morrowlife

Here’s a duck we spotted at Chabot Park recently. He and the missus were watching their three babies. He looks just a little suspicious of us here, doesn’t he? Part of my famous Camping and Bird series.

Extreme Short Shrift. It was Massive Meeting Tuesday. Drove the Miata today, so there was no blogging from the train, either.

All’s well. The weather has been incredibly pleasant – cooler than usual, I believe, and sunny and beautiful.

Thanks to LRN1 for his comment on yesterday’s post on glowing snakes. They’re cool, but they’re not quite real. The search continues.

So I’ll leave you with some food violence news: When going to the zoo, don’t eat the Sno-Cones. Really.

No comments on my gardenvillesoftware.com questions yet. I’d really like to know what you think.

Much more information tomorrow. See you then.

Here’s LRN2 on the way to one of our geocaches at Chabot. Part of my famous Camping series.

Happy birthday to me! It’s been a nice day on all fronts.

We actually celebrated my birthday yesterday. LRN5 was there for the afternoon, which was extra nice. I received some nice gifts and a great dinner.

Spoke with my Mom last night and my Dad, brother, and sister today. It’s always possible that more loved ones will call tonight or tomorrow. What a great day.

Just one small negative note today – LRN4 discovered a flat tire on the Suburban this morning. Sadly, it was the result of yet more vandalism. Welcome to California. Costco cheerfully replaced the tire at no cost, as part of their no-cost tire warranty. I like Costco and plan to give them a lot more tire business.

LRN1 had his wisdom teeth removed on Saturday morning. It was a tough weekend for him. He’s still in pain, but is recovering well. The swelling, which was never very bad, is already receding. One more missionary checklist item completed. Probably the most painful one.

LRN1 and I stayed home on Sunday. We watched a bunch of TV shows on Hulu. Sat unhappily through a bunch of (unattributed) Microsoft commercials for their stupid Bing search engine. No mention of Microsoft or what Bing is, of course. Just announcements of today’s “Bing-athon.” Looks stupid. The harder Microsoft tries to be cool, the more uncool they are. Sigh. I read somewhere they have a $100 million advertising budget for Bing. Maybe if they would put that kind of money into their product, they wouldn’t have to try to fool people into using it. Double sigh.

I got yet more good news today – all the YW camp counselor callings are filled! Woo hoo! It’s been a struggle. Now I’m looking forward to getting to camp. Should be a pleasant week.

LRN2’s been working on an article for spinfo.info. He reviewed the very cool game called flOw. It’s a strangely compelling game. Highly recommended. See the article for a description. You can play online or download it for free.

I need to shoot him a copy of sumotori. Also worth playing.

I’m also working with LRN1 on making gardenvillesoftware.com a destination for Arduino enthusiasts. He’s working on documenting the MARV on an ongoing basis. And I’m adding a few links to interesting Arduino projects.

I’m still struggling with gville’s focus. Here’s something my Loyal Readers could help me with. Or something with which my Loyal Readers could help me, to avoid ending the sentence with a preposition.

Anyway, what’s your opinion? There are several decisions to be made:

1) Should we abandon the gville domain for something easier to remember, more descriptive, or hipper?

2) Should we eliminate anything not related to Arduinos or talk about anything in tech that interests us?

3) Should we get a new website design and/or logo? If so, what?

4) Should we eliminate the currently-unused Forums feature or try to get it used?

5) What else should we change?

I’d really love to hear some opinions.

Today’s important glowing animal update: they have glowing babies! Still waiting for the snake version.

Time for other things. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Great Art featuring . . . Great Art. Talk about confusing. Some of the painters seemed to have a bit of Artistic Temperament, an affliction that fortunately doesn’t affect me. My talent is pure. Part of my famous Camping series.

Fine day at work, although the commute was less than perfect. Moved pretty well until I got the where two lanes were closed for an accident. Got there eventually, though.

It was really crowded getting to the temple. Took a little more than an hour to make a 45-minute drive, which really isn’t too bad, all things considered. The temple session was very nice and I’m glad I went. Saw a few people from the ward, plus a woman who introduced herself as somebody I called to serve at Young Women Camp. I’ve spoken with a whole bunch of people and don’t have any idea who they are in person. I have a lot of names to learn this summer.

LRN1 is having his wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow. We’re hoping for the best but expecting him to feel pretty bad for a few days. Good luck and a speedy recovery, LRN1!

What with temple night and all that, it’s late. Weekend plans pretty much center around helping LRN1 out. There’s also the lawn to be trimmed, the filters to be cleaned, and a car to be washed. Plus a navigation system to be written. Ought to be both action-packed and relaxing.

No food violence, no toilet news. The world is at peace.

Next blog: my birthday! See you Monday.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One, Two, and Four on the beach at Anthony Chabot Regional Park. Part of my famous Camping series.

Welcome to June. Ironically, it’s taken an unusually cool turn and we may have some rain before the week’s out. What happened to my global warning?

No, don’t get me started in that. Bunch of dopes.

Fine weekend. The campout was a success, if a little cool, weather-wise. I mentioned to LRN4 that we appear to be destined to camp in the cold this year. She suggested we may have found a new way to combat global warming.

Anyway. The park was pretty. It was supposed to have been quite full, although we didn’t really feel it. Our site was right at the beginning of the first loop, and we saw a lot of cars go in, but that was about all we saw of them.

We had full hookups, so we didn’t see any crowds at the showers, either.

Strangely, we saw more rental motorhomes there than we’ve probably ever seen anywhere else put together. We never figured out why, but there was plenty of speculation.

Had a cold but nice campfire the first night and spent the second playing games. Cooked in the crockpot, found a few geocaches, ate french fries at the marina store, watched people oil painting and fishing, and hiked around a little. Fully successful trip.

LRN1 is at an open-source software conference in San Francisco today, apparently sponsored and put on by Sun. We texted a little during the day, and he appears to be enjoying it even more than he expected. I’m looking forward to hearing about it.

He’s planning to stay a little while after the conference, for the after-conference party. Says he wants to see how geeks party. I’m not so sure he’ll like it. He said the general tenor of the crowd was somewhat adult and corporate, so it ought to be fairly sedate.

LRN2 has an article ready for Spinfo, which means the time to put up a framework for his content is here. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. We’ll see how the times goes.

Things are otherwise quiet. Our friends the Taylors are coming over this evening to give us a delicious dessert, in honor of LRN4’s birthday. How kind! I’m looking forward to their visit.

Today’s toilet news: They’re highly prized items.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a nice little island at Chabot park. Part of my famous Camping series.

Well, another work week comes to an end. Spent the evening quietly at home. Enjoyed every quiet minute of it. We skipped adult dance instruction at the church this evening. Turns out we preferred a quiet evening at home.

LRN1 has decided to change the development system for the MARV from the Arduino’s IDE to Cocoa, using some libraries provided by the Arduino people and a toolkit called Crosspack, which is an AVR cross-compiler provided by some third party. I’m probably going to get my machine set up to do the same thing, just so I can keep up with events. I’ll probably drop my Arduino simulator in favor of a native Mac or Linux navigation program that can be recompiled for the Arduino. Must remain flexible.

In today’s food violence news, the gorillas are getting restless. Keep your bananas locked up.

Still no winners in my Dollar Movie Challenge. Still no entrants, for that matter. What’s up, Loyal Readers?

Monday is Memorial Day – three-day weekend! See you then.