morrowlife

Here’s yet another entry in my famous statue series. I found these guys in Tokyo. Frightening, no? Special lo-qual photo taken with my original lousy digital camera.

No post on Monday. Fortunately, Anon didn’t notice. No, wait. That’s unfortunate. Where are you, Anon?

Anyway. We’re back from the funeral and family visit. It was a wonderful service that was attended by many people, including about 75 family members. Morrell was a kind man who will be sorely missed.

It was great visiting with family members we haven’t seen in a long time. My brother Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Three and all his kids were there, as was Loyal Reader Number Seventeen. And a whole lot of other people.

Things were fine at home in our absence. As expected. Our hotel room was very nice, we had some good meals, and the drives in both directions were comfortable and event-free. Oh, and it was sunny and warm the whole time.

But I’m really going to miss Uncle Morrell.

I need to get ready for my Tuesday night meeting. See you tomorrow.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Four riding the merry-go-round in Los Gatos a couple of summers ago. Doesn’t she look like she’s having a good time?

Wonders of Blogger. I was home all day, but busy with work pretty much the whole time. Loyal Reader Number Four sometimes wonders out loud whether there’s any point at all to my staying home on my off Fridays. I think there is. I did manage to get to the Honda dealer three times, but otherwise worked.

As always, thanks to Anon for missing me.

The Honda has new gear oil in its transmission now and I’m driving it for a week or two to see if it still doesn’t want to shift into third. If not, it’s transmission rebuild time in Lardville. Let’s hope that doesn’t become necessary.

My mom got here safe and sound and pretty much on schedule late in the evening (further delaying bloggage). Well, the plane was about half an hour late, but that’s not so bad.

Anyway. She’s here and we’re having a very pleasant visit. Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve came over this afternoon for another pleasant visit. We even had Loyal Reader Number Twenty-Four over for dinner, so the table was full. And the food was good. And we had a nice time together. Tomorrow, we’re off to LA.

Speaking of which, I found out yesterday that my brother Chris and his son Jack are coming too. I’m really looking forward to seeing them again.

Morrowlife Financial Juggernaut update: I’m up to 56 cents! There have even been two clicks on my exclusive ads. And they said it’s hard to make money on the Internet.

In spite of my long nap this afternoon, I’m exhausted. So I’ll see you on Monday.

Here’s yet another in my famous statue series. This is perhaps the most disturbing of them all. And that’s saying a lot. Consider this. And this. And this. And even this. And yes, this too. Scary.

I’m off for the next five days! It’s off Friday tomorrow, and so far I only have two telecons, one meeting agenda, and fifteen or so timecards on the schedule. Oh, and the Honda goes to the shop first thing. Otherwise, I’m free all day. My mom arrives tomorrow night, we have a pleasant Saturday, we go to The Birthplace of Me on Sunday, we attend the funeral and visit with family on Monday, and we travel home on Tuesday. Busy. Don’t worry, though, Loyal Readers – I’ll make the posts.

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two just got back from battle-axe lessons. They stayed for Fight Night and had a good time. LRN2 especially appears to have done some serious whupping. Cool.

Due to procrastinatory behavior on my part, it’s time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a nice looking ship about to pass in front of Alcatraz. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One, like all the other Alcatraz shots. He did some nice photography that day.

No post yesterday. I was late getting away from work. There was barely enough time to get home, eat, go to my Tuesday evening meeting (which ran late), come home, talk to the family for a few minutes, and go to bed. Since I’m on the train right now, I have no idea whether good old Anon noticed, but we’ll see, won’t we?

(Update – I got home and checked. Anon didn’t let me down. Thanks, Anon!)

There wasn’t much need to post yesterday anyway. Nothing new.

There is news today, sad though it may be. My uncle Morrell Snowball died this morning. He’ll be greatly missed. Loyal Reader Number Four and I will be attending his funeral in Los Angeles on Monday or Tuesday. I still don’t know whether Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two will be there. I do know that my non-Loyal-Reader mother will be coming out to go to the funeral with us. The plan is for her to stay with us for about two weeks. While we’re very sorry about the circumstances surrounding her visit, we’re excited for her to come.

My mother really needs to become a Loyal Reader. I guess she’ll need to get a computer first.

The train was reasonably crowded this morning – not bad at all. It’s extremely crowded this evening. Sigh. I hate crowds. If I weren’t saving a bunch of money, I doubt I’d ride this thing. And I’m not so sure it’s worth it anyway.

Anyway. Nothing else to report today. So I’ll see you tomorrow.

Here’s another in my famous bizarre statue series. This one was taken at the Lardville Museum at Christmastime. Scary. I have one more from this series in the Blog Fodder queue, so be prepared. And be afraid.

Spookily short ride home from work today. I drove the Miata for the first time in a few weeks – it’s been too rainy for it most days. The morning drive was right on par – two hours. This evening, though, it was slightly less than an hour and a half. There were almost no cars on the road! I can’t figure out why, but I’m not complaining.

Fine weekend. Sunday was a little more restful than the previous week, which was nice. We watched President Hinckley’s funeral on Saturday morning and got a few little things done around the house the rest of the day. I fixed a few loose towel racks, replaced a light bulb (there’s a highly technical job for you!), and worked a little on a couple of light switches. Oh, and we drained excess water out of the pool a couple of times. There was some pretty strong wind and rain on Saturday night, so it filled up again and we drained it on Sunday too.

The other day, I started reading Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte. It’s one of the books that spend time predicting the technological future. Since it was written in 1995, I expected to be amused. To my surprise, though, he was pretty much right on. A few of his predictions haven’t come to pass, but most of them still seem feasible and I expect to see them happen in the near future.

A couple of small examples come to mind. He talks about the difference between atoms and bits, atoms being the building blocks of physical objects and bits the components of digital objects. He theorizes that entertainment (music, movies, magazines, etc.) will stop being delivered via atoms and will exclusively come via bits. That’s right in the middle of coming true. Makes one wish somebody in the entertainment industry had bought this book ten years ago and studied it. The book was written after CDs were available but before DVDs were around. He completely skipped over that medium and saw what the entertainers still can’t see. In fact, he predicts the explosion of bandwidth and many of the options that offers.

He also talks about the coming of digital HDTV, which had been in work for quite some time when the book was written, and laments the entertainment industry’s lack of vision. “Eventually,” he says, “when you watch a baseball game, you will be able to do so from any seat in the stadium or, for that matter, from the perspective of the baseball. These are the kinds of changes that come from being digital, as opposed to watching ‘Seinfeld’ at twice today’s resolution.” Amen to that.

He can’t seem to figure out how to monetize the new media he predicts, although he rightly predicts that the then-current money models were about to disintegrate, and he thinks the telephone companies will have a much larger share of the pie than they do now. However, if they hadn’t been such short-sighted fools, his predictions might well have been right. It kind of reminds me of the old comment that the old railroad companies thought they were in the railroad business rather than the transportation business, and acted accordingly. Otherwise, we might be flying Union Pacific Airlines rather than United or Northwest.

Anyway. It’s a surprisingly good book and is full of great ideas and future vision, even thirteen years after its publication.

Time for bed. See you tomorrow.