On one of the online communities I frequent, an Arizona lady said she was coming to glassland for a week and asked about appropriate clothing. What followed defined a rarely mentioned northwestern US trait: Chronic inability to feel cold.
Stopped by Peet's Coffee today for some beans. Coffee beans. Despite my location I'm not particularly into coffee. I tend to regard it as a wake-up drug and mild stimulant (and lately, a source of warmth). Basing my choice on taste is about as intelligent as choosing one brand of digitalis for its superior nose. And, as many of my coffee fanatic friends point out, it's doubtful that I could distinguish the finest Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee from mud, given my heavy reliance on cream and Splenda to make any coffee palatable.
That about sums up 2006. Wacky. (warning--long-winded post ahead. sorry about that) This year has had more ups and downs than an escalator. On the whole, I'd say it was an up year but with some serious, life changing downs. Here's my version of the year in review, not necessarily in order of importance: A huge up was also a [...]
So the HVAC guys were just here for a second day, and the new furnace (a Carrier Infinity 96) is almost installed (almost). It's bigger, noisier (well, sometimes) than the old one, but here's the deal: It works. It's also smarter than the old furnace (which, after all, was a whole 27 years old). We no longer call its thermostat [...]
Whether you celebrate the Christian/pagan day or not, best wishes for a festive holiday season, and much hope and joy for the last 5 days of the year and the 365 to follow. Here's what should be the last of my fractured carols for 2010: The 12 days of Glassmass On the first day of Glassmass my true love gave [...]
My first trip to the White House as a reporter was not exactly an unqualified success. For one thing, I hadn't been in Washington DC long enough to really acquire the jaded affect of the rest of the DC press corps and I stuck out like a sore thumb. For another, I wasn't exactly in the DC press corps--I was a PC reviewer for a newspaper about public sector computing, Government Computer News. My interest in the White House was usually limited to presidential use of Macs and PCs. Clinton and Monica Lewinsky would never appear on my radar...unless Clinton used an optical mouse instead of a cigar.
Had lunch with a friend this week, and found out she grew up on a farm in eastern Oregon, ran a combine, etc. We had a lot of fun comparing experiences--I didn't grow up on a farm, far from it, but I grew up in Fresno, California, the agricultural center of the universe. And Fresno's where I learned one crucial ag rule: Never try to kill a steer with your eyes closed.
Note to all who call a spade an individualized excavatory device: Stop it. Of course, if they really stopped, I’d be on welfare. Finding the right words has paid the mortgage for many years. Still, there are times I wish that people wouldn't assume that originality and confusing the hell out of the customer are the same thing. I mention [...]
It’s Halloween and we all have our ghost stories to tell, right? Here’s mine. A long time ago, I managed networks and BBSes (a kind of early online community) for a research group in our local agricultural college. Our charter was to persuade farmers, agriculture teachers and the ag industry in general to use the computer to gain competitive advantage over the rest of the world.
I am most emphatically NOT a birdwatcher. I don’t even own a pair of those khaki safari shorts or a pith helmet. I can point out robins and bluejays and hummingbirds, but get beyond that and all I can say is “it has feathers. must be a bird.” So when I heard a loud clacking behind me this morning, as [...]
