morrowlife

How about another Nassau picture today? (Link alert: ocean sounds.) It’s freezing cold, the wind is blowing at a million miles per hour, and it would be great to feel warm. Of course, in a few months, I’ll be wishing I could just feel cold again. Some people are never satisfied.

Anyhow, this guy was riding his horse along the beach. Looks pretty cool. I imagine that’s how he makes his living – I wonder what his schtick is. All I know is I wouldn’t want to be the guy swimming behind him.

Although this post’s date says Friday, I’m actually writing this on Saturday night. I didn’t get to write anything last night because I was camping with the scouts. It went pretty well and I think everybody had a good time. We spent some of the very windy evening inside the church having our paper airplane contest. We went through a lot of sheets of paper, had prizes for distance, hang time, and accuracy, and generally enjoyed it. Ian won twice and Braden won once. Afterwards, the boys played dodge ball (with a big, soft, red ball) in the dark cultural hall. It looked like a lot of fun. I didn’t play because I have a family to support and didn’t want to break any of these old, brittle bones. Turns out I wouldn’t have broken any anyway.

Off to Luxembourg tomorrow. I’m bringing my laptop computer with me, so I hope to be able to post while I’m there. If not, I’ll arrange for a guest poster. One way or the other, keep reading!

I saw this fungus (or whatever it is – link warning: sound!) growing on a log during a camping trip and loved the colors. It looks good enough to eat! But I don’t recommend it.

Yea! An official welcome goes out to Reader Number Seven – our good friend Hannah from Colorado. Check out the list on the right. Now we just need to get you to send us your picture so you can be Prominently Featured. Send it in!

Reader Number One noticed that I omitted links yesterday. Sorry about that. I didn’t see anything to link to at first glance, but I was definitely wrong. I’ll make up for that today.

Went over this evening to visit my good friend Mike – Andy and I home teach his wife Teresa and him. They both have lots of physical challenges, but you never, ever hear them complaining, and they manage to do a lot and to enjoy themselves. It’s one of the highlights of my week when I get to go over and visit them. The conversation is always fascinating and the energy level over there is high (they probably think just the opposite, but they’re wrong). Mike doesn’t just have every gadget there is, he has eight of each. Pretty cool.

Today’s bad news is that I had to stay at work a couple hours longer than usual today. I’m traveling to Europe on Sunday night, and I just had to get some things done, not the least of which was a little fire drill on a requirement change our launch vehicle supplier is proposing to incorporate. They hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it until today, and we needed to run it to ground as quickly as possible. It looks like everything will be fine, but we had to run around and panic a little bit first.

Today’s good news is that tomorrow is my off Friday. I’m going camping with the scouts in the afternoon, as mentioned before. I need to make a quick list of things that need to be done before I start my mega-travel and work on some of them tomorrow morning. There will also be a few hours on Saturday afternoon, but that’s about it, what with the camping trip taking up all morning and the stake dance in the evening. Then I’ll pack up on Sunday morning, go to church, and head for the airport immediately after. Or maybe even during.

It’s supposed to get down to 23 degrees tomorrow night, and up to about 40 on Saturday, with rain in the afternoon. It sounds just a little iffy for the campout, but certainly not bad enough to entertain cancelling. The show must go on!

I’ll try to remember my camera for the campout. The blog photo list must be fed!

The book club should go up tomorrow. Possible guest bloggers next week. See you Friday.

Here’s Reader Number Four with her hand-made rock scuplture. It kind of looks like a duck, doesn’t it? Good work, Reader Number Four!

We have a very mysterious comment on yesterday’s post. Somebody is claiming to be Reader Number Seven! Naturally, I’m delighted. However, it would definitely be a good thing if that person would identify him/herself. That way, we could give him/her proper credit over there on the right and do our traditional feature picture. Speaking of which, I’m still hoping Reader Number Six will send me a picture of himself for his traditional feature.

I’ve been indulging in a little fantasy this afternoon. We learned today that our company is going to be laying off a substantial percentage of the workforce. I doubt it will affect me, but it occurred to me suddenly this afternoon that if we worked the finances just right, got a couple of good breaks, and were careful spenders, I could just retire. I wouldn’t have to work another day in my life if I didn’t want to. Of course, we’d have to make a lot of changes, and I might get sick of being retired after a couple of years, but it would sure be cool to try. Besides, I could get another job in a couple of years if I wanted to – maybe be a high school physics, math, or computer science teacher. Then I would still have summers off. Let’s hope they lay me off! No, not really, I guess. Things will probably stay just exactly the way they are right now. There will probably be a better time for retirement in a few more years.

Still, it would sure be great to be permanently at home while Mark and Andy are still there too.

Not too much else new today. Scouts went okay, I suppose, but our Woodworking merit badge counselor didn’t show up, so I had to punt. We did a little bit of first aid that was received pretty well. We also named our large camp stove. It’s no Mahonri Moriancumr, AKA Moe. Great.

Back to ENIAC. I’ll work on the book club soon.

Here’s my proposed new design for the computer desk of the future. Actually, they may have done a lot of things right back then. I’ve been reading a little bit from people who have stand-up desks, and they seem to be pretty much an ideal way to write. The desk in today’s picture is beautifully made, has lots of storage space inside, is pretty ergonomically sound, and even has several strategically-placed lighting sources. Not that candles are necessarily the best light for writing, but you have to admit they’re cool.

Spent the day getting a bunch of little things out of the way – things like travel authorizations for the next month’s worth of travel and deliveries of a few documents to launch service providers. I never got to the main thing I wanted to do today, but I hope to be able to spend most of the day tomorrow on it. It’s got to get done before I leave for my campaign in two weeks, and I’ll be spending a week of that time on travel in Luxembourg. It’s pretty much now or never.

My evening was mostly taken up with scouting and finishing my 25 weekly pages of the Old Testament. At this rate, I’ll read the whole thing before the year’s out.

I’ve been thinking of adding a book club on the right side of this page – kind of like Oprah, but much better books and much lamer execution. I would just list recently-read books, my current reading, and what’s on the pile. Maybe there would be links to significant sites related to the books. What do my Esteemed Readers think of the idea?

I have to go pick Mark up from Barbershop practice in a couple of minutes, so it’s time to quit! So long.

Here’s Reader Number Two climbing around on the rocks at Worlds End State Park. What a great park! I really want to go back there again. I really want to go camping anywhere. With my family that is.

I already have frequent chances to camp with the scouts, which is also a lot of fun, but it’s a different kind of fun. We’re going this coming weekend, although we’re only camping on top of the septic system at the church, since we’re working on our video on Saturday morning in church kitchen. We’re planning a paper airplane flying contest in the Hall of Culture on Friday evening. Since we’ll be at the church, we can’t have a campfire, of course, and we need to be particularly good neighbors, so we’ll find fun things to do inside. It will be fun regardless.

But the real camping fun this year will be our family trip to Ohio and Illinois (along with other possible destinations) in the first two weeks of August, as mentioned in a previous column. I’m ready to go right now.

Elizabeth, my friend and co-worker from San Diego, Denver, and McLean, came up to Newtown to work on an ICD with me today. We had her come over for dinner this evening too. It was really nice to see her and catch up on things. Today’s work went really well too, and I got a great sushi lunch out of it to boot.

I listened to a new podcast tonight. It’s called Daily Giz Wiz and features Dick de Bartolo and Leo Laporte. de Bartolo is a very entertaining guy who discovers and writes/talks about all kinds of neat little gadgets. He used to appear on The Screensavers pretty often, along with several other more networky shows. He’s also a longtime writer for Mad Magazine, which I really enjoyed as a young person. His website is here. Anyway, the podcast was pretty cool. It’s supposed to become a short daily show, and I’m really looking forward to hearing it every day.

Right now, I’m listening to an old Charlie Chan radio show. Very entertaining. I’ve found a website or two with some old shows available for download. Unfortunately, they’re pretty heavy on Red Skelton shows – not my favorite – and too light on Bob Hope and a few others I enjoy quite a bit more. I would love to find some old Blondie shows. Readers are invited to let me know where they are (for free, of course).

I finished reading The Psychology of Everyday Things. It wasn’t exactly what I had thought it would be, but it was fascinating nonetheless. It’s basically a treatise on what makes for good design, which it basically defines as ease of use. I especially enjoyed the early parts of the book where numerous examples of bad design are given. The examples hit pretty close to home. If you look around a little bit, you can find practically unlimited examples of hard-to-use things, including such commonplace things as doorknobs and telephones. Very amusing and informative. I recommend the book. Just don’t expect it to be a psychology book – it’s more of a human factors engineering treatise.

Having finished that book, I’ve started Eniac, by Scott McCartney. It’s a history of Eckert and Mauchly, the designers of the first digital computer. I’m only nine pages into it, so it’s way too early to tell if it’s any good, but the subject is a fascinating one to me – the history of computing and the people who were there from the beginning. I’ll keep my loyal readers informed of my progress and opinions. I’m sure they’re dying to know.

It’s just a few minutes after nine o’clock, but I’m really sleepy, so it’s time to quit. Besides, Charlie Chan is done. I was too busy typing to find out who done it, so I’ll have to listen again soon. The suspense is killing me! Good night.