Sometimes too many is just the right amount.I recently bought a Kindle Touch. I didn't need one, as I already have 3 others: a 1st generation Kindle, Kindle 3, and a Kindle Fire. Some of you might consider that to be too many Kindles. Not so! I had specific uses for 3 of them, and today I discovered a use for many more.
<p> The 1st gen is an original, I'd say it's a "First Edition" Kindle, and although it's ugly and outdated, it was signed by Neal Stephenson, whom I admire very much.
A Summary of my weekend (so far)… <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.lua.org/">Lua</a> – Because I don't know anything about Lua. </li> <li> <a href="http://taskwarrior.org/">Taskwarrior</a> – Awesome terminal based task app. </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/xolox/vim-notes">Notes.vim</a> – Like Notational Velocity, only in Vim. </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/weisslj/muttjump">MuttJump</a> – So I can jump from Taskwarrior to the corresponding email message in mutt </li> <li> <a href="http://irssi.org/">irssi</a> – When was the last time you were in an IRC channel?
It's people that make technology great <p> Other than a quick test when I got my iPhone, I'd never used Facetime. But now that my daughter Jessica has an iPhone, I use it all the time. </p> <p> Jess recently vacationed in Florida and used Facetime to take me on virtual tours of wherever she was. Then she would ask me to "put the dogs on.
I get angry <p> I become angry while driving. Not mildly annoyed, but full-on vein-popping, teeth-grittingly furious. This isn't the exception either. It happens nearly every time I get behind the wheel. </p> <p> I'm not normally aggressive or prone to violence. In fact, I'd consider myself a pretty mild-mannered fella. Very roll-with-the-punches, I'd say. And yet, I am consumed with road rage during even the most basic commute.
A recurring dream The dream always begins with the fear that I hadn’t buried the bodies deep enough. You see, the floor of the fruit cellar was made of very hard-packed dirt, making it difficult to dig. Especially when in a hurry. I had buried them long ago and was not entirely certain that I’d done a sufficient job of covering my tracks.
Now, the police were snooping around while investigating an entirely unrelated crime.
A story about enemies One of my best friends in grade school was Tom. Or Tommy, as we called him. One of my (and Tommy’s) enemies, so far as it’s possible to have enemies at that age, was Sturgis. That was his last name. I don’t remember his first. Anyway, we just called him Sturgis. We disliked the entire Sturgis family. I have no idea why.
Behind my house, there were a series of bike trails that criss-crossed and circled the orchards.
A story about courage.
My friend Brad and I wanted to buy Peter Brown’s album, “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me.” I don’t remember why we wanted it, but we’d saved our money and were planning to split the cost. Buying records was a big deal for us in 1978.
We walked to the local Meijer (we weren’t old enough to drive), found the record, and discovered that the cover contained a silhouette of a naked woman.
A story about accidents My family spent vacation time each summer camped in a trailer on a “permanent” lot at a campground in Newaygo. The park was called “Sandy Beach,” even though their really wasn’t much of a beach or much sand on it.
I’ve always preferred the company of myself to that of a bunch of other people, so I’d spend much of my time just wandering around finding my own little imaginary adventures.
A story about flying Tom, John, and Frank, three brothers, lived in the house directly across the street from me. One day we decided to build an airplane. A real one. This was probably 1976, which means I was 12 years old.
I grew up on a dead end street. Behind my house were infinite orchards. Behind the houses on the other side of the road was a long steep hill ending in something that may have been a river, but was more likely just a creek.
A story about small pleasures The house I grew up in was located on the edge of a large apple orchard. Our back yard butted up to an open field, which in turn butted against the orchard. Directly across the field were 2 trees growing golden delicious apples. Golden Delicious have always been my favorite apples. I don’t know if that’s a result of the convenience of having the trees just a short walk away or not.
A story about revenge
In late elementary school I was already smaller than most of my classmates. Fortunately I was agreeable and funny enough where bigger kids didn’t bother much with me. Most of them didn’t anyway. One kid, Chucky Lee, was 2 years older than me and much bigger. Chucky was a bully. Not all the time, but once in a while he’d just feel like showing off and decide to wail on some poor little nearby kid.
A story about extermination Young boys are mean and they like to pick on things smaller than themselves. Animals, for example.
Nothing cute of course, but small slimy critters were fair game. It all started with what we called “tent” worms. You know, those fuzzy little caterpillar-looking things that build elaborate web-like tents in trees. The fields behind my house had plenty of them, so I would gather up a couple of friends and conduct a series of Great Tent Worm Raids.
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