Category: Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

Tonight, while talking with blk about childhood memories, I started thinking about the summer camp I went to when I was around Zach’s age. It was a sleepaway camp, up in the pocono mountains, called Camp Susquehanna. I went for 3 years, and the experiences during those three summers left me with some fantastic memories.

I caught up with one of the sons of the family that owned the camp several years ago, and we exchanged some brief email, but I really hadn’t thought of the camp since then.

Tonight, a little googling, and I’ve found the Camp Susquehanna Alumni website, run by none other than Todd Schroder, the aformentioned son of the owner. Todd’s put together a wonderful site, with a lot of fascinating details about the camp and what it was like for us staying there, but there was one bit of magic I thought was lost forever.

The camp was divided into ‘units’ (remember this was the early seventies. Militaristic models were the norm – we ate in the mess hall, we bought candy and stuff in Canteen, and bugle calls played over the PA system with revelie, taps, and horsemans calls). The units were numbered, from 1 through 17, each with 4-6 campers in it. Each unit had it’s own counsellor. Once you were in a unit, you were there for the summer, and the camp ran for 8 weeks. That’s a long time for a kid 8-10 years old – your unit became your home, your unit-mates were your family.

Every summer, each unit made what was simply called a ‘Unit Sign’. It was a wooden board, about 2′ square, that could have anything you wanted painted on it, but it had to have the Unit number, all the campers names, the counsellors name, and the year being represented. The signs were mounted on the ceiling of the mess hall. During meals, you could look up, and see all the units that came before you. If you were a returning camper, it was great fun coming back the next year and seeing your name up on the ceiling.

These Unit Signs were an undeniable record of the summers I spent in the Poconos, and I thought they were lost when the property was sold.

They were not.

Todd, being the magnificent person he is, has scanned pictures of all the Unit signs, and therefore, I’m able to present to you my signs, now almost 35 years old:

1972 – Unit 3. My first year at Camp Susquehanna. I was only 8. The Unit was a tent platform, about 14’x20′, which had 5 bunks in it. The sides of the tent could be rolled up – it looked a lot like a MASH tent, but smaller, with a peaked roof in the middle. My counsellor was Ron Becker, who did a great job of making us all feel right at home. I remember being very confused at the beginning about what was going on, and what we were supposed to do, but it was only in the first few days, then it became comfortable and routine. Of the other kids, I only remember Eduardo, who became a good friend, and taught me a lot of Spanish.

According to The Lookout, I was involved in the yearly Skink Hunt…

Jim Weeks and Rick Davis told the assembled campers about the skink, an elusive lizard. Then, armed with laundry bags and noise makers, the campers set off to a rock quarry to practice for the big hunt. Robbie Devor, Greg Vogel, Andy Ziegler, and David Shevett eagerly volunteered to be the “catchers”, waiting at the end of the field for the skinks, while everyone else made noise and scared the skinks downfield.

1974 – Unit 6 – As the kids got older, folks moved up to higher numbered cabins. Unit 6 was toward the top of the ‘lower clearing’ (names that’ll mean nothing to anyone who wasn’ t there – humor me). This was an actual cabin – about 20′ on a side, with a roof and rafters and power and everything. The ‘windows’ could open by hinging up the shutters and latching them open with a hook and eye. These had bunkbeds too, so there was room for 7 kids plus the counsellor, but as I understand it, the camp was beginning to go into decline attendance wise, so the units weren’t all full. Eduardo was my bunkmate again, and another boy named David Strohl, whom I remember as being very sweet and a good kid (course, this was 30 some odd years ago. Who knows if I’m even remotely right here.)

1977 – Unit 11 – If I’m remembering this one right, it was another cabin, up toward the top of the upper clearing. By this time I’m 12, and the camp has a different feel. I’m more involved in some of the acting and stage stuff that Jim Weeks was doing, and I remember Andy Bershad (our counsellor) very well. He and Jim were icons of the camp. As to what the picture and caption on the sign meant? I haven’t the foggiest idea.

And if there were any question about my early love of old movies, according to the Lookout from that year :

“Ah yes!” wailed the familiar voice. And so began an evening of films starring W.C. Fields. The first in our series of films, the Fields evening was moved up to Thursday night due to rainy weather, but no one seemed to mind the quick announcement and showing. In fact, the next day found David Shevett and Todd Schroder giving people “hearty handclasps” in the Fieldsian manner.

I have nothing but positive memories from my time at the camp, ranging from massive games of capture the flag ranging all over the fields and woods, to long horseback rides, to the summer I was given my own horse to take care of (I became a ‘horseman’ – I was assigned one horse as my responsibility all summer. I fed and groomed her, prepped her for the days classes, and brought her up to and down from the paddock each day). Many of my current fascinations can be traced to this camp – I still love old barns, woods trails and camping, and the sound of rain on the roof of a barn or tent still sends me back to the summer rainstorms spent in our ‘homes’ with friends.

There are times when I get down, or quiet, or just generally “off”. I can almost always turn these moods around with a solid shot of loud intense music. Today it’s delivered while sitting at Panera and working on some server changes.
The track I’m listening to? “Spocks Beard“, doing “I Am The Doorway”. Never heard of ’em? Think a modern day Yes (in fact the bass player sounds almost identical to Chris Squire).
So what’s your “Go away world, I want to be in my head for a while” music?

I get into these funks in winter, where I just want to curl up somewhere and escape for a few hours. For me this is where my love of movies comes to the fore. I’ve built enough of a setup that I can watch movies at night without disturbing my family, while enjoying good sound, good video, and a comfortable listening area.

Sure it’s escapism. But it’s escapism I understand – therefire I can embrace it and revel in it.

It has let me catch up on movies that I’ve owned for quite a while, but never actually got around to watching. Over the last week, I’ve gone through a handful of titles…

A Scanner Darkly

Just watched this one tonight. I’ve never read the original story by Philip K. Dick, so I had very little information on what I could expect to see. I knew about it’s odd filming style, but nothing else, not even the cast beyond Keanu Reeves.

It was good. It seems this was Robert Downey Jr. at his most neurotic, and because of that, his acting style initially repelled me. But then I realized he and Woody Harrolson were perfectly cast. By the end I was totally involved in the story, and found it engrossing, poignant, and emotional

Spiderman 3

Boy I’m sure glad I didn’t spend money on this one. What a disappointing end to a trilogy. I’ve heard folks say “Don’t bother, go watch 2 again” and I have to agree with them. What a stinker. Visually has some moments, but there’s several scenes toward the middle of the film that had me seriously considering turning off the DVD and giving up, they were so ludicrous.

The Bourne Identity

I’ve never actually seen Identity all the way through, from beginning to end. I’ve seen bits and pieces in various cable surfings, plus the non-stop previews. It was very good. Engrossing, mystifying, and all around fun. Many folks have called it What Bond Should Be, and I can see that. Matt Damon gets a lot of flack for his simplistic acting approach, but he was perfect in his role. And, of course, there’s the ever wonderful Franka Potente, of Run Lola Run fame.

The Bourne Supremacy

If you’re going to take the time to start in a series, why not see as much of it as you can. The sequel to Bourne Identity was certainly as good as the first, with recurring roles and appropriate references to both the first movie and modern day events. One thing I did not expect was the outstanding performance by Brian Cox (he who played William Stryker in the X-Men movies and Nathan Waldman in Long Kiss Goodnight). He had a good strong role in Supremacy, and played it marvelously.

I haven’t had a chance to pick up the Bourne Ultimatum yet, but judging by how much I enjoyed the first two, it’s now gone onto my wish list.

Last year I tinkered with figuring out how much money was in a coin jar by weight. The numbers I came up with were reasonably close – within 10-15%.
Some folks have come up with an online coin calculator that does something very smart. You weigh the total pile, then pick a handful of coins out of it, randomly. Count the number of coins in your hand. That’ll be a statistical sampling of the rest of the coins in the pile, and the page extrapolates based on that sample to the total weight.
Quite accurate, and pretty durned smart.
Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

This past weekend I decided to take the plunge and replace the bulbs in our recessed lighting in the kitchen with dimmable CF bulbs. We had been using these huge honkin 150watt floodlamps, which were great for getting a tan, but didn’t handle the constant vibration of folks walking around upstairs very well, not to mention chewing up gobs of power when running.
I hadn’t actually seen dimmable CF bulbs in action, so I was curious how well they’d work. Flourescent lights can’t take the same electrical route that dimmable incandescents can (if you lower the voltage in a flourescent light, the ballast that regulates the power into the bulb can’t pass enough power to make the bulb actually light up.
I saw the dimmable bulbs in our of our regular visits to Target, and picked up a handful.
Our lightswitch has one of those little sliding tabs next to the switch that lets you adjust the brightness. I installed all the bulbs, flicked the switch on, and lo!
But would it dim?
The answer is… “Sorta”. The dimmer switch does in fact lower the light level coming from the bulbs, but not in the range the older bulbs could do. I’d say we can get a 25% reduction in light output from the bulbs before they go out.
All in all, this is just fine. We can’t have that sort of glowing nice ‘1/3rd’ light mode that is handy post-dinner (we can sort of do that by turning out most of the ceiling lights and just going with one lamp over the stove), but the dimmer is handy for taking the lights from “bright enough to do real kitchen work” down to “comfortable to live in day to day”.
So why is this relevant? Well, aside from the bit that the 5 bulbs now in the ceiling use as much power as only one of the old bulbs did, apparently the new energy bill that just came through congress is mandating that all incandescent bulbs be off the market by 2012. (If that link fails you, see the article on Slashdot and the same on Engadget).
According to the article:

The new energy bill signed this week makes it official. When 2012 hits, stores can no longer sell the cheap but inefficient incandescent light bulbs that are fixtures in most homes.

Personally, I’ve already switched all our bulbs to CFL’s, and we have a lot of them (an off the cuff count puts it at about 30 for our 4br house). We’ve been here 2.5 years, and I was just trying to think of the last time I had to replace a CFL that had gone out. I think it was once, using a very old bulb we had brought from the old house, but I hadn’t until now replaced the ceiling lights in the kitchen yet.

Extrapolating from a conversation on IRC today…
I swear OkCupid is the place budding ‘web 2.0’ programmers go to see how badly they can screw up a busy site, and still stay in business.
They’ve gone through a dozen site ‘overhauls’ in the last few years, rewriting the entire thing into some new funky dynamic design that not only fails to implement features they had working in the old design, but also tends to breaks most browsers. Then they spend the next few months ‘fixing’ problems with the new site, until most folks have forgotten about the missing features…
AND THEN THEY DO IT AGAIN.
Dear OkCupid. We know you’re a site that caters to up and coming jetset socialites and the like, but please… Stabilize your site, lock down a feature set, and stick with it. When you roll a new site? Make sure all the features still work? It’s really not that hard.

A few times in the past year I’ve commented to my lovely wife regarding coffeemakers, and gosh-wouldn’t-it-be-nice if we had one that had a timer on it. I generally make a pot of coffee each morning, which involves the standard wash out the pot and gold filter, grind a new set of beans, fill up the tank, and hit start cycle. I’ve almost got my morning routine timed perfectly – I know how long the pot will take to brew, and I know when I need to be back downstairs.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if I could set a timer and have the pot ready the next morning?”
Well, it being Channukah and all, Cat got me a new coffeemaker, but went far beyond the pale and got a SUPER GEEKY coffeemaker.
The machine is a Keurig B-60 ‘single cup brewer’. Now, don’t let the ‘single cup’ thingy scare you. This isn’t some weeny little device that makes weak tan colored coffee and requires a half hour with the kitchen drudges to get clean.
The Keurig uses the little puncture-cups that have pre-measured coffee (apprently known as ‘K-Cups’). I’ve been skeptical of these puppies for a while, but I have to admit the first cup or two has come out just fine. The machine avoids a lot of the pitfalls I’ve seen in other automated machines. It has a ‘time on’ and ‘time off’ setting that changes when the reservoir is kept heated (I set mine to start at 7am, and turn off by 1pm – avoiding the machine keeping the heating element on all day). A full cups’ worth of water is kept inside the machine when idle, so you can change out the big tank without affecting the next cup of coffee. If the tank is empty, the machine lets you know on it’s little LCD screen.
The K-Cup approach to prepackaged coffee is fascinating, and allows the machine to make dozens of different types of coffee, or tea, or hot chocolate, without requiring a change of hardware between uses. For shared machines (like in our house), this is wonderful.
My only mild complaint about it is the noise. It uses a water pump to cycle water out of the tank into the internal heater, and that can be pretty rattly. I tend to make coffee after everyone has left the house, but my roomies may use it at early hours. I suppose it’s really no noisier than a coffee grinder, but it was a little alarming when it first started.
And. It has a cool blue glowing effect on it. I can have my cup of nuclear waste!
All in all, a vast improvement over the old Krups standard filter / pot. It served me well, and will most likely be used for social gatherings still, but my daily 2-3 cups are now coming from this puppy. Thanks Cat!

A blog post about the first OLPC deployment. Uruguay.

About a thousand machines were given out in three days. Another seven thousand will be given out in Uruguay in the next two weeks, and another 90 thousand in the coming months. Peru is next: they signed an order for 260 thousand today.

Awesome.

So I have a profile on Facebook. It’s been enjoyable fiddling around with the apps and linking up with other folks, and all that has been peachy keen. In particular, I rather like the Twitter-esque ‘Status Updates’ that folks can use to say “I’m home, and eating sushi” or whatever else strikes their fancy.

The problem is, I frequently see a Status update where someone says “I’m feeling down” and what I really want to do is go “Oh? What’s up?”

But it appears the only way I can do that is to:

1. Click on the users name to go to their profile
2. Click on ‘Send [user] a message’
3. Type a subject “So you’re down?”
4. type a message
5. hit send

This doesn’t seem like the interactive social structure I was looking for, where I could simply follow up on something I see with a “hey, what’s up?”. A message sent as above has no context, is not attached to the status update, etc etc.

In fact, Facebook seems structured in a way to NOT encourage that sort of spontaneous communication. It’s more geared to “Lets funnel people toward shared functions or applications” as opposed to “Lets make it easier for people to communicate.”

What am I missing? The initial funness of the site is starting to wear off a little bit. There’s zillions of people on Facebook. What keeps them there?