We have now gone from being a 4 computer family to 3. One of the computers left standing is the one I'm using now (Marie's). It was purchased for $400 about 4 years ago when we realized that one desktop wasn't big enough for the both of us. We also have the Fujitsu laptop, which my father-in-law bought me for b-school. It has miraculously survived various trips, and is barely hanging on to life, given its overmatched Crusoe processor. I also have my work computer, which is always around. It works well on our wireless network around the house. Marie is using it right now, since it's easier for me to blog on her computer.

My desktop, which was purchased in 2000, and was quite the machine at that point, finally died two weeks ago. Actually, I accidentally killed it with my can-do (read: ill-advised) approach to computer maintenance. It all started a couple of months ago when the computer started making this loud, annoying, repeditive beeping noise in the middle of computing sessions. I have no idea why it did this, and after restarting failed to remedy the problem, I ripped off the cover and searched the motherboard for the offending buzzer. I thought I found it, and after shutting down, I drilled a hole in one of the places in the motherboard where I thought the buzzer was soldered in. No dice. I tried to just ignore the beeping for another two weeks, but I couldn't take it, and drilled 2 more holes in the motherboard just to try to kill the buzzer. Well after that, (surprise, surprise) the computer wouldn't boot up any more. It's not a big deal, though. I just slapped all the useful components (hard drive, DVD-RW drive) into Marie's computer, and use my work computer a lot more than I used to.

The heat wave finally broke this week, and we are enjoying a run of 75-78 degree days.

This week I sat through 4 days of meetings, and was taken aback at the prolific number of truly bad doodlers there are in this world. I happened to see a few of the pads people left after the meetings, and they definitely should have disposed of their artwork before leaving to catch their flights. Come up with a system, people! Get with the program! Draw a series of squares and make little patterns in the squares (for example) - it's really not that hard. I know Tamsin to be an excellent doodler. Maybe she could give lessons.

Here are a few pics from this week.






 

A couple of Stu notes - first, he was exceedingly happy to see me produce the Colin-towel from my trunk after our Saturday morning body board session. Although he asked me how I got it, I really don't know.

Also, he invented a really good word on the spot - "Pseudity" to describe the kind of nudity that is disguised in the cloak of artistic expression but is nonetheless embarrassing and lame. He was describing the time when he took a date to see "titanic".  

Out of the frying pan and into Poway

Poway is a nice little community on the other side of I-15 from us. Its downtown is maybe 5 miles from our house. On Saturday, I noticed that our car needed some gas, so we ventured over to their Costco instead of the Carmel Mountain one (w/no gas pumps) that's a little closer. We knew it would be hot over there, but were rather dismayed to be driving down the main drag and see a bank thermometer proclaim that it was 120 degrees F. When we got to Costco, I stepped out of the car to fill 'er up, and felt like I was in the Costco rotisserie chicken roaster. Inside the store, Marie overheard one woman telling another that it was 111 at her house, and she was going to hang at Costco for the next 4 hours until it closed. When we had finally purchased our groceries and breached the air curtain to go outside, I recall feeling like we had just been hit with a huge wall of car exhaust. This turned out to be rather humorous since, as I was loading our pile into the van, I actually felt the exhaust on my shin, and it was cooler than the ambient temperature. Back at our house, it was a 'comfortable' 90 degrees, although combined with our current 70% humidity and no AC, it's pretty bad. We're told that it's almost never this hot or humid. The temperature gradient is very real, though, and San Diego County has lots of microclimates. The coast is nearly always in the 70's, with the temperature variation increasing by the mile as you go inland. The nightly ritual of getting air to circulate through the house has made me pine for Dad's fan-on-steroids device that we used at 800 Fisk. Remember how that thing could slam the sewing room door? It's a wonder the door didn't get ripped off its hinges and sucked into the air intake.

On Monday of this week, I tested the limits of the Costco return policy, and came away considering a Costco ankle tattoo. It will surprise none of my non-Tato-skin-eating family members to know that I make questionable purchase decisions. For some reason, on the drive home from work on Monday, serious buyer's remorse hit after owning a $1200 Vizio 37" LCD flat screen TV for about 2 months. I just decided that for the time being, the TV might be considered riotous living. Many of you may be wondering "what made Scott buy it in the first place?". The answer is that 2 months ago, we had just finished a rather difficult english-japanese translation for my dad-in-law, which made me feel like we had some extra dough. Oh yeah - the world cup was about to start, too (we had just gotten digital cable for the occasion, which we then canceled last week). So we loaded up the TV into the car, and with no receipt, successfully returned it to Costco. The employees weren't exactly overjoyed to see it being wheeled in, but they took it anyway, and in the end, were nice about it. It is sometimes a humiliating experience to return stuff, and this was no exception. I'm kind of getting the hang of it, though. In the last 6 months, I've returned a prepaid cell-phone, a juicer, DVDs, a DVD burner, and a color printer. I know I may be a marked man, now, but Costco is basically the only place we shop, so I think they still make money on us.

Here are some random pictures from the beach last week. Kai is eating sand (as usual), and Jerome is making the obligatory 'tunnel'. Mari used an innovative technique for removing sand from the kids which involves talcum powder (see pic where Asha's crossing her eyes.

So it's been a while since my last post (have I said that before?). I hasten to add that my last post was on June 4, a mere 5 days before the World Cup. I still feel it is one of the few events that it worth turning your life upside down for. I have a few observations that I'm going to share, whether you like it or not.

1. As a US fan, I watched the team for 270+ minutes, and was actually happy for 3 of them. Those 3 minutes occurred after Clint Dempsey put one in on Ghana, and before the referee whistled Oguchi Onyewu for a foul on a shameless dive in the box, awarding Ghana a penalty that essentially sealed the US's fate.
2. It was nice to see the teams that were actually good at soccer playing deep into the cup. None of this Senegal, South Korea, Turkey, Greece (see Euro 2004) stuff. If I'm watching the world cup, I want to see the Italys and Brazils of the world in the quarters, and we did.
3. Can we please get instant replay into world cup football? Before all the purists erupt into violent spasms of protest, let me say that I too see game 'flow' as sacred to the sport, so lets only consider options that won't interrupt flow. For example, if a penalty is awarded, play has already been stopped. We at home already get to see the foul from 3 or 4 angles in less than 30 seconds, so why can't a ref? Check quickly for a dive, and then let play resume. Another option that wouldn't interrupt flow at all would be to let play continue after fouls, but have a 5th referee review replays of fouls to award yellow cards after the fact for obvious dives. I would estimate that perhaps 10% of fouls in this cup could be termed as blatant play acting, and were clearly so upon review of the tape. Same thing in offside non-calls resulting in goals. Play has stopped because a goal has been scored. Just take 10 or 20 seconds while the celebration's happening to confirm that everyone really was onside.
4. Everyone has to have an opinion on Zidane, and I guess I do, too. My take is that his exit didn't hurt the French at all. Barthez is a spaz in goal, and kind of short to boot. The French probably weren't going to score in the game's final 10 minutes anyway, so even if Zidane makes the penalty that Trezeguet missed, there's no way that Italy misses before France does (remember that Roberto Baggio has not been with the Azzurri for some time now). Zidane's head butt is inconsequential, but useful for giving Zidane more noteriety than he had, if that's possible.
5. Why fire Arena? He's gone anyway, but let's be realistic and say that there's no way anyone else will do better. The only thing a Klinsmann will do is produce a mirror image of what happened in Germany this last world cup, where vast hoardes of Klinsmann skeptics were instantly transformed into true believers when he won (and made a soccer team that was fun to watch). These people then bawled like they had been forced to eat Schneeballen when Klinsi up and quit last week. The mirror image refers to my prediction that everything will happen in reverse - a small band of soccer fanatics will be giddy upon the hire of Klinsmann. Gradually, the team will fail to produce results and Klinsi will turn giddy supporters into skeptics who cry when they realize that Sunil Gulati gave truckloads of money to Klinsmann and now can't fire him for fear of hurting his own credibility. Oh, and don't get me started on how bad it will be if Gulati picks an MLS coach to head the team. That's what Areana was, too, but Arena is Arena.

Well, I got through soccer and nothing else. This is sad, since I really don't know anything about the sport, but have strong Campbell-style opinions anyway.