The last few nights I've been reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to the kids for a bed-time story. I've read the whole series before; I read the Half-Blood Prince in one long sitting on the night it first came out. But this is the first… more »

Common sense is spreading like an infectious disease .... only, in a good way. Lessee ..... Obama is elected, Gitmo is scheduled to close, Harper's budget is showing signs of sanity, governments are talking about serious investment in public transit &… more »

Peaches have to be the best fruit ever. Maybe the best food ever. They're right up there with a good ripe apricot or fresh raspberries on a bowl of special K. Peach Jam in particular is divine. If God has jam on her toast, I'm betting it's peach ja… more »

--Update April 2009: The first section (front page through pp.27) is more or less complete. The second section, "Part I", is about 60% (pp. 29 through 68). PDFs are here. -- I firmly believe that all the really interesting people in the world are ju… more »

I really love staying up late watching old war movies, Dirty Harry flicks, â??Casablancaâ?, and any movie based on a Tom Clancy novel. Now, Dirty Harry hardly symbolizes the modern sensitive male. He's really clearly not my kind of guy. (Pink is my secon… more »

On St. Valentine's Day, I sat on the train and wrote a lovely long blog as a valentine to my wife. There is no connectivity from the train, and I saved it to post later, knowing that I could back-date it in B2Evo, and knowing that my readership is so rid… more »

It took me a while, but I've finally switched on to CFLs. (Pun intended, in case you missed it ...) To be fair, the cute little curly bulbs took a while to become likable though. The early versions gave off a harsh light that was difficult to like, an… more »

Well, it was time. I like long hair. I like the way it looks on me, and I like some of the laid-back liberal attitudes that it conveys. But after a year or so without a haircut, I start looking like Keith Richards. And that just isn't good. I was goin… more »

Does boom-bust-echo apply to blogs? It's a repeating pattern on so many blogs ... a great flurry of action, followed by a dead silence period; and if the blog survives the down-turn, then a prolonged period of regular posting. Yes, it's been pretty… more »

Our house has a porch. Not a stoop, and not a step, but an honest-to-goodness veranda spanning the whole front of the house, 5 feet wide and about 20 feet long, complete with a white picket railing. This is unusual in newer homes, but our subdivisio… more »

Kurt Vonegurt had an uncle. Kurt wrote that his uncle said, "When times are good, it's important to notice." Sitting on his front porch, in a quiet moment, he'd say out of nowhere "This is good". I think of this often. Times are not always good,… more »

Now, I have a thing for the male voice in singers. I confess this inspite of my self. I cannot quantify or justify this; just observe that with a very few exceptions, the music I've bothered to rip from purchased CDs to my laptop is, by far, dominate… more »

Well, dear diary, er -- make that -- blog, it's been a while. My practice has me on loan to an external account, doing IBM Workplace Forms development for a short stint for a major financial concern. It's on-site work, with a small IBM team, in downt… more »

No, I haven't really written that many posts today. I just happened to notice that my blog was not being updated with the posts I've written lately, and upon further investigation it seems w.bloggar was creating them in draft mode. Doh! more »

I (finally) completed wiring up a few new plugs and lights. The plugs were in the basement stair-well and (facing the other side of the same wall) the dinette area. On the same circuit I put a square box of four plugs over the workbench where I keep m… more »

Now, I knew in an abstract sense that air nail guns were fun. And I've been looking forward to using my new air nailer .... just waiting for an excuse. But I was talking with my brother Dave the other day, and he related the joys of using his new air n… more »

Well, I think I've wrangled b2evolution into shape. Here it is ... my first post. I have a dis-used internal IBM blog, and the first few posts I'll just copy over from the internal blog (because I'm lazy). But I hope to use this space to wax phill… more »