morrowlife

Here’s a very stoic-looking old guy.  Statue courtesy of the Middle Ages and Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone cam, taken at Bryn Athyn, and part of my famous Statue series.

My, I’ve been a delinquent blogger.  No wonder my Loyal Readers are deserting me in droves.

I’ve been at the old Pennsylvania homestead alone for the last week and a half.  LRN4 has been in California getting our stuff in the house packed up and loaded.  Now she’s in Nevada getting it unloaded and unpacked.  She got rid a of a ton of stuff, and it’s still pretty full.  By the time our stuff from here gets there, there’ll apparently be even more to throw away.  Still, it’s good to minimize.  Don’t want the house to feel overstuffed, do we?

Anyway.  I’ve been here alone for a while.  Not much time for fun – I’ve been working long hours, seven days a week.  We’re very close to the major event I’ve been preparing for over the past year, so there’s been lots to do.  Just a little bit longer, and we’ll be free!

Ordered my Christmas present the other night.  I can’t say [amazon asin=B0042Z55RM&text=what it is], of course, but I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy it.

And it’s past bedtime, as usual.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: cooking chimp!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN3 posing with a new friend.  That’s LRN3 over there on the right.  I’m not sure which is scarier – the dragon statue with blood dripping from its teeth or LRN3’s t-shirt.  Let’s call it a draw.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Longwood Gardens, and part of my famous Statue series.

By the way, the blood-dripping dragon head is part of Longwood’s kiddie-land.  Pretty sweet.

Working like a dog this week.  And not one of those eat-and-sleep dogs, either.  I’ve really got the old nose to the grindstone.  Fifty-six hours so far and there’s still one day left this week.  I’m getting lots done but barely seem to be treading water work-quantity-wise.  Sheesh.  Only about two more months to go on this job, so I don’t mind it too much.  I mind it, but not too much.

Speaking of work, we got great news today!  We’ve decided we want to move the furniture and other household stuff we have here to our house in Las Vegas.  That’s going to cost a bit and we were trying to figure out an affordable way to get it done.  Since the company is moving our stuff back home after my current assignment is over, we decided it wouldn’t hurt to at least ask if they would move it to the new place.  I asked, but had next to no hope.  We heard today that they’ve approved it!  Amazing!  That absolutely made my day.  Which was not an extremely happy one, what with all the work and such.

Anyway, our stuff will go to Las Vegas and LRN4 and I will have two livable places to stay.  We’ll have to shuttle some clothes and other stuff back and forth to get everything where we want it for a while, but that’ll be no problem.  But we’ll have furniture, kitchen stuff, and pretty much all the other supplies we need in both places.  Very happy.

Let’s see, what else is going on?  LRN3 and LRN15 ended their visit on Sunday after a very nice weekend.  I worked some on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but was able to do it from home, so that was good.  I pretty much kept it to times when we weren’t doing other things, so no complaints.  Plus, I’ve made a pretty good amount of money out of it.

Anyway.  Back to our weekend.  LRN3 spent the morning and early afternoon on Friday with us at Longwood Gardens (see picture above).  They were having their world-famous Chrysanthemum Festival, which was actually nice.  Not as flashy as February’s Orchid Festival, but there were some really nice floral displays.  I’ll try to add slip in a picture or two in the near future.  We stopped for lunch on the way home and still made it home in plenty of time for LRN15’s arrival.  We didn’t do too much on Saturday – LRN4 went with LRN3 and LRN15 to the new James Bond movie, which they all enjoyed, while I stayed home and worked a few hours.  Sunday morning rolled around and they left.  We were sad to see them go, but they’ll be back again next month.

The other great news is that, after giving it very careful consideration, LRN3 and LRN15 have decided they would rather move to Las Vegas than to Mesa.  Cheaper rent, more buffets, and the Liberace Museum were what turned the tide, I suspect.  So we have high hopes that within about a year, we’ll start seeing them even more regularly than we have here.  Save your money, LRN3 and LRN15!

And it’s already time for bed, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: turkey truck hijacking!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s an ancient statue hiding away in a corner of the old owner’s mansion at Bryn Athyn.  It’s probably a highly-significant religious artifact.  Me, I like the dunce cap.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Statue series.

LRN3 got here on Monday.  We’ve had a nice few days together.  I took a guitar lesson from him last night and hope to have another one tomorrow.  Needed to let my poor fingertips rest for a day.  Learned a couple of CCR songs.  Sort of.  If I keep practicing them, I might actually be able to play them someday.  Movie night tomorrow night at the Impenetrable Apartment of Doom’s cool little theater room.  Friday morning, we’re going to Longwood Gardens to check out the Chrysanthemum Festival.  We’re looking forward to LRN15’s arrival on Friday evening.  We’re planning on setting up the Christmas tree on Saturday.  I know that’s bizarrely early, but we’ll enjoy having family here to do it, and that’s the only time they’ll be here before the actual holiday week.

We’re planning to buy the cheapo $20 artificial tree from Target.  LRN4 seriously considered the nicer, taller $50 version, but it’s just too darned fluffy to comfortably fit in our little apartment.  So we’re getting the short, skinny version.  We have a few dollar-store decorations LRN4 found.  Strangely, I think the tree will look really nice.  I’m looking forward to next year’s Christmas, though, when we have our decorations.  Which are currently languishing in our garage in California.

Hopefully, she’ll have an easy trip up here.  It snowed pretty much all day today and continues at this late hour (roughly 10:24 PM EST).  We’re supposed to have up to about four inches of the stuff on the ground by tomorrow morning.  I suspect it’ll be gone fairly quickly, though.  It’s not time yet for permasnow.  Maybe in December or January.  This is just a nor’easter, which is exactly what all the people in New Jersey and New York who still don’t have electricity don’t need.  We’ll be just fine.  I only hope I can get to work tomorrow.  If not, I’m in a bit of trouble, since I didn’t bring my work laptop home.  Although that might make it a bit better, now that I think of it.

Spent some time this evening watching another in the excellent Stanford University iOS programming class.  I’m on lecture 7 in the 2011 series.  I had previously watched the 2010 version, which was also excellent, but this one adds all the cool iOS 5 stuff.  Of course, we’re already on iOS 6 but, contrary to Apple’s express wishes, I’m not ready to abandon all the devices still running iOS 5. Including my beloved iPad.  So I’m sticking with iOS 5 compatibility for now.  LRN1 has convinced me to drop iOS 4, though.  It’s time.

Speaking of my beloved iPad, I also spent some time this evening populating the excellent Flipboard content manager and linking it to the equally excellent Pocket offline reader.  Pretty sweet combination.  I loved Flipboard the first time I installed it many, many moons ago, but I never really started using it regularly.  I think now’s the time.  Just need to make sure I don’t overwhelm myself with extraneous content.  I have too much to read already.  Fortunately, it appears to be an excellent platform for Google Reader, which is where I get most of my news.  So we’ll see.  The browser-based Reader interface is simple, clean, and efficient.  I’ll find out whether the magazine-like format of Flipboard is equally efficient in terms of getting things scanned quickly and reading the stuff that looks interesting.

I also have Zite and Google Currents installed on my iPad, but I don’t think I like either one of them as well as Flipboard.  Maybe it’s just because Flipboard is the first such app I tried, but it just seems prettier and smoother to my eyes.  Not that I’m uninstalling either of those other apps now.  Need to keep my options open.

We haven’t bought much on Amazon lately, so I’ll have to start working on my wishlist. [amazon asin=B0042Z55RM&text=Here’s something I’d like to see] under the tiny little tree on Christmas morning!

And by the way, I’m an Amazon affiliate, you know.  If you click any Amazon link on my site and then buy anything, I get a little kickback – and it costs you nothing extra!  Feed the Morrowlife financial juggernaut!

Regarding last night’s election: nothing to say.  Well, one thing.  People generally get what they deserve, so I guess we’ll probably get what we deserve.

I’m rethinking what to do with my company website.  Also kind of rethinking what to do with my company.  I still hope to do iOS programming for the underserved world market, but I’m also thinking maybe I should be making use of my experience managing big-time software development and space engineering.  So I’m thinking of figuring out how to do a little consulting in that area.  One good way to start is to write a book on the topic that gets a few sales.  One good way of doing that is by writing it a little bit at a time and publishing it on my website.  So I’m working on finding a good theme that will allow me to emphasize writing a bit more while still not ignoring my programming efforts.  We’ll see how that turns out.  The problem is that the blog portion of the existing website is a bit difficult to find.  I’d like to get it back on the main page.  I think I found a good WordPress theme that will require a whole lot of modification, but provides a solid foundation with room for commercial information at the top and the blog starting underneath that.  I’ll let my Loyal Readers know when the revised website is ready to check out.  In the meantime, have a look at what we have up now.  Also feel free to check out my non-profit (well, free, anyway) programming site.

Let’s see, what else is going on?  Can’t think of a thing.  So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this rare exciting toilet news:  the Kaiser’s toilet has been found!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s LRN4 with a friend she made in Bar Harbor, Maine.  Very large ice cream cone there.  And a triple scoop!  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Cruise, Vacation, and Statue series.

Not a lot going on today.  LRN3 reports that he and LRN15 are heading to LRN15’s sister’s Gigantic Wedding Extravaganza tomorrow.  The wedding is on Saturday in Yorktown, so they’ll all have a few days together to vacation a bit and do wedding-related things, such as eating.  Have fun, Loyal Readers!

As already mentioned, LRN1 is in the market for a nice used SUV of some kind.  He spent some time today with his very kind uncle, who made some good recommendations.  I think he has the search narrowed down to about five different models – a couple of Nissans and three Chevys.  Jeeps are out of the question – old ones tend to be beaten up pretty badly and there have been a few reliability issues.  Ditto Ford Explorers.  Those trucks may not take as much of a beating, but reliability on the older ones hasn’t exactly been perfect.  He was looking at Toyotas for a while, but people are willing to pay a bit more for them than he is.  What do you say, Loyal Readers?  What should he buy?

We’re thinking about another cruise to Hawaii in the spring.  LRN4 got a great offer from our travel agent today – even cheaper than our last trip there.  It would be an exact repeat of our 2011 cruise there, including the same ship, but I had a great time on that ship and love to go to Hawaii.  So we’re seriously thinking about it.  Should we go?  Have to make our minds up by Monday at the latest.

I want to go read, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: bus driver banana attack nightmare!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a group of statues from some ancient church somewhere.  They’re not in the best of shape, but neither would any of the rest of us be if we were their age.  Of course, they’re made of rocks and we’re not, so they ought to have a little advantage in the longevity department.  Still, for relics from the middle ages, they’re pretty nice.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone cam, taken at Bryn Athyn, and part of my famous Statue series.

Well.  It’s been a few days since I posted here, yet again.  I’ve been giving Facebook a bit of a try lately.  I get WAY more comments than I’ve ever gotten here, since I have WAY more friends than I do Loyal Readers.  Still, the blog is my journal and I want to keep it up.  Plus, my Loyal Readers demand it.

Work is heating up, and I’m not talking about the climate control system.  We’re coming up to a very crucial activity – the whole reason I was asked to come out here – and the pressure is on to perform.  I hope to do well enough to make everybody glad they brought me here but not so well that they want to keep me here.  There may be a fine line I have to walk, but I’m up for the challenge.

Since we think we’re about three months away from going back home, we’re trying to pack in all the local entertainment and culture we can.  We’re going to a play tomorrow night, a corn maze on Saturday,  a Ghost Tour of downtown Langhorne (our current hometown!) Friday of next week, the church Halloween party on Saturday of next week, back to Longwood Gardens for the Chrysanthemum Festival in early November (who knew there even was a Chrysanthemum Festival?), and who knows what else.  LRN3 will be here in early November, we’re going to Michigan over the Thanksgiving weekend, and there will be a whole lot more.

In the meantime, I’ve been working hard on Morse Trainer to modernize it a bit.  I already have all the graphics updated for Retina displays, I have it filling up the screen on iPhone 5’s, and I plan to have it iPad-compatible by the end of the weekend.  Lots still to do, but it’s looking pretty good.  Also came up with a new logo for spinfo dot info, which is now my non-commercial app outlet, while Business Casual Software is my commercial arm.  I may not exactly hit the ground running when I retire and start making a freelance living writing software, but I hope to be at least moving at a trot of sorts.  We’ll see.

Anyway.  Nothing else going on, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: ramming Taco Bell!

See you tomorrow.