Christmas Spirit

We awoke to 2″ of snow this morning and it has continued more or less for all of this day. About 1100 hrs I summoned sufficient spirit to go don the hill on foot to get the gas can.  I filled the snowblower with gas, started it (first pull – yea), and blew the driveway off.  SAM was out there helping with the shovel too.  We were done in about an hour. 

After lunch I ran out to the airport to see what was going on and they were plowing snow too.  I returned home an did the driveway down to the building and that takes 5 passes at 450′ per pass.  Three passes are down the hill and two are up the hill.  It is a little work out.  Temperatures are hovering at freezing but the blacktop collect a little from the sun so it is melting off the drive.  The barometer is 29.88″ and rising a little but very light winds from the NE.

I think I will log off and try to find some Flash.  BFN.

Been a while

It has been some time since I was last here blogging.  A lot has been going on.

• My ISP has changed the email system and I was intermittant and sometimes totally out of the email business.  It still is not correct since my SMTP will still not work.  I use Outlook and have 5 accounts set up.  My default was my ISP but I had to change it to gmail so I could send mail.
• The Christmas Letter 2009 was finished several days ago but I could not send it.  I have two Christmas Letter groups with about 25 names in each group.  I sent the letter days ago and it appeared to go OK to each group.  Things were strangely silent after that.  I almost always get a comment or two -No Comments.  Sure enough many people did not get the letter.  I sent it again & the same thing happened.  Finally I started sending them individually.
• Church website is http://www.angolaag.com and I took on the task of cleaning it up a bit.  That took a surprizing amount of time and the activity continues.  I spent a couple of days just getting used to the CMS GUI.  As it turns out I have to hand code most of the stylesheet controls.  The CMS also used depreciated HTML such as <font> and <b>.  The code is also very dirty – for example if you do a test size 3 and later change it the code calls for a size three and then nests the size 4.  Now I am looking for some good gif’s or Flash to replace some of the drab pictures. I did a few IFRAMES too.
• Last night was the Primetimers group at church so we both attended.  It was entertaining and the pizza that SAM made was good.  We got home about 2100 hrs.

Now I have to figure out what I do with the Christnas News Letter 2009. To publish or not to publish?

A case currently in federal court questions whether it should be possible to patent genetic sequences. At issue is whether Utah-based Myriad Genetics, a biotech company, should be allowed to hold patents on genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, which are linked to increased risk of developing breast cancer. Although courts have held that “products of nature” and “laws of nature” are not patentable, the US Patent Office has been awarding patents involving genetic sequences for over 20 years. Currently, thousands of genetic sequences have been patented. 

In May of this year, the ACLU organized a lawsuit, Association For Molecular Pathology et al v. United States Patent and Trademark Office et al, seeking to have the Myriad patents thrown out. Part of their argument centers on the US Constitution, which gives Congress power “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Because the gene patents hinder scientific progress, the lawsuit argues, the Patent and Trademark Office acted against the Constitution in granting those patents.

There is a link to this US Science Friday site.

Cougars

I just received and invitation to attend the next Cougars game at Saint Francis University in Fort Wayne – You know I just might go.  Go Cougars!

Florence of Arabia

Just finished the book I bought on Amazon titled “Florence of Arabia” by Christopher Buckley.  It is an easy read, fast moving book about a couple of fictional middle east countries, cabals, women repressed and hero’s and heroine’s.  I enjoyed it and found it only because of Mitch Daniels recommendations – Thank’s Mitch.  This is a change of pace book for me with decent plot and superficial but entertaining coverage of the middle east women’s plight.

It was extremely windy yesterday, stated warm and ended up in the single digits today.  There is snow on the ground and the wind is still 13 kts from 250°.  A deep, almost a record, low passed and my barometer registered below 29.10″.  I brought the truck up the hill yesterday late so it would be available if more snow arrived than expected.  I picked up the tractor that I had taken in for repair and put it away for the winter with all Preventative Maintenance being performed.

I removed the Widget Zemantha yesterday.  I did not like the new Privacy Statement.  Now I am back to plain text and the excruciatingly slow method of adding visual impact.  When you install it you get it on both IE & FF but not on Chrome and Safari.  I have made Chrome my default browser as it is about 4X faster than FF and a little faster than IE.  I have 5 of the popular browsers installed so I can check the various websites I have for proper rendering.  IE has some quirks that I wish Microsoft would get rid of.  All the rest seem CSS compliant.

Party

We went to Jerry’s dinner tonight and talked airplanes most of the time but also talked boats and kayaks.  They will be going to Florida soon and wanted us to come down for a while.  They had some compelling arguments mostly centered around water and warm temperatures.  We had a great time and the evening ended too soon.

I also walked 2+ miles to day at a reasonable clip.  I walked Robb Hidden Canyon complete circuit and part of the Fish Creek Trail from Ball Lake to the road bridge.  It was 32° with nearly calm Westerly winds in light snow: wow, how can it get any better?  It is pretty hilly at the start of this walk so you get warmed up after the first half mile.  I am still not broken in to the exercise yet and at my age it is best not to push too hard.  However, I need to get in shape for the X-C skiing this winter – pray for snow.

The 2009 Christmas Letter is nearly finished and ready for delivery so I spent some time this afternoon trying to get new email addresses for those forgotten in past years.  In the process, I deleted the “Friends” list and had to reconstruct the whole thing: do you know how many people I have stored in Outlook?

Regretfully I had to delete Zemantha due to the new Terms of Agreement.  I will miss it as it was extremely easy to add interesting content to the blog.

I Shall Rise

Never Fear – I will rise when He calls my name.  I am saved & I shall Rise.  Worthy is the Lamb.

Facebook

I spent a good deal of this afternoon agressively going after old friends for my Facebook.  I found at least 4 of my old friends and from the looks of things a couple of those friends became friends.  Since these new friends are much younger than me they will survive the test of time.  Warms you heart it does.

Tonight, we went to AG church and the message was Revelations – OK, I know you have knowledge of Revelation but tonight was different – it was like slow motion of a fast forward.  Pastor covered the first 4  of The Seven Plagues which rendered havoc here upon Earth.  Man, I will tell you that I am glad that I will not be here to experience that trauma.  Injecting my bit here, from the descriptions by the pastor, I see a big object, of large mass but not so large relative diameter hitting the Earth, that renders our systems and centralized population subject to Titans.  I will leave it to you to figure that out what the first 4 are but it is real easy to find the answers.  Call it the B.I.B.L.E.

Productive day

I was home most of the day & got my three things accomplished.

1. Varnish sailboat companionway doors
2. Burn the non-recyclable trash
3. Go for two mile walk at Fish Creek Trail

I also started using Google Chrome browser and am learning the nuances.  For instance, there is no specific search bar.  You just type in the search term into the Address Bar and wallah you get a Google search.   It is much faster than FF and a little faster than IE8.  So far I like it but have dropped back to familiar functions in IE or FF when needed.  I am writing this blog line in Chrome.

Xara Web Designer was downloaded and installed on a trial basis.  It is a pretty slick web page maker and is all drag and drop with no code knowledge needed.  I have not really investigated the source code generated much but it seems to be html/css on the one page I glanced at.  Now the question is whether to spend the $50 to purchase it.  Xara has some pretty flashy software and I have bought my share but, in practice, I have rarely used it on web site graphics or design.  I did use their Menu Maker on a website for www.itsmichigan.org

Board of Aviation

The BOAC met tonight as is custom on the first Tuesday of the month. It was a great meeting with many items covered and there was legitimate harmony all around. Things look like they are coming together after many years. Thank you Steuben County Commissioners!

After the meeting I discussed with the FBO website considerations and the various hosting methods for small businesses. The FBO needs a site to represent the business and to lead charters to the website. This will be a delicate situation since the name of the town is Angola and there is a whole Angola State in Africa. How do you compete with that?  I explained a whole bunch of technical things but it was the “Search” engines that dominated.  We left with the ball in the FBO court to define what he wanted and then we would talk again.  Great – good short meeting but I think we both had glazed eyes.