Music to my ears

I’ve been following the Sony/BMG fiasco, which culminated in several lawsuits, for a while now. The New York class action has brought about some positive change:

Under the Settlement, SONY BMG will be enjoined from using XCP and MediaMax software on audio CDs they manufacture. SONY BMG will implement several changes to its policies and procedures concerning content protection software and the EULAs associated with that software. These changes will ensure that the content protection software will not be installed without the user’s express consent, will be removable from the user’s computer, and will not render the user’s computers vulnerable to known security risks. In addition, the EULAs will be written in plain English and will accurately describe the nature and function of the content protection software.

No more one-cheek sneaks, it looks like. And you thought class-action lawsuits benefit only the lawyers.

Vacation reflections

We got home at about 9:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, to a house full of people. Not only the extras we had when we left, but Mrs. Fetched’s brother, his wife, and their kids. We ended up playing euchre and dominoes until 5 a.m. (that I managed to grasp the Byzantine rules of euchre only goes to show how brain-fried I really was). We spent January 1 not doing much of anything; I was one of the first adults up at 10:30 (Daughter Dearest went to bed around 2 and got up around 9:30). I’ve found that I have a difficult time sleeping much past 9:30 nowadays, no matter how much or little sleep I get.

Yesterday, we went shopping. I think I mentioned that we (as a family) adopted the Hispanic tradition of doing our gift exchange on Jan. 6 (Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day) for several reasons, not the least of which is that it gives us 12 extra days to deal with shopping. Just in case DD or one of the other denizens has started reading, I will not go into details. Neener neener!

The brother & family stayed at our place until this morning: seems the gas company was dragging their feet about sending out a truck to fill their tank until Mrs. Fetched’s mom had a “little talk” with them. Sheesh. To make things even “better,” my cholesterol weighed in at 236 (about 30 points higher than what I expected, yucko). I’m hoping the eating & exercise habits I’m using to attack my blood pressure will also do for the cholesterol. But after only a handful of workouts, it’s taking more effort to get my heart rate up. The way things are going, I’ll have to start running marathons or something.

Chucked right back into the pressure cooker, it helps to reflect on the vacation a bit. We only went down to the beach once — we carried our kites, but it was too calm to fly them, so we walked some instead. The entire week was very nice, except for the flu I talked about earlier.


570 miles from FAR Manor, physically... light-years away, in another sense.

That water is cold, by the way!


Joking with Daughter Dearest, I told her Katrina washed all the dishwashing & laundry detergent out to sea, and the suds are washing up everywhere. In reality, it’s most likely just plain ol’ sea foam.


Back to dealing with reality. *sigh*

Home again

9-½ hours after leaving, give or take. Wife’s brother & his family is here for a little euchre & New Year’s celebration. So FAR Manor is full tonight & I have to go be a host or something. :-P

Outrage of the Day: Bush-league posturing

So you commit criminal acts by using the NSA to spy on American citizens. The news gets out, and what do you do? Stop the criminal acts?

Oh, heck no. Not if your name is George W. Bush, anyway. You go after the “leakers” instead.

I’m sure more readers of Tales from FAR Manor are intelligent enough to know this already: but if you still think this administration is anything but corrupt, you’re living in la-la-land. Period.

Happy b-day, Other Brother!

Hope you got lots of cool stuff!

Fingers crossed

My bro Solar came down with the flu yesterday — fever of 102°F and all. I brought some beef stew from Mom’s last night, then ran & got him some Gatorade this morning. He seemed like he was less than hungry for company, so I came over here to Mom’s for the afternoon. Got a bike ride in (I’m a day behind on exercise this week, foo) and now the bread machine is cranking away at tonight’s rolls. Daughter Dearest is napping, so I have the computer all to myself!

Things are quite a bit different here compared to FAR Manor, which has mostly to do with population density. FAR Manor is in a pretty rural area, sitting on acreage. Pinellas County FL is mostly a low- to mid-density sprawl — lots of low-rise condos, single-family homes, one- or two-story office buildings, and the like. I doubt there are 10 (dry) acres left undeveloped here, or at least 10 contiguous acres¹. At home, I have to go 10 miles just to get to town, 15 to a supermarket. Here, you can walk (or at least bicycle) to the supermarket, since you don’t have to go more than a few blocks to get to one... but going 10 or 15 miles is quite an expedition due to all the stoplights. Trade-offs everywhere you look.

DD and I are talking about going to see Chronicles of Narnia and eating at PJ’s, a seafood restaurant about a block from the beach, tomorrow. Hopefully, I won’t have the flu myself by then.

---

¹I consider a golf course to be developed. Of course, there are lots of those around here.

Vacation blogging

Daughter Dearest is hovering over my shoulder at the moment, wondering when I’m going to get off her computer so she can go back to IM’ing her online buds... hey kid, give me five more minutes, OK?

Internet access is a little restrained here... I need to buy mom an Ethernet hub for Christmas or something. DD is staying here at Mom’s, while my bro Solar is putting me up. He gets his Internet access at work, although he’s talking about having me help him put in wireless.

Have a great Christmas, or whatever holidays you celebrate at this time of year!

Score, big time

Putting stuff away in the outbuilding last night, I found two more short stories from my college days. That brings the total number of shorts found to five since I started this project. I would say those are all I have, but I’d completely forgotten that I’d written these last two... so who knows? Maybe there’s more....

The Ultimate Holiday Greeting

Daughter Dearest has been annoying the Red teachers at school with this one:

Happy Christeidholikwanzukah!

Vacation has begun!

It’s official: I won’t be setting foot in the office until next year.

I’ll take the car in for an oil change tomorrow and generally get it ready. Friday, Daughter Dearest and I will be going to Florida for a week. Woohoo!

My new design mantra

It’s about people, st00p1d!

It applies equally well to product design, documentation design, or work environments.

E-paper becoming feasible?

Category: Technology
Current music: Digitally Imported (DI.fm) EuroDance
According to this article in Wired, Siemens has demonstrated a flexible, ultra-thin, ultra-cheap display technology. Wired’s lead-off is a tad alarmist, though: “The cereal aisle at your local supermarket may soon resemble the Las Vegas strip,” they warn us.

Um, no.

First off, the article quotes several skeptics who question whether Siemens can manufacture the e-paper in quantity. Assuming they leap that hurdle, they’re talking about 30 cents for a piece of e-paper measuring a couple of square inches (or a handful of cm²). The realities of mass retail suggest — no, scream — that when a box of cereal costs about $3 and a can of soup goes for 59 cents or less, adding 30 cents to the per-unit packaging costs will fly about as well as a pig. There might be a handful of special promotional cases, but overall I wouldn’t be concerned about blinking cereal boxes any time soon (where “soon” is 2008 and beyond).

But if the Siemens e-paper idea works out, it could be the final piece of the puzzle that leads to widespread acceptance of E-books. I thought I’d written about this before, but it must have been off-blog. I believe that electronic books will only become popular when the readers are cheap enough to be disposable — selling for $10 in the checkout line racks, for example — and are no larger than a paperback book. The major hurdle here has been the display; they're relatively bulky and too expensive to make E-book readers more than a “bleeding edge” idea at the moment. Take a page or two of Siemens flexible e-paper, put a card slot and some rudimentary controls on it, and you have a reader.

Now watch book publishers try to kill the technology the way the RIAA and MPAA are trying to kill DVD/CD writers....

The War on Christmas: Dispatches from the front

Perhaps The Register won’t yank this story about Bad Santas terrorizing New Zealand like they did with the guy who chatted up his mom online....

Gmail Mobile

Gmail, if you haven’t heard, is Google’s free (but invitation-only) email service. They’ve recently added a useful new feature: you can access Gmail through your cellphone at http://m.gmail.com — I tried it with my Moto V220 and it worked pretty well.

I have 100 invites; if anyone wants a Gmail address just leave a comment. You need to include an email address for the invite. Munge the address to foil the spammers, but not so much that I can't make it out.

Busy weekend

Current music: DI.fm Chillout
I’m not terribly fond of weekends where you have no decompress time.

Saturday morning dawned; Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest headed out to deal with the chickens. I decided to try fixing some pancakes for when they got back, and botched them totally (my brain-fart was forgetting about the self-rising flour). With no milk, I used the remnants of a can of condensed milk plus water to thin it out, then tossed in some self-rising flour hoping to correct the mistake. Didn’t work. Not even the boys ate them.

So we rushed out the door to a 50^th wedding anniversary for some friends of the in-laws. It was a nice outing overall; starting at a Ryan’s, then we ended up at one of their houses where we shot a couple rounds of pool and shot the breeze with people we haven’t seen much of. From there we went straight to a Christmas party put on by a couple at church; I enjoyed some spiked eggnog and we all chowed down again.

This morning, I got dressed and sat down with the iBook for the first time in several days. Her Imperial Highness came out, literally looked down her nose at me, and ordered me to get the boys up and go over to the church early to vacuum the sanctuary and take the greens out of the window (there was a wedding this afternoon). Ooooooookayyyy... first off, she certainly knows that getting the boys up doesn’t go with getting anywhere early. Of course, The Boy had a friend over (we wish he had more friends like EJ, but that’s a different story), so of course he had to have an attitude.

First trip upstairs: “OK, I’m getting up.”
Second trip: “I’m not going to church, I’ll go help at the chicken houses.”
Third trip: “I don’t have to get up.”

At that point, I told him that he could remember that when he was walking to work and back today, then asked EJ if he wanted to come to church with me. He did, they both got moving, I dropped The Boy off at the chicken houses and grabbed the church keys out of Her Imperial Highness’s purse (another minor detail), then took care of things at church.

After church, we ended up getting some pizza, had about an hour and a half before going out again with the in-laws. Then SWMBO decided the living room had to be cleaned up (and it’s mostly her stuff), but I got a reprieve to pick up M.A.E. from work.

Now it’s bedtime. I can’t wait to get back to the office and relax a little...

The Boy meets Reality

One of the recurring theme of conversations with The Boy, especially bringing him home from work, is his assertion that he, Lobster, and M.A.E. are going to move out and get an apartment in January. My audible response has usually been a grunt, although I think “Yeah right” to myself. Trying to explain the Real World to The Boy, I have found, is a waste of syllables; I figured he’d find out for himself.

So with school closed around here Thursday and Friday due to the ice, they piled into Lobster’s truck and went off to secure an apartment they had scoped out some time back. M.A.E. later told us that the manager wouldn’t rent to them because The Boy and Lobster are still in high school, and “we’ve had problems doing that before.” The other minor detail was three people of mixed gender in a two-bedroom apartment. Nobody would come out and say it, but it was pretty clear that The Boy and M.A.E. had planned to share one of the rooms.

The Boy said, “everything was going fine until the manager asked us if we were students [presumably at the local college -FF], and M.A.E. said we were in high school.” He didn’t even mention the other part.

In a vain attempt to further drive the lesson home, Mrs. Fetched ran a few numbers past The Boy: at $525/month rent, each person had agreed to put up $175/month. Lobster says he can’t even afford to pay us $100/month for rent (plus all the food he eats), and M.A.E. barely brings home more than that per month. With the only full-time job among the three of them, The Boy would be the one essentially paying the rent. And then there’s the minor detail of electric bills, heating bills, laundry, food... kiss all the extracurricular stuff (movies twice/week, shooting pool) goodbye. He didn’t respond much. With him, you can’t tell if it’s sinking in or bouncing off.

Last winter’s ice storm

The beginning and end of this year have seen ice storms at FAR Manor now. The storm in January was much stronger, icing up the ground as well as the trees (only the trees today). Even in the northern reaches of Planet Georgia, ice doesn’t stay around too long — so you grab the camera while you have the chance. Today, I didn’t have the chance... but January’s storm was more photogenic anyway. Here’s a few pictures....

On the road in front of FAR Manor.


Part of the front yard. The tree dominating the picture flowers in the spring.


A Christmas ornament of sorts. Too bad it would have been just a stick 10 minutes after bringing it inside...


This is my personal favorite. It has been the desktop wallpaper on my iBook all year now.

Lunchtime blogging

Second night in a row that I couldn’t get to the computer — I was mucking out the gutters in the outbuilding, by hand, in the dark cold rain, last night. Blog stuff is backing up, so I compromised on my self-imposed “no blogging at work” rule and decided to post all this junk at lunch.

The NWS was a little more optimistic about last night’s weather than they should have been — they said we would be well clear of any significant freezing rain. WRONG! Power glitched at the house and rang a phone once, this morning, but everything else seems to be OK. I disconnected the DSL box at home just to make sure. Going to work was a bit of an adventure; the roads were only wet (not icy) but power was out in town and several traffic lights were dark on the highway. And how the juice managed to stay on at FAR Manor is a puzzlement. At work, the power had glitched some time last night, long enough to shut off my G3. I ran the disk repair stuff and got to work.

It’s still this cold steel rain (phrase borrowed from Pink Floyd, it’s perfect) outside, so I dug into the more dubious reaches of my overhead bin for lunch. I have several packs of ramen for days like this, but I only used a pinch of the beef-flavored sodium packet and opted instead for this “Kyo-Green® dietary supplement” packet that’s been sitting on my desk for like forever. Oh, the ingredients sounded soooo appetizing: barley grass powder, wheat grass powder, Bulgarian Chlorella (an algae grown in mineral springs, yum), cooked brown rice, and Pacific kelp (more yum). I’m not a picky eater, so when I say it was “edible,” adjust for your own level of picky. I figured worst-case, I’d be out 20 cents for the ramen and I could still go out. I’m scarfing some potato chips and some quality candy & nuts that the employer handed out yesterday as a side dish. We’ll see if I end up with with a major download event this afternoon....

The Piña Colada Song revisited

“I walked out on that dark beach thinking I was going to hook up with the girl of my dreams.... But when I got close, she turned around — and we both got the shock of our lives.”

It happened in France, of course. Quality journalism by The Register, as usual.

The Carpet Has Landed

The carpet stretcher worked a treat, as my friends across the pond might say. Mrs. Fetched thought it looked great. I finished tacking down the end where it stops a few feet short of the workbench (desired, although not planned) last night. All that’s left to do is put some plant hangers in the window and bring most of the stuff back in.

It occurred to me that I haven’t done a pictorial entry in a while. I’ll rectify that when I have it together, I hope by this weekend.