Lynn, Lynn, city of….. gifts?

1 Reply

So, the Democratic National Convention has taken the city of Boston by storm. This has thrown a bit of a wrench in my commuting habits. Nevertheless, I set out this morning an hour and a half early with hopes of a smooth trip into the city.

I was walking from the commuter train in Lynn to the shuttle bus that would take me to South Station, and imagine my surprise when I saw nice people there smiling at me! And there was a musician playing some happy morning music for us commuters. How nice.

On the way home, walking back to the train from the bus I encountered many more Lynn representitives who were handing out little gifts; a free subway token, a half-pint of lemonade, a Lynn gift bag (with some casino cruise tix, a stress ball, a pen and other stuff). Who knew that Lynn was so full of nice, cheerful people!?

I, Robot

Leave a reply

Becky and I went to ***Chunky’s|http://www.chunkys.com/*** last night to see ***I, Robot|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/*** – and of course to have dinner.

The best performance in the movie, I felt, was by ***Alan Tudyk|http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0876138/*** in the role of Sonny, the moody, Three-Laws-Defying robot. We were pleasantly surprised to see ***Even Stevens’|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0206511/*** ***Shia LaBeouf|http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0479471/***, albeit in a minor role. Will Smith had a few good one-liners here and there as the technophobic, anachronistic Detective Spooner. Overall it was an enjoyable movie with some good action sequences and special effects that at times drew attention away from the more weighty themes.

Now I want to go and re-read all of my Asimov. 🙂

More Congrats!

Leave a reply

I would also like to congratulate two other fellows whose blogs I follow:

***Chad Everett|http://jayseae.cxliv.org/*** (who also wrote the ***Bloglines Toolkit|http://jayseae.cxliv.org/2004/07/08/bloglines_toolkit_v1r4.html*** Mozilla/Firefox plugin) for winning third place in the MovableType contest for his ***Notifier|http://jayseae.cxliv.org/movable_type/notifier/index.html*** MovableType plugin.

***John Gruber|http://daringfireball.net/***, author of the ***Markdown|http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/*** MovableType plugin, who tied with Chad for third place in the same contest.

Kudos and congrats to everyone involved! As much crap as I’ve given SixApart for their changes to the licensing schemes, I think this contest was a great way to reward people for doing great work in the area of plugins.

Of course, since the contest was to write plugins for MovableType 3.0, I won’t be able to use the newest versions of these plugins… but I guess I can stick with the old versions for now.

Congrats, Jay!

Leave a reply

Congratulations to ***Jay Allen|http://www.jayallen.org/***, ***winner of|http://www.sixapart.com/log/2004/07/plug_in_to_mova.shtml#more*** ***MovableType|http://www.movabletype.org/***’s ***Plug-In Contest|http://www.movabletype.org/contest.shtml***. Jay is the creator of the excellent ***MT-Blacklist|http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/*** plugin. I use MT-Blacklist here at prwdot.org to help reduce and control comment spam.

Update: Jay chose the PowerMac G5 system as his prize! Woo-hoo!

Read the relevant entries on Jay’s ***personal blog|http://www.jayallen.org/journey/2004/07/plugin_contest_winners_announced_tonight*** and on his ***MT-Blacklist blog|http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/2004/07/mtblacklist_mt_plugin_developers_contest_grand_prize***.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for someone I’ve never met!

A Wood Gathering

Leave a reply

Last night we had a rare gathering of the Wood family – my parents are up in the area visiting, my cousin Kim was back in the states, and Scott took a bus up from NYC to visit. John and Joan were there, and Mark came along as well. All told there were eleven of us who gathered at ***Concord’s Colonial Inn|http://www.concordscolonialinn.com/*** for dinner. The food was great, but the company was better. We had a blast chatting with everyone and catching up.

Photos and other things

Leave a reply

Some news items and issues to catch up on:

* The photos from our ***Niagara Falls trip|http://gallery.prwdot.org/niagara_falls_trip*** are online. Go look at ’em.

* I’ve upgraded our photo gallery to ***Gallery|http://gallery.menalto.com/*** 1.4.4-RC2, which has some interesting new features such as an ***RSS Feed for new photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/rss.php***. If you plug that URL into your favorite RSS reader, it will keep you up to date with any new additions to our gallery. Pretty cool! There are a few little bugs here and there. For example, when viewing a single photo within an album, the photos is left-aligned rather than centered. Other than that, it’s looking good! Also, the Gallery has released an alpha version of Gallery 2, their next generation project. I have been following this major redesign for a while, as it is pretty revolutionary. Hopefully it will make users and permissions much easier to manage.

* The latest nightly releases of ***Firefox|http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/*** have a couple nifty features. One is a redesigned find feature. Hit ctrl-F, and a slim toolbar appears in the bottom of the window with a search box and some other controls. Searching occurs as you type, which is really great. There is also now support for RSS feeds, by way of a “Livemark” feature. When Firefox detects that a given page has an RSS feed or feeds, a small lightning bolt icon appears in the bottom status bar. The user can then click on this icon to display a list of available feeds, and upon selecting one, it can be added to a “feeds” item in the bookmarks menu. This item will then be accessible as a sort of folder, and within the folder is a list of the entries contained in the feed. Sweet!

* From what I hear, the Macworld Expo in Boston last week was a success! My co-worker Christine took off of work for a few days to go down there. She enjoyed taking some classes on GarageBand and digital photography. She was also nice enough to pick me up a t-shirt from the Expo – it has the expo name on the front, with a spiffy patriotic Minuteman logo in the middle. The expo has already been booked back in Boston for around the same time next year, so maybe I’ll see if we can plan to attend.

* Yesterday ***Apple|http://www.apple.com/*** released a new lineup of ***iPods|http://www.apple.com/ipod/***. There are now just two models besides the Mini: a 20gb and a 40gb. They sport a scroll wheel of the same design as the Mini, as well as a new shuffle songs feature. The 20gb model is $299 and the 40gb model is $399.

* Mac fans may be interested to hear that when we returned from our trip, I found a special package waiting in the mail for me. I can’t officially disclose the specifics of what was in that package, but I can say that it was sent out to seed-holding members of the Apple Developer Connection who did not attend ***WWDC|http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/***. Hee hee.

Home Again

Leave a reply

Just a quick post to let our readers know that we arrived back safe and sound in Beverly this evening. We had a wonderful time on our week-long vacation. I expect that Becky or I will have more details to post later, but for now, here are a few random thoughts on our trip:

* You Ohioans don’t know how good you’ve got it in the real estate pricing department. Or maybe you do, and that’s why you’re living there, and not in the Greater Boston area.
* Taco Bell IS better in Ohio. Being served by Customer Fanatic ***Will Farnham|http://gallery.prwdot.org/ohio_trip_day_2/IMG_8061*** was an added bonus.
* We dubbed a man at ***Niagara Falls KOA|http://www.niagarakoa.com/*** “Admiral Snorrington”
* On one side of our camp site we had Mark and Kirsten for one night, and another nice family the second night. On the other side, we had a different dysfunctional family unit both nights. Think drunken yelling at 3 a.m., or paddling of a child at 6 a.m.
* As tempting as it was, I did not, in fact, take advantage of our Kampground’s wireless internet access.
* Raccoons love graham crackers. Or any other type of food. They are evil.
* Among the words that I didn’t expect to be spelled differently in Canada: Jewelry -> Jewellery

The photos from the Ohio part of our trip are up ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/ohio_trip***, and the photos from the Niagara Falls part will be up ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/niagara_falls_trip*** soon – check back if it doesn’t come up.

The State of Ohio

Leave a reply

Cedar Point was a lot of fun last night! The weather was quite hot and muggy, and there were a few brief rain showers that passed through, but otherwise it was very enjoyable. We went into the park after 5 p.m., so the rate was only $25.95 per person. The lines for most of the rides were pretty short, so we got to ride on almost everything we wanted to. Becky and I wanted to go on the newest ride, the ***Top Thrill Dragster|http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/inside_park/rides/thrill/ttd/index.cfm***. The ride launces a car instantly to a speed exceeding 100 miles per hour, and then shoots it straight up a track to a height of 405 feet!! Unfortunately, we didn’t end up getting there until close to the end of the day. At that point, the wait was 2.5 hours, and the ride had just shut down. It’s such a fast and tall ride that they only let it operate under the best conditions. Anyway, we decided to put it off until some other time. We did however get to ride on the ***Power Tower|http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/inside_park/rides/thrill/powertower/index.cfm***. This ride lets you choose whether you’d like to be shot at high speeds to a height of 240 feet, or instantly dropped from the same height. We choose the fast upward ascent, and were instantly whisked off of our feet to a height of 240 feet! It was amazing! Before you knew what was happening, you could see all of the park, Lake Erie, and Sandusky! It was great fun.

Today has been slightly less thrilling from an adrenaline sense, but no less enjoyable. I’ve been hanging out with Dad today. We had lunch with Mark and then drove around to see different people at ***Lakeholm|http://www.lakeholm.org/*** and ***MVNU|http://www.mvnu.edu/***. It’s great to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while. Dad also caught me up on a lot of the new construction in the area – a new elementary school, new renovations and additions at MVNU, construction in the south end of town.

The ladies today are at an afternoon tea at the ***Longaberger|http://www.longaberger.org/*** company, so I’m at home relaxing and blogging.

Tah Tah!

O-H-I-O

Leave a reply

Becky and I arrived safely in Ohio on Saturday evening. Our trip from Beverly to Mount Vernon took about 14 hours and about 22 gallons of gasoline (1.5 tanks – not bad!). Saturday night we played UNO Attack, which was interesting but not quite as good as the original UNO.

We went to Hope Community church on Sunday to hear Mark preach on “Bodybuilding 101”. Afterward we zipped down to Columbus to see Kirsten and Elizabeth compete in a tennis match. Everyone then went to Graeters for ice cream, where we all entered their contest to win a pint of ice cream every week for one year. 🙂 Sunday evening we watched Spider-Man 2 with Mark, Kirsten, and Dad… it was excellent. Becky and I ended the night by visiting ***Will|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/*** at Taco Bell (oh, and eating some Taco Bell too).

Today Becky and I took an excursion to Newark to see the Moundbuilders park and the ***Longaberger|http://www.longaberger.com/*** Company home office, which just happens to be located inside a giant, seven-story-tall wicker basket. 🙂 Tonight we are headed up to ***Cedar Point|http://www.cedarpoint.com/*** to experience some roller coaster madness.

It’s been a fun and relaxing trip so far, and it’s great to be in Mount Vernon after more than a year. Becky has had the fun side benefit of being able to check out a lot of photos from my earlier years… 🙂

We’ve taken some good photos, but we probably won’t upload them until we get back to Beverly or have access to a high speed connection, whichever comes first. 🙂