We’ve all been hearing alot lately about the current status of the Flu Vaccination. Frankly, I’ve heard more than I really care to. I know that the flu is dangerous to certain groups of people and I think that they should get a shot. For everyone else… Read this!
***Flu Vaccine Substitute|http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2004/10/14/chicken_soup_replaces_flu_vaccine/***
A few interesting tidbits for the day:
Unearthing the origins of Firefox — how Mozilla emerged from Netscape’s closed source world, and how we got to where we are with Firefox.
Virgin Electronics’ “iPod-killer” — functional but uuuuuugly.
It’s that time of year again. The Red Sox are once again in the American League playoffs, and as a loyal New Englander, it’s once again time for me to start paying attention to baseball.
Tonight I’ll be watching Game 1 of the ALCS, and hoping that the Sox don’t win. Why? Well, as my dad says, “We want the Sox to lose tonight because every time the Yankees lose
their first game, they win the series.” However, he continues, “But then again the Sox need to start winning from the get go.”
What other sort of voodoo can we perform in order to reverse the curse? Well, legend tells that if my dad can remember to wear his Red Sox baseball cap throughout each game in the ALCS, the Sox could actually make it to the series.
Other folks think that by destroying Babe Ruth artifacts, the curse could be broken – earlier today, the owner of Babe Ruth’s former home in Watertown, Mass had the property buldozed – not just knocked over, but completely pulverized into the ground. Sorry, I can’t find a link to the story on that, so you’ll have to take my word on it.
Also, various restaurants around the Boston area have been selling food items dedicated to reversing the curse – Burrito Max, for example, was selling a Reverse the Curse Burrito. Brigham’s Ice Cream (who is known for their “Big Dig” ice cream flavor) has introduced a special limited time flavor, “Reverse the Curse”. There are other food-based stunts listed in this Herald article.
I’ll be doing my part, such as it is, by permanently setting our website’s banner to show the “Reverse the Curse” sign, until the Sox either win the series or get knocked out.
And by watching the game tonight.
Go Sox!
Today I picked up a package at the post office from my parents: a birthday gift that they had sent out last week! Here are the contents:
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1 box Ziploc 1-Quart storage bags
1 box Ziploc 1-Gallon storage bags
1 box large drawstring trash bags
1 box kitchen-sized trash bags
4 rolls toilet paper
1 box Earl Grey tea
1 box of Buckeyes from the Squirrel’s Den (recipe/explanation for non-Ohioans)
2 packs of Trail Mix from the Squirrel’s Den
1 box Kudos
1 large bag of peanuts (to be eaten while watching the ALCS)
1 box Bisquick
2 boxes Rice Pilaf mix
1 box Chili Cheese Cheez-its
1 box Double-Stuf Oreos
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Now, this may seem like a strange birthday gift, but it is exactly the sort of thing that Becky and I have recently been requesting. Frankly, in terms of material possessions, we have more than we need, and literally more than can fit into our apartment. So we’re asking for consumables as gifts, for birthdays, Christmas, whatever.
Of course, you are still more than welcome to check out the Stuff Peter Wants page, should you want to buy me something a little less practical. My Amazon wishlist is linked from that page, as well.
CBD doesn’t give Columbus Day as a paid holiday, but I used one vacation day so that I could have a nice three day weekend on MV. Becky and I met up with Jenn and Mom and Dad Lowe this weekend on Martha’s Vineyard. We did a bit of housework, lots of reading, talking, movie and TV watching, eating, and relaxing. The weather was cool but nice, and there were no summer crowds to deal with.
Picture-taking was fairly subdued this time around, but there is still a gallery to check out if you like.
This guy is the luckiest Apple Store employee. His whole store, I suppose, is lucky, but he is the one with the photos to prove it.
We’ve been watching tonight’s Presidential “town hall” style debate. Frankly, all of these debates just make me sick and don’t really make me want to vote for any of the candidates. Politics in general just sickens me, but at the moment that’s not my point.
Right now, the question I’d like to ask the candidates is, “What exactly are you going to do to stop the forces of Blue Laser? Will you ensure that the Cheat Commandos have sufficient supplies of Cheat Commandos…O’s?
Earlier today, Jay Allen, creator of the MT-Blacklist plugin, posted on his blog that Six Apart had just pulled in an additional $10 million of venture capital funding. He wondered in his blog entry, “Geez, what they’re going to spend that money on?”.
A little while later, Mena Trott posted on Mena’s Corner that Jay would be moving back to California from Hungary and joining Six Apart as a product manager.
Hmm, I suppose that explains where at least some of that new venture capital could be going. 😉 Methinks Jay knew just a tad more than he was letting on in his post… if not, then it’s certainly an amazing coincidence!
Anyway, congrats Jay! Your plugin is great, and though I’ll probably never upgrade past Movable Type 2.661, I do appreciate all of the work you have done. The MT-Blacklist plugin helps protect all of the blogs here at prwdot.org from comment spammers, and Jay’s genius will surely come in handy at Six Apart.
Update: Jay just got around to posting about it.
After a somewhat excruciating reading experience, I finally finished aaa|A Widow for One Year|0345424719|aaa By John Irving. A few years ago I read “The Cider House Rules” and was looking forward to reading another novel by the same author.
‘Widow’ was an interesting read. I am torn as to whether or not I actually enjoyed it. The book focuses on the themes of Family, Love, age and aging, and Death. These themes were all fully developed throughout the novel and I really felt as if all the different plots were brought to a satisfying conclusion.
While reading some of the reviews of ‘Widow’ on Amazon I noticed that many readers enjoyed the first half of the novel and found the second half lacking. My take is just the oposite. I was completely put off by the overly sexual nature of the beginning of the book. Now, I don’t consider myself a prude… and I can appreciate the use of sexual relationships as a means to drive the plot… but I think that Irving went a little overboard. The second half of the novel focused more one the lives and struggles of the characters than on their libidos.
Over all, the book was deep, complicated and full of characters who aren’t sure who they are or what they want. Although I seriously considered returning it to the library after the first couple chapters I was intrigued enough to finish. I think I’m glad I did.
[A side note] When I was half way though I saw the author on The Today Show with Katie Couric… He was promoting a new children’s book that is based on a children’s book written by a character in ‘Widow’. I thought it was a bit ironic that my reading this book and his appearance on TV coincided. Weird.
Since I’ve been promoting my movies to a slightly wider audience recently, I thought I’d make an index page for them. I’ve also put a link to “Peter’s Movies” in our left nav bar. Hopefully this will make it easier to keep track of future short movie productions – if any. I don’t see movie-making taking up too much of my time, though, unless I receive a real video camera and a more powerful computer. At the moment, it’s fairly excruciating to do even a five-minute movie on my 450 MHz PowerMac G4, and my individual video clips are limited to about three minutes in length, since I’m just using my digital camera’s freebie “movie” function.
