CurlyShavings

I was in a church nursery once, well, probably more than once. I've been in multiple churches and multiple nurseries.

I've been in nurseries that weren't in churches and churches that had no nurseries.

I was probably in this one nursery in this particular church more than once, too, come to think of it.

Anyway, it had a sign in it, a poster. Probably in many church nurseries. Probably.

Never mind, I'll try to come to the point.

At least once, I saw a sign in a church nursery. And it said:

Not all will sleep
But all will be changed.

And while the meaning intended by the ink was certainly not the meaning intended by the author of the verse in Corinthians, it has stuck with me over the years.

And I think of it sometimes. As I change diapers. As I contemplate change. As I think about sleep.

And January seems a good month to think (and perhaps write) about change.

One of the more obvious examples of change is the kind found in one's pocket.

I'm what I call a "change minimalist". I don't relish walking around with loads of change in my pocket. And yes, it is only ever in one pocket: my left. (Is this too much information or only what's needed to make a point?)

My left pocket, because my BlackBerry is in my right one. And why announce to the world that you're walking toward them? Why make any more noise as you walk around than you need? (Does this also apply to blogging?)

So what becomes of all my change? At work, I have a spot in a drawer that I sometimes raid when there's enough in it for a cookie or some other treat. At home, there's a big jar on my dresser that receives all my change. In the car, there's a small, 20 dram medicine vial for quarters and dimes (meter feeders).

Just about all change is inspected. Quarters are evaluated for the State Quarter Collections (five in our house). Pennies are inspected for wheatbacks and various Canadian varieties. All non zinc-copper alloy coins are inspected for copper-clad status and silver instances are retained. Nickles' ages are inspected, along with that tell-tale mint mark over the rotunda. And if you're a `76 quarter: look out—I'm compiling a roll of you.

Change that sticks around too long (like pennies) ends up at Zagara's where they have a cool change collector. (If you choose to be paid in an Amazon card, the machine won't charge you a surcharge.)

But overall, I'd rather not carry around loads of change. It's never enough to accomplish what you want/need/desire and it just makes too much noise.

Like this blog entry.

I worked this New Year's week (MTWF) and anticipated an early end to the day on Wednesday. (Christmas Eve, management sent folks home at 11:24 AM!)

So my wife and I started to plan lunch. I'd take the bus in, she'd drive in around 11:00 and we'd be lunching by 11:45! Have a long, restful lunch and who knows what would follow.

"Take me somewhere special", she hinted. That's just the encouragement I needed. Cleveland's La Strada is a winner I'd wanted to share with her for a while. Also on East 4th Street is Lola Bistro which I've not visited yet. "You choose. And call to make sure they'll be open", she gently prodded.

Huh? Open? Why wouldn't they be open?

"Not enough workers" said La Strada "but we open at five." "Your website says four; please fix it", I replied, frustrated. No matter, Lola was also on my list.

"No lunch hours New Year's Eve; it would make a really long day for our staff." Huh?

So we decided I'd come straight home after they dismissed us. (Yes, there are other places to eat on East 4th Street—for some reason we had our hearts set on these two.)

That morning, I discussed my woes to the folks at the local coffee shop. (Can't wait for Erie Island Coffee to open!) They'd be open all day normal hours, which I suppose makes sense given that no one is likely to make a coffee shop their 2009 New Year party headquarters.

Is it consistent for me to complain about restaurants being closed for lunch on NYE but enjoy going home early myself?

Wednesday, as I walked East 4th Street to my car on Prospect at 11:45, I saw little activity at any of the establishments. Except, in the distance, a man pulling at the door to La Strada. "Why aren't they open?" he yelled to his friend and went over to Lola. With the same result.

"Neither Lola nor La Strada are open; I don't know about the others. Something about the staff not working such long hours." I informed them.

"In this economy?" he demanded as I walked past. Precisely.

Then why was I excited to head home early? Hypocrisy, I suppose. (More likely the difference between an hourly wage and a salary. And that's a different sort of hypocrisy.)

Happy New Year, Cleveland. Maybe in 2009 we won't roll up the sidewalks so often.

(Note: words "in quotes" above shouldn't be seen as actual words of the person speaking, just a way to facilitate the dialog on the page.)

Have you ever wondered what a "sea change" was? The easy answer is that it is a transformation of large proportion. It comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest in which Ariel sings:

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

In short, Ariel is saying that the sea has changed Ferdinand's father's body from flesh and blood to coral, pearls and things rich and strange. We have adapted the phrase and made it mean change of significance, any large change.

Now you know!

I learned to cross-stitch some time ago at Bethany Beach, Delaware, and, to my surprise, rather enjoy it. I've done a "Finding Nemo" pattern, adapted a "princess" theme and done a few others. Recently, I started a Pointsetta pattern, managing to finish it in one day.

Granted, it wasn't a very hard one (12-count, if I remember correctly). There weren't very many colors and no fancy stitches were required, just the standard cross-stitch variety.

But somehow I was able to get it done on a lazy day around Christmas time. Even got it hanging from the tree.

My eldest daughter is now working on a 6-count pattern that she received for Christmas—a flower and a couple of lady bugs—and making great progress. I was hoping that I'd inspire her to finish it and it looks as though she shall.

What's odd is that most of my technique (outside of up here and down there) is self-discovered. How to start and terminate the floss and making decisions on which color to start with and why. So we've had some very interesting discussions around some of those techniques. Things I never thought I'd be talking about with my daughter.

Rather fun.

Ages ago I started a two-part cross-stitch project with a train and a train-crossing sign. It was supposed to be framed in some little heart things that I just couldn't get my brain around. Hearts and trains!?

I struggled for a long time with even finishing, mostly because of the time commitment. There are only so many hours in the day, even for folks who wake up early. I'd get a half-hour or so during some lunch breaks. One day I had someone walk by my office and do a double-take—"What are you doing sewing a post-it note?" I had fun explaining that one.

One day I attended a meeting where I was expected to be one of the only live participants. A dear friend also attended and the rest were on the phone. I pulled out my cross-stitch and got busy. Until a third participant showed up in the room.

Well, I finally finished both parts and tried to figure out what to do. I ended up cutting a round piece of cardboard, used some 3M spray adhesive to fix the Aida fabric to the cardboard and then cut out the cloth. Big mistake. I should have left some on the edges. A little white glue and some black satin cord fixed the problem, though. It looks fairly nice (if I do say so myself) hanging on that little red thread.

This one was a bit tougher than some of the others. The count is higher, making for a finer stitch. There are also some "french knots" which frequently give me fits.

My train nut friend seemed to like it. Ended up being a late birthday/Christmas present.

I don't think he recognized it from the meeting, though.

One of the simplest weather tools one can operate is a barometer. I became interested in predicting the weather as my sailing interest grew a few years ago. I won't go into all the details of what can be determined by watching a barometer, but here are a couple of observations.

This morning, for example, I noticed that it had dropped two-tenths of an inch from where it was last night. A modest drop and one that indicates a minor decrease in nice weather was on its way.

Sure enough, it clouded up and began to snow this afternoon. When I reached home, it had dropped a further seven-tenths of an inch, indicating some unsettled weather, probably rain and a good blow. Two hours later, it is still dropping and we are now having a bit of a storm.

The useful observations are the direction (dropping or rising) and its speed (quickly or gradually). A list of forecasting tools can be found in The Complete Sailor on page 168.

E.F. Knight trusted his barometer implicitly and more than once credits observing it to having saved his life.

We once used it on the Severn River in Maryland to understand how the high pressure system was going to move around us and how we could use it to our advantage and have the wind blow us to our destination and back!

A very simple and useful tool.

Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith

My review

This was a difficult book to put down. Its daily format encourages that, of course, but even so, it was a joy to read. Its characters are engaging, helping the reader to laugh, cry and a few times even cringe in agony.

Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit and look forward to the next.

One of my favorite quotes comes toward the end. The discussion was around shared history, the importance of remembering one's past and even one's ancestor's past. And not just events but places, land and circumstances. "We need to remind ourselves", said Domenica. Then she goes further.

We need to renew that bond between ourselves and them, our great-great-grandparents, or whatever they were. It's what makes us a people. It's the knowledge of what they went through, what they were, that brings us together. If we lost that, then we'd be just an odd collection of people living on the same little bit of land. And that would be my nightmare. . . . If our sense of ourselves as a group, a nation, as Scots, were to disappear.

I have the feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking at the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members one of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers—making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?

My apologies for the longish quote. It's only that it is expressed so well. Captures some of my day, I think.

View all my reviews.

My little sister is the creative genius behind "Little c Designs" out of Annapolis, Maryland. If you have a little one, are expecting a little one on know someone who does or is, check out Little c Designs.

They're all very special and my favorite is this little sailboat design.

For a girl, I like the Piper design and for a boy, the Simon. They're all just too cute and make me want to snuggle up with them just from looking.

In addition to what's in the catalog, she may make custom items for you.

Take a look; there are some really neat items on her website. If you drop her a line, make sure you tell her that her big brother sent you!

I'm a public transportation junkie. I don't really know how to explain it other than that. I enjoy taking buses and trains. There are a couple of aspects to it that I really, really enjoy.

Daily commute

My daily commute involves walking a half-block northwest, then a half-block east, catching the RTA #32 for a 40-minute ride to downtown Cleveland. I sometimes get off early and walk along the Mall, catching the light/snow/darkness on the statues there and just enjoying my city. Sometimes I get off at ground zero, Superior and Ontario and walk a short block to my employer. Unless my ride gets weird and I have to divert to a train or do some strange transfer, I usually get the full 40 minutes to read and satisfy that particular need.

In the afternoons, I reverse the route and get a further read-and-ride.

Recently, RTA raised the rates and lowered the service and I've had some difficulties in catching the right bus. In the morning, two buses come within four minutes of each other. The first one only goes to the train, leaving many riders five miles from downtown. The second one goes past the train and delivers riders downtown. As you can imagine, it is easy to end up on the first bus. Ironically, if you wait the ten minutes for the train, you'll end up downtown a full fifteen minutes earlier than waiting for the second bus.

What's frustrating though, is the lack of reading this bus/train mixture has. You only get a few pages into your book before it is time to get off and wait for the train. Standing on a freezing, blustery train platform is not conducive to reading. And once you're on the train, it's only a short ten minutes or so before you arrive. Short chunks of time don't add up to forty minutes at all.

So I've been known to be early for my bus and yet wave on the first, faster ride in favor of the second, longer ride that lets me read.

Adventures

Then there are the adventures. The "let's see if we can get there from here" type of experiences. Today, for example, I needed to run an errand (pick up two drills I had repaired) and it wasn't on my traditional bus line or even the train line. I spent a few minutes on the Google Transit web site to figure out how I was going to get to the tool shop and then how I was going to get home.

Overall, door-to-door, from my office to home, was just short of 1.75 hours. Going home and taking the car to pick it up would have resulted in arriving after they closed. Driving in Friday and picking up on the way home would have added 30 minutes to my trip home and spent 15 miles of gas (approximately .5 gallons in our Fit) plus $3.50 parking plus a wasted day on my pre-paid bus pass for a total of around $10. Taking the bus(es) to pick up it up on the way home added an hour to my trip home but no extra dollars.

And I got some exercise, too.

So I took the #1 on St. Clair from downtown to East 55th Street and then walked the 1/4 mile to the Kay-Dee tool repair shop. Then I walked down East 55th Street to a bus stop and had a delightful conversation with a fellow traveler. I misunderstood where the #2 went and ended up having to walk another 1/4 mile on Euclid Avenue to the bus stop there. I decided to leave that stop due to the unsavory characters spitting on the sidewalk and caught the #6 (aka "The HealthLine") to move along a bit further where I would wait for my #32. At Euclid and Stearns, I found that I had exchanged spitting on the sidewalk to foul-mouthed hoodlums standing in traffic daring cars to hit them. Too bad no one obliged them.

Some time later my #32 arrived and took me the rest of the way home.

All-in-all, I think if I had shortened my time at Kay-Dee Tools, I might have been home almost 40 minutes earlier. As I commented to myself earlier this evening, it was a complete success: I got my tools, I navigated my buses and made it home in good time.

Wrapping up

So that's how I look at Public Transportation: convenient, cheap, fairly reliable, flexible and a pleasant challenge. Of course, your mileage may vary!

One of the blogs on my virtual blogroll is The Scoutmaster Minute. I thought this recent posting needed some clarification, though. I thought he got some details wrong about this February 17th thing being about HDTV and if I'm right, his argument is weaker than he thinks. But that doesn't make his overall point wrong. In fact, I agree completely with his overall point: we make choices every day. We're largely in charge of what we say and do and with that responsibility may come consequences.

Anyway, here's his original blog posting and below are my comments.

Just a point of clarification, if I may. From the DTV.gov website: "On February 17, 2009 all full-power broadcast television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and begin broadcasting only in digital." It's not really about HDTV but about analog vs digital signals.

To be able to receive over-the-air TV signals will require this converter box. And if you have an old TV, the picture will look about the same. If you decide to get one of these converter boxes and you already have an HDTV, it may look about the same. A lot depends on if your local TV station is broadcasting an HDTV signal and you have a converter box, too. Just getting a converter box doesn't mean that you'll get an improved, HDTV picture.

What's different about this new digital signal argument from the VHS/Beta war or even the ongoing 8-track/cassette/CD/MP3 wars is that this one was mandated by legislation. The consumer didn't get to decide (like in the other format choices). That's why the government (you and I) are paying to offset the costs of these converter boxes ( https://www.dtv2009.gov/ ) So the argument that the conversion from analog to digital TV is the same as the conversion from 8-track to CDs isn't really a valid one.

Having said all that, I largely agree with your posting. Watching TV is a lifestyle choice. My household is choosing not to get a converter box. What this means is that we will continue to not regularly watch broadcast TV. Those few times we want to catch a football game or some news event, we'll need to turn to the Internet, I suppose. And that's a lifestyle choice. Just like it was when I updated my cassettes to vinyl and from vinyl to CD and from CDs to MP3s.

Being able to watch my analog TV signal, though? The government is taking that away from me.

Our society seems to have forgotten what a choice is. We are not entitled to (many of) of the choices we make! We (largely) choose where we live, what we wear, if we drink coffee from home or high-priced stuff from some boutique coffee shop. We choose to watch TV and we choose if we will get cable.

Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
The third "44 Scotland Street" book, this one was also written as a daily for a newspaper. It appeared to me that the author began to further explore some of the ways that these can be written. One has the sense that the plot twists that surprise the reader are sometimes a product of the author not completely knowing where the story is going himself.

This time, however, there is more of a sense that the book (or collection) is finished, is complete.

And once again, it was difficult to put down, largely due to each chapter so naturally flowing one to the next.

Overall, a good read, one that provides additional insight into life at 44 Scotland Street. I look forward to the next.

View all my reviews.

Yesterday, over at the Scoutmaster Minute, an additional article was posted. I'm not sure if it was understood that I agree with the overall message presented there and that I was mostly taking issue with the example used to argue his point.

No matter, read on, The Scoutmaster Minute has a great site with lots of insight into Scouting at the Troop level!

Krazy & Ignatz 1935-1936: "A Wild Warmth of Chromatic Gravy" by George Herriman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ooooo! I just love reading Krazy Kat. Since I can't get any new Calvin & Hobbes and while Frazz meets some of my needs, I truly enjoy getting into a Krazy Kat and catching up with the characters there.

This edition is an eyeful of color, movement and scenery and is thoroughly wonderful.

When picking up Krazy Kat for the first time (or after an extended absence), it may be necessary to remember (or learn) that Krazy Kat isn't so much read with the eyes as with the ears. There's a particular "Coconino" dialect that is used that at first glance (and second and thirds) isn't readily readable. Please listen with your ears and let the words sound out before hitting your brain. Don't actually read it out loud or your bus neighbors or office mates might lock you up. But listen with your ears as the filter and processor before your brain takes up the words.

A lovely book.

View all my reviews.

The World According to Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

What's there to say about this book that hasn't been said about the previous three? This one is also a good read that is hard to put down. A difference in this series of chapters is the settlement of many of the issues already developed.

Oh, I won't spoil them, but I will say that I'm quite glad that the last voice from Bertie's house is Bertie's own. It is disturbing to me that Irene is as she is. It is even more disturbing that there are people like her out there in the world. How sad.

I was left quite pleased with how things turned out. A good read.

View all my reviews.

I'll be a voluntary bachelor for several days starting Sunday—my wife and children are taking a holiday to Alabama to see my father-in-law and his wife. Should be fun and I'll join them in Birmingham on Saturday.

The question, though, is what to do with "all the free time"? That phrase has quotes around it because I doubt I'll have all that much extra time. I'll still be going to work and there are some obligations already planned:

Sunday

Church in the morning

Sledding with Pack 4 at 2pm

Steelers game at 6-something (probably skip; gain 4 hours)

Monday

Morning open (6 hours)

Volunteer at the CABBS booth at the Cleveland Boat Show from noon to 6pm

Evening free (4 hours)

Tuesday

Back to work

Work the CABBS booth at the Cleveland Boat Show from 6pm to 9pm

Wednesday

Work in morning and afternoon

Pack 4 Pack/Den meeting at 7pm

Recover

Thursday

Work in morning and afternoon

Work the CABBS booth at the Cleveland Boat Show from 6pm to 9pm

Friday

Work (from home) in morning and afternoon

Evening free (4 hours)

Saturday

Bus to train

Train to airport

Southwest to Birmingham

Collected by wife and four children

Drive north

So what would I like to accomplish? Hmmm.......

• Sit with cat on lap
• Complete another cross-stitch (airplane?)
• Varnish cabinet doors
• Finish arranging shop
• Complete top of workbench
• Turn handle for custom screwdriver
• Practice a recipe or two
• Write review on CodeWeavers CrossOver
• Write here a bit more
• Finish a few cleats and a pair of blocks

Update: Oh, and I have need to:

• Do a couple loads of laundry
• Finish the leatherworking on my new Scout belt
• Clear up my office and get 2008 taxes started
• Write some Thank-you notes
• Get my Etsy.com site up
• Organize my new books

Of course, I'll never really get much of that even started.....

Today it was single-digit temperatures as I disembarked the bus and started thinking about lunch. You see, Wednesdays are when our Team Manager Management Team gets together for lunch. To talk about solutions, pose situations and bridge gaps so we can be more unified when stuff happens. And it wasn't too early to think about lunch (is it ever too early?) because by 6:45 am, I had emails suggesting Houlihan's or Cadillac Ranch, both of which are close to the office.

And it occurred to me: what's my tolerance for walking outdoors to lunch when the temperature is 5°F?

In my Google Reader is a small XML file that brings in an image from Indexed, a website full of 3x5 cards. So I'm familiar with the idea: A 3x5 card with an image, usually an X-Y graph or Venn diagram, taking two or more dissimilar ideas and relating them.

Since I was at work, I couldn't search the site for my idea (blocked by Websense), so I drew my own. My apologies to Indexed if I've plagiarized; I didn't find anything similar here. If this idea isn't on your site, perhaps it should be.

I love my little garret office, with a few exceptions, anyway. This morning it was -12°F outside, warm for some folks and quite cold for us. Inside the house, the thermostat was set to 62°F, the normal nighttime temperature for us. My office, however, was 57°F. That's quite cold for typing. I found my pair of ¾-finger gloves, put on my hat and went to work. A few hours later, the sun rose and I got quite a dazzling spectacle on my eastern window as the ice patterns laid down by Jack Frost during the night were illuminated and began to sparkle.

A few hours later, it wasn't so spectacular, but still pretty enough that I wanted to snap a picture (see nearby).

Meanwhile, the temperature had risen to nearly 70°F and I had shed the gloves and hat. Downstairs it was 68°F, which is just about where we want it during the day when people are present.

The frost, which had formed on the inside pane of the storm window, was starting to melt. Perhaps as the sun heads west I'll be able to watch it freeze again.

I suspect that as the day wears on (and after my lunch break), I'll notice a decline in the temperature and will need to re-apply the gloves and hat.

Quite nice at the moment, though. In my little garret office!

I was in the process of doing a complete backup of my MacBook's hard disk drive when I noticed some strange sounds emanating from under the wrist rest. Yes, it was the click-click of death.

Hard drives only ever fail when you're in a precarious situation. Either you're about to do an important presentation or you're suspicious of your backups. Because we all do backups, right?

Not only do I do backups, but I even test them! I've been using TimeMachine since it came out and I love it. About a week ago it began complaining that something wasn't right so I took a peek at the backups and found that it was corrupt. No matter, I'd only ever used the facility once in the past year, so I wasn't too worried. I had the original media (my hard drive), right?

At this point I should have gone to MicroCenter and purchased a third mirror for my TimeMachine's RAID array. Let the mirror sync, then break the mirror on this third drive.

There's not a whole lot of free space on my .5TB TimeMachine volume: we've got three systems backing up to it. So I deleted the "corrupt" copy of my machine's backup and started a new backup.

And this is where I started hearing my click-click of death.

Between the partial TimeMachine backup and the externally-mounted original laptop's SATA drive, I have just about all the files I need. Still need to download a few programs (probably needed new versions anyway), but overall, I'm pretty happy. About the only thing (and it's a big one) missing is the directory with the pictures. It's not on the partial TimeMachine backup and the drive shows a file when it should be a directory. Hmmm

So I lost some pictures (fairly big deal) but I also lost a lot of time. Every non-working moment for the past four days has been spent messing with this dratted issue. Seriously. I have a couple more ideas on how to retrieve the pictures directory. But I'll never get the time back. And that's a big deal.

This past Sunday, my wife took our four children on a trip to see her Dad and his wife at their Alabama condo on the beach.

And I stayed home.

I stayed home to save some vacation time, to keep the house from freezing solid, to feed the cat and hamster, to bring in the mail and paper and to volunteer at the Cleveland Boat Show. (I think all but the first of those could have been hired out.) Oh, and a honey-do list a mile long.

I ended up doing all of those except about three-quarters of the honey-do list because of the HDD failure in my MacBook. But I digress.

So my wife drove these kids the thousand miles to Gulf Shores, Alabama and my kids drove my wife crazy. Well, not quite, but close.

So I was called in to chauffeur them back. Not the whole way (since very little flies into Gulf Shores that we could find), but from Birmingham, at the end of a long-ish Southwest flight. So while they did a full 2,000 miles in a week, I only did 1,400 miles. In 38 hours. On Saturday, I was up by 4:30 am, on a Greater Cleveland RTA westbound #32 by 5:43 am, on a westbound #66/redline by 6:02 am and through Cleveland Hopkins airport security by 6:52 am. (They didn't care that I only had a sandwich bag and not a liter bag for my toiletries!) By 7:00 am I had started my first cup of coffee and was wishing I'd figured out the ATT/Starbucks free wireless password before I'd left. At 7:38 we were lining up for Nashville.

I had to change planes in Nashville so I decided to sit close to the front in an aisle seat. This meant sitting next to a mom with an infant. Turns out she's got two 7-week old twins and a three-year old (the others were with her sister in the previous row). We had some fun conversation for a while, I read for a while, I napped for a while and then we landed. Barely a peep from the two twins the entire trip. The other kid, well, he's got issues (appropriate for his age) with sitting still for 90 minutes!

By 9:42 am (all times Eastern), we were on the ground in Nashville and I was looking for more coffee. Starbucks there was still in the T-Mobile network and had lines out the door so I didn't get any coffee or free wireless. So I ate some of the scones I'd made Friday and wished for coffee.

Bumped into a mom and son traveling from Cleveland and we chatted for a bit. Posted a picture of the cool wing on the plane at the next gate and by 11:04 am we were on the plane to Birmingham and on the ground by 12:04 pm. By 1:04 pm we were all reunited and had diverted to the Museum of Southern Flight where we got caught up on our Tuskegee Airmen history and saw this cool replica of our/Ohio's very own Wright Flyer.

After that was a long drive to Bowling Green, Kentucky (where I happen to know the location of the near-highway Starbucks from our trip to Mississippi for our Katrina relief trip). After a night in Bowling Green, we were off again. Very slowly, with four children.

The snow started in Cincinnati and let up a few times but the temperature kept dropping. Soon we were in Cleveland and home by 8:30 pm Sunday.

It was good to get everyone home.

This Saturday, Pack 11 went winter camping. The temperatures were in the upper single-digits and lower double-digit, staying (for the most part) away from the teens. The Pack rented a cabin but most folks stayed in tents. Troop 176 provides the food so the Cubs and parents can pay attention to toes and such. My job was primarily to have fun. I wasn't able to stay the whole time due to some commitments early Sunday morning, but my youngest boy (not yet a Tiger) and I decided to go.

Having a cabin is nice but it complicates things. Do you want to be inside or outside? If I warm up, will I want to go back outside? Given the chance to sleep inside, would I want to sleep outside? Frankly, I think folks stay warmer and drier outside. I think it forces folks to watch what they're doing and be careful.

One of the big draws for this campout is the sledding. This camp is on a ridge overlooking a valley and yet there weren't a whole lot of good places for sledding. We tried a few runs with limited success.

Earlier in 2008, I borrowed my mother's snowshoes from her since we get more snow than they usually do (or want). This was the chance to use them!

Overall, it was a great experience. Once I got the hang of the bindings and remembered to use my gaiters, things went smoothly. I wouldn't want to use them on a trail, but on virgin snow, they didn't seem that much extra effort. I will need to investigate new bindings, though. These are quite old, probably 40+ years and there's signs that the leather will need to be replaced with a synthetic. Not the sinew holding the shoe together, that's fine, just the leather bindings. I'll keep my eyes open for possibilities.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that The Cleveland Boat Show saw light attendance this year compared to the 2007 show. Actually the Cleveland Boat & Waterfront Lifestyle Expo, we call it the Cleveland Boat Show because it is in Cleveland and there are usually lots of boats being shown. A quick walk through the various vendors and booths shows that the "Lifestyle" portion may be gaining on the "Waterfront" and "Boat" portions. One can have their gutters kept clean, purchase sharp kitchen knives, get thirsty sponges, buy beef jerky, chocolate and numerous other non-boat and non-waterfront related things.

The CABBS booth lived up to both its own name and the show's name. We are the Cleveland Amateur Boatbuilding and Boating Society. We boat in and around Cleveland, we build boats in and around Cleveland and while there are some very high-quality boats and builders in our group, we are most certainly amateurs!

This year we had the incomplete Bailey Boat (pictured above, see "Bailey Boat" here), a cedar strip canoe (pictured below), a birch-bark canoe, Jim Batteiger's 12' Wee Rob and a lapstrake dingy model sized as a cradle.

The cedar strip canoe is a work of art as you can tell even from the lousy picture. The builder wrote his name in Morse Code as an inlay on the side. The whole boat practically glows.

The birch bark canoe is also a work of art. During the show, a gentleman and two companions came by to talk about it. He's a complete nut for these things and makes them as part of Cleveland-area school program he's affiliated with. Even goes up to Canada to harvest the birch bark and the cedar strips needed. Amazing.

Alas, my own contribution, an Optimist Pram didn't make it, partially due to transportation issues and partially due to project timeline and work-effort issues. I still intend to complete it and offer it for sailsale, so keep your eyes open for this announcement.

The Cub Scouts in Pack 4 went sledding at Forest Hill Park. The park is huge at about 235 acres and is just full of trees and ravines and all sorts of wild places.

The location we chose for the sledding day is the site of an old Rockefeller home with a view to Lake Erie. It was built in the late 1870's as a sanitarium and converted in 1881 to Rockefeller summer home. More information can be found here. The story goes that it accidentally burned in the early 1900's and today it is difficult to find much evidence that it was there.

The slope on the western side of the homestead drops about 60' in this short run, making for a great sledding experience. You can see the three park benches on the right (east) of the map (below) at the top of the hill. The run goes west (to the left) and could go all the way to the parking lot (way off the map) if you have enough speed. Typically, one stops at about where the map's field ends.

Update (20090128): xkcd has a posting today on some of the physics of sledding including a discussion on using a GPS to determine sled speed!

I was challenged to defend my comment from yesterday that the attendance at the Cleveland Boat Show was lagging prior years' attendance. Challenged in a friendly way, of course. (I'd have preferred 20 paces at dawn over at Wendy Park, but that's not to be these days.)

So here's my definition of "light attendance": OK, I don't actually have one. But a survey on both Monday (noon to 6pm) and Tuesday (6pm to 9pm) showed that fully one out of every two people stopping by were wearing exhibitor badges. And the place was empty. Not even Capt'n Willie was drawing them in.

When I would walk around looking at other booths, a third of the booths were un-peopled and their exhibitors were walking around looking at other booths. The people visiting booths were exhibitors, too.

While that doesn't provide proper numeric analysis, suffice it to say that it was very light while I was present. I'll dig around for some ticket sales numbers.

I work in downtown Cleveland and needed to both drop by an Apple Retail Store and go to the IX Center today. Apple closes at 9pm, the same time I'd be finished at the IX Center (Cleveland Boat Show). So, must drop by an Apple Retail Store before 6pm when I need to be at IX Center. Work ends around 4-ish (I start early), so that rules out a trip to the east side (Legacy Village) only to cross over town to get to the IX Center (south-west side). There's an Apple Retail Store at Crocker Park. I dislike Crocker Park only slightly more than Legacy Village. Mostly the fake architecture and pretense at being a community, a village. I like Legacy Village slightly more than Crocker Park only because I have been desensitized to the fakeness, I suppose.

maps.google.com rocks, in my opinion. You tell it where you want to start, where you want to go and choose if you want to drive, walk or take transit. I use it a dozen times a week, easily. Google's Mobile Maps on my Blackberry is even cooler. Bear with me, I'll get to that.

So I remember where I left the car, get started and then remember that the East 9th Street entrance to West I90 is closed. Something about a bridge being too stressed. I know that there's this thing called I490 that might help, so I spin myself off toward I77 hoping to get connected. The GPSr in my Blackberry connects to Google's Mobile Maps and I tell it to get me to Crocker Park. Bingo! I'm on I77 southbound, I490 westbound, etc., etc., and soon there's the exit to Crocker Park.

Crocker Park is big, huge, confusing and you can't park near where you want to be. I know, it's supposed to be like that. And I'm not the kind of person who needs to drive everywhere. I'd just like to know where I'm going after I park.

No maps in the parking garage and no sense that I'm . . . anywhere, really. Back to Google's Mobile Maps. I walk out to get a clear fix with my GPSr and ask my Blackberry where the Apple Retail Store is. Bing! Now I'm in Geocaching mode and I find it quite easily.

Aside: Apple's store is amazing for both the "hunter" and the "gatherer" types. I was in "hunter" mode and the clock was ticking. I walk in, scare the orange-shirted concierge (must have had a "get out of my way" look) and find the Disk Warrior box I think I want/need. Blue-shirted person comes up, swipes my credit card, scans the box, I tell her to send me the email receipt, she confirms my purchase, asks me if I want a bag (no!) and I'm out of there. Total time at Apple: four minutes.

Back to the car following the breadcrumbs I'd dropped earlier and once in the car, I point it south and tell Google's Mobile Maps where I want to go.

Here's where I start driving blind. There's this cultural thing in Cleveland that stipulates that if you're an EastSider, you're not permitted to travel on the WestSide and vice versa. Border crossings, card checks, etc. So here I am, an EastSider, traveling on the WestSide from a somewhat unknown location to a location I know quite well but never from this direction. A Real EastSider would have gotten back on I90 until they were back in friendly territory and traveled to the IX Center the approved way. But I don't have the time.

So my GPSr and Google's Mobile Maps take me south into the fuzzy area known as WestSide. I know none of the names of the streets, the communities, the buildings: nothing. (Once I thought I saw US20 but since it wasn't called Euclid Avenue, I couldn't be sure!) It's like the corner of the map that gets folded and unfolded until the paper fibers aren't there anymore. That's what the WestSide looks like to EastSiders.

But hey, this is an amazing place! Or was I just amazed that my GPSr got me to where I wanted to be? I drove through neighborhoods and along golf courses, through the Rocky River park and saw amazing scenery. When I drove up to the IX Center after not knowing where I had been for twenty minutes, I felt like Hornblower when he brought his ship up to the Panama (?) shore after three months at sea and no landfall. Just amazing.

But it gets better. I was telling this story to my fellow boat-builder colleague who, it turns out, lives on Porter Road along my route. And he validated, turn-by-turn, that Google's Mobile Maps took me the right way. In fact, it was the way he frequently drives. Amazing.

So I think I will be less afraid of the WestSide from now on. A little.

Note: I'm mostly kidding. I feel this way about most places I can't get to easily or conveniently via bus/train. And I'm sure that many WestSiders feel the same way about the EastSide. Seriously.

Someday I'll have to tell you why we live on the EastSide.

We live on an old riverbank and our driveway slopes down to the road now covering the west branch of Dugway Brook. This slope has caused us much frustration over the years but hey, we chose the house and probably ought to enjoy it.

One of our problems is that we don't like to shovel snow. We live in the snowbelt and don't see much point in shoveling snow only to have to do it again a few hours later. Besides, we have a 4wd SUV and why bother? So we hired a neighborhood boy (our own) to take care of the driveway.

Sometimes he doesn't get to it fast enough and the car will compress the snow to become a double ribbon of ice. This requires extra equipment (a different kind of shovel) and extra work. Seriously, if it wasn't for the need to drive to church and piano lessons, I'd just leave the cars (and the snow) in the driveway until May.

Combine this problem with a sick snow-shoveling boy earlier in the week and you end up with a glacier.

With today's high expected in the mid-40s, I thought I'd finish up chipping away at the glacier. Most of it had been removed earlier in the week: I'd spend an hour a day on it and get everything clear before I left Saturday on a short (but long) trip.

Suffice it to say that I got it done.

We're big fans of reading. We have acres of books in our house, RSS subscriptions and too many magazine subscriptions. We get the Plain Dealer on Sundays (for the comics and ads only), and the Sun News on Thursdays (for the local police blotter) and the Wall Street Journal Monday through Saturday (for the national and international news as well as the opinion pages).

Most of the articles I read from the WSJ come through my RSS feeds and a cool tool for the BlackBerry called the Mobile Reader.

I think what they've done with their RSS feeds is very usable. Their headline and an introduction paragraph show up (free) in my Google Reader along with all my other "news" and if I want to read more, I click over to the article on wsj.com (paid) to read the entire thing. Since we're paper subscribers, the online version is slightly less expensive than an electronic subscription by itself. (And eliminating both would be gain even more savings, but I digress.)

I'll frequently read the online version at the office over lunch and come home and talk about it with my wife or the kids who have read the paper version at home. Or some days, when things are too hectic, I'll just read all my news on the BlackBerry's Mobile Reader. Today was one of those days.

I had gotten up and left the house before the paper had arrived and then wasn't in touch with a WiFi connection throughout the day. By the time I left Nashville, I had read all the Opinion pages and much of the x1 pages (where "x" is Section A, B, C, etc.) on my BlackBerry.

So it was quite disconcerting to see the fellow two rows in front of me paging through his paper to see article headlines I'd started reading at 5:30 am on my handheld device. At first it was a "where did I see those words in that order before" moment and then it became a "why are those words on his newspaper" thought and then it finished as a "I wonder if there are any differences in the text from his to mine" pondering (there sometimes are as misspellings and typos get corrected).

So, no, it wasn't a case of dual realities. To find those you'd have to compare an article from the Plain Dealer and with the same story from the Wall Street Journal. It doesn't happen often but we're sometimes left shaking our heads and wondering if we're on the same planet. It's (almost) always explainable by the bias that each paper has, but it can be very disconcerting.

One of the neat things we got to see in Birmingham, Alabama was the Southern Museum of Flight. Not too far from the airport, we stopped after picking me up from my flight and spent a good while there.

What I wasn't prepared for was the exhibit on the Tuskegee airmen (and here). What an incredible story. I understand that there are even more information, stories and planes here.

We read about a B52 being removed from a nearby lake bed, we saw the Mig from a North Korean pilot defection and we saw a whole lot of airplanes.

It is a good museum and it was a good time to get reacquainted with my family after being home alone for a week.

The Webelos den from Pack 11 needed a wood project recently for their Craftsman Badge (actually a pin) and I had a few projects left over from a different Webelos event many years ago.

This was a treasure chest of sorts and it included fastening the sides together with screws and fashioning a lid out of a board, some nails and some fabric straps.

It's a neat project and they seemed to have fun with it. One of the challenging issues is that The Guide To Safe Scouting indicates that Cub Scouts aren't permitted to use power tools.

This is easily resolved by using old-time brace and bit technology. Chuck up a modern Phillips #2 driver bit in your antique brace and you've got a very powerful screw driver with lots of torque.

I think this will be more of a "ramblings on the book "I.M. Wright's 'Hard Code'" than a full review.

I picked it up for a number of reasons. One is that it was from Microsoft Press and I'd never read anything from them before. Another is that I always enjoy reading The Mythical Man-Month and this seems to be in a similar vein. I'm not sure where I first heard about it since it isn't on Slashdot (yet).

No matter, it's a great book and I have already been challenged to rethink certain things because of its pages, for example the relationship between a developer and a tester (or in my situation, an engineering resource and an operations resource). He goes into some detail about why this is such an Odd Couple relationship and makes a very good case for why (and how) the relationship should be improved.

More on this later, including (I hope) some best quotes. Oh, and since I'm finishing it soon, what to read next?

My wife has me converting AppleWorks files to formats used by OpenOffice today. We're using DataViz Conversions Plus 15-day demo to get things over. Works like a champ under the CodeWeavers CrossOver tool.

And then she gave me a CD to convert with a label on it.

Stuck, stuck, stuck.

But hey, out of all of the different suggestions found on Google, the one that worked for me was to stick a business card into the slot and then attempt to eject, while gently tugging on the card. Worked. Both times.

Got a note that my updates are appearing in an out of sync fashion (older ones appearing after newer one). Not sure what's going on here! If I find anything interesting, I'll let you know.

Perhaps it's the RSS feed?