I was having some issues with using a straight keyboard and regular old mouse, since I've been using only trackballs and trackpads for years now, so I got hooked up with some new gear.  It's only been a few days, but so far I'm pretty impressed.  I got the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, and the Evoluent VerticalMouse 3.  The keyboard is very comfortable (as I type this) and has an optional support that props up the front of the keyboard, which keeps your hands flatter.  I wasn't sure about the lift at first, but now I'm sold.  It's quite comfy, although it did take me a day or two to get used to it.  The buttons are laid out very nicely, with a real inverted T arrow key setup.  My only complaint so far is that the spacebar clacks.  But since I usually work with headphones on, it will only really annoy my neighbors.
The most is also quite comfortable, although I think I still need to get my chair adjusted a bit to deal with the desk height and the new mouse.  The VerticalMouse is just that.  It's a nice optical mouse, but oriented vertically instead of horizontally, so that you hold your hand perpendicular to the desk, rather than on top of it.  It seems like a much more natural hand position.  The buttons have a nice feel, as does the scroll wheel.  Because of the layout, the third button has to be pressed with the pinky (at least for me) which seems a bit awkward, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. 
Oh, yeah.  And I got a new car.  My Durango finally gave up the ghost after 9 years and over 230K miles.  RIP.  I got a 2007 Subaru Outback 2.5i, and so far I'm loving it.  Very comfy, handles nice.  About twice the mileage of the Durango.  We'll see how it does pulling a trailer.  The hitch goes on today, with luck.
Fall seems to be the season of change for me this year.  And it seems to have come early.  It's started getting much chillier at night just over the last week or so.  OK, now I'm rambling. 

So there it was, all planned out...  I had two days off (and a weekend) between jobs, and everything in place for my son and I to do a 4-day, 40 mile backpacking trip.  My last day at Corillian was last Wednesday, so I staid up late into the night packing all our gear, putting dried food into little plastic bags, trying to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything.  Thursday morning, we got the whole family up way to early so that my wife could drop us off at Santiam pass for the 4 day trip to Ollalie Lake, heading North on the Pacific Crest Trail over Three Finger Jack, Jefferson Park, and finally down into the Ollalie Lake Scenic Area. 

Alas, 'twas not to be.  As we were heading up Hwy. 22 toward the pass, all set for an early start, about 5 miles this side of Detroit the alternator in my Durango went completely dead with no warning.  Very exciting.  The better voltage fell to exactly jack, the radio shut off, lights went out, etc.  Big fun.  Luckily we made it into Detroit, where there is both food and cell coverage, but once the car was off it was dead as a post. 

Apparently there just aren't that many tow trucks working Hwy. 22, especially ones that can take a 4WD vehicle and four passengers (plus a small dog).  Between that, and actually getting the car fixed in Mill City, we lost the entire day.  There's no way we could have made 15 miles a day to do it in 3 days, since 10 was a stretch as it was.  Crap.  We ended up just going home, and retooling for a new plan.

So, they 4 day hike became a three day hike, and we decided to focus on what would have been the end of the route, around Ollalie Lake.  We (re)set out Friday morning and started hiking South from Ollalie Butte around noon.  Many fine sights awaited us along the way.

 

We camped for the night at Upper Lake, just off the PCT, and got up the next morning to keep heading South. 

This was a great opportunity to try out some new gear, and it all worked fabulously.  My new pack, a ULA Catalyst, was a joy, as was the new tent, Tarptent Rainshadow 2.  Also a big success was my new quilt, a "No Sniveller" down quilt from Jacks'R'Better.  Between those upgrades, and some other careful choices, I think I got my total pack weight to under 35 lbs., which is soooo much nicer than the 60+ lbs. I used to carry.  I'm still in the "transition" to ultralight backpacking, so I've got plenty of room for improvement.  I also have to carry a fair amount of extra stuff for the kid(s) since they can't carry quite as much.  My son's new Golite Gust also worked very well. 

The one big problem was that I have apparently lost the ability to sleep on the ground.  Something to do with the aging process, no doubt.  We brought old fashioned closed-cell foam pads, and it was hell.  In fact, I slept so poorly (plenty warm enough though) that we decided to trim the 3 day hike down to a 2 day hike, and just truck on out the second day.  This went pretty well, although made for a few more miles than the boy appreciated.  :)

We went around the East side of Monon lake, then the West side of Ollalie lake to get back to the car. 

 

Not quite the trip I'd planned, but it worked out well none the less, and a good time was had by all (except possibly the frog, who was a bit harassed). 

My apologies to anyone who tried to access this site over the weekend and found it down.  My hosting provider did some reorganizing, and some of the file system permissions got goofed.  I was out of town all weekend, and didn't know there was a problem.  Everything seems to be back to normal at present.

After the usual travel hassles (4 hour delay out of Dulles), I'm once again back at home in Hillsboro.  I'm looking forward to not going anywhere next weekend, as I think I've been out of town for the last 4-5 weekends in a row.  Going places is fun, but traveling sucks.

Lot's of exciting new stuff at TechEd, the highlights for me being Acropolis, the Entity Framework, SQL 2008, and Orcas stuff like LINQ and the new smart client features.  Of course, now it's back to the practical, so I'll be focusing once again on the details of WCF/WF, ADAM and AzMan.  I can worry about Orcas later.

Yesterday we had a party for the 10th Anniversary of the CERT program here in Hillsboro.  We had many more people than I had expected show up, to whom we provided free spiffs, literature on disaster preparedness, and lot's of nifty door prizes including tools, hats, etc.  Plus safety related games for the kids.  And there was cake.

A good time was had by all.  Here's to 10 more...

Late last week, Rhapsody finally released a new desktop client that doesn't crash in the presence of IE7.  Hurray!  I've been gimping along with the web-based client, which is cool, but not nearly as full-featured as the desktop version.  I've been running it for several days now, and not one crash, so I'm hopeful at this point.  Just in time to listen to all that Christmas music that I'd never shell out to buy full time...

Update: I may have spoken too soon.  It works fine on my desktop at work, but crashes constantly on my laptop at home.  Sigh.

Over the weekend I took my kids for a hike up the Deschutes river from where it meets the Columbia, just east of the Dalles.  The weather was pretty nice, although it was overcast most of the day.  At least the rain held off until the middle of the night.  Check out pictures and a brief description at portlandhikers.com. 

This was the longest hike I’ve ever done with my kids, and as we’ve progressed toward longer hikes over the summer, I’ve learned some valuable lessons about hiking with children and how to make the trip more enjoyable for everyone.  I got a lot of great tips from Extreme Kids: How to Connect With Your Children Through Today's Extreme (and Not So Extreme) Outdoor Sports.  It’s a very well written book, that starts with some general tips about going outdoors with children, and then has some sport-specific information in the second half.  The tips I’ve gotten the most out of so far:

• dress them for the part.  Hiking-specific gear like hydration packs, boots, and trekking poles make them feel like they are participating in something special, and really help get them out on the trail.
• talk up the hike.  Take some time to talk up the hike.  Make it sound hard, question their ability to handle such a difficult task (not too seriously) and make it into a challenge.  This has made a huge difference.  My kids both boogied right up Little Belknap Crater after I played up the difficulty of “scaling a volcano”. 
• keep them fed.  Keeping their blood sugar up is vital.  I’ve started packing not just granola/Clif bars, but some smaller snacks to keep them sugared up.  Generally we avoid giving them sugar, so this one took me a while to warm up to, but on last weekend’s 7.8 miler, it made a big difference.  They were tired, but the never crashed.  The new Jelly Belly “Sports Beans” work great for this.  They are basically jelly beans with electrolytes in them (like Gatorade) that come in 100 calorie packs.  The kids love them, and the feel like they are getting away with something.   We also tried some Clif Shot Bloks, which proved popular.  They come in packs of 6, and were easy to dole out at key milestones.

These tips (and more from the book) have made our time together outside much more enjoyable.  I’m already looking forward to next season (and maybe some snowshoeing over the winter).

I wanted to check out some CardSpace stuff today, so I bit the bullet and installed IE7 RC1.  In the short space of time I played with it, it looks pretty good.  However, as soon as it was installed, my Rhapsody client started crashing on startup.  Bummer.  The Rhapsody client hosts IE to do its “Music Guide” stuff, so I wasn’t really surprised that it didn’t handle the change well.  I’m pretty addicted to Rhapsody at work, since I can listen to just about anything I might want to. (Today it’s been a bunch of alt country stuff, Neko Case, The Sadies, Whiskeytown, Be Good Tanyas…yesterday was largely a Rage Against the Machine/The Prodigy kinda day.)

Apparently, this is a known problem, and Real says tough rocks.  I don’t blame them.  It’s what I’d tell me.  Luckily, some crafty bugger in the Real support forum mentioned that it worked for him if he cleared his IE cache before starting Rhapsody. 

Son-of-a-gun, that worked.  We’ll see how long it lasts…

Yesterday my daughter and I hiked from Timberline lodge out to Zig Zag Canyon.  What a nice hike!  Just about the right length, and the weather up there was perfect yesterday.  Check out the pictures.

Definitely a good hike for even medium-sized kids, and the views are fantastic.

We just got back from a week's vacation in sunny Marin County CA (just across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, for those not up on Californian geography).  We were visiting family and checking out goings on in "the City", which we haven't done in 4-5 years. 

I was quite surprised to discover that the California Academy of Sciences, which was one of my favorite destinations as a kid, is being rebuilt.  We showed up in Golden Gate Park, (finally) found parking, and were all set to go to the aquarium and visit the stuffed lions when we came around the bend to find a big hole in the ground, surrounded by cranes.  So we went to the recently renovated Deyoung art museum instead, and hit the temporary location of the Academy (near Moscone Center) the next day. 

We also squeezed in a visit to the new Asian Art Museum, much of which used to be the Brundage (sp?) Collection at the Deyoung.  The new building is beautiful, and very well laid out.  It's designed to be viewed as a progression over time and distance, starting with India and South Asia, through SE Asia, and then East Asia (China, Korea, Japan).  The new Deyoung is also very well laid out.  Don't be put off by the exterior.  It'll grow on you as you get closer, and the inside is fantastic. 

Our tour ended with a day in Sonoma, where we checked out the historical sights, like Valejo's house, the Sonoma Mission, and Jack London State Park, which has a very nice museum, and where you can see the ruins of London's "Wolf House" which burned down a month before he could move in. 

The weather turned out to be very pleasant, and in fact it was hotter here in Portland when we got home yesterday.  Go figure.  Hotter in Portland than in Redding?  Who'd have thunk it.

There’s a great (relatively new) site for hikers around the Portland area called (aptly enough) PortlandHikers.com.  There are forums for trip reports (many of which come with beautiful photos), gear reviews, and other topics related to hiking our part of the Great NW.  You can check out the pictures I posted of our hike to the Indian Heaven wilderness last weekend, which turned out to be a great trip.  Nice weather, good company, and a very pretty lake to camp next to.

Yes, it’s happened again.  Yet another technology/trend which appeared in Neal Stephenson’s seminal novel Snow Crash has come to (almost) fruition.  I think he called it “sintergel” or some such.  This new technology joins the burbclave and a host of other trends that Stephenson predicted back in the day. 

Liquid Body Armor By End Of 2007

The company Armor Holdings is developing a liquid-type of body armor to either replace or enhance the current tough fiber and polymer armor that's in use today. The liquid can be smeared on a person, or a person's clothing, and stiffens when hit by an object. [Gizmodo]

Aboutt 4 months ago I moved into a brand new (town)house.  It’s been great, particularly since our last house was generating more maintenance opportunities that we could handle.  The new place is 3 stories, and there’s a deck off the back of the second floor over the driveway.  Staining/finishing said deck is left as an excercise for the homeowner, and yesterday I finally got around to it.  At first I didn’t want to tackle it due to the everpresent rain, and lately it’s just been a matter of finding the time.  And I really hate ladders. 

Anyway, I had the time, the materials, and no rain.  Unfortunately, it was around 100° yesterday.  It’s a small deck, but nonetheless 4 hours of huffing paint fumes on my hands and knees left me a bit nackered.  And today I’m finding out how unbendy I’ve become (i.e. crippled today). 

This whole getting older thing really blows. 

I hope not.  But since it seems to otherwise be a good recording, I fear it’s so.  Check out Hanselminutes 21, wherein Scott interivews Jeff Atwood and I about the relative merits of Subversion vs. Team System.  Taking the show on the road was a great idea, and all the segments came out very well.  I’m amazed that he and Carl were able to clean up the audio to the point that you hardly hear the other 7–8000 people in the room with us.

Yesterday we met a bunch of friends for a birthday brunch.  A good friend of ours turns 50 this week, and a ton of people showed up to mark the occasion.  Afterwards, on a lark, I decided it was a good day to visit Multnomah Falls, out on the Columbia Gorge.  It took us for ever to find parking out there.  I forget that Multnomah Falls is one of the most popular tourist spots in Oregon.  And I think pretty much everyone was there yesterday. 

Anyway, I’ve been to the Falls maybe a dozen times in the (almost) 18 years I’ve lived in Oregon, but never hiked up to the top of the falls.  Being that it was such a brilliant day, and the kids had been inside way too long, we decided to make the hike.  It was well worth it!  What a view.  It’s certainly not a hike to be undertaken lightly.  It’s only about a mile, but it’s very steep.  However, once you get up to the top, there’s a viewing platform that’s built out over the top of the falls (with a very stout railing) so you can see all the way down.  There were quite a number of wild flowers blooming already.  It’s definitely spring around these parts. 

I was reminded of just how much I like hiking.  I’m thinking the kids are big enough that it’s time to start dragging them around the woods on a more regular basis. 

Vikki and I took the kids to see an “Indian Dance Ballet” downtown yesterday called Krishna Bhakti.  It was great!  Groovy costumes, great music, and some very impressive dancing.  The ballet focuses around the lives of two female saints and poetesses who were proponents of Krishna Bhakti, or love of the divine in the form of Lord Krishna.  Their stories reminded me a lot of that of Hildegaard von Bingen, a medieval German nun and abbess who was also a poetess, and whose work has become popular of late. 

The lead dancer and choreographer, Jayanthi Raman, also runs a school for Indian dance here in Portland, and many of the dancers yesterday were her students.  I’ll be looking out for future productions sponsored by Rasika, an Indian Arts and Cultural Council in Portland. 

I’m such a sucker for good TV shows on DVD.  Our latest favorite is Lost.  What a groovy show.  I love the fact that during the cource of the first couple of episodes you form distinct impressions about the nature of each character, and one by one during subsequent episodes those impressions are exploded.  A very interesting premise for a show, particularly set against the survival-on-a-desert-island background.  I also like the fact that there are unanswered questions that are allowed to linger for several episodes before finally being addressed.  It’s nice to see more TV shows taking advantage of story arc, a la Joss Whedon, and not making the assumption that your viewers are all dim bulbs who can’t remember what happned a few weeks back. 

We’ve been renting Lost one DVD at a time, which Vikki says is a good thing, or else we’d never sleep. 

The second I win the lottery, I’m so getting one of these.  They are wood-covered, spherical rooms that you hang from trees.  What a great place to hang out in (literally). 

 

Scott and Mo are putting together a team for a Walk for Diabetes later this Spring.  I walked with Scott and his family 6–7 years ago, and had a great time.  Jump on over and make a tax deductible (in the US) contribution, or come out and walk in May.  I’ve watched the technology that Scott uses to control his condition pretty closely over the years, and know that there’s still a long way to go.  Definitely a worthy cause.  Show your support for Team Hanselman, and know that you’re helping a lot of people in the process.

Early this week my beloved iPod (a 3G 20Gb) died horribly, in a won’t boot and the diagnostics crash kinda way.  Great sadness.  I hadn’t been using it as much lately, largely due to how rediculously the battery life was SUCKING.  But with it gone, I was really missing it, particularly the Audible support, which I use in my car all the time. 

The result:  a quick trip to Costco (home of all things good) last night and a shiny new black iPod Photo 30Gb.  Gotta love Apple.  The packaging is even sleeker and sexier than before, and you can’t beat their out of box experience.  The documentation that comes in the box basically says “install iTunes, plug in the iPod and everything just works”, and that’s pretty much how it went.  Took over an hour to get my 11Gb+ of content downloaded, but I love the fact that the USB interface will charge them now.  I was a little bummed that you don’t get the wall-plug-to-iPod-cable charger any more, although I’m sure my old firewire one still works. 

The screen is truly amazing.  I scoffed at the thought of trying to watch videos on such a tiny screen, but it really is that good.   Since I don’t get cable, the fact that you can get the Daily Show on iTunes is pretty dang cool, since that’s about the only thing that makes me want cable. 

Sadness gone.

I really have to hand it to Apple (once again).  I’m amazed that so few other companies seem to “get it” the way they do.

Last night I finally got broadband access hooked up at my new house.  Two weeks without Internet access has been crushing me slowly, but this was the soonest I could pull everything together. 

I found out a while back that I could get Verizon’s FIOS service at my new house.  Way faster than the 768Kb DSL connection I had before.  I went round and round about how to set up networking/phone/etc. at the new place.  I considered cable modems, VoIP phone, etc.  I didn’t really want a cable modem, since I don’t watch TV, and Comcast really tries hard (relentlessly?) to make you watch TV once they get a foot in the door.  I considered DSL again, but you can’t get DSL without local phone service, and I didn’t really want that either.  FIOS works out perfectly.  It’s fiber direct to the home, and you can get (right now) 5Mb down and 2Mb up for $35/month.  Perfect.  I don’t have a landline, since I already pay for cell phones, and FIOS carries no local phone requirement, although if you use Verizon as your local phone service, they route your phone over the fiber too, at no additional charge.  If you really feel you need it, FIOS is also capable of 15Mb/2Mb for only $10/month more. 

Once that was decided, it was still a lengthy process.  Turns out that FIOS requires a little box (the Optical Network Terminal) to be installed on the outside of your house.  This (for me) required getting approval from the HOA, and for that I had to wait until we closed before even submitting the application.  That took a few days to process, and by then the earliest time I could schedule Verizon for was over a week out.  Sigh.  Being a utility, Verizon gives you a nice tight arrival window for the technicians between 8 AM and 5 PM.  Thanks.  So I worked at home all day waiting for them to show up.  They finally arrived at 4:45.  Good thing I waited. :-(  Once they got there though, I was very impressed.  They only took about an hour, which included installing the ONT on the outside of the house, installing a battery backup for said device inside my garage, and running CAT5 from the ONT through the crawlspace and into the room where I have my PC set up.  The install ends in a very tidy looking RJ-45 jack.  They even install a free (if you agree to a one year contract) wireless router and get it all configured to talk to their server (via PPPoE, I was surprised to learn). 

I tried it out last night, and it kicks the llama’s @$$, as they say.  Lightyears ahead of my DSL connection. 

If it’s available in your neighborhood, it’s totally worth checking out. 

It was an arduous long weekend, but we are now moved into our new house.  10 years ago we bought our first house, a 1926 farmhouse with loads of character.  And bad plumbing.  And wiring.  And little insulation.  And no foundation.  All in all, an exciting place to live.  Somewhere along the line I discovered that I am totally not handy, and have absolutely no desire to become so.  And that I loathe yard work with a pure and simple hate. 

All that’s behind me now.  We’ve moved into a brand new townhome, with no yard work, lots of insulation, and all sorts of other stuff that works.  Sure, maybe it has a bit less “character”, but at this stage of the game, I’m willing to make sacrifices. 

We actually sold our old house back in December.  Full price, in cash, in less than 24 hours.  The real estate market may be slowing down someplace, but not here, apparently.  Ever since then, we’ve been renting our old house back, and waiting for construction to complete on the new one.  It was quite a thrill to pick up the keys last week. 

Oh, and if you ever need movers, All My Sons completely rocks.  The movers were incredible.  Not a scratch on anything, extremely polite and courteous, put everything exactly where we wanted it.  Totally worth it.   

Now the unpacking gets into full swing. 

I've been a fan- and user of Plaxo for some time, but hadn't been using it as much since switching to Thunderbird for all my email at home.  Then they came out with Thunderbird support, but not for 1.5, which is (of course) what I was using.  Now everyone has caught up, and Plaxo supports Thunderbird 1.5.  Oh, happy day!  I'm once again a regular user, and love it.  It's so nice to have my contacts synchronized across all the different machines I use on a daily basis. 

This morning I got to talk to an AP Computer Science class at a local high school about GPS receivers, and the wonderful world of geospatial data.  We touched on making your own maps, Google Maps/Google Earth mash-ups, and the kinds of data you can get from the internet and from a GPSr.  Fun stuff. 

In timely fashion, Scott has some info on how to geotag your photos using various means, which is handy information for the geospatially inclined.

For an excellent (and practical) example of using geospatial data, check out the Brew Map.  A Google maps mashup showing the locations of every brewery in WA and OR.  Apparently there’s a winery version too if you are into that sort of thing.  Little did I know there was a brewery in Forest Grove!  A useful tool already.

Vikki and I took the kids up to Mt. Hood on Sunday to play in the snow and try out the new sleds they got for Christmas.  We decided to head for the Trillium Lake snow park, which is just past the turnoff to Timberline (maybe a mile) right across from the turnoff for Snow Bunny.  It’s a nice snow park, usually not too crowded, and a great jumping off place for Nordic skiing or snow shoeing.  Unfortunately, their new sleds need a steeper slope, so the sledding didn’t go as well as hoped.  But we had a very nice time playing around in the snow and walking down the snow covered road watching the skier and snowshoers.  Also impressive was watching the tractor.  Some brilliant individual had decided to drive his 4Runner down the snow covered road (we’re talking probably 4+ feet of snow) past the chained gate, and got stuck up to his axles at the bottom of the hill.  They had to bring in a little snow tractor on a flatbed and pull him out.  Must have cost a fortune.  As well it should for doing something so stupid.  It did provide a fair amount of amusement for the spectators, so not a total loss.

We had a pretty mellow Christmas this year, visiting family up in Seattle and then finishing the festivities yesterday at our place.  In years past we’ve had some pretty crazed holiday seasons, so it was nice to chill for the weekend.  Got a chance to hang out with my sister and her new baby, my first nephew. 

We managed to work in some gadgets, as is traditional.  I got a new Highgear Axis watch, with compass, altimeter and barometer.  Very cool for geocaching.  Also got some extra software for my GPSr, so now I have topo maps that I can load onto it.  I have yet to try it out for caching, but I’m thinking the maps will be a big help. 

I got my son his very own Garmin GPS 60, which was a huge hit.  We went out Christmas morning so he could find his first geocache by himself, which he did quite quickly.  A chip off the old nerd block.

For those of you who might happen to read this blog for the technical content that once was here, hopefully there’ll be a bit more in the weeks to come.  I’m starting to work with Indigo, WWF, and Enterprise Library 2.0, so I should have some interested tidbits to report soon.

Over the weekend I finally got a chance to go down to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville.  The Spruce Goose is one big plane!  When I’d read that it was the biggest plane ever built, that still didn’t prepare me for the actual scale of the thing.  The whole museum is essentially in one big room, and the goose makes the other planes (like the “little” B-17) look like kid’s toys in comparison.  Not too surprising that it couldn’t actually fly.

The museum is very well done, with good, informative graphics, and a very nice building.  A clean, well lighted place for planes. One of the coolest parts of the visit was that we got to go inside the B-17 (for $10 extra for a family) and talk with some of the volunteers about the plane.  My grandfather flew B-17s and B-25s in WWII, so it was pretty cool to get a look inside and get a sense of what it would have been like to ride in one.  It would have been crowded, cold (30° below) and pretty scary, considering there’s not that much aluminum between you and the bullets. 

On the way down I managed to hunt up a couple of geocaches in Newburg, which made the trip that much more fun.  We also got a chance to check out the Hotel Oregon, McMennemin’s hotel in McMinnville.  Typical McMennemin’s food, nice atmosphere.  It’d be a nice place to stay.

I did a little geocaching with some friends this summer, and really want to do some more.  To that end, I just got my first GPS, a Garmin GPSMAP 60C.  So far I’m totally digging it.  It gets great reception, even in the car, and the color screen is super easy to read.  It’s even got some nice built-in geocaching features, like the ability to mark a cache as found, and recording when you found it. 

The USB interface is super easy, and I was able to upload/download waypoints in no time.  I have yet to try downloading a route, but that will be next.  I haven’t shelled out for the mapping software yet, so I have to content myself with the basemap, which isn’t much to go on, but should be enough for highways at least.

I’m hoping to get in some ‘caching this weekend, so we’ll see how well it works in the field.

How cools is this?  The first ever pictures of a live Giant Squid.  My son has been completely fascinated by these things for years, so he’ll freak when he sees these shots.  Getting pictures of a live Giant Squid has long been the holy grail of marine biology, which makes these images that much cooler.

September and October are the very best months here in Oregon.  Yesterday was truly spectacular.  Bright sunshine, clear blue skies, 45° in the morning, 75° by lunch.  The leaves are just starting to turn, and it looks like they are going to be something else this year. 

I also love that when I walk to work from the bus stop in the morning I often see Killdeer and a Great Blue Heron hanging out in the field across the street. 

Scott turned me on to TiddlyWiki a while back, and I’m totally diggin’ it.  I decided to use it for my latest Web Services class at OIT, and so far I think it will work out well. 

For those who haven’t seen it, TiddlyWikki is a self-contained, all DHTML wiki.  Just one HTML file filled with JavaScripty goodness.  It has very nice editing features built in, so all you have to do is keep slinging the one file around, and it’s all there.  I don’t have to worry about installing any server side code on my hosted site, and can edit the file basically anywhere FTP works. 

There isn’t much there yet, but if you want to take a look at an example, my class site is here.

Since our beloved husky-German Shephard Saffy passed away in July we’ve been casually shopping for a new dog.  Vikki and I both decided we wanted something smaller, and mellower.  In short, something that will be content to just hang out, and doesn’t take up too much room. 

Last week we found what we were looking for in the form of Carter.  He’s a Chihuahua/terrier mix that we got from the animal shelter.  About a year and a half old, had his shots, neutered, some puppy school.  All is good.  He’s a bit of an escape artist, but when he’s not escaping, he pretty much just wants to hang out with us, and he’s about the same size as our cat.  Perfect.

Pictures to follow.

My sister Erica delivered my first nephew yesterday afternoon.  Connor James Mullen, 7 lb. 15 oz.  Woo hoo!  Everyone is doing beautifully.

Over the holiday weekend we lost our 11-year-old Husky/German Shephard, Saffy (short for Saffron).  She went quickly, and didn't suffer, which is all we could have hoped for.  We can only hope that wherever she is now that the sun is warm, and the squirrels are slow.  She'll be missed.

My friend Lori turned me on to O’Reilly’s new “Make” magazine this weekend.  Very cool stuff.  I love the current trend towards mainstreaming the hacking of stuff.  You can find similar, although a bit more technical, stuff on the Hack a Day blog. 

I’m dying to try Make’s project for “kite arial photography”.  Basically you build a cradle out of popsicle sticks and pure grit, put a disposable camera in it, and hang it from a kite string.  At some controllable interval after you get it in the air, it releases the shutter on the camera and you get some pretty cool aerial photos. 

There’s also a project for a $15 DIY steady-cam.  Pretty fun stuff, and most of it looks pretty easy to build. 

My son is chomping at the bit to try their electric motor made from a magnet, some wire, two safety pins and a D battery.  Good times.

I upgraded to the latest 1.7 release of dasBlog CE this weekend, and it couldn’t have gone more smoothly.  I didn’t have any problems, and everything seems to be working just fine. 

Kudos to Scott, Omar and the other contributors.

I love to see technology being put to uses that actually make our lives better, so I was pretty tickled by the Fox Blocker.  It’s a little inline band-pass filter that you can screw into a cable TV line that blocks the signal for Fox News. 

Simple technology that makes our lives better.

[via Engadget]

I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to get some ham radio related (yes, I’m that big a nerd) software to run on an old laptop I have at home.  I figured, being such an old and limited little machine, I’ll run Linux, since it will be small, light and agile on such hardware.  As ever, the Linux install itself went very smoothly (Debian 3.0).  I spent three solid days installing Linux back in like ‘93, so I appreciate how far installing has come.  It’s what happens after that.  I know I write code for a living, but I’ve discovered that when I get home, it’s not really what I want to do.  And the unfortunate truth of Linux (for me at least) is that everything that doesn’t come with your distro is next to impossible to run.  I just don’t have the patience to compile every piece of software that I want to use, especially since whatever libraries it depends on are NEVER the ones that I have. 

Sigh.  I know deep in my heart that Linux is cool.  I just don’t have that kind of time. 

As sad as it is, I gave up and installed the copy of 98 SE that came with the box.  And it just works.  Not nearly as flashy (Gnome is way cooler, hands down) but a solid performer.  Of course it took two days and several sets of drivers to get my D-Link WiFi card to work, but that’s a different story.