Punderings

So what deals are you looking for tomorrow on Black Friday? And how many people are actually going out to the store, versus just shopping online, especially with the large number of retailers promising similar prices?

And for the non-US readers out there: does anyone else have similar sales tomorrow, or is it completely restricted to the US? Just wondering how if anyone elsewhere was going to try to order something on sale from the Amazon US store for shipping elsewhere, for example.

Hey, where did the black friday boycott stuff go? Wasn’t there a move a while back to go all non-consumer instead in the past?

Which we’ve been reading to Roxanne slowly as a bedtime story. One of the first things she said when Amy was done reading the last chapter was: “Can we start again tomorrow?” I was so proud.

The Hobbit is definitely one of those books that sounds better read aloud rather than just read to yourself. We’ve skipped a few parts, and massaged the reading of the story to gloss over a few of the violent or scary scenes that Roxanne didn’t like (especially at bedtime). But The Hobbit is far closer to being appropriate for kids than the rest of The Lord Of The Rings is – the adventure is just great, and Roxanne really seems to like Bilbo now.

Wow – I just noticed that among many many other editions of Tolkien-related works, Amazon also has The Hobbit: A 3-D Pop-Up Adventure. Too bad it only features 5 scenes, the reviews seem to point out that they’re beautifully done.

Any suggestions on other classics we should try reading at bedtime next? I tried reading some Fairy chapter books last night, which Roxanne likes sometimes – but it was really hard going back to the overly simple structure that most kids books use in their writing. We’re ready for some stories that are approachable for kids, but written for adults (and preferably, stories Amy and I would like!)

Not now, but rather… in a few years: what will today’s young children think of the real-time web we’ve posted them to? When they’re old enough to think through what it means. When they’re a teenager going through the awkward years. When they’re getting out of college, looking for a job. When they’re out on a date.

How will their experience be different, when all the world can watch exactly how they grew up?

Little Ryan Soroush Scoble – only a few days old now – will have a chance to live that life. One inside of the real-time web, right from the very beginning after his C-section entry into the world. His father, @scobleizer has publicly Tweeted, FriendFeed’, Posterous’d, flicrk’d, blogged, and a wide variety of other online tool’d the whole process. And I can only imagine he’ll continue the quest for good technology behind the real-time web as Ryan gets to grow up.

When do you think Ryan will figure out what the internet is, and be excited about all this cool stuff about him that he can see live, right now? (I guess 3 years old.) When do you think Ryan will realize that maybe it’s not so cool, and he wishes his dad hadn’t posted that video of him doing (insert embarassing pre-teen moment here)? (My bet is before 10.)

In some ways I had a similar early childhood, with a father who was a technology geek and a photographer. I remember baby pictures (of course), birthday and holiday pictures, and pictures of me every year the first day of school (every year), and sometimes the second day of school, and sometimes my haircut… But those were all private pictures; ones shared only with close family, and now, mostly lost somewhere in the maze of the basement. Heck, even today, even with my high-tech life and open source contributions, there’s still only a handful of pictures of me easily findable on the net. And videos, or stories about me on the net? Only the ones I choose to post, now that I’m an adult.

How will the continuing information revolution change our lives with this brand new and very personal sharing that easy blogs, flickr, and Facebook have given us? It’s an interesting question for adults, far beyond the simple “Dude, did you really mean to post that kegger on FB?”, but one that’s been discussed plenty. What I wonder is, how will it affect our children – those who aren’t aware enough to decide their fates now – what they’ll think about it later, when they realize what their parents did.

This is offered – not as an excuse, but as an explanation – of why I’ve been so quiet lately. Some friends and perhaps fellow members have wondered why I haven’t spoken up or made known some positions recently.

In the past week or so, I’ve been dealing with a number of stressful situations including:

• Extended family member in rehab recovering from a heart attack
• Close family member with arm and wrist injuries
• Various minor but urgent miscellaneous legal issues
• Various questions from our home renovation contractor
• A cat at the emergency vet at 2AM
• Leaks in the roof
• No attic or basement (due to shuffling boxes for contractor)
• Flaky electricity in half our outlets
• No home internet for a while
• Reorg at work
• Cats making a mess and being upset at the rest of the stress in life

I do recognize that I’m incredibly lucky even give the aforementioned disaster a day of the past two weeks. I live in a country with free speech, and free and fair elections. I have a great job, own (some of) my own home, and have a wife and daughter more wonderful than I ever imagined. I don’t have any serious illnesses, and all of our cats are now in at least stable condition.

But the human condition is a relative one: one person’s exciting challenge is another person’s incipient ulcer. And we’re used to a certain pace or style of life – while I can handle most disasters as well as anyone, too many at once just doesn’t feel fair. Hence, a number of things I’ve wanted to do have been postponed for a while lately.

So I declare it the end of disaster week, and look forward to a disaster-free and very fun weekend with some family coming to visit. I just hope we have enough floor space left from all our storage reshuffling to find the spare bed!

Yes, it’s almost that time of year, so I’m sitting on the porch blogging away. Looking forward to doing more of it soon now that it’s spring, and the sun is up so long.

I saw an old friend this morning after my morning cappuccino and coding at my favorite coffee shop, Peet’s in Lexington. It was one of those odd moments of complete and happy surprise, since while we email regularly, I really didn’t expect to see him in downtown Lexington, just sitting on a park bench. In any case, he reminded me that I should blog more, and not just about that Apache stuff. So here you go. I will say I’m looking forward to catching up with old friends in the next two weekends, since I think some plans will be coming together nicely.

Hey! If anyone has good links for Patriot’s Day events this year, email them or post them here. I really want to get a good calendar of what’s happening when, since it’s one of my favorite holidays of the year. I’ll drop one excellent link here – if you want to know what actually happened back then, read Boston 1775, a blog by J.L. Bell, who has great commentary as well as links to original source material from the time of the revolution.

In other news, I’m ashamed to say I’m drinking instant coffee with my stroopkoeken. It’s one of those guilty pleasures – I love the Idee Kaffee instant coffee packets that I brought home from Amsterdam last month. Please don’t tell Janice or the staff at Peet’s I’m drinking anything but their bar drinks or my whole bean Maj. Dickason’s I get each week.

Post > 5 items per week

Blogging (or writing comments, etc.) is creative work, and creative work makes me feel like I can do more. To cliche, to be the change you wish to see, you have to do it first. That’s either in the larger world, or for yourself (like this blog is).

Get physical exercise every day

Brisk walks around the block or doing simple weights at home count. Swimming is the best though.

Deploy one new project per quarter

Insert “personal” there. I have all sorts of ideas about community, open source, and swag/tshirts – I just need to do them.

Spend more time with family

Duh. Insert “quality” in there; it’s about avoiding the day’s stress and avoiding too much multitasking. I’m starting to understand when people say we should let kids be kids for as long as possible.

HT2DrBacchus.

Really dark. You just can’t believe how vastly deeply inkly dark it is. I mean you may think it’s awfully dark in your bedroom when you turn out the lights and close the door, but that’s just twinkles compared to Maine. And you haven’t stayed in Maine until you hear the loons on the lake in the middle of the night. Spooky, unless you’ve heard them before, and then it’s just eerie.

We had a lovely family vacation up at a cabin on the lake. Yes, it’s near Waterford, and no, it’s not at Papoose Pond, although one set of our previous neighbors stay there, and several other neighbors stay within a town or two of us. It’s odd how many New Englanders we’ve met who not only spend summer vacation in Maine, but spend it within a few miles of where we do.

Sadly, cell phone service is only on the highways, my dial-up was less than anemic, and the nearest wifi was over 20 min drive away, as well as my firewall acting up, hence I’ve been offline for the past weekend. Although I feel bad about missing a few things, it really was relaxing. I went just over 3 days without using a computer at all, and I can’t remember the last time I’d done that for… possibly years. While it’s a good thing to get completely away from work and such for a while, it still could have been useful to use teh internets for all those little convenient things, like ordering something online, checking the weather, and good gods, Google Maps would have been handy for exploring around there.

In any case, the weather was beautiful and we not only took out the canoe but also the little outboard skiff and got to cruise through the ponds. Quite spiffy.

Anyway, I’m back now. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?

Sorry, it’s not a new song, but it is a new way to see it.

Wordle is making the rounds of cool ways to visualize words; try Wordle out yourself.