From the monthly archives:

November 2008

Sunday morning thoughts

by gulker on November 30, 2008

One of our liquidambar trees in full fall glory

One of our liquidambar trees has gotten into a holiday mood, cheery  against the oaks and redwoods around it. I need to find heavy-duty holiday lights for our redwood trees… the 40 year-old lights that have been a neighborhood tradition were in bad shape and came down when the trees were trimmed a couple months ago.

We stopped at the Menlo Farmer’s Market this morning for baby carrots and other veggies destined for turkey soup we’ll be making later on today.

Spent some time last night perusing the Jonathan Richman catalog on iTunes and came across this lyric in his ode to the Fender Stratocaster guitar: “The sound is thin, the sound is cheap, like a tin can falling on a dead-end street.” I think he plays one on my favorite, Roadrunner.

I walked perhaps 2 miles at Arastradero Preserve yesterday, while Linda ran a 4 or 5 mile course. I walked a hilly (for me) trail without a cane or leg brace, and surprised Linda when she discovered me at the bottom of a steep hill, farther than she thought I’d be able to go.

We’re getting ready for an overnight visit by granddaughter Grace.  I think it will be fun… Linda’s not so sure, and has hired the teenager next door as a backup. We’ve got a crib, a baby feeding table and will have a walker and some plush friends for this and future visits to the grandparents.  I’m trying to figure out if she’s too big to bathe in the kitchen sink…

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Having given thanks

by gulker on November 28, 2008

John and Grace at Tinker Park

We had a lovely family Thanksgiving yesterday. John, Julie and Grace joined us for our ‘tiny turkey,’ a 10-lb. Diestel petite, with yam and carrot puree, rosemary-roasted red potatoes, Linda’s famous stuffing and cranberry sauce, paired with  Clos d’Oratoire Chateauneuf du Pape. Num.

Grace, as usual was the center of attention. Barely one, she’s starting to talk, walk and can crawl furiously from room to room. She liked the yams, didn’t like turkey, but loved the pumpkin pie Linda served for dessert. While Grace napped, we played a card game called Phase 10: as ususal I lost, big time...

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A rainy day at World HQ

by gulker on November 26, 2008

Wild oak and a streetlight

It’s been a dark and rainy morning and so far we’ve been to the market, the gym and the hardware store. It started to pour rain as I made my way back from the hardware store, so I ducked into a Starbucks for shelter and a latte that made me remember why I don’t like Starbucks.

Yesterday we hauled home some shelving material and screws and such and cobbled together the contraption, left, that we’ve christened The Vertical LAN Rack, and, yes it’s a Gulker Labs project. Six months ago I couldn’t have dreamed of such a project, so useless was my left side – we still have issues, but rehab has been working wonders.

Today I switched out a broken light switch, another project I wouldn’t have attempted previously. Before that I wrestled our turkey ino the biggest salad bowl together with my ‘top secret’ brine and lifted the whole works into the refrigerator for an overnight soak. Now I’m sitting at World HQ’s mighty Mac console – configuring our new, streamlined LAN – good rainy day work…

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OMG, the upgrade worked!

by cg on November 25, 2008

November Sky

November Sky

At least I think it worked… Everything  apears to be functioning. I threw the photo in, above, just to check out the upload stuff.. and note that I get a caption space… interesting. The spellchecker doesn’t seem to be working, but otherwise we appear to be good to go…

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Upgrading

by cg on November 24, 2008

We have been considering upgrading our Wordpress server software from its current vintage to the latest stable release (2.6.3). There are lots of good reasons for doing this, mostly visible from the author’s side, but, of course, we have that dread feeling that precedes any software ‘upgrade.’

The Wordpress user forums seem to be OK with the latest version, but every user’s installation is a unique case and who knows what can go wrong. Anyway, we’ve started by backing up everything in sight. We’re shooting for tomorrow sometime.. just in case the site goes away…

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Too many links

by cg on November 22, 2008

We finally caved in and responded to the dozens of messages in our inbox inviting us to join Plaxo Pulse (the last invitation – from the rector of our old church – somehow put me over the top). It was reminiscent of all the invitations we once received to join LinkedIn. Plaxo used to be a web app for keeping Outlook contacts updated (and useless to a Mac user), but its latest incarnation seems to be about social networking. LinkedIn used to be about social networking, but now seems mostly to be about employment. To top it off, when I ‘Plaxo’d’ colleague Ezra Roizen, he responded that he only used Vator.tv (he’d better, he’s married to the CEO) – sheesh. And I’m not going anywhere near Facebook et al…

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Finally, a blog post

by cg on November 20, 2008

The renewed family room

The sky this A.M. as Scott, Tiger Lily and I went out on our walkSo, we’ve been remiss in keeping up the blog, and Linda is getting email asking if I’m ok. I’m going with the family room remodel as my ‘official’ excuse – though Linda managed not to miss a blog beat while everything was in boxes. The family room is now 95% restored, and came out very nicely with its refinished floors, new paint and scrubbed bookshelves.

Not only am I ok, I haven’t been better since the brain tumor made itself known. Physical rehab is slowly but surely restoring my left side, I’ve lost the 30 or so pounds that steroid therapy put on me. I’m increasingly stronger, have some muscle tone and can do tricks like stand up from a chair without pushing off with my hands.

Indeed, life is good.

Scott, Tiger Lily and I continue our twice weekly 1.4-mile dawn walks (pretty sky this morning), and have had friend, retired priest David Perry as a companion for most of the last month.  David and Scott discovered they’d lived in Poughkeepsie at the same time during the 70s – Scott was at IBM and David was at the Episcopal church there.

There are many topics that I should be blogging about, if I can just make time from being ‘retired.’ There’s the world’s coolest data center (check out the Maybach submarine engines for backup power), TwitPay, neural plasticity and a major overhaul of gulker.com’s World HQ. So many topics, so little time…

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Life in boxes

by cg on November 13, 2008

The curent state of our living room...

So this is our living room, as it’s been since Monday a week ago, when movers emptied the family room so we could refinish the floor and paint. Life in the interim has been chaotic. We tried to put important and useful things in the boxes that were easy to access, but somehow we managed to misplace things, like our checkbook, that we need. Really essential stuff – like WiFi and a corner with 2 CPUs – has been maintained at all costs. The good news is, everything goes back tomorrow (in theory)…

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Morning on the coast

by cg on November 8, 2008

Scene on coast path south of Ritz Carlton Hotel this A.M.

The floor refinishing process has left the house a bit toxic, so we used the excuse to spend the night in Half Moon Bay, which meant a jog for Linda, and a walk for me along the coastal path this morning. The morning sky gave way to rain as we made our way to Pescadero for lunch at Duarte’s, followed by a visit to the Harley Goat Dairy for their excellent cheese…

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Long shadows

by cg on November 6, 2008

Scott Loftesness, Tiger Lily, David Perry and I cast long shadows on this morning's walk

Scott Loftesness, Tiger Lily, the Rev. David Perry and I cast long shadows as we headed out on this morning’s not-quite-1.5-mile walk. Tiger Lily is so busy, it’s probably a 3-mile walk for her…

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