November 30, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Just in case…

If you would like to write a similar letter to Santa, let me know and I’ll make sure it goes public. SPECIAL NOTE: if you don’t make your wishes known pretty soon, Jeanie has given me the OK to do some shopping this year. New music for everyone!

November 29, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Work after four days of feasts, parties, and travel was… not great.

Added a couple of shots to the autumn scenes. Hint: click the arrow to photo four and five–the gray days.

November 28, 2004 — The Plains, Ohio. Happy 50th Birthday Butch!

We started the morning at my sisters house in Frederick, Maryland sitting on her front porch with Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee. Life has been good to me. We said our farewells and headed back over the mountains. Once we reached home, Nick headed back to school in Morehead, Ky while Jeanie and I went to her brothers surprise 50th birthday party.

November 27, 2004 — Frederick, Maryland. Congratulations Andy!

This morning we headed out over the mountains to a surprise celebration for Andy. He graduates from the University of Maryland in a couple of weeks as a graphics designer. It goes without saying that we are all proud of him and wish him well. Maybe now that I have family in the business, he will offer a few pointers on how I can make this site more attractive. :)

November 26, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Today I want to discuss my plans for this site. My intention has been all along to have a number of people write for it. I tried getting people to send me stories via email without much success. Recently, I added a content management system that allows trusted authors to write without my knowledge or assistance. Another underwhelming venture. Russell made a point that I needed to be persistent and not give up so easily. Last night, I told Nick that the 2005 beta tab was my plan for next year. He didn’t much care for that thought. He prefers that I keep two sites. One that I author (that he claims people will read) and one where others can contribute. If you read this, would you kindly send me a note and express your opinion.

Joe sent the URL of a flash movie that discusses the possible future of the media. It was pretty interesting but it took well over an hour to download on a dialup. With over half of the U.S. on broadband, I expect to see more and more of this. Today, web designers tend to consider bandwidth very carefully. At one time in my career, I carefully considered whether to multiply two numbers (relatively slow) or add them (much quicker on a machine if the numbers are not large). Today, of course no one would think of such a thing as the speed of the machines making the calculations make such concerns obsolete. Likewise, web designers will more and more design sites for broadband and give very little thought to dial up users as the bandwidth becomes available to greater percentages of our population. When the number of broadband users reaches around 80%, most designers will no longer find it economical to concern themselves with the remaining dial up users. It hasn’t taken ten years to go from 2400 baud dialup modems to our current status and the pace is escalating. It seems reasonable to expect that we have less than ten years to get ourselves out of that 20% category. Unfortunately, I live in an area so remote that we may be the last residence in the U.S. to ever have broadband. Ironic isn’t it? :(

Update: 1 vote for keeping two separate sites.

November 25, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Happy Thanksgiving!

November 23, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Here is a little something I wrote in an email tonight that struck me as noteworthy.

“When you do it for yourself, it changes everything.” – Dave Weeks

Russell has given me a nice new word to add to my dictionary of peculiar words.

The holidays will soon be here. I’ll admit to looking forward to them. Actually, it is more the thought of seeing family and friends that I look forward to.

At right are are a few of the better scenery photos I’ve taken this autumn. Press the arrow to see the next photo. Press any image to enlarge it.

November 16, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. This morning on my way to work it wasn’t daylight and it wasn’t dark. Deer have been as plentiful as I can recall. I see them on my way to and from work nearly every day. Often they are in small groups. Seeing a buck is fairly routine for me. Seeing them is such a routine that I typically do pay any attention to them and only worry about avoiding them on the road. Today I drove by a hill that is normally a hayfield with woods at the top (681 just past the Christmas tree farm before Sumner road for those who know the area). Two deer were grazing as I went by and one looked up and watched as I drove by. It was a buck with a beautiful rack. This pair was special. The sky was just beginning to light up behind them making the pair a nearly perfect silhouette. The rack was spectacular! The deer stood their ground in a perfect pose. As a photo I’m sure it would have won big awards as it was absolutely gorgeous! A second later I had to put my eyes back on the road (around the corner and down the hill) and the sighting was over for me. It made me feel good all morning to have seen it.

November 14, 2004 — Cincinnati, Ohio. Happy birthday Dan!

Dennis called and joined Dad and I for breakfast. Later in the day, Doug and Sue stopped by. It would have made a nice birthday party except Dan and Jean were out of town. We were all thinking of you. Good luck with the interview.

November 13, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. A crisp beautiful bright and sunny day here. I’ll be off to Cincinnati to visit with my Dad this weekend.

The opening lines of Chapter 29 of the Tao…

Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

I found those lines interesting to ponder. Deliberately slowing down my reading of the Tao as mentioned previously has helped considerably. I don’t know that I agree with all of it even though much of it is becoming clearer to me. On occasion, a line only makes sense to me on the third reading. Some portions still baffle me. You would think that Chapter 31 (good weapons and victory) was written last week rather than 2,500 years ago.

November 12, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. This site now has a list server. Woo woo! You may join if you like. Send an email to this address: “list-subscribe” at this domain name* (without the quotes). Wait a moment and it will send a note in reply asking for a confirmation. Simply reply to that confirmation message and you are a member of the list. Very simple. What does that mean? It means that whenever you send a note to the email address: “list” at this domain name (without the quotes), EVERYONE who is a current member of the list will receive your message. Please send at least a “hello” message to let others know you have joined. Conversely, anytime ANY member of the list sends a note to that same address, YOU will receive it. All automatic. Of course you may opt out of the list at any time you like. If this list would ever become to general in nature, I’ll set up specific interest group lists.

November 11, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Chapter 2: Our First (and Last) Hippodrome Rider by Allan Gereg is being republished today. It once appeared and was written specifically for a motorcycle newsletter with a worldwide circulation of about 18. Please don’t let some of the inferences and the tone of some of these stories be lost if you are a non-motorcyclist reader. Allan claims that it was a true love affair for over 25 years!

Steve writes from Boston about the big dig (a huge tunnel that connects Cambridge and Boston).

If you enjoy writing, come enjoy the fun and add your twists to The Feral War, a novella being written by you (it begins on 2004.11.11 - scroll down past the big dig story).

November 09, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. The artic is melting. Good news for the oil companies apparently. I read that they are excited by the prospect of having more land available for the exploration of oil and gas. Ironic isn’t it?

Mozilla Firefox version 1.0 (a web browser) has been released. It is my browser of choice with Opera being a close second.

The last few days have been filled with news of the French difficulties in the Ivory Coast and the U.S. attacks on Falluja.

November 07, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Steve and Mary Ellen were in town this weekend. It was real nice to have them visit. Joe and I drove him to the Akron Canton airport to fly back while the girls had a shower. The newspaper clipping at right will enlarge if you click on it. It is pretty large so be patient if you are still on a dialup connection.

Left-Mary Ellen sitting on our swing. Right-Joe and Steve at the Akron airport. The airfare is cheaper if you fly out of Akron to Boston with a stop in Cincinnati. They would probably make money now and then if they didn’ make such pricing decisions.

November 05, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. I’ve been trying for a week or so to install .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1. It hangs my system and I can’t find anything on the Microsoft site that tell why or what to do. This machine was not two months old, had all MS patches, all Norton virus definition, and in as good a shape as you could ask for. How could Microsoft offer such poor quality code and have everyone continue buying it?

This afternoon, Steve and Mary Ellen stopped in. Earlier in the day they had breakfast with Diane and Gary in Maryland. We went to the courthouse so they could get their marraige license. While there I looked up the wedding license for Jeanie and I issued nearly 26 years ago. My occupation was listed as an instructor at Hocking College. Jeanie was listed as a computer operator. Then we looked and found the one issued to Jeanie’s mom and dad some 51 years ago. Neat!

“No one has as many enemies as a friend of a king.”–Magistrate Eydalín (a character in Iceland’s Bell by Halladór Laxness) That line just struck me a noteworthy and something to ponder. Iceland’s Bell is a story about a rogue character set in 17th century Iceland when it was still an oppressed Danish colony. Who would have thought that something like that would be interesting. What a contrast this book is with the Tao. I found that I had to put up my other new books and settle on just two. When I was trying to read several at once, I stopped reading altogether. Reading these two at the same time is comfortable for me. The Tao is very brief so I just read a couple of chapters and then ponder them for a day or two. Iceland’s Bell is a novel so it keeps me occupied until I drift off to sleep.

This morning Lisa gave me a ride to town to pick up Jeanie’s car. It wasn’t ready so she brought me home. If you own a car and live out in the country, you had better have family, friends, or relatives that are willing to take to and from the people who work on them. Thanks Lisa.

Fourmilab in Switzerland has a nice Earth viewer that I have used off and on for years. Another page on the site that will give you pause to ponder is this one titled View from Satellite. Allow this one to load and then scroll through the list of satellites that are up there. You know there is a lot of them but I really had no idea until looking through this list.

November 04, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Rain today. The news is rather tame and I have nothing pressing to discuss. Perhaps that is a blessing. Over 55 million people been able to very clearly express their displeasure with our leadership and to my knowledge, they will all be able to get up and go about their affairs today without any hostility towards them. I have seen that occur time and time again over the years and it becomes more striking to me with each election. Particularly when I read the news of how other countries fare when attempting to shift power around.

November 03, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Kerry tossed in the towell today. It is over except for the parades in January. Lovely. Another routine election. No one had to perish. Everyone gets to live to try to spread their influence another day, another way.

Here is how the townships in my county voted.

In round numbers, this is how the country voted. 59,108,395 for Bush. 55,554,114 for Kerry.

No tanks visible nor soldiers patrolling the streets this morning. That is a good sign. We have had a lot of problems with the power going out but otherwise survived the night. The news people are saying that the Buckeye state is still undecided and will likely determine who wins. We need to discuss provisional ballots as it appears that they are going to be very important in the coming days.

November 02, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Today I held my nose and voted. It wasn’t pretty. It is an absolute shame that we had to pick between these absolutely wretched candidates. The only pleasant part of the experience was noticing the absolute lack of any form of intimidation. It was a record turnout, but at the end of the day, just another routine election. We are fortunate to have such a system, as flawed as it is.

A few days ago we realized that it would likely come down to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. At 10:31 p.m. tonight they gave Pennsylvania to Kerry so my prediction is still holding. If it comes down to a single vote in Ohio… my vote perhaps… that decides it all, you might be interested in knowing how it was that I voted. Rather than spilling the beans and giving it away (we have plenty of time here as we are only on the first day of the election and we can expect lengthy delays) let me explain my reasoning over the next couple of days. Mahalo!

November 01, 2004 — Alfred, Ohio. Ever peek at tomorrow? I do all the time. The Australian newspapers have been talking about todays election for several hours. In the UK they are still taking wagers for todays election (note the date/time on the image at right). Here is it still only 8:11 p.m. EST Nov 1st (yesterday I suppose)as I write this. These are the odds that bookmakers are giving right now for the presidential election that will still be held tomorrow (in these parts). Lest you think that I am overly familiar with the bookies, I merely did a google search on "election odds" and this was the first thing on the list.

You wouldn’t imagine how popular I’ve become this past week. I mentioned how the post office must be working overtime to deliver all the mail I’ve received. My phone has been ringing off the hook and every day we have several messages on the answering machine. These are the big boys mind you. I just got a call from George Bush as I was writing this. I had expected that either he or John Kerry would be stopping by for dinner tonight. After all, I live in Ohio, a true contested battleground state. But wait, there is time. Perhaps one of you two gentlemen plan to meet me at the poles with hotcakes and steaming hot coffee in the morning. Slather on the butter and syrup will ya fellas? Pass the pork while you are at it. Now I can feel pity on the good people who live in Iowa and New Hampshire. What a circus.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu was written some 2,500 years ago. It contains roughly 5,000 words in eighty one chapters. It is different. I can’t say that I understand it. The first day I read three chapters. Chapter three contains 58 words. Each chapter of the book has a photo. Realizing that something other than my norm is going on, I have deliberately slowed my pace. Today I read chapters one through six. Next time I'll read one through nine. Every time after that, I'll add three new chapters and leave three behind. That is the way I taught my boys to read. The old McGuffy reader had beautiful line drawings. We would sit and discuss the pictures and then I’d go through the new sounds and letters and how they were combined to form words. Each day we would read the four previous days work and then open to a glorious new page, discuss the picture, the sounds, and then they would attempt to read and guess what the new words were. By the time we left a chapter behind, they had read it on five separate occasions and had it memorized and could easily read it (or at least recite it from memory). They always wanted to read ahead but I always kept them to one new page at each reading. That approach kept them coming to me for more. Whenever I got home from work, or whenever I came in from chores, they would meet me at the door holding the book with hands freshly cleaned (one of our rules) wanting to see and read what happened next. The slow deliberate pace and anticipation worked for them. I’m hoping that a similar approach will work for me. The photos in the book are quite nice, perhaps even tranquil.

I just now looked at the background of my web site. It is red (a favorite color of China) and the characters mean “The Analects of Confucious”. It seems an odd coincidence that I would have been thinking that nearly a year before picking up the Tao.

Believe it or not, I recall bits and pieces from the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. The 1960 election had more people talking before the election than any I can recall until now. In 2000, there was lots of talk, but most of it came after the election. My guts tell me that we will not know the winner of this race for some time after Tuesday. It would not surprise me to see this one go to the house of representatives. If that should happen, they could choose anyone. During the colonial times, we would often have a president of one party and vice president from the strongest opposition. Imagine the house realizing that neither candidate is fit for office and decide to go with two completely different candidates. How does this strike you. Colin Powell for president and Hillary Clinton for vice-president. God would surely find a chuckle in such an arrangement.

Another election predictor? The Redskins lost. Tradition has it that if they win, the incumbent wins. Otherwise, there is a new administration in January.