In my haste to capture shots of the kids’ running out into this morning’s snow, I inadvertently dragged our Nikon off the shelf and onto the floor. Fortunately, it wasn’t a forceful impact, but it was enough to damage the flip-up flash.
I toyed with the idea of fixing it myself, but that camera means too much to me to risk messing it up further. I’ll be shipping it to a factory-authorized repair shop soon (and will be hating every minute I’m without it). Sigh.
President Obama … and former President Bush!
Looks like we’ve gotten two inches of snow this morning, with plenty more still falling. Beautiful and peaceful, it is.
I’ll be at home today, methinks.
[Update: 8:40 AM] The initial snow was more like three inches. And its still falling!
[Update: 2:00 PM] The official measurement at MT.Net is a total of 5 inches of snow.
The current weather forecast calls for about 3″ of snow tomorrow, though depending on where things converge it could be less or much more. Fortunately, by coincidence we stocked up on our white goods yesterday, when we were still oblivious to the coming storm. Should things get messy tomorrow I’m staying put. With the vpn into work I can still be productive.
It was exactly four years ago when we got an inch of snow and all hell broke loose in Raleigh. That inch of snow wreaked more havoc than the 20″ we got in January 2000. Let’s hope this won’t be a repeat.
I conducted another meeting of the East CAC this evening. It was one of those meetings that sent me home feeling great. I get a rush out of being with a group of people passionate about their neighborhood.
It’s no small amount of work supporting my neighbors through the CAC, but it sure is a blast to see how much it’s appreciated.
I had a dream last night that I cut my fingers off. In my dream, reattaching them was as easy as sticking them back on my hand. Not so for jazz musician Mark Turner, who cut his fingers for real back in November.
Here’s an update from Aaron Parks on Mark’s fingers:
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Good News (update on Mark Turner)Some very encouraging news regarding Mark Turner and his injury. It’s looking like his recuperation is going much faster than anticipated, and he may be back to playing gigs again sometime in the next couple of months. Much better than the six months of recovery time that was initially expected. Let’s all wish him continued healing through the rest of 2008 and into 2009…
Get well, Mark!
I’m thinking of starting my own publishing company, specializing in books designed to give people the bare-bones information to keep computer systems running. The books would be a bit more complete than a HOWTO but favoring the day-to-day tasks over installation and configuration.
The target market is the poor schmuck who got stuck running Exchange (for instance) because the mail administrator got downsized. Poor Schmuck needs to know only the things that will keep Exchange up and running until someone with a clue can take over.
I think such a line of books might be successful in this kind of economy. If you’d like to write on a topic that might fit this mold, drop me an email and we’ll talk.
Finally I present the biggest highlight of 2008: our move to downtown. This one event was the most profound change for us in 2008.
Over the past few years, I’d been pondering what life in Raleigh would be after cheap gas was gone, or after I had become too old to drive. I wanted to live someplace where amenities were close by, and by that I don’t mean a faceless strip mall. I wanted to find a place where we could retire, knowing that if we needed to we could get around without driving.
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On my way home I picked up some takeout from a place in Cameron Village. Waiting for my turn to pay, I noticed a man holding the familiar MasterCard with the Cardinal photograph and “North Carolina” on it. It was an icon to the jobless in North Carolina: the unemployment insurance debit card.
“Hey, I used to have one of those,” I said to him, maybe looking to boost his spirits, or drum up camaraderie.
“Yeah,” he nodded, seeming a bit embarrassed. “The design industry isn’t doing so well these days . . .”
He trailed off, but it didn’t matter. I knew exactly how he felt.
“Good luck,” I offered as he turned to pick up his food, and he thanked me.
It’s tough out there and a lot of people are just barely hanging on.
I ended last year on a sad note when we said goodbye to my longtime feline companion, Smitty. Then in the following months we moved into a new home (and judged the kids ready for a pet), so we decided it was time to get a dog.
We met Rocket through a Lab rescue organization, and decided to “test-drive” him for an hour one evening. It wasn’t long after then that Rocket joined our family for good.
He’s led us on romps through the neighborhood, kept good company, become a great car traveler, learned a few tricks, and pretty much been everything we could’ve hoped for in a dog.
