Breakfast in Ogunquit

Breakfast
Originally uploaded by GeoffNascar.

Pieter and Nicole came to America this week and we went on a tour of New England with them. We had great weather until the last day, when it clouded up and rained a bit. Ellyn and I got to do some kayaking and the kayaks were great storage for bringing back the loot from shopping.

Conservatives only think with half their brains.

Find the money? For crying out loud, we HAD the money before the numb-nuts Republicans got into office and tossed it to the four winds with rebates and tax cuts. We had the budget and the deficit under control under Clinton and all that was shit-canned in 2000. We would also have a lot more money if we were not throwing it by the truck-loads down the rathole known as "Bushes Dirty War". If we want to "vote all these things in", we have to first vote all the Republicans OUT!

(Update: 11/9/06) DONE! YAY!

Yom Kippur in Boston

We are spending the High Holy Days in the Boston area at Temple Shir Tikva. Rabbi Gold is much more inspiring to us than anything we could get in Danbury. Plus, we get to worship with Brian.

History Lesson?

Not a good post title but here goes. On Thursday I was working at the home of one of our business clients who owns an insurance agency. We had done some work on his office machines and he hired us (CM/IT, specifically me) to fix his daughter's laptop (severely hijacked) and his Vaio minitower. I was sitting at the kitchen table and his two younger kids were getting ready to go outside and I commented to his youngest daughter about the logo on her shirt, which had the shape of a famous ice cream company but it said "Frozen-Assets" with to dots (a german umlaut) over the "o". She said it was the name of her Nanna's boat. I mentioned how it looked like the Haagen-Dazs logo and she and her brother both said "Yeah, our Great-grandfather founded Haagen-Dazs". "Eh?", I retorted. "Yeah and I was named after him", said the brother, Reuben. "But he sold it to Pillsbury". "For a lot of money, I bet". "Yeah".

I mentioned it to their Mother later and it was her Grandfather, Reuben Mattus, who founded Haagen-Dazs. I meet some interesting people in this job.

Job crisis

So I suddenly got a job offer from a company I interviewed with last winter called and offered me a fulltime, 2 month contract job at Praxair in Danbury. Although the hourly rate was less than I was getting at CM/IT, it would be a guaranteed 40 hours/week for 2 months with a possibility of an extension beyond that, and, if it was not extended, there was an 80% chance the hiring company would pull me back into their organization. I would have a choice of full or part time then. Sounded pretty good, especially since I had not been getting very many hours with CM/IT lately.

When I talked with Sandra about it, she started talking about different projects she could put me into and started offering not only more hours, but a guaranteed 20 hours/week. Guess she thought I was valuable. Truth is, I like working for CM/IT and have created a relationship with my clientele so I decided to stay. Pretty dumb, huh?

I also wanted to keep some flexibility in my daily schedule. I will have to book some office time when I am not scheduled for any clients to make up the 20 weekly hours but I don't mind that.

T. M. X. Elmo

Ten years after "Tickle-me Elmo", the latest incarnation does acrobatics. We saw this guy on GMA this morning and everyone was really laughing at him. He sits down, bangs his hand on the floor, lies on his back, lies on his stomach, and, at the end of his fit, stands back up on his feet.

Star Trek TOS Updated!

Wow! They are returning TOS to TV with new digitally mastered special effects. I have got to see this. I checked it out on the TiVo and found two episodes on G4 on Saturday but not sure if they are the updated ones. Guess I will find out.

What about Daddy?

This is so cute! I would be tempted to buy it just to see what they put in it. Actually there are some sample pages. Hits the Conservatives right where they live. I can't imagine what a similar book called "Why Daddy is a Republican" would contain. But here is a possible list for them to start with.

Able and Baker

This comic is very funny. Thanks to Brian for putting me on to it.

Manbag?

So I got tired of having to chase all over for all my stuff before leaving the house to go on a job. Cell phone, Bluetooth earpiece, GPS, XM radio, iPod, PDA, headphones, I was always forgetting something. So I dug around in the attic and found this discarded leather bag of Ellyn's which didn't look too "girly" and was a good size to hold everything. Is it too "hip" for a 57-year-old? Am I too late for this trend? Has it already passed?

Woo-hoo! Free PDA!

Tungsten T3. A nice perk for an IT job well done.

So I was working at a business here in Danbury which I had worked at before, fixing some problems they had and configuring some new software. I had seen that they had a couple of PDAs around and had heard that they were unused. They currently only used the desktop software for keeping schedules and contact lists and they wanted to view the same DB from the two computers. While I was working I asked the owner if he ever used the Tungsten. I had already checked and seen that the battery was dead. He said he bought them but never used them. I also asked if he had the sync cord. He said it might be around somewhere. So I asked him if he would be willing to sell it. I had been thinking of getting a new one, since I had been using Ellyn's old IBM Workpad for several years now.

So I asked what he wanted for it. He wasn't sure how much he paid for it or what it would be worth. I checked on eBay and they covered a pretty wide spectrum of prices. I told him I would give him $30 and he seemed hesitant, so I tried $50. He told me to haggle it out with his secretary.

So after he was gone and I was ready to leave, I gave my card to the secretary and have her charge me the $40 we had finally settled on. She started, then gave me back the card and said to just take it, that I had done a lot of work for them and he would never miss it.

It is missing its sync cable but they can be had pretty inexpensively plus it works in Ellyn's Zire cradle, which is how I charged it and synched over my Workpad data.

Our anniversary party

The 20th anniversary living in Danbury party went over very well. Everyone did not come at once but spaced out very nicely over the day and the weather cooperated very well. After several days of rain, it broken Sunday morning and the sun was actually out for a lot of the day. There seemed to be plenty of food for everyone and there was a lot of schmoozing and visiting going on. We even got to meet a few of our neighbors. Logan and Brian were here from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. We got a great picture to supplement the one we took 20 years ago in front of our new (at that time) house.

If only

Surprising Covers

Today on XM radio, I heard Neil Diamond's Kentucky Woman covered by Deep Purple. Ouch!

Guess I'll have to get one

How did we get so lucky

For the second time recently, I heard about one of our friends whose kids have, for the most part, disowned them, or visa versa. Neither Ellyn nor I can believe that they have accepted this. We are relatively close to our kids, and also to our siblings and parents, for the most part, and if we were not, it would be very tragic. I am not sure what it is that we did right during "the dark years" of Logan and Brian's up-bringing (just kidding of course, which might be it), but we certainly have not disowned them and, I think, they not us, and we are very interested in everything that is going on in their lives and are always glad to see them or hear from them when we get the chance.

I gave my Dad a call on Friday because it was his 81st birthday and I think he was glad to hear from me. We didn't have much to talk about because I just saw him last month, but it was a nice call and I will do it again sometime before the end of the year.

Kick-ass rock guitarists - Robin Trower

robin trower lyrics

a - z LYRICS

Speaking of back to school...

...how about this shot from 1990 of Logan and Brian heading back to school?


by geoff0522

Back to School

I'm glad we don't have to go through the "back to school" drill any more.

Hard work

Well, I have finished pouring the floor to our new shower, and it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I need to get the tile guy in to take a look and let me know if I need to correct any possible problems before they come in on 8/23 to start setting tile.

Good product naming

Assos Women's H F.I. Lady Cycling Shorts

I was a baaaaad boy.

So the good news is that our 11-year-old van with 165,000 miles on it, which I have been somewhat lax about keeping up to date on its maintenance, passed its CT emissions test. Whew! Now we can renew its registration. The bad news is, it will be due again in about 1 1/2 years, since I was about 6 months delinquent in getting it tested. Oops. Now we will probably also have to cough up another $20 in fines for doing it late.

Fix ups

After 20 years, we have new garage doors. The old ones had started rotting out. I had painted them twice and took out glass windows (after Brian put his hand through one while playing hockey in the driveway), put in wood, then took out the wood and put in plexiglass. I also backed Ellyn's car into one of them from the inside. So it was time for some nice, new, tightly sealed and insulated doors. They look nice. And they will never need painting.




Now I just have to fix the broken siding from the hockey playing in the driveway.

Bang, Pow, Bam!

So I'm working on Wednesday in an industrial part of Georgetown and the power goes out. The person there says it has been happening a lot because there is some construction going on. She checks with the CL&P guy outside and he turns it right back on. Then, about 15 minutes later, it goes off again. But this time we also hear some banging sounds in the outside wall. We listen for a while and then realize they are coming from outside the window. We look and there is an electrical wire hanging down in the street doing St. Vitus' dance in the street, with sparks shooting all over the place. Luckily (ha!) there is a CL&P truck right down the street, with its cherry picker...um...up. Hmm. So we run into the next office and look up the side of the building to where the wired used to attach. there is a flaming stub of wire where the dummy in the truck (allegedly) sheered it off. Oops. So I guess my job there was over and everyone else's, for a while at least. As I left the CL&P guy was in his truck talking with someone, I guess to order more wire.

I started my second blog

I am trying an experiment. I am going to use my new blog, "Blog This!", to post stuff that angers me each day. I am hoping it will work as an outlet for my anger. Not that I get angry all that often but I'll bet there is at least one thing I see, hear, or experience each day that will warrant a post.

Fallout

Well, maybe we have some fallout from Ellyn's laptop dousing. The fan that cools her processor has died.



I sent for a new one. Hope it comes fast. The laptop will not start up without it.

Fun with Supermarkets

I love to walk around in Chinese or Japanese supermarkets, not because I like the food, that is Ellyn, but because I like to look for the unusual food items that I would not THINK of eating. I had our digital camera yesterday when we were in Super 88 Market in Boston and got some pictures of beef pizzle, aloe vera soda, and some others. Look on Flickr to see them.

In search of the perfect headphones

I love my iPod. Well, ok, so I lost my iPod shuffle and now have an iPod nano, but I love it. However, the earbud earphones do not love me. I cannot keep them in my ears. I bought some EarJams add-on parts to get them further into the ear canals but they still would slip out when my ears got sweaty. I have a pair of behind-the-head Radio Shack phones which work really well. I have also tried the ones with wires that pass over the ears but it seems they never keep the earpiece close enough and they feel like they are falling out.



Now I have learned about a Logitech set of wireless Bluetooth headsets. They are also behind-the-head and there is a Bluetooth transmitter you attach to the iPod, They make one specifically for the iPod but they are only for the full size one, not the nano, mini, or shuffle. The others are for all MP3 players.

So I sent for a pair for just $50. I hope they come soon. I love new gadgets.

Oops!

Ellyn suddenly exclaimed "Shit, I just spilled water on my laptop". I jumped. I flipped it over on its keyboard and grabbed a can of compressed air and blew as much water out as I could. Ellyn unplugged it and I pulled the battery. I then pulled the keyboard, disk drive, CD drive, memory cards, and wireless network card. I blew and dabbed out as much liquid as I could reach and then baked the parts in the oven heated to 170 and then turned off. I left it in there for about an hour then put it all back together. It is working fine. Hopefully it will be ok.

CBYD, damn it!

This affected Logan and Maureen's condo last night, as well as BUMC the next day. D'oh!

More shopping automation

Our local Stop & Shop has put in the Shopping Buddy. It is a little computer which you put on your cart and a scanner wand to scan your items as you pick them up. Then you pull up to a checkout stand and pay for them. Very slick. Probably adds a little time to the actual shopping time but, if you get your bags first, or bring your own, you do not have to unload the cart except into your car. Technology is fun!

Great picture!

The International Space Station against the sun, taken by an earth-bound telescope.

I hate bad news

But worst than hearing bad news, I hate deliverying it. Unfortunately, I had to do both recently. On Thursday, while Ellyn was at work, I got a call from a friend of hers in Seatlle, WA, that another friend of hers and her oldest daughter, had been brutally urdered while hiking on Tuesday. Her friend Sydney, who had called, was very teary as she related this news to me. Then I had to call Ellyn and tell her. Her agonized cry of surprise was hard for me to hear.

Now, several news stories have surfaced in the Seattle papers that Ellyn has been looking at, and she has found some pictures we had around here from the last time we were out there, nearly 20 years ago.



Ellyn has been agonizing a bit about the irony that she has been so sick this year and yet her friend, who was healthy and fit enough to be hiking in the Seattle area, was in mortal danger.

'Nuf said

T'row da bum out!

Headbutt was justified

It has finally been reviled what was said to French soccer player Zinedine Zidane by Italian Marco Materazzi to provoke the headbutt.

"La vostra madre era un hampster ed il vostro padre sentiti l'odore di delle bacche di sambuco."

(Your Mother was a hampster and your Father smelled of elderberries.)

No wonder he was so pissed off. This is a well known insult by the French.

What's next?

I was thinking yesterday and I realized something: my parents grew up with the automobile, the first generation to know them from the start. My generation was the second to have cars around all the time and the first to grow up with the television. Our kids were the second generation of TV and the first to grow up with the personal computer. Their kids will be the second computer generation, but what will they grow up with that their parents did not and had to learn later in life? What is the next big thing? What will come along and change the world as much as the car, the TV, and the personal computer?Hm, maybe it is already here.

Family Reunion

The 4th of July this year was a chance for my two brothers and I to all get together for the first time in 11 years. Wes and his family came west by car, stopping off to visit with some of Pat's family, and Steve and Laurie came down from VT with their trailer to camp out. I was not as adventurous, flying into Detroit to visit my friend Ken from college, and then I drove my rental to GR.


It was a great weekend. The highlight had to be Wes and Pat's 2-year-old granddaughter, Trinity. She was quite the center of attention much of the time. Another attention-getter was Mom and Dad's pool, which I put a lot of sweat into during the summer of 1966, and which was very refreshing. The weather was wonderfully warm and sunny, so we used the pool 3 times in two days.

Sadly, Ellyn was not feeling up to making the trip. She stayed home and spent time with our son Logan and some of her friends.

Burning flag amendment, my ass.

I'll tell you what. You can have your "anti-flag burning amendment" if it is written as a "proper flag display" amendment instead. This means that I cannot burn the flag to protest US government activities, but you cannot:

1. Mount a flag on your car and drive 70 mph until it is a tattered remnant or flies off to be run over.
2. Fly a flag at night, except if it is properly lit.
3. Fly a flag in the rain or other inclement weather.
4. Dispose of a flag by any means than a ceremonial burning (ironic, eh?).
5. Display a flag pinned up other than with the stripes vertical and the star field on the left. If displayed horizontally, it must be free-flying.
6. Use it as adornment for any individual.
7. Ever let it touch the ground.
8. Write on the flag.

Deal?

Killing Al-Zarqawi not a "success"

I wish the damned conservative pundits would stop pointing to the killing of Al-Zarqawi as a "success" in Iraq. He would not have even appeared on the radar as a threat if it had not been for America's invasion in the first place. He only came into being as a leader of the terrorist insurgents in Iraq after we went in and painted a big bull's eye on the country. This is the equivalent of turning a tenant house into a slum and then indicating how good it is that you are there because you killed a rat. Or turning a river into a sesspool and then showing how good a job you are doing by cleaning up one pollutant.

Hospital Episode II

Ellyn is back, this time planned. She had her colostomy reversal surgery today and Dr. Bussell said all went well. She is currently in recovery and I am waiting in the visitor's lounge on the 10th floor waiting for her to come up to her room. They said they were going to block off one side of a semi-private room for her and let me sleep in the other bed. There is a woman here who is waiting for her husband as well and heard me talking to the nurse manager about that and she also asked to be able to stay tonight in his room. Looks like they will be able to accomodate us both.

We were there!

Springsteen delivers a backyard blowout - The Boston Globe

Ellyn and I just got back from our May vacation and the highlight was seeing Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band in Boston. It was a great concert and the weather could not have been better for it. The only thing that would have been better would have been if we had closer seats.



Here is an interesting link to a site which lists all of the songs on the CD and several from the tour, and lists the artists who have recorded them over the years.

On vacation

We are traveling in CT, taking a little time off before Ellyn has to go back for more surgery. Here is a photo we took today in Old Saybrook, right on the Connecticut River, just after a thunderstorm went through, of a brilliant double rainbow.


by geoff0522

The narrowest stairway ever.

The narrowest stairway ever.
Originally uploaded by GeoffNascar.

Some photos from Logan and Maureen's move on May 20th from Naughatuck, CT to Boston, MA. Sigh! They will be 2 hours further from us but we think they will be very happy in their new condo.

No brag, just fact

Maureen has graduated from medical school and she and Logan will soon be moving to Boston for her residency. It is so great. They should close on their new condo tomorrow and move on Saturday. We are so excited for them.

There is a great article about the graduation here. It was a rainy, cool day but it was not that noticable. We had a great luncheon afterwards in Hartford.

I love peepers!

However, I do not live near any. I guess they also drive frogs nuts.



Info on peepers

Coming attractions

Ellyn found out yesterday that she will have her second surgery on June 1st. She seemed pretty happy about it, although it will mean more pain. It will also mean the end of colostomy bags.

Turkey!

Ain't it the truth?

Under the Knife Again

Ellyn is having another surgery this morning. Her knee surgery, which was originally schedule for January, has been postponed until now. This is very minor surgery and she should be up and around in just a few days.

Big Changes

So there are some big changes happening in our family. Brian just got a new job after being unemployeed for a few months. He started yesterday for Athenahealth in Watertown, MA, closer to his apartment than the other job at TV Guide was. Atenahealth (yep, one word) writes computer programs to help doctors bill to insurance and medicare.

Logan has found a new job in Southborough, MA, at Texterity. They publish online magazines. He needs this new job because in May, Maureen graduates from UConn Medical School and starts her residency at Boston Medical Center.

Additionally, Logan told us today that he and Maureen have put an offer in on a condominium in Boston. Pretty exciting stuff.

Spring is springing!

Spring is springing!
Originally uploaded by GeoffNascar.

I took this picture this morning when I saw these cute little 1 inch sprouts coming up near our garage door. I love spring!

Political cartoons

I like to read them as well as the "funnies", both ones created by the "liberal" cartoonists and by the "conservative" cartoonists. So this one by Chuck Assay, who falls into the middle somewhere, I think, caught my eye.



Now, I believe I know what he is trying to say, how education used to be about getting out and working and was much simpler, but I think he missed the final point about "going home to live with the parents". His final panel, instead of being about education being about more than just the 3-Rs, should have been about the output, into a world of immense national deficits, Iraqi war, and increasing energy "costs" should have been the point.

Also, he missed the fact that many of the things he shows as being taught in today's schools are now being set aside, including science, geography and history (doomed to repeat?) for the original 3-Rs so that children can pass the national testing requirments of the ridculous "no child left behind" policy.