 450 MHz. Big difference.

And that's basically all I accomplished this evening. Had an hour-long meeting with my successor as Ward Mission Leader - training time. Also ate dinner.

I picked up the Honda early this morning. The new oil seems fine. No other changes.

One of my colleagues told me he purchased three working handheld GPS units at a garage sale this weekend for $5 each. I told him if he sees any more of them to get one for me. He said I can have one of the three and is planning to bring it to work tomorrow. I'm excited to get it. It doesn't do fancy car navigation and that kind of stuff - it's just a handheld unit, which is exactly what I want to try out geocaching. Maybe at our next campout!

That's it for today. See you tomorrow.

Lizard

Here's another picture from the Big Sur campout in March. This little fellow (along with many, many others like him) was sunning himself along one of the hiking trails.

It's just as I suspected. The Honda's ready to be picked up, with nothing having been done to it yet. Both the sunroof switch and the transmission rebuild kit are on backorder. At least they changed the oil. I'll get Loyal Reader Number Four to help me pick the car up on my way to work tomorrow morning.

LRN4 has spoken with both Loyal Reader Number Nine and her father this evening. Everything appears to be fine in both of their locations. She's been having a little trouble finding her dad at home, so she's glad to have finally gotten hold of him.

Time to do other things, like work on Moe. See you tomorrow.

Tree sitter

Here's one of those tree sitters you hear so much about, like all those idiots people at UC Berkeley. This is a particularly hardened one, determined to stay up there until his demands are met. Fortunately, he doesn't have far to fall if it doesn't work out.

Wait a minute - that's Loyal Reader Number Two at this year's Big Sur campout. Sorry about the confusion.

Well, I somehow missed it. Today is post number 501, so I wrote #500 on Saturday Friday. How did you like the big celebration? Sigh. I guess we'll just have to wait for #1000.

The Honda is at the dealer for the night to have its transmission looked at once again. The good news is that Honda has formally acknowledged the six-speed transmission problem and has a kit to fix it, which unfortunately requires that the transmission be removed from the car and basically rebuilt. The parts are on backorder right now, but my car has to go there to get on the list. So it's there. I'm also getting an oil change and a fix to a dashboard switch light while it's there. A permanent fix is on the horizon, though.

Uneventful day otherwise. It was beautiful, sunny, and warm without being too hot. It's supposed to be the same for at least the next ten days. Upper 70's and lower 80's. Not bad.

FrankenMoe lives! We bought a new motherboard/CPU/heatsink/fan/memory for LRN2's computer when the old ones died. Loyal Reader Number One made the amazing discovery that LRN2's old CPU/heatsink/fan would fit on the FrankenMoe motherboard. Since we suspected those parts were still perfectly good, he put them together and reassembled FM on the loft's coffee table. It's working! Although it's currently too short on memory to install Ubuntu, I used it to run SpinRite overnight and it works fine. Plus, the old 20GB hard drive we have on it is in tip-top shape.

We now need to decide whether to disassemble Moe, cannibalize its memory, and put FrankenMoe into Moe's case. Upside: much faster machine with much faster data transfers. Downside: none identified to date. Decision: we should probably do it.

In the meantime, LRN1 can put the FrankenMoe pieces into temporary storage now, I believe.

Time for home evening. See you tomorrow.

Spinny ride

Here's one of those spinny rides at Great America. Don't you feel queasy just looking at it? I certainly do. I believe this one is called "The Vomitorium" or something like that.

Wonders of Blogger. It's not that I didn't have time Friday night. It's just that I spent it doing other things. Mostly it was more Cocoa tutorials. And I also wrote a little program on my own. I wanted to learn how progress bars work. The book had a little information on the subject but not a tutorial, so I had to figure it out myself, with some valuable help from Loyal Reader Number One, who has been writing Cocoa programs for a while now.

Anyway, I didn't blog last night. Not that it matters much right now. I don't think much of anybody is actually reading the blog these days, and I don't blame them. Not much of interest there. I'll have to start generating some worthwhile content Real Soon Now.

Nothing else to report today. LRN1's senior piano recital is Saturday evening. We're looking forward to it and hope a few people will show up. I'm sure it will be well done and everybody who comes will enjoy it. And the refreshments are looking to be excellent.

Time to go. See you on Monday.

Reader with brush

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve with her hairbrush. Or maybe that's her toothbrush. Or her spoon. I have no idea. Isn't she just the cutest, though?

Happy May Day! Not a holiday celebrated much around here, granted, but possibly about as popular as Boxing Day. And just as logical.

Beautiful weather out there again today. It was sunny and comfortable in both Sunnyvale and Lardville. On the other hand, the Weather Channel told me this morning that it was 32 degrees and snowing in Salt Lake City. Loyal Reader Number Four's brother and father have my pity. On the other other hand, it's already getting blazing hot in Phoenix. Loyal Readers Numbers Three and Fifteen also have my pity. Can't complain about Northern California's weather.

Blogger continues to have problems with FTP publishing. It took me about an hour to get last night's post to appear, and I don't plan to wait that long again tonight. It's my Thursday Night Meeting Night, so the time simply isn't available. They need to get their act together. Or I need to move to different blogging software. I may look into WordPress again.

Today is the Morrowlife blog's 498th entry! We ought to have some kind of celebration for the 500th post. Maybe some nice devil's food cake and a round of jacuzzifying. Other suggestions?

The weekend will be busy. Loyal Reader Number Two is going camping with the Boy Scouts Friday and Saturday. Loyal Reader Number One and I are helping a friend's daughter move in the morning, and then his Senior Piano Recital is Saturday evening. I think he's pretty well prepared for it and hope a few people come and enjoy the music. At least I'll be there.

I rewatched The Singles 2nd Ward today on the way home from work. I'm not more impressed than I was the first time I saw it. It's not nearly as funny, and it plays way too much on the previous movie's jokes. I also can't handle the haircuts. Not highly recommended, although there are a couple of amusing moments.

We're a few minutes away from my train station, so it's time to button up the computer. See you tomorrow.