| Wednesday, 29 August 2001, 1:50 pm Tags: Blogging |
It was a great birthday party for Henry. We were thinking of having goat cart rides as the entertainment, but Stella and Andy are still too small to put to work, so we rented “jumpy jumps” and put them on the north 40 by the goat pastures and the haystacks. The rainbow is a slip ‘n’ slide – a hose sprinkles it from the top and the kids slide down. Just add water and 10 seven-year-old boys and you’ve got fun! The other you just get in and jump up and down in until you want to barf. You can see the goat pasture to the left of the car.
Afterwards, it was time for cake and ice cream. Henry announced that he wanted to give a speech then dove head first into the ice cream. Nice speech.
The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree, they say.
Back to work today. I still don’t have a time when they’ll run my segment on the Today Show this Saturday. I’ll post it when I do. But they did e-mail asking for some more pitches. They’re interested in a piece on identity theft. So maybe I’ll do it again in a month or so. This time I’ll spend a weekend in NYC, instead of just a night.
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| Saturday, 25 August 2001, 11:56 am Tags: Blogging |
Erp. I got off the plane in New York and got a message from the producers saying my segment had been bumped. I’m still going in to the studio. I want to watch Blues Traveller perform on the show. They didn’t get bumped! I’ll tape a segment with Soledad after the show at 9:15. They say they’ll air it September 1. We’ll see.
Oh, well. Such is life. Or rather, such is TV. I have an 11a flight back to San Francisco. I’m taking Monday and Tuesday off. Henry is having his 7th birthday party on Tuesday and we have a lot of preparation to do.
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| Thursday, 23 August 2001, 12:57 pm Tags: Blogging |
Hey, goats are fun! Stella and Andy arrived Monday and they’ve been really sweet. Stella’s still on the bottle and Abby has been feeding her every day. We were warned that she’s a little “vocal” (the goat not my daughter) but both have been pretty quiet. Our housekeeper, Magdalena, keeps giving us recipes for goat. She says it tastes better than pork. I don’t think she understands that they’re pets!
Tomorrow morning I’m going in to do a roundtable on TechLive celebrating the 10th anniversary of Linux. Apparently they needed someone who still likes it. Harumph. Then I fly out to New York at 1p. I arrive at 9p. Get up at 4a (Eastern – 1a my time!), do the Today show, then immediately fly home. Not even time for an H&H bagel before I leave. I’m supposed to be on at 8:20a but these things always change. If there’s any breaking news I could be bumped entirely, but that’s less likely on a Saturday.
I’m going to be talking to Soledad (my buddy from The Site) about finding old friends online. Should be fun – if exhausting. I wish I could sleep on airplanes.
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| Monday, 20 August 2001, 8:56 pm Tags: Blogging |
Infamous uber-hacker Kevin Mitnick will be on The Screen Savers tonight. I understand he’s going to be accompanied by a famous friend. Watch the couch shots to see.
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| Monday, 20 August 2001, 8:06 pm Tags: Blogging |
We’re shooting the cover for “Poor Leo’s 2002 Computer Almanac” tomorrow night. They asked me if I had my own overalls and straw hat or if they should get one for me.
I have my own pitchfork. I have my own goats. But, oddly enough, no overalls and straw hat. If I can steal a copy of the picture I’ll post it here.
I’m not going to be too sprightly on the show tonight, my back is killing me after all the farmwork yesterday!
The goats arrive today. Any suggestions for the names?
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| Monday, 20 August 2001, 1:18 am Tags: Blogging |
Spent the day putting up 16 foot galvanized hog panels and getting the hay feeder, salt lick, shelter, and shed ready for the goats.
We have a smalll pasture in the northeast corner of the ranch that’s just perfect for livestock. It’s 80×80 feet. But the old fencing surrounding it is a little raggedy. Hence the hog panels. We’re getting two female kids tomorrow. Both Alpine goats. We were thinking of getting a Nubian, as well, but they get pretty big. The kids are pretty young, one’s still on the bottle for another week. They were bottle-fed by a couple of 4-H girls in the neighborhood, so they’ll be very friendly. They’re really just pets, but they do have a job to do. We need them to keep the grass down.
We’re also going to get a few chickens for the eggs. We could milk the goats, Laura Burstein says I should start a goat cheese business, Chevre de Laporte, but that’s most emphatically not part of my three year plan.
Right now I’m making Hunter’s Chicken for the family while listening to great old country music on The Cowboy Cultural Society. It’s my current favorite Internet radio station. Last night they had a GRITS festival – Ghost Riders in the Sky. Hee yah!
I installed Windows XP on Friday night for the first time – Release Candidate 2 which is pretty close to the gold master. Its Windows 2000 heritage is very clear, and I like the new UI pretty well, although it’s a little gaudy. But I ended up deleting it because for some reason my beloved Sony Clie can’t sync in XP. It works fine in 2000, but not at all in XP. Which makes me think that XP won’t be quite as compatible as one hopes. So I ended up trashing it. I think I’ll stick with W2K for a while.
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| Wednesday, 8 August 2001, 5:55 am Tags: Blogging |
Once again it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I just didn’t feel right writing the blog when I had so much to write for the book. But the book has finally gone off to the publisher. Whew. If you want to see some fanciful pictures of me writing in the Leoville message boards.
All I can say is that writing is very painful, although I rather like having written.
The tentative title is “Poor Leo’s 2002 Computer Almanac” but that could change. It’s a day by day almanac with a calendar of events, maintenance schedule, and lots of factoids, quotes, and tidbits from the show. Plus hundreds of questions and answers, most pulled from my Access Magazine columns and the Screen Savers and Call for Help show notes. I also wrote twelve essays to begin each month. I have high hopes for this book. It’s supposed to be in book stores by October.
My last book sold about 5,000 copies. I hope this one does a little better!
I did take a little time off from writing to play Max Payne, the new game from Remedy. Wow. It’s about the most violent game I’ve ever seen, but it’s also incredibly compelling and realistic. Nightmarish, too. Very scary. The most interesting innovation is “bullet time.” You can slow everything down as in The Matrix – which makes it easier to shoot the baddies. I hesitate recommending it because it’s so violent, but I can’t stop playing it. I didn’t allow myself the Diablo II expansion disc, though. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to finish the book with that lying around the house.
Abby is in camp for the next two weeks. It’s her second year but it still terrifies me to have her gone so long. She loves it though. She’s with her best friend, Bianca. I’m taking Henry to Legoland this weekend. We went last year and had a blast. We’re going to stay on the beach in San Diego, do some father-son body surfing, and visit the Wild Animal Park, too.
Well I was installing the latest version of Mandrake Linux while I was writing this. The install is done, so back to Max Pay… er.. I mean back to work!
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