Category Archives: uncategorized

Orange Crush

Here it is:

We picked it up last night, during the extremely nasty storm (fierce wind, torrential rain, crashing lightning, booming thunder, frightening hail, and wratch and such).

Now I just need one of these so I can listen to my iPod and not fill the car with CDs like I did the wagon.

And no, Bill, I didn’t buy it just to spite you. I’ve actually been planning (hoping for) this for a while now. The deals they offered this month proved too great for us to resist. They offered $1,000 back for the downpayment, they offered zero percent financing for five years, they accepted our GM Card money (which they usually don’t do), and they offered me way more than I expected for my wagon. When we arrived to do the paperwork, the salesman said, “Oh yeah, we found at lunchtime today that we’re offering an additional thousand dollars back.” So, that knocked another $1,000 from the loan amount.

Back from the Saddleback Valley

We’re from our first trip to California. Travel was smooth, weather was hot and muggy (for which all the native So-Cal folks apologized and theorized that we must have brought the humidity with us from Pennsylvania because, you see, it’s never like that here), the conference was awesome.

More later. I need to go to bed right now. I woke up very early to catch a plane home (actually, to Denver, then home). Yes, I realize that now that I’m back on the east coast, I didn’t really wake up as early as it seemed, but you know what? I’m still tired.

Keeping Child’s Mind

Mark Pilgrim: There is a concept in Zen Buddhism called “keeping child’s mind”. It means… well, it means many things, as all things in Zen do, but its meaning was never so clear to me as the other night. I watched the tape and thought about Disney-the-corporation and their lobbying efforts to extend the copyright on Mickey Mouse. Reminds of David’s assessment of Barney. The gist was that Barney reminded him of a cult leader: “I love you, children. Barney loves you!”

I dunno. Sure is a lot of crap around. As far as kids’ TV goes, however, I must give credit where it’s due. There are some excellent shows. One is Blue’s Clues. Another is Bear in the Big Blue House. And I love Rolie Polie Olie.

Outer Banks, Day Four (Monday, 6/2)

Read Day Three here.
Read Day Two here.
Read Day One here.

Sadly, Mary Anne wasn’t feeling very well this morning. Gracie, Jen, Clair, and I headed down to the beach to check things out. Gracie, as always, wanted to build a sand castle. Clair, meanwhile, dug a giant hole. I got in the water, even though it could only be described as heart-stoppingly cold. Yes, I went in all the way; my head was submerged. Hey, if I’m at the beach, I’m getting in the water.

We went back to the beach house after and got ready to climb into the hot tub, or as Gracie likes to call it, the hot pool. When I removed the cover, there was a small frog sitting on the control panel. Gracie immediately ran up and picked him up (she’s not afraid of critters, just motorcycles).

Mary Anne was feeling better, so we decided to walk down to the community pool. Mom had assured me that we didn’t need a pass to get in, despite the signs to the contrary. Immediately upon arrival, we were carded. Embarrassed, I explained that my mother was absolutely certain that we wouldn’t need the pool pass and that she had never needed it last year. The guy smiled and said, “I’m not always here.”

After the hot pool, we all got showered and changed, and then we faced a minor meltdown. Gracie hadn’t brought the right shirt to match with her green shorts. Needless to say, after the Emma incident in Ocean City, I wasn’t about to drive eight hours home and eight hours back for a shirt. She dealt with it. We discovered around this point that Mary takes even longer showers than Jen and I do. We found this satisfying.

We all decided to order pizza for dinner. Mom called the pizza shop and ordered three large pizzas with a few toppings, nothing fancy. “That will be $56.” Hmmm. On second thought, cancel that order. We’ll grill. Thanks anyway.

While we waited for the food to cook, Gracie and the women played cards. Gracie chose to play Go Fish, since we were at the beach. Around that time, I was checking out a decorative blanket with the lighthouses of North Carolina on it. I noticed on called Bald Head. So I called to my Dad, “Dad, there’s a lighthouse named after you!” He came up and looked at the blanket and said, “Yep, and it’s the shortest lighthouse on the east coast.”

After dinner, Gracie wanted to swing. Mary Anne and I took her down to the swingset, and my Dad showed up. Gracie dared him to swing on the monkey bars. My Dad never steps down from a challenge. He kicked off his docksiders, grabbed the monkey bars, and threw his legs into air, shoveling a fair amount of sand into his eyes in the process. When he regained his sight, he tried again. This time, he admirably held on to the monkey bars with the tops of his feet. Until they slipped. Presumably from the sand. In what has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen (because he was OK), he landed squarely on his back, in the exact same position he had been in while hanging.

Link Dump

The Steve Jobs weblog: Passed by an Indian buffet restaurant last night. They advertise “more than 100 items”. I really wonder where they got the idea from… OK, not that funny, but worth a chuckle or two.

Selling Singles: “If you download a single, you may ignore the other tracks on the album,” [Reiter] said. “When our artists record a body of work, it’s what they deem to be representative of their careers at that time.” Interesting. I was surprised to Green Day on the list, but not Metallica.

Fish Food: One key reason is that most of the Big Event movies have lost any glimmer of individuality. The problem isn’t just that they’re sequels, but that they’re all bulked-up, 1950’s-style B-movies, crawling with sci-fi mutants, cyborgs, military experiments gone awry, drag racing and Vargas-like pinup girls. He’s saying that like it’s a bad thing!

Mac Addiction: But this is the kind of “thinking system” that computing needs more, and Apple deserves kudos for providing it. Yeah!

Miracles of the Next (Past) Fifty Years. Worth reading.

Jargon: Even the word megahertz, commonly used in advertisements for home computers, mystified many. I must confess that sometimes I use obscure acronyms where every day words would suffice. Not often.

A new Mac news site: MacBytes. Looks like a pretty decent newsfeed.