Pneumatics for Halloween. A pointer to a good pneumatics primer on my Halloween at the Ludwig House blog. I’m thinking that a pneumatics project will be my big effort this year. I’d like to learn about the gear and my feeble attempts at animation last year (small motor driven) basically sucked.

Great source of lighting gear

Jim Allchin vs Google. I have to agree with Frank – Jim’s comment struck me as a little over the top. I think Jim meant well but this comes across as incredibly insulting to Google and very egotistical. I am sure the Google guys feel all warm and fuzzy this morning about Microsoft and Longhorn.

Haloscan on a short fuse. Haloscan, the external commenting service I use, seems to be down more than up, and it kills page load performance when it is unavailable. I am giving them this week to fix it before I give up. May be what drives me to moveable type finally, I’ve been too lazy to move to it, but I hate it when my pages load slowly.

A great midi setup for haunt control. I am ok with my system today (primarily DMX512) but this might be worth looking at.

threedegrees – ha ha ha ha ha. It is the day for bad technology experiences I guess. I installed the threedegrees beta from Microsoft. Firstly just a laughable install for a consumer product – i had to download and install a separate system component, i had to reboot, i had to register AND i had to log in with my passport AND i had to provide the double secret beta key, and i had to use the miserable microsoft download manager. Then when i tried to use it, it gave me some error message about my IPv6 stack not being properly configured! an IPv6 stack that it had installed. Just hilarious – who would build a dependency on an IPv6 stack into a consumer product?

Miserable experience with Alienware. I have nearly begged Alienware to take my money for a new machine. After nearly a month trying to get them to take my money, I give up. Because I wanted to ship the machine to my office, while my credit card bills go to my home address, they required a fax of my driver’s license (why I don’t know). I faxed it to them 4 times over two days as two different people called me to complain that they couldn’t read the expiration date. I zoomed the license and toned down the contrast so that the expiration date was as visible as possible. I thought they were happy and I went away on vacation. I got back after two weeks and – no machine. I contacted them and they said they still couldn’t read the license and are still waiting for me to fax me a new one, though they hadn’t bothered to call me. In this time of course a credit card charge could have cleared but no, that apparently isn’t good enough for them, somehow a faxed copy of a driver’s license is the key to their entire system. Today I gave up, I’ll order from someone else.

25 year high school reunion. Class of 1978 Harding High School Class Reunion – wow where did the time go?

Vacation Reading List. As always, I read a lot over my vacation. The best reads: Winesburg, Ohio – loneliness takes many forms in this collection; Faulkner’s The Reivers – great characters; Agatha Christie’s A Death In The Clouds – a good Poirot mystery; and How Can I Get Through To You – great analysis of some the basic issues in modern marriages.

OK reads: Mirror Dance – modern space opera; The Talented Mr. Ripley – very faithful to the movie; Venus by Ben Bova – OK hard science fiction; Inversions – another good but not outstanding Iain Banks novel; Salamander – started out very strong but has gotten a little too mystical on me in the middle going.

I won’t bother to record the bad reads, they are better left unmentioned.

Good source of new blogs to read. Technorati: Top 50 Interesting Newcomers, with context

Stutz. Wow he left, I thought he was a lifer. Good luck David, what’s up next? Microsoft and the Commoditization of Software

Port Magic Beta. My friends at Pure Networks released the beta of Pure Networks: Port Magic while I was gone – much broader gateway coverage! (disclosure: I’m on the board and I like these guys!)

Bellevue and nukes. From a colleague who knows better than I do, answering the question “If Seattle was targetted by a nuke, would we be safe here in Bellevue?”:

Depends on the size. The Hiroshima (fission) bomb had a lethal radius of 2 - 3 miles. Large fusion bombs (very hard to make, North Korea can’t produce them) could have a lethal radius up to 30 miles. I would want to be further away then Bellevue if downtown Seattle was hit. Also, its very hard to make a long range missile accurate. The probable accuracy of a North Korean missile is 1 - 2 miles (or worse) at that range. Go to Monroe!

Back from Hawaii. I’m back – had a great 12 days at Kona Village Resort – a long time favorite of ours. and then another 3 days next door at the Four Seasons Hualalai – our first time there, a beautiful place, tho not quite as relaxed and intimate as Kona Village. Great weather, lots of humpback whales, a fun trip up to the caldera, some good stargazing. No Blackberry coverage, no laptop, no internet terminals, no cellphone, no tv for most of the stay – it was great to disconnect, I am thinking about going internet/pc/tv free on every saturday from now on.

Going Silent for a while. Tied up with some things, it’ll be maybe a couple weeks before I post or surf again. Serious withdrawal pains.