Feeling sick

Here's LRN1 on a day when he was not feeling all too well. Great Art courtesy of his computer's built-in camera, I believe, as enhanced with Photo Booth. He kind of looks like he comes from Easter Island, don't you think?

Life's back to normal - I spent the entire day in meetings. Found out on the way to work that I had an all-day commitment for the entire three days I'm working this week. The upside: three free lunches. The bigger upside: it looks like we'll probably finish on two days. The even bigger upside: I only have to attend tomorrow for a short time in the morning.

You have to take your good news where you can get it.

The Loyal Readers have been working on installing a new ceiling fan in our bedroom. I'm excited to see it and even more excited to use it. One thing about the Las Vegas-based family's house is that they're much more comfortable when it's hot because they have ceiling fans in essentially every room. Ought to be a good thing for us too.

There's a bit of progress on the MARV today. LRN1's been working on getting it to write to the SD card. It has looked like a fairly difficult task until he found an internet link to three different systems to do exactly what we need. Hopefully, he'll get something working Real Soon Now.

We have some highly disturbing Food Violence news today, involving pretty serious Cheeto abuse. Let's be a little more circumspect out there, snack food-wise.

See you tomorrow.

Road trip

Here's LRN3 cordially helping LRN15 into her seat as they were getting into their snazzy new (to them, anyway) van on their way back to Arizona from our weekend rendezvous in Las Vegas. Picture courtesy of the famous iPhone-cam.

We're back! Limited posting during the trip, as described earlier - the internet out there was quite unreliable. It was basically non-operative almost the whole time we were there. We got it working pretty well on Sunday, which was one of our primary weekend tasks.

The other primary tasks were visiting (mission accomplished), a visit to the fancy makeup store for LRN4 (ditto), and the removal, sandblasting, painting, and reinstallation of the Suburban's trailer hitch receiver (ditto also).

We also managed to replace the truck's spark plugs and wires, which was way too non-trivial and took way too long, but which was instructional also.

Otherwise, we pretty much relaxed and hung out. Very pleasant weekend, and a great time seeing LRN3 and LRN15, as well as all the Nevada-based family.

My brother-in-law Ken gave me an old Dell computer with a few problems. It's a bit more powerful than Shemp, the Dell I received as a gift from LRN5, so I put the best parts of both machines together to form New Shemp. He's up and running now. I'm still deciding whether it will be necessary and/or prudent to reinstall Windows on him. Will probably decide by tomorrow. Thenks for the computer, Ken!

It's hot here in Lardville! It was about 104 when we got home this afternoon, and is supposed to remain warm for a while. The pool water was at 86, so LRN1, LRN2, and I went in for a very pleasant swim, followed by Costco pizza and diet root beer on the deck. It doesn't get much better than that.

Next big event: LRN2's departure for Utah on Wednesday to visit LRN21. We'll miss you, LRN2!

He'll get home just a couple of days before Young Women Camp, which ends just a few days before the cruise, which will take us into August. Goodness, how the summer is flying by.

I'll leave you with some important toilet news: Even the animals are getting into the act.

See you tomorrow.

Work truck

Here's LRN3 and his fancy work truck. Pretty cool. Photo courtesy of the famous iPhone-cam, as usual. The truck's only a couple of years old and in great shape. LRN3 reports that it has lots of power, rides pretty rough, has no cruise control, and is fun to have. The blue and red flashing lights and police radio are big pluses.

No post yesterday. We were having too nice a time. And the wireless internet wasn't working. It's working now, but still cutting out pretty frequently. We're still in diagnostic mode and hopeful.

And that's it for today - can't count on the connection. See you on Monday.

Summit Garage

Here's the Summit Garage, a lonely outpost of obsolete automotive care at the top of the Altamont pass. I can only imagine it used to be on the main road over the pass in the pre-freeway days. They probably did a pretty decent business back then. Great Art courtesy of the famous iPhone-cam. Taken through the train window.

I wonder if the Summit garage is on the Internet. Let's have a look: Why, of course! There's something on the internet for everyone.

Okay day. It turns out my employee with the layoff notice yesterday was identified by mistake, so it's all fixed now. Good thing - I really don't want to lose that person.

And the weekend is here! Kind of! That's right, we're off to Las Vegas early tomorrow morning. My colleagues at work all wondered how much I planned to gamble. The answer was simple: zero point zero. Well, we were certain to take in a show then, no? No. I would certainly do that if I didn't lack one thing: the desire. We're going to hang with the family.

The cruise will have lots of shows; I'm sure we'll see at least a few. That will have to tide us over.

Have no fear, though, Loyal Readers. Daily posts will go on as scheduled. We'll be staying with Internet-equipped relatives, so there will be at least brief posts. And the quality will be just as good as always.

Unfortunately.

We're really looking forward to being together with LRN3 and LRN15. As of today, we still have no confirmation that LRN15 is coming, however. All I can say is that she had better be there. I mean it.

Anyway. We plan to do a little mine exploration (conditions permitting), a little work on the Suburban (cleaning up the hitch's rust problem and possibly looking at its fuel gauge problem), and a bunch of enjoying being together.

I noted today that Boxee has been released for Windows. I tried installing the Alpha version on Shemp downstairs the other day, but its built-in, non-expandable video card has insufficient oomph. Sigh. I'll try it on Larry Real Soon Now.

I did install the latest Boxee on Joe, my beloved Apple TV, last night. Not a good thing. It's completely broken now. Double sigh. I'm sure they'll fix it presently.

On the video-related upside, I set up Netflix on Larry last night. It's massively cool. Essentially unlimited content. Lots of on-demand stuff and everything else imaginable on disc. We're going to like it.

Everything else is normal. So I'll leave you with a bit of toilet news: There's nothing lower than a toilet-tipping pair.

See you tomorrow.

Dancers

Here's Saturday's 12/13-year-old dance instruction class in progress. All those boys and so few girls. That's just not right. Fuzzy action photo courtesy of the famous iPhone-cam.

Another beautiful, sunny day. Not overly hot in Sunnyvale. I'm not sure how it was here in Lardville. I do know it's been a remarkably mild summer so far. Bad for swimming, good for the electric bill.

Got my permanent crown this morning. It feels fine, I suppose. The chewing surface feels a bit rough, but I assume that will take care of itself. It's also a bit sensitive to cold, but I'm hoping that will diminish quickly. If not, back to the dentist I go.

I spent essentially the entire workday in meetings. After getting there from the dentist's office, that is. One of the meetings was to tell me I'm supposed to lay one of my people off. I think they identified the wrong person and plan to get it fixed tomorrow.

Minimal Meeting Tuesday tonight. Only one meeting, but it goes from 8:00 to 10:00, so it'll be a late night anyway. I'm writing this on the late train, so I'll have only about fifteen minutes to change into my suit and have dinner. Not quite the relaxing meal I sometimes get.

And the iPhone's battery is getting low (my kind coworker still hasn't handed over the free charger), so let's end with some disturbing food violence news: When cucumbers are outlawed, only outlaws will have cucumbers. My advice: stay out of the vegetable aisle.

See you tomorrow.

Thinking reader

Here's the first daylight picture taken by my new iPhone. Featuring LRN1 in a pensive mood. Pretty decent detail for a phone camera, no?

Another weekend has come and gone. And a nice one it was. LRN5 came over on Saturday, followed by LRN6 and LRN12, neither of whom we had seen for several weeks. They also brought Rob, LRN6's friend who's in town to help the Loyal Readers move. Sigh.

Anyway, it was a pleasant weekend. There were Father's Day presents and nice meals and general relaxation on Sunday, after I finished giving my two talks in two different Sacrament meetings.

Which went fairly well, I think. By coincidence, LRN1 and LRN2 played an organ and piano duet in the second meeting. They did an outstanding job, of course.

Saturday morning was spent helping a ward member move and the afternoon was spent doing . . . umm . . . I don't precisely remember what at this exact moment. I do remember gong to the 12/13-year-old dance instruction in the late afternoon and working on my talk quite a bit. Otherwise, it's pretty much a blur.

Decent day at work. Stayed busy. Got a couple of things done. I'll be late to work tomorrow - my new crown will be ready. Bling, here I come.

LRN1 had a great breakthrough on the MARV today - the accelerometer is working! He installed the new 3.3-volt Arduino and tried it without luck. He finally took a closer look at the software and discovered an output pin setting that needed to be changed. He did that and it started working. Hooray! It's always the easy thing, isn't it?

Now we can move forward again. I need to get working on the navigation software again. Congrats, LRN1!

Let's end with today's food violence news, of which we never seem to run out: They're dying to get back in.

See you tomorrow.

Hedge trimmer

Here's yet another picture of LRN2's Eagle project. This guy is using the power hedge trimmer (gotta get me one of those) to trim the edges of the trail. Love them chaps.

Once again, the weekend's here. Lots to do. The Loyal Readers and I are helping some people from the ward move tomorrow morning. Then I need to work on my Sunday talk, which I'm giving in two wards. Then I might have to go to a youth dance in the evening. Sunday is Father's Day! The second happiest day of the year! I'll spend until about 2:00 in church, followed by nonstop Father's Day stuff. You know - gift giving, delicious food making, flattering, inviting to relax, that kind of thing.

The latest round of new parts for the MARV arrived today. We need to try to find time to get the accelerometer working again. Maybe sometime during the day tomorrow.

I'm still enjoying figuring out how to work the iPhone. I keep finding out about new and cool features. The battery won't last through a day of mucking about with it, so I need to get a charger for work, just like with the Treo. I was checking on Amazon for something inexpensive yet good when I remembered that one of my co-workers had had his iPhone stolen. I sent him a note offering to buy his old charger if he still had it. He wrote back, offering to give me all his accessories on Monday. Woo hoo! I'm set up.

Situation otherwise normal. Several of the Young Women are here for the evening to continue working on preparations for camp. They've been painting, hot gluing, recording music (accompanied very ably by LRN2), and generally putting decorations together. Seem to be having a nice time.

I appreciate the opinions of a few Loyal Readers on what kind of cereal they would punch someone in the mouth for. It's that kind of hard-hitting journalism that really sets the Morrowlife blog apart. Keep it up, Loyal Readers.

Speaking of Loyal Readers, LRN3 received a free 1977 MG Midget today. Apparently, it had been in somebody's garage as a restoration project for quite some time. LRN3 said some admiring words, and suddenly it was his. He needs to put a few things (radiator hoses, seats, bumpers) back on and make sure everything is functional, but between him and LRN6, I think they can get it done. Send us a picture, LRN3! I'm looking forward to getting a ride.

And finally, we have a strange combination of food violence and toilet news: Why?

See you Monday.

Eagle workers

Here's a group of happy peppy Eagle project workers, featuring LRN1 in the background. Don't they all look excited to be there?

Extreme Short Shrift. It's late - I had a bunch of Young Women Camp work to do. Making good progress, though.

There was an important unacknowledged Morrowlife milestone yesterday. It was the 750th post. Incredible. More than three and a half years of marginal content. Wow. I just finished a bowl of raspberry sherbet to celebrate. True wretched excess, that.

The first day with the iPhone was great. I really like it. Got a couple of nice scripture applications and an excellent book reader. It's all good.

Otherwise stayed busy and happy. And worked moderately hard. And had moderate success.

LRN5 pointed out that LRN4 didn't need to suffer from mosquito bites quite as much as she did at the Eagle project, since she received a lovely personal mosquito net headcover for her birthday. I suspect she's saving it for a special occasion.

I'll leave you with some important food violence news: A 76 cent punch in the mouth. Not worth it, if you ask me. Maybe for a bowl of Cocoa Krispies, but never for a bologna sandwich.

See you tomorrow.

New phone

Here's the new iPhone, being powered up for the first time. It was a special moment.

Lots of news today. Two things came: my brother-in-law Ken (I guess he's technically not a thing) and my shiny new iPhone. Ken's visit was very pleasant - we'll be going to visit them in about a week, so there will be a repeat.

The iPhone is a thing of beauty, as clearly demonstrated above. I'm busily figuring out how to use it, which is taking a little time. I got a nice leather case for it - no clips this time. It's staying in my pocket.

Tried to ride the train today. Got to the station, punched my ticket, waited on the platform. After a minute or two, the loudspeaker reported that the train had hit a car and they didn't know how long it would be delayed. People, including me, started heading for their cars mere seconds later. I found out later than the train eventually arrived 89 minutes late. Good decision to drive. A quick web search discloses that it was exactly a year ago today that another ACE train hit somebody who wandered onto the tracks. Dangerous things, trains. You would think people would see and hear them well enough to avoid being hit by them.

Having the Miata at work allowed me to leave a little earlier than I might otherwise have done. That was important, since you have to call the AT&T people when your new phone arrives to get them to activate it for you, and then you have to connect it to your iTunes computer to complete activation. The only way for me to do both of those things was to come home early. Which I did.

Let's see, is there any other news today? Umm . . . no. Nothing. So let's check today's Toilet News: Maybe they flush a little too well. Note to self: find another way to wash your dog. And don't even think about LPN2. Snakes and toilets are too well-documented of a problem.

Anyway. Time to plan with the iPhone some more. See you tomorrow.

Project sign

Here's LRN2's Eagle handmade project sign, complete with the detail shown yesterday. Great Art, LRN2!

It's finally starting to warm up a bit here in Lardville. We've been having an unnaturally cool summer, and even had a bit of rain on Friday night/Saturday morning, which is absolutely unheard of around here. I've started wondering whether Al Gore has moved to town. I hope not - we need all the global warming we can get.

Otherwise normal day. I got some important things done at work and didn't get others done - typical day, in other words. Got a very nice compliment on behalf of the group from the tip-top program manager today, which was nice. Passed it on to the group. Then I got a personal compliment from a guy who recently left the program and was back to pick something up. Called me an "inspiration" and said his carpool mate, who works for me, tells him constantly what a great boss I am. Very gratifying, if just a bit irrational.

Anyway. LRN1's telephone surgery took place today. The patient didn't survive the treatment. Not overly surprising, since the patient was dead before the procedure commenced. Still, there was little to nothing at stake. I received word this morning that the iPhone was shipped from Texas last night and is expected to arrive sometime tomorrow. Woo hoo! After which time, of course, LRN1 will have a Treo again.

This is kind of an end of an era, however. It'll be the first time I've been without a Palm PDA since I bought my first one in Denver, which was about 1997 or so. That first one didn't last long - a few hours, in fact. I bought it at the Franklin Covey store during lunch, played with it all afternoon at work, took it home, and went to show it to LRN4. it snagged on my pocket and I dropped it on the hardwood floor and the screen shattered. Sigh. I took it back to the FC people and told them my sad story. They took it back and gave me a new one on the spot. Wow, what great service. Their kindness has led to great loyalty and resulted in numerous additional purchases.

Anyway. I'll be Palmless after tomorrow. Hopefully, the iPhone will be good enough to make me forget my troubles. I'm hoping there's a great free text file reader for my e-books. I'm pretty sure I'll find something good in that department.

We have some important food crime news: It doesn't get any lower than this.

See you tomorrow.

Chainsaw violence

Here's LRN2's artist's conception of a chainsaw-on-a-pole attack. Pretty gruesome. Detail from this weekend's Eagle project worker sign.

Good weekend. The Eagle project got done. The trails ended up looking very nice, to boot. Everybody is mosquito-bitten and sore, and a couple of people got into the stinging nettles (Link note: Food violence? You decide!). Otherwise, all's well.

Sunday was busy, as usual. Some things got done, others didn't. Nice day, though.

LRN1's Treo appears to have died. The keyboard won't work anymore, so the phone is useless. I hated to see him suffering, so I magnanimously offered to give him my Treo. I then ordered an iPhone for myself. No need to thank me, Loyal Readers. It was the least I could do.

I got the newly-price-reduced 8GB 3G phone, which is the previous generation. I would have liked the brand-new one, but didn't want to spend at least double the money. And I'll actually be saving money, since, for inexplicable reasons, the iPhone's data plan is discounted by 25%, while my current phone's is not. I live to economize.

The MARV remains at a standstill. We can't get the Arduino to talk to the accelerometer. We now believe it's a voltage conversion issue. We now have a 3.3 volt Arduino coming that ought to get us back on track. I hope so, anyway. It's gotten pretty frustrating.

There's important toilet news today: they float! The toilets, that is. Let's keep the conversation at a mature level here.

See you tomorrow.

Official geocache

Here's a rare picture of me, holding a geocache we found at Anthony Chabot. Part of my famous Camping series.

Busy morning - we spent a little more than 6 hours working on the Eagle project. It's going well. One more morning to go.

Spent most of the rest of the day either napping or working on the MARV accelerometer. We've been stymied at every turn, so it's a little frustrating right now. LRN1 and I downloaded the software for an Arduino-based logic analyzer. Installed it (not very easy, since it doesn't use the Arduino IDE) and . . . it doesn't work. Makes absolutely no sense. LRN1 played around with it a little and then moved on to other things. I thought maybe the Mac version just wasn't working right, so I installed it on a Windows virtual machine. Doesn't work. Sigh. I need some new ideas for figuring out what's going on with that blasted accelerometer.

Today's food violence news: I'm not sure it qualifies as food, but it was certainly violent.

Time to finish. See you Monday.

Michaels only

Here's an entirely appropriate sign. Picture taken, coincidentally, at a place called Michael's restaurant.

Well. LRN1 went to the dentist's office today and it turns out he has a secondary infection. Not a loose suture. I'm assuming the secondary infection was caused by a stray piece of suture in his throat. That's the only reasonable explanation.

The weekend's here! We're working on LRN2's Eagle project Friday and Saturday mornings. He's been working on signs, making phone calls, and getting food ready. Getting excited about it. We're clearing trails in the local state park.

Other weekend plans include . . . ummm . . . not much. The pool and pond filters are pretty clean. The cars are pretty clean, for the most part. I do still need to trim the lawn, so I'll get that done. And I have a lot of work to do on the MARV. The accelerometer still doesn't work right. I've been looking at the software, but am turning my attention to the hardware now. I drew a quick schematic of the current arrangement and need to verify it's the way we want it to be. Maybe I'll take a few voltage readings at critical points. LRN1 says we can get some free logic analyzer software for the Arduino that will help us too. We're going to get this thing figured out this weekend, by golly.

Also need to make more progress on my talk coming up in another week. I'm speaking in two wards - sitting in for a friend on the second one. One talk, two wards. Easy.

Do my Loyal Readers think this counts as food violence? Fork attack. I think we can all agree it's at least food-related, anyway.

See you tomorrow.

Baby ducks

Here are two of the baby ducks being protected by the daddy duck from yesterday. Aren't they cute? Looks like the one on the left gets a little more than his fair share of the chow. Part of my famous Camping and Bird series.

Greetings, Loyal Readers.

Normal day. Other than the big company picnic over at the Corporate Ballfield. Free food, decent weather. No complaints.

LRN1 reports he's still having a bit of a difficult recovery. It appears to me that there may be a bit of a suture that has broken off and lodged in the tissue at the front of his throat. Of course, I'm probably wrong. He's going to the dentist's office tomorrow afternoon, so the truth will be out shortly. If I'm right, I propose that each Loyal Reader send me a $100 cash reward for my excellent medical/dental diagnostic skills. If I'm wrong, we'll forget all about it.

Update: The piece of suture broke loose at dinner tonight - LRN1 retrieved it. Where's my hundred bucks, Loyal Readers?

I think that's fair.

Special thanks to LRN1 for his comments on the future of Gardenville. I suspect his suggestions are right and I'm very serious about turning th website into a one-topic blog. We just have to make the commitment to update it on a regular basis. With meaningful content.

LRN2 made travel plans today for a summer visit with his friend Jay. Is Jay a Loyal Reader? Let's have a look over there on the right. Why, yes he is! Thanks for your Loyalty, LRN21!

We have some highly important Toilet News today: The King of Toilets is nearly ready. That's gotta be some kind of a nice toilet.

See you tomorrow.

Daddy duck

Here's a duck we spotted at Chabot Park recently. He and the missus were watching their three babies. He looks just a little suspicious of us here, doesn't he? Part of my famous Camping and Bird series.

Extreme Short Shrift. It was Massive Meeting Tuesday. Drove the Miata today, so there was no blogging from the train, either.

All's well. The weather has been incredibly pleasant - cooler than usual, I believe, and sunny and beautiful.

Thanks to LRN1 for his comment on yesterday's post on glowing snakes. They're cool, but they're not quite real. The search continues.

So I'll leave you with some food violence news: When going to the zoo, don't eat the Sno-Cones. Really.

No comments on my gardenvillesoftware.com questions yet. I'd really like to know what you think.

Much more information tomorrow. See you then.

Long Walk

Here's LRN2 on the way to one of our geocaches at Chabot. Part of my famous Camping series.

Happy birthday to me! It's been a nice day on all fronts.

We actually celebrated my birthday yesterday. LRN5 was there for the afternoon, which was extra nice. I received some nice gifts and a great dinner.

Spoke with my Mom last night and my Dad, brother, and sister today. It's always possible that more loved ones will call tonight or tomorrow. What a great day.

Just one small negative note today - LRN4 discovered a flat tire on the Suburban this morning. Sadly, it was the result of yet more vandalism. Welcome to California. Costco cheerfully replaced the tire at no cost, as part of their no-cost tire warranty. I like Costco and plan to give them a lot more tire business.

LRN1 had his wisdom teeth removed on Saturday morning. It was a tough weekend for him. He's still in pain, but is recovering well. The swelling, which was never very bad, is already receding. One more missionary checklist item completed. Probably the most painful one.

LRN1 and I stayed home on Sunday. We watched a bunch of TV shows on Hulu. Sat unhappily through a bunch of (unattributed) Microsoft commercials for their stupid Bing search engine. No mention of Microsoft or what Bing is, of course. Just announcements of today's "Bing-athon." Looks stupid. The harder Microsoft tries to be cool, the more uncool they are. Sigh. I read somewhere they have a $100 million advertising budget for Bing. Maybe if they would put that kind of money into their product, they wouldn't have to try to fool people into using it. Double sigh.

I got yet more good news today - all the YW camp counselor callings are filled! Woo hoo! It's been a struggle. Now I'm looking forward to getting to camp. Should be a pleasant week.

LRN2's been working on an article for spinfo.info. He reviewed the very cool game called flOw. It's a strangely compelling game. Highly recommended. See the article for a description. You can play online or download it for free.

I need to shoot him a copy of sumotori. Also worth playing.

I'm also working with LRN1 on making gardenvillesoftware.com a destination for Arduino enthusiasts. He's working on documenting the MARV on an ongoing basis. And I'm adding a few links to interesting Arduino projects.

I'm still struggling with gville's focus. Here's something my Loyal Readers could help me with. Or something with which my Loyal Readers could help me, to avoid ending the sentence with a preposition.

Anyway, what's your opinion? There are several decisions to be made:

1) Should we abandon the gville domain for something easier to remember, more descriptive, or hipper?

2) Should we eliminate anything not related to Arduinos or talk about anything in tech that interests us?

3) Should we get a new website design and/or logo? If so, what?

4) Should we eliminate the currently-unused Forums feature or try to get it used?

5) What else should we change?

I'd really love to hear some opinions.

Today's important glowing animal update: they have glowing babies! Still waiting for the snake version.

Time for other things. See you tomorrow.

Painters

Here's Great Art featuring . . . Great Art. Talk about confusing. Some of the painters seemed to have a bit of Artistic Temperament, an affliction that fortunately doesn't affect me. My talent is pure. Part of my famous Camping series.

Fine day at work, although the commute was less than perfect. Moved pretty well until I got the where two lanes were closed for an accident. Got there eventually, though.

It was really crowded getting to the temple. Took a little more than an hour to make a 45-minute drive, which really isn't too bad, all things considered. The temple session was very nice and I'm glad I went. Saw a few people from the ward, plus a woman who introduced herself as somebody I called to serve at Young Women Camp. I've spoken with a whole bunch of people and don't have any idea who they are in person. I have a lot of names to learn this summer.

LRN1 is having his wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow. We're hoping for the best but expecting him to feel pretty bad for a few days. Good luck and a speedy recovery, LRN1!

What with temple night and all that, it's late. Weekend plans pretty much center around helping LRN1 out. There's also the lawn to be trimmed, the filters to be cleaned, and a car to be washed. Plus a navigation system to be written. Ought to be both action-packed and relaxing.

No food violence, no toilet news. The world is at peace.

Next blog: my birthday! See you Monday.

Houseboat

Here's another bit of Great Art courtesy of LRN3. That's a pretty full houseboat. This is how they spend their holiday weekends in Arizona. I guess it's too hot to do anything else.

Extreme Short Shrift tonight. I had a dental appointment this morning that went later than the last train out of town, so I had to drive. Therefore, no blogging on the train. Then I spent the evening making Young Women Camp phone calls. So I'm out of time.

Tomorrow's temple day for me after work. Looking forward to it.

Otherwise, it was a beautiful day, marred only slightly by a very painful jaw from the dental work.

No search engine news today, but there is food violence news: At least they're taking their differences to court. Stupid, I grant you, but they didn't actually throw the crunchberries.

See you tomorrow.

Working reader

Here's LRN3 at work this past Memorial Day. Looks pretty tough. I can't understand why he likes that job. Photo courtesy of LRN3 hisownself.

Another great day. Busy as a bee at work, and way more than plenty to do at home. I'm still struggling to make good use of my time on the train. I have some new tools, but it still comes down to productivity and having the right tools at the right time. I've been disappointed to learn that much of the trip is outside of AT&T's pathetic data coverage, so there's that to be worked around. Email works okay, since it gets queued up until the signal comes back. Web access - not so good. There just are no towers covering a whole lot of train tracks.

On the other hand, I could be more productive, even without web access. In one positive development, I'm spending a little less time watching unproductive videos on my iPod. Only productive ones. Mostly.

Anyway. MARV is at a bit of a standstill today, accelerometer-wise. LRN1 has some queries out to the accelerometer's maker, having gone to the forums without much luck. If we haven't broken the logjam by the weekend, we'll hold a peer review and try to get to the bottom of things. We need to figure it out and get the project moving forward again.

More search engine stuff today: Topsy. It's fascinating; the search is done via Tweets - Twitter posts. I tried a few queries out, and it looks to me like it might actually do something better than Google: news. Google's information is days old, at the very least. Since Topsy uses Tweets, its information is presumably fresher. Check it out. You don't need a Twitter account to play.

And then there's this: A call to action. I find the idea of an open-source search engine fascinating. Would the openness of the search algorithm tend to encourage or discourage gaming? It sure seems like the latter, but read the article and see why Cory Doctorow thinks otherwise.

Today's food violence update: When ranch dressing is outlawed, only outlaws will have ranch dressing.

See you tomorrow.

Chabot flowers

Here's some true Great Art. Taken during last weekend's campout at Chabot park and part of my famous Camping series.

Just another day in paradise. Couldn't have been nicer.

Our visit with our friends the Taylors last night was delightful. They brought us shortcake with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and fresh whipped cream. Delicious! What wonderful friends we have.

Good day at work too. I've been experimenting with a little website for some of the group's data, including a wiki for frequently-updated test procedures and such things. Don't know yet whether there will be much interest in it, but I'm interested, anyway.

LRN4 pointed out correctly that we used the dutch oven on our recent campout, not the crockpot. That's what I meant, of course. Must be getting old. It worked great, too. We're actually getting fairly good at dutch oven cooking, if I do say so myself. Which I do. We tend to prefer main courses over desserts, unlike many of our camping friends. Dutch oven desserts are almost uniformly wretched. On this subject there can be no dispute.

I've been checking out some new search engines recently. First, there's bing.com - Microsoft's new entry. Sigh. What can I say about Bing? Basically, it's useless. Not that it doesn't function. It just doesn't do anything better than Google. That's all I ask - just do something better than Google. The search results aren't quite as good as Google's, based on my short, unscientific test. Other observers report that it apparently favors search results that feature Microsoft products and employees. Bing doesn't look better than Google - it has Microsoft's signature busy look with colorful backgrounds and various non-memorable graphic elements. Bing tries to specialize in video search results, with a supposedly nifty feature that starts videos in the search results window playing when you hover your mouse over them. I find this feature disconcerting. Play starts very quickly - too quickly, in fact. Just passing the mouse pointer over a video starts it playing immediately, with the result that you tend to get several videos playing at once, or starting and stopping, or doing something annoying.

I haven't gotten any further with Bing. If I can find something I like there, I'll let my Loyal Readers know. Maybe it'll get better with time, although Microsoft's track record in this area isn't too strong either.

Speaking of getting better with time, I continue to be tremendously impressed with the lds.org website. They started out with just a few features and have grown like crazy, constantly adding cool new features. No fanfare, not much publicity. Just great new features. I was looking at the Music section last night. They have MP3s of practically every song in the hymn book, with and without vocals. They have sheet music with auto-playing "accompaniment" that allows you to determine the speed of playback. The Provident Living section started out with basically a few old talks from various church leaders. Now it contains an incredible depth of information on emergency preparedness, home production and storage, financial management, and who knows what else. There's practical information on a huge number of topics.

Then there's the genealogical information. Oh my goodness. They have everything you can imagine. And the church magazines, with searchable text from essentially every issue of every magazine ever published by the church. And information for interested non-members. And stake/ward websites with extensive calendars and searchable membership rosters (that stuff is for registered church members only). And MP3s and videos (including recent general conferences in beautiful HD video). And on and on. Bravo, church. I've never seen a better example of embracing technology everywhere it can do good.

Anyway. I also looked at wolframalpha.com. It's not exactly a search site. It's more of a solution finder. I really don't know how to describe it any better than that. I haven't gotten very good at giving it queries it can work with - I supposed it's an acquired skill. But the sample queries they detail on their search page are pretty cool. I plan to get some use out of it in the future. The Wolfram people are behind the excellent Mathematica software, so there's probably a good chance they'll improve with time.

Speaking of the bumblers over at Microsoft, I discovered last night that they have surreptitiously installed a Firefox add-on on PCs that allows websites to install applications onto your machine without your knowledge. This is done for your convenience and in response to intense consumer demand, of course. Oh, and you can't uninstall it. Well, there's been enough outcry that if you look really hard, you can find a well-hidden Microsoft patch you can install by hand that will allow you to uninstall the stupid add-on. I did it on my machines, of course. How typical of the bumblers at Microsoft to install add-ons to Firefox without your knowledge or permission. If they thought so many people would really want it, maybe they would have told us they were installing it, hmm?

Anyway. We do have some food violence news: Stay away from prosecutors. At least the Florida ones.

Lots of things left on tonight's schedule. See you tomorrow.

Chabot beach

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One, Two, and Four on the beach at Anthony Chabot Regional Park. Part of my famous Camping series.

Welcome to June. Ironically, it's taken an unusually cool turn and we may have some rain before the week's out. What happened to my global warning?

No, don't get me started in that. Bunch of dopes.

Fine weekend. The campout was a success, if a little cool, weather-wise. I mentioned to LRN4 that we appear to be destined to camp in the cold this year. She suggested we may have found a new way to combat global warming.

Anyway. The park was pretty. It was supposed to have been quite full, although we didn't really feel it. Our site was right at the beginning of the first loop, and we saw a lot of cars go in, but that was about all we saw of them.

We had full hookups, so we didn't see any crowds at the showers, either.

Strangely, we saw more rental motorhomes there than we've probably ever seen anywhere else put together. We never figured out why, but there was plenty of speculation.

Had a cold but nice campfire the first night and spent the second playing games. Cooked in the crockpot, found a few geocaches, ate french fries at the marina store, watched people oil painting and fishing, and hiked around a little. Fully successful trip.

LRN1 is at an open-source software conference in San Francisco today, apparently sponsored and put on by Sun. We texted a little during the day, and he appears to be enjoying it even more than he expected. I'm looking forward to hearing about it.

He's planning to stay a little while after the conference, for the after-conference party. Says he wants to see how geeks party. I'm not so sure he'll like it. He said the general tenor of the crowd was somewhat adult and corporate, so it ought to be fairly sedate.

LRN2 has an article ready for Spinfo, which means the time to put up a framework for his content is here. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. We'll see how the times goes.

Things are otherwise quiet. Our friends the Taylors are coming over this evening to give us a delicious dessert, in honor of LRN4's birthday. How kind! I'm looking forward to their visit.

Today's toilet news: They're highly prized items.

See you tomorrow.