Monthly Archives: June 2003

Tangle with the Woods

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Saturday afternoon, Becky and I packed up the car and headed out to Tanglewood in the Berkshires to see Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion.

The weather was perfect – warm air, clear skies. We had a nice picnic basket all packed up with snacks, and added a couple of sandwiches and cookies from a Subway when we arrived in Lenox.

The entertainment was great, as any fan of PHC would expect. The atmosphere at Tanglewood, particularly in the lawn area where we were sitting, is incredibly friendly, laid back, and relaxing. It was wonderful to simply walk among the crowds, even while the performance was going on. The music and comedy routines could be heard easily from just about anywhere you walked – I even took a walk far back to take in this magnificent view, and I could still hear just as well as I could back at our seat. Families and friends were enjoying meals together on the lawn. Some had set up simple blankets, like Becky and I did, and had brought dinners with them. Others had elaborate setups on the lawn, complete with tables, mounds of grilled meats, and rings of candles set up around their spots.

With the food, the atmosphere, the company, and the entertainment, it was an amazing day over all, and we are certainly looking forward to visiting Tanglewood again. 🙂

I did take some photos, as mentioned above, and you may see them in the Tanglewood gallery.

In other news, on Friday, Becky finished reading the fifth Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix, and handed it over to me. I’m happy to say that as of tonight, I have also finished reading it. As before, it was an immensely entertaining piece of fiction, and I only wish that the final two books were already available for us to devour. 🙂

Finally, there are only a few more days left until Becky and I head out to Portland for the O’Reilly Open Source Conference. We’re both very excited for the trip! But before that, there are still a few days of work to get through…

WWDC

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Today was the Keynote Address at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs, president of Apple (and Pixar) gave the keynote address, which ran from roughly 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Steve made some big announcements, new software, new hardware, and I will summarize them below with links where appropriate.

Safari 1.0
Apple’s new web browsing software has reached its final release version, after a six month beta testing period. It has evolved into a very fast, stable, and usable web browser, and it is available for download now.

iChat AV
A new version of Apple’s instant messaging software, iChat AV now allows users to hold video and audio conferences over iChat. Currently, iChat AV is in public beta and can be downloaded for free. After Beta-testing, however, you will be required to purchase the AV version of iChat for $29.95. This new software works well with the next announcement…

iSight
iSight is a web conferencing camera and microphone. It connects to a FireWire port, and provides streaming audio and video to applications such as iChat AV.

Mac OS X 10.3, “Panther”
Mac OS X panther is the next revision of Apple’s UNIX-based operating system. Panther promises 100 improvements over Jaguar, such as seamless switching between users and vastly improved searching. Panther is expected to ship by the end of this year.

PowerMac G5
The PowerMac G5 represents a light-speed step forward for Apple. The processor speeds currently range from 1.6 GHz to a dual 2 GHz. The system bus is 1 GHZ, and the system can hold up to 8 GB of ram. Internal storage can reach up to 500 GB with two 250 GB hard drives. This is one amazing system, and it starts at $1999. Systems should start shipping in August. if I am not mistaken the system will be being delivered by the team at http://shippingcontainer.world/ because of its size, since I also needed two monitors .

So there you have it… big announcements from Apple. Right now, we’ll take the free stuff that we can get – Safari and iChat AV Beta. The G5 will have to be put on the waiting list for the Wood family, at least for a while. But it’s great to know that it’s out there. 🙂

“Strawbery bankes forever”

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Howdy! I have been involved with my internship for one who week now. This blog entry is for those of you who are dying to hear what I’m actually doing. Here’s the scoop. Strawbery Banke has an old house called the Wheelwright House. It was built in the 1780’s. Until very recently it has housed an exhibit of ‘real’ ‘old’ artifacts. My job this summer is to come up with a plan to make the first floor into an ‘interactive, experience based’ exhibit. Basically we want to set up the kitchen, family area and formal living room just the way those rooms would have looked in the late 18th century. The catch? Everything inside can be touched, sat on, tried out, etc. The goal is to have different experiencial activities for the public to try, ie: kneeding bread dough, writing with a quill and ink, churning butter.

The first steps (which I have jumped head first into) are to research other museums that have exhibits that might be similar and to research estate inventories from the Portsmouth region between 1760-1790. These house inventories will give me a look at what the average home had during that time period.

So far I’m having fun. The people have all been quite nice and I’m looking forward to getting some ideas and research down on paper.

Mid o’ the week to ya!

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Howdy folks, it’s Wednesday! The week is halfway through. Hooray!

On Monday I visited my allergist for some more testing, since the first time I went I forgot to stop taking Claritin. Oops! In any case, they ran subdermal tests for treatable allergies – 13 needles total, each one containing a moderate dose of an allergen for which there is a pharmacological treatment. These include cat and dog allergens, dust mites, mold, pollen, as well as trees, grass, weeds, etc.

I came back with five positives out of the 13 tests: general trees, maple trees, birch trees, grasses, and weeds. This was interesting news, as I had previously thought I was allergic to cats and dogs. But their test showed that I had no reaction at all to those allergens! In any case, the tree, grass, and weed allergies hit me in three out of the four seasons, so the only season where I’m safe from allergies is winter. The doc prescribed me Allegra-D and Rhinocort Aqua – the former an antihistamine to block my main allergy symptoms, and the latter a corticosteroid to help keep my nose from being irritated by allergens and other airborne particles.

I’m looking forward to enjoying the summer without allergies. 🙂

In other news, Becky has started her internship at Strawbery Banke. It sounds like she’s enjoying it so far! She has her own little research area set up and she is starting to get busy with projects.

In two weeks Becky and I will be heading out to Portland, Oregon for the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. CBD is sending me and another colleague out there to take some classes and learn new techniques, and they were gracious enough to allow our spouses to come along for the trip. It should be an educational time for me, and a fun time for both of us. We hope to also spend some time with Jackie and the rest of the Ways while we are out there. 🙂

Finally, I hope you are all following along with our newly-created Scrabble This! blog.

🙂

Guns don’t talk.

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I could not resist posting my own caption to this picture that CNN ran today. U.S. troops raided the town of Fallujah, Iraq to find illegal weapons, now that the weapon amnesty is over.

Talk, worm, talk! Tell us where the other guns are hiding! My buddies here can’t wait to get you to the smelting pot!

Batch Mode

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Becky is down in New Jersey this weekend visiting Jenn, so I’m batching it. Incidentally, this is the first time we have been apart since our wedding. Things would be much nicer if Becky were with me, but I have had a good amount of fun today in her absence.

This morning I attended the opening of the Chestnut Hill Apple Store. I was one of the first 1000 people in the store, so I got a free t-shirt. I also picked up a few not-quite-as-free items while I was there. 🙂 You can see the items, as well as pictures of the store, in the photo gallery.

After that, I figured I might as well zip into Boston… so I took a leisurely drive east on Route 9 straight into downtown Boston. I parked at the first garage I could find for under $20, and sort of ambled around for a while on foot and on T. I eventually ended up at Quincy Market to eat lunch and watch some interesting street performers.

In the afternoon I headed back to Beverly to play with the new toys a bit and take a nap. Then in the evening I went out to dinner and a movie with me, myself, and I. The three of us watched The Italian Job, which we quite enjoyed. It was a great caper film in the vein of other recent films such as Ronin, The Transporter, and Ocean’s Eleven.

That’s it for tonight. Tomorrow Becky will be back, and that will be a happy thing. 🙂

Scrabble This!

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The Woods have a little passion. That passion is Scrabble. They play often. Sometimes they have lots of great words on the board. Sometimes all they can come up with is “can”. Either way you have been invited to join in on these games. Post-game of course. (unless you are in the greater Beverly area and want to come over and play).

We have created a new blog. It is called:Scrabble This! and it is a photo blog of each of our finished games.

This idea was born last night. Please travel over to the new site and check out last night’s game.

from Bank to Banke

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Well folks, as of Friday, June 6, 2003 I am no longer an employee at Danvers Savings Bank.. I can’t say that I will miss the job, or many of the people, but I did meet some lovely people there who I will miss working with. All in all I think this is a very positive career move for me.

After a week of rest, relaxation, housekeeping and craftyness I will begin a summer internship at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I will be working in the Education department developing a new hands-on history exhibit. I’m excited to get started.

The first day of my little vacation has proved to be productive. I spent the morning sewing up a curtain/shade for the kitchen window. The window has served its term as the cinderella of windows, dressed in rags, but is now decked out to go to the ball.

Gordonexus

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I’ve created a new feature for our site. It’s called Gordonexus. Basically, it’s a collecting spot for links to people who are or were related to Gordon College at some point.

It’s linked up above, and also in the right hand nav bar. I hope that the page will make it into some search engines, so that Gordon people will be able to find each other on the web. 🙂 I, of course, make no guarantees that the pages will be useful, or even interesting at all. 😉

If you’re a Gordonite or former Gordonite and would like to have your site on the Gordonexus, just let us know!

Smurfs

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Remember the Smurfs? They were three apples high.

And three Apple Stores is what the Boston area is about to have.

On Saturday, June 14, at 10 a.m., the Chestnut Hill Apple Store will open. It is located at the Chestnut Hill Mall in Chestnut Hill, an eastern neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts.

I’m not sure if I will be able to attend the opening of this store, but for more information, click here.

For those who don’t know, the other two Apple Stores are located at the CambridgeSide Galleria in Cambridge, and at the Northshore Mall in Peabody.