Category: Uncategorized

I’m awake, showered, fed and ready to go. My sole disappointment this morning was the fact that the little Mexican place across the street isn’t open for breakfast. I’ve had a craving for a good breakfast burrito or authentic huevos rancheros since we landed, and I’ve still not satisfied it. I went downstairs and had breakfast in the little hotel restaurant. It wasn’t bad, but was nothing to waste anymore thought on. I did finish a couple articles in the Smithsonian magazine, which is always a good read.

Today is tourist day!! Tim’s coming to get me in about an hour, and we’re off to do stupid touristy things. Not sure what yet, but we’ll find out. I’m finally taking the camera out and will hopefully have a ton of pictures to show you on Monday (unless Tim has broadband at home… then I’ll get them done sooner). Hopefully, we’ll be able to hook up with Daws and Annie for dinner. Not sure where yet.

It’s been a good trip, but I hope I’m done travelling for a while. I miss Jen and Max and can’t wait to get home. Today and tomorrow will be fun, and it’ll be great to see Tim and Monica, Daws and Annie, but I really want to see my wife and son. It’s weird. I didn’t feel like this either of the times they went to Arizona to visit Jen’s parents. Plus, I don’t handle jet lag well. This is day three, and I’m still a wreck. I’m relying on frequent Cokes to get me through the day, which is bad. Until this week, I hadn’t had a soda in over six months other than the root beer at Sweetwater. Now, I’m downing them whenever I get the chance (and thanks to Google’s stocked and free breakroom – that was many). I hope my little addiction doesn’t come back and I can kick this as soon as I get home.

I really want to tell you about the meetings yesterday. They were really cool, and I met some really great (and brilliant) folks. I made some great jokes, and think I may have contributed a little bit to the discussion. Not much, I’m sure, but maybe something.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve been using Hydra to take notes in meetings. I’ve created a little meeting template html file, and then keep my stream-of-consciousness notes during the meeting. It looks good enough to send out to people afterwards and it bloggable if I need it to be. Plus, Hydra has a really nice HTML preview window that uses Safari’s WebCore to render the page. It refreshes automatically every second or so, does so very smoothly without slowing my already slow machine down, and doesn’t require me to save. Hydra is shaping up to be a great editor – all it needs now is tag completion and I’ll swtich from jEdit.

I think I’m done not telling you what I’ve been up to the past couple days. There’s nothing secret about the next two, so keep your eyes peeled for new stuff.

Defective Yeti has the best of all possible possible endings for Joe Millionaire. I won’t be watching the final episode unless Jen makes me, but I would almost watch if they could guarantee and ending half as good as the one laid out by the Yeti.

I’m in a bad mood. I’m mostly in a bad mood because I came home sick from work yesterday and spent all today feeling like microwaved elephant dung. I’m fatigued, congested, my various pains are paining me and I’m just plain old grumpy. It’s time like these that make me want to say all the unpleasant things I normally keep to myself. Which means this is a good time to stop.

We did nothing today. I tried to go buy a lighter bowling ball (why kill my back bowling when I can throw something light with an amazing amount of force?), but the drill press was broken at the sporting goods place and I don’t feel like waiting two weeks for a new ball. I got lunch, and brought it home. That was the extent of my accomplishments today. Max and I played with his new Matchbox cars in the basement while we watched Full Metal Challenge. We played and played and played. Then, he ate dinner. Jen read to him, we played a little more, then he went to bed. Now, Jen’s watching Felicity (her new filler now that she’s seen all the Buffy‘s ever committed to video). I’m surfing and trying to recover from a week of family, frivolity and trying to keep on my best behavior.

I’m been whooping it up family-style all week, what with Chistmas and all. Christmas was fun, mostly because Max is three and had a ball. With all this family around, he’s been unstoppable. He’s got this endless supply of energy, and this wicked three year-old sense of humor that just catches me off guard.

He taught his Uncle Tim to do jumping jacks and it was the funniest thing I think I’ve ever seen. Max’s jumping jacks are basically jumping around while spinning in circles and waving his arms frantically as if he’s trying to be the world’s first human helicopter.

And, back to the main topic of the past couple weeks, I have good news. In about ten days (over Christmas and many many big family dinners mind you), I dropped three pounds and dropped my blood pressure 20 points. How cool is that?

I’m gonna go sleep for a week…

My brother and sister-in-law got in this afternoon. It’s so weird how everyone just slips into their familial roles, and the newer additions just flow in and fill in the gaps. It’s nice to have them here.

As if it needs to be said, posting may be light as I’m off celebrating all that Christmas stuff.

NetNewsWire is a neat RSS feed reader. Ok, wait, step back. Don’t know what RSS is? Nevermind. It allows you to read the most recent posts from some of your favorite blogs (and other newsy sites) without having to fire up your browser and load all those pages. This is the first newsreader I’ve used, and it’s incredibly easy to use. It’s smooth, fast and easy to find new content to add.

The one question this raises is how this fits those “pay for content” business plans out there. If you’re RSS-ing your site, and you expect people to pay, how does that work? I’m sure there are people thinking about/around it, like only posting snippets, only posting whole posts older than X days, or just not RSS-ing anything.

I’ve been thinking about my crazy business ideas I come up with while driving, or in the shower, while doodling in meetings. I think I’ll start blogging them so you can all share in the wackiness.

I’m home alone!!! AUGH!! Ok, sorry, I’m regretting that already. Here’s a little holiday travel tip: fly home the day after Thanksgiving. It was great. I was expecting long waits, planes full of cranky stuffed people and overworked and stressed out attendants. What I found was totally unexpected. The planes weren’t full. I had a seat open next two me on both flights. Everyone who worked in the airport was apparently happy that it wasn’t tomorrow or Sunday and the service was great. I’ve decided that I’m going to fly American from now on. They have more leg room than Delta and United and the service on all four of my flights was great.

I was so early for my flight I made it halfway through this week’s Time before I boarded. For the day, I read all of Time, Newsweek and half of my book (Bitterroot by James Lee Burke) by the time I got home.

I have tons of stuff to talk about and tell you, but I spent two weeks having my sinuses attacked by dog dander and 12 hours in planes and airports and want to recover a little bit before I go into everything (and I have to finish the new photoblog).

Dick Cheney’s warning the nation of a possible marriage between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. Where does a couple like that register? I wouldn’t think Target would have what they’re interested in. What did the choose as their china pattern? What’s their song? Who’s the bride? Was there a dowery? Who gave the bride away? How do we know there was a marriage? Did we get the guestlist, an invitation, photos? The article raises so many more questions than it answers.