Category: life

where everything else happens

Shifting Gears in my reading habits…

I finished Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Thanks John W!) last weekend. A truly fascinating read. I grazed through the Goolsbee bookshelves to grab something else and my eyes fell upon something I hadn’t read in years (since it came out in the 80s actually!) … I instinctively grabbed it and shoved it in my pocket as I drove off to work one morning. It is Douglas Adams’ Life, The Universe and Everything.

I only started reading it yesterday, and I’m already halfway through. I LOVE Adams’ writing style. It is wonderfully entertaining to read. I’m inspired by him, truly. I love to write and wish I could write half as well as Douglas Adams. I’d love to be able to somehow channel Adams & Eagan when I write my rally reports and stories. While I’m usually confident in my photography, I know my writing is nowhere near these two greats. I guess I’ll just keep trying.

A thoroughly enjoyable diversion from my usual serious reading.

As a side note, I actually one day found myself standing next to Douglas Adams. I can not really claim to have met him, though we exchanged exactly four words. (mind you that was far more than my other New York/Celebrity encounter – the infamous William Fucking Shatner!) I was at Macworld Expo in New York City in July of 2000. I was scheduled to speak at the MacIT conference later that week (with Ron Marx and John Welch) and my speaker badge afforded an AMAZING seat at the Steve Jobs Keynote. I was in the sixth row. This was the famous G4 Cube/no-button mouse/free mouse Keynote. After the speech concluded most of the attendees stampeded the exits like Wildebeests lurching from a Crocodile to collect their free mouse. However the real geeks clamored to the front of the stage to get photos of the newly announced product. Freebies can wait… there are Cubes to undress with our eyes!

crush

Since I was sitting right up at the front, I ambled up there too. I stood back a bit to have a look at the Cube (a truly elegant machine, I still have one on my desk at work!) and noted a rather tall man at my right elbow wedged between me and my friend Chris Kilbourn. “Quite nice” I said to him nodding at the machine. “mmm Yes” he replied, his eyes still glued in techno-lust at the gleaming Cube. I took a second glance and recognized him as Adams! I shot a photo – and despite look of this shot, it wasn’t as stalkerish as it appears… there were literally hundreds of people in a huge semi-circle, with flashes going off like crazy.

Douglas Adams

Tragically, within a year, he was dead. 🙁

I introduced my sons to his genius not long after, and this copy I grabbed belongs to my youngest son Nick. Next up will have to be “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish!”…

Need an Alternator for a ’79 M-B 450sl!


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My father is driving his 1979 Mercedes-Benz 450sl from Colorado to Vermont roughly along that route above. He just called me from western Nebraska with a dead alternator. 🙁

Needless to say, the parts stores in Nebraska don’t carry a suitable alternator, so he’s doing the logical gearhead thing: He bought two spare batteries and a charger and he’s going to keep driving until he can find one.

Here is where you come in dear reader: Anyone know what sort of alternator he needs? I assume it is a Bosch, but googling so far is just getting me link farms. A Lester/Rebuilders number would be great! If you don’t know that, how about a hint of reasonably honest Mercedes service locations (dealers or independents) anywhere from Elkhart, Indiana to Cleveland, Ohio. That is where he’ll be Monday morning.

Thanks in Advance!

Update, 11 PM PDT: I posted this to a couple of car-related mailing lists, and received a ton of useful information, part numbers, potential sources, and a good selection of service operations along his route. I’ve passed it along to my Dad. He & my mom made it to their hotel before dark, and have their battery on the charger. He said the car ran great all day.

Thanks to all who provided information!

My April Fool’s Day prank.

I love practical jokes, but most years I forget about the license to do them on others that is the 1st of April. It just escapes my mind until it is too late.

This year however I was inspired by something that happened back in December. My friend (and client) John Welch posted something of a love letter to my employer on his website. Basically it said “You’ll never see a “bandwidth quota exceeded” page on my site because my hosting provider doesn’t do that sort of thing.”

That is true, but when I saw it I thought to myself, what a great practical joke this will make! 😉 … and made a note in my calendar to do this on 4/1/2008.

So when people went to John’s site today this is what they saw:

LOL

That “(reference)” link on the “bandwidth exceeded” page goes right to John’s post that inspired the prank.

I actually wanted to make the joke more John-specific… like “This user has expended the maximum number of input keystrokes allowed” or “this user has been suspended for excessive profanity” or something… Unfortunately I spent the day yesterday at our facility in Vancouver BC replacing a broken switch, and fixing a broken server, so I didn’t have the time to write up the HTML. Bill Dickson however, whipped up the PHP code required to pull off the stunt, and wrote that HTML page. Without his help, this one would not have been pulled off.

I hope John liked it.

Out Like a Lion…

Plum Tree with Snow

Rhodie in snow

Really weird weather here the past few days. It seemed as if Spring had sprung (as you can see by the flowers and buds on the trees above), then Friday Winter came back for a last gasp. Friday night brought about 3″ of snow. Saturday it went from rain, to snow, then rain, snow, etc. I went out to the barn to work on the Jag’s exhaust and it was coming down pretty hard. A while later I opened the barn door to find the clouds all gone and the sky filled with brilliant sunshine. About that time my friend John showed up with a barrel of WVO to make into BioDiesel. While we were unloading that from his trailer my driveway was turning into a lake! The snow was melting so fast the water had nowhere to go!

Then a few hours later the clouds came back. It is snowing again now. Go figure.