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ZDNet Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Home Edition Review

So I went over to CompUSA during lunch and picked up this year’s tax software. It came with the option of getting some other deals like Norton Internet security and anti-virus software. I decided to get WordPerfect Suite X3 Home edition.

Its got some interesting software with it and my primary need for it is to install it on the kids’ computers. Next year Ben starts middle school and I think he needs some of the software like word procesing and presentations.

And they threw in the $83 software with TurboTax. So I’m tickled about that.

Ben went to a Boy Scout meeting last night - more of an observer than anything else. He’s finished all his requirements for his Arrow of Light badge and I think in a couple of weeks they’ll give that to him. After which time he will be eligible to join the boy scouts. He seems excited to do it.

Cold.
Wow, it was cold this morning. When I got up it was 6 degrees. At lunchtime it had warmed considerably to 12!!

oi.

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splashpage

1. I’m not a big fan of Air America radio because I find much of their rhetoric to be too harsh and shrill. See, I think they saw the success that the conservative wingnuts have had and emulated its tone. unfortunately I hate that tone. Nonetheless I listen sometimes.

2. I turned on 1200 AM and heard Rumba 1200 and lots of salsa latin music! No english!!

3. It didn’t bother me much though, because Boston, being a bastion of liberalism, has TWO Air America radio stations! How cool is that?!

4. They’re both latin salsa Rumba spanish. No liberal english at all.

Now I’m totally S-O-L. Well, that’s ok. Like I said - they were too shrill for me anyway. I still like Al Franken and maybe I can get his shows podcasted or something.

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So, the weekend is over now. Again.

I spent Saturday taking care of chores. I finished removing the debris that was once my desk. That took about an hour. I ran a couple of errands. Nothing special.

On Sunday we went to Portland, ME to see some old friends who just had a baby. We had a really good time with them and their kids. Our girls get along really well with their girls and we get along really well with the parents. The boys – well, they seem to have a fine time. Gabriel seems to … well, he’s patient and he goes along with what we want to do.

Anyway, the kids behaved really well and they all got along well. Maybe the best part was that the dogs didn’t poop at our friends’ house. Every other time we’ve visited Peterman would run upstairs and take a dump in their hallway. Our friends have always been pretty great about understanding, but I’m sure they couldn’t possibly appreciate having a big load in their house. This time nobody crapped in the house!

So we had a good visit.

The weather has been lousy – rainy and cold. Not cold enough for snow, though. I hear that’s about to change. On Wednesday we’re supposed to have a high of 19 degrees. I don’t think we’re going to get any snow out of it though. Its been a very mild winter so far. I haven’t had to get out the snow shovel even once!

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World of Warcraft Community Site

So I’ve been playing this game called “World of Warcraft” for a month or so now. I like it. Its fun and is a great diversion. It really sucks in my attention and my time. Its not at all like the other Warcraft-games - its more like a first-person game.

But here’s the thing I’m struggling with. I can sit there and spend hours upon hours playing the game. I have triumphs and failures but at the end of it I feel like I haven’t gotten anything accomplished. Yes, maybe I have more virtual online “gold” than I had yesterday, but at the end of the day it isn’t … it doesn’t feel like I’ve done anything.

I guess its a question of feeling like I’m wasting my time which may be more of a function of where I am in my life instead of the quality of the game. Afterall, I do have fun with it while I’m playing.

So what’s happening this weekend? Nothing much. Well, not on Saturday. On Saturday I’m going to finish cleaning and running errands.

On Sunday we’re going to go see family friends. that should be fun. The whole family is looking forward to it.

I think that’s it.

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War Room - Salon.com

“Not all of Baghdad has fallen into a civil war.”

This is a summary of the highlights of the secretary of state’s day in Congress.

In short: she’s in trouble and its about tdamn time.

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Ok, I’m no Mr Science or anything, but I read about this and was amazed! So its an invertibrate parasite with a larval stage and everything. Go ahead and read the next section, but pay attention to the second stage. AMAZING!

Dicrocoelium dendriticum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dicrocoelium dendriticum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Lancet liver fluke (Dicrocoelium dendriticum) is a parasite which lives its life in three animals.

First stage: D. dendriticum starts life as eggs found in the dung of cattle. This dung is fed upon by snails which allow the eggs to enter the snail’s intestine. Once inside, the eggs hatch and burrow into the digestive gland of the snail. The flukes reproduce in this gland and are expelled from the snail in slime trails.

Second Stage: Ants happen upon the slime and consume it as a source of moisture thus taking the new flukes into their system. Once inside, the parasite shows an interesting tactic. By controlling nerve centers of the ant they are able to control its behaviour. When the sun sets and temperatures drop the ant is compelled to attach itself to a tall blade of grass by its mandibles. Here it waits to be ingested by some grazing animal. If the ant survives the night the sun prompts it to return to the colony and live its life normally, until the next night. Eventually the ant is eaten by some grazing animal.

Final Stage: Flukes living within ants are eaten by cattle while grazing. The flukes will enter the digestive system and force their way into the cow’s liver, where they will grow to adults capable of producing eggs.

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Monday was huge improvement over Sunday. I took the kids to school and then dropped the car off at JN Phillips Glass in Wakefield. I was going to pay whatever they wanted to put all this nastiness behind us. I wanted to forget about the monitor (which is fine, BTW) breaking the window altogether. My intention had been to avoid getting drenched in the early morning rain by hopping on the commuter train, which has a stop right there! My plan was to take that back to work and then return in the evening for the car. I still think it was a fine plan. But the car was going to be ready sooner than I expected and they offered me a ride home, so I decided to work at home instead of dealing with commuter rails and the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. It worked out great. It turned out that they filed a claim with my insurance company, who covered 100% of the work with no points against me! It was a free pass! Outstanding, eh?!

I worked at home for the morning. Liz was still sick and spent the morning in bed. Around 12:30pm me and Grace hopped on the commuter train and headed north to Wakefield. This was the highlight of her week and she wouldn’t stop yammering on and on about everything. It was kind of adorable really. She had seen this train practically five days a week for her entire life and had ALWAYS wanted to ride it. And on Monday we did. It was an uneventful ride and it put us within a couple of blocks of the shop. We picked up some pad thai for me and some McDonalds for Grace and her mother and headed home. I worked for a couple of more hours and never did get around to cleaning up the debris of my desk. Its still in the backyard.

Last night I took Ben to one of his last Cub Scout meetings. I think he’s got maybe three or four left. He has satisfied all his requirements for his Arrow of Light award. It’s the highest award a Cub Scout can receive and the only badge from his uniform that he’s allowed to take with him and wear on his Boy Scout uniform. It’s a pretty big deal. Yes, he’s worked hard to complete all of his requirements, but I have to admit that its also a testament to how many things we do as a family. He didn’t have to go out of his way for very much. I mean they learned a lot of things in their bi-weekly meetings but just because the kids are so active at so many different things it was easy to satisfy most of the requirements. So I’m very proud of him for all the work he’s done. The next pack meeting will include the awarding of the Arrow of Light and their cross-over ceremony when they will ritually leave the Cub Scout pack and join the Boy Scout troop. There isn’t that much to it, but it’s a nice way to mark a significant transition for the boys.

Tonight I have a special meeting of the cub scout leaders to figure out what we want to do with the money we’ve earned.

Tomorrow night Gabriel has a den meeting.

Next Tuesday (1/16) Ben will sit in on a boy scout troop meeting.

The following Tuesday (1/23) Ben will talk with a scout master at another troop meeting. Then on Friday, 2/2 is the big pack meeting where the arrow of light will be awarded and the cross over ceremony will take place

There will be a second cross over ceremony that will happen out in the woods and will include only those Webelos who will be joining Troop 615 – some of the kids may join the other troop in town because they already have brothers there.

I think there’s a hockey game in Lowell coming up. BC vs UMass Lowell. They said it was a great event last year. And there’s an afternoon of ice skating coming up at the end of January (1/23 I think).

Very busy children.

So I should focus again on work and see if I can make some headway there.

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Sunday was a difficult day. It was a truly awful, horrible, no-good, terrible day. The good news is that nobody is hurt and no irreparable damage has been done.

1. It rained all day and only got up to about 50 degrees. Miserable weather.
2. I spent much of Saturday night taking apart my computer and the contents of my desk and getting it all packed up. I have to confess that the desk makes the whole den feel small and cramped. I volunteered to put the computer in storage and dismantle the desk so we could improve the room.
3. The little woman got up and had a terrible case of pink-eye. One eye was puffy and swollen and was very sensitive to light. It was also clearly very painful. I asked if there was anything I could do and she said that there was a particular medicine that might be helpful so I dashed off to CVS for it. They didn’t have it so I went to Brooks down the street. I got it from there and stopped off at Starbucks on the way home. A good trip, but it was a good chunk of time that I hadn’t planned on devoting to that particular errand.
4. So I finally loaded up the van with my computer, books, keyboard, monitor etc. I drove 200’ down the street and made a left turn. The 17” monitor was sitting on a rear seat that had been folded down. So it had been elevated but seemed to have a perfectly stable foundation. But when I turned the whole thing toppled over and banged in to the window of the sliding door on the passenger’s side. There was a mighty “BANG-CRASH!!!” followed by tinkletinkletinkletinkletinkletinkle of glass. The window was completely blown out. My stomach flip-flopped as I considered how to tell the little woman that I had put a hole in her van. She took it surprisingly well. I think because by the time I got back I had a plan as to how to fix it. I took some more time to vacuum up the glass at the local car wash. When I got back I taped a piece of plastic up to the gaping maw where the window had once been. All this took up a great deal of my morning that I had planned to spend on dismantling my desk.
5. After lunch I listened to the Patriots demolish the NY Jets as I took my desk apart. I used an allen wrench, a screw driver and sledge hammer. All in all, that aspect of the day turned out just fine. In fact, I was finished before I wanted to be – there was a lot more game left to go! So I trotted outside to start removing the debris and when I stepped on the top stair it dropped about an inch!! I was dumbfounded! I couldn’t believe it! I’m not sure if I can adequately explain the construction method that allowed this to happen, but I feel I must try. The steps were attached to the underside of the porch with a biscuit joint. That is there were small wedge-shaped grooves cut in to the boards with football-shaped “biscuits” inserted. There’s a groove on top (porch) and groove on the bottom (steps) and the biscuit is glued in to place joining the steps to the porch. This is a common method of joining two slats of wood in furniture, for example or in non-load-bearing joints, but it would never have occurred to me to use a biscuit joint in a porch/steps!! It is not cheaper than other methods. It is not simpler than other solutions. All I can figure is that someone got a new biscuit-cutting tool for xmas and decided to try it out on the deck. On the other hand, I have to confess that it held just fine for at least eight years.
6. Nonetheless I spent the rest of my afternoon fixing the porch. I screwed in some metal brackets that I had lying around. They were really fairly heavy-duty and fit the task nicely. I also installed some more bracing using 2×4’s and half-inch plywood to more completely connect the steps to the porch. It is all solid now and won’t go anywhere. But it consumed the rest of my day.
7. Finally, while I was figuring out what to do with the pile of debris that used to be my desk and remnants of the porch with the light fading our real estate agent called to say that the sellers had accepted another offer and she just didn’t have the heart to call the little woman. The day just kept getting worse and worse!
8. By this time I was sore and tired and grouchy and just didn’t feel like doing another damn thing. So I called it a day.

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Hmmm… looks like I’m a little behind. I’ll try to make up for it with organization. I’ll write up something different for each day.

Life has been really busy lately and a lot has gone on. For example, we are committed to selling our house and getting off main street. On Saturday morning I got up bright and early and started moving boxes to a storage unit we rented. I also managed to drop off some window screens at the hardware store to get repaired. Then we saw a house that was for sale on West Emerson. Although it was interesting it didn’t work for us. Afterwards, our real estate agent came over and spent about an hour talking details of how to move a house. We also had her write up an offer for another house in which we were interested.

We went to Fudrucker’s for lunch which turned out not be such a great idea. Nothing bad happened, but it took us away from the house for longer than I wanted. When we got back I spent another couple of hours loading the van and hauling boxes off to the storage unit.

However, I had also promised Chloe that I would take her around the neighborhood to sell girl scout cookies. She’s been dying to do that and she had a great time. Grace tagged along while Ben and Gabe went with Liz to see “her” house again. That is, the same one we had written an offer for earlier in the day. We had a good time meeting neighbors and selling 45 boxes of cookies. One old lady spied us from across the street and walked over asking if that was a Brownie selling cookies. She went on to say that they hadn’t had one in the neighborhood for years and she wanted to see that order form right away! It was funny and sweet. In about 75 minutes we did half the neighborhood.

I think I got another load of boxes over to the storage unit before dinner.

After that I was wiped and loafed for the rest of the evening.

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N.Va. Boys’ Championship Dream Doomed by a Moment of Vengeance - washingtonpost.com

“As disheartening as this might be,” he said, “this might be one of the biggest lessons these kids will learn in youth sports: how to handle adversity and disappointment and come out a better person for it.”

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