July 2004 Archives

Quilter ladies visiting today.

Jake & I gave Jennifer & the ladies a little space.

Jake and Papa's Big Adventure

Stopped just west of Country Fair Drive.

Vermilion County, part of the Illinois Counties project.

C-130, Chanute Air Museum

Not pictured: lunch at Culver's, playing with the cats at Petsmart.

Interesting software:

Subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/) which is a replacement for CVS; and TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/), which as a Subversion client that integrates nicely into the Windows shell.

CVS is a bit like COBOL: ancient, crufty, disliked by nearly everyone who uses it. It needs replacing.

Spying on the neighbors:

The annual Notice of Assessment was published in Friday's newspaper, so I looked up our humble abode. It turns out the identification numbers were assigned in order, up one side of the street and down the other: so now I know the names of everybody on the block.

Property taxes are a scam. The theory is that you pay taxes based solely on the value of your property, but the reality is:

• Start with the Market Value of the property, which is supposed to be the price we could sell for, but isn't even close;
• Multiply by the Assessment Level, which has nothing to do with the value of the property but a lot to do with the city's need for cash;
• Multiply by the Multiplier, which is used by the county to raise taxes without having to admit to raising taxes;
• And finally, multiply by the Tax Rate, which never changes in an election year.

It's chicanery like this that makes it difficult to respect the law (or the people who make it).

Cloudy, drizzly day.

Inexplicably, the 1994 general election results for Rockford, Illinois are online; I see that Randy Ligocki, one of my co-workers at Northrop, ran for a seat in the General Assembly (67th district). He lost, 11,026 to 7,944.

At Northrop, Randy was infamous for cadging free technical manuals from hardware manufacturers. He had quite a collection, few of which were relevant to his work.

He tried again in 1996, for a seat on the County Board (district 14); this time, he lost in the primary: 1,414 to 998.

Last night, I found a salsa recipe on the Food TV web site (http://www.foodtv.com/); this evening I made a batch. Lots of chopping, dicing & mincing; I hope the stuff tastes good.

(Yes, I remembered to wash my hands after dicing the jalapeños.)

I've been trying to disable the Outlook 2000 Preview Pane (aka the Virus Executor Pane). I'm not the only one: Google returns about 4,500 hits for “disable outlook preview pane”.

The 'softies are of one voice in response to such queries: “Just use the /nopreview option.” They're right, in that starting Outlook 2000 with /nopreview will disable the preview pane—but there are at least four different ways to start Outlook, some of which cannot be modified to use /nopreview.

I suppose the only solution is to upgrade to Outlook 2003, and hope that it has fewer vulnerabilities than Outlook 2000.

Today's tomato harvest:

Forty-three!

The total so far: one hundred and twenty-eight. Jennifer's looking for good salsa recipes.

American Micro Devices (http://www.amd.com/) has announced a new line of CPUs, named Sempron: an unfortunate choice, as it makes me think more of the Semprini gag from Monty Python's Flying Circus than of microprocessors.

In today's mail:

The Targus Portable Keyboard I ordered from Amazon.com last Friday. Their delivery estimate—August 4–16—was a little off. Not that I'm complaining, mind.

A postcard from the Book of the Month Club, informing me that they're fresh out of Rutherford B. Hayes biographies but hope to get more in a month or two. (I suspect they never had any, figuring that nobody would ever order one.)

Today in the Amazon.com Gold Box: the usual hair-removal device, and a Metrokane Deluxe Rabbit with Foilcutter. Well, now. Deluxe, is it?

<python>
That's no ordinary rabbit!
</python>

Poor Amazon.com. I rarely buy anything for myself from them: usually my purchases are Christmas presents for other people, which makes quite a muddle of their if you bought this, you'll probably like that calculations.

Before I started fooling with the Gold Box, I never knew there were so many different ways to remove hair. It's been an education.

Tomato update: three tonight, eighty-five total.

A while ago (last year?) I signed up for online access to my credit card account: online statements, payments drawn directly from my checking account (no more checks!), etc. It's been very convenient for a lazy guy like me. But in today's email:

You have received this e-mail because you provided your e-mail address to [us]. We would like to contact you occasionally at this e-mail address regarding various promotions.

It was an HTML message, too, with a 1×1 pixel bug tucked away at the bottom. Outlook 2003 is smart enough not to fetch external images, but Outlook 2000 isn't; so I disconnected the modem before opening the message.

Spam from my credit-card provider. Very disappointing. The question now: whether to send a scathing email to their customer-service department, or just find a new credit card? (I suppose I could always do both.)

The Democratic National Convention opens today in Boston: four days of speechifying & bloviating, ostensibly to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President for the November election.

I don't see the point. John Kerry won the nomination four and a half months ago (on March 11, according to CNN).

(Poor Leland: he lives about a half-mile from the FleetCenter [http://www.fleetcenter.com/], where the convention is being held. He's in for interesting times this week, I'm sure.)

There's even less point to next month's Republican convention: they didn't even hold primaries, having decided long ago to nominate Bush & Cheney.

I guess it encourages the voters to believe they're part of the process, and gives the talking heads something to talk about.

I want a digital video recorder: something that can record twenty or forty hours of video on a hard disk, as opposed to four or five hours on a videocassette. That would be pretty cool. But I don't want to sign up for any program-listing service such as TiVo. I already get program listings in the newspaper, so paying $13/month for them seems unreasonable.

Alas, nobody sells standalone DVRs. It's TiVo, or nothing.

Supposedly it was King Gillette who said, “Give away the razor, sell the blades.” A lucrative business model, if you can keep the customers from realizing that they're being fleeced.

Hewlett-Packard announced several new iPaq models today: the h6300 ($600), which has a built-in phone; the hx4700 ($649), which has a 640x480 screen and various multimedia toys; and the rz1700, the main selling point of which is that it's cheap (if $279 can be considered cheap).

Windows CE has two dirty little secrets that are beginning to cause problems. First, main memory is limited to 64MB. You can add memory cards (and even tiny hard disks) to PocketPC machines, but it's not a good idea to install software there: some packages won't run, and memory-card accesses are slower than main memory. Second, Windows CE limits the number of running processes to 32. Some PocketPC models have so much pre-loaded software that only five or six process slots are left for user applications.

I'd rather have the 2215, which seems to hit the sweet spot of just enough toys to be cool while not overloading the creaky old Windows CE architecture. And it costs almost $300 less than the hx4700.

[Microsoft just announced—or shipped, or something—Windows CE 5.0. I don't know whether it removes the memory and process limitations of previous versions. Even if it does, that won't help this year's PocketPC models. Maybe next year's.]

Tomato update: eleven today, eighty-two total.

Jake likes to pick tomatoes. Red, green, he doesn't mind: he'll pick them all.

Forgot to mention: everybody's fine today. No fevers, no meals left in parking lots.

Off to Bloomington, to attend cousin Ryan's christening. (Christening, or baptism? What's the difference? Is there a difference?)

I was handed a camcorder and told to record the proceedings. I hope I did all right.

We were supposed to go to Ryan's house for some post-christening cake & fun; alas, Jacob's breakfast was proving rather disagreeable to him. He ended up leaving it in the church parking lot, which meant it was time for us to go home.

He was his usual self almost immediately thereafter, and complained all the way home that home wasn't where he wanted to go. He was fine the rest of the day, and ate a good dinner.

Papa, on the other hand, is running a bit of a fever (100°).

Stupid errand: I packed up the GPS receiver, the camera and a clipboard (I have three), and drove over to Ogden to get a picture of the Vermilion County sign (for the Illinois Counties page).

Only there wasn't one. I drove back & forth on US 150, then up to Royal and east on Highway 20. No signage in either location.

Apparently the folks in Vermilion County are ashamed or something. I'll have to try some other highway, possibly US 136 east of Rantoul.

(I asked Jennifer recently whether it would be silly to take a day off from work just to drive around the state photographing county-line signs. She just stared at me, which I interpret to mean: Yes, very silly indeed.)

Tomato update: eight today, seventy-one total.

The tomato plant is looking rather flat these days: Jennifer put in a dozen stakes, but they've all fallen over. The center of the jungle is opening up; I can see dirt at the bottom.

And various unwelcome wildlife have discovered the tomato plants: we found a few tomatoes that looked to have been nibbled on by bugs, and we think rabbits have been eating the low-hanging branches.

Silly rabbits.

The carrots are doing well. I picked another one a few days ago: it was larger than the first one, but not yet carrot-sized.

The oregano and chives are surviving at ground level, but not really thriving. I think they are this year's failures.

Went to Curtis Orchard again this afternoon, since yesterday we never got to go inside (Jake & some of his friends from daycare were having too much fun outside).

They've built an entire restaurant on the back. As yet it's rather empty (no tables), but they're still working on it.

Tomato update: fifteen today, sixty-three total.

Visited the Government Printing Office (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/) to download a copy of The 9/11 Commission Report.

It's almost 600 pages, so I'll be a while reading it all (if I ever do).

Cooler today (70° at 9:00am), and not so humid. After a hot & muggy couple of weeks, we're in for a stretch of good weather. How nice.

Someone has taken over the old General Magic domain, www.generalmagic.com, and turned it into a rather lame portal site.

Domain squatting is for losers.

[Apparently, the losers in question are NameScout Corp.]

One of the many schemes Amazon.com has to boost sales is the Gold Box: open the Gold Box, get two special offers for stuff Amazon thinks will interest you. Buy within an hour, or the offers expire (at which time you can try again).

The first time I tried this, the offer was a rather nice pair of binoculars. More than I felt like spending, but nice.

It's been downhill from there: since the binoculars expired, opening the Gold Box has revealed nothing but a series of body-hair removal devices.

Um…no, thanks.

Nessus needs backup software. I can dump files to CD-R, but that's a tedious process. I'd much rather do a rotating full+incremental scheme, but Windows XP doesn't come with any way to do that. (Windows XP includes a backup utility; it's impressively useless.)

Supposedly, Dantz Retrospect (http://www.dantz.com/) is pretty good. And it's only $85 at Amazon.com.

Today is Opening Day at Curtis Orchard. Cider & donuts, very tasty.

Tomato update: fifteen today, bringing the total to forty-eight.

Installed the July 15 iPod update, only to discover that

iPod Updater 2004-07-15 contains the same software versions as iPod Updater 2004-04-28 for all other iPod models.

which means all that downloading & installing was pretty much a waste of time.

[Even worse, when I ran the July 15 Update it crashed Windows XP: Blue Screen of Death, system reboot, Would you like to report this problem to Microsoft?, etc., etc.]

While I was reading Jeff Duntemann's commentary on incarnational theology, the iPod's song shuffle tossed out a track from Jesus Christ Superstar.

Funny old world.

2:58pm, and thunderstorms prowl central Illinois. The radar looks like a blood-spatter diagram on one of those secrets-of-forensic-science television shows. I saw a few lightning flashes, and heard some thunder, but as yet there's been no rain.

It's raining in South Dakota, according to the Crazy Horse Webcam (www.crazyhorse.org/webcam.shtml). No—just checked again—it's stopped.

This is cool: the U.S. Mint is offering proof set subscriptions. Coin collecting for the lazy, only $22.95 per year. I may have to sign up.

(They also have the American Eagle Gold Proof One-Ounce Coin. Very pretty, but at $675 clearly intended for people who have a lot more disposable income than I do.)

Installed the iTunes 4.6 update this evening. It looks the same as iTunes 4.5. I tried to download the iPod Updater, but it's 27MB. 9:45pm is too late to start an enormous download; maybe tomorrow.

The City of Urbana has its construction permits online, so now I know that in 2003 Paul Tenczar—my boss, when I worked at Computer Teaching Corporation fifteen years ago—spent rather a lot of money on home improvements.

I don't know if he's still working, or retired. Whatever he's doing, Google knows nothing about it.

Interesting spam just now: it claimed to come from the Book of the Month Club, but the url in the message body didn't look anything like www.bomc.com.

Delete.

[When I decide to open suspicious email, I never use Outlook. Outlook has a nasty habit of handing complete control of the machine over to any incoming message that requests it. Instead, I use Notepad, which is too dumb to execute anything it opens. Notepad is safe, so far as I know. Too bad Outlook isn't.]

Forgot to recharge the iPod last night, so just after noon today it popped up the unhappy-battery icon and shut down. As Hamlet said, “The rest is silence.”

1:54pm, and the NOAA says: temperature 87°, dewpoint 79°. I'm afraid to go outside.

Just now (2:20pm) there's a fella on the roof of the Trade Center building. I wonder whether this is related to the jackhammer sounds I've been hearing off & on all week.

The NOAA reports that the temperature at 2:00pm was 88°, the dewpoint 80.1°. I can't remember the last time I saw a dewpoint above 80°.

I hope the fella up on the roof is getting hazard pay, or a bonus, or something.

The Illinois General Assembly has a web site: www.legis.state.il.us.

These are the slackers who are required by law to come up with a state budget no later than May 31^st; as of today—fifty-one days past a firm, non-negotiable, no-exceptions, this-means-you statutory deadline—they have yet to do so. Maybe Friday, they're saying now.

I see two root causes for this: first, there are no consequences to the legislators for missing the deadline; second, legislators in general have an overdeveloped sense of their own grandeur.

Perhaps if they were locked inside the House and Senate chambers, and put on bread & water rations, they would learn a little modesty and take their obligations a little more seriously.

Is there still any point to having a bicameral legislature? The original idea was for the Senate to be the older and wiser body, while all the young hotheads were to be restricted to the House, where they couldn't cause as much trouble. Two hundred years later, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish the two.

Incidentally, the Twelfth Amendment says

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves…

which is a bit odd, given that Texas' 32 electoral votes went to Bush and Cheney, both of whom are from Texas.

[No, that's not true—Cheney moved his legal residence to Wyoming for electoral purposes, in much the same way that George H. W. Bush's legal residence was in some state that 1) he never visited and 2) had no personal income tax.]

Interesting page: the 2000 Presidential Election Results, www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm. It turns out that there were sixteen candidates in 2000; and 3,315 Nevadans voted for None of the Above.

Good for them!

Tonight's tomato harvest: fifteen.

That brings the total to thirty-three.

A bit hazy today. Rather warm, too: 82° at noon, with a dewpoint of 71°.

The good news: I managed to re-enable online access to my 401(k) plan, so I can do all sorts of geeky analysis & reportage thereon while sitting comfortably at my desk.

The bad news: my balance has fallen $700 since the last statement.

The Forgotten English calendar tells me that this is the feast day of St. Wilgefortis, “patroness of women who sought protection from ‘troublesome husbands’.”

Perhaps St. Wilgefortis should intercede on behalf on Jennifer…

Today is also the 35^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the 28^th anniversary of the Viking 1 Mars landing.

(I spent half an hour last night creating recurring events in Outlook for all of the Apollo missions. So now the iPaq will tell me when their anniversaries roll around.)

Busy evening:

Stopped at Prairie Gardens on the way home from work and picked up three bags of play sand; then washed out Jake's sandbox (which was filled with Unidentifiable Semiorganic Goo after one thunderstorm too many) and refilled it with fresh sand.

It occurred to me halfway through the project that Prairie Gardens keeps their bags of play sand outside, so the new sand has been rained on at least as much as the old sand.

Oops.

Got out the box cutter and dismantled the patio furniture packaging; it took some effort, but I managed to cram all of it into the recycle bin. (If we have anything else to recycle this week, we're in trouble.)

Five more tomatoes from the backyard jungle. Added to yesterday's harvest (seven) and Saturday's (six), we're up to eighteen. We've already given some away, too.

9:28pm, and Jacob is in bed. He doesn't want to be there, and protests loudly. Poor little guy.

9:44pm, and sounds of utter despair continue to emanate from Jacob's room. I feel so heartless & cruel to leave him in there, but he's got to learn how to fall asleep on his own.

He used to be quite good at it. I don't know what happened.

9:49pm, and blessed silence reigns.

At home this afternoon, waiting for patio furniture to be delivered.

Wondering which of the 50 State Quarters I've managed to collect? Wonder no more! The State Quarters page will ease your troubled mind.

Or something.

Drove to Normal, so Jake could visit with the grandparents while Jennifer & I went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Nice film. A bit more focused than the first two, which was nice. The actors have grown up quite a bit, too.

Our first tomato harvest:

Very tasty, too.

Fun with TerraServer: I found a high-resolution, color image of the Saturn V on display at the U. S. Space & Rocket Center outside Huntsville, Alabama.

It would be fun to go there sometime, and see the big rocket close up. According to Yahoo, it's only 500 miles from Champaign: eight hours, more or less.

Sometime recently when I wasn't paying attention, Google bought Picasa. Version 1.6 has been re-released as a free download (it used to cost…um…$30?), but maybe that means it's full of advertisements now?

The free-software crowd is working very hard to make the phrase ‘free software’ mean something good & noble, while certain companies—for want of a better term, let's call them vermin—are teaching people to equate free software with spyware, adware, and other unpleasantness.

Even if Google's free version of Picasa is untainted by malware, people will be suspicious of it, just because it's free. That's probably not what Google expects, or wants. What a shame.

Jeffrey Jones, good and bad:

• Besotted, the Jeffrey Jones Obsession Site: www.besottedwithjeffrey.com
• Jeffrey Jones Sex Offender Bust: http://thesmokinggun.com/archive/0702041jones1.html

This morning I have the iPod on song shuffle, as opposed to album shuffle; I am skipping merrily through my CD collection, like listening to a radio station where there are no commercials and all the songs are good ones.

I use Personal Vehicle Manager (www.twopeaks.com/site/products/pvm) to keep track of gas purchases & maintenance on Mr. Explorer; and I use Money 2004 (www.microsoft.com/money) to keep track of our checking account. This means that whenever I fill up Mr. Explorer, I have to enter the transaction twice.

This is rather annoying.

Microsoft says that WinFS, coming in Windows 'Longhorn' (no earlier than 2006, and probably later), will solve all my filesystem problems. Will it solve this one?

Seems unlikely. The Money team has a history of not playing nicely with the Windows team, and will probably ignore Longhorn and WinFS until forced (by BillG himself) to support them.

For the first time in many months, I have ordered something from the Book of the Month Club: a biography of Rutherford B. Hayes. It should arrive in a week or two.

My knowledge of U.S. history in general is a bit spotty, but I know even less about the second half of the 19th century, after the Civil War but before the Spanish-American War. Reading up on Rutherford B. Hayes seems like a good start toward filling in some of the gaps.

The Moody Blues (www.moodyblues.co.uk) are still around, thirty-seven years after Days of Future Passed. They're down to three members: Graeme Edge, Justin Hayward (www.justinhayward.com) and John Lodge (www.johnlodge.com). Their last album was Strange Times in 1999, but they're still touring.

The Moody Blues web site says Days of Future Passed was released on November 11, 1967; but also says it was released in 1966. Which is it, fellas? And what happened to Patrick Moraz?

If you do a Google image search for Sturm, the first few pages of hits are mostly German web sites with pictures of thunderstorms.

I should have expected that, I suppose.

Nice day today: sunny, not too warm, humidity much lower than it has been.

Jake had this to say about yesterday's storms:

We have to tell the sky, “No, no! Don't blow the trees down!”

Jacob has a keen sense of the Natural Order of Things, and any deviation therefrom provokes considerable indignation.

Tree branches are piled at curbside on most roads in the older parts of town; in the newer neighborhoods—e.g., where we live—the trees held up nicely (perhaps because they were so small). Power is still out here & there about the county, but the Illinois Power crews are beavering away to get everybody's lights on again.

Lucky us, we never lost power and our trees are intact.

Yesterday's mail brought the latest Book of the Month Club flyer; they're offering a six-volume set of biographies of U.S. Presidents: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Madison, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.

It would be an interesting project to read biographies of all forty-two U.S. Presidents. It might take a while, though…

Tried to mow the lawn this evening, and got about one-third done before the battery gave out: the grass was just too high, and still a little wet from yesterday's rain.

I think we need a bigger lawn mower.

Mail from the WRI office manager:

With the arrival of spring, we often encounter severe weather, including tornadoes.

Er…Spring ended three weeks ago. It's Summer now.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service says…

ILC019-183-132045-

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LINCOLN IL
306 PM CDT TUE JUL 13 2004

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN LINCOLN HAS ISSUED A

* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
VERMILION COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL ILLINOIS
CHAMPAIGN COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL ILLINOIS

* UNTIL 345 PM CDT

* AT 306 PM CDT...RADAR INDICATED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WITH STRONG
ROTATION 8 MILES NORTH OF LUDLOW...OR ABOUT 3 MILES NORTH OF
PAXTON...MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 45 MPH. THIS STORM COULD PRODUCE A
TORNADO AT ANY TIME. IN ADDITION TO THE THREAT OF A TORNADO...LARGE
HAIL AND DAMAGING WINDS CAN BE EXPECTED WITH THIS STORM. GO TO A
SAFE PLACE NOW!

* THE TORNADO IS EXPECTED TO BE NEAR...
RANTOUL
GIFFORD
ARMSTRONG
POTOMAC
ROYAL
ST. JOSEPH
COLLISON
OGDEN

OTHER LOCATIONS IN THIS WARNING INCLUDE...CATLIN...FAIRMOUNT...
FITHIAN...OAKWOOD AND TILTON.

IF YOU ARE IN THE PATH OF THIS STORM...TAKE COVER IN A BASEMENT OR
INTERIOR ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR. VEHICLES AND MOBILE HOMES SHOULD
BE ABANDONED FOR A SAFER SHELTER.

REPORT SEVERE WEATHER OR ANY STORM DAMAGE TO YOUR LOCAL ESDA...OR THE
NEAREST LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY...FOR RELAY TO THE NATIONAL WEATHER
SERVICE. STAY TUNED FOR LATER STATEMENTS.

LAT...LON 4059 8806 4048 8825 4003 8815 4004 8756

…and radar shows a Big Red Blob bearing down on us from the north. (I wonder: what are the radar color codes measuring? Red is more intense than green, but what does that mean? Taller clouds?)

Ah. The NOAA has a Radar FAQs page. Red means a stronger return, which means more water droplets (i.e., rain) in the air. They can also do Doppler analysis to detect speed & rotation. Pretty cool.

Hm. 3:35pm, and the sky is very dark & scary-looking. Too bad my camera is at home (not to mention my umbrella).

Sputnik recorded a wind gust of 33mph, and ¾ of an inch of rain, between 4:00pm and 5:00pm. Some fairly large tree branches are no longer attached to their trees; crews are out cleaning up the mess.

[Sputnik also recorded a temperature drop of fourteen degrees, from 83° to 69°, between 4:00pm and 5:00pm.]

Warm today (84°), and very humid (dewpoint 74°).

No rain, though. This is rather unfortunate, since dry weather means the lawn must be mowed tonight.

Sneaked a few airplane pictures into the June 30 entry. This time next year, I'll be pretending they were there all along.

Bought some patio furniture this afternoon: six chairs, plus a table. (We skipped the umbrella, since these are going on the back porch, not outside.)

They won't be delivered until the 19th, alas.

Entering vacation receipts into Money 2004, I was amused that it suggested the category Taxes for a purchase from the Door County Confectionery.

I suppose the word County confused it.

We're all back.

Jacob spent a few days with Grandma & Grandpa in Arlington Heights, while Jennifer & I went up to Door County, Wisconsin.

Very nice up there. I took many pictures, some of which will appear here, when time permits.

Jake and I went to the post office (the old one, on Neil St.) to pick up our mail. “Regular delivery will resume on Monday,” said the cheery clerk.

Nobody told the route driver, who stuffed a handful of envelopes into our mailbox around 2:00pm this afternoon.

Jake was expecting another sticker book, since he got one on Tuesday when we dropped off the hold-mail card. Sorry, Jake. Not this time.

Jon Wiswall, of Microsoft, says:

The unfortunate state of the world today is that once an installer exits (either for an operating system or a software package), the resulting state of the world is completely unknown and undefined.

Just so. And it's Microsoft's fault. There are all sorts of files / directories / registry keys that installers have to create, scattered hither & yon across the system. Keeping track of it all is a huge pain; uninstalling it without breaking something is nearly impossible.

Microsoft decided to “fix” things with the Windows Installer Service, which added a few more layers of complexity without making anything easier or more reliable.

Added a Door County page to the Road Trips section.

[It's gone now, moved to the picture gallery.]

Pulled up a pair of carrots this evening, to see how they're doing. They're still quite small, but coming along nicely.

I washed & sliced them, two (tiny) slices each. They were very tasty, but Jake wouldn't eat his.

Driving home from Door County, Wisconsin (with a stop in Arlington Heights to pick up Jacob).

Breakfast was cherry pancakes at the Inn at Cedar Crossing (www.innatcedarcrossing.com), very tasty.

In Door County, Wisconsin: Scandinavian Lodge (www.scandlodge.com), room 112.

Went on a sunset dinner cruise (concertcruises.com), on the good ship Island Clipper. Tasty food, tasty music by the Last Gaspé (my.execpc.com/~lastgasp).

Dropped off Jacob at Grandma & Grandpa's house in Arlington Heights, then headed north to Door County, Wisconsin.

Staying at Scandinavian Lodge (www.scandlodge.com), room 112.

Another day, another line of thunderstorms crawling up I72 from Springfield.

It rained this morning—I saw water on the windows—but sputnik failed to record any. Again, mysterious.

We're all on vacation this week. Ah, leisure.

A line of heavy weather blew in around 1:00pm this afternoon: dark clouds, high winds, an 8° temperature drop in less than an hour.

But only the merest drizzle of rain. Mysterious.

Jake and I went to the Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum (www.aeromuseum.org) this afternoon, to look at the big planes (since the last planespotting trip went so well). Some pictures:

Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum

Training Wheels

Engine

Super Constellation

C133 Cargomaster

We stopped at the gift shop on the way out and picked up a green plastic helicopter for Jake.

The Aerofax books recently unearthed from the closet (June 2) have proven an unexpected hit with Jacob. He really likes the pictues:

Spent the day in Bloomington, and watched fireworks there.

Went for a drive today, and added five more counties to the Illinois Counties page: Christian, Logan, Macon, Moultrie and Sangamon.

Eighteen down, eighty-four to go.

The Sangamon county picture was taken just before a stray cloudburst hit. I got a little soggy walking back to the car.

Also spent a few hours at the Illinois State Archives in Springfield, getting copies of death certificates for various Austins and Kingerys. I meant to stay longer, but trying to read the microfilm while it was moving was giving me a splitting headache.

One of these days I'll go back and finish off the list.

Happy New Year!

Across the nation, accountants stayed up late last night to ring in the new fiscal year. (Difficult though it may be to imagine the pinstripe set indulging in wanton bacchanalia.)

Cloudy this morning. Chance of rain, I think.

Something I've been waiting for: Philip Su, a former member of the Microsoft Money team, has surfaced on blogs.msdn.com. He's even written a longish essay on what went wrong with Money:

It was 1999. Twenty-year-olds were millionaires. Anything was possible. Money was judged as a portal, so a portal it became. Thing is, no one wanted a sticky, ad-serving, time-consuming personal finance application.

Quite true—the first thing I did with Money 2004 was turn off as many of the advertisements as I could. (Some of them can't be turned off, alas.)

Interesting game: Petals Around the Rose (personal.baker.edu/web2/cdavis09/roses.html):

Dr. Richard Duke [University of Michigan]…used to begin each of his gaming/simulation courses with this exercise. While some students would solve the problem right away, others would struggle all semester. It had taken Dr. Duke well over a year himself, and he would always explain that the smarter you were, the longer it took to figure it out.

I didn't have to solve anything—I looked at the first row of dice, said “Oh. Yeah. Of course.” and gave the right answer. Six more tries, six more right answers. I must be really stupid.

I've been reading Dave Librik's LiveJournal (daev.livejournal.com) lately, snooping on Dave (whose office at WRI is just down the hall from mine) and following links to all his LiveJournal friends.

One thing I've noticed is that real names are conspicuously absent from LiveJournal pages. (Dave's is the sole exception I've found so far.) There's nothing in the Terms of Service to require pseudonyms, so why are there so many?

Even within the entries, complete anonymity is preserved. Nobody ever writes, “Went to Bob's house to watch TV.” It's always, “Went to shellfish93835's house to watch TV.” If it weren't for the occasional pronoun slipping through, there'd be no telling the men from the women.

It seems a curious way to run an online community.

Still no activity on Eric S. Raymond's blog, esr.ibiblio.org, except for comment spam. Lots of comment spam.

It's been five months. Where's Eric?