"Don't make fun of my hearing."
"What? You think my hair looks funny?"
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Mid-winter inventory (nocwyhfl*)
*nocwyhfl = No One Cares What You Had for Lunch, a blog entry that is full of minor details that are probably of little interest to anyone outside the immediate family (and, even then, only if their lives slow down for a bit).
As noted before, we should have half of our winter's wood supply remaining at the end of January. We do. Nearly all of it is wood that we brought from my father's house. I didn't measure our supply in the fall, but I'd guess that it was about five cords. We burn more wood now that I'm around all day long. In the spring, I'll place another order for the coming year.
The sun is bright today, so it's a good day for laundry. The extra minutes we get each day add to the drying time available on the clothesline. We still have to finish drying the clothes on a rack inside the house in the early evening, but the good smell still lingers.
Our winter project is to get our office clutter trimmed down. I've cleared out a couple of small baskets, tossing some stuff and sending other to deeper storage. I've saved perhaps 10 pages out of a half-dozen shirt-pocket notebooks. ("Burn our notebooks. What good are notebooks?") We've cleared about half the shelves, a tasty bit of progress.
It looks as though we'll close on the deal with my father's house next week. The closing was originally scheduled for today. The buyers requested an extension, but said that they might be able to make the original date. Given that we're just about out of the original date, we'll go for next week. We have our final chores as complete as they can be, so now we're just waiting. For all the work that's gone into the house and sale, we've been extremely blessed with a lot of help from many corners.
As noted before, we should have half of our winter's wood supply remaining at the end of January. We do. Nearly all of it is wood that we brought from my father's house. I didn't measure our supply in the fall, but I'd guess that it was about five cords. We burn more wood now that I'm around all day long. In the spring, I'll place another order for the coming year.
The sun is bright today, so it's a good day for laundry. The extra minutes we get each day add to the drying time available on the clothesline. We still have to finish drying the clothes on a rack inside the house in the early evening, but the good smell still lingers.
Our winter project is to get our office clutter trimmed down. I've cleared out a couple of small baskets, tossing some stuff and sending other to deeper storage. I've saved perhaps 10 pages out of a half-dozen shirt-pocket notebooks. ("Burn our notebooks. What good are notebooks?") We've cleared about half the shelves, a tasty bit of progress.
It looks as though we'll close on the deal with my father's house next week. The closing was originally scheduled for today. The buyers requested an extension, but said that they might be able to make the original date. Given that we're just about out of the original date, we'll go for next week. We have our final chores as complete as they can be, so now we're just waiting. For all the work that's gone into the house and sale, we've been extremely blessed with a lot of help from many corners.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Department of why people hate computers
We have a new desktop system at home, a system that I plan to keep fairly clean and use only for household chores - photos, DVD-burning, home finances, stuff like that.
I'd been spoiled by working in a corporate networking environment where you could pretty much just plug a computer into a network port and you'd be connected to everything that you'd need. It's taken me about a week to get our old laptop to see shared folders and a printer on the new system (running Vista). It turned out that I needed to start two services - Workstation and Computer Browsing - on the laptop. Nowhere in the official docs did that appear. I stumbled on it in an IT forum and, even there, it was just an off-hand remark made by the poster on the way to another point.
And, here's what happened the first time that I opened Internet Explorer:
I'd been spoiled by working in a corporate networking environment where you could pretty much just plug a computer into a network port and you'd be connected to everything that you'd need. It's taken me about a week to get our old laptop to see shared folders and a printer on the new system (running Vista). It turned out that I needed to start two services - Workstation and Computer Browsing - on the laptop. Nowhere in the official docs did that appear. I stumbled on it in an IT forum and, even there, it was just an off-hand remark made by the poster on the way to another point.
And, here's what happened the first time that I opened Internet Explorer:
This week's RoasterBoy playlist
Paul Butterfield - East-West ( Tuesday, Jan 29 at 11:45 AM )
The title track of one of the most interesting albums that I've owned. (I bought the vinyl album about 40 years ago, replaced it with a CD in the 80s, and have listened to it on my iPod since 2004.) The album is a mix of blues standards with a pop/jazz tune (Cannonball Adderly's Work Song)…
Emmylou Harris - The Maker ( Monday, Jan 28 at 05:40 PM )
A fine cover of a Daniel Lanois tune. -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com Drink from the well and yield your place to another. - Jose Ortega y Gasset
Georgie Fame and his Blue Flames: Yeh Yeh (1965) / Co-authored by Pat Patrick ( Sunday, Jan 27 at 10:30 AM )
Deval Patrick's father, Pat Patrick, wasn't much of a father, but ran with a good crowd as a jazz musician: Patrick shaped by father's absence - The Boston Globe .
YouTube - Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush - Don't Give Up ( Saturday, Jan 26 at 10:19 AM )
YouTube - Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush - Don't Give Up Or, if you'd like to have it shaken up a bit, here's Don't Give Up with Willie Nelson and Sinead O'Connor.
YouTube - Jefferson Starship -- Wooden Ships ( Saturday, Jan 26 at 08:23 AM )
How the hippies survived: Jefferson Starship -- Wooden Ships
YouTube - Phil Ochs - Power and Glory ( Friday, Jan 25 at 03:04 PM )
Strength and wisdom side-by-side with a deep and relentless pain: Phil Ochs on Midnight Special , with an intro by Curtis Mayfield.
YouTube - John Coltrane - My Favorite Things - 1961 ( Thursday, Jan 24 at 06:43 PM )
YouTube - John Coltrane - My Favorite Things - 1961 As memorable as Coltrane's performance is, the rhythm section, particularly McCoy Tyner, is the Atlas to Coltrane's new world.
Jennifer Warnes: First We Take Manhattan ( Thursday, Jan 24 at 10:30 AM )
Most folks know Jennifer Warnes from her duet with Bill Medley (Righteous Brothers) on I've Had The Time of My Life , a nice tune that's been seared into our prefrontal cortexes by those Sandals ads. You might also know her from her duet with Joe Cocker on Up Where We Belong . Excellent…
Multitasking makes us stupid and, oops, I've got to take this call...
"... certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy." From The Atlantic: The Autumn of the Multitaskers
via /.
via /.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Party on
We had a great gathering yesterday at our house for Mike's birthday, 16 of us at the dinner table. A few items were overcooked and someone took the ice cream cake out of the freezer too soon. (Ice cream soup, anyone?) Still, everything tasted good and, most importantly, we had time to talk and just enjoy each other's company. A lot of it had to do with being relaxed. Instead of worrying that there were kids running up and down the stairs and from room to room, we said, "Isn't this great?" The older kids found Spiderman on TV while the younger ones watched a bit of Nemo upstairs in our room while other just found ways to play. Marley stayed quietly in his room and was rewarded with lots dishes to lick clean after the company was gone.
Happy Birthday a couple of days later, Mike.
Happy Birthday a couple of days later, Mike.
Department of Oxymorons: "How Murphy's Law Works"
If Murphy's Law works, does that mean it didn't? Howstuffworks "How Murphy's Law Works"
There is something going on here, ...
but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Olsen: YouTube - DEC - Glimpse of the Future, 1994
Sunday, January 27, 2008
A Compendium of 150 Monty Python Sketches
Lily knows the words to the Lumberjack Song because I sang it to her as a lullaby when she was a baby. In case you've forgotten the words, here's the sketch along with a compendium of 150 Monty Python sketches.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Baby-sitting, part next.
The word is out that they think that, somehow, I know what I'm doing as a babysitter.
BTW, there's a special place in Hell for the people who design the packaging for children's toys. Imagine having a new collection of Disney figurines in a thick plastic package with each of the figurines also wired into to place so that you have to untie these tiny wires while a three-year-old is waiting to play with Remy and the other Ratatouille characters. We finally freed the characters and had a delightful time, in spite of my malevolence vibrations directed at the packaging engineer.
BTW, there's a special place in Hell for the people who design the packaging for children's toys. Imagine having a new collection of Disney figurines in a thick plastic package with each of the figurines also wired into to place so that you have to untie these tiny wires while a three-year-old is waiting to play with Remy and the other Ratatouille characters. We finally freed the characters and had a delightful time, in spite of my malevolence vibrations directed at the packaging engineer.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Scientists vs. Gray Beards
Even though Scientists say time is slowing down, they aren't saying so from the perspective of people living their lives. For me, the days are getting smaller. No matter how precious each day's activities might be (and precious indeed they can be), the bags get smaller and slide past more quickly.
About the Patriots and winning ugly
Some days, we aren't great. Some days, in fact, we aren't even good.
The New England Patriots sneak into the Super Bowl. - By Charles P. Pierce - Slate Magazine: "His greatest gift always has been his ability to go completely egoless while playing a position designed for egomaniacs."
The New England Patriots sneak into the Super Bowl. - By Charles P. Pierce - Slate Magazine: "His greatest gift always has been his ability to go completely egoless while playing a position designed for egomaniacs."
NPR: In Today's World, the Well-Rested Lose Respect
NPR: In Today's World, the Well-Rested Lose Respect
Listening to people claim how little they sleep reminds me of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch by Monty Python (and others).
Listening to people claim how little they sleep reminds me of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch by Monty Python (and others).
The north county is falling apart
Pine Street in Gardner, where my grandparents lived, has been closed for several weeks because part of the old Heywood-Wakefield complex has collapsed onto the street. In addition, the part that hasn't collapsed is none too steady and could fall over in strong storm or a bad case of the hiccups.
Then, we learned that the Westminster library, where my mother worked and where I spent a lot of time as a nerd-in-training, was damaged by water from a broken pipe. The break occurred over the long weekend and was discovered on Tuesday morning.
What's next? A plague of frogs clogging the snow guns at Mount Wachusett?
Then, we learned that the Westminster library, where my mother worked and where I spent a lot of time as a nerd-in-training, was damaged by water from a broken pipe. The break occurred over the long weekend and was discovered on Tuesday morning.
What's next? A plague of frogs clogging the snow guns at Mount Wachusett?
Video Chronology of The History of British TV Comedy | MetaFilter
A terrific compendium of 50 years of BBC comedies: Video Chronology of The History of British TV Comedy | MetaFilter
Snow White and, um, Godzilla
Yesterday, Cassie and I hung out at my father's house while the good guy from Country Fuel cleaned the furnace. Cassie had a backpack full of figurines - princesses, princes, and a dwarf-sized Godzilla. We spread the toys out on the carpet in the den and played. The play mostly involved standing up the figurines and knocking them down.
It's hard to imagine, but we did grow tired of that after a while, so we switched over to hide-and-seek. This game, for the most part, had one of us hide in a closet while the other counted to 10, walked around for a bit, and then opened the closet door. The person inside the closet yelled.
The time passed quickly and we didn't have to try figure out other games to play.
It's hard to imagine, but we did grow tired of that after a while, so we switched over to hide-and-seek. This game, for the most part, had one of us hide in a closet while the other counted to 10, walked around for a bit, and then opened the closet door. The person inside the closet yelled.
The time passed quickly and we didn't have to try figure out other games to play.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
This week's miscellaneous links
The Presurfer: Lederhosen Dance Generator ( Tuesday, Jan 22 at 09:01 PM )
My first visit to the ocean was on a high school trip. I was probably a freshman. My aunt and uncle had recently gone to Germany and brought me a pair of lederhosen. I thought that it would be cool to wear something unique on the trip. I was wrong. Very w
Reserve A Spot In Heaven - The Only Way To Guarantee Your Spot In Heaven ( Monday, Jan 21 at 08:43 PM )
What if there was no room for you?
Do we need computer competence tests? | The Register ( Monday, Jan 21 at 08:33 PM )
It is, surely, a loss of liberty to say "You can't buy a Formula One racing car and drive along the motorway at 200 mph" - but how important was that freedom, really? And are we doing something equally daft in insisting on the "freedom" to let someone loa
LOLinator: i can haz websiet? ( Monday, Jan 21 at 05:23 PM )
This web site translate a web site into lolcats dialect. Try it out with http://roasterboy.blogspot.com.
The page cannot be found ( Sunday, Jan 20 at 08:34 PM )
via del.icio.us hotlist
weirdconverter.com ( Sunday, Jan 20 at 03:51 AM )
Rules of Thumb for Writing « // Internet Duct Tape ( Saturday, Jan 19 at 04:15 AM )
Read your work out loud to locate problems. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long.
What is your best quality?
| What's Your Best Quality? Your Result: Intelligence Your best quality is intelligence! People like you because you are smart and always make the right decision. Your intelligence also helps you handle tough situations. | |
| Loving | |
| Personality | |
| Ambitious | |
| Sense of Humor | |
| Out-Going | |
| What's Your Best Quality? Take More Quizzes | |
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