I love Doctor Who. Since the days of Tom Baker and his outlandish Scarf and those tasty Jelly Babies!
These latest Doctors are far more refined as far as the production values go, but the original’s were just as fine a bunch of actors as we have today. One of the best parts of Christmas in my house is the annual release of the Doctor Who Christmas special
Oh, it’s snowing!
So, it started to snow. Not to bad just a dusting. Still had power, heat, lights. Just another Autumn day.
All hell breaks loose, but the dog seems to enjoy it!
Then it really started to snow, cars slamming into each other everywhere. Roads closed and the freeway moving at 2 miles per hour. There was a 20 car pile up not 15 minutes after I left work! Kids walking home from the main road and the daughter had to abandon her car for fear of the rather steep hill we live on. The dog certainly seemed to enjoy it though.
Now just silence
No power, no heat, no street! Still I have 300 lbs of concrete in the back of the SUV and the Four Wheel Drive engaged. Looks like I’ll be moving Thanksgiving dinner over to my sons apartment across the water.
Stay warm out there! This is me, in the dark and posting from work .
A short story by the world renowned author: Arthur C. Clarke
As described by Wikipedia
This short story tells of a Tibetan lamasery whose monks seek to list all of the names of God, since they believe the Universe was created in order to note all the names of God and once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. Three centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet in which, they calculated, they could encode all the possible names of God, numbering about nine billion and each having no more than nine characters, in their alphabet. Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, even after eliminating various nonsense combination’s, would take another fifteen thousand years; the monks wish to use modern technology in order to finish this task more quickly.
They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along with the monks.
The operators engage the computer. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer, and by extension its operators, when nothing happens. The Westerners delay the operation of the computer so that it will complete its final print run just after their scheduled departure. After their successful departure on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. Under a clear starlit night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. They notice that “overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”
I thought it might interest some of you to glimpse the strange and sometimes terrifying places my daily wanders take me.
So I created a new category and this will be the place I post such things.
It was my first born child’s 21st Birthday yesterday.
He’s not my oldest, but he was the first. It’s quite a complicated and yet very common set of circumstances that accomplished that odd juxtaposition. Anyway, note the image to the left. We’re from San Diego and as such long for that south of the border cuisine. Here we are south of the border, the border of Canada! Not that I don’t love Canadian Bacon (or as they call it, ham) but it’s hard to find authentic Americanized Mexican food around here. So a tradition started several years back with my daughter (she’s older then my first born btw) where I would take her to our favorite Mexican themed restaurant on her birthday. You see, I had been there a few time with my wife and was well aware the establishment had a little birthday production that they carried out. While she went to the rest room I just happened to mention to our waiter that it was her birthday and as he was bringing the check to our table, he and several other staff members started singing happy birthday in Spanish and placed a large sombrero on her head for a lovely Polaroid.
I hadn’t ever done this with my son Jared and thought it would be nice for his 21st (a nice Margarita wouldn’t hurt either). Now keep in mind, as a family we had been to this restaurant many times (it’s not San Diego good, but this is 3000 miles from Mexico) and had witnessed a dozen or more of these birthday processions. I of course had mentioned to the waiter that Jared was newly 21 and got the knowing wink from him. So what happens? Jared decides to go to the bathroom not 60 seconds before the big sombrero came out. So everyone reset and waited for him to return. Now my sons sitting there wondering why the bill hasn’t come yet, and curious about the large hat that had suddenly shown up in the booth a few tables back from ours. I can’t be sure, but I think he was actually quite surprised when I pulled out a digital camera. As you can see, he was thrilled about the whole thing.
Happy Birthday Jared!
The new site went online one month ago today. I wish I could say I now understand CSS and PHP far better then when I started, but alas it still mystifies me. I’ve had more visits this past month then I had anticipated and the arcade is coming along nicely. Still haven’t fleshed out the forums just yet, once I have regular visitors it may begin to take shape.
I’m thinking of posting excerpts from the book, unfortunately most of them are still just hand written so no cut and past for me.
It’s the end of summer and school starts in two days for the youngest of my clan, need to figure out what supplies he still needs. Waiting to the last minute is sort of an annual competition around here; you should see me scrambling at Christmas time. So I’m off to face the crowds at Wally World.
Seems my site is moving up in the world. I just had my first Chinese Spam bot sneak in. I’ll have to look into plugins to prevent such things now of course.
Took the day off Friday, watched the Perseid meteor shower with my sons at 1am laying out on the front lawn. We don’t have any official street lights in our neighborhood (the occasional small private ones) so it was nice and dark. We discussed the stars and the mysteries of the universe for about an hour and didn’t get bitten by a single creepy crawler.
Later in the day the boys and I went to lunch and hit the movie theater for a first showing of the Expendables. Your typical guys flick, with of course all the big names in guy movies for the last 20 years. A predictable plot and perhaps too great a reliance on digital blood splatter, you just can’t beat old school blood packs. All in all though, it was a good flick and it kept us entertained enough that no one made a break for the bathroom the whole length of it.
Friday night I took the wife and daughter out to Taco Bell to try their new cantina style tacos. Nothing to write home (or on a blog) about but they don’t cost much anyway. Before you all (ya, like anyone but me is reading this) judge me on how cheap the night was for the ladies, it was the wife’s idea!
The whole weekend went like that, the sun was out and blue sky’s as far as you could see. Living up here in the North these past 14 years I really miss the sun and the heat, I’ve long known I am a solar powered person. The long cold dark of what passes for the norm around here really bites, but this past weekend it was glorious!
Enough rambling for now, time to look like I’m actually working. 
She visited me in a dream this morning, she looked good, her dog Odin was there too (pissed all over the place, he was really happy I guess) though neither made a sound the whole time.
Michelle would have been 45 today. I miss the sound of her voice, I guess it can’t be conveyed properly in a dream. Still, I miss her.
Till the day I hear your voice again Michelle, love you.
Happy Birthday!!
