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Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
10:30 hrs: Apologies. I forgot to hit "save" last night after I finished my update. No, you're not imagining things -- the post from last night was not there last night or early this morning.
Apparently, I spoke too soon about the weather. It started snowing sometime in the wee hours and it's still coming down with a vengence. We'd got 4-5" of fresh snow on the ground, and judging from the sky, it doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon. No biggie. We don't need to go anywhere or be anywhere today, we've got plenty of food in the fridge, and even a bottle of wine in the cupboard. In short, let it snow -- the farmer's need it. An excellent day to curl up with a good book or two.
It also might (might meaning it's too early in the day to commit to a definitive game plan ;-) be a good day to revamp the partitions on my notebook. When I first arranged things I thought I had left lots of room for "software creep", but it seems I underestimated. My 'root' Gentoo partition is sitting at 95%, which leaves me a tad uncomfortable. I think I might downsize my XP partition, then use the extra space gained from that to enlarge my Gentoo 'root'. I've also got some DB problems (Berkley DB; some apps are not compiling cleanly against my current install), so perhaps a clean install of Gentoo is in order as well. But I haven't thought through things fully yet. If I'm going to do any partition reorganizing though, nows the time. Come the New Year the furs going to be flying fast and furious once again.
Be well, and have a peaceful Sunday.
23:00 hrs: We ended up doing a major "Thompson Deep Clean" today after undertaking the task of finding places for all the kids new toys. Danielle complained she didn't have any room left in her closet. This statement didn't make any sense to me, as I know Leah had just reorganized their room two or three days ago and at that time the cupboard had lots of room in it. So I wandered down to check things out first-hand. I opened the cupboard door and sea of toys fell out, swirling around my feet. Mmmm. I had a solution for this. Leah and I initiated what I'll loosely call my "waterfall" method of Deep Cleaning. We started in the far bedroom -- the kids room. Everything out of place or in need or organization went into the center of the room. From there what belonged in the bedroom was sorted and put away. The remaining pile was pushed into the hall, and we moved to the next bedroom and repeated the procedure. Eventually, we had all the upstairs bedrooms in order and a huge pile of "stuff" at the top of the stairs. We pile was transferred to the playroom downstairs, and the process was repeated. The pile that remained was culled, and all the loose bits either went into the garbage or into boxes for the Salvation Army. I hauled two trunkloads away yesterday.
I'm on a reading binge. I finished Giuliani's book, and found myself craving move. So on the way home from hauling the toys away, I stopped at the library. I picked up book on the "Making of Microsoft", See No Evil by Robert Baer (the memoirs of a CIA agent who spent 20 years in the Middle East), a biography of Winston Churchill (I've got several on my shelf, but this one I hadn't seen or read), and O'Reilly's Definitive Guide to HTML and XHTML (some "light" reading for a change of pace ;-). What can I say... my thirst for knowledge is an eclectic one. Oh yes, and I brought home Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Suess for the kids. All children should have a good grounding in the classics of literature.
I don't want to appear to prattle on mindlessly about the weather, but it's been nothing short of extraordinary all week. Bright sunny days, with temperatures in the mid-afternoon often climbing into the high 40's. What remarkable contrast to the storms that have been pumelling the northeast or the wind/rain hammering California. In the words of Pournelle, Interesting times indeed...
05:00 hrs: I didn't get to email yesterday. As a matter of fact, I didn't get to much of anything as far as my TODO list goes. I did, however, spend some quality time with Landon, read with Danielle, and chewed through another three or four chapters of Leadership. Excellent book, BTW. Extremely well-written, and whoever copyedited the title did a first rate job -- I've yet to find a spelling error. I also spent three hours sitting on the couch catching up with my wife. She worked some long hours before Christmas (so did I for that matter), and we were like two ships passing in the night. All in all, while I didn't put much of a dint in my task list, my time yesterday was well invested.
If you sent me an email and are patiently (or impatiently ;-) waiting for a reply, hang in there. I'm going to get another cup of java and tackle my no doubt overflowing Inboxes next. I'll return here later with any insights from the day -- if, that is, I have any.
Good morning, and Seasons Greetings to all my readers! I trust everyone had a wonderful holiday -- we sure did.
Christmas day was a marvelous mix of chaos, fun, and laughter. Santa brought Landon a Rescue Heroes aircraft carrier "command center":
Santa left Danielle a CD player:
Tom got a calendar from O'Reilly (which delighted me no end), and from my wife, a book I've been eyeing since it arrived in stores: Leadership by Rudolph W. Giuliani. I devoured 20 pages Christmas day while pretending to watch the kids open their presents ;-) and soaked in another 2 chapters yesterday. Giuliani's writing is animated and full of valuable insights. And while most of his principles of leadership are not new, how he applied them to his career/life makes for a compelling story. Highly recommended reading.
And what's Christmas without good food... goose, yam, and stuffing for Christmas dinner, "milk" chicken (recipe compliments of our favorite chef, Jamie Oliver) with mashed potatoes yesterday. The goose was a tad gamey, but it was fun to cook something unique and so traditional; the chicken was absolutely awesome, and incredibly simple to prepare.
Yummmmmy.
I haven't been near a computer since Christmas eve, so the first order of business today is to wade through the thousand or so emails I've accumulated over the last two days. Then, a game of "Rescue Heroes" with Landon...
I try very hard not to bash technology. I use what works for me, and laud products that suit my style. I work in Linux/KDE 99% percent of the day because it does what I need it to do. It does it well, it's stable (sorry Bri ;-), and it's fast. And while I don't use Windows on a routine basis any more, there are some things it too does well. Very well. Whoever designed the plug-n-play/hardware detection elements of XP did their homework. It simply works. And I don't mind telling you, I really like things that simply work.
We picked up our new camera late today. In case you missed my earlier post, it's a Sony DSC-P71. Leah and I mucked around with it for an hour or so, then wanted to save some of the pictures we had taken to disk.
I fired up XP, plugged in the camera (via USB), the OS immediately (and correctly) detected the camera, and up popped a dialog asking me what I wanted to do: Display the pictures, move the pictures to disk, or open them in another application. I opted to move them to disk. It did so without further ado, I exited out of the dialog, and presto pocus. Pictures saved to my HD. I love Linux. Sometimes I even love XP. But most of all, I love technology -- in all its assorted colors.
Picture of Landon, complements of photographer extraordinaire, Danielle. Be well. And enjoy the season. More pictures to come...
Ahhhh. Coffee as it's intended: Black and oily.
It' 05:30, and for some reason I'm full of piss and vinegar this morning... Guess I'd better get this done before I collapse in a heap on the couch ;-)
Our "open house" yesterday was a resounding success. Nothing fancy; just a social gathering of friends and neighbours. There's several things we don't like about our house as far as design goes, and despite our efforts last summer, there's lots of yardwork left to do, but if there's anything that would tempt us to buy, it's our neighbours. Wonderful people. Friendly, sincere, and always willing to lend a hand if asked.
Didn't do much of anything yesterday. Puttered with MySQL a bit, avoided OpenLDAP like the plague ;-), sorted the garage, and watched Mary Poppins with the kids. Evidently, the "day off" did me good.
I don't have a game plan for the day ahead, and I think I'll just keep it that way and go with the flow. I'm "Mister Mom" today -- both kids are home and Leah's at work 'til mid-afternoon. Just another day at Syroid Manor. I'll likely check in later, providing I come up with something intellectual to add.
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