I need a job like this one:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,395181,00.html

I think I’d qualify very well, especially with my degree in Aerospace and experience doing documentation in the Aerospace industry.

Where do I sign up?

Every year, parents all over the US go through this horrible experience called “Back to School Shopping”. I am happy to announce that this year, I’m done. Early. Now. Fini.

As schools begin to ask parents to supply more and more basic supplies, it becomes a bigger and bigger task to make sure your kids have all the right notebooks, pencils, tissues, etc., to do their work. You get a nice big list, and then head to the store where nothing is organized in remotely the same order as on your list.

I think I orbited the 4 aisles at least 4 times making sure I had all the necessary items. It probably took over half an hour. For someone like me who sets land speed records for getting in and out the doors at the grocery store, that’s an eternity.

It seems like if you were really good, you could make money shopping for people and delivering custom kits for your kids. But I’m not really good and the frustration isn’t worth the money to me. Can someone develop a standard for listing items, organizing items in the store, and then just put everything in one long aisle? Probably not.

All I can say is, I’m happy it’s over for this year.

I can’t wait until Andrew gets a little older and then we have to add on the pain of Back to School *clothes*.
Not.

Tags: Rants

I’ve posted pictures of the annual household garden in the Pictures section. For those of you too lazy to click on multiple links:

http://www.stickman.org/Pictures/Pictures-2008/garden2008/

So far, we’ve picked about a half-dozen tomatoes (early blooming Romas and large Grape tomatoes). 4 zucchini (including the one pictured - I picked it after the picture) and half a dozen cucumbers. We also picked some green peppers and one of the chiles this evening (which we’ve come to realize can’t be Serrano Chiles because they’re not the right color).

This garden doesn’t vary much from last year except it’s twice the size and we’ve added a bigger assortment of herbs. Our one disappointment this year is that both Sweet Basil plants we’ve planted are doing poorly - but in different ways. One is small, but the leaves are deep green and very flavorful (but way too small). The other is pretty big, but the leaves are very light green and taste like, well...leaves....

Will probably update this as the summer goes along.

This year’s garden is courtesy of my second cousin and her family. They bought me a huge gift card to Lowe’s for my birthday, and I spent a bunch of it on garden stuff! Thank you all!

Tags: Gardening

Someone sent me the following two links as overpackaging demonstrations by HP.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/

and

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/

Ayup....items definitely overpacked. Must be that oversized European A4 paper....

Tags: Humor, Technology

A bit of an overdue posting.

I got this wonderful present from my wife on Father’s Day (I was allowed to get anything that would encourage me to get some exercise - it was a hint...)



It’s the bike, not the Mini Cooper, silly....specifically, a Cannondale Adventure 4 hybrid bike. It is compared against the similarly green Mini Cooper though.

I’ve been riding almost every day. Fridays are the major exception - I mow the lawn for exercise on that morning. I’ve only fallen off twice, and probably average a short 5 miles per ride. But it does get me out of the house and getting some exercise! There are lots of nice trails around here and the terrain is varied enough that I do get a pretty good workout. I love the peace and quiet too (no iPod on these rides for me!)

Tags: Bike

No doubt, you’ve heard about Apple’s great meltdown today with the release of the new iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software.

So no, I don’t have a new iPhone 3G. I’m not in a hurry to get one. I waited 6 months to get my iPhone. I don’t feel a need to be first.

Unfortunately, I did feel a need to get the new iPhone 2.0 software. Why? It wasn’t the new Application download capabilities (though it’s nice and I’ve downloaded a couple). It was the fact that they finally added separate calendars to the calendar program and fixed a long standing gripe I’ve had about the mail reader where it couldn’t read forwarded emails. So when they posted the updated image yesterday on some of the typical Mac interest sites and no one complained of any problems, I went ahead and updated.

Bad idea to try to do anything in a way not sanctioned by Steve Jobs.

So the firmware that was distributed yesterday was different from the official release version of today. And the one distributed yesterday wedged my iPhone so solid overnight, I had to put it into recovery mode and reload from scratch. Then, what was already a painfully long recovery process got compounded by the fact that every iPhone user in the world (new and old) was trying to update and reactivate their iPhones too. ARRRGHHHH!

However, I finally got the right firmware file, did the right incantations, and at 4:15pm today, fully 8 hours after I discovered my iPhone was an iBrick, I had my phone properly upgraded.

I’m hoping it doesn’t crash again tonight.

Lesson learned - don’t be the first, don’t be impatient, and don’t do what Mr. Jobs says not to do.

Sigh.

Today is a good day not to have been transferred to department 1107940052 at work.

This is the department code for the Sun MegaRIF 2008...

Happy to say that this is not my department number today.

I took some time over this long weekend to clean out the basement. Since moving into our new house almost 3 years ago, our basement has become less and less, um, “clean” as it were. I set out Thursday to do something about that. In addition to freeing up some walking room, the other goal was to take advantage of the dwindling supply of free dumpsters in our neighborhood (the result of contruction being almost complete in our subdivision).

I made great progress, but only got 1/4 of the basement sorted. I found lots of things like pictures from junior high school and high school, documents from my office I hadn’t looked at for 5 years, and, well, junk. If I get motivated, maybe I’ll scan in a retrospective of some of those old pictures. I also tossed all my old college notes (so all thoughts of Aerospace Engineering as a second career are now gone).

I did, however, come across 7 full file boxes that have documents that require shredding. Great. Shredding one box left me with a yard bag full of confetti for recycling, and an overheated shredder which no longer seems to be shredding as well after accidentally ingesting what I think was a paper clip. Sigh.

And I never realized how tall dumpsters were until I had to toss a 30 lb. box of old course notes into it....

All in all, a useful exercise in exercise. And the basement is now *slightly* cleaner.

Tags: Home Improvement