Category: General

Hello Spring

Well, spring is here. In fact it’s April already. The nights are still cold but the days are getting mild. It’s been a few weeks since life has returned to normal WTR the work week, but I feel like I’m still catching up. Haven’t even had time to go shopping. Been trying to catch up on some random purchases. Been getting back into biking and rollerblading regularly again. We *did* manage to finish tiling and painting our bathroom (more on that in a previous post). Also last weekend we started getting the yard going for spring. Raked off the leaves and debris, and uncovered the fig tree, and started planning what we want to do this spring.

Been making progress on the new Mac. Every new thing is an adventure. After we discovered that Boot Camp won’t work if there are three partitions on the drive, we basically started over. We got a new external hard drive (which we were planning on anyway for backup) and put a 10.5 partition on it, and then put a 10.4 and a Win XP partition on the main boot drive. I went back and installed proTools on 10.4 and it worked, and so did the drivers for my MIDI interface, and so the whole MIDI rig. So far so good. Last week we installed VMWare, which involved calling up Microsoft to talk numbers with a phone robot. Tons of fun. My friend Blick, who is a Mac ProTools guru, came over to help me out last weekend with my music setup. Still after all that SampleTank still doesn’t appear in the list of plugins. So it looks like I’m gonna buy the new SampleTank upgrade for intel macs and see how that goes. At least I always have the option or running PT under windows now.

Been making progress on a new song. The song is gonna be it’s own post when it’s ready but for now I’ll say it’s a kinda prog-ish r&b number and I’m working out the horn arrangement. I realized as I was tracking it that I don’t really have funk chops on the bass, so I went for something I’ll call the funky rock approach that seems pretty good. Now I’m up to penciling the horn section.

And I did get a bit of a spring break, a few comp days. We took the kids up for a day of hanging out in the Catskills with my brother Martin and his fiancé Kathleen at this quaint Victorian era lodge. Sort of like camping but without sleeping out in the cold. The place had a Teddy Roosevelt kind of vibe; thematically consistent with the Museum of Natural History. It was built kinda like a castle into the side of cliff on a small lake. We went hiking and ice skating and swimming, and had a blast. Pictures to be posted sometime in the indeterminate future. The next day M & K came back to our place, and we hung out and played Wii and Settlers of Catan. Our friends Steve and Alice from Texas (yo!) also popped by for a visit.

I’ve also been making progress on diagramming my origami turtle (hope to be ready in another few days), but overall I feel like I need to devote some time to new origami designs, and haven’t yet had the opportunity. I have a bunch of ideas in my head I need to work out in paper.

Ski

One of the few things I really love about winter is skiing, so I was really happy that we finally had a chance to go this year. Technically, we went skiing way back in December at a local hill near my parent’s house, but that barely counts cuz the main purpose of that trip was to introduce the girls to skiing, and mostly they took a lesson and I took a few slushy runs down a very short slope. I don’t think Jeannie ever even put her skis on. Still, it accomplished it’s primary goal, and Lizzy took to it, and Michelle liked the idea although did not do so well on the rope tow.

Then January and February flew by in a blur as I worked alot weekends and I had an injured foot anyway, so, like, whatever. Finally, with my project gone live and back to a normal schedule I was determined to have a real day skiing before winter’s end. Lizzy was thrilled, but Michelle decided she didn’t want to come, so we spilt the kids up, which turned out to be the perfect move. It’s something we rarely do, but they’re really at different levels, and Michelle had a great time with Nana and Poppy.

Of course the other wild card was the weather. The day before was pouring rain and stormy, to the point where my friend Nick had major flooding issues with his new basement, and my next door neighbor lost a chunk of his garage roof, and we had a rather heavy fallout of tree branches in our yard. But then it turned freezing overnight, so we went to bed hoping for the best. We got up way early, a problem made worse by the fact our government, in keeping with its recent trend of terrible policy making, decreed that this was the night we’d move our clocks ahead instead of a more sensible date in April. So off we went.

It turned out to be great day for skiing. The weather was in the upper 20’s and amazingly they had groomed large amounts of the mountain to decent conditions. The place we picked to go was Catamount, in the Berkshires in Massachusetts , about 100 miles from our house. They’re not a huge mountain, but big enough to be fun. Another nice thing about it is you can park close to the lodge. We started with Lizzy on the bunny hill, and discovered they had a conveyer belt instead of a tow rope. Michelle will be thrilled to hear about this. Lizzy took a lesson, and by the time she was done she’d been up the chair lift and down a real slope. Meanwhile Jeannie and I got in a bunch of good runs. One of the nice thing about Catamount is alot of the trails wind thru the trees, and my last run was very peaceful (and high-speed), as I was the only one on the trail. Perfect moment of ski Zen.

After lunch we spent our time with Lizzy and she was doing great zigzagging down the hill. She really wanted to make it the whole way down with out falling, and was well on her way, but toward the bottom she picked up some speed and the wind came up, and she almost lost her hat, and in saving her hat she lost her balance. I told her if that happened again just let the hat go; I was right behind and would grab it. Shaw’nuff next run the same happened, and she let her hat go, and made it to the bottom, quite triumphantly!

So that was it, now I’m ready for spring. As luck would have it, the weather is getting milder, and our government, going against its recent trend of deplorable policymaking, rolled back the clocks a month earlier than usual, so even though I’m getting up before it’s light out again, today I got to go out for a bike ride after work in the daylight.

South Side of the Sky

Good news: my project for work is going live this week, which means no more working nights and weeks to meet the deadline. I worked basically continually from Thursday morning thru last night. At least it’s a good time of year to be sitting inside in front of the computer. I feel like I’ve made it through the worst of the winter, and the days are getting longer. On the other hand, I’ve been not devoting as much time to music and origami as would have liked this winter, not to mention playing Super Mario Galaxy, and need to make that up. Oh yeah and finishing tiling my 2nd bathroom.

At least I got out on my bike a few times when there was a break in the weather. I find I can tolerate 40 degrees or higher pretty comfortably. And I got my bike fixed up just recently. I originally bought my bike when I moved to California, and Jeannie and I were sharing a car, and my commute was shorter, so I did it on bike. I bought it at Palo Alto Bicycles, which at the time had a little neon sign that said “Google” in the window in the floor above the bike shop, the home of a tiny internet startup. Jeannie and I had a conversation something like this:

I though it was spelled Googol. I wonder what they do.”

“I think they do search or something like that.”

“Sounds interesting, I wonder if I should apply for a job there.”

“Nah, most startups tank. And Alta Vista already owns search.   I’m sure they’ll be gone in a year.   Stick with the job you’re at.”

It was a basic but well made mountain bike (a Trek if you’re curious), that has held up well over the years. No shock on the front, cuz in those days it was a pretty high-end feature. Palo Alto has lots of bike paths and I used to pass over a cute little bridge and by a kind-of farm with donkeys, so it was very pleasant.

So I switched to biking in the evenings after work when it got too dark to skate, and kept it up into November, and here and there in December, January and February. But then I got a flat tire, and not only my tubes but my tires were shot, so into the shop it went. This time it was Pelham Bicycles, with no internet startup on the floor above. They put on new tires, trued the wheels and replaced the brakes and cables. Now it rides as good as new. Of course as soon as I got it back from the shop, I rode it once and it was back to the cold and snow again that very evening. Ah well spring is getting closer. I’m looking forward to taking a few days off to catch up on things, and hopefully getting a day of skiing in before it’s too late, and get a bit of a spring break.

Special Guest Blogger: Lizzy

Today we have a guest contributor to this blog, my daughter Lizzy. She’s been getting into taking pictures and wrote about a few of them. Here you go:

“This is my play-dough heart. On Valentine’s Day Michelle brought pink play-dough from school. I made a heart out of it. Plus we got a lode of candy. Also I saved my brownie.”

“We didn’t have the week off but we had Monday off. But we had a snow day on Friday. On Friday we built a snowman, had a snowball fight and played with our friends on our block. And we also played ice princesses.”

Caribbean Blue

You might think all I’ve been doing this winter is working extra hours and complaining about the cold. But no! Last week Jeannie and I managed to sneak out for a long weekend getaway to Nassau, in the Bahamas. Four days of lying on the sand, sailing sailboats, swimming in the ocean and pools, eating lots of seafood and drinking fruity rum drinks, and checking out aquariums full of sharks and manta rays and exhibits on pirate history. Aye me hearties!

We stayed at a place called Breezes on Cable Beach, which was very nice. The flights were smooth both ways. It was a much needed break, and our return to the winter is mitigated by a warm spell this week.

Here are a handful of pictures. A full gallery will be put up at some point in the future.

Fotoz 2007 Summer III

Well, it’s still January. The season of darkness and cold, fated by the alignment of cosmic entities. But at least I’ve been taking advantage of time spent inside to move into my new Mac and get my photo publishing software up and running. So here are two more galleries from last summer.

http://www.zingman.com/fotooz/2007-05
http://www.zingman.com/fotooz/2007-06

As usual, these galleries are for friends and family and are password protected. If you are friends and/or family and need a password, please send me an email.

Meanwhile, here’s a sampling of the pix:

Fotoz 2007 Summer II

Well, it’s January. At least the days are getting longer and it’s twilight instead of actual nighttime when we get up in the morning again. But the holidays are over and the deep part of winter is upon us. Apart from the skiing there’s not much I enjoy about being outside this time of year. So it’s all about beating the cold.

And what better way than to flash back to the warm part of the year? I’ve been making galleries of pictures I’ve taken, but I remain about 6 months behind real time. So here are some pics from a camping trip from last July:

http://www.zingman.com/fotooz/2007-04

These galleries are for friends and family and are password protected. If you are friends and/or family and need a password, please send me an email.

Meanwhile, here’s a sampling of the pix:

Kickin’ TV

Recently I realized that the all the television I’ve watched this fall has consisted of: Local on the 8’s a few times a week, Dennis Kucinich emptying his pockets on the Colbert Report, my kids singing the Spongebob Squarepants theme to wake me up one Saturday, a cool show on extrasolar planets, and a few instances of random channel flipping. I’ve heard that the average American watches 6 hours of TV a day, but I don’t see how that’s even possible.

It’s gotten to the point where I generally find TV difficult to watch, largely because of the constant interruption of commercials. I always mute the ads, but even so.  More an more they go for disturbing, just to get me to buy things I don’t want. It’s like thought control from a Kurt Vonnegut story. It used to be when I was a kid there were 4 ad breaks an hour, totaling about 10 minutes an hour. Now it’s about 50-50 each of show and ads. It makes is hard to tolerate even if a show is good, and most of the shows out there are not. And with cable it’s even worse than regular TV. You’re paying twice to watch the show, cuz you’re paying for the channels and then you pay again by being shown ads.

I’ve been wanting to get rid of cable for a long time. For a few years we were getting our internet via cable in a bundle, so to drop cable wouldn’t’ve saved much money, but now we’re getting our internet thru the phone company via fiber. And the cable company just raised our rates to $650 a year! I’d go for a system where I could pay for just the channels or show I like, but the industry is too greedy to allow that sort of thing and they want me to support hundreds of channels I don’t like, so goodbye.

Plus we have NetFlix and a pretty good shelf of DVD’s so we can watch what we choose without ads pretty easily. I tend to like movies and documentaries. One thing I want to do this fall and winter is watch the entire (13 hour long) Lord of the Rings trilogy. I started in September and now it’s mid-December and I’m halfway thru The Two Towers. So I’m doing pretty good.

Now we’re back to plain old TV with rabbit ears. Have to figure out how to get the weather report from the internet or the radio or regular TV. Other than that I don’t miss it. I haven’t even seen how the channels come in yet. Our house never had a roof antenna but I might look into getting one if we need to. Meanwhile, I can take the $650 I saved and look into buying a drum set!