morrowlife

Here are a couple of non-readers in the rocks. We like them anyway.

The first Intel-powered Macs were announced at the Macworld Expo tonight. Joy reigns in Macland! I gotta get me one of them.

We went to James Monroe’s house, Ash Lawn-Highland, over the Christmas holidays. It’s in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is very close to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s house, and Montpelier, James Madison’s house. Monroe, Madison, and Jefferson were not only neighbors, they were good friends. Monroe seems to have gotten the worst of it among the three, as he never really had much money, and his house wasn’t all that great. Still, he was the president, so they have the place open to the public.

My favorite part of the tour was when we visited the part of the house Madison himself built. The floor was so crooked you could hardly stand up straight. I guess he was a better politician than a builder. Everybody has to be good at something. He did give us the Monroe Doctrine, which basically promised Europeans we would stay out of their hair and warned them to stay out of ours. It served us well for quite a long time. He also worked out the Lousiana Purchase when he was Secretary of State. Not a bad legacy there. So, I can forgive him for having a lousy house. He gave a lot of service and didn’t get much of this world’s goods in return.

Still, his statue is in pretty bad shape.

As promised yesterday, here’s Aunt Sandy and the sea lion (or seal or dolphin or mollusk or something in the ocean or a river or somewhere). It was taken at the Detroit zoo last summer. They have an arctic exhibit with a pretty cool underwater tube you walk through.

Number One and I went to our friend Ross’s sixteenth birthday party at the Extreme Sports Center (can’t find a link, sadly – maybe a reader can find it for me) tonight. It was a lot of fun and the place is very cool. It has two indoor soccer fields, one of which was reserved for us to play touch football. We had fun, although I’m in quite a lot of muscle pain today. I don’t do much running around these days. Maybe I should start. Maybe not.

To the bedmobile! See you on Monday.

As promised yesterday, here’s a picture of reader number three on his wedding day a little more than a year ago. Delightful, no?

They went home this morning. We got a call a little bit ago to tell us they arrived safely. I’m still sad to have them gone. I’m also so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open. Spent the whole day that way. I’m going to bed in a few minutes, that’s for sure.

I took a little time this evening to try to organize my scouting stuff – I’ve been feeling like it’s spread pretty much all over the house and I can’t ever find anything when I need it. Hopefully, that will improve with tonight’s little bit of organization.

I’ve been studying C++ and generally enjoying the textbook, but I don’t think I have any applications inside me waiting to come out right now. I’m also looking into how to create Dashboard widgets now. Maybe a brilliant idea along that line will come to me.

I listened to a podcast today about a service called Pandora. It’s a website that creates a streaming “radio station” based on your preferences. You enter an artist or a song you like, and it picks others it thinks you will like too. It’s based on a quite advanced algorithm that takes into account about 400 variables for each song. I played with it a little bit after I got home from work tonight and must say it pretty much works as advertised. The user interface is slick too. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Tomorrow’s picture: Aunt Sandy and the sea lion. See you then.

Here’s a group of people watching a guy giving a presentation on racing pigeons in a Pennsylvania State Park campground. It was actually an interesting presentation, and both the people and the pigeons were fascinating.

Paul and Melissa are going home tomorrow morning. Boo hoo! I’m really going to miss them. Come back soon, Number Three and spouse!!

I’m too sad to write any more tonight. Besides, it’s just after 11:30 PM at this point, and I have to get up at 5:00 tomorrow morning. Off to bed.