The view from the window next to the trees displayed below. 

Another one of the original works of art on the wall towards which I never gave a second glance. It's amazing how much you can see with a camera that gets overlooked by the naked eye. 

These are the plates above the door from the main part of the house into the covered porch. I never gave them much of a glance until I edited this picture. Nice Plates.  

Mother Daughter Reunion 

Below Zero Last NIght

It was below zero last night. The ice fishermen are out on the river. I count four from this window.

They are keeping close to shore. It will probably take a few more nights below zero before the perminant village is installed. Because to temperature is going up during the week, the shacks out there now will be towed off.

To more days in the fridged north before we return to balmy Boston.

=30=

In the Maine Woods in December

How does howling winds, 10 degrees above zero, F., sound?

I am sitting at the computer on the enclosed porch overlooking the frozen river. The word 'cold' comes to mind. Not too cold, yet. Too cold is when you walk out to the shed to get wood for the stove and your eyeballs can't move because the tears have frozen, you can't breath through your mouth because your lips have frozen together, now THAT'S cold!

It's too early in the season for the ice fishermen to be out there.
It takes a few nights below zero for the ice to be hard enough for them to pull their little huts out onto the river ice with their snowmobiles.

They once used jeeps, the small WWII type of jeep not the monsterous SUV jeeps of today. I suppose before that horses were used. That would be long before my time.

There is snow predicted for the drive back through Boston on Wednesday, but we'll have snow tires on the car. This will hopefully make the drive a tad easier,

Ah, Maine in Winter, what fun...

=30=

No one should drive in this weather

Okay, that was too scary for words.

We drove north from Quincy after a family gathering,
through Boston on Rte. 1 and then onto 95 North.

The interstate had not been plowed or sanded. Our
packed minivan was going all over the road.
There was no place to get off the interstate where
we wouldn't end up on a sideless farm road, so
we braved the road until we got to middle
Newburyport.

By then, the nerves were shaken and the windshield wipers
frozen. We were able to pull over at a Mobil station.
There we shook off the nerves and the windshield wipers.

It wasn't that far to New Hampshire, where fellow motorists
met at the station, told us the roads were passable.

My kudos to the New Hampshire and the Maine road crews.
A Bronx Cheer to the Massachusetts crews. The roads sucked
to the point of being dangerous. I just hope they weren't all
nice and warm watching the Patriots trounce the Jets.
=30=

London Underground Tube Blog

How Stuff Works

How a blog works

It's been a long time since I last mentioned the website I can only call "neat."
The site is How Stuff Works. If you've ever had a question regarding the basic
inner workings of just about anything, this is a good site to visit.

My favorite entry so far, and I know this will be a surprise to you, is the one
entitled How Blogs Work

It doesn't go into great detail but just enough to let you know what it is we're
dealing with here. It also talks you through signing up for a blogger.com
weblog, such as this one. The next section is a simplistic explanation of
the Blogophere. At least it tells you it exists and in very general terms
what it is from one point of view.

The entry on blogs mentions the Forbes Best Blogs page. That's worth a visit
as well, if you have an hour or so to kill and a good understanding on
how to load bookmarks in your browser.

I hope your holiday is going well.

=30=

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

If Christmas is the holiday your people use
to celebrate the rebirth of the sun,
now that days are getting longer,
I wish you the merriest of times.

=30=

GMail invitations.

I remember scrounging around for my GMail invitation not so long ago.

Now I have five of them just sitting there with no one asking for them. If
you would like one, just leave a comment to this blog and I would be glad to
send one to you.

=30=

Christmas Even on Shadowbrook...Desert Time!!!

w::bloggar is sending up duplicates

w::bloggar, the blog interface I use to upload messages directly from my desktop to Blogger has take on a new feature.

In the previous version, when you backloaded a previously published blog for editing, and you republished it, it replaced the edited version.

In this version of w::bloggar, 4.00.181, to place the corrected blog back in its prior location, you click on the "Post" icon and not the "Post & Publish."

When I reviewed the blog this morning and found similar duplications to the one found on Leo Laporte's blog, I was able to delete them using the online Blogger interface. Good thing it was there; it makes maintaining the blog so easy.

=30=

This site is copyrighted by JDK Communication

Though all I write is owned by JDK Communications, I found the
Creative Commons Licence displayed below to be of some interest.
There were no sites listed in the United States, but the link was
facinating.
=30=

Creative Commons Licence

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

Tomorrow and the day after is for Family...

I spent a good deal of time on the home laptop today.

For the next two days, I will come in here sparingly.

Happy Holidays!!

=30=

I jumped ship, but the siren calls

It didn't take long for me to jump from the Opera ship and onto the ocean liner that has become Firefox. The kick is now Opera is releasing a beta version to be called Opera 8. The oddest thing I have read about it so far is the voice recognition software. It will be imbedded in the structure. I could see this as a plug-in for those in need of such a feature, but why weigh the software down? The feature that took me away from Opera was the open ended email. Not the sort to check mail boxes to see if the mail has gone down, or even to read the ingredient list on fast food, I was still wondering what email I missed trusting to its style of delivery. Thunderbird has a similiar One Inbox feature for all the types of mail you have delivered, but inside the workings of the machine, you still set up how each mail box is treated. It also sets the filters up for so easily, I don't even think twice about setting a filter for a message that will probably be the only one from that particular source. Then there is Sunbird. It's a calendar, a PIM of sorts. I have played with it, it works, but then so do the other dozen or so PIM's I have tried down the years. A database is pretty much a database. The three I use at the moment are Locust Notes at work, Palm Desktop at work and on my palm and Time and Chaos on my laptop. I have been using Time and Chaos since it had a DOS interface. The amount of information I have put into that program is personally staggering. It has a Palm interface, but I don't think I want half of what I have in Time and Chaos to fill all the memory. This also gives me a chance to keep work somewhat at work and my personal information seperate. The Palm is the bridge. I don't know how I lived before it existed. This has become the time of year for lists of best blog sites. I won't bore you with my opinions, in general. The one I am having the most fun with right now is flickr.com. Like toys at christmas, we'll see how long it lasts. To those for whom it means something, Merry Christmas. =30=

Our electrician on a coffee break...This is a wacky town in which we live...

=31=
 

Our local UU Church is having three services tomorrow. The first is at 4:30, the second is somewhere around nine. The Midnight service will start at 11.
this is a little different from last year. A new minister likes to put his touch on the way things are run.
That's a good thing. I suppose.

=31= 

Number two: 

Ever the one to try something new, I took advantage of TypePad's free 30 day offer to try their on-line interface for blog creation. It was interesting, had some nice features, but was no more interesting than, say boog-city or the venerable blogger.com.
Here are snap shots of the two pages I created there. The offer expires today, and I don't plan to continue with the paid service.
=30= 

Sufism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sufism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Weather Report

Though I know of none, I am sure there is a superstition somehwere
about it snowing on the first day of Winter. It probably has something
to do with locust, China and the grand state of Utah, home of our
Governor's family.

You may be surprised to find me making an entry early on a Monday
morning. Be not so startled. I am teaching a class this evening at
1800. Ergo, I don't need to be in the office before 1400.

I took Friday off and here it is Monday and I am still not at work.
It kinda, sorta, almost feels like a four day weekend. I am sure
it won't feel that way when, tomorrow morning, I have to get up
at five to make it into work on time.

The good news there is there will be only one more day after that
before I go on vacation.

Real Vacation, with a capital V. Then I don't return to work until
the first Monday of the New Year. That is assuming the job is
still there.

Not too , supersticios am I?
=30=

Aimie's Black Poodles

---

=30=

Aimie's Mother and Aunts

The older photograph is of Aime's mother and aunts.  If  the
second photo posted along with the first it is of Amie's two
black full sized black poodles. 

The brown one was sitting next to me on the back porch.

=30=

The entry below this one was the Flickr Zeitgeist

One day, if I think there are enough interesting photos to upload to Flickr, I may install the Zeitgeist into the upper right hand corner of this blog. For now, I think I will experiment a little more with the beta version of the service.

The price for the pro version, almost $50.00 is a tad steep for one who would give it frivolous use. That and the Hello! part of Picasa offers so much more as to the management of the photos themselves. Combined, and if the upload by email feature ever works, perhaps then I would consider subscribing.



=30=

A washed photo of The Monument

A washed photo of The Monument,
uploaded by sgtret.

This is a test of the Flickr online photo log's ability to upload photos to my blog.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

In case you were wondering with what camera I am taking the previously posted photos,
It is the Olympus Stylus 410 4MP Digital Camera . It replaced my Olympus film camera that
went with me to Africa, stayed behind and came home a week or two later intact.

It's a ridiculously easy camera to use. Combine it with the SanDisk SecureMate USB Card Reader
to my laptop, and you're off and running.

The Camera does come with a cable that attaches directly to the
laptop, but I found the downloading of pictures drains the battery quickly.

There is nothing worse, photographically, than running out with a dead battery. It's very
frustrating to have the digital advantage of 372 shots but not the power to take them. I am
considering getting the solar powered back pack I saw in a recent Engadget entry.

Whether that's before or after I get the I don't know.
=30=

The orange cat below has a name.

His name is Mowgli, after the boy in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books

He is originally from Florida. He came to our house because of a child's
allergy in his first home. Unlike our other cat, Beamer, Mowgli is pure
house cat. Beamer is more the outdoors type. Moge, as we call him has
the pure New Yorker's attitude of the great outdoors being the space between
the end of the awning and the taxi.
=30=

This man was one of my childhood heroes. Here he is demonstrating how a certain gesture can be modified by leaving the fingers open. My favorite quote from him has to the with the expulsion of fire rectally to save matches. He's a wonder of wonders to know. Do you know who he is? Think Paul O'Dwyer and Sarah Kovner.... 

I like to think of this blog as the diary of person into not just the blogging itsef, but the method and use of the blogging software and associated paraphenalia. An example of this is the Picasa and its related Hello! plug in for sending photos to Blogger. The photo above is a screen capture shot of sharing photo session using Picasa. 

In a recent article Mr. Dvorak stated emphatically that there were two kinds of blogs. Tech and Personal, aka diary types. 

Picasa

Download it for free here! This is an amazing bit of software free from Google.
They must be making money on it somewhere, but so far it hasn't come directly
out of my pocket.

Picasa's first use for me is to easily upload photos to the Blogger Account. This
is a Blogger Account.

The second use, one for which I thought I had little use until friends and family
picked up on it, is the instant sharing of pictures.

Simply said: I like it.

=30=

Have I mentioned the jury notice?

In Massachusetts, all able body adults are required to report for jury duty
every three years. When they say "all," they are not kidding.

This includes others who are automatically excluded in other states, lawyers,
judges, politicians, police, Indian chiefs and candlestick makers.

The jury notice sitting on my desk tells me I am to report to a certain court
at a certain time and that there is no choice.

The good part is the one trial-one day rule. You report for one day. If you are
not selected for a trial, you are forgiven for the next three years. If you are
chosen for a trial, and the trial goes one day, again, you are forgiven for three
years.

However, if you are chosen for a trial and the trial goes on for weeks and weeks,
you must stay for the entire trial. It's a crap shoot.

Life's pretty much a crap shoot as well. It should apply to our trial system.

Such is Justice in New England.

=30=

The first blog every I read...

...was the one put up by Neil Gaiman.
I picked up a copy of his Neverwhere and fell totally in love with his writing style.

Much like my experience with Gurdjieff, I wondered if he had written anything else.

When I googled him, it somewhat amazed me that there was already a small
cult following. Every time I think I've found something new and cool,
it always happens that a million people have beat me to it.



This started as a comment on Neil Gaiman's blog and turned into a walk down memory lane.

The point I intended to make is that producing a blog similar in intensity to Neil Gaiman's
has been my goal. There were two or three paragraphs of excuses running through my head
which almost were written, but all of them boil down to lack of commitment to the trade.

There is SO much writing in so many forms these days, that to be a Writer is no longer clearly defined,
but seems to be a needed profession in much the same way the farmer or hunter was not that long ago.

With my over a half of century of experiences behind me, the noble thing to do would be to write about
the more interesting parts, meaning the parts that happened in the first 32 years, before I was put on hold
by a date with the front of a truck.

Before that date, I wrote poetry, sculpted and went to every museum and library within fiscal reach.

After the date, I found solace in just waking up alive every day.

The desire for adventure of any sort was almost cut out of me.

Near Death for the fifth or sixth time should be a lesson to the smartest of the few
who make it past the last time. For me the fear of being timid far exceeds the fear
of dying. Make sense out of that and I will spend time on your couch saying confession.

Enough baring of the soul.

=30=

Though I am very tired, I had to finish...

... installing the Openoffice.
I was told it's HTML editor was a great place to writer a blog before
transferring it to w::bloggar.com
or Thingamablog.

So far it seems to be working out for the
best. We'll see how true this
is when we save it in HTML form
and see if it translates at all to the blog

=30=

Live Radio Net

Of all the radio guides I've seen on the Internet, the link above
will take you to the best I've found yet.

=30=

A witticism

A witticism spontaniously erupted from my boss during a
budget discussion. He said, "...we have to learn how to polish
the apple without paying for the cloth."

Having read many books containing endless bon mots and
have never heard that phrase used before. Kudos to the boss.

=30=

Amy's New York Notebook

Amy's New York Notebook is worth a visit
for anyone who has ever lived in New York.

Reading this blog is like having an old neighbor stop
at your house on the way somewhere else just to have
a cup of coffee and shoot the breeze about
what's happening in your old neighborhood.
=30=

Amy's New York Notebook

Amy's New York Notebook is worth a visit
for anyone who has ever lived in New York.

Reading this blog is like having an old neighbor stop
at your house on the way somewhere else just to have
a cup of coffee and shoot the breeze about
what's happening in your old neighborhood.
=30=

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

The Link

Everyday Matters!

Everyday Matters.

Now that Boogie Street is on hiatus, I have added another artist's blog to my list of To Read blogs.
Its called Everyday Matters.

I hope you all go there for a visit and enjoy this wide open free spirited artist as he shares
his work with the world.

I wont make the mistake again of reproducing the work here.

You'll just have to go over the Everyday Matters and see for your self.
=30=

Citizen Reporters

MSNBC news is taking advantage of the blogging faze to sign up Citizen Reporters.
It appears to be little more than an extended letters to the editor section.

It does bear reading, if for no reason than to gauge what the people believe to be important news.

When I say the people this mean those people who have the ways and means of getting online to express their opinion of what qualifies as news. This makes them no different than most bloggers, but does give them the legitimacy of coming from a recognized news agency.
=30=

Chocolate getting a bum rap agian?

Just when I thought chocolate was really the miracle food I always thought it should be, ABC News, in an article, goes on to tell me it may not be.

In the tradition of news of late, it continues to say it just might be.

A Dr. Katz is quoted as saying: "It's probably the richest source of flavanoids in our diet," Of course this is assuming that the scientific announcement that a flavanoid is good for your. To me it sounds like a body part that should be removed if it becomes swollen.

The conclusion of the article states it is, in moderation, an indulgence that may have health benefits. Sounds like a resounding endorsement to me.
=30=

Wouldn't want to miss a Saturday

Quick entry to be changed later

=30=

My Next Car!!

A bright and sunny Sunday

With the cat on the roof, not hot, not tin
but tile and very cold, I sit and muse.

Musing can be a very dangerous thing.
It means there is nothing of any great worth
to do, or ponder, or regret.

Musing, I believe is more of an Europian
practice. With musing they came up with
things like World Wars I and II.

Then there's Communism, The Catholic
Church and all of its puppies. Most of
these things were the result of having
enough free time on your hands to muse.

You can argue that the Christian faith
started in the Middle East. True enough.
It wasn't until it got to Rome on the back
Paul, as in "blinded by the light" Paul, and
was picked up as hobby by the emperor
Constantine, that it took off.

It took off, the books tell us, because
Constantine was looking up towards the
sky, as in musing, and saw a cross form
in the clouds. What would the world be
like today if he saw a clown or a duckie?

Yes, this musing can be a very dangerous thing.

=30=

Watch out Blogger!

There is a new blog host in town.
It's called MSN Space and it wants us all to leave this
Google based Blogger and run right over to a new
attempt by Microsoft to own the world of computing.

Did I succumb?

Of course I did. I created a blog there called, of course,
Random Space.

=30=

Stretching the limit

When we look for new ways to make a blog entry stand out,
using this drop-cap method is one of them.
Though, as a child the drop cap did confuse me into thinking
all of the words to the right of it began with that letter.
It was used in earlier manuscripts as an illustrative tool.
I think it's much sublter than constantly using the thumbnail
photo method. After a while, too many photos on a page can be
distracting and take away from the topic on hand.

If you have any questions as to how this is done, merely look to the
source of this blog. It will have the coding in it. Look for coding
that begins with "float" and ends with "2px;"
=30=

What does a Saturday off feel like?

I'll let you know.

It has been a month and one half since I have had a Saturday fully off.
I have either worked, attended a work related class or was "on call" every
Saturday since the beginning of October.

I think, if I can, I will sleep past seven a.m. this coming morning.

What a luxury!

=30=