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

Feeding the Tweets

I find myself doing a heck of a lot of twittering lately. The updated version of Twitterrific has an excellent interface, allowing me to post pictures, follow threads, do things like like “show me tweets that are coming from nearby me physically” (which has led me to make some new friends!).
This unfortunately has meant I don’t blog as much. When I see something I want to talk about, I just throw out a twitter post – which may include a picture of something I’ve just seen.
I understand that many of my readers don’t log into Twitter at all, and that’s fine. There is, however, a nice RSS feed of my postings available.
To read my tweets via RSS, use my RSS feed link (which is available on my twitter home page). My tweets are also forwarded into my Facebook page.
Last but not least, there’s a cute widget on my blog home page that shows the last couple tweets I’ve posted.
Twitter, for all it’s buzzwordism, is an interesting medium. I’ll stick with it for a while.

TechGripe – iPhone Mail app

First and foremost, I still love my iphone. It’s become my internet-in-your-pocket device. When I’m not carrying it, I feel like something’s missing.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s faults – and today’s itch is with the Mail app.
I have Mail configured to chat with the Exchange 2007 server at work (which works remarkably well – I get meeting notifications, etc). I also have it configured to talk to my Homeport mailbox over IMAPS. This works… well, but has some quirks.
First, Mail crashes like clockwork on startup. My guess this is due to a large inbox (frequently I’ll update and see 50-75 messages waiting to download. It’ll get 2/3rds of the way through the download, and BOOM). A restart usually completes the update.
I’ll do my mailbox cleaning, removing a bunch of spam, checking notices, etc… and then go on about my daily business.
When I sit down at my desk and run up Thunderbird – which connects to the same IMAP server, I see that all the messages I deleted or marked as read are still in my inbox.
I can’t find a way to tell the iPhone to sync it’s view of my inbox with the server. It does happen eventually, during some dark and sleepy period when I’m not watching it I’m sure, but I can’t figure out how to make it happen on my time – like, say, after I’ve updated my inbox during a boring meeting, and before I sit back down at my desk.
I know OS 3.0 is right around the corner, and will be a monstrous update. Perhaps there’ll be some Mail app tweaks?

Kingdoms Live – Army Invite Codes!

Oh, and I also appear to be playing Kingdoms Live on the iPhone. It’s a lot of fun, pretty straightforward play, and enjoyable. Limits moves so you don’t spend your entire life on it. Not sure how far it’ll go, but if you’re playing, and you have an invite code, comment here, and expand your army!
My code is VNS22

Cohousing Day #28 – Superinsulation Works!

Super Insulation in ActionToday we had 2 more houses move in (well, technically, only one – since the second is still unloading items from the truck as I type, and it’s 9:30 at night.) Tomorrow we have another household moving in, bringing our grand total to 7 so far. That’s seven families that have pulled up everything, and moved here. And there’s more to come.

But that’s not what I came here to talk to you about.

When we designed our houses, we put great emphasis on Superinsulation. The idea that a house should be insulated far beyond what ‘code’ calls for, to the point that it can stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer with a minimal amount of work by heating / cooling systems.

Today we were able to put that to the test. It got incredibly hot today – hot for April in New England, topping out at around 95 degrees according to my indoor/outdoor thermometer (see above). (Note that wunderground history for today says it only got up to 89. But it was still damned hot). According to the thermometer, it got up to 95 outside, but stayed at or below 79 inside the house.

Note that we have no fans running, no AC, in fact all the windows were closed. The house kept in the cool air from the night before – all day long. Even with traffic in and out.

That, my friends, is energy efficiency.

How many other people turned on air conditioners today? We didn’t have to.

Cohousing day #20 – Spontaneous Outdoor Meal!

image1766156110.jpgTonight we had one of those cohousing moments everyone talks about, but this really was experienced first hand.

Cat and I were home doing normal work on the house, the kids were out doing kidstuff around the site. We bump into Diana who mentions she’s making tacos, and would we like to join her and the kids? Well this went further into ‘it’s such a nice evening, let’s eat on the common house porch!’

So we did!

Diana made tasty tacos while I got out the furniture and set things up. Cat finished up the work she was doing on the house, and the 3 adults and 4 kids sat down for a lovely outdoor dinner.

We had a visit from the fellow doing work on Beezys house, and our soon to be neighbor Ken came by as well. Later after we had finished and were lazing around chatting, Kai came by and shared some quiet time as well.

All in all, a nice end to the week, and we got to use a common house resource for something shared and pleasant.

I like this place.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Cohousing Day #10. We have a home.

img_7113.jpgA week and a half now. We’ve been living at Mosaic for a week and a half. Even though only 3 houses are now occupied, the life that is slowly coming to what was once just another construction site is tangible. I see people I’m close to almost every day – if just in passing, or to sit down for a chat. People are coming by to borrow tools, or to say hi, or for no reason at all.
Inside our house, things are starting to look sane and liveable. The living room is turning into a comfortable space, with the boxes receding like a flood tide, leaving furniture and decorations behind.
img_7112.jpgThe site in general? Wet wet wet. Color it mud. But even with the ongoing work, the dirt and rocks, the double parked construction machinery, and the strangers in your house at 7:30 in the morning working on an electrical problem, there’s no other place I’d rather be living.
In the next 2 weeks, I know of 2 definite move-ins, with 1-2 more possible. The neighborhood grows a little more, and a little more dream is realized.
Is is that shimmering utopia we imagined 10 years ago, when we started this project? No. But I’m starting to see glimmers of the thing we’ve been building. Sure, it’s been there, in the community at large, but it hasn’t been tangible and here.
Now. Bit by bit. It’s turning from a dream we all shared, to a place we can all call home.

Cohousing day #5: I am knocked up.

….. by electricians pounding in the front door responding to email I had sent the night before.

I’m working on getting the house internal wiring hooked up and realized (late last night) that the data and telco lines had been miswired. Fortunately our GC checks his mail often and sent the guys over to fix it this morning. Sadly I didn’t realize the problem until at least 5 trips from the basement to the attic (3 flights of stairs). Phew!

The guys saw the problem (yay! I’m not loopy!) and were repunching connectors as I was leaving.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Dear iPhone Developer Community…

You see that switch on the side of the iPhone? That little switch that means “Be quiet, I’m in a place where a vibrate will do?”
Pay attention to it!
There is absolutely no excuse to write a game, app, utility, or tool that starts making sounds or playing music upon startup if that switch is set to ‘silent’!
At the moment, I’m talking to you, Ezone, and you’re Crazy Snowboard app, that, despite having the phone on “SILENT”, you start playing music loud and clear upon startup!
iPhone App Developers. PAY ATTENTION TO THE SWITCH!
Sheesh!

Glimpses Back – The House that held Homeport – Up for sale!

It’s always interesting looking into houses that have so much history for you personally – after you’ve moved out of them.
The house that got to be well known as Homeport, which we sold about three and a half years ago, is back up for sale.
The listing on Realtor.com has a whole series of pictures of what the house looks like now. While I don’t agree with many (er, well, most) of their decorating tastes, I do think replacing the countertops in the kitchen with granite was a good idea.
I hope they do well – this is a bad time to be selling a large house, but it looks like they’ve dressed it up nicely, and have done repairs and improvements that the place needed.

The Move. T-Minus 10 days – Disassembly of Interlude begins.

In less than 10 days, Cat and Zach and I will be moving to Mosaic. It’s an intense time for all of us, and what with me being down with the crud and life continuing apace, taking no notice of our challenges, things have become a little… chaotic.

InterludeUnlike some of my friends, I’ve moved only twice in the last, gosh, 13 years. Once into Homeport, and then from there to our current abode, called Interlude. Interlude was supposed to be a weigh station between homeport and Mosaic, but it lasted longer than we anticipated (almost 4 years). They were good years though, with our awesome roommate Beth and a cast of thousands (well, okay, 3 cats over that time, plus one dog and one fish). We had some great music nights, great gaming socials, and a few outstanding parties.

Now it’s time to pull up stakes and move again. This time to a far greater project than anything else I’ve ever been involved in. There’s a lot of unknowns ahead. I’ve never lived in cohousing. I know all the families I’ll be living near – some families have already had our children growing up together – but what will the community be like when we move from seeing each other on weekends and constantly sending email – to actually living right next door? Will we survive?

Of course we will, but I just don’t know what it’ll be like.

Day 3 – Still sick

I’m sick.
I started noticing the telltale throat itchiness Thursday night, and by Friday morning it was in full swing. We’re to the point of thinking this is flu now, as I’ve been down for almost 3 days, and at last sensor check, I’m running a 101 fever.
Sudafed and Nyquil are keeping things under control at night, but I’m really tired of being weak as a kitten.
I have however been enjoying browsing Hulu to watch some shows I never get around to seeing. I really want to watch Heroes and BSG from season 1 on, but Hulu doesn’t apparently have them online (Sad!).
What I have been watching is Legend of the Seeker, the TV adaptation of Terry Goodkind’s books. All in all, they’re not awful – the casting of the main characters is good, though a lot of the incidental roles are terrible. I have read the books, so I didn’t have high expectations for the television series, and so far things seem to be meeting that bar 🙂
What bothers me most is that this show went to 22 episodes,and Firefly, which I still feel is a vastly better series, was cancelled at 12. I just don’t understand Hollywood.
Back on the sick front, I may have exacerbated this whole flu thing yesterday, where I spent the whole day helping Mosaic folks move materials out of our basement and into the common house. We needed to get this stuff moved now so that we can clean the basement, and there really wasn’t an option to ‘sit it out’. The crew was awesome, and I managed to make it through without having to do any heavy lifting (not that I could anyway), and we got everything moved without mishap. Yay community!
Now back to medicine and bedrest.

You, yes you on your phone in Starbucks.

We’re very impressed you have a nice blackberry, Jawbone bluetooth headset, and brown loafers. The leather case you’re carrying is pretty snappy. I think it’s particularly fascinating how you’ve managed to park yourself in a sparsely populated Starbucks, cranked up that wonderful gear of yours, and decided to CALL EVERYONE IN YOUR PHONE BOOK. I suspect there may be a small problem with your headphone, because the tree-leveling volume you’re speaking at must be needed for those obviously important customers to hear you.
Oh, and the constant revolving of your head to look at everyone around you, to make sure people notice you’re doing real live interesting cool stuff? Wonderful. Makes me want to throw down my obviously worthless career and beg for your guidance to success.
It’s particularly riveting that you’ve decided not to lower yourself to actually patronizing the restaurant you’ve decided to claim as your own personal conference room. What a star!

Speaking of webcomics. What are your favorites?

While on the topic of webcomics, I’m curious what strips folks read regularly? I have all of mine loaded up in Google Reader (currently one of my favorite toys), and while I’m not necessarily looking for other good strips to add to my lineup, I’m always interested in finding new interesting comics. Some I add to my daily read, some I let slip…

Anyway, here’s my current reading list.

So, got any suggestions of strips I absolutely should read, no matter what?