Laptop back - Less then 48 hours after DHL picked up the box with the iBook in it, it was back. Good job, Apple! I was glad to be back in my familiar environment: Safari, Mail, NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, Comictastic, Terminal, etc. Ahh, like putting back on a comfortable pair of shoes...
Painting - Michelle is still overcome with the painting bug. Since this started a few weeks ago she has painted the study, the toy room, the kitchen and now she's working on the master bedroom. I think it's secretly therapeutic after dealing with the three boys all day long while the girls are away at school.
Lawn work - After several weeks of delay (procrastination, "some assembly required" fun, hurricane rain remnants, etc.) I finally got around to aerating the lawn. Strangely enough Claire wanted to ride on the tray that is normally used for weights (cinder blocks). At first I was a bit reluctant, but she really wanted to. It was a bit of a bumpy ride but she rode while the tractor pulled it around the whole yard pulling out plugs of grass and dirt. Her weight helped the tines really dig deep into the soil. Kids like the strangest things sometimes.
Cars - I'm trying to get the vehicles ready before winter starts. I put a new battery in the Accord this morning and hope to do the Odyssey soon. Both seem to have marginal batteries -- the Accord from age and the Odyssey from the kids running the battery out. I hope to get the rims of the Accord scrubbed and tires re-sealed because most of the tires have the slow leaks that are common on older alloy rims as corrosion slowly sets in. The same thing happened with Suzy's CRX rims. Lastly, I hope we have a nice weekend coming up to put a quick coat of wax on the Accord. After the car had some of its panels repainted last summer, they advised me to wait a few months before applying any wax. Now it's had plenty of time to dry.
Customer service - While I work in a customer engineering support role and sometimes feel swamped with the queue of items to do each day, I still try to keep a perspective on what it's like to be the customer on the other side using our products in their chip designs. This past week Michelle and I both had experiences that made me think unemployment rates must be low again. (i.e. hire anyone with a pulse)
Michelle was at a checkout lane at the 101A Walmart. She observed the checkout attendant giving the person in front a hard time. Then when Michelle's cart was up, the clerk was rude to her as well -- not at all like the smiling WalMart'ers you see on the commercials. This morning when I went to get a battery for the car, I first stopped at VIP (about 1/4 mile from our house). I felt like a ghost there because even though I was the only one standing at the service counter, no one said a word to me for at least ten minutes. I just left and drove further to AutoZone, where they quickly took care of me. Did I ever mention that Milford has a disproportionately large number of auto parts stores for its relatively small population?
TJ's art - I'll close with some fun doctored drawings that TJ made, mixing "PC paint" style backgrounds with pictures of the kids taken from the online photo albums. So TJ, did you use a mouse or your fancy Wacom USB graphical tablet?
That picture cracks me up! I can't get the one of Claire to come up, though I saw it when I was home.
Posted by: Suzy at October 1, 2004 11:42 AMHi Suzy,
It should work now. Internet Explorer showed the problem, other browsers didn't.
Posted by: Scott at October 1, 2004 11:51 AMHelo my name is László Bilik y'm Hungary he is writing a letter for/to me.
Posted by: Bilik László at October 16, 2004 08:27 AM
