8:37 p.m. Caller reports numerous loose dogs on the new playground at Horace Mann School. Patrol notes no trespassing after dark is posted and asks all there to move on.
I hope the dogs realized the error of their way and started paying more attention to the posted signs!
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Get the word out! Sphere: Related ContentOn Wednesday, Aug. 13 at 9:58 a.m., a caller received a report of suspicious activity on Myrtle Street. Report unfounded; turned out to be a man wearing a winter coat.
Yesterday Ben went to the beach yesterday with his buddy. He was out there all day and had a great time. I think he must have gotten his mothers’ complexion or at least her forethought, because if I was out all day I would fry to a crisp. Grace and Chloe went to a birthday party while Liz and I took Gabe to the mall where I spent some time drooling over the latest apple iTouch. We did some shopping but I don’t think we got anything interesting.
When we got back I took Chloe and Grace on an errand to the grocery store. The real excitement came up because we took our bicycles. Chloe and Grace have never really done this with me and Sunday afternoon was a pretty good time for it. Traffic was low visibility was good. Chloe and Grace had a great time. I picked up some salmon for dinner and they took their piggy banks to trade in the change for cash at one of those machines. In truth, I think it was the highlight of my weekend.
I spent the rest of the day taking care of chores. So it wasn’t a bad day.
I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new computer. Yes, I broke down and ordered a new machine and I’m tickled pink about it. Its just a computer and I know I shouldn’t be on pins and needles about it… but I am.
9 months ago I got a great deal on some video editing software from work. I got an industrial/commercial strength video editing package for under $100 and I was all set to start having fun putting together my clips and having some fun with it. But after installation it was clear that my system was catastrophically underpowered. This was disappointing, but lets face it - I don’t really NEED to run a commercial-strength video editor. or any editor for that matter. So I put it off for a few months.
When my mother was visiting she wanted to install Rosetta Stone’s Swedish package. After ten minutes of installation-time she looked up at me with a WTF expression on her face. My MOTHER thought my computer was too slow! I lost a lot of geek-cred that day, I can tell you.
So I placed an order for a Dell XPS 630. Its not cutting edge, but I needed to keep my expenditure down. So I went to their scratch-and-dent section and found a real honey of a deal. Its an intel quad-core processor with 4GB of memory, 500GB of SATA I disk and dual 256MB Radeon video cards. Its got Windows XP, which is fine because I’m comfortable with that and haven’t seen anything special from Vista that makes me need it.
So this is some exciting stuff for me. Its going to allow me to do a lot of stuff that I have wanted to do. Many of my more complicated programs take a long time to load. Boot time is long. Installation and uninstalls are very time consuming. Photo and video editing was prohibitively taxing.
My games have actually been doing ok since I added a rocking video card, which is now obsolete. I may part-out the old system and sell it on eBay. I will probably still appropriate a couple of the internal hard drives (1x at 100GB and 1x at 40GB).
Last I saw, DHL was speeding this computer to me via Coventry, RI around midnight last night.
ok, back to work.
Get the word out! Sphere: Related ContentBest I’ve ever seen « 38 Pitches
Did you know that Curt Schilling, ace pitcher for the Boston Red Sox has a blog? Its funny. You wouldn’t expect him to keep a weblog.
In this link he talks about what he’s all excited about right now - besides baseball.
He’s full of surprises.
Get the word out! Sphere: Related ContentSo the visit with the parents went well. We did touristy things around Boston like Plimoth Plantation, Concord and a trip to the beach. It was a good visit and I think we’ll all look forward to the next one. For now, though, its good to get back to the things I had left undone at work. I will probably spend the rest of this week catching up from my absence last week.
The kids are doing well. School starts in a few weeks.
At about the same time Gabriel turns 11. His favorite thing to do for a birthday party is laser tag. And what 11-year-old boy wouldn’t love running around blasting his buddies?! He’s done it a lot and has fun at it, but I think we found something EVEN better! There’s a place nearby called “Guard Up” - they teach fencing and swordsmanship. For the party, he and 8 of his best buddies go on a quest with padded swords and flails and maces. They’ll get to bat each other around for an hour and then they get the regular ice cream and presents in a party room. I think they’ll LOVE it!
It came up because I sat him down last week and told him that with the fall approaching I wanted him to get involved in some kind of activity outside of school. I didn’t want him just sitting around the house playing games. I told him that I thought some kind of sports would be good, but that something like Lego League might be fun too. Fencing was on TV, so I used that as an example of something he might like to do. I don’t know what he will wind up doing - he’s not very focused.
ok, back to work.
Get the word out! Sphere: Related ContentSo I went to work on Monday and then took the rest of the week off to entertain our house guests. My folks are visiting from washington DC and things are going well thus far. They’re pretty good guests, I have to admit.
We went to Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA today. The weather was amazing and we had a good visit with each other while doing the whole “living history museum” thing.
I got out this morning early and rode my bike for the first time in years. Well, I’ve tootled around on it a couple of times, but I haven’t gone out to lay down some miles and get my heart rate up. Omigod I’m out of shape. I was winded within a couple of minutes of leaving the driveway. I managed to average 11mph over the course of 30 minutes. By then I was done. Wow. I have my work cut out for me.
Tomorrow its supposed to rain, so my folks wanted to get to the JFK Library - I think that’s a good indoor activity for people who were fans of his back in the day. I just have to find something for my kids to do while the guests are doing that.
I think we’ll also go to Concord, MA on Friday. We were also talking about going to the harbor islands in Boston Harbor or maybe Misery Island off the coast of Salem.
Naturally I’m all plugged in to the olympics. I’m a complete sucker for the olympics and I love watching them. Don’t know why. Who even knew Togo had an olympic kayaking team?!
Get the word out! Sphere: Related ContentIt looks like there are a lot of people who think the chinese gymnastics team looks too young!
As i understand it, the rules say that these girls must be at least 16 sometime this year in order to qualify. The one in the upper left corner is only four and a half feet tall and weighs 68lbs. She’s supposed to be 16. OH COME ON! What kind of rubes do they think we are?! Unbelievable. There’s no WAY all of these girls are turning 16 this year.
Other coaches and organizations are saying that the chinese government gave them falsified passports JUST so they could win a gold medal for china. I saw that the canadian coach thinks that because she can’t go to the canadian government and get a special passport that nobody else can. no, I think china is cheating on this one.
Get the word out! Sphere: Related ContentI’m watching the olympics (LOVE the olympics). And I am looking at the chinese womens gymanstic team. Holy cow, some of these girls look like they’re ten years old! I know all female gymnasts tend to be young but they look really young.
Get the word out! Sphere: Related ContentThings are quiet here. Its the last month of summer vacation and we have little scheduled. My parents care coming for a week in the middle of August. Before that we have some family friends arriving, so that will be good. The kids all seem to be doing well. Work is fine.
I finished reading all of the Dresden Files books a while back. Sure, I agree that the series stunk on ice. When it came on the Sci Fi channel back in January I gave it a chance and watched a couple of episodes before deciding it stunk because I liked the premise. Then in March i was in Barnes and Noble and saw that there was a whole series of Desden Files books, some had reached the NYTimes best seller list. I didn’t want to hold the awful television adaptation against the books, so I picked one up and got hooked. its a great series and I can’t wait until the next one comes out in April of 2009.
But after I finished that series I decided that I liked the author’s style well enough to give his fantasy-based series (Codex Alera) a try and I was not disappointed. I’ve been hooked on the series for the past month or so and have been reading it every chance I get. The bad news is that I finished the last one yesterday. And now I have no book.
I read a couple of books from a “Vampire Earth” series set in the future. I won’t get in to the details of it except to say that they didn’t grab me enough to make me want to see what happens in book three.
I read some of Michael Crichton’s books back in the spring. And I mostly liked them. They seem a little preachy but I may go back and try some more. Any suggestions for books that really sucked you in?
I should get back to work. I found some great used technical books on Amazon.com that normally run $25+ for only $0.94! The shipping was $4 but that’s ok.
SWEET!
So I guess I should do myself some good and read them.
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