2005
A Walk in the Woods
It feels like a crime to re-read a book, at least for me. My reading list is as long as my arm (actually, about five times longer than my arm). I’ve got stacks of books that I want to read and haven’t cracked the spine of yet. So, when I think of taking time from all those neglected books to re-read a book I’ve already read, I feel bad. It’s like I’m neglecting all those other great texts. However, it couldn’t be helped in this case. I had to re-read A Walk in the Woods.
I read this book the first time a few years ago and just loved it. Bill Bryson is an incredible author and very funny. I highly recommend all of his books, they are extremely enjoyable. Walk in the Woods is exceptional though even for Bryson.
The subject of the book is the Appalachian Trail.
First, for those that don’t kow about this trail, it is a 2,175 mile hiking trail that extends from Georgia to Maine. Every year people attempt to hike it’s length, called “thru hikers”, only a small percentage of those that start make it all the way to Maine.
Walk in the Woods is Bryson’s attempt to hike the trail. His is joined by a very non-hiker friend of his, Katz, and you are treated with laugh-out-loud humor as you trek through the woods with these two.
I would like to hike the AT at some point. It takes about five months to hike completely, starting in early spring in Georgia and ending in fall in Maine. Until then, I’ll just have to join Bryson and Katz on the trail every few years.
Windows Media Player as Infant Education
I learned a new trick tonight while holding Mazie. We were sitting onthe couch and I had my laptop next to me. I was singing to her and keeping her occupied and decided to put on some classical music. Mozart of course. And then it dawned on me that I had a great infant toy in front of me, so I gave it a shot.
I maximized the WMP visualization window and put it in random rotation with Mozart. I then held Mazie on my lap so she could see the screen. I had always figured these visualizations were only interesting to those on illegal substances, but it turns out 1-month old Mazie really dug it. She was watching the spinning graphics and when the screen would suddenly change to something else she would stop sucking my finger for a moment and check it all out. She particularly liked the flutes in the Mozart selections we were listening to.
Forget the Leap Frog – just grab your laptop!
EarthRoamer: Now this is an RV!
Tammy and I have occasionally thought about getting an RV. We like to take long road trips and like to get off the beaten path. Particularly with Tammy’s fear of flying, we tend to drive long distances when it comes to vacations.
The average RV though isn’t really our speed. Then while Tammy was flipping through a magazine she saw the EarthRoamer. This thing is amazing!
Essentially, take a Ford F-450 turbo diesel and turn it into an amazing off-road vehicle with plush surroundings. It’s small, but makes the most out of it’s space. Ecologically sound as well! The EarthRoamer uses solar panels and the truck engine to provide power – no generator on this thing. It also runs on BioDiesel. You can take the EarthRoamer out into, literally, any conditions for well over a week at a time and have no worries. Optional items like satellite TV and sound system bring further comforts.
I sent them an email to see if they’ve ever built Internet access into one. This would be the perfect vehicle to go to Moab or Alaska in. Who knows, maybe in a few years, earthroamer.thingelstad.com will be up and running! (You know I would have to do it!)
Blog Upgrades
Applied a couple of upgrades to the blog this morning. Decent amount of work that will have absolutely zero impact on you the reader. 🙂 I did a decent amount of research on upgrading from my .Text blogging engine to it’s successor, Community Server. CS is now at 1.1 and it’s improving, but it’s got a lot of pork with forums added. While it is certainly feasible for me to migrate, great people out there have written wonderful tools to help make that possible, I’m going to wait a bit longer I think. Perhaps wait for a 2.0 release. In the meantime I’m stuck using my great, but now dead, open-source .Text package. So, time to spiff it up a bit.
First, I removed all the old spam protection I put on my sites with the random character CAPTCHA and all that and went a different route using this ReverseDOS toolkit from angrypets.com. I just installed it this morning so we’ll see how it goes, but it doesn’t put the burden on a person and tries to make life real hard for spammers.
The second big upgrade was to move from FreeTextBox 1.0 (built into .Text) to FreeTextBox 3.0. The main driver behind this was so I could have a nice, rich editing environment with spell checking in Firefox (FTB 1.0 did not support Firefox). This proved to be a bit of a hassle, lots of trial and error, but I now have it working great. Google is the savior here of course since there are about a dozen sites that tell you how to do it but they all seem to be missing one or two steps. You have to feel your way with Jedi-like focus in order to get it working. These are the best references: DanBartels.CS, Dave Burke (2.0 actually, but steps are helpful) and Markyologist (don’t forget the browsercaps!).
Mazie Turns 1-Month
Today is Mazie’s 1-month birthday! It’s an odd stretch of time. It seems in some ways like forever ago that we were in the hospital and brought her home. I look at her now and she’s already grown so much. We have gotten over our regular panics and now just panic every once in a while. We no longer have to track feedings and diapers to make sure all the inputs and outputs are working right.
Other milestones are starting to occur. Tonight, for the first time, I got to watch her all by myself for about an hour while Tammy went grocery shopping. We are teaching her to start taking a bottle, and it’s not a very easy process. We are also trying to get her to accept a pacifier, but that also isn’t going so well. She seems to only want the “real deal”.
We’ve made it out now a number of times but we still feel a lot more comfortable at home. We haven’t taken her on many walks due to the extreme heat. So, we’ve been mostly sticking to the house waiting for 6 weeks to pass when she’ll have more of an immune system.
I put up a collection of photos from the last three weeks as well.
She’s a great kid, amazing, we love her like crazy… and we’re pretty tired. 🙂
Not All Fun and Games
Tomorrow Mazie celebrates becoming three weeks old. She is filled with anticipation of exciting “three-week-old” things like having some milk, making some dirty diapers, maybe even taking an extra nap in the afternoon.
In her first three weeks Mazie continues to be amazing and incredible and beautiful and simply the best, or at least according to yours truly, Dad. She’s learned to exercise her lungs more with some mild wailing. I find that it bothers me less if I consider it exercise. She’s gotta learn how to get all that air in and get it out quick after all! She is still being very nice to us and sleeping relatively well. I’ve acquired a very valuable skill – being able to put her to sleep at night. I just talk about computers, telescopes, Road Sign Math, etc. 🙂 In all seriousness, the nightly routine involves me swaddling her real tight, which she hates at first and cries and pushes against but after a few minutes of rocking she settles down. Then we put the “heartbeat” CD on fairly loud which makes a womb-like sound for an hour. Perhaps not surprisingly this puts all of us to sleep pretty quickly as well.
Tammy is obsessed with her being too hot or too cold, still. She’s also obsessed with cleanliness. We changed her diaper for the first time today outside the house, at Eden Prairie center. There was much care taken to make sure nothing was touched. Germs! Everybody had to wipe off with the baby wipes after leaving. I find it all very funny and cute, but it’s really great too.
Lance and #7 (cont.)
We are now past the 3rd stage of the tour and it’s clear that Discovery (formerly US Postal) has what may be one of the best tour teams ever assembled. It’s also clear that whatever Lance’s motivations are for riding this tour, he’s serious. The first stage saw him take one to three minutes from his rivals. All that in a little over 12 miles! Stunning performance in an individual time trial.
The last two stages have had great sprint finishes. This is definitely gearing up to be a legendary tour. Can’t wait for the high mountains.
Happy Independence Day!
We aren’t doing much exciting for the fourth this year. I really like fireworks but with Mazie being just under three weeks old fireworks don’t sound like a good idea. [Hint: Stillwater has the best fireworks around!] We had a classic 4th of July barbecue in it’s place. Barbecued bison burgers and baked beans. Yum!
Some Independence Day moments of Zen to share…
Lance and #7
It is the eve of the 92nd Tour de France. I love cycling. I think it is the best sport in the world, and the Tour de France is the biggest event in it. A lot of friends have asked me what I think of Lance’s chances in this years tour, and I don’t have a very quick answer. Here is why. Lance is an amazing athlete. One of the best ever. He is a big part of why I’m even a cycling fan! Going to France to see him win his 6th tour and do something that has never been done in cycling was amazing. If I could have staged Lance’s final years in cycling, this is what it would look like.
After winning six consecutive tours Lance decides to turn his attention elsewhere. He focuses his program on the spring classics. His huge popularity draws unprecedented attention in the US to races like Gent-Wevelgen, Paris-Roubaix, Milano - Sanremo and Paris - Nice. After winning a select set of the greatest classics Lance focuses on breaking the hour record. After adding these two great achievements to his dossier he forever puts to bed the complaints and comparisons to Eddy Merckx and decides to hang up the bike.
Instead of doing what I wanted (c’mon!) Lance has decided to pursue another Tour de France victory. Part of me is simply worried that he is going to lose. He’s old for cycling and if anyone can win, he can, but he has a legacy to lose. Additionally, I think it’s just poor etiquette. Lance is a strong believer in the etiquette of the peloton, and how “ugly American” of him to not go for something new after shattering every record. Last is that I really think this is all about money at the end of the day. When the US Postal sponsorship went away they needed a new sponsor and if you remove Lance and the Tour de France the value of the team drops a lot. It’s widely known that his contract with Discovery requires that he ride another tour, it just didn’t say when. I really wonder if he would be riding this year if it weren’t for this financial situation.
I’m going to be shouting for him to win tomorrow and the 22 days after that (it will be hard to compare to the kneeling-on-the-floor agony of watching Hincapie come into the velodrome in Roubaix!). I’ll be on the edge of my seat on every mountain stage and wincing as they rocket down the descents. I really hope we have an amazing tour, and yes, I really hope that Lance wins, it’s just complicated.
Power… Out… Again…
Stunning! Shocking! Our power went out again at 4:04 pm today. It returned, fitfully with a lot of jerking and stopping around 6:30 pm.
I really wish I understood why this happens so frequently for us.