Air Condition

I’ve been working in my office all day, and I’m quite cold. I just got an e-mail from Michelle saying she was going to go swimming because it was 92F, and its expected to reach 100F tomorrow. I was quite startled at this news, because my fingers, hands, and arms were numb from chill. I promptly went outside and sat on the concrete, where I was quickly heated like a rattlesnake.

Now I’m sitting back down to work, and I can feel the cold the cold return as my warm clothes radiate their remaining heat. Everyone in the library had a small heater/fan because it was so cold, but the fire marshall said we had to turn them in. I guess warm hands are the devil’s workshop or whatever.

Forest Blvd

My mom is in Hastings, NE closing on my grandparent’s home. They are moving out to Yakima, WA today, with a brief stop in Estes Park, CO. I’m saddened by the sale of the house, because it is probably one of my favorite buildings ever. Here are pictures of the front and back.

The house is on a large city park with a small lake/resivoir that runs the length. There are plenty of resident animals, including squirells, ducks, rabbits, and lots of other birds. We even refer to these grandparents as “the ducks” because we associated them with the waterfowl as children.

I hope they enjoy the trip out, and hope they like Yakima. I’m going to miss the house, and the park, and such. anyway, best of luck to “the ducks.”

Wilderness area

Today was the Rose Parade. Its the grand floral parade for the Portland Rose Festival, which is one of Portland’s many “things”. Michelle is volunteering with Oregon Natural Resource Concil, and today we walked around before the parade and asked people to fill out postcards that will be sent to Sen. Smith and Sen. Wyden. asking them to re-designate Oregon lands as Wilderness. Since the roadless acts from the last adminnistration have had problems, ONRC and other groups have been trying to accomplish this themselves.

It was really hard for me, because I’m quite personal about my beliefs, and avoid forcing them upon strangers on their day off before a parade. I’m glad I went, because I should be more active as an evironmentalist. I’m also glad I went because Michelle filled out the most postcards, and won a $150 gift certificiate to Breitenbush Hot Springs. We get a free night. Cool.

The parade was pretty typical parade, but I really enjoyed being downtown, seeing the people and the buildings. I enjoyed watching the kids playing out in the streets, the people in their chairs, on fire escapes, and in apartment windows. Portland has a beautiful downtown.

cool dream

Barley woke us up early this morning. He had to go poo. He woke me from a really cool dream about programming and architecture and life. This is all pretty dorky stuff, so I’m going to use the extended option to decrease random viewer boredom.
Continue reading cool dream

bike close call

I started riding my bike to work more, and its a somewhat perilous ride. At least, its become one as of last night. On the way home, a honda tried to turn right at an intersection right while beside me. It was technically the closest I’ve come to hitting a car ( less than 3″ ), but wasn’t too big of a deal. The driver drove off, I rode off, and the lady at the bus stop said “Oh my goodness!” Thank you, Shimano, for V-brakes.

In Bellingham, I was riding home one night after school, downhill, going ~30mph, and a person in a car kicked their door open very suddenly, and I cleared it by over a foot, but it was much scarier than yesterday’s incident. It might have been the speed, it might have been the car behind me, or it might have just been the fear of hitting a car door at 30mph.

Invented the Remix

There’s a great tutorial on making PDFs with PHP on WebMonkey. There’s aslo an annoying doubleclick ad for P Diddy’s new alubm “We Invented the Remix”. It isn’t so much that Puff Daddy annoys me, well, actually it is… but, the idiot rapper is now claiming he invented the remix? The fact that phonies like this idiot can make it prove that there are problems with both capitalism and darwinism. I just hope he fades out quickly.

Also on a musical note, the PDF article had a link to Disc-Cover, which will look up an album on the freedb and create an album cover for you in PDF, or whatever. Pretty cool programming. I can’t wait to try and print covers for all those “cover’s I lost”, as the programmer says.

cars make the world go round

Michelle and I went to look at station wagons this weekend. We were feeling the cabin fever after Barley’s surgery, so looked for any excuse to get out of the house. I was quite surprised when I was driving a Subaru Outback a few hours later. After looking for a while, one dealer mentioned that Subaru was going to release a “pickup” called the baja. Take a look, and you’ll see why I put pickup in quotes.

One the drive back, I wondered what cars would look like if everyone’s cars changed from what they are now to what kind of car those people should drive purely by their driving habits. Imagine how many Expeditions would turn into Geo Metros and such. My van would probably turn into a bike because I live only 3 miles from work. Its interesting to see what cars people pick for themselves. I guy I knew back in high school wanted a big dual-axel chevrolet. It was absurd, but if you picked cars by body type, he probably would have been a dually.

I like cars, but I shouldn’t.

irock

I was flipping through Macworld and found a blurb for the irock300W, a miniture radio transmitter that plugs into anything with a 1/8″ jack, and broadcasts the signal in FM. I have to get one of these. I think my dad already ordered one. Imagine how nice it will be to hook up the iBook in the car, or the desktop to my stereo. The digital life rules.

Apple auctioned off a bunch of warehouse stock, and I was going to bid on an iPod, but I didn’t want to spend over $50. (dog just had surgery) Sadly, the starting bid was $75, and closed somewhere near $300. Someone had bid on all 39 of them.

Pileated Woodpecker

This morning outside the library I ran across two pileated woodpeckers. They were chasing each other around the trunk of a tree, and didn’t seem to care that I was staring at them. People walking by didn’t seem to care that I was staring at anything either. However, when I ran down and grabbed a digital camera and started taking pictures, people noticed. I guess when you have a camera, you aren’t just a crazy person.

I shared the pictures with the library staff, and was surpised at how delighted people were. I guess everyone likes birds.

My boss recently hired another mac user. It’ll be nice to have someone who agrees with me about how good macs are rather than just how bad microsoft is.