Sunday June 29, 2003
The Second Five - How I'll Spend my Summer
The Friday 5 for June 27, 2003- How are you planning to spend the summer [winter]?
- What was your first summer job?
- If you could go anywhere this summer [winter], where would you go?
- What was your worst vacation ever?
- What was your best vacation ever?
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Friday June 27, 2003
Discovering the Friday Five
(Actually, I discovered this site on Wednesday whilst surfing during downtime in the WWDC Exhibit Hall. But I didn't get around to posting the article for a few days, and then it sat as a draft. What can I say?... Pretend.)The Friday Five for June 20, 2003
- Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short?
- How has your hair changed over your lifetime?
- How do your normally wear your hair?
- If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like?
- Ever had a hair disaster? What happened?
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Thursday June 26, 2003
Too Darn Hot
It is w*a*r*m in San Bruno today. A little too warm if you ask me; indoor thermometers are registering 85 - 89 depending on the location. Supposedly 85 outside. 97 in the sunroom. 116 on the (2nd floor) screenporch! (and all the windows are open AND the fan is running!). Nobody is out on the screen porch.
The cat thermometers are registering 90.
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Wednesday June 25, 2003
3 long days under WWDC
I spent Monday - Wednesday (9am - 6pm) manning a small MacTech booth in the Exhibits Hall for WWDC (Apple's annual World Wide Developers Conference). The conference was well attended - 3800 people. The Exhibit Hall had some 70 exhibitors - and essentially no "customers".
Part of the problem was the location. In the past, WWDC has always been in the San Jose Convention Center. Exhibits, break areas, sessions, lunch, have always been on the same level of the building. But this year, WWDC was moved from May to June and from San Jose to San Francisco, to the new Moscone West convention center building. The exhibits (and lunch) were on the first floor. Sessions and break areas were on the 2nd and 3rd floors. Except for lunch (2 hours each day) there are no scheduled breaks at WWDC. So, people either hurry from session to session, or spend short breaks talking to friends, checking email, grabbing a snack - this year, all on the 2nd and 3rd floors. One (or two) levels above the Exhibit Hall.
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Sunday June 22, 2003
BART is finally here!
BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has finally opened four new stations on the Peninsula, and goes as far as the airport. This thing has been under construction since 1998 and was originally due to open well over a year ago. The Millbrae station also provides connectivity with CalTrain. The San Bruno station is just a bit more than 2 miles from our house.Saturday June 21, 2003
I wonder what I did last week
Hmmmm. Looking back over my weblog, I wonder what I did last week. I guess it wasn't very interesting.Saturday June 14, 2003
Nature Walk
Once again, I forgot to take a camera. Sigh. Pics are representative; from enature.com. But we did see these.
Time to put a camera in the car; it does no good on the shelf!
Coming onto the trail we met a woman coming out carrying a lizard! She had caught him and was holding him in the palm of her hand. Either he was petrified with fear (Rich's comment) or he didn't mind; he wasn't trying to get away and she just held him on her hand, palm up, gently stroking his back with her thumb. My guess is he was hypnotized. :-) He was greeney-grey.
About 100 feet into the walk we saw another lizard on the rocks at the side of the trail; this one was dark brown. I'm not sure what kind of lizard they were (or even if they were the same kind). I'm guessing the guy in the picture ;-)
On the way back we came to a place where some people were looking at something along the side of the path. It was a snake; a man jogging by said it was a California kingsnake (confirmed on the web when I got home). He looked much like the photo here (from enature.com) but ours was brown and wasn't curled up; he was slithering along. Here is an even better picture.
He was a very handsome snake. At least a dozen people stopped and watched. Unfortunately, the snake was moving north and we were heading south on the way back towards the car so we bid him adieu and came back home.
Wednesday June 11, 2003
Finding Nemo
We saw Finding Nemo last night.
The movie is fun and intensely colorful (I felt like I was inside a screen saver :-).
There are some darker parts than previous Pixar films (especially the introduction, which evokes memories of Bambi and Dumbo). Although it was important to understand why the main characters were a single fishfather and his son, and to understand the personalities of both, it was still something of a downer beginning.
Nevertheless, the movie perked up after that and moved along, ahem, swimmingly. All the the characters are well actualized and believable. Dorie is fun. Everything seems very real. I thought the seagulls were particularly well defined and very very funny.
Overall a fun movie and worth seeing. Take the kids but see it for yourself too. See it in a theatre; it's worth the large screen experience. Stay through the credits; they're entertaining.
Monday June 9, 2003
Amazing JavaScript Clock
Have you seen the Amazing JavaScript Web Clock? It's cool.N.B.
- The clock requires JavaScript.
- Mac users note: The clock does not work under Safari Beta 2; try IE.5 (a bug report has been filed)
Sunday June 8, 2003
Origami paper sculpture
I ran across a reference to Michael G. LaFosse almost three years ago, when I found an issue of Bats magazine in our doctor's waiting room (apparently a doctor at the clinic subscribes). Mr Fosse does incredible paper scuplture and fantastic origami; he was featured in an article entitled Origami and the Art of Bat Appreciation .
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Saturday June 7, 2003
Herbal Mosquito Repellant
Want a natural way to fight mosquitoes? Something without nasty pesticides?
Try catnip! Apparently it repels mosquitoes (and your cats will love you for it).
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Tuesday June 3, 2003
Romeo and Juliet
We watched West Side Story last night. Well, Rich watched the whole movie; I stopped about 3/4 through. I just couldn't stay with it. I've never been a big fan of Romeo and Juliet or of tragedy in general, at least when it involves innocent people and inexorable events. Sigh.Nice dancing though. Very balletic. Fancy edition of the DVD complete with screenplay and photographs.