November 2008 Archives

...a lot like Christmas: this morning, we put up the tree; this evening, we decorated it. Jake & Sam were enthusiastic helpers (though Sam is still working on the notion that some ornaments are very old, very fragile and best left to Mama and Papa).

In other news, Amazon reports that our first shipment of presents is on its way. This morning, Amazon's order tracker estimated that our order would ship sometime in January: a bit late for Christmas.

It wouldn't be the first time. I distinctly recall procrastinating quite severely over Grandpa Bob's present, sometime around 1986, and not actually handing one over until mid-January.

But in this case, the delay was because I'd chosen the ship everything in one box option during checkout, failing to notice that one of the items was marked ships in one to two months. I cancelled that one this afternoon, and the remainder of the order shipped later in the day.

It's good to get the shopping out of the way early, so there's time to actually enjoy Christmas.

Woke up this morning - ninety minutes later than everyone else; I'm so lazy - to an inch of white, fluffy snow.

We're putting up the Christmas tree today, so a bit of snow seems appropriate.

The NOAA can't seem to decide whether we're going to get more snow today, or melt off the snow we've already got. Apparently the storm isn't over yet, which means more snow; but it's also tracking west of Champaign, which means less snow, more melting.

Might as well fall back on the Old Farmer's Forecasting Method: look out the window.

I've listened to all the podcasts on the iPod. I have two dozen new ones on the iMac, but there's a problem: ever since I upgraded the iMac to iTunes 8, docking the iPod has been a crap shoot. Maybe it'll synchronize, maybe it'll just hang.

Maybe this is Steve Jobs' way of telling me to buy a new iPod. Sure thing, Steve - show me one that costs $10, and I'll buy it.

Earlier this evening, there was an iTunes update: 8.0.2, I think. Perhaps that means my docking woes are over. (No, I don't believe it, either.)

This evening, I uninstalled Spanning Sync from the iMac. It was whatever 1.x version I installed last summer (or was it last spring?); I never did bother with installing version 2, which was released a few weeks ago.

The original idea was to use Spanning Sync to keep iCal on the iMac synchronized with Google Calendar, so that I could make changes on either and have them automatically propagate to the other. But as it turns out, I don't make calendar changes on the iMac, and iCal's subscription mechanism is quite sufficient to keep iCal up-to-date with changes from Google Calendar.

So I don't need synchronization software - which, despite years of claims to the contrary from vendor after vendor, has never worked very well. Having persuaded Jennifer to use Google Calendar (instead of a paper calendar, hanging on the kitchen wall), the last thing I want is for the iMac to take a giant [censored] all over it.

(It's amazing how much stuff is on the family calendar. We're a busy bunch, it seems.)

It's been thirty years, more or less, since I lived under the same roof as Al Rice - the fella from whom I obtained my current surname - and yet I still remember quite clearly his favorites in a variety of categories:

• Beer: Pabst Blue Ribbon
• Cigarettes: Newport
• Deodorant: Old Spice
• Soft drink: RC Cola

I don't know why I'm wasting neurons on stuff like this.

It's been an unusual Thanksgiving: we didn't go anywhere, and didn't eat turkey.

The original plan had been to visit the relatives over in Normal; but - alas - there are germs over there: Cousin Ryan and Grandma Barb are both feeling a bit under the weather. (Last I heard, poor Ryan was running a fever that would leave him medium-rare, if he were a roast instead of a little boy.) So that's been cancelled, with no firm date yet for a second try.

I can't remember the last time we spend the whole of Thanksgiving day here in Champaign. It's entirely possible that this is the first time.

We went out for lunch: a rare indulgence, these days. It took a bit of searching, but we finally found an open restaurant. Two of them, actually: Ruby Tuesday, and Hometown Buffet. As the latter had a huge like, out the door and snaking across the parking lot, we elected to dine at the former.

The Ruby Tuesday salad bar is pretty good. (So is their chocolate cake, which pretty much wiped out whatever healthy-eating points I got for having salad.)

And now Thanksgiving is nearly over. All that remains is to get the kids in bed. (Sam is just now complaining to Jake: "Get away from me! Get away from me!")

From the always-interesting Jeff Duntemann (who says he got it from Terry Dullmaier), a link to a 33-question quiz on American history and civics.

Mr. Duntemann scored 100%; I missed question #14 (the one about the Puritans). I feel dumb.

Dear Merchants:

If your only hope of achieving profitability for the year depends on my getting up at 3:00am on the day after Thanksgiving to spend money that I don't have on consumer electronics devices that I don't want just because you drop the price a little, then you are well and truly [censored].

Perhaps you should try harder to turn a profit every month of the year, not just in December.

Thank you.

Noticed some spuds setting up Christmas trees this afternoon, in the Custard Cup parking lot.

I guess I missed my chance to get some ice cream this year.

You might think that, since I work just a few hundred yards away, I'd be a regular customer at Custard Cup. Alas, no. I can recall only one mid-day visit since I moved back to town in 1991.

In other news, there's been a Hooters restaurant just down State Street from Wolfram Research World HQ since the summer of 1999, but I still haven't eaten there. (Probably never will, either.)

One of the more annoying 'features' of Windows Vista is the cheesy semi-transparent window borders - apparently implemented on the theory that the topmost window isn't really the one you want to see.

Windows Vista: Microsoft's failure to distinguish 'possible' from 'advisable'.

The other day, I had a Notepad2 window maximized, and some other window - I forget what it was - sitting on top of it, when I noticed some stripes in the topmost window border. This was a little odd, because Notepad2 windows have plain white backgrounds. A bit of experimentation revealed that the window border was showing me the desktop underneath the Notepad2 window.

Way to go, 'softies. Not only did you waste a few developer-years on a feature that's cheesy, annoying & completely useless, you didn't even implement it correctly.

LinkedIn tells me that no fewer than thirty-three former inmates...er, employees of Washington National Insurance Corp. are also on LinkedIn. A few of the names are vaguely familiar; but after so long (almost eighteen years) only one of them - let's call him K____ B_____ - stirs up any kind of direct memory.

LinkedIn also reports seven former employees of Computer Teaching Corp, of which I recognize five. (Perhaps the other two were after - or before - my time.) Most are still in Champaign, too.

And - of course - there are scores of WRIfolk, present & former, on LinkedIn.

I'd ping a few of these new-found names from my past, if I could persuade myself that they'd welcome the contact. But I imagine them thinking, Oh, [censored]. Him again.

Yesterday, Sam wouldn't take a nap. He does that, sometimes. He's generally grumpy all evening, then falls asleep as soon as we put him to bed.

And that's what happened. Alas, around 10:00pm he woke up with a bad case of the screaming crazies, and nothing could calm him for very long. We ran through the entire checklist: water, movies (the Pixar short films on the iMac; various cat videos on YouTube; and even Dumbo on the television), snacks, snuggles with Mama and Papa (though not at the same time).

Finally, we dosed him with some tylenol, and he sort of fell asleep around midnight. But he didn't stay asleep, and poor Jennifer was up with him until 4:00am. (Jake slept through it all. He's an amazingly sound sleeper. We don't sedate him, honest!)

At 4:00am, it was my turn to wrangle the beast. We snuggled a bit, out in the living room; Sam was still miserable, but too tired to stay awake & yell any more. "I want to get back in bed," he said, so I tucked him in.

That was around 5:00am. I thought about going back to bed myself, but decided that getting one more hour of sleep before the alarm went off wouldn't be worth the trouble. (As I recall, my exact thought was, [censored] it, I'm awake.) So I messed around on the computer for a while, until Sam woke up, miserable again.

We didn't need any alarm clocks this morning: Sam woke up everybody quite effectively. (I imagine he disturbed the neighbors' sleep, too.)

It occurred to us that Sam's nose was all stuffed up, so we dosed him with some decongestant; and - mirabile dictu! - Happy Sam returned almost immediately.

He had a good day today, took a good nap, and - fortified with a bit more medication - has been sleeping soundly for a few hours now. Poor little guy. I feel quite the chump for not thinking of the decongestant last night.

We're hoping the rest of tonight isn't like last night....

One of the WRIfolk - no, not me; I don't know who - was heard to grumble, "That better not be this year's bonus."

I had a goal for this week: to put 10,000 steps (or more) on the pedometer - not just once, but all five working days. And I did:

Monday - 11,971 steps; 5.66 miles
Tuesday - 11,360 steps; 5.37 miles
Wednesday - 13,902 steps; 6.58 miles
Thursday - 10,354 steps; 4.90 miles
Friday - 10,355 steps; 4.90 miles

...for a week's total of 57,942 steps, 27.41 miles.

It's curious that yesterday's and today's numbers are almost identical. I followed pretty much the same route both days, but even so the miscellaneous walking around at work should've produced some variation.

I don't suppose I'll manage this again any time soon. Certainly not next week, with Thanksgiving and all.

This morning, I walked to McKinley & John - a little over three miles - before catching the 4E bus to work. This afternoon, I had the whimsical notion to walk back to McKinley & John, and catch the 4W bus home (with a transfer at Country Fair to the 9A, my usual bus home). Alas, there were problems.

For one, I seriously underestimated how long it would take to walk from Wolfram Research to McKinley & John, and missed the 4:36pm bus. (I'm not even sure there is a 4:36pm bus. I neglected to check the schedule before embarking on this adventure.)

The bus schedule said there'd be another bus at 5:15pm, so I elected to walk down John Street a bit, and catch the bus at whatever corner I happened to be at when 5:15pm rolled around.

Crossing Prospect Avenue at John Street is always tricky: there's no signal, and Prospect is a pretty busy street. Crossing it at 5:00pm - in deep twilight and rush-hour traffic - was even worse. As I waited to cross, there were three different vehicles packed into the intersection, all trying to make a left turn somewhere, with traffic zooming around them.

And I thought: This is the intersection where Jerry Keiper died. So I waited.

Eventually the lunatics cleared out, and I crossed Prospect without incident. I ended up catching the 4W at Russel & John, transferring to the 9A at Crescent & John, and getting home just before 6:00pm.

Perhaps I should aim for less adventurous commutes from now on....

From the City of Champaign News:

Frauenhoffer and Associates, P.C. provided the report on the integrity of the building at 215 North Neil St. at the request of fire officials concerned with the safety of personnel conducting fire investigation of the Metropolitan Building fire on November 7.

The Frauenhoffer report states, "In my professional opinion, the north and east third-floor walls of the Law Office are susceptible to collapse at any time. Collapse is most likely during high winds, heavy snows, or snow accumulation followed by drizzle soaking the snow."

I imagine the lawyers are a bit upset at this news....

I looked out the office window just now, and saw...snow, the first of the season.

It's coming down pretty hard, but the ground is warm enough yet that it's not sticking.

I think Jennifer is out driving in it, too. Poor Jennifer.

I have a new skin-care regimen, that's proving quite effective at preventing cracked & bleeding hands.

Every night at bedtime, I slather on about a half-cup of hand lotion (on each hand!), then put on a pair of white cloth gloves (that Jennifer picked up for me at Walgreens the other day).

Sleeping with gloves on is a little weird, and I certainly look ridiculous wearing them: I'm just a tin of shoe polish away from an Al Jolson impersonation. But it gets me through the day with unshredded hands, so it's a fair trade.

We're having a quiet afternoon here at Stately Rice Manor.

(For certain definitions of "quiet", that is: Jake's computer game and Sam's Teletubbies video are making some noise. But one of the many unexpected consequences of parenthood is a new-found ability to tune out offspring-induced racket & mayhem. So in my own mind, at least, it's quiet.)

Jake, Sam & I drove to Le Roy this morning, to meet the grandparents for lunch. We also unloaded some no-longer-needed baby gear, for delivery to Matt & Trina.

Sam didn't eat very much of his lunch. He drank some of the juice, ate most of the caramel sauce (but none of the apple slices that came with it), and none of the chicken nuggets. Silly boy.

Jake ate all his lunch, and would have eaten Sam's, too, if I hadn't stopped him.

(Me? I had a salad that probably wasn't nearly as healthy as it could have been. I'm sure to regret it when I get on the scale tomorrow morning.)

Jennifer's off on a well-deserved sewing day with her friends.

Dinner is cooking: some kind of turkey recipe in the crock pot, and a loaf of oatmeal bread in the bread machine. It won't be finished until 5:30pm, but it smells pretty good already.

(We've been having uneven results with the bread machine lately. About one-third of our efforts end badly: small, dense, raw-centered disaster loaf. Another third is frothy, over-risen yeast-gone-wild bread. Only one in three loaves comes out normal.)

I probably should have tried to get Sam down for a nap. But he slept late this morning, and he doesn't seem all that tired this afternoon. The no-nap Sam can be a fearsome beast, but it makes bedtime go much more smoothly.

Choose your battles, as the saying goes.

Noticed the Parkland College course catalog this morning, lying more or less where I'd left it the night before, and had a look at the rest of their offerings for Spring 2009.

It's always a bit awkward - if not annoying - to read course catalogs. I'm not a teenager, fresh out of high school, trying to accumulate a few semesters' worth of credits on the cheap before transferring to the University in pursuit of a degree that future employers will take seriously. I just want to take a few courses, learn a few new things, stretch my aging brain a little.

I briefly entertained the notion of taking a composition class, or a digital-photography class, or - veering way out of character, here - studying classical guitar and/or music composition.

Alas, the scheduling conflicts (not to mention the tuition, course fees, etc., etc.) proved insurmountable.

Every semester, Parkland College sends us a course catalog, even though it's been ten years since I took the Ken Urban's C++ class. Maybe they just send them to everyone in the county?

Unlike most of them, this one didn't go straight into the recycling. Instead, I leafed through it a bit - with frequent interruptions from Sam, who had his own book he wanted Papa to read instead - looking for a course that met the rather stringent criteria of being interesting, being affordable, and not taking too much time away from work and/or family.

Alas, I didn't find anything - but then, I had only reached the Art section when it was time to put the kids to bed, and I had to suspend my search. Perhaps somewhere in the remaining 96% of the alphabet there lurks the perfect course for me.

Must remember to take another look, sometime tomorrow.

iTunes is running some kind of movie-of-the-week promotion: a different set every week, only $4.99 each. This week: Terminator 2.

I resisted for a day or two, then caved & clicked Buy.

In the in-box this evening: a letter from Green Sherpa:

We are closely approaching the release of our beta software! We have been working diligently on our software and are thrilled to get it into the hands of the many people like you who have signed up, requested and often lightly stalked us for the product.

In order to serve you in the best way we can we would like to get to know you a little bit better. Please take two minutes to complete the following short survey.

So I filled out their survey, ending with the comment:

Microsoft Money is unusable. Quicken for the Mac has been abandoned by Intuit. Mint lacks forecasting, and is generally unsatisfying. Help me, Obi-wan Sherpa, you're my only hope.

Perhaps my shameless keister-smooching will get me a beta invite....

Today I signed up for an account on http://www.soocial.com/, because they said:

Soocial provides a one address book solution to contact management. No matter where you add or change a contact, it will be changed in your other connected devices or web applications.

I like my new phone (the Sidekick 2008 I bought last August), with one glaring exception: there's no way to synchronize the phone's address book and to-do list with any other machine or service.

So I hoped that Soocial had found a way around this. Alas, no: the Sidekick is not on their list of supported phones. So that's a big Never mind on Soocial.

(And their name is silly, too.)

...this morning I received a ping from Lisa Beinhoff.

Twenty years ago, Lisa lived in Champaign, in the same house on Nevada Street as Leland (and just down the block from David Gehrig).

It was a curious time - I was years out of college, but not quite ready to let go of the college-student lifestyle. I spent most of my time on campus, most of my friends were still students (or were, like me, reluctant ex-students).

But gradually, the group dispersed. (It's a college town. Nobody stays here long.) Now & then, over the years, I got the occasional phone call or email from Lisa (not to mention gossip from Leland), hence always had at least a vague notion of where she was, what she was doing.

A few years ago, she came to Champaign for one or another professional conference, and wanted to come to the house for a visit; but (for a number of reasons) that didn't happen. I didn't hear from Lisa after that, and figured she was annoyed with me. (I can be pretty annoying sometimes.)

But now she's on LinkedIn, looking up old acquaintances. Hi, Lisa, nice to hear from you.

Stuck at home today, for a curious reason. It's all boring work stuff, so the loyal readership (both of you!) is hereby granted a dispensation to ignore the remainder of this post.

Recent build-system changes uncovered some ancient and previously-unsuspected scrozzlement in the WRI source-control repository: files that were supposed to be dead & gone were suddenly back from the grave, sneaking into include search paths, pre-empting the correct files and causing no end of difficulty.

The solution: un-tag and re-remove the zombie files. Then re-bury them, preferably at a crossroads, under a full moon - conveniently, there's a full moon tonight - and they'll trouble the build no more.

So that's what I'm doing. Unfortunately, there are 800 files to be staked through the heart, and that sort of thing takes time - especially when done from home, over a DSL/VPN connection. I can't really stop the process, then restart it at work; so I'm stuck here until it finishes (at which point it will probably be too late to bother going to work; I imagine I'll finish up the day here).

It might have been wiser to open an RDP connection to the Vista machine at work, and start the process there. But I didn't think of that in time. Oops.

This afternoon, I elected to walk from work to Norris Tire & Auto, to pick up the newly-repaired Mr. Explorer. It's only 3½ miles: a pleasant stroll for an autumn day.

I passed at least a half-dozen people doing yard work. Some people had leaf blowers; some wretched few were attempting to rake leaves: quite a job, in the older (hence thickly-forested) parts of town. Two were mowing their lawns, even though in both cases the grass was completely buried under a thick layer of leaves.

They weren't using bagging mowers, either. Surely it would have been easier to rake first, then mow.

Cold this morning: a frosty 19° when Jake & I were out waiting for the school bus. It's warmed up a bit since then (to 35° as of noon), but still rather wintry.

The nice people at Norris Tire & Auto - who are more trustworthy than the First-Class Experience folks who took over the local Ford dealership a few years back - hooked Mr. Explorer up to the diagnostic machine, and discovered the cause of this weekend's CHECK ENGINE light.

Color me surprised: it wasn't O₂ sensor #3, it was a low engine temperature reading. All that's needed is a new thermostat.

Alas, those cost $150, so whatever relief I might have felt at avoiding a $250 O₂ sensor is somewhat muted.

Wandered clicky-clicky across the internet this evening, and ended up at http://www.27bslash6.com/.

I'd summarize it as: 90% bad attitude, 10% amusing.

And would it be wrong of me to point out that in the movie Brazil, the form in question was referred to as the "twenty-seven b stroke six"?

(I see from whois.pairnic.com that 27bstroke6.com was registered two years prior to 27bslash6.com.)

Long ago, I used CityDesk. In March of 2005, I switched to Movable Type. In November of 2006, I switched to TypePad. And, finally, in May of this year I switched from TypePad back to Movable Type (only this time it was to Movable Type as installed & maintained by Pair, not by me - a big win).

When I switched from CityDesk to Movable Type, I had to come up with titles for all the old posts: CityDesk didn't have titles, but Movable Type requires them. I decided to use the two-digit day of the month, mainly so the urls wouldn't change and all my cross-references wouldn't break.

When I switched to TypePad, there were no problems. I exported from Movable Type, imported to TypePad, and it just worked.

Alas, the second Movable Type migration ran into a snag: the Movable Type importer decided that basenames (which are generated from the post title) must be unique, and appended a sequence number to all my two-digit basenames. Doing a search (regular expression: [0-3]\d_\d+) turns up 1,600 mangled basenames.

Fixing all those by hand would take months.

Movable Type has a search and replace function, but - alas! - it seems incapable of operating on basenames. "No matches," it says, even though a moment before it had a list of several dozen matches on the screen.

Perhaps a query in to Movable Type tech support is in order....

On June 28, 2004, the Explorer's check engine light came on. The diagnosis: failed O₂ sensor. On September 27, 2004, the Explorer's check engine light came on again. The diagnosis: failed O₂ sensor. This was when I learned that Explorers have three O₂ sensors; ever since, I've been waiting for sensor #3 to fail.

Last night, the check engine light came on again.

Tomorrow, Mr. Explorer will visit his friends at Norris Tire; I suspect we'll be replacing yet another O₂ sensor. These things cost $250, too. Ouch.

Jake had his first flu shot this afternoon.

We got there just before closing time (2:00pm), and - unlike yesterday, when I was there for my own flu shot - there was no line. They're amazingly efficient at these things - we were in & out in less than five minutes.

(If only they showed the same level of speed & efficiency during normal visits....)

We decided not to tell Jake what was coming - we just said, "Time for shoes and coat, we have errands to run." Only as Jake and I were walking in the clinic door did I tell him why we were there. He wasn't nearly as upset as I expected him to be.

All the way home, Jake made a big show of how much it hurt, but I think he was just hamming it up for my benefit.

That's three down, one to go: Mr. Sam will get his first flu shot as soon as we can arrange it with the doctor.

(It used to be that I caught one cold per year, and was fine the rest of the time. Then, sometime in the 1990s, I went through a brief but happy period of no colds at all. Then Jake was born, and my immune system was unprepared for all the germs he brought home from daycare. I haven't had an entirely healthy year since. Pity me, pity me.)

A bit of excitement this morning: the News-Gazette says:

The 1870s-era Metropolitan Building caught on fire early Friday morning, collapsing under the flames.

No injuries have been reported.

The intersection of Neil and Church streets will be closed all day, officials said.

Flames were shooting 100 feet in the air when firefighters arrived at about 5:20, said Deputy Fire Chief Tim Wild. About 10 minutes after they arrived, the building collapsed.

Traffic through downtown is going to be...interesting until the streets are reopened.

Still warm today, but windy & drizzly. (Not enough yet of the latter to qualify as actual rain.) Cooler weather is coming.

Had an appointment with the dentist this morning, for some x-rays and a cleaning; it went well. No cavities, no fillings in need of replacement, no crowns. There was much praise for my dental hygiene.

Watching - with Jennifer, in the quiet hour between the kids' bedtime and our own - the first episode of Legend of the Seeker. Somehow I don't think we'll be watching the second episode.

It's very pretty, I suppose - filmed in New Zealand, just like The Lord of the Rings - but there isn't much of a story. It's just a bunch of stock fantasy-novel scenes & characters, slapped together without much regard for whether the result makes any sense.

And the extravagantly capitalized dialog - "I am the Confessor, I must give the Book to the Seeker." - is way over the top & really annoying.

Supposedly, Legend of the Seeker is based on a series of novels by Terry Goodkind. I've never read any of them, and am not motivated to start now.

Finished - last night, just before bedtime - reading The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois.

It took me two months to slog through all 641 pages. This year's collection was a bit uneven, compared to previous years; some of the longer stories were the least interesting (which might be why it took so long to finish).

Destruction of the Earth - in some cases, of the entire universe - was a recurring theme. Here's hoping the twenty-sixth annual collection is less apocalyptic.

We've had pretty good weather, this last week: sunny, highs in the mid-70s, that sort of thing.

Halloween evening was perfect for trick-or-treating, but we didn't get very many children (and no sullen teenagers).

On Monday I walked all the way to work, and then all the way home: just over 20,000 steps, and just short of ten miles. (On Tuesday, my back was killing me. I walked like Fred Sanford, or Ozzy Osbourne. I'm back on the pills, and feeling much better today.)

Alas, the Indian summer is nearly over: tomorrow's forecast calls for showers & thunderstorms, with decidedly cooler days on the other side. (Incidentally, the phrase Indian summer has exactly the same origin as the phrase Indian giver - the rather unpleasant nineteenth-century use of Indian to mean false. But only the latter is considered offensive.)

Early returns suggest that voters across the nation are administering a richly-deserved spanking to the Republican Party & its candidates.

Various of the bloviating classes are already calling the election for Obama. If he does win, he'll be the first President I actually wanted to get the job. (As opposed to the yutzes I voted for over the years only because the other candidate was even worse.)

This morning, I walked over to Parkland to vote. This was probably a mistake.

Not the voting, the walking. Strange that I could walk almost ten miles yesterday, with no ill effects, but the short stroll to the Parkland theater was enough to reinjure my back.

So I'm back on the pills, and being very careful about moving, walking, lifting, etc. I imagine I'll be fine (again) in a few days.

...your Amazon wishlist includes a home blood-pressure monitor.

Some weeks ago, the television remote control - as opposed to the TiVo remote, the DVD player remote, or the Apple TV remote - went missing.

This was only a mild inconvenience, since most of the important functions are accessible from the TiVo remote; the one exception: the TiVo remote can't turn on closed captioning.

Closed captioning is very handy when dealing with actors who mumble. (For a while, it was also useful for watching shows with naughty language; alas, Jake's a pretty good reader now, so shows with cussing have to wait until after bedtime.) It's hard to follow a story when you can't hear half the dialog.

We - that is, Jennifer - conducted extensive searches for the missing remote. All efforts failed, until last night when the long-lost remote was finally discovered wedged into the couch frame. It wasn't just under the cushions. (That was the first place we looked.) No, it was jammed into a small gap between the armrest and the flat part where the cushions go.

So, after a gap of several weeks (months?), closed captioning is back.

Also back: Standard Time. (Coincidence? I think not!) Some of our clocks change themselves, and we are slowly getting around to changng the rest of them.

Today I bought myself a backpack.

Why? Two reasons:

1. I have too much gear that needs to be carried back & forth to work every day;
2. and my over-the-shoulder messenger bag (from Land's End, long ago) throws my balance off and is probably aggravating my neck and/or back problems.

So Jake & I went to Target this afternoon, and picked up a spiffy green backpack. It has about nine thousand pockets, zippers, velcro'd enclosures, etc., etc., etc. I'm sure I can pack into it just about everything I own - but then I'd never find any of it again.

Figuring out where everything belongs - and then remembering where I put it - will take some time. But so long as my spine is happy, I'll be happy.