So I’m up here in lovely Morristown, NJ for SQl training this week. As I write this, I’m just finishing up my lab for the day. Yesterday, I realized that I was relatively close to my college friend Erich. He works in NY and lives on the Jersey side, but I didn’t know exactly where he was in relation to my training. So I gave him a call, and luckily, he wasn’t away on business.

He went home last night, carved pumpkins with his kids and then met me for drinks around 8:30p. He is only about 25 minutes away. Tonight, rather than eat locally, I’m going to drive to his house to have dinner with his family. It’ll take closer to 45 minutes because I’ll be driving in traffic right now. I haven’t seen Erich since he came for the twins 1st birthday party, so it’s been 18 months. It’s been like that, on and off for 12 years since we graduated. Real life keeps us from seeing each other, and then time passes, and then we get together. I’m looking forward to seeing his kids tonight and how big they’ve gotten.

So while I was on the thought process of dinner with friends, I decided to give my buddy Murray a call. Now, Murray is a friend from college as well, but since he happens to be in the SCA *and* a fencer *and* in NJ, I see him regularly. I would say easily once every two months, sometimes several weeks in a row. However, our time is always spent being @ an SCA event, or going out to dinner with everyone else *after* an SCA event. I figured this would give us a chance to bullshit about life without the crowd. He’s working late tonight but thats ok as I have other plans (see one paragraph above, in case you forgot already). So he’s thinking we’ll get together on Thursday night.. but guess what? It’s fencing practice!!!

So i’m actually going to leave class, go meet him for dinner and then join him at practice. That way i get the best of both worlds. He only works about 10 mins from here, lives 25 mins, and practice is about 35 minutes… that rox…

I made sure my fencing gear was in the car before I left, just in case the fencing in Settmour Swamp practice idea panned out — I’d been batting that around for a week. it’s just nice that I can combo it with dinner with a friend as well.

Current Mood:  amused

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Regularly, Jeremy (ianraven) throws out a random lolcat phrase that makes reference to the current situation. Often they are very ‘heady’, and appeal on an higher intellectual level. We had several concerning the midrealm fencers during Pennsic.

While not a huge lolcat fan, I still find myself chuckling. Listening to this past weeks TWiT podcast #110, I found myself tracking down the following lolcat, + Maybe +, and thought of him immediately.

Current Mood:  bored

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It’s the Summer Solstice today.. Ok, that’s misleading.. it’s only the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere… which it’s most likely where you’re reading this from…So I guess I’d be more technically correct to wish you a happy June Solstice, or more generically a Happy Solstice!

Current Mood:  calm

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I’m looking at you Stacey! (staceyspins)

From Boing Boing

HOWTO knit a baby viking helmet

 Got a baby? Got knitting needles? You can use the latter to improve the former (and perforation of the child is not involved, you sicko) — by making a baby viking helmet! Link (via Craft)

 

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We’ve been using Google Maps for years now, ever since it was first released. I find the Ajax interface to be very easy to navigate, and I’m happy with the results. One of the great things about Google is that they are always adding new features. The problem is, that sometimes these new features slip in and as a regular user you have no idea. Granted, their new Street View feature (see real images and navigate 360 view at the street level) is getting a lot of news in the past weeks because of privacy issues. However, there are plenty of other features available, and I recently discovered two I didn’t previously know about.

For example, did you know that you can look at a Google Map and see traffic flow (real time)? How’s that for last minute planning! Did you know that you can save common addresses and even make your own address a default starting location?

I highly encourage you to read the Google Maps User Guide so that you can see what you’re missing. Learning keyboard navigation and knowing simple things like your mouse scroll wheel can zoom are going to make things easier for you.

So what two things did I learn? First, that they’ve now added the ability to Add Destinations to your directions. This means you no longer have to go from Point A to B and then from point B to Point C on two different sets of driving directions. You can go from A to C via B. Real nice for multiple destination travels.

The other thing is the really awesome ability to create your own map! These can be public, such as America’s Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66, or they can be private (non searchable). Being private doesn’t mean you can’t give out the link to other people –

– such as Directions to Our House. Now, I didn’t add any nifty pictures or video, because that would just be overkill… for now at least…

Now you have a link which takes you to a fully interactive Google Map that I created. You can click on our house, and have all the regular Google Map features, such as ‘Get Directions to this Point’. Or you can simply print it out and have the information to come visit us! Wanna see something really cool? Follow the link to our directions and then switch on Satellite View. Now you can see the actual streets AND our house. If you get lost now, it’s really NOT my fault.

(Edit: 6/13/07 — I removed the link to the house directions for privacy concerns. There are other public maps available for you to get the idea, and if you are particular friend/family who could actually USE the directions to our house, I’ll be glad to forward the link along to you)

Google Map Mashups are a whole separate post, but I’d want to pointout Wayfaring.com, which is a pretty slick one that I’ve used before. It takes all the features of the My Maps functionality and extends it into the public area. This way multiple people can add points of interest and leave comments, etc. Imagine, for example, a map with all the locations of SCA groups in NJ.. or even finer, just the members of Tadcaster and their relation (distance) to each other.

Current Mood:  accomplished

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I received an out of the blue email message the other day from my old friend Sara. Sara and I were friends back in high school. We were in drama together and hung together outside of school as well. We haven’t seen each other in over 10 years, though we did communicate via email for a bit. That’s even fallen off, and I haven’t heard from her in over two years, since she told me she was getting married and I told her we were pregnant with twins!

So imagine my surprise when she send me an email the other day. Apparently, she was going through her old email archives and realized that she never replied to me two years ago, so she finally did. Not only that, but she’s been in touch with a least one other friend, Heather, regularly. She proposed that we get together a sort of mini-reunion this summer and we’re currently working out the details.

While the ‘old gang’ didn’t all talk to each other directly, each of us, in turn, has been close with a least one other member. So it wasn’t too difficult to get everyone’s email addresses, and start a little mailing. Kinda bizzaro to suddenly be exchanging email with folks you haven’t talked to in so many years, while at the same time, it’s kinda cool to suddenly be talking with them again. So let’s see if Sara, Heather, Kevin, Ray, Jason and I can actually pull this off. Meeting husbands, wives, kids… Old friends, new families… new friends…

Current Mood:  sick

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So my friend Jason was just discussing this with me last month. He swears by it, and said how much better it made him feel. I was reluctant to belive him. Jean’s allergist recommended something similar, but it was more of a nasal spray cleaner then a true Neti Pot. Problem is, if you do it wrong, you wind up gagging on the water, or burning your nasal passages.. maybe this instruction video can be used to assist in using the spray. I can only imagine how much crap I have up my nasal passage. As long as a Muscle Man doesn’t fall out, I think I’d be willing to try it.

Current Mood:  cynical

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Thinking of you this morning Murray.. Here’s an article with pictures of baby hedgehogs.. I wish had some of you for comparison. Though the image above is one of my favorites.. it might not be a hedgehog on a keyboard, but it might be “avatar-worthy”, if only for the gratuitous anus shot.

http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/2007/05/newborn-hedgehogs-cute.html

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