Fellow Californians, I believe this to be a sensible vote — please vote NO on Proposition 8. Thanks! And yes, as a matter of fact, I do have friends whose marriages would be affected by this. You can read more of the history in the wikipedia article same-sex marriage in California.
August 2008 Thirty-two posts
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Home, Finally.
After two weeks of traveling, I’m ready to be somewhere, and the somewhere I am is home. It’s been a wonderful two weeks of vacation with family in Hawaii and Washington and parts in-between.
Where are you?
Lots to catch up on. I’ll start tomorrow. Well, maybe a little bit tonight.
My goal Thursday is to do NOTHING. I’m not sure it’s possible, but it’s the goal I’ve been saying out loud.
Is doing nothing possible? Is it possible for me? Possibly Office Space-style is what I was thinking, but I only thought of that when I typed out “doing nothing.”
I hope you’re all having a great day.
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Three from the drive to Washington State
So we were in Hawaii last on Tuesday. Now it’s Friday and we’re in Washington state: Monroe. Here are some photos from the trip. When I say “some” I mean “three” and they may or not be representative.
Also, my phone is still broken (screen whited out) so twittering and flickring is down significantly. Sad about that a bit.
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Three Photos from Yesterday
Yesterday we started out hot on the west coast of the island, and ended up rainy on the northeastern (Hana Road) coast. It was actually quite a nice day. We went and hiked up to Twin Falls, one of many waterfalls and swimming holes on Maui. We swam for a bit, and I even ended up jumping off the waterfall into the water below. It was only a little unsafe, but I was not hurt. I was asking if it was clear below, but I did end up narrowly missing a person below. I was extremely apologetic to the guy, but he was fine. Quite an adventure. The water was about 16 feet deep at the point where I jumped, and the drop was 40 feet deep. I was wearing Teva-style sandals and did touch the bottom as I dropped, but not that hard. I’d like to work out the physics of various weights and how far a jump into water you can do, and how deep the water needs to be.
This jump is not something I can recommend for everyone. But if we went again, I would do it again. It was a blast, and very refreshing. My aunt was disappointed that no photos captured this event.
Lots to think about from that experience. It’s rare I’m the most “daredevil” among a group of people. I don’t think I quite know how to reign myself in when I’m in that position. I need to be aware of my influence in such situations, and moderate the advice I give, to, say, my younger cousins. I think, strangely, I was acting very much as my father would, and did, pushing at the limits of my own physical capabilities to do what, make a point? Make sure everyone has a good time? Push on people to take interesting risks about which stories can be told? I can’t speak for my father, but I think at that leading edge of adrenaline, I make different decisions. In retrospect, I find it fascinating psychologically. One of the things I’ve gotten adept at in the past 4 years is “pop the hood” on my psyche and look in and see how I tick. It’s rare that I can’t immediately see where my motivations come from. Yesterday is a data point I’ll be thinking about for a while.
Oh, and here are the three photos, taken in the space of about 20 minutes as we drove from Lahaina on the way to Twin Falls.
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Offline Blog Tools
Some months ago I was prompted to learn a bit more about the tools out there for offline and online alternating blogging tools. Not server software, but applications which allow you to compose your blog and post when you have online access. I was not very impressed by any of them, but then I also am not part of whatever the demographic is that wants these tools.
So here’s the list I came up with, lo those months ago:
MarsEdit 2 (I’m still astonished that author does not include WYSIWYG)
http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/ (for Mac) (30 day trial, cheap)
http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/faq.html no WYSIWYG! Ouch!
– not yet testedBlogDesk
http://www.blogdesk.org/ (for Windows) (free)
– tested it, works greatWindows Live Writer
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/ (for Windows) (free)
http://wordpress.com/windows-live-writer/
– worked pretty good. kind of impressed Microsoft has a product like thisScribeFire
http://www.scribefire.com/ (addon Mozilla) (free)
– seemed to work okay, Firefox pluginIt’s All Text
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125
– not really offline, but sort of interesting
– I didn’t use this enough to form much of an opinionAlso check out this post: Improve Your Workflow with a Blog Editing Program and this thread:
Best or better blogapi editor around.Ecto (Mac)
http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/
– did not end up trying this one outZoundry
http://www.zoundry.com/
Qumana
http://www.qumana.com/
– both of these seem to want to post some kind of spam ads with all your posts, this turned me off so I never tried them out. I suppose it’s possible they have no-ad modes, but, not for me -
Running Out Of Tropical
So we return to “the mainland” or “The States” on Tuesday. We’re running out of tropical paradise, but that is fine, this has been a lovely trip altogether. Enjoyable and family and chill. Next week will be a trip to Washington state with even more family and I hope just as much chill time, though after the requisite stressful travel time (driving, not flying though).
My phone is on the fritz, but only the display — I seem to have lost all contrast, so everything is a semi-uniform white, extremely light gray (perhaps #dedede, to you HTML nerds), and an occasional black that’s really a dark gray. So photos and twittering have been rebelling. It’s as though my phone has taken a vacation as well. Though really it just drives me to check Leah’s laptop slightly more often. Disconnect? No thanks. I like a trickle of news and updates from blogs and news and twitter.
I also did some deep-diving on my blog archives and found precisely when I was last in Hawaii — that would be July 2002, see: Hawai’i and Memories and Greetings from Maui and A Picture of Me From Waikoloa.
These were posts made from internet cafes I think. And the photo was posted after the vacation itself. At that time I was an oddball, sniffing around for WiFi, trying to check my email–my typical situation then was running a unix shell, sshing, or (augh!) telnetting into my hosting machine and running pine. Nowadays several in our party regularly check their email, even while vacationing. And posting to a blog? What the heck is that? At the time I was still using blogger.com for my posting, posting via FTP.
I think this is quite a cultural change in only 6 years that I was so unusual before, and now I’m a commonplace. People are more connected. It’s simply the way things are.
So today I think we’re going to be going to a local waterfall, a little hike. Otherwise trying to enjoy a Sabbath, resting as much as we can stand.
Here are two photos from the other day, when my phone was working properly:
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Is John McCain Stupid?
Daniel Henninger of none other than The Wall Street Journal, asks “Is John McCain Stupid” and basically comes up with the answer, “yes.”
Sitting on beaches and wandering around the isle of Maui, I’m far removed from politics this week, but that headline caught my eye.
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Charles Schulz
(I started this post in 2007 and left it as a draft, I think because I found the subject matter too maudlin).
In 2006, in the post Joe Cool, I wrote:
I find Charles Schulz to be a tragic figure though. Based on the interviews I read, he never fulfilled the ambitions of his life. Maybe I am misreading him — maybe he was self-critical, but despite having created the most popular comic strip of his age and becoming fabulously wealthy, he didn’t consider himself a “real artist” because his medium was not oil paint and canvas, it was bristol board and ink — and because his work was in the newspaper, not in a “real gallery.”
What I had read was a book called Conversations with Charles Schulz, which I had bought in 2002: Third Best Comic Book Store Ever.
In 2007 a book came out called Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography which brought out some controversy because it brought out a “darker side” of Charles “Sparky” Schulz. The controversy brought out some interesting commentary about Schulz, from his family, from fellow comics professionals, and about the nature of biographies. I followed it in earnest, but I didn’t get the book, because, well, I think I already understood something about Schulz from having read so many different interviews with him in Conversations.
Herewith are some of the links I collected from that time period:
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To Molokini; Seasickness
One of the “pre-planned” activities we’ve done was to take a boat out to Molokini and snorkel. Leah and I (and the various family we’re with) enjoyed it very much. We went on Maui Classic Charters’ Four Winds II. Lots of fish, clear water, nice swimming.
I’ve never been seasick that I can recall, and as far as I know I don’t get seasick. I decided on the way out to try and experience seasickness, knowing that my Aunt Jacqui had brought seasickness medication that could ameliorate symptoms once I got it. I was, alas, not able to induce that feeling. I tried simply closing my eyes. I tried looking directly at the undulations of the boat in the water as we were moving, I tried to maximize the feeling of “falling” like on a rollercoaster as the boat was cruising. I think I may be immune from the illness, if indeed that’s possible. The wikipedia page on seasickness implies that it’s possible to be immune: “while others are relatively immune, or become immune through exposure.” Though I’m not sure how I’d have become immune, not really having been on many boats. I wonder if it was my early exposure to swimming (I think I was four?) and how I took to swimming so well. I have no idea what the correlations are, but I suppose I’m glad I don’t get seasick.