O little town of Hackensack, How still we hear thee snore;

The picture on the right is an overhead view of our cove. The pushpin denotes the roof of the camp. By comparison, the site that looks like a runway is our neighbor's year-round home. The neighbors don't understand why my father didn't like what they did to the property.

Below is the perspective that a hawk would have on our house and yard as it's approaching from the south.

All images are courtesy of Google Earth. With the Google Earth software, I can tilt, zoom, and circle around. The images are based on an amazing array of GIS, satellite, and aerial data covering the U.S.

We had a large meeting at work yesterday regarding a reorganization. The major impact was felt by some managers who have new bosses as of today. The individual contributors are largely unaffected for now. I did talk with one manager who is in the process of forming a software tools group. He's still resolving issues regarding his budgets. He knows that I'm interested in such a job and that I'd likely be good at it.

This morning's automated search for a technical documentation position provides a lead on a Principle Internal Auditor. "And how are your principles doing this morning, Dilbert?"

Moving my work computer so that it faces the opening in my cube at work has had the desired effect. Not only are people not sneaking up on me, but people are stopping by to talk. If I really need to concentrate on something, I can take my laptop and work in a conference room or in the cafeteria. Most of the time, though, it's more important that I talk with people.

Every hour or so I get up and walk around the building. It's about a 1/5th of a mile. I walk clockwise. My friend Brownie used to like to have discussions proceed around a table clockwise. He said that, because that's the direction that high pressure systems circulate in the Northern Hemisphere, it brings fair weather to the meeting.

Sandra's at the camp with her cousin Phyllis. I'll go there this evening. It should be a quiet day at work and we may even be sent home early. Traffic was heavy yesterday afternoon, with people getting an early start on the early start.

Speaking of which, in a GMAC study of driver knowledge, or lack thereof, we're #2!

On Saturday evening we'll see the Prairie Home Companionshow at Tanglewood. Gillian Welch, one of my favorite singers, is performing, along with the usual cast. An added treat is the appearance of Professor Peter Schickele. We can only hope that he will pull another rancid gym sock from laundry bag that is the repertoire of one P.D.Q. Bach. (The title of today's entry is from P.D.Q.'s Christmas carol O Little Town of Hackensack.) We have seats in the shed.

Sunday night we'll watch the fireworks on the lake. The weather promises to be good. We will probably watch from Elden's lawn where there's a better view of the whole lake.

Happy Canada Day.

Fung shui rides again

It's coming up on a year at my job. Over the course of a year I manage to do horrible things to the software configuration on my computer. Installing and uninstalling trial products, there are shards of software all over the place. It was time, past time even, to reformat the hard drive and start anew, which I did yesterday afternoon. While that was going on, I was faced with an office that had its share of creeping clutter. Editing drafts stood in stacks on the corner of the desk. New project files were scattered among personal notes. It was time to clean house.

The biggest problem with cubicles is that they are designed to have you work while facing away from the door. A visit has not choice but to interrupt and, possibly, surprise you. Sandra gave me a little mirror, but people were still managing to sneak up. I have moved my computer monitor so that it's facing the doorway. I'm sitting at a bit of an angle to the desk and my back may be a bit torqued by the time I'm done, but it's worth a try. It's been said that if you're surprised by people's arrival, you'll be surprised by their ideas.

There's a big meeting this morning, announcing details of a reorganization in the group to which I'm assigned. I don't think that the changes will have any major, immediate impact on me. The director who called the meeting said that there would be cake. I was supposed to bring food to my manager's staff meeting, which was trumped by this other, bigger meeting. So now we have two Finnish coffee breads and a can of Spam Lite.

Sandra's cousin, Phyllis, is spending the weekend with us. She's flying from Chicago this morning. Sandra will meet her at the airport and, after errands, go to the camp for the night.

From the My VCR is Flashing 12:00 Dept.
There's a whole economic world of which I'm only dimly aware, that of ringtones. In brief, you can buy (or rent or lease or whatever the right verb is) short clips of music that play when you receive an incoming call. You can have different ringtones for different callers. In addition, you can have what are called ringbacks. In this case, the person calling you will hear a musical clip. I stumbled on to a service that would have let me use Freddy Freeloader from Miles Davis as my ringback tone. I think that these tones cost a dollar or two a piece, but I'm not sure if it's a one-time charge, a subscription fee, or something else. Apparently, enough people have figured this out to make the ringtone business very popular for the wireless phone companies.

New releases of Apple's iTunes and my new friend Replay Radio have made it even easier to record Internet radio shows for later playback. The radio shows were a part of my work day for several years and it's comforting to have them back. I'll wax nostalgic another time about radio, listening to Carl de Suze on WBZ and WBZA in the early morning darkness on school day, hearing Mississippi Harold Wilson play Paul Butterfield's East-West in a late 1960s night.

Michael Francis worked in our yard yesterday, splitting and stacking wood, straighten up some construction equipment of Mike's that we've kept in back. MF is bulking up for football. Earlier this week, he was carrying packages of roofing shingles up ladders and was sore for a couple of days. Football practice starts at the first of August.

In separate calls, I had good conversations with Mike and Adam last night. Our wives were out for the evening, so the guys got on the phone. The conversations meandered nicely on a summer's evening - from work to baseball to the expansion of the Smith College campus and the need for science and engineering program for women to communities and business networking (the meet-and-greet kind, not 800.11g). I brought them up to date on my health. I'd been having a couple of bad days, but, about 1:30 yesterday afternoon, the wet, wool blanket lifted and I was able to do stuff again. I'm really blessed to be supported by such a wonderful family and so many good friends. As I often quote Luis Tiant, they make me do better than I can do.

Adam, Jennie, and Lily spent Tuesday night at the camp. Yesterday morning an engineer from Verizon came to look over the settings. (See, I told you this was going to be a saga.) The engineer told Adam that getting phone service to our camp was going to be a big project. The last phone connection is at pole #22. We're at pole #30. The poles are 150 feet apart, many surrounded by tree cover. Adam said that the engineer estimates that the work will take a couple of weeks. I can't locate my phone-company-to-UTC time conversion table, but I think that two weeks is optimistic.

The sound of a phone not ringing

The pleasant young man from the phone company showed up at the camp yesterday morning. He was wide-eyed, an expression common to first-time travelers along the muddy camp road. He may have even been surprised that I spoke English. He asked if we'd ever had phone service at the camp before. I said no, but that our neighbors did. I directed him toward the woods in back of the camp and assured him that there was another house not too far away.

When high-speed Internet access was first offered, starting in the late 1980s, there was a good deal of talk about 'the last mile', that often-expensive and troublesome segment of cabling from the main service lines to the homes. It's not quite a mile from the nearest wired telephone at the lake. It's more like 300 yards, but the woods are thick and the ground underfoot can be ledge or swamp. The neighbors on the south of us get their phone service from one town, the neighbors on the east from another. (The neighbors on the north and west are fish.) The southside neighbors had to pay for their own telephone poles (as they have often reminded us). The installer couldn't quite determine how the eastside neighbors got their service; the line disappeared into the trees.

So, we have the makings of a saga. The installer said that he'd have to hand this request to the engineering team for further investigation. This will take a while.

Not far away, in the small town of Shutesbury, some clever people have assembled a wireless network around Lake Wyola. I think that there are enough year-round residents that we could put together such a service at Queen Lake. I may get a chance to talk about it with a few folks at next month's lake association meeting.

OK, so Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields believe that antidepressants can help people and Tom Cruise thinks that antidepressants are evil (transcript).

Last night the Canadian Parliament voted to allow same-sex marriages for all of Canada. It's still not clear if all provinces must go along. Prince Edward Island, along with Alberta, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories do not permit same-sex marriages. Besides, PEI has other things to worry about. The government is setting up cameras to take pictures of people illegally dumping trash in the woods.

Once more into the woods

Friend Tom often talks about corporate DNA, the tendency of an organization to revert to its original style, goals, and actions even as it tries to change. I thought about Tom during the 45 minutes that I was on the phone with Verizon as we a) tried to figure out why our phone line wasn't installed at the camp last Friday and 2) what we could do about that. Each person in customer service, billing, repair, and, of course, the eCenter (!), was very nice, very empathetic. The system in which they worked and with which I had to contend is, however, genetically Ma 'We are the phone company and we know what you need.' Bell. In my case, when I filled out the form on the web and selected Verizon as my long-distance carrier, I didn't select a plan. The online forms didn't require a plan, but the folks in the back office did. So, the order was put on hold. A very nice person named Bonnie figured out what had happened, reopened the order, double-checked the work order, reviewed the directions to the place, and said that I'd be getting a credit on my first month's bill because of my troubles.

We're going to try again today. The installation is scheduled for some time between 8 and 12. The camp will be a good place to be today. It's warm and quite humid now.

Also, I came home from work early yesterday and feel better, but not all better today. At my appointment yesterday, I learned that my doctor is moving to California at the end of August. He's been good - forthright, empathetic, good-humored, as well as competent.

Sandra and I had dinner outside last Saturday night. This was the first time we'd used our outdoor fireplace for cooking. The steak and potatoes came out well, perhaps a bit al dente, but very tasty. For dessert, I toasted marshmallows on the coals, using a skewer that my father made a very long time ago, long before there was thought of gadgets such as this.

At work we take turns bringing in snacks for the team's weekly staff meeting. It's my turn this week. I'll bring some Finnish coffee bread and the obligatory can of Spam. I doubt that anyone will want the Spam. It's best when served fried or grilled, bringing out all of its artery-clogging goodness.

There are some vegetarian readers of this journal. A visit to the Potted Meat Museum might make a few more converts.

Cooking with gas

The telephone installer didn't show up on Friday. I did manage to get some work done in the quiet. I also played with my new picture phone a bit. Sandra finished her errands in town and joined me shortly after noon. The nice guy from the heating company, Larry, finished the installation of our new gas cooktop.

We investigated the neighbor's tree that was hit by lightning (the tree, not the neighbor). There was no damage to their buildings. One tree was split and knocked over, blocking the driveway. Another had a black burn mark running its length. The next day, we could hear our neighbor and his son-in-law working with their chain saw.

We'd set aside Saturday as day of peace and ease. We walked in the woods, paddled around the north end of the lake in the canoe, swam, read, dozed, stacked wood and gathered kindling, dined on steaks from the grill. My father couldn't make it up the stairs, so we had early afternoon coffee and snacks in the shade near the boathouse.

On Sunday Sandra went to the Cape for Russell's first birthday party while I went grocery shopping for my father and did a few other chores around the house. Michael Francis and Joe rode with Sandra. I'd sent a text message to her cell phone. Joe (age 10) showed her how these messages work. So simple that even a child can do it. Verizon Wireless should package a child with each new phone.

The concept of free long-distance calls is a new and strange one. Until 20 or so years ago, phone charges were measured by distance - a call to Florida, Florida was a lot more than a call to Florida, Massachusetts. Fiber-optic cables have made national distances disappear. My father would prefer to (and does) drive 40 miles to talk with his friend Ted rather than make the long-distance phone call. This new cell phone plan will change things, but probably not quickly.

I attended a regional school system, two small towns joining together to make one small high school. The other town, Ashburnham, was outside of our local calling area until my junior or senior year. Until then, a call to a friend in the next town (a toll call) required much pleading.

My father hasn't been able to get to the dump for a while. Not that he makes much trash; the house is quite tidy. As I was taking one bag of trash and other bags of paper and cans for recycling, I asked if there was anything else. He asked how much room I had in my car (a Subaru wagon). When he was assured that I had plenty of room, he pointed me to three trash bags with cement that had gone bad. (Moisture had seeped in and hardened the mix.) Anyone have anything that needs to stay at the bottom of a lake or pond?

On the back road that leads from my father's house to the Wal-Mart in Gardner, there's a sign by the driveway of a small house: "Worms 24x7".

Woody and Marian were having company this weekend, so Marian baked cookies. She laid them out on the kitchen table to cool, covering them with paper. They had to go out for a little bit. When they return, not a cookie was to be found. The company wasn't coming until the next day, so Marian had time to make another batch. This time, she put the cookies on the dining room table, covered them, and went out. Upon return, not a cookie could be found, just a very happy dog.

We received a bill from the circulation office of the Worcester Telegram. The bill is for 34¢. The good news is that it's a final notice.

One of my favorite sites (though PG-13 and usually not safe for work) is Fark.com. One of the recurring features at the site are their Photoshop contests. Participants are given a theme and they have to use Photoshop (or other image-editing programs) to alter a picture to make it fit with the theme. This weekend, one of the contests was If the world were more like a cartoon...
By the way, Blogger has added a new feature that makes it much easier to add pictures to blogs. I'll try to be judicious in the number of pictures that I include here because I know that pictures can be very slow to load on a dial-up connection, which I hope to have at the camp real soon now.