And so endeth the month (of blogging daily). There was a post for each day in November 2008 (even if the timestamps sometimes pushed an entry into the next day!). I found it an interesting experiment. It was definitely challenging to come up with something for each and every day. Some days were particularly challenging [...]
Archive for November, 2008
Beach: Beach glass: Wikipedia gets it right in observing that beach glass is a strange phenomenon — an odd case where something more valuable is created from man-made litter. “Beach glass” is remnants of (usually coloured) glass articles that have been broken and distributed in the sea, carried and tumbled by time and tide, to [...]
Faced with the question of “what are the top kitchen appliances you would bring to an island”, I can tell you I include “slow cooker” on my list. This week’s culinary challenge was to prepare a reasonable Thanksgiving dinner in a kitchen that has virtually no staples (can’t reasonably keep liquids between visits — they’ll [...]
Today we recognize that we have much for which to give thanks, not the least of which is captured in the views from our driveway — that it is our driveway, that we’re here to enjoy the island, that the weather was so stupendous that it was impossible not to smile :-) Today we particularly [...]
We had a pretty good blow last night/this morning, on Grand Manan. Winds were sustained at 50km/h, with gusts up to 70km/h. A night to appreciate a well-insulated house! It was windy enough that the ferry didn’t run last evening or this morning, until the 11:30am departure from Grand Manan. A good day to plan [...]
Same socks,too. Not used to seeing this place with snow. Was a little stormytoday. Much happier to have been on the ferry yesterday, rather than today –might have had a roughride.
When You Just Have to Go
Posted in All, Misc, Photo Op on Nov 24th, 2008 Comments Off
Dashing home from a week of meetings, sliding in by 7pm, time to unpack, do laundry, repack and take care of some work deliverables, so that at 6am I’m on my way to our favourite place on Grand Manan. We transited Halifax, which is still digging out from 30cm (a foot) of snow. And [...]
Things seem a little quiet around here to me — do they seem a little quiet to you? Yeah. Something to do with being busy in meetings all day/evening every day for the last 10 days. I think it was a productive trip; I think the meetings moved stuff forward, which is a win. But [...]
I coined a new word today — “ultitasking”. As in: theULTImate in multiTASKING. It has to do with doing a number ofapparently-divergent tasks simultaneously and achieving some coherentand successful outcome. Consider it “ultitasking” if you are leading a meeting whilesimultaneously handling several instant message chats and updating apresentation (for the same meeting. Or, carrying out [...]
Exhibit A: FromCuteOverload Exhibit B: DowntownMinneapolis No, really — any questions? ;-)
Well, after about 4 weeks of meetings and travel, I have a new pair of socks. I guess I must not knit very quickly — to take so many weeks to produce a pair. But, I’m on to the next pair already. These are done in White Birch Fiber Arts sock yarn, knit toe-up with [...]
I mentioned that this burst of blogging is somewhat inspired by the (writer’s block busting) activity of NaNoWriMo. It turns out that I am hardly alone in this aspiration. Someone else has coined the NaBloPoMo term for national blog posting month — blogging every day this month. That certainly captures the spirit of what I’ve [...]
The Power of a Collective
Posted in All, Knitting, Net Working on Nov 18th, 2008 Comments Off
The other day, with some new laceweight yarn in hand, I was browsing for patterns for shrugs. (I could make a lace stole, but I think it would be nice to have a colourful shrug to wear over a sleeveless dress, as an alternative to having to balance drapey fabric all evening). More specifically, I [...]
I recently got one of my suitcases back from the authorized repair shop – it cost $50 to have a wheel replaced and a zipper pull-tab re-installed. Although the luggage was hardly cheap, that’s still a significant fraction of the original capital cost, and it makes me wonder whether the original purchase was good value. [...]
Some words of wisdom you might have occasion to take advantage of… if you are hanging around in the home turf of these guys these are not the proper footwear unless you really like to share your shoes with lots of this If the depth has been lost in the digital photograph, let me assure [...]
What a Tangled Web We Weave…
Posted in All, Net Working on Nov 13th, 2008 Comments Off
I recently installed NoScript as an add-on to Firefox. I observed the Firefox application randomly running my CPU up to 80% usage and holding, and I was pointed at scripts as a likely culprit. Indeed — as soon as I started blocking web page scripts, my Firefox process CPU consumption dropped below 5%. Of course, [...]
As I was writing the entry about my current sweater design effort, I surprised myself by reaching the tentative conclusion that I should rip the whole thing back (frog it) and do something more compelling with the lovely yarn. I really had not thought about that before sitting down and writing out the text. It [...]
There were multiple announcements today of home mortgage bailouts in the US – from Citibank to its customers, as well as US Federal bailout plans via Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Citibank plan offers the possibility of reviewing the principal of the loan as one possible parameter to adjust in aiming to bring the [...]