The Weir–an excellent play. And spooky, too.

Posted on February 26, 2011 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

A small theater, but phenomenal actors. At least, for this production. It takes place in an Irish pub, which you can tell without looking, because the actors all do a good job of imitating the accent. The small party each repeats a spooky tale about fairies, ghosts, graveyards, and death. But they are done with such realism, the audience is completely enthralled. And the last story, told by the only woman in the group is completely spellbinding. Yes, it starts out a little slow, but the second half is worth the wait. It is one of the best plays I’ve seen. And coming after seeing Wicked, that’s no small feat.

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Great place for Prime Rib (DC area)

Posted on February 26, 2011 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

The Golden Bull has a great deal on weekends, if you’re okay with eating early. As in Eary Bird Special. For $14.95, you get a great salad bar, and your choice of prime rib, Chicken Marsala, or salmon. But wait, there’s still more. Dessert and iced tea or coffee is also included. My wife and I ate there tonight, both had the prime rib, and I had two draft beers. Total was $36.95.

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News feed in FaceBook

Posted on January 14, 2011 - Filed Under Business, Family | Leave a Comment

I thought I was losing my mind because I couldn’t find my friend lists in Facebook any more. They used to be over in the left column, but they disappeared. I finally figured out where they are after reading a couple of articles on using FB for a news feed, similar to Google Reader.

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Linux update

Posted on January 5, 2011 - Filed Under Business, Family | Leave a Comment

A while back, I posted a story about my adventures with Linux on an older PC. I was stymied at the time, but I have made significant progress since then. The memory boards I had ordered (and didn’t work), were replaced–good job, memorystock.com, and they fit just fine this time.

It actually turns out that I probably didn’t need the extra memory–once I installed Xubuntu to the hard drive, it got significantly faster. But, extra memory never hurts. The version of FoxPro that comes with Xubuntu is fully functional with Hootsuite, FaceBook, etc., so I consider that installation a success.

The score is 2-0

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Bit the Bullet (Android, that is)

Posted on January 4, 2011 - Filed Under Business, Contracting, Family | Leave a Comment

My PDA (aka Palm, Tungsten E) has been my constant companion for about 5 years now. I even soldered a new battery in about a year ago. It was the perfect instrument. It could sync with Outlook, I could read books, and even download web pages (offline, of course). Then, the paint began to flake. I couldn’t sync with my new PC (curses, Vista), then I started having problem syncing with my XP machine. Still, I resisted the urge to buy a smart phone–I did not want to get locked into a contract, and that monthly data package was just too big of a pill to swallow. I used a prepaid phone (Tracfone), it was cheap and worked just fine.

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Law Abiding Citizen (movie)

Posted on December 26, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

I’ve watched this twice now–excellent story of how a man that has been wronged by the law gets revenge. Or does he?

Equilibrium (the movie)–a new twist on Fahrenheit 451

Posted on December 26, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

This one is fairly old (2002), but I really enjoyed it. It seems early on that it’s going to be Fahrenheit 451 all over again, as, it takes place in a future society where emotions are regulated and outlawed. But they throw in a bit of Matrix-like action sequences, and some additional chraracter complexities. And the acting is much better.

Cleopatra author talk

Posted on November 13, 2010 - Filed Under Family | 1 Comment

I caught my first author lecture last week. Stacy Schiff, the author of Cleopatra: A Life, was speaking at Sixth and I, a nondenominational synagogue in downtown DC. It’s only about two blocks from the Gallery Place Metro (and Chinatown), so it was easy to get to without having to drive.

I was very impressed with how intelligent Stacy is, and how well she speaks. She took several questions from the audience, and showed she really researched this book well. And research is the right word, because there’s not a whole lot documented about Cleopatra’s life. Stacy certainly had no diary to go by.

Not only did I enjoy the talk, but I got my picture taken with Stacy. I was lucky enough to strike up a conversation with a volunteer, Bruce Guthrie, who was also taking pictures, and he very gracefully offered to take our picture.

Bruce also told me about some other places in town that feature guest speakers like Stacy, so I’m really looking forward to attending more of these.

Picture in picture on your HD TV

Posted on September 12, 2010 - Filed Under Family | Leave a Comment

Football season means lots of games to watch–and I like to watch more than one game at a time. That means switching back and forth between channels. Or going to a sports bar, where they have multiple games showing on different TV’s at the same time. This year, that got me to wishing I had Picture in Picture (PIP) capability, like we used to have, before satellite and cable TV came along.

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Linux will revive an old PC? Not so fast.

Posted on September 7, 2010 - Filed Under Business, Family | 4 Comments

I bought several old notebook PC’s a while back, specifically for the purpose of giving them to my grandkids. I wanted to see if I could retrofit them as replacements for newer PC’s, sans Windows. Because, let’s face it, Microsoft has effectively tied their newest OS to any new machine that you buy.

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