Where the Sidewalk Begins ...

California Day 5

Thursday I checked out of the hotel and went walking the city. I started out having a long, leisurely lunch at my favorite - the Buena Vista Cafe at the top of the streetcar line (the home of the Irish Coffee).  In the day time, it's like a locals diner, and I had a great time talking with the waitress and another server. They recommended a great little place to eat across the Bay, and I had a patty melt, fries, and 3 Irish Coffees. I was amazed to find out that alcohol in SF can be served from 6 am until 2 am. 10 am until 2 am on Sundays. Wow. It certainly doesn't work like that at home.

California Day 4

Let's see. Wednesday I did some work on my laptop and hung out in my room until around 11 am. Then I met Kevin at the Conference, and explored the Exhibition Hall at Java One. I discovered that Google is hiring technical writers.  Hmmm.  Unfortunately, I'd have to be in California or Seattle. :-( That's not happening just quite yet. Ask me again in 5-7 years and California might definitely be an option.  (There's some family things here currently.)
I learned that O'Reilly has a fascinating online university program where a professor or trainer can create a custom book from many O'Reilly titles. That program is then not only available to the students online via PDF, but O'Reilly offers an entire LMS for the teacher to use. This service is free for the instructors and the students pay for the custom textbook. It's a brilliant little business plan, and highly useful for instructors and students alike. Imagine, you would only have to buy 1 textbook for a class instead of the 2 you buy because the instructor uses pieces of both.
Wednesday night we ate at an In and Out Burger, because Kevin has always wanted to eat there. Their menu consists of hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, fries. I was impressed. They definitely keep it simple. Then we went to Ghiradelli and had a huge dessert.

California Day 3

Let's see. Tuesday was a fun fun fun day. I took a tour of the Pacific Heights district and learned tons of things about the old Victorian styles of houses as well as some tidbits about San Francisco itself. Here's a jumble of all the things I picked up:

• All businesses are required to be retrofitted to steel, which is a flexible metal that best withstands earthquakes. If a home is sold, the new owners are required to outfit the home with steel. This ensures that eventually, all homes are also better able to withstand earthquakes.
• Original Victorian SF homes are made of redwood timbers. There aren't any existing Victorians around Union Square because the fires after the 1906 earthquake wiped them out. SF stopped the fires by setting off dynamite on Van Ness street, sacrificing about 20 homes, but preserving areas such as Pacific Heights.
• Flat areas in SF are completely man-made.  For instance, Fisherman's Wharf (tourist central) and the Marina District, sit on top of sand and the rubble from the 1906 quake. If there is a quake, those distrcits will be the first to go under.
• Victorian houses are deep, tall, and skinny. In the 1800's, property taxes were assessed based on the width of your property.
• In order to be classified a Victorian Painted Lady, a house must use at least 3 different colors.
• Types of Victorians include Italianate (Gold Rush homes), Stick Victorians (which are more ornate due to the invention of the jigsaw in 1881), and American Queen Anne style from the 1890's (these have turrets and "witches caps"). I could go into a lot of detail about the differences in each of these, but I'll spare you.
• Current rent in SF goes for about $1000 per bedroom in the City. Yep, that's $3000/month for a 3-bedroom apartment. Homes in Pacific Heights go for around $5-14 million, depending on the view. If you are purchasing a "smothered" Victorian (victims of the 1970's), it is at least $300,000 to remodel just the front and not the back and sides. The city offers tax incentives to unsmother Victorians though. (In the 1960's and 70's, they offered tax incentives to smother the houses.  Crazy, eh?) It is now illegal to smother a Victorian in SF.

California Day 2

My bad mood has lifted slightly - I'm more into tired and grumpy at the moment. I took a nap around 11 am PST today and I think it helped. I'm just exhausted. I take sleeping pills to fight insomnia. Normally I just take the prescribed 1/2 pill but tonite, I'm thinking I need to take the whole thing and sleep in tomorrow.
Good things happened today though. I scored a pedicure appointment at one of the most posh spas in the City. That's Wednesday at 10 am.
Banana Republic, one of my favorite stores (up there with Ann Taylor, the Gap, and Old Navy) is having a huge sale. I bought shoes - Banana Republic shoes - and they were only around $12/pair: a pair of little sneakers and a pair of lacy flats. The girl at the cash register was shocked at the incredible prices (I have a knack for sales). It is a huge BR because it's the flagship store - it's as big as a wing in the mall at home and it's two floors. I didn't even get through the whole store. I moved happily along to Old Navy where I also discovered one heck of a clearance sale. Old Navy also has it's flagship store here (same company, as is the Gap) and I picked up some jeans and a couple of shirts really cheap. I stumbled into the Gap as well but the clearance section was so huge and I was so tired that I just decided to leave it for another day. What can I say - my style is consistent!

P2P :-(

Today the Supreme Court ruled against Grokster.  Here's a link to an article - it's a BBC article because I prefer their news, but I'm referring to our very own Supreme Court.
This is potentially huge. From a distance, it looks like nothing more than another Napster case. But if you look closer, it could change everything.
Rip. Mix. Burn. 
That's Apple's advertising campaign. I've seen it referenced in several articles today and I've seen it slathered over billboards and walls all over San Francisco. Looks like they need a new campaign.  Why? Because rip, mix, burn implies that we are going to take music from CDs and burn them to another CD, which we would then give to a friend and that is illegal.  Yep. 
Also, this ruling basically states that software companies are responsible for what the users ultimately do with their software. Think about this - what if Ford were responsible for every driver who ever got into an accident in a Ford vehicle.  That analogy is incredibly extreme but in the end, how do you control your users?
This will change the face of technology marketing as well.  Rip. Mix. Burn. is a marketing campaign. It could be construed as inducing you to go do illegal things with your music. Marketing will change drastically. No one will mention download speed anymore, and no one will mention ripping.
Cory Doctorow wrote a great little piece in Popular Science online today regarding the Supreme Court ruling. I recommend giving it a read. He rightly points out that the biggest problem with this ruling is that it will stifle American innovation.
Oh, the Supreme Court also opted to rule that some displays of the 10 Commandments on gov't property are okay and some aren't - that it's subject to interpretation.  Thanks for that clarification.
They had a busy day, those justices, and then they left to take a three-month break.

Bad Mood

8 am-ish, PST
Despite this trip to the city I love so much, I've been in a bad mood since Saturday. We saw a wonderful opera on Saturday night - the Barber of Seville - and it was even a comedy. Still a bad mood. Crazy travel yesterday, but ended up here. Still a bad mood.
Granted, my back has been hurting again lately and my hand is acting up again (I'm way too young to be falling apart this way). But that's no reason for my own personal rain cloud. I'm also overly emotional in the last few days. The littlest things are upsetting me.
What the *$#! is wrong with me? (And no, I'm not pregnant.) So, here I am in San Francisco, in a bad mood and overly emotional. Maybe I just need a good night's sleep. Who knows?
I'm looking forward to moving on to Santa Rosa, just so that I can be in a beautiful sunny valley. Maybe that's what I need - fresh air and sun. 
Off to fix my hair and find some breakfast. I have to eat so that I can handle my pain killers so that maybe I can numb myself out of this funk.

California Day 1

Well, we finally got to San Francisco last night.Here's the thing - we were supposed to get here around 2 pm yesterday. But our flight was oversold. We volunteered to take the next flight, at 5 pm EST. That got us into SFO at 6:30 PST (9:30 EST). Delta also gave us each $400 in Delta dollars to use on an upcoming trip. I see Spain or Hawaii in our future (or both, given my FF Miles).
When we arrived, a car was waiting to take us to our hotel. This was confusing, as I had called the service and gotten their price. When I was told their price ($78), which was substantially higher than a cab ($45), I told them no thanks. Apparently they didn't get the No Thanks part. The guy begged us to let him drive us to the airport for the cost of a cab ride so we finally relented. Here's the thing - he made himself sound so pathetic because he waited around in the airport all day. But he'd also checked with Delta and found out we were on the later flight. He COULD have trolled for business and taken other people to their hotels until we were supposed to arrive.  Just a thought ... However, the towne-car-for-the-price-of-a-cab ride was pleasant and much better than a cab ride.

C'est bien!

We leave for San Francisco this weekend. Goodness, I'm tired already. I've been rushing around, trying to get everything packed (and I overpack, I know I do), getting dry cleaning, doing laundry, and of course, dealing with work. We have a gold date for our software package of July 8. It's coming down to the crunch, which is why I fully expect to work next week - at least while in San Francisco.
Per usual, we'll arrive smack in the middle of the Gay Pride Parade. I think this is fun and entertaining, but it does make getting to our hotel a bit more difficult - we're on the wrong side of Market Street.
This year I've packed an extra suitcase inside my suitcase, as I expect to buy things like wine and clothing. I'm going to try to hold back on all of it. I've discovered a lot of the Napa and Sonoma wineries are carried by, of all places, our local Sam's Club. Their wines are almost exclusively Napa and Sonoma. I walk through the liquor store saying, "Ooo! I've been here!  Oh! I want to go there!" and so on. My biggest weakness isn't the wine, but the clothes. The Old Navy flagship store is right there, a couple of blocks from the hotel (last year it was ATTACHED to our hotel) and they have practically a whole floor of clearance. Egads! Definitely my big weakness.
I'm having a hellish time getting the Virtual PC program on my Mac to behave. I need to get it working before we go.
Now I still have to clean the house, go to the Opera, and a dozen other things before boarding the plane.
Life is good.

Merry Meet!

What a bad little witch I am, as usual. With all the craziness of wrapping up a huge project, trying to acquire more clients for the future, and getting ready for San Francisco, it completely slipped my mind that Tuesday was the Summer Solstice. I hope everyone had a blessed solstice! (I can't believe I forgot.)

Why I love Steve Jobs

Why I like and admire Steve Jobs has very little to do with Apple and everything to do with his abillity to buck convention and risk everything. Someone just emailed me the commencement speech he gave at Stanford the other day and I thought I'd re-publish it here.  Read it. It's quite good - of course.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea  how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

La Boheme

The Opera season starts tomorrow night. We have Saturday night tickets for the season. So, this Saturday evening we're getting all dressed up, I'm breaking out the nifty Opera glasses (courtesy of Kate) and off we go. It's the most accessible Opera season ever, I think. If you live near Cincinnati and you've always been curious - this is the season to go. We start off with La Boheme, the tale also known as "Rent" or "Moonstruck" (yep, with Cher). This is where those stories came from.
We follow that with The Barber of Seville. Think Bugs Bunny and Opera. It's the lone comedy this season.
Next up is Margaret Garner, which was commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera and stars the lovely Denyce Graves. Now that woman has a voice to die for. The libretto (story) was written by Toni Morrison - the same Toni Morrison who wrote "Waiting to Exhale" and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." It's a true story about a runaway slave who crossed the river into Cincinnati but was arrested and killed her children rather than see them sold back into a life of slavery.  No one ever said Opera was happy. 
We end the season with Rigoletto, the tragic (of course) tale of a court jester and his daughter.
Anyway, this weekend we watch Mimi die in La Boheme and I keep away from the "Rent" soundtrack for a while.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Last year we visited the Robert Mondavi Winery (Napa) on the Saturday before July 4th. Mondavi is the King of Napa and responsible for much of modern innovation in vineyard technique in No. California. He was the first to make a vineyard a tourist attraction and set out to prove that California wines bested French wines in every way (okay, I've been doing some research). The winery is beautiful and the photo of Kevin & I that I love so much was taken at Mondavi. However, we were kicked out early. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans was playing a concert at Mondavi that night - in the vineyard!
So this year I looked into it and they're playing on Saturday, July 2. I bought us tickets. It was a splurge, but I'm so excited! The Preservation Hall Jazz Band playing in a vineyard. Wow! At the end of the concert there is a special "July 4th" fireworks display. Yay!

1st Annual Gerl Sibling Day

Steven decided that since we're all going separate ways this summer (Marianne bought a house, Steven is attending U of Arizona for 6 weeks and Kevin & I are travelling), we ought to have a Sibling Day at King's Island.  So yesterday we had our 1st Annual Sibling Day (I would be a sibling-in-law, but it works for me) and it was great! Steven is already planning for next year.
We rode just about every ride in the park. It started off rainy, which kept lines in the park from being overly long all day. We still managed to get sun burnt, and just had a great time over all! Here's a photo that the keyhole photo people took (I swiped it from online). We had just arrived at the park and weren't quite ready for the photo. ;-)

One more trip ...

Just to make July comparable to April when I lived out of a suitcase, here's the plans for July:

June 26 - 30 San Francisco
June 30 - July 3  Sonoma and Napa
July 29 - August 3 - Jamaica.

Yep - we're heading back to Couples Negril. Now I know that Tropical Storm Arlene is out there somewhere, but hopefully we won't get hit by another hurricane. Ivan was enough and I haven't really recovered from that, based on my reaction when we lose power. I will be packing a pair of jeans, a wind breaker, and my iBook, among other Shel-Survival Essentials when we pack for Jamaica.

Before you comment that we must have money to burn, we don't. However, we do have a complimentary offer from Couples to burn and we're only returning for 5 nights instead of our customary 7 night vacation. If you remember, they offered us several free nights in recompense for our several nights without electricity or water in the aftermath of Ivan. The offer expires September 29 and I'm sure as hell not going back to Jamaica in September, which is when the hurricane hit last year. Last year we tried travelling on our wedding anniversary - this year maybe we'll have a party instead. The whole travelling during hurricane season just didn't work out too well. Fluke or not, I'm spooked by the very idea of a hurricane.
If my cell phone doesn't have service in Jamaica, will it still work if I have an Int'l pre-paid calling card?

JavaOne

Last year Kevin didn't have trouble scoring me a free Pavilion-only pass for JavaOne. This was great - I got to see what the conference was about, score some swag, get a photo with Duke, and talk to a couple of different software firms whose products I use.

This year, I have searched high and low and have not been able to find a free Pavilion Pass. I really don't want to shell out $150 to buy one, but I wouldn't mind going. If anyone stumbles across one in their Internet or business wanderings, let me know!

Summer Reading List

I have raided the library, Amazon.com and BN.com and the bricks-and-mortar Barnes & Noble in the last few days and my summer reading list is set.
The biggest item on my reading list is (drumroll, please) East of Eden by John Steinbeck.  Had I realized it was currently an Oprah book, I might have passed. The truth of the matter is that I'm terribly interested in the book - I've heard it compared to Gone with the Wind in its sweeping epic-ness.

There is a definite theme of wine and wine country in all of my choices other than the historical fiction. I didn't plan it that way; it's just the items the piqued my interest. The rest of my list is as follows:

Political Ramblings

Why can't the Democrats get their act together? I ask this because I heard an article on NPR the other day. The article discussed Barrack Obama, that wonderkid Senator from Illinois that I do so love, as well as Hilary and Joe Biden.  Here's the thing - Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are fighting over Obama as their VP candidate.  What? Already? Can't we come up with better candidates than Hillary and Joe?  (Scary,as the Republicans will probably offer up Dr. Scary Bill Frist.)
Hillary, I love you.  I do. I'm impressed by you and consider you a role model. BUT YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE PRESIDENT! 
Hillary is too controversial a figure to be President. Too many people hate her - including women. People who don't hate Hillary hate Bill Clinton (my dad included) and don't want Bill back in the White House, even as First Husband (what the hell term would they use, anyway?). She would lose on the basis of who she is, not what she believes in.
Joe Biden flip-flops, to use an over-used term from the last election, every bit as much as Kerry did. And if that strategy worked once for the Republicans, well, methinks it would work again. I like Joe Biden, but I get really angry at him. He has a way of saying one thing and then caving to pressure. He hasn't quite got that "standing up for himself and his beliefs" thing down pat yet.
Out of the batch, Obama is the only one I really like and believe in. Two things stand in his way - he's young - really really young (although Kennedy did it) and he is black.  This country, and I'm ashamed to admit it, is a large portion redneck and I don't know if any of them will consent to vote for a black man, even if he's the best person for the job.

Blue Hawaii

Right at this very moment, Blue Hawaii is on AMC. I discovered an appreciation for Elvis only in the last couple of years, but his movies are part of the reason. (I love old "Technicolor" movies.) Blue Hawaii is my favorite Elvis movie, my favorite Elvis album, and my favorite incarnation of Elvis himself (1961 Elvis). I really buy him as the rebellious son of the pineapple tycoon, home from the military, and hanging with his surfer buddies and Hawaiian friends. Plus, I love the girlfriend Maile. The soundtrack includes Can't Help Falling in Love and Hawaiian Wedding Song - two of my favorites, and a whole lot of ukelele. The movie just makes me all happy and sentimental and longing for the beach and simpler times all at once.

Spamalot wins Tonys!

Spamalot picked up a couple of Tonys last night - I think best director, best featured actress in a musical (yay!  I knew she'd win!), and the big one: Best Musical.  It's also been picking up Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards this year.  Yay for Spamalot! 

Hospital Round-up

Donna gets to come home from the hospital today. She walked up and down a few steps in physical therapy.  Of course, I think the hard part starts once she gets home. But she's coming home early, which is a good thing!
The twins will be having their mid-June graduation party after all because Krystal's boyfriend's parents are throwing it for them - at Dad's house. (Donna can't really go anywhere.) So that's good, and awfully kind.
Betty, my step-grandma, was taken to the hospital yesterday because her hip hurt so badly. She and Donna were sharing a room. Betty's dr just keeps giving her pain pills, and that doesn't help anything. She needs to be turned over to an orthopedic surgeon. She had an MRI today and they'll let her know the results tomorrow. Hopefully they'll fix her instead of just giving her more pain pills and sending her home.

Learning Curve

So on Thursday evening, my client's client (basically I'm a subcontractor in this case) informs us that the printer has specified dimensions for the Quick Start Guide I've been working on for about 2 months or so. We'd already decided, in the beginning, that the dimensions were basically "booklet" or half of a standard letter sheet. I'd designed in those dimensions.
I'd also designed thinking that my graphics and text would be put into a publishing program and cleaned up by a graphic designer. After all, I'm only the writer and I don't know a damned thing about pre-press setup. (Until last week, I didn't even know the word "pre-press.") My client had also assumed that this was the case and I went ahead and designed in MS Word, with everyone being fully aware.
Thursday afternoon I'm told the following:
1. The document must be 4.75 x 7.25 inches. Huh? That's just strange.
2. The document must be delivered in either Quark or Acrobat, with pre-press settings, TIF or EPS graphics that are at least 300 dpi, and the whole document at least 300 dpi and in CMYK.
3. The revised document needed to be delivered on Friday.
What?!  This is Thursday afternoon.  Friday I spend a good part of the day on the phone with the 3rd party printer. They don't understand that I'm 1) working with a PC and 2) working from Word.  There is no way to convert Word to a CMYK file when printing to Acrobat 6.0.  Okay, there are ways, but they are expensive plug-ins. My bread-and-butter is interactive design - I'm not dropping $300 on a pre-press plug-in. I asked about the new Acrobat 7.0. The printer said it didn't have anything that could help me. By this point I've also discovered that the new sizing has turned my Quick Start Guide into something ugly.
Argh!  By Sunday, I'm frustrated. My client suggests I port the whole thing into MS Publisher. I do this, despite the fact that I've never used Publisher.  I happen to own a copy (came with Office 2003).  I took two quick tutorials on Microsoft.com (commercial printing and getting started) and off I went. Publisher reminds me of PageMaker in the '90's.  I hate it.  I'm pretty darned good at it now. I re-shot all of my screenshots as 300-dpi TIF files in CMYK. I re-created the whole document as CMYK. I published to Acrobat.  It was RGB.  Over and over. I tried all sorts of different things and finally went to bed around 3 am. I woke up and by 7 am I was at it again. After several extensive google searches I went to the Acrobat site.  Turns out that Acrobat 7 does the color conversion. Considering that Acrobat 6 is less than a year old, I'm peeved that I need to purchase 7. At least the 30-day trial is fully functional. Anyway, Acrobat 7 solved all my problems and I wish I'd known that on Friday. The really ironic thing? I have a box containing Acrobat 7 for the Mac sitting at a friend's house and I haven't yet had time to pick it up. 
The document will be delivered today - Monday - once I hear from the client's client on some more last minute changes. So ridiculous.
Over the last 24 hours alone I've learned all about pre-press, pre-flight, and Microsoft Publisher. Ugh.
It was an incredibly fast learning curve and I hope that I don't have to use Publisher again. I'm terribly peeved that the client's client didn't bother to get this information out to me sooner, knowing I was bopping along in a different size and in MS Word.  :rolleyes:

Get Well Soon!

My stepmom, Donna, had an accident on Thursday and broke her hip. Seriously. She had surgery this evening, and she came through with flying colors and a brand new hip as well.  Now the hard part - the recovery.  Get well soon ... but take your time and don't rush the healing process.

Update: I should probably explain how she broke her hip, as Kate is right. Donna is really young to have a hip replacement. She was at Krystal's tournament softball game on the top bleacher and went to jump down (no railings or anything) and fell and landed exactly on her hip. Ouch!  Can't you imagine the pain as the ball in her hip splintered?  Egads! Oh, and after all that, the girls still lost the game. :-(   

Apple Ipod Settlement

Well, it looks like we qualify for the iPod settlement regarding crappy battery life. My original iPod, currently owned by Kevin, was purchased in April of 2004.  The cutoff purchase date is May 31, 2004. Ours is the 3G iPod covered by the settlement. Basically you can either send your iPod back to Apple for battery refurbishment/replacement or you can take a $50 gift certificate. Our battery is crappy, but it is also covered under the Best Buy warranty we purchased, so we're going to go with the gift certificate.  Anyway, there's no doubt the battery is crappy - it seemed to do well for almost a year and then pretty much started wasting away. Yep, it lasted until it became Kevin's iPod, then it decided to act up. (Although the almost a year battery life is pretty standard for the 3Gs from what I've read.)  Anyway, if you purchased a 1G, 2G, or 3G iPod before May 31, 2004, go check out http://www.appleipodsettlement.com and see if you qualify as part of the class action suit.

Flickr vs SmugMug

I know that everyone who reads my blog is all about Flickr.  I know.  And Flickr is cool.  But I think I may end up with SmugMug.  You see, I'm getting lazy.  Rather, I take so many photos that creating individualized web pages is getting tedious, even through Photoshop's batch page automator. I still have to tweak everything in Dreamweaver. 
My one complaint with Flickr is that, although their mission is to cater to every customer, no matter what the level of privacy requested, they don't yet deliver on that promise. Yet. I'm sure they will. You see, I want to post my photos, but I don't want them public.  I don't want the whole world ogling my sisters or seeing my house. I know that's silly and retro of me, but it's true. 
Granted, the whole world can get there now.  If they know how. If they have the interest.  Seriously, it's not like our personal web site is popping up high on Google if you search for Niagara Falls.  But if I upload my Niagara Falls photos to Flickr, and tag them Niagara Falls, everyone can see them. Okay, I know that I can do the "friends and family" thing, but then my family has to log in, etc, etc, and really, that's too much for many of them. I want simple password protection. 
SmugMug allows me to password protect individual galleries or the entire site. I like that. I just post the password on our web site and folks can then view the photos.  Seriously, it takes just enough work that it deters folks who aren't interested and not enough work to deter my family.
I know it's not secure in any way - I get that, but it's exactly what I need.
I still think Flickr is cool though - I love the whole PhotoStream idea. I just don't want my photos as part of the stream. Although if I attended an event - say I went to a conference and took a lot of photos - Flickr would be a fantastic way for me to share and view photos with other conference attendees.
I've opened a free account with Flickr and a 7-day trial with SmugMug. I'll let you know in 7 days what I decide to go with ...

Diet is die with a t

I seem to remember Garfield the Cat spouting that saying in the 80's.  I would agree.  Today I attempt to re-start the diet.  Remember the diet? I was successful at it back in February. Then I went to New Orleans and pretty much never recovered. As usual, I'm returning to Weight Watchers on-line. I head to San Francisco and Napa in about 3 weeks. I want to have dropped between 5 and 8 pounds by then .  Wish me luck! 

Such a geek

Looking around my office, I have to wonder when I became such a geek. Starting to the right, we have an old iMac with actual memory sticks piled on top of it. On the floor by the iMac is the Seagate 120 GB hard drive that will soon go inside the iMac. Next to the iMac is my Dell laptop, which is huge. Once upon a time, the laptop was my favorite computer. Then it fell out of favor because, I now realize, it was uncomfortable to use. Now that it's sitting up on a podium pad and I have an attached and lower keyboard, it's back to being my favorite PC. Next we have the Seagate external drive that I'm using to religiously back up my work. I've had too many scares in the last year and am not willing to lose the items that my clients pay me for. The little Seagate isn't always on, but when it is, it's remarkably quiet. I also use Acronis as my back-up software - it's fantastic.
On the next desk over (I have them set up in an "L") I have my desktop Dell with the nifty flat monitor. On a shelf above my desktop machine is Keiko, my photo iPod, hooked up to speakers. There's also a bag of cases, cords, and cards, as well as my camera. Then finally, on a rolling cabinet, is Lily, my nifty little iBook that is currently sporting a Shag desktop and martini icons. I added a passport external drive to Lily, naming the external drive Winnie, where I'm storing big files and installing things like Photoshop. Lily is also on a podium pad, extremely angled so that typing is comfortable. I added an external mouse as well.
See - I'm a geek.  A gadget geek. I have no idea when or how this happened. I suppose the funniest part is all the stuffed animals peeking out from above and around the various gadgets.

Photos Posted!

Because starting tomorrow I will completely slammed with work again, I wanted to get all the photos up. I managed to get some "missing" photos up as well.

- Steven's junior prom
- Kim & Krystal's high school graduation
- Niagara Falls & Rochester, NY vacation: There are close to 300 photos here.  The Rochester photos are mostly of museums. The Niagara photos are everything from the little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake and vineyards to the great rushing falls. The Falls are really photogenic - I couldn't stop taking photos.

View them all here.

Feels like a Sunday

We're back and vacation was wonderful. I haven't been that relaxed in a long time and even managed to completely forget about work. I'm not going to let myself even think about work until tomorrow either, as I'm rather enjoying this stress-free thing.
It feels like a Sunday.
Over the course of the day, I'm going to attempt to get my photos online (I took around 500) as well as blog a little. We'll see how that goes.