morrowlife

Here’s a picture of Loyal Reader Number Two’s buddy from Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy of LRN2. Astute Loyal Readers will note that this individual has been featured in these pages before.

No post again yesterday. We were at the airport picking LRN2 up from his trip to Utah. He was in fine health and spirits, the flight went just fine, he found us without any trouble, and he had fun on his trip. Nothing to complain about there.

The weekend was also pretty uneventful. LRN1 went to Colorado on Sunday for a week-long visit with his old buddy. We miss you LRN1! Have fun, remember who you are, be safe (link warning: a little kid singing a dopey song) and have fun! And maybe recruit a new Loyal Reader while you’re out there.

We went to the Computer History Museum on Saturday. It’s just a few minutes’ drive from the Fortress of Solitude. It was absolutely free and pretty cool. They don’t have much in there yet, but they do have some really cool things, like a rack from ENIAC (subject of a fairly recent Morrowlife Book Club review) the only known part of Colossus in existence (a reel from the paper tape transport mechanism – see the picture in the link), and a whole lot of other early computer industry stuff. They also have a lot of computers that I’ve owned and/or used, including a Speak & Spell. Strangely, they don’t have a Texas Instruments PC, so I’m sorry I threw mine away all those years ago. They do have a Sinclair ZX81, which was the first computer I owned. It came as a kit and, believe me, putting it together was the best part of owning it. But it was a start. All in all, the museum is worth a second visit, which I hope to do before we move into the Secret Undisclosed Location.

Flickr isn’t working for me. I couldn’t post Friday’s picture – the site was in “maintenance” mode – and I can’t get into it today either. I get part of the splash page (without any graphics) and can never get to the login page. Weird.

Oops. It started working again. Never mind.

I have a great idea for the blog. I want to put the comments on the main page, increasing the interactiveness quotient dramatically. I’m not sure whether Blogger will allow that, though, so I’m looking around for other blogging tools. Loyal Readers are invited to submit ideas for accomplishing this Important Upgrade.

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a statue of Admiral Somebody-or-other, out behind Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I wish I could remember his name. Maybe some Loyal Reader could do a little bit of internet research. I don’t feel like doing it myself (link warning – I did it myself after all).

I missed a couple of days on the old blog. Sadly, I don’t really have an excuse. Wednesday evening, we went to the Santa Clara library (great building, nice collection – especially of computer-related books, friendly people, comfortable chairs, too-small parking lot) and checked out a few books. I went home and started reading immediately and forgot to blog. On Thursday, I tried unsuccessfully to get Knoppix Linux to log on to my wireless network. It couldn’t figure out the password. I then tried to install Cygwin on my machine. It would install but wouldn’t open a terminal window when I tried to open it. Don’t know why not. The fiasco lasted until slightly after midnight, so I forgot to blog again. Sorry about that, Loyal Readers. It must have been a depressing couple of days for you. I’ll try to make it up to you tonight.

Or maybe not. There’s not a lot to report. The fascinating book I started reading on Wednesday is called Linux Application Development. It’s simultaneously interesting and incredibly boring, which is no small trick (link warning – bad rock music). It teaches the reader/programmer how to interact with the fine details of the Linux operating system. I can’t really recommend it to my non-programmer Loyal Readers, but for the programmers among you who are interested in getting started with Linux programming, have a look. It gives a good description of the relevant system calls, has plenty of code snippets, and actually has interesting, meaningful prose to boot. I’m putting it on the book club list, with the above caveats.

Yesterday, one of my many bosses told me there’s another program somewhere around Sunnyvale looking for a software leader. He told them about me and they were asking for a resume. I spiffed an old one up and sent it to him. He dropped by today and told me they called him back and told him they’re very impressed and presumably will want to talk to me. He’s kind of depressed because he’s happy to have me where I am and he hates to lose me. After only three weeks, they’re already fighting over me! Easy boys, just send money.

We’re thinking of going to the Computer Museum tomorrow. It’s right around the corner in Mountain View, and it looks like it might be a fun, although short, visit, since they’re still just getting established after only four years in their present location (it’s taking longer to set up the museum that it did to create all that history in the first place, but far be it from me to criticize) and there are only a few exhibits, including a big room with computers sitting on warehouse shelves. Critical though I may sound, I think it will be a fun place to visit. I’ll let you know.

Otherwise, not much is scheduled for the weekend. Of course, Loyal Reader Number One is leaving for Denver on Sunday afternoon and Loyal Reader Number Two is coming back on Monday, so there will be a lot of preparing over the weekend and a lot of catching up during the coming week. Maybe we’ll find time to make another library run. The one catch at the library here was that on your first visit they only allow you to check out three books. I guess they’re trying to minimize the damage caused by people who get a card with a fake ID and then steal a bunch of books. I didn’t know that was such a serious problem, but I’m learning to expect just about anything weird in Sunny California.

Speaking of sunny, it’s been very hot the last few days. We’re having high temperatures in the 90’s here. My company is part of an industry group that voluntarily cuts back on energy usage on hot days, so they’ve been turning the air conditioning off at 2:00 every day. It gets pretty warm in there by 3:00 or so, but it hasn’t been really miserable so far. They announce the plan a day ahead of time over a PA system in every building on campus (big brother is watching you!), so you can dress appropriately. There have been a lot of shorts, sandals, and hawaiian shirts this week. Of course, with Bay Area hippie software developers, it’s kind of hard to tell the difference. We’re definitely not on the east coast anymore.

Correction on the previous post: the picture was taken by Loyal Reader Number Two, using my camera. Thanks a lot, LRN2!

Gotta go. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a nice shot of Loyal Reader Number One accepting his Eagle Scout award a few weeks ago. We’re really proud of LRNO’s accomplishments in this area, as in many other things. Way to go, LRNO!

Well, there’s certainly some big news in the Morrowlife Blog world tonight. We have a new reader! Vickie is hereby declared Loyal Reader Number Ten. Actually, those of you following the comments already learned that she’s been reading for a while now, but she finally decided to reveal her existence last night. Welcome aboard, LRNT! Now just send us your picture for your very own Special Morrowlife Day. Don’t forget!

There’s not much else to talk about tonight. Work was busy as usual. I spent a little time in the software lab today and got a pretty good education. I need to learn how to run tests at various levels.

The mortgage on the Secret Undisclosed Location was approved today (actually, it was approved by two different mortgage companies), so nothing could possibly go wrong now. We’re movin’ to Lardville!

We got back in the spa this evening. They had changed the water today and it was much better. The Pool Guy told Loyal Reader Number Four that yesterday’s problem was a simple chemical imbalance caused by inexperienced personnel operating during his unavoidable absence. Sure. He also claimed they change the spa water every Tuesday, regardless of how polluted it was on Monday night. Right. Anyway, it was much nicer tonight.

Late breaking news! We have another Loyal Reader! That’s two in the same day. Welcome to Mike, our new Loyal Reader Number Eleven! Send us your picture and you’ll have a Special Morrowlife Day of your own.

Off to bed. Hasta manana.

Since we’re near San Francisco now, I figured it would be appropriate to include a picture of Chinatown. Of course, this is Philadelphia’s Chinatown, but I don’t have a picture of the one here. Besides, it’s the thought that counts, no?

This will have to be short tonight. It’s already getting late, and I frittered some time away this evening trying to solve ciphers on the NSA Kids website. The ciphers were pretty simple, but I’m not very good at solving them, so it was something of a challenge. It’s a pretty cool website – check it out.

How things can change over a weekend! Loyal Reader Number Four had me look at realtor.com in the area where our Dream Home is located. I did, and there’s a vacant one exactly like the one we want, but four years old and $45K cheaper. Yikes. We went into the office on Saturday and discussed the situation with the sales people. They didn’t have much to say. We thought about it some more and decided we would be just as happy with the house that’s basically complete already (just missing the appliances and a few knick-knacks) and much less expensive. We offered to buy it if they gave us a free refrigerator and paid for half of our swimming pool. Otherwise, we were going to go have a careful look at the four-year-old house.

Well, they bit, for the most part. They offered us much more than I expected them to offer (although they hit LRNF’s expectations nearly exactly), and we accepted their offer. The contract is signed, we close on 21 July, and we move in as soon as we get back from our August vacation. Hooray! Now somebody has to tell our realtor we won’t be using his services after all. I’ve been unable to get out of that task so far.

While we were in Lardville on Saturday, we found a good pool/spa supplier and decided on a pool and spa that we would like and could afford. It wasn’t an easy thing meeting both requirements, believe me. With the extra money the builder is throwing in, we might now go back and add in a few luxuries we had redlined out the first time. Of course, we believed at the time we visited them on Saturday that we were moving into a different lot, so we have to go back and get them to lay it out again, but I’m sure they won’t mind at all.

Speaking of pools and spas, we decided to jacuzzify for Home Evening activity tonight. The water in the spa here at the Fortress of Solitude was murky and smelled funny, but Loyal Reader Number One and I, inexplicably, got in it anyway. Succumbing to peer pressure, Loyal Reader Number Four did too. We stayed in for a few minutes, got thoroughly grossed out, and went back into the FOS and took showers. How smart of us. We’ll probably all die of e. coli or something. Yuck.

On the positive side, I found a great reading list on the internet today. New Morrowlife book club fodder! I’m planning to get a library card soon and start looking for some of them. Stay tuned. By the way, Tales of St. Austin’s is going well but very slowly – less time than usual for reading. I’ll get through it, though. It appears to be a series of related short stories, rather than a completely coherent whole. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though – it’s easy to break it up over time. I’m still enjoying it and still recommend it and all of Wodehouse’s other work, although I’m still pushing the Jeeves books for first-timers.

I had an idea this evening that would really stir up this blog. I thought of letting Loyal Readers improve their LR number by posting more often. Less-frequent posters would be gradually demoted, although they would of course never be dropped from the list. Then I decided it would cause mass confusion and too much work on my part, so I dropped it. Still, it was an intriguing thought for a few moments though. Loyal Reader Number One suggested awarding my more frequent posters with additional titles (Extra-Loyal Reader, Super-Loyal Reader, Hyper-Loyal Reader, etc.) and maybe saddling less frequent posters with shameful titles (Disloyal Reader, Barely-Tolerable Reader, etc.), but I probably won’t do that either. Too much trouble. Just keep posting, Loyal Readers!

That’s it for today. Got to get to bed. See you tomorrow.

Keeping with our Loyal Reader Number Two theme (we miss you!), here he is with Loyal Reader Number One in front of the model of our new house. No, you can’t see much of the house here, but I have more pictures and there’s always tomorrow! So much for Great Art.

Decent day today. Got a call from my brother Chris – apparently he didn’t have our cell phone numbers and couldn’t get my work email address to work. I don’t know what the problem was, but he took the initiative and called some family members. Apparently, neither of my parents knows our cell phone numbers, but my sister Sandy does! It was nice to talk to Chris.

Nothing else to discuss today. Tomorrow’s ostensibly my off Friday, but I’ll still not sure if I’m allowed to work 9/80 in Sunnyvale, so I’m just not asking. I’ll go in for a few hours and then say I need to leave to look at houses. My subtle plan is to just worm myself into 9/80. Very clever.

Did I mention my new drill? I got it at Costco the other day with some money my colleagues in Newtown gave me as an Extravagant Parting Gift. It’s totally cool. I already have a cordless drill, but this is one of those high-powered ones that all my friends have. Now I can really work on things!

See you tomorrow. I’ll let you know how the subtle plan works out.