BilikFamily.com

Weekend - This weekend had awful weather. With the exception of a little clearing near the end of Sunday, it was mostly rainy. This ruins my ability to keep up with lawn work. Already the lawn is starting to look overgrown with no hope of simply mulching at the next cut.

Saturday - I took Claire to see Shrek the Third and out for a Mexican lunch afterwards. Michelle took Abby and the boys bowling while we were out. Much of the day we were stuck indoors because of the rain. Later that afternoon we went out for dinner at Elisha's in Milford.

Sunday - Sunday morning started out with the usual Mass followed by breakfast. We took the kids up to Manchester so that we would be out of the way of the contractors who were working on our family room floor. We started at Barnes and Noble where Claire got a book on crochet and the boys got sticker books. Afterwards we head to the mall in Manchester where Abby got Catz and the boys got Yoshi Touch & Go. Later we took the family for a meal at Ruby Tuesdays.

Monday - Of course once the weekend was over, so was the rain. Monday was sunny, clear, with modest temperatures. So aggravating after a weekend stuck indoors! On the plus side I went to Abby's girl scout award meeting, sometimes called the bridging ceremony. She had been nervous about a little segment where each of the girls had to recite something about the different awards and the activities behind them. Luckily Claire practiced with her so she read her part smoothly. When I got home the family room was done with its floor installation and the big furniture was back in position. Michelle and I put back all the knick-knacks and books. We put off doing the entertainment center because there was some consideration given to painting the wall along the fireplace with a contrast color.

Tuesday - Today was another day that should have been transposed to the weekend. Highlights include finally getting my cell phone back from repair. Goodness! Nearly two months to repair. Apple repairs usually are a few days. Nintendo repairs are a couple of weeks. Two months to repair/replace a cell phone?! That just seems a bit excessive. When I got home, my main task was to put all the electronics back together in the corner of the family room. There's not a lot, but plenty of cables to connect. Overall it took about an hour.

Wednesday - Tomorrow looks to be yet another nice day weatherwise. Claire and her friends are attending a baby sitting class, sponsored by St. Joseph's hospital in Nashua. I'll have to pick them up on my way home from work. Hopefully I won't have the last minute delays that caught up with me as I was leaving the office this afternoon.

Rant - I came across this picture of Al Gore yesterday. (excerpt shown at right) I often wonder when he'll "jump the shark". He showed video in his movie implying oceans rising twenty feet while even the "sky is falling" UN scientists at the IPCC are leaning towards one foot by the end of the century. He jets around the country collecting huge speaking fees telling us to cut back. His Tennessee mansion, just one of three homes he owns, uses more energy in one month than the average house does in a year. And we are to swallow that it's okay because of carbon indulgences offsets he has from a company he owns. But when I saw that picture with 3 30 inch Apple Cinema HD displays driven by a MacPro and contrasted it with my own home office desk (which admittedly now has a 2nd modest 15 inch LCD monitor), I blew a circuit. Just one of those screens uses more power (150 watts) than my entire setup. In that enlarged picture he probably has the windows open to vent the heat his setup generates!

On my setup I'm writing verification code, compiling huge circuit models, running compute intensive circuit simulations, and debugging chip waveforms. I'm betting that Al is running a web browser, a word processor, and an email client. Perhaps PowerPoint for his next award winning movie? With that setup you'd think he was running climate simulations. For me it just gets harder and harder to give him an ounce of credibility... Sometimes I think that this recent satire wouldn't be that far from the truth for him.