September 29, 2011
Fire
Good morning! I had a bit of a rough night of sleep, despite the exercise yesterday evening. My mind was spinning trying to come up with a way to solve a design issue.Luckily I eventually came up with a good approach and fell back to sleep.
Michelle and I smiled this morning at an MMS sent to my phone. It was a new picture of my mom. In her most recent hair appointment she had her otherwise white hair highlighted with pink highlights. Michelle, the girls, and I look forward to seeing it for real if she visits next month.
I dropped the girls off at their schools and then stopped at Cafe on the Oval for a decent breakfast. So many of my mornings are rushed breakfasts and today I wanted something more substantial. Afterwards I drove down to the office with rain the whole way down. I listened to another hour of "The Diamond Age". Neal Stephenson weaves a good sci-fi story.
Michelle is likely at Golds Gym to take the 9:15 Step It Up class taught by fellow instructor Kathy. She has her usual radiation treatment early this afternoon. Today is roughly the half way point in her treatment. So far, so good.
Whoo-hoo! I got my IT approvals for my work laptop upgrade. From hard drive running WinXP to solid state drive running Windows7. I'd been too lazy to ask for the upgrade earlier but lately the boot times and other activities associated with malware scanning were slowing down the machine. A fresh start with a fast drive should help a lot.
Alright. I broke down. I ordered it. The Kindle Fire. It's released in November so I can always cancel if I change my mind. I'm already such an Amazon fanboy with their EC2, S3, Amazon Prime, video on demand, e-books, mp3 store, cloud player, and my wife already has a Kindle3 which I admire. Have I mentioned that my mirror site is Amazon powered? Even though the Fire is powered by a TI OMAP app processor, I'll hold my nose on that aspect. ;-] Qualcomm already powered a bunch of the original eInk Kindles. Let TI have a little Amazon action.
OK, I'm a couple of days late on this news but... Spotify requires new users to register with a Facebook account?!?! I guess I'm glad I registered when they opened here. What an onerous requirement! The Internet does not equal Facebook.
Left around 5:30 hoping to catch the 6:30 strength training class but got caught up in stop 'n go traffic in downtown Groton and missed the class. Listened to more of "The Diamond Age" along the rainy drive home. With a flaky blower motor, I could dehumidify the windshield in bursts every five or so minutes. Glad this didn't fail in the middle of winter...
After dinner I folded some laundry and helped Claire with her algebra for a while. Also studied how to VNC over a secure network tunnel. I'm also getting more of an appreciation for the use of Evernote. Got the boys tucked in bed with their prayers. Eventually head out to pick up Abby from an afternoon of preparing with the Young Americans for a performance this weekend. She was pretty tired out from all of the singing and dancing.
After some debate for a few weeks, I broke down and ordered "The Land of Lisp". I had debated because it's a bit pricey and I only get to dabble with Lisp, but the inside is written with silly drawings and without an academic tone so perhaps soon Timothy will try it.