For the last few weeks, I've been catching the HBO show, Hard Knocks, off of Tivo. It is a show about the training camp of the Dallas Cowboys as the season is about to begin. It shows what really goes on and how the team rosters are made.
This is real reality television. It's not manufactured out of nothingness like Survivor or Big Brother. It's what is really going on as the Cowboys get to the opening day roster of 53 men. A lot of people get cut.
Here's the dilemma. I've been watching the show and learning about the players. I have, dare I say it, *sympathy*, for the Cowboys. Since I live in Los Angeles, I am without a football team. As I go through the season, I fear that I might actually root for the Cowboys and their players since I know them now.
Me, root for the Cowboys? Am I out of my fucking mind?
I want this Landspeeder. Please fairy godmother, buy me this car!
What a day.
Work was a blur as we had a half day and I was trying to cram a day's worth of effort into four hours. I left work around one and headed home.
I convinced the girls to go out geocaching with me. The cache was in nearby Lacy Park, but we were unsuccessful. I even had a travel bug to place.
We looked and looked, but the GPS unit was sketchy on pointing me on a consistent location. I couldn't make sense of the clue. It was hot, the girls were complaining, so I decided to find it on another day.
We went to the library afterwards to drop off some books, and lo and behold, there was Fallen Dragon waiting for me on the New Releases shelf. I grabbed it and am currently on page 5.
Later in the afternoon, we took Zoe to her first soccer practice. It looks like she'll have lots of fun. Eight 6 & 7 year old girls do make a lot of noise.
We went out to dinner with the family of one of the girls Zoe is on the team with and will be in first grade with, Ken & June and their kids Emma & Nate. We thought japanese food would be good, but by 8:30 the kids were swinging from the ceiling and we knew it was time to leave. I was amazed that Ken also is a fan of the band X. He even knows more about Tivos than me. I need to invite him out on the next guys night out.
Currently, it's 11:15. Michele is crashed and I'm about to dive into Battelfield 1942. BTW, the contacts are getting more and more comfortable. Life is good.
After five months of trouble, I finally have some new lenses on my eyes. They don't feel perfect, new lenses are a little different than old lenses so there is always a bit of time it takes to get used to them.
But I can deal. I can finally see out of both eyes. Woo-hoo!
I've got a few things to do tonight, so this update will be brief.
Battlefield 1942 continues to consume my game time. I am in it's thrall.
There are a couple new weblogs on the scene. Jennifer now has Mrs. Diggs dot blog and Paul has Paulie-Log. Please go check them out and give them a little encouragement.
Chokersandwich is back in operation. In addition, Brad, Mike, and Matt have all been weblogging furiously as well. Pat and Travis have been weblogging even while on vacation.
Phew, that's a lot of links.
On a humor angle, take a look at the transcript of President Bush discussing world matters with the Saudis.
Lastly, I need a new book. I'm thinking about Fallen Dragon. Any comments?
My IM conversation with my father today;
Session Start (MSN - Michael Pusateri:Dad): Wed Aug 28 13:41:19 2002
Dad: do you have time to do a check on the remoteassistance feature?
Michael Pusateri: I can't do it from work. Only from home. I think...
Dad: OK
Michael Pusateri: Got a problem?
Dad: Only trying to the office to be able and can't seem to make it work
Michael Pusateri: Huh?
*** Dad signed off at Wed Aug 28 13:52:15 2002
Session Close (Dad): Wed Aug 28 14:02:34 2002
Can anyone decode this?
It's funny, because it's true.
(Flash 6 page for the browser & bandwidth impaired)
Thanks to Brad for the link.
First of all here's a picture I took on the way back from my parentss house.
These people are not clear on the idea of tying down a mattress correctly.
Yesterday, I went on a geocache with Zoe. We had a good time and as usual, I wrote up a short story about it. Enjoy.
The last bit of info is for those of you that are not squeamish. If you are squeamish, click away now. I'm serious.
OK, I warned you. On Saturday I lost a battle in my war against athlete's foot. The toenail on my right foot had the fungus pretty badly and actually came off on Saturday after the hike. It didn't hurt and a new nail is already growing underneath. I'm going to see the doctor this week to get the special, expensive anti-fungal medicine. For the truly gross at heart you can see a picture of the nail here.
You people are weird if you really just looked at my toenail...
Ok, so what's been going on around here. It's Sunday morning and I'm sitting outside with one eye on the girls in the spa and one eye on this. I keep having to stop and help them put the face masks on for diving. I'm trying to get them used to swim gear early so they hopefully will get into snorkling and scuba diving when they get older. Zoe can snorkle already.
It's my parents 39th anniversary today and we'll be heading over to see them this afternoon. 39 years. That's a long time. Happy anniversary Mom & Dad. For the life of me, I can't figure out what to ge them. Over the last few years we've run the technological gamut with new TVs, DVD players, and even a Tivo. There's nothing new to get them...
I've been doing a little more gaming recently, much to Michele's chagrin. She went out on Friday night with Jenny and was suprised that when she got home post midnight I was still up 'killing Nazis'. It was actually nice to have quiet chat at 1 AM. To bad we realized in 5 short hours the children would stir and one of us had to get up with them. Life is short, stay up late.
Last week I had spent some time downloading and patching Neocron. Yoshi at work suggested I give it a try. After downloading over 1 gig I booted the game it patched over night. The next day I tried to play and was completely clueless. It's first person shooter style, but the controls use the arrow keys instead. After trying to understand what's going on, I realized there was too steep of a learning curve. I read the FAQ and found out there was a single player tutorial version. After a quick 100 meg d/l, I was in tutorial mode and it all made sense. I went back and played a bit of the multiplayer and it appears to me that it's kinda like Deus Ex online. Lots of running back and forth figuring out how to solve things. The combat is simple and unrewarding. It doesn't appear that traditional FPS skills are of benefit in Neocron. It's a lot of 'aim in the general direction of the enemy and shoot with your biggest weapon'. I'm minimizing it a bit and I'm sure rabid Neocron fanboys would jump down my throat. The game does look cool as a MMORPG, but it's not competitive with Quake & Unreal level FPS games. I'm sure a ton of people will play the game, but I'm not sure I want to spend a bunch of time in the resource gathering mode.
While I was on Fileplanet, saw a game called Battlefield 1942 as a demo download. I had seen mention of the game on the genmay.com message boards earlier but wasn't sure what it was. I d/led and installed the game. All I can say is Wow! It's a multiplayer team based FPS but in the tradition of Team Fortress and Wolfenstein, but this game takes it to a new level. Perhaps it could be called 'WWII Online, done right'.
The game rocks because besides being able play the foot soliders gunning down the enemy with small arms, you can take over any gear in the game. Any gear. You can drive the aircraft carrier, the tanks, the APCs, aim and fire the gun emplacements, AA guns, landing craft, etc.
It's a blast. It ships in 15 days on September 10th, and I'm all over it. Give it a try.
OK, I was going to try to update about geocaching and my toe nail, but I need to go do some work outside. More later as I find time.
I went out last night with Brad & Martin to have some beers. In my brilliance, I walked two blocks and bought some cigars for us to smoke out in the bar's 'garden' section. Nicotine & alcohol. By the end of the night I was in full control of the jukebox and subject the bar to 7 songs from a Grateful Dead album, including Space. Finally, as our conversation dropped to a minimum and we all started staring into the distance and/or eyelids, it was time to go home.
This morning I'm a bit rough around the edges. I went to the supermarket to pick up a few thigns and could tell that most of the other shoppers had not been out late the night before. I was struggling with explicitly commanded my body. "Legs, MOVE. Arms, MOVE." Others there were bright, cheery, and clean, discussing the merits of the various apples on display. I grabbed a cup of coffee, the needed items and headed out.
So while I have stories about geocaching, gaming, toenails, and what not, they will have to wait until I get my shit together.
It's Friday morning here in lovely South Pasadena, and that can only mean one thing, It's Trash Day. The town has decided that we are so upscale, that we do not bring our trash out to the curb like other reasonable communites. We pay extra so the trash hauling people drive onto our driveway and empty the barrels where they sit. I don't agree, but the Keep South Pasadena Unsightly contingent is strong.
What this means to your hero is that every Friday morning I need to get up and move Michele's truck out of the driveway before 7AM. 7AM is when the trash haulers begin to arrive. I also tend to uncover the barrels to make it a little easier on the guys.
Today I moved Michele's truck and went open the barrels when I saw a big mess. Some woodland creature had pulled a bag out of the trash barrel ripped it open to get to the contents. As I walked up, I saw this:
It was the turkey sandwich I tossed out after leaving in my briefcase overnight. The creature, I suspect a raccoon, smelled the turkey and made a beeline to it to retrieve a midnight snack.
Michele's eagle eyes spotted this other telltale clue:
Tracks! Tracks on the hot tub cover. Again, I suspect a raccoon. Why? I don't know one kind of animal tracks from another, but it's much cooler to talk aboiut raccoons in the yard than boring, commonplace possums or cats. Those aren't cat tracks!
I must ponder how to deal with this situation. This is the second time the raccoon has gotten into our trash barrels. I must think. Suggestiosn welcome.
Rather than simple wait like corn in the field for my contacts to arrive, I decided to do something about it. I called CibaVision, makers of the special SoftPerm lenses I need to see. I called the general information number, determined to get the answers I needed.
Rather than use the tough, but effective, 'man-who-won't-take-no-for-an-answer' method, I opted for the 'quiet-and-pleasant-but-persistant' method instead. After repeating the phrase, "Good afternoon, I'd like to speak to someone about your SoftPerm contact lenses." to five different people and enduring lengthy wait times while on hold, I finally reached a woman who told me she could answer my questions. After explaining the situation and asking how long the contact lenses should take to make, she said words I have not heard in a while from a customer support person. She said, "Mr. Pusateri, let me try to help you out." She asked the name and number of my eye doctor and called his office.
She called back and said that unfortunately my specific lens was unavailable anywhere in the world, but that there was a set of tolerance lenses in Canada. A tolerance lens is a lens that would fit my eye correct and be comfortable, but would not correct my vision entirely. It would be something that would let me look at a computer or find things in a room. She had requested them be shipped to my eye doctor and said they shoudl arrive mid-next week.
Viola! Ask and ye shall receive. I can only hope the new Rx for the the shape of these lenses works. More news as it happens.
Speaking of corn fields, here's the scene from the backyard.
Another month or two and we'll be eating California corn...
I had yet another appointment to see the eye doctor today. Still no new contacts. He assured me that my right eye was fine and that I could continue wearing a lens in it, even though it was causing me some pain.
In all the time I had trouble with my eyes, I've never asked what my vision is in the 20/xx style. I knew the power in diopters of my lenses, but not the more traditional rating. I asked abou this today. My left eye, the better one, has a vision greater than 20/2000. Yes, twenty - slash - two thousand. The doctor says it's actually worse than that, but that is high as the quick measurement with a chart in an office goes. My right eye is worse than that.
Lovely...
One last thing...
I put up a link to Important Quotes on the left hand side. Enjoy.
Scumbag congressman Bob Barr, has been 'bounced out of Congress' by a fellow Republican. I can only hope this sounds the death knell of Newt 'Where Are You Now' Gingrich's '94 GOP landslide.
Important Tip: If you bring home a turkey sandwich from work on Monday do not wait until Tuesday night to open your briefcase and find it. The sandwich will be stinky at this point.
Lastly, this the the pinnacle of home computing.
I wrote up a review for Rebecca Blood's book on weblogs, The Weblog Handbook. Rebecca linked to my review, but people seemed more interested in my theory that weblogs started with .plan files.
Virulent Memezilla discussed the idea a bit. Graham of VM brings up the good point that signatures also were a form of personal expression that changed regularly. He also linked to a post by Anthony Hicks that discusses the role of .plan files as the precursor to weblogs.
Plep thought it was a good enough insight to rate linkage.
Radio Free Blogistan wasn't so much interested in .plan files, but seems to have gotten quite enthused about tracking the term 'navel gazing' I used in the review.
I was also surprised to see links from two places I had never heard of before, Weblog Bookwatch and All Consuming. Both sites appears to scan weblogs looking for links about specific books. In this case, I think it was the fact that I linked to both Rebecca Blood's book, The Weblog Handbook and Matt Haughey's book, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, that I popped up on those site.
It's an interesting concept to have meta-blogs that automatically scan for various bits of data and synthesize an analysis of what people are posting. After many false starts, perhaps the age of intelligent agents is upon us.
I had to take the day off from work today due to my eyes. I'm still just wearing the contact in my right eye. Yesterday it was hurting all day. I had to give it a rest. Unfortunately without my contacts I can't see. Even if I tried to wear my glasses at work, I wouldn't be able to drive the freeway with my glasses on. Overall suckage...
Right now I'm squinting at the screen from about 8 inches away.
Michele asked me to help put up the border wallpaper in the kids room with her. She had also shanghaied her cousin James into the wallpaper effort earlier and decided to add me to her crew since I was home. I put on my glasses and we spent a couple hours spashing the walls with wallpaper glue. It's done now and the border looks good. Pictures to come when I get the chance. Michele was so please with the outcome she went out and got In 'n Out burgers for lunch.
More later...
We got back a few minutes ago from a small party at our friends house. They recently moved into a new house. They moved only a block, but the new house is bigger and has more land. It's the first time we've visited since they moved and they really put a lot of work into fixing it up. The kids all had a great time and it was good to hang out and talk with friends.
Last night, I went and saw XXX with Martin and Len. We debated on whether to see Goldmember or Pluto Nash, but we ended up seeing XXX since it's the kind of movie to see on the big screen. It's not a bad movie. I enjoyed it and had some good laughs. A couple night ago I finally watched Pitch Black on DirecTV and understood why people thought Vin Diesel was going to be a big action star. I had seen him in Fast & Furious and Boiler Room and was unimpressed. He was good in Pitch Black and I look forward to those sequels.
XXX is just a modern version of James Bond, right down to the specific characters. Samuel Jackson plays the M role and a geeky dude plays the Q role. Everything was typical Bond hyperbole and over the top stunt action. I was hoping for a new twist on the spy thriller, but there wasn't much out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, it was fun.
Lastly, I recently finished the book on Salt I had been reading. The book was long and took me about two months to get through. Everyone around me at work and home has had to endure my stroies about salt while I've been reading the book. The writer, Mark Kurlansky, definitely did his research and it shows. There is nothing left for me to learn about salt, I now know it all. If you like reading history, you'll probably enjoy this book. If you are looking for action and adventure, this ain't your book.
The funny thing is that as long as it took to read this book and the chore that it was to finish it, I find myself interested in his book on cod. Evidently, the cod fish drove much of the economic development of North America and the eventually collapse of the fishing banks. Someone stop me before I buy another 300 page history book...
If you look to the right --->
You'll see a search box. You can now search through the annals of Cruft history easily. I'll pretty it up when I get time. So if you are getting here via an external search engine, you can try finding what you are looking for via my search box.
In my last post I mentioned how great my wife was for squeezing in painting when the girls weren't home. This morning I walked out back and caught a glipse of a familiar blue color. Yep, it was a blue Makita tool case. Hrrm, I own a few Makita tools, but I don't have a case like that.
I walked over and noticed my Black & Decker sander next to the blue case. It's the sander I used to redo the spa a while ago. I opened the case to find a new Makita sander just like the one we already had.
I asked Michele if she bought the new sander. I knew she had, but I wanted to hear her reasoning. She said that Len and I had 'runined and broke' the old sander and that she needed a new one. I asked her how she could have bought a new power tool without me. I mean c'mon of all the shopping we do about the only thing I like to shop for is electronics and power tools. She gets to make all the other choices. She told me to shut up and go to work.
Now I'm at work and I don't know which sander she bought. I bet she didn't even know how many choices she had...
Michele's been busting her ass in the house. The kids are going off to camp during the days, leaving time for Michele to do what she wants. What she wants to do redo the girls room.
She's been painting the girls room as part of the redo. The kids leave the house around 8 AM. Once they leave she them moves most of the furniture out, masks off the room and paints. She has until the afternoon to get it painted, clean up the mess, and put all the furniture before the kids come home.
She painted half the room on Wednesday and the rest of it today. She rocks.
We harvested a few carrots from the backyard garden last weeked. Their size is fairly small. I'm hoping the corn does better than this. it's about two feet tall at this point. Time for some miracle-gro.
Also on the weekend, we saw this. I had heard jokes about this but I didn't really believe it. Yes, that's braille instructions on a drive-up ATM. You'd have to be in the driver seat to touch/read it. WTF?
Today at the office I was in meetings from 9Am to 5:45PM. 5 different meetings. I didn't even get to read my work email today. I'm sure it's going to be a big pile tommorrow.
I updated several info type pages this evening.
I updated What's Cruftbox? Where's pusateri.org? , What is Cruft? , Cruft FAQ , and About Me.
Enjoy.
So a while ago I was walking in beautiful downtown South Pasadena on my way to the school board meeting when I saw this...
Holy fuck. It's a real live warchalking symbol. An actual specimen found in the wild. Sure enough, 60 feet up was Cafe Pop, the same place I connected to while sitting in my car previously.
I guess some this stuff I read about on the net is real...
So, I'm going to rewrite the FAQ. But I need to know what questions are frequently asked. I know there is concern over such monumentous issues as how I order the links to the left. But I feel there are other questions just waiting to be asked out there, hovering in cyberspace.
Please let me know what other questions you have. The comments thingie should work just fine for this.
I was pondering a few things about weblogs and wrote a couple emails off to Rebecca Blood and Matt Haughey. They are fairly well known experts about weblogs.
After exchanging a few emails, I decided to buy their books on weblogs. Rebecca's book, The Weblog Handbook, came quickly from Amazon. Matt's book, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, comes out this week and has not arrived
I took Thursday off for my aborted geocaching trip, so I was happy when The Weblog Handbook arrived in the mail. I grabbed a soda pop and began to read. The book is only 160 pages so I was able to read it during the day. I'm a fast reader and I was familiar with the material, so it went quickly. Here's my book review
Rebecca's book has some really good information in it. At first, I thought, is there enough info about weblogs to write an entire book about? After reading it, it can definitely say there is.
The book goes over the origins of weblogs and identifies the different types. I've been on the web a long time and thought I knew everything there was to know about weblogs. I wrote my first weblog type post back in 1997. The first couple chapters go into good detail about exactly what happened.
I disagree a little about the origins of weblogs though. I've been wasting time on the internet since 1991. Back in the day, everything was text based. To learn about someone else on the net, one of the first things you could do was to 'finger' them. When you fingered someone, you'd get a basic set of info they had written to identify themselves. One of the files that could be used was known as the .plan file. The plan file was a relic of the time when the net was primarily an academic place. A .plan would be used to describe the plan of study. As the scope of the net became larger, the plan files became something that people could change a bit more regularly to reflect what was going on. Before there were webcams, you could finger devices on the net, like a coke machine, and the .plan would describe their status.
In my mind, these .plan files were the true origin of weblogs. It's a bit of a stretch to see it if you have never lived in the pre-browser internet. But trust me, it's true.
Enough of my navel gazing, back to the book. Rebecca has some sound advice for someone wanting to start a weblog or make their existing weblog better. I thought the chapter on Finding an Audience is great. She is absolutely correct that regular visitors are the currency of weblogs. Whether people like to admit it or not, what people are craving with weblogs is attention. Everyone checks their referrer logs. If someone doesn't check their referrer logs, it's because they don't know how. She lists several good and practical methods to get people to visit your site and what to expect when they eventually do come.
The chapter on Weblog Community and Etiquette should be required reading before you can join blogger.com or start any other form of weblog. I think the idea of having an ethical code for your weblog is a good one. Since my weblog is kinda fluffy, I don't really run into these issues much. But there are many people who write about serious issues and they should at least attempt to have a code that they try to adhere to on an ongoing basis. I have read many sites that post anything without the least attempt to verify it's truthfulness.
On a more practical note, the book is full of helpful tips and how-tos for someone learning the basics of weblogging and online community. It's long enough to be worth the money, but it's short enough to finish the whole thing in a couple sittings. The three appendix sections do a good job of explaining the basics of creating a weblog, creating hyperlinks, and using third party weblog software.
I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone that finds weblogging interesting.
Check out this cool trick: TANJ and TANSTAAFL.
Put you cursor over the underlined words...
Thanks to Medic119 at SeaDoc.net for the tip.
In a test of TrackBack, I refer to my brother's post Dot-coms to hot-dogs? on his site.
He's talking about how many previously rich dotcommers are now finding jobs in less high tech, more service sector areas like selling food. Matt seemed to think this sounded gloomy.
My response was:
"Well I don't think it's so entirely depressing. America is unlike the rest of the world where wealth often takes precedence over personal time.
The rest of the world seems to be having much more fun and taking many more vacations than us.
The real question is are the people happy in their new jobs. If so, then it's probably a good thing. Life is short. Far too short to waste most of your time focused on a bank balance instead of a balanced life."
Maybe I just need a vacation...
After a fair amount of work, I have finally moved my weblog from my pusateri.org site to this site.
There are many cool new features, like comments, and I will be adding some new stuff soon.
Right now, it's past midnight and time for me to go to bed. Good Night.
Here's the funniest thing I've read on the net in a while:
"I think fanfic writers rank just below Everquest players and people who design webpages about their cats."
-Squidward, on fark.com
Readers of this page will probably remember the trouble I am having with my eyes. Since April, I've struggling with my eyes due to keratoconus and the fit of my special contact lenses. By wearing the ill-fitting lenses, I got a corneal ulcer on my left eye that took a few weeks to heal.
The company that makes the special lenses I wear stopped production at about the same time. I never got a straight answer why they stopped production. When I finally got a new set of lenses in the first week of July after a three month wait, they didn't fit. This was a 'very bad thing' because it meant I was going to have to order new lenses once again. Now I'm told that they may have them by the end of the month. End of the month? That's a two month wait and there's no guarantee that these will fit either.
Since April, I've been functioning only seeing out of my right eye. Glasses can't correct my problems. I can wear glasses for a short one to two hours before I start getting a headache. It's pretty much impossible for me to wear the glasses for an entire day. I've tried, and it just doesn't work. Driving with my glasses is dangerous at best. I done it a few times to the supermarker a quarter mile away, but I would never try it on the freeway.
Seeing the world out of one eye is a pain, but not impossible. Half of the world is blurry to me. I have to be extra careful driving due to my reduced field of vision and the lack of good depth perception.
The real worry to me is if I lose or damage the contact in my right eye. If I can't wear that contact, I effectively become blind. I wouldn't be able to drive. I would barely be able to use a computer for more than an hour. Work would very tough If I couldn't see for much of the day. While many others in the world have much larger crosses to bear, not being able to see clearly would have a huge impact on my life.
So it's all down to a thin piece of plastic. As long as I can still put the plastic contact in my eye, I can function in the modern world. If something happens to that contact and I can't wear it, my life will grind to a complete halt. What would I tell work? I can't come to work because I'm blind?
Until the new lenses arrive, I simply have to have faith that the lens will last. Faith in a thin piece of plastic.
My Brief History of HDTV got posted on Slashdot again.
I took the time to put it on a web page for future reference.
Bad news: Chick Hearn Dies
Good news: Conjoined twins safely seperated
Good news: Diet Vanilla Coke is coming
We need more days when the good outweighs the bad.
My brother said all that needs to be said about Chick Hearn. As I get older, the more and more I realize the importance of people in my life over possessions.
I'm waiting here for some guys from Corp IT to show up, so I think I'll goof off for a few minutes. This weekend I saw a post about blogtree.com. It's an interesting way to show the linkages between different weblogs.
You can see the Cruft entry by hitting the icon below.
So if you run a weblog that was inspired in some way by Cruft, you can register and add me as the parent. You can search on 'cruft' or use the blogid, 800. I think it would be very cool to see how all the weblogs interact.
Even if your weblog isn't inspired by Cruft, go register.
We had a great time at Casey & Heidi's party on Saturday. Tons of good food, close proximity to the beach and a 1/4 keg of beer combined with fun people leads to a good time.
There was one tragedy though. During the party I walked up to the liquor store with Len and I happened to pick up a Starbucks Doubleshot, the pure essence of ice coffee. back at the party, I showed it off and was about to drink it when Zoe had an allergic reaction to the cats and I had to leap into Dr. Daddy mode.
She had rubbed her eye after touching the cat and it was swelling up. I cleaned her up, gave her an anti-histamine, and calmed her down. When I returned to the back where I had left my Doubleshot, it was gone. Alas, I fear another guest drank it. Drank my precious...
On Sunday I completed the upgrade of Michele's computer.
She's now running an AMD 1700+ on a ECS mobo with a new Maxtor 60 Gig hard drive with Windows XP. It's smooth as glass. She's happy. I'm happy.
The girls start camp tomorrow. We went to a parents meeting today at 5 to introduce Mira to the counselors. Zoe and Mira are both quite excited. Michele is a bit pensive over the whoel thing. She wants them to go to camp, but she has all the normal worries a mother would have the day before camp starts. I'm sure once they come home happy and smiling all will be better.
So I'm messing about with my recent install of Movable Type and I have come to the realization that I will actually need to learn the basics of CSS to do what I want...
Learning? At my advanced age?
For those keeping track, I was up to 2:30AM working on Michele's computer. It was worth it though. The next day she was *ecstatic* about using Windows XP.
Yesterday I got involved in city politics. Here in South Pasadena, they big news is the desire of the school board to propose a $29 million bond to pay for a bunch of work on the Middle School. Michele and I talked about it and I decided to go to the school board meeting. As Michele says, I can 'talk that bullshit' with the best of them.
I headed out to the meeting. I walked into the city chambers and the Council just went into session. The first thing on the agenda was the public speaking where anyone could get in front of the council and talk for a minute. I was the youngest person in the room. One older person after another got up to the mic and blasted the council for the proposed traffic changes in town. I wondered when they were getting to the school bond issue. After about ten speakers, the city council was visibily tired of being called nincompoops. One guy got up and complained that the council hadn't put the meeting notice in the local paper. Angry senior citizens nodded their heads in agreement. Hrrm, I read about the meeting in the paper in the morning. The woman next to me leaned over and said, "If it wasn't for the school board meeting, there'd be more people here." Huh? I asked here if the council was going to talk about hte school bond. "Heaven's no," she said, "the school board meeting is somewhere else. This is just about the horrid traffic plan!" Damn. I walked out of the chamber. As I did, several in the audience stared at me. Perhaps they thought it was my protest gesture against the traffic plan.
After a short walk, I entered the school board meeting. There were 4 others in the audience watching the school board (6 people). As I sat down and flipped open the info packet, the chairmen said, "Well, that about wraps it up, are we ready to vote?" Damn. After a bit of parlimentary stuff they voted to place it on the ballot. Meeting adjorned.
First lesson of city politics: Be at the right place at the right time.
In other news:
Michele has continued to update her weblog. It take my utmost self control to not edit her entry and put in paragraphs. She was inpressed with the lifewithageek page and hopefully she can emulate a bit of the text formatting there before I am driven to drink.
It appears that Brad has been bitten by the weblog bug and has a case of weblogitis. [mrburnsvoice] Excellent [/mrburnsvoice]. He's on a cruise ship vacation, yet finds a way to update his weblog.
My other two progeny weblogs, Pat and Mike, continue to post but do not seem to be as obsessed as Brad.
The new hardware for Michels' computer showed up and I need to find time for the motherboardectomy. I splurged $20 on myself and got one of those cool front panel connection extension.
Cool, eh? Yes, I know it's geeky but I don't care. That's the CPU temperature measured directly off the heatsink. Woot!
One last thing, Matt updated Crookdimwit with a new top banner. It's neat, but I thought the Crookdimwit color was light blue not red.