Rand Wacker

slumpire, n.

1. A collection of sub-par rental apartments or income properties that are controlled by one person/corporation; as, “The sun never sets on the Reddy slumpire.”

Nicely provided by brain on this quiet Monday afternoon.

After a month and a half of either being on the road (Seattle, New York, Chico, Seattle), or having friends we had to help move or see off, we finally have a whole weekend at home with nothing planned doing…and its great.

Took some time yesterday to completely finish phase one of our Terraforming project; a second, smaller patio tiered off of the major space in the upper back yard (pictures coming). I wanted to just complete something so that we would feel like we were making progress in some way…and it helped a lot. Being able to move the patio furniture and hammock up to the new area then enjoy some evening drinks with friends overlooking the hills was quite nice. There’s still a lot to do (retaining walls for the walkways, new fences, the whole utility yard), but we can theoretically have people over for dinner in the back yard again. Now if the damn Bay Area weather would only cooperate (every single day in July has been overcast for at least the entire morning and most of the evenings).

I’m finding myself more and more at peace in this old house. I originally thought we were only going to be here for a couple of years, but as we do more and more major projects I keep pushing the “moving horizon” back further and further. Really, there’s no reason for us to move as the location works well (the neighborhood keeps improving), the house is holding up well (for the most part), and there’s nothing that can’t be done to improve it that doesn’t need just a little money and a (lot) of hard work. People said when we moved in that the average stay in a house was 5-7 years; I never thought we could stay here that long. Right now though, when planning the next steps in our lives, I think it might not be so crazy.

billmon has some interesting information that was dug up by the NYTimes and by CNN about continuing issues in the Florida election process. Crooks, every single one of them:

Whiskey Bar: Caught Jeb Handed

Formac Electronic, Inc.

In a fit of distraction I started poking around on the net looking for some way to download Tivo shows to my PowerBook so I could watch them on the road (I spend a lot of time on the road these days). Looks like things have changed quite a bit since I last looked.

There is now a networked version of Tivo MPlayer that can stream shows directly off of a Tivo over the network. It also looks like Tivo, Inc. has announced intentions to build a TivoToGo feature that will allow you to download shows and then play them (as long as you have a special USB dongle plugged in to prevent illegal sharing). And yay, both of these solutions are supposed to work with OSX (despite what Steve Jobs may think thinks about computers and TV). A third option might be to get a A-D converter or USB/Firewire tuner box and just record shows straight on to my laptop from the Tivo.

Options A and B are both going to give me a headache since I own a DirecTivo (still no Home Media Option for the DirecTivo box). Option B won’t be available for sale until Fall apparently (if that sticks). Option A could potentially work today, but requires hacking the Tivo which will both be a pain and take time (which I probably won’t have until fall anyways. Option C could work straight away but is quite a kludge.

Ideally, I would love to just be able to drag and drop shows off the Tivo and then take them with me when I’m gone. It would also be nice to use my extra screen real-estate as a remote TV streaming shows off the living room box when I’m working back in the office.

Oh well, guess there’s no perfect world yet.

I’ve been cultivating ways to materially help out in the next presidential election (if we actually have one). A friend in New York suggested going out to places like Florida and doing poll monitoring. Here was an interesting site I came across recently as well:

Driving Votes - Visit a Swing State

Registering voters in swing states is the single most effective way to defeat Bush. Driving Votes provides you with everything you need to register voters in swing states. If you don’t live in a swing state, get your friends together for a road trip on the Democracy tip. You’ll have an unforgettable time while helping to put the brakes on Bush.

Anyone have any experience with this group?

I snapped this as I was boarding a flight from Seattle this weekend.

Alexis and I went back up to Seattle this weekend for the wedding of my best man Rob and his new wife Amy:

It was a wonderful weekend, and those two have fantastic families and great friends.

Being the best man gave me a good perspective on just how much all of my friends did for me at our wedding earlier this year. It is quite a responsibility, but the whole crew was a lot of fun and I was honored to be a part of it. And I definitely could not have done everything were it not for my best-best-man-woman.

TuSSH - HiRes palm ssh for Palm OS4 and Above

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