Jack is the newest member of our family:
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He’s a four year old Australian Shepherd whose owners moved into too-small of an apartment. It must have been awful to give him up, because Jack is a terrific dog. He can catch a tennis ball in the air, and he knows “cookie on the nose,” though he doesn’t quite do that one for us (not yet, anyway).
Jack may look a little morose in the picture (I don’t think he liked the flash) but you haven’t seen exuberance until you’ve seen him jump in the air while chasing a tennis ball.
I’ve been using the Canon Rebel XSi for about a year and a half now, and it’s definitely THE camera for aging yuppies. I need reading glasses, and that makes many cameras hard to use.
The Rebel Xsi is a classic single lens reflex – SLR. The viewfinder shows you what the lens sees. It has an eyepiece adjustment so I can use the viewfinder without glasses. In addition, the XSi has an extra large display screen on the back. While I can’t use it to carefully judge an exposure, it does display the camera settings in really large type. Yuppie sized type.
[Update: there's a newer model: the Canon Rebel T1i
. This one boasts 15 megapixels and built-in High Def video capture. I haven't seen one of these in the flesh, but the PR suggests it has a comparably large dispay on the back, and the essential eyepiece adjustment]
Continue reading 'A camera for aging yuppies'»
Real Winter has arrived at our home today. The Weather Service calls it ‘blizzard conditions’ so I skipped the rush-hour trip to a volunteer breakfast in St. Paul.
There is an honest-to-gosh snow drift in the driveway. Next door, I hear Mark running his snowblower. No doubt that’s my exercise for today.
I think chain saws gain mythic proportions in any safety-conscious household. My dad grew up on a rural farm in the early 1900s, and statistically, a farm is about the most dangerous “natural” workplace there is.
I don’t think we ever owned a chain saw. I remember my dad “borrowing” one, maybe once, or maybe it was a friend or neighbor using it. In any case, I have a stronger memory of Dad’s countless horror stories than I do of actually seeing the saw in use.
Anyway, it seemed fitting to buy Biscuit her very own chain saw for Mother’s Day several years back. An intentionally Amazonian gift. In practice, we rarely use it, but it’s there.
Continue reading 'Dangerous Yardwork'»
Here is an adorably geeky photo of Alex and his fiancee, Courtney.
The big story, though, is in constructing the Spock ears. Alex and Courtney made a desperate search of costume stores and such to find pointy ears for Halloween, and found nothing.
Then Alex searched the Internet.
Continue reading 'Making Spock Ears'»
My secret vice is that I read adolescent fiction on my smart phone. This awful habit started years ago. I have the collected works of Louisa May Alcott and Lucy Maud Montgomery and I pore over them when stuck in line or waiting for food at a cafe.
Now I find that Bear is likewise reading reading Eight Cousins on her smart phone.
This is particularly interesting because the womens’ roles in Alcott’s fiction tend to be super-traditional, while Bear’s politics are “progressive” to put it mildly. I generally agree with both Bear’s attitude on womens’ rights and her attitude towards Alcott: who cares if her female characters are so traditional!
I think we both appreciate Alcott’s underlying themes: the pursuit of moral ideals over superficial values (despite the difference in moral values) and the fundamental rights of women to self-determination (despite the different view of womens’ roles). Alcott portrays “strong minded” women as positive role models despite the negative reactions of conventionally attractive male characters.
Continue reading 'Reading Alcott'»
I posted some buddy photos in our photo collection. Some were for Kelsey’s school friends, but one had the old gang from various Boston area rented homes:
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I also posted it on Facebook.
A Burnsville Scoutmaster has been accused of molesting three troop members.
It’s impossible to 100% prevent such incidents, just as it’s impossible to prevent death and injury during scouting events. Scouts are specifically taught how to identify and deal with potential abuse situations. Leaders are taught to avoid situations that might enable abuse. For example, individual leaders are never supposed to be alone with individual scouts. We call this “two deep leadership.”
Continue reading 'Abuse by a Scout Leader'»
We said goodbye to Whimsey this morning. She’s been a wonderful dog, though we knew the cancer would be taking her soon.
There was a documentary produced back in 2002 about free software, open source, Linux, Gnu, Stallman, and Torvalds. A topic ripe with irony.
I finally saw the documentary, Revolution OS
, on Netflicks. The video is avaliable through the iTunes store and the DVD through alibris:
The ultimate moment was when Richard Stallman was given the “Linus Torvalds Award” at the second Linux trade show. So we have this scene of Stallman earnestly explaining the irony of the award to the audience of 5,000 people while two blond, Scandanavian toddlers (Torvalds’ daughters) are cavorting around the stage in the background.
Continue reading 'Linux and Gnu on “Revolution OS”'»
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