morrowlife

Here’s a bear head. Taken at the Detroit Zoo, which has quite a nice polar bear exhibit. Which is appropriate, given that polar bears are quite at home there for much of the year. Part of my famous Statue series. (Note: picture publishing is not working. Again. Doggone Blogger. Come back Real Soon Now and look at the cool picture as soon as they fix their doggone system.)

Beautiful, sunny day today. It was warm too. Quite warm, in fact. It’s supposed to be in the 90’s for the next week or so, except for Friday, when it will be in the hundreds. The pool’s nice and warm.

Went to the first day of a three-day class on cost account management. Valuable stuff for my current job, and possibly useful for the future software business too. Although I hope to never get big enough to require cost account management. Or badges. If we make badges it will be strictly for grins. Not that there’s too much fun in making badges, but you never know.

Anyway, this is two weeks of training in a row. Too much.

Speaking of the business, we’re not really getting anywhere right now. I’ve been concentrating on my little electronics projects, which haven’t had a place in the Business Plan. Not that there’s one of those. I hope we never need that either. Anyway, maybe those projects will turn out to be useful too. I hope so. In the meantime, Loyal Reader Number Three reports that he’s starting to work on something to run on the PC/Xbox platform. Good luck, LRN3!

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two did a little bit of canoeing tonight at Young Men. They’re preparing for the High Adventure trip next week. They went to Dos Reis, which is where we’ve decided to camp this Thursday through Saturday. Which we’re looking forward to. Need to find some horseshoes, since that’s about all they have to do there, other than hang out in the trailer and walk around the loop.

Anyway. Today’s controversy: Should the Prince have paid the interest? I say no. He’s technically not the one to run up the debt, so he doesn’t technically owe it. But it was a nice gesture anyway.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two performing some sort of strange ritualistic dance on a frog. Very scary. Taken at the Detroit Zoo. Part of my statue series.

What a beautiful Friday! It was a work day, and there was plenty of it for me to do, but things are going great.

There was a moderate amount of interest in yesterday’s controversy. Inputs appear to be unanimous in favor of the correct (Over) toilet paper orientation, which impels me to ask the obvious question: who is putting all those toilet paper rolls in the Under position?

I did notice that Loyal Reader Number Sixteen’s toilet paper was Under during our recent visit there. We had such a nice time that I was reluctant to point out this obvious problem, but I did notice it.

Who else is suffering under this odious burden?

This is the last post before the Happiest Day of the Year! That’s right, my birthday is on Sunday. Extravagant gifts are still being accepted. Not to worry, though. If I don’t get any extravagant gifts, I’ll just buy some of my own.

The trouble is that I’m having a hard time thinking of things to put on my wish list. I always just buy everything I want, so it’s pretty tough to come up with a gift. Suggestions are welcome.

Oh, and don’t worry about it if you miss the Happiest Day of the Year. The Second Happiest Day of the Year is the following Sunday – Father’s Day! What a great month.

Today’s controversy: Super-convenient foods. Dumb? Or just stupid? Would you buy a pre-dunked Oreo?

Speaking of which, is this is as lazy as it gets? Or is there something even lazier?

See you Monday.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two in front of the Detroit Zoo’s famous bear statue, now a part of my famous Statue series. The bears are on the right. Picture taken this afternoon.

Greetings from Detroit! Well, from Royal Oak, anyway. We arrived – only two hours late – at about 2:00 this morning. Stayed up talking until 4:30 or so and finally got to bed. Everybody’s a little sleepy this evening.

The plane from Chicago was delayed nearly two hours because of a problem with the cabin lighting system. They had a tech in there fiddling with it for quite a while. The lights would dim, go off, and come back on. Over and over again. I imagine he thought it might start working right if he just turned them on and off enough times. Finally, he signed them off and we were on our way.

Watched a bunch of Chris on Camera shows on the iPod while we were waiting. Also saw Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. I had downloaded that one from the Internet Archive, I believe. It’s an old Soviet Russian science fiction movie that was poorly dubbed into English. It was (unintentional) ridiculous nonsense from beginning to end. Recommended, but you won’t want to see it more than once. Trust me. At least it’s free.

Went to the zoo today, as you know. The weather was cool and cloudy, and it had been raining earlier. Perfect weather for hanging around outside. We wore sweaters and had a great time. We’re off to the Henry Ford Museum tomorrow, which was one of our three objectives for the trip. The others being Greenfield Village and visiting with family (link warning: this is perhaps the most unreadable website I have ever seen – proceed at your vision’s own risk). So far, so good.

Time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a guy with the thinnest head I’ve ever seen. Part of my famous Statue series. Taken in Pisa.

Extreme Short Shrift yet again. Worked until 8:30 this evening. It always happens on my last day before a vacation. There are things that Simply Must Get Done. So I stay and do them.

Anyway. The Detroit trip (doesn’t everybody go to Detroit for Memorial Day?) starts tomorrow, so bloggage will be non-existent tomorrow and spotty for the next five days. If the relatives have WiFi, I’ll be there.

In the meantime, just be glad we’re not going to Gough Island.

See you …umm… soon.

Here’s another in my famous statue series. This one, like so many others, is in Pisa. Cute little guys, no?

No time tonight for much blogging. I stayed an hour and a half late at work and the evening is just gone. On the other hand, I really didn’t get home any later than I would have otherwise – I got two email messages before I left the office telling me the last two trains were seriously delayed by a broken down freight train. Again. I saw what I believe was the second train coming into Lardville just as I was about to get off the freeway, and the third one (my usual train) seems to have arrived shortly afterward. Monday evenings have not been good for the ACE people.

Why did I stay late at work? Other than the fact that I have way too many things piled up, that is? Well, I was coding. That’s right, actually coding for money, just like I used to do. I think I haven’t coded at work since at least 1998. I really enjoyed it. I only added about six or eight lines of code to a Perl script, but it took a little effort because I had to study the tool, which had been written three years ago by somebody who is no longer working there and I had to learn enough Perl to get it done. It works!

The weekend campout went just fine. I got home in plenty of time to pick up the trailer and get set up long before dark. I built a nice campfire, took care of the charcoal for the Dutch ovens (delicious chocolate pudding cake – need to keep that recipe), and relaxed a little while the Young Women did their planning for next year’s Girls’ Camp. In the morning, I made myself slightly useful taking down a few tents and cleaning up and managed to sneak in a little more relaxation. Everything considered, it was a pleasant evening and morning.

Let’s see, what else did I accomplish this weekend? Not much that I can recall. I didn’t even use the Wonders of Blogger on Saturday, as sort of promised. Need to do better next week at making a list and checking it three times. Heaven knows there’s plenty to do. Even if it’s no more than getting a car washed and waxed.

The Weather Channel tells us it’s going to be over 100 degrees in Lardville on at least Thursday of this week, with temperatures well into the 90s before and after. Yikes. Maybe the pool will be warm enough to swim in by the weekend.

I was delighted to receive a comment from Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Two on Thursday’s post. Sadly, I have to answer that the new GPS doesn’t plug into a computer. It has only one connector, which is for an external antenna. We’re talking basic, mil-spec unit here. However, I have to agree with LRN22 that it would be cool to have one that did that.

Still hope to find my first geocache sometime this week. Friday seems like a likely candidate.

I followed a link to an interest website today – Clutterers Anonymous. I’ve been trying to figure out ever since whether this is a serious website or a joke. Any opinions from listeners? I could certainly use some help reducing a little clutter in my world. I guess I should really surrender to my Greater Power in that regard.

Here’s another interesting website I found today. How to go about making a movie, and not just how to point the camera. As with most things, the mundane aspects of the job consume most of the time and energy. Kind of like blogging, no? The site hosting this tutorial seems pretty interesting itself. Lots of classes.

I found those websites when I was digging around on Lifehacker. It’s a pretty cool site dedicated to personal productivity. It’s normally a beautiful-looking site too, but it appears right now as if their CSS files have disappeared. I hope they’re not another victim of the Chinese hackers.

Speaking of productivity sites, I also like 43 Folders. Highly recommended for people who want to get things done. Also for people who like Macs – that’s where I found Quicksilver.

Anyway. Time for bed. Remind me to mention a few new podcasts tomorrow. See you then.