Ups and Downs of the week.

  Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III – One hell of a pilot. Incredible skill and grace under extreme pressure. Amazing.

  Economy - Still tanking and showing signs of worsening. Circuit City going under with more stores to follow for sure. Bad news. 

  Kevin Youkilis – 4 more years with the Red Sox. Very cool indeed.

  Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ10 – Nice little camera. It’s now in my glovebox so I can grab images during my commute. See below.

 

  Winter Sunset – Cold but beautiful.

Ups and Downs of the week.

 TGIF – First week back after a break is always tough.

   Celtics – Serious slump. From a near perfect season to second place in a week. Yikes.

  Trader Joe’s Cranberry Stollen – Man, is this stuff good.

  Winter – Single digits and below coming next week. I am so ready for spring.

  Blago about to be impeached – Six months late, but better than never.

   Amazon.com’s shipping – Used to be the best in the business. now it’s just pathetic. Up to two weeks to get some items. I ordered a very small handheld CB radio on Dec. 31. It may arrive on Monday, nearly two weeks later. It shipped from Hazelwood, MO which is less than a hundred miles from here. I guess the Pony Express still lives, although even a horse could be here quicker. Used to be you’d get the item you bought in a few days, now it’s a few weeks. Amazon made their fortune off instant gratification and now they’re abandoning the very thing that made them famous and successful.

Update: My CB arrived today (Saturday), so 10 days after ordering. Not as bad, especially considering the 1st was a holiday. Still, from an hour-and-a-half away…

…I’ve been in watching the Patriots dismantle the Cards and messing around a bit with the camera. Caught some deer eating the bird food I threw out. Also caught one of my cats in her favorite spot.

Ups and Downs of the week.

  Done with my courses – Thank God. And none in the spring, either.

   Our lying governor – He really is a sociopath. How he can stand there in front of the whole country and deny doing anything wrong is beyond me.

  Weather – It’s already been a crappy winter and it’s not even Christmas yet. We’re heading out to New England on Sunday or Monday *if* the weather permits. At least we’re driving, so no hanging out in airports for hours like last year.

 Boston Celtics – 16 wins in a row. Going for #17 tonight. UPDATE: 17 it is.

 Bruins – Still kicking butt. Serious goal production from the offense.

Ups and Downs of the week.

  Gadgets - I love technology. It lets you spy on kitties in your shed. 

   Icy roads – That time of year again. 

  New router and wireless AP – Suddenly everything is faster. 

   Medical bugaboos - Dad is back in ICU. The poor guy can’t catch a break. 

  Critters - Storing up for winter.

  Christkindlesmarkt – This place is great at Christmas. I used to love to wander around through the stalls while enjoying a bratwurst and some glühwein. In past years you could pan and zoom the camera, but now it’s a fixed webcam. Not as much fun to people-watch now.

Still a beautiful place.

UPDATE: While surfing around with Google Earth, I think I found a shot that shows the webcam housing for the shots above. Seems like the right angle and placement.

Ups and Downs of the week.

  Fireplaces- Nothing like a toasty fire on a cold, rainy night.

   Homework- It’s bad enough when it’s useful. When it’s pointless it really gets annoying.

  Polycom Videoconferencing systems – Very cool to connect in real time to another meeting halfway around the world.

    Patriots – Not a stellar season so far, but much better than predicted. Cassel will never go back to being a number two QB. He was record-setting incredible last night and the rest of the team let him down. He played well against Indy, too, and they let him down there as well. I wonder who he’ll be starting for next season?

  Space shuttle launch – I never tire of watching them. I love the shot where the external tank separates.

I mean a real vacation. Something with a beach and warm breezes and bottomless Margaritas. Some place where my mind can just drift. No phones, no kids, no cold rain, no school work, no server worries, no email, no internet, no driving, no newspapers, no TV. Maybe a good book would be ok.

It seems lately that annoyances are everywhere. Last weekend we went out to eat at our favorite Indian restaurant in Champaign. Just after we sat down, a family came in and I knew right away they’d be obnoxious. The two kids, especially the little boy, were quite loud and the parents’ only reaction to their outbursts were to shhhh them. Over and over and over. Then the kids starting singing “Frère Jacques” and the parents joined in!! So instead of my wife and I having a nice dinner conversation, we were treated to two verses of the world’s most annoying song. We couldn’t get out of there quickly enough. Then this past weekend we went into our favorite Thai place in Urbana and the same family was there!! No singing this time, but the same “this is our living room” attitude. Luckily the place filled up and the generic background noise drowned them out.

Today I received a laptop from our office in Chicago. This laptop is a Dell with the idiotic Media Direct button on it. Apparently the owner pushed the button by mistake and it now will only boot to Media Direct. After searching for answers online, I learned that this is a common problem with such laptops. The Media Direct application overwrites the Master Boot Record (MBR), supposedly temporarily. However, in many cases it’s irreversible. Good thinking Dell. Even Dell support failed to correct the issue, so they suggested reformatting and reloading the OS. All the remedies I found online failed to bring the OS back to working condition, so I decided to stop wasting time and I started over from scratch. Just what I needed to start this week.

To top it all off, this whole week is supposed to be cold, gray, and rainy. Fits my mood perfectly.

 This is where I’d rather be.

Ups and downs of the week. 

  Red Sox – Can’t believe they came back to win Game 5. Awesome.

   The Trop – Back to the major league’s crappiest stadium.

  Modern Medicine – Dad is doing better. He’s breathing on his own now but is still very weak. I’ll be out there later this week.

    Patriots – Well I guess the question of whether they can win without Brady has been answered.

  Cool weather – Almost cool enough for a fire tonight.