morrowlife

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twenty squinting into the bright future, as promised yesterday. That’s San Francisco there in the background. Congratulations, LRN20 – it’s your Very Special Morrowlife Day! Even though your picture has appeared a time or two in conjunction with other Loyal Readers, you’re today’s star of the show.

Another busy work day today, with little else to talk about. I showed up at the train station at about 6:30 this morning, only to discover three school buses there. Oops. No train ride for me today. The drive was tolerable. At least I was able to stay a little late at the office. Not that I wanted to.

I’m right in the middle of one of the more interesting books I’ve read lately. It’s called The Life and Death of Classical Music, by Norman Lebrecht. The subtitle is “Featuring the 100 best and 20 worst recordings ever made.” It’s not really about music as much as the classical music recording industry. Although it’s certainly not what I expected when I picked the book up, it’s really a fascinating story. Recommended to all my Loyal Readers. Or at least the classical-music and/or recording industry ones.

Loyal Reader Number Four bought a bunch more plants to go around the pond. She got several nice ones for just a tiny bit of money, which is always a Real Good Thing. We need to spend a little time planting them tomorrow. And also fix the leak. And also dig the filter into the ground. And also a lot of other things. Probably.

Loyal Reader Number Three has some interesting ideas building on my boring video game idea. I’m particularly taken by that curling idea. As the link shows, curling has been done before, but not on the Wii, which will make all the difference. I think we can corner the boring sports market. I’m looking forward to seeing your preliminary designs, LRN3!

Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Two goes home early tomorrow morning. It’s been a nice visit and we’re sorry to see him go. Sayonara, LRN22.

And I’m off to bed. See you Monday.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Two displaying the “project” he and Loyal Reader Number One have been working on. Photo courtesy of LRN22 via his MacBook and Photo Booth.

Explanations may be in order. First, as you can see over there on the right, we have yet another new Loyal Reader! The Amazing Unstoppable Morrowlife Juggernaut rolls on. Welcome, LRN22. Today’s your Very Special Morrowlife Day.

I still owe Very Special Days to Loyal Readers Numbers Twenty and Twenty-One. Stay tuned for those.

And baby picture lovers can take heart – I got several exceptionally cute pictures of Loyal Reader Number Twelve today. They’ll be featured in this space Real Soon Now.

A few words about the “project.” As a highly-valued member of a cross-country team, LRN22 has an obligation to run for a certain period of time each day, with evidence of this activity recorded by his personal heart monitor. Presumably, the results of this daily monitoring will be submitted to a coach-like individual at some point as evidence of ongoing devotion to the sport. He and LRN1 got to wondering whether it might be theoretically possible to somehow make the heart monitor believe its owner was working up a sweat out on the highways and byways, when in fact he was relaxing in the comfort of his own home while a computer-based device generated realistically-simulated heart rate data for the monitor to record. Just as a Technical Demonstration, they hooked up the monitor to our Arduino, wrote some software blending multiple sine waves (I think they should have thrown some random data on top of the blended sine waves, but nobody asked me), and took some Scientific Measurements. I’m sure they’re not actually using this ingenious device for fraudulent purposes, of course.

Anyway. Drove to work today. It took two hours to get there, but only about 1:10 to get back. How can this be? Easy, I left work at about 8:00 this evening. Got a lot done, but it made for a long day. Which went by incredibly quickly because I was so busy. But I’m tired tonight.

I got a great idea for a new video game tonight. Tell me what you think: Blimp Racing. Two players (with two separately licensed copies of the game, of course) would go head-to-head to see who could travel from Bangor, Maine to Los Angeles, California the fastest. Wind currents would hold your blimp back for hours at a time. Frequent landings for food, candy and gum, restroom breaks, and changes of clothing would break up the nonstop action. Some shorter races would finish in as little as a week! We could have a really accurate simulation mode as well, for those aspiring blimp pilots. You could take off from Akron, Ohio, travel a thousand miles to the site of the Super Bowl, and hover overhead, displaying advertising slogans and filming a bird’s-eye view of the game. Wow!

I’m also considering America’s Cup sailboat racing as a follow-on game. I think I’ve invented a whole new video game sub-genre. The Loyal Readers are calling it “Boring Sports.” I’m going to start coding immediately. Gardenville Software employees, get to work!

So I’m going to cut this short. There’s so much to blog about, but my pillow calls out to me. Besides, the internet connection is scarily slow tonight, so I ought not to press my luck. See you tomorrow.

Here are some hardened criminals lined up in front of their cell block. They’re known on the street only as Loyal Readers Numbers One, Two, Twenty, and Twenty-One. Very frightening. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Four.

Spotty internet connection on the train this morning. There’s never been a good enough connection to connect to work email, but I’ve been doing pretty well getting into Blogger and a few other websites the last few days. Not today, though. Today, I have no idea whether what I’m typing will ever get onto the blog. Let’s hope.

I agree with Loyal Reader Number Four’s comment last night – it was pretty cool in the old neighborhood last night. It’s about 6:45 AM as I write this, and it’s still only 56 degrees in Lardville, so the heat of the past several days has certainly broken. It’s only supposed to get into the upper eighties today. Brrr!

I’m working harder than usual at work and still feel like I’m not accomplishing much. I have one colleague who’s struggling with feeling expendable, and he’s occupying an unnecessarily large amount of his and my time with it. He’s no more likely to be gotten rid of than the rest of us, so he might just as well learn to relax and go along for the ride. I think his only alternatives are to find something else to do that he can enjoy (a path I’ve taken before) or keep worrying, which I don’t think is a good choice.

Had a couple of good interviews yesterday, once again with people who are about to be laid off from Northrup Grumman in a plant closing. Our only problem with these folks is figuring out how to hire all of them – they’re excellent, and their experience is directly relevant. I’m hoping to make offers to at least a couple of them.

The Loyal Family went to the Apple store yesterday and got themselves some souvenirs – t-shirts and the like. They also got me an Apple badge reel, which I like very much. Thanks, Loyal Readers! Speaking of which, maybe we should try to talk Jonathan into being yet another new Loyal Reader. Think about it, Loyal Reader Number One.

Did I formally announce the addition of Loyal Readers Numbers Twenty and Twenty-one? There’s already been a picture of LRN21. In any case, I’ll try to have a Very Special Morrowlife Day for both of them Real Soon Now. I think there are pictures available of both.

Might as well end at this point. The train is about half an hour away from my station, and I still have emails I want to look at. See you tomorrow.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers Two and Twenty-one getting ready to set sail for Alcatraz island. They look pretty cheerful for people about to spend ninety-to-life on The Rock, don’t they? Maybe they have plans to get out of there a little bit more quickly, if you know what I mean.

Standard day at work yesterday (this is once again being written – and published! – on the train early in the morning) – I had about thirty “must do” items and got to about two of them. Sigh. At least I’m not bored. Interviewed a really good guy, who we’re going to make a job offer to. I sure hope I get a few more acceptances soon.

Home evening was nice. We spent an hour or two out in the pool/spa for activity and had some more of Sunday’s very good Father’s Day angel food cake and strawberries for treat. Yum.

At some point this week, the Loyal Readers and their friend are going to Apple headquarters in Cupertino to see the Holy Shrine of Appleness and buy a t-shirt at the gift shop. Then they’re going to the Winchester Mystery House. They also have a trip to the NUMMI factory scheduled sometime. When you throw in music lessons, Loyal Reader Number One’s tutoring job, and various other Standard Activities, they’re going to have a busy week. I’ll be in Sunnyvale.

Might as well get to some work emails while I have the chance. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve smiling for Grandma. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Four.

Greetings from the train! The wifi is now working well enough to get into Blogger but not to get into my work email server. So I still have to do that offline.

No Friday post – not even a Wonders of Blogger Saturday edition. No campout either. We decided not to trust non-reservation Forest Service campgrounds, so we went to the storage place to pick up the trailer for a trip to a commercial campground outside of Sacramento. Got to the lot at about 6:30 and it was closed. You have to go through a landscaping company’s parking lot to get into our storage, and when the landscaping company is closed, so is the storage lot. They were supposed to be opening a different entrance into the lot a year ago when we put the trailer there, but it looks like they won’t be able to do it for various vague legal reasons. I think we’ll have to make other storage arrangements. Sigh.

So why no Friday post? Eh. I didn’t feel like it.

So instead of camping, we just sort of hung around the house all weekend. Not that it was unpleasant – quite the contrary. I took Loyal Reader Number Twenty to the airport very early on Saturday morning. We certainly enjoyed his visit. Loyal Reader Number One’s friend from Denver arrived yesterday evening and Loyal Reader Number Twenty-One goes back home today. That’s three airport trips in three days, and I didn’t have to get on an airplane on any of them. That’s what I call a success story.

Father’s Day was very nice. The family showered me with numerous gifts, including some lovely dental floss, and I got to speak with various Loyal Readers and other loved ones on the phone. And they canceled most extra-curricular meetings at church, so it was a quiet day. Just like I like it.

Time to have a look at my work email. See you tomorrow.