Air Spencer

Spencer gets air at a recent high school track meet.

Water Water Every Where

On Monday we noticed a water leak somewhere in the house. The plumber initially thought it was a defective water spout on the bathtub in the Master Bath. So we spent hours that night sucking up the water from the Family Room carpet only to find it flooded again Tuesday morning.

When the plumber returned he figured out that maybe there was a water leak in the wall ... somewhere. Upstairs in Roberta's closet he made one hole in the wall ... no leak. He was preparing to hack his way down the walls into the Family Room before we nixed that concept.

Long story short he called in 7 other plumbers to work on the problem and we were able to minimize the hole cuts. Below is the opening they made to crawl in under the stairs. The next photo is what they found.













I have more photos from under the stairs, but you should get the point. Apparently there is a capped section of copper pipe that developed a pin prick leak in its cap. A fine spray of water shot upward about 4 feet soaking the bottom of several steps on the stairway and then soaking the backside of the Family Room wall. Water eventually flowed from under the stairs onto the Living Room floor, under tile in the Entryway, under the Wet Bar cabinet, and down the wall onto the Family Room floor.

The most noticeable damage is in the Family Room, but the worst damage may be what we don't see yet. Tiles are already lifting in the Entryway and the oak on several of the steps is warping.

Just another day in Paradise!

BeenUp2

I just added a feed from BeenUp2 (www.beenup2.com) in the Blog sidebar. Check it out.

Think of BeenUp2 as Twitter for the camera phone. Snap a photo on your cell phone and send it to your BeenUp2 account for friends and others to see.

Renewed Connections

Thanks to Facebook I heard from two more classmates today: Brian Battles and Alvin Ashlaw.

If you have a Facebook account look me up. It would be great to hear from more of you.

Is it Snow or Snail?

It's been a bit since I've posted anything, but today's drive to work was interesting enough to mention.

Just the other day it was almost 80 degrees out. Image my surprise when it started to snow and hail on the way to work this morning. Do you call it snail (snow + hail)? Spencer even sent me a text message noting that it was snowing at his high school.

A Short Visit

Clark Lindstrom, one of my old college friends happened to be in Southern California on business this week. While we knew each other at USC, he hadn't been back to California in about fifteen years and I hadn't seen him for an even longer span. Another friend, Jim Yerdon, intended to join us but in the last minute ended up stuck at work.

It was only a three hour visit (including lunch), not nearly enough time to catch up with each other's lives. It will, however, have to do until we can meet again either here in California or there in Nebraska.

Here are a couple of pictures from today. The first one is of Clark with his old friend Shakespeare. Guess who is in the other photo with Clark.

Lotus Symphony

I recently installed IBM Lotus Symphony. It's not a bad suite of applications especially when you consider that it is free and from a major corporation. While its appearance is fresh and clean you will need to spend some time getting use to its organization, icons, and nomenclature. None of the components (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) are as bloated with feature as MS Office, but they do cover the basics.

Here's the biggest fault I have with current beta version of IBM Lotus Symphony (beta v. 2)Users are able to open and save documents in MS Office 2003 format, but users of Office 2007 beware! The current beta version does not support Office 2007 XML document formats; you cannot open or save in the 2007 format.

The next fault is somewhat minor for the home user, but potentially significant for small business users. Unlike OpenOffice, Symphony lacks a database component.

As I see it, there are still two major advantages to Symphony. Unlike its cousin, OpenOffice, Symphony is being developed by a single vendor which should imply the availability of technical support at some level. The availability of technical support is often cited as a major reason why businesses and individuals are not eager to adopt open source applications. The other advantage is its price (free) and how this is an attractive characteristic for home and small business users.

Too Many Catalogs?

If your are like me, at this time of year the mail box is filled with catalogs. You can do something about this by visiting CatalogChoice.org and setting up an account.

What sets this site apart from the Direct Marketing Association is that CatalogChoice lets you select only those catalogs you do not wish to receive instead of the DMA's all or nothing approach.

Winter Weather Arrives

Winter weather arrived this week. It rained locally and snowed in the nearby mountains giving the area a fresh clean appearance.

Parking 101

Here's a photo of my Mazda after some idiot parked his pickup a tad too close. Parking Rule #1: Never hit a car parked next to you. Parking Rule #2: After mastering Rule #1 be certain to leave enough space between you and another car to avoid door dings. Parking Rule #3: After mastering Rule 1 & 2 be certain that you allow enough room for the person next to you to get in & out of their car.

Southern California Fires

This is just a quick post to let friends and blog followers know that we remain essentially untouched by the current Southern California fires. We are "essentially" untouched despite the Slide Fire (Running Springs) creeping to within a ridge-and-a-half of our community or that we are under a voluntary evacuation notice.

Yesterday our school district (Redlands Unified) canceled school for the three schools in East Highland. Today they canceled school district-wide. I assume this not due to an immediate danger of fire but instead for these reason: unhealthful air (smoke and ash) for children, and those teachers and staff who were under mandatory evacuation notices.

Post Script: The fires never spread into East Highland.

A Day in Montreal and Southern Quebec

It's time for our annual trek to Burlington, Vermont. This year we added a new diversion, a one day side trip to Southern Quebec and an overnighter in Montreal. Quite simply what we learned in Montreal is that it is well worth spending a few days there, as long as your day begins around 8:00 pm!

On Friday we walked Rue Saint Catherine exploring some of Underground Montreal. Dinner found us at the Hard Rock Cafe on Rue Crescent adding to our beer and martini glass collection. After dinner we dropped in to a local pub aptly named "Ziggy's" sitting outside watching the street spectacle stroll by and eavesdropping on multilingual conversations. Montreal is more than a Anglo/Franco melting pot, it's international.

Saturday found us with a few hours to spend strolling around Old Montreal taking in the sites. Below is view of Lord Nelson's monument at the Place Jacques-Cartier.








On our drive south to Burlington we discovered Quebec's wine country and with it we probably discovered why it is so unknown.








The only saving grace was the quaintness of the wineries and the fall foliage.

Web 2.0 and Open Office

Normally in this Blog I don't talk techie stuff, but today seems to be one of those watershed days that should be shouted out to everyone.

For a while now I've used two online and FREE Web 2.0 office applications services: Google Docs [formerly Docs and Spreadsheets] (docs.google.com) and the product suite from Zoho (www.zoho.com). I've also been a fan of the Sun sponsored free OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) which was just updated. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but for the average computer user they are nonetheless viable options to buying a full version of Microsoft Office. Best of all the allow the importing and exporting of documents in the standard MS Office file formats plus the ability to save files in the PDF format.

Yesterday Google bolstered its Google Docs suite with the introduction of its online version of Microsoft's PowerPoint; it's simply called Presentations. Presentation joins the existing elements for Documents (word) and Spreadsheets. Neat stuff but if you think that's nifty, then check out Zoho to see how many other office applications they offer.

Today, however everyone got trumped by IBM as they introduced their own free office product suite named Lotus Symphony (yes, it is a recycled name, but it's still a new product) and joined the Open Office movement. In the next few days I'll try to download a copy of Symphony and check it out (symphony.lotus.com). Looking at the minimum specs for Symphony does point out one potential near-term drawback, it requires 1 GB of RAM. Regardless, with the weight of IBM now behind the movement, the times they are a changing.

Why are these developments significant? Simply stated, I believe that in the next several years businesses will seriously question the necessity for purchasing common office applications from the likes of Microsoft or Corel. Instead they will join the Web 2.0 and Open Office revolution.

Think of the implications. For one thing, it's a step toward minimizing the digital divide by reducing the cost of computer ownership. It's also a way to reduce some the administrative overhead business commit toward software license and copyright management. It's also a way to facilitate the rapid adoption of new features: if you're using a Web 2.0 office application, new features are available with your next browser refresh; if you're using an Open Office application, you can bypass the evaluate/plan, budget, purchase, deploy cycle of technology tyranny and move straight from evaluation to deployment. Finally, Open Office products save documents in the Open Document format which is intended to not only be a universal file format, but is also a strategy for preventing your older documents from falling victim to legacy formats that are no long available or supported.

What do you think? Are we on the cusp of a new application paradigm or is this just hype and hope?

A Trip to USC

I briefly stopped by USC last Thursday to resolve an issue with my transcripts; thankfully I was able to have it resolved quickly. While I was there I snapped this photo of Tommy Trojan for old time sake.

Enough With the Old Jokes

OK, so today's my 50th birthday, but geeze did comic character Ziggy have to get in an old guy dig too?











(Ziggy is copyrighted byZiggy and Friends, Inc. 2007) - the cartoon is used here for non-commercial purposes

Fireworks Video to Appear on TV

Apparently my brief YouTube video of the News Years Eve fireworks in Sacramento will appear in a segment on fireworks videos on KOVR TV (CBS affiliate in Sacramento) tomorrow.

If you want to see the fireworks video click on this link Fireworks or view my New Years Eve post.

Father's Day

Once again a single photo (taken with my cell phone) covers a single day. The morning of Father's Day found a group of us playing golf (or in Sig's case, not playing) at the Teal Bend golf course just outside Sacramento. In the following picture are Spencer, Chris Teichert, and Ethan.

Wine Tasting in Amador County

Roberta, Ethan, and Sig ventured to the Amador County (east of Sacramento) for some wine tasting. The following picture says it all.

Cross Country Trek - Day 6

Today's travel involved driving from Portland to Sacramento; a drive of over 8 hours (excluding stops). Arrival quickly led to dinner. Later, Ethan and Jake went into Old Town in search of local flavor and libation.

Tomorrow will see us taking a side trip into the alternate wine country of Amador County instead of the traditional tourist area of Napa.

Cross Country Trek - Day 5

Jumping off from Missoula, Montana we continued our westward trek (basically following the path of Lewis & Clark) into the panhandle region of northern Idaho and quickly transitioning into Washington (Spokane). The objective of our routing was to follow the scenic route along the Washington side of the Columbia River and ultimately cross the river into Portland, Oregon.