Owen turns one (bet you can’t say that 3 times)

Posted on March 14, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

Recent pictures of Owen–what a cutie.

The Candle Project

Posted on March 14, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

Jordan and I experimented with making custom candles–it’s so easy, even a PaPa can do it. I found the plan on the internet–buy a large candle, wrap it with decorative ribbons (or write your own message on one), and dip it into melted paraffin. Joila–a custom candle. It worked great, and now we each have a one of a kind candle.

Triplet’s 2nd birthday

Posted on March 14, 2010 - Filed Under Family | 1 Comment

We helped Tristan, Zayne, and Ethan celebrate their 2nd birthday a couple of weeks ago. Since they can now walk , they are a handful to keep up with. And my, they seem to like my PC way too much.



Wicked–the play

Posted on March 11, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

I normally don’t care for musicals, but we took a chance on this one, because it’s so well known. And what a surprise and treat it was. The actors were superb, and Glinda was hysterical. What wonderful singing–and the comedy lines had us in stitches. Some of the great scenes were:

  • The wizard (as a robot head)
  • The Wicked Witch towering over the crowd at the end of the first half
  • The slap–followed by a scream that turned into a horrendous cackle (brought the house down)
  • The duet by the Wicked Witch and the hero.
  • The line “step away from the green girl”

We had pretty good seats, about halfway up in the orchestra area, far left. E505-507. Next time I’ll shoot for E501, as that’s the seat next to the aisle. These seats had an aisle in front of us, so we had good leg room.

We took our oldest granddaughter, Megan (16). She loved it.

Orestes, A Tragic Romp

Posted on March 4, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

This was a play at the Folger Theater, in Washington, DC, and one of the best I’ve ever seen.  it’s a Shakespearean type play (actually written by Euripides over 2,000 years ago). When the actors use the typical language of the era, it’s just too hard to understand.

But this play had been updated, so the actors used “normal” language, and even wore conventional clothes. It was kind of shocking to see Mentes, a sea captain, come onto the stage directly off his ship and appear in a suit and tie. But then again, the play was full of surprises.

(more…)

Jordan could replace Leno

Posted on February 6, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

Here are a couple of recent examples:

We’re riding down the road and Jordan asks me if I get the Disney Station on my radio.

Me: No.

Jordan: What? This car sucks.

We’re walking the dog around the high school. I stop for the dog to “go.”

Jordan: Come on, old man.

Reading by cheating–Book TV

Posted on October 20, 2009 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

Every weekend, CSPAN2 turns into Book TV–a channel dedicated to books. Most of the programs are presentations by the author of a book they’ve recently written. It’s a wonderful way to get a quick synopsis of a book without having to read the whole thing. That talks are usually recorded from a book signing event, a university speech, etc.

Here’s an example, from Oct. 11, 2009. It was “Financial Fiasco: How America’s Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis,” by Johan Norberg, of the Cato Institute.

The author basically showed how the monetary meltdown of 2008-2009 occurred. There were many contributors–the government, home owners, banks, and regulators. And, much as I hate to admit it, the Bush administration was just as guilty as Barney Frank. And the thing that stuck in my mind the most was this–added regulations are not going to help, because there were many watchdogs on guard that completely missed the event while it was happening. How can we trust the same regulators who screwed up the first time to do it right this time?

Anyway, you can see the upcoming schedule at booktv.org. Set an Outlook reminder to check it out on Friday evening or Saturday morning, so you can set your DVR to record an interesting title.

Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

Posted on September 29, 2009 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

This is a delicious book–it has it all: intrigue, deception, treachery, violence, wars, and oh yes, a little sex. It takes place in England in the 1600′s, but covers several generations of characters. It’s totally unlike Ken’s usual spy novels, but don’t worry, this is not a failed experiment that he took in trying to cover a different genre. He excels at it, and I got my wish after I finished it–he wrote a sequel. Worlds Without End is just as good, so I recommend both of them.

NASA Tweetup

Posted on September 26, 2009 - Filed Under Family | 4 Comments

I found out about this event through Twitter–I saw a tweet that announced the STS-127 crew was going to meet with the first 190 people that registered at a link they showed. I did, and I was accepted.

So, Cindy Bowers and I headed to downtown DC this last Thursday to NASA headquarters for the tweetup. It turns out that the previous mission had been the debut of an astronaut tweeting from space. Astro-Mike is actually Mike Massimino, and has helped pioneer NASA’s efforts to connect with more of the public through social media like Twitter.

pulansky_20090924This particular mission was also interesting to me, because we saw the ISS go over in July at the Woodlake Skywatch, when this shuttle crew was aboard. We had about 150 people that night, and the pass put on a really good show. It was also the largest crew that had ever been aboard the ISS–13 people.

The crew described their mission, with accompanying video, while live on the NASA TV channel, and then had a Q/A session. I was also able to get a picture with the MD on the crew, Tom Marshburn.

tom_marshburn_20090924

The audience was definitely full of geeks–most of them were texting and some had PC’s going while the show took place. But then again, I was only there because I’m quite a geek myself.

But, several people asked good questions, like the future of the space program, and the apathy of the public towards space exploration. I also made sure I told the crew I had seen them fly over at a star party.

We got a pretty nice goody bag–a stereoscopic viewer, moon puzzle, X-15 poster, picture of the crew, etc. We got to go up and talk with the crew afterward. And I got a couple of autographs.

This was a very nice program, and I was fascinated, as usual, by being in the presence of real astronauts. One of them, David Wolf, has been up 4 times.

Great hotkey program–Autohotkey

Posted on August 3, 2009 - Filed Under Business, Family, Mainframe | Leave a Comment

I found this through PC Mag about a year ago, and have been using it ever since. Autohotkey is free, and does several great things, which I illustrate here:

(more…)

« go back — keep looking »