My laptop died during my trip to the ACWA conference in San Diego in early December. It wouldn’t boot up, and the hard drive icon didn’t light up, suggesting that the hard drive was dead. So the day before yesterday, while I was in Best Buy to get my son a graphics card for our main computer (which didn’t end up working), I bought an inexpensive replacement hard drive in […]
Today was my first day back on my bike riding in the “real world,” as opposed to riding inside on the trainer, since my accident on July 3. For a long time, I couldn’t ride without risking hurting my arm if I fell, but lately I’ve been putting off riding out of what I now understand was just pure fear. An odd fear, not one that I was even conscious […]
I’ve had my new Droid phone now for a little over a week, so being a somewhat tech guy I decided to post a short review. The bottom line: 8 (maybe even 8.5) out of 10. I really like it. The positives first. The Google Android 2.0 operating system on the phone is very, very good. It’s simple, straightforward, and fast. It integrates smoothly with GMail, my business email, and […]
One of my four readers asked if I’d considered writing a post on health care reform in the U.S. I don’t know that I will say anything that hasn’t been said elsewhere, but here we go … et voilà: The health care issue in the U.S. is so difficult for four reasons. The first reason is economic, and really a no brainer: The real costs of health care are hidden. […]
C’est à Alain Minc, dans Le Point le 6 aout: “Etre un libéral de gauche, c’est posseder un mauvaise chromosome, atypique dans l’ADN politique; c’est croire que l’intérêt général existe en dehors le marché, mais que l’Etat n’est pas l’expression naturelle et exclusive de cet intérêt général.” Je le crois aussi. Rough translation: To be a conservative leftist is to possess a bad chromosome, unusual in political DNA; it’s believing […]
Those who know me know I’m not a huge movie fan, but I do watch movies in French (some from Netflix, but mostly on TV5 Monde). This weekend Suzie and I went to the Rialto to see a French movie called Séraphine. Based on the remarkable and true story of the French artist Séraphine Louis (also known as Séraphine de Senlis), the movie slowly absorbs you into the mind and […]
Left Santa Rosa at 3:00 p.m., back with Will at 7:30, not as bad as I expected, thanks to diminished August traffic. Some random observations: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the light more beautiful in San Francisco than it was today. The air was crystal clear, the buildings were bathed in a pure white light, everything stood out in extraordinary relief, like a digital photo with the saturation and […]
Il y a une expression en Anglais — “to be snakebitten” — qui veut dire mot à mot “être mordu par un serpent,” mais veut dire figurativement “avoir de malchance.” Moi, je suis “snakebitten” cette semaine. Ca commence par mon accident à velo. Puis hier soir, notre chienne Elsie, la plus mignon chienne du monde (regardez), a été mordue par un serpent à sonnette, qui est très dangereux à cause […]
Friday was a beautiful day for a ride. I rode into Santa Rosa, stopped downtown for a soda, then started home. I was riding up Old Redwood Highway, wanting to get to my son’s Geometry class (the last of his difficult summer school session) before it ended, so I could surprise him. I started to make a right-hand turn onto Angela Drive, but realized at the last second that I […]
It occurs to me that lately I’ve been Twitter-ized, or Facebook-ed, shoehorning my thoughts into small bits of text, rather than actually writing anything. Not that the public’s been out there clamoring for SSSBlog posts (no one seems to care), but I’m afraid that my brain will become unable to think of anything longer than a demi-paragraph. Ironic, given that technology has opened up a huge pipeline of information, that […]