Life of Conan

Family Fun (last WordPress post)

lifeofconan — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 02:53:17 +0000

    Hung out with my brother Roy’s family a lot this week. Went over to his house Sunday morning for the usual delicious chocolate chip pancakes and entertaining the younger kids (including another klutzy attempt by me at playing a Mario Brothers video game). The next day, my sister-in-law Sandy came by to swap my little twin bed for a proper grown up full bed. (The littlest two girls had been sleeping on the full bed, but for Christmas had gotten bunk beds, requiring twin sized mattresses. To save money on beds for both of us, we traded beds, so Sandy does not have to get two new beds, and I get a bed befitting an adult. Let the fun begin! )
    Then Tuesday night, I walked over to their place again (a balmy night then), for cookie decorating. Seems it is a holiday tradition to get a big tub of plain cookies, whip up some frosting, put out a selection of sprinkles, and have the kids get creative. I had never done this before, so my attempts rather simple and crude, while the experts (the kids) were adept at making pretty designs, and even making the blank cookies look like fish or other objects. At 10:30 PM I walked home, which is hard to believe now.
    That’s because Thursday, after raining all day, at night it started to snow, a lot. This wasn’t like the few wisps of last time, this was a serious snowstorm. By sunrise, Christmas day, the skies had cleared to sunny blue, and the whole city was under several inches of snow and ice, on top of being very cold. (Turns out it was the first white Christmas in Fayetteville in over 20 years, which is good because I naturally assumed this happens every year). But I had been invited to my brother’s place for Christmas festivities, and being unwilling drive in this strange powdered frozen water, I crunched over there on foot, taking some pictures along the way. But Christmas at Roy’s house was worth it, full of holiday cheer, a hearty breakfast, and gift opening, which the girls where going crazy with anticipation over. Roy liked the present I got him and the family, a box of See’s candy (soft centers), which hopefully caused nostalgia for his long ago youth, because when we were kids our parents would give us all boxes of See’s candy every Christmas, which are unavailable directly in the Fayetteville area, though of course you can get them online, and during the holiday season you can get them at malls in Little Rock, Tulsa, and Springfield, MO. We also watched the cars slip and slide on the ice covering the steep road outside Roy’s house.
    Otherwise, not much to report, except for the saga of the lost mitten. You see, Wednesday I went on an exercise walk to a local park called Gulley Park. It turned out to be less cold than I thought, so I eventually stuffed my mittens and knit hat into my jacket pockets, but when I got home – oops! – I had only one mitten left. After some looking I decided I had dropped one while fishing around in my jacket pockets, and while I was lost in my deep thoughts about the new year. This was hardly a great tragedy, since they are cheap three dollar a pair mittens I got at Target soon after I got to Arkansas. But I was still miffed, because I like to think I keep better track of my stuff, and what good is one mitten?
    But then I remembered that around here, people leave stuff lying around out in the open for days at a time, without disappearing. So the next day, I again went on a walk to Gully Park (a two mile round trip), retracing my path, and as I hoped I came across the missing mitten flopped onto the middle of the sidewalk, plain as day, and right in front of somebody’s driveway, too. It was raining by now, so the mitten was all wet, but what amazed me was that it was still there where I dropped it 24 hours before. Thank goodness for whatever qualities Fayetteville folks have that makes them leave obviously lost mittens sitting on the sidewalk all day and all night.
    And with that, I hope you all have a wonderful New Year!

(And also with that, this is my last post here on WordPress. It’s a nice website, but not enough people are reading my blog here to make it worthwhile to keep posting here. If you want to keep up with the adventures of Conan, see my much more popular MySpace blog at: www.myspace.com/uncleconan )

Busy Holidays.

lifeofconan — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:30:08 +0000

This week mostly busy with holiday activities, a lot of it writing up my yearly Christmas newsletter (a rather subdued one this year, not so witty as usual), and getting the Christmas cards out. Cards are a slow process for me, because I have to write a personal note in each one, then hand address them. I also did a little bit of Christmas shopping.
I also read a library book, “Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking,” by Charles Seife (a summary of the progress in nuclear fusion research, or the lack of it really; the author seems to believe that fusion will never be a practical energy source, and with good reason given the track record of the field so far). It has been a long time since I read a general overview of fusion, so when I saw it at the library, I decided to borrow it to get caught up (the book came out last year). A quick, fun read, but the tone a bit dismal and depressing due to the parade of flops and embarrassments.
Today I made myself useful, and went over to my brother’s place to help put together the new bunk beds for the two younger kids. Some parts have not been delivered yet, so I could only get it partly assembled, but it should look very snazzy when it is done. It’s looking very Christmas-y at their place, they have a very nice decorated tree, and other decorations for the house. (All I have are a couple of red stockings hung up in odd places.)
Here’s hoping you all have a wonderful Christmas this Friday.

Get cold, then get a cold.

lifeofconan — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 01:13:53 +0000

Not much to report this week, because for most of it I was sick with a mild cold. Since I am a big believer in going to bed when you are sick and staying there until you feel better, that is what I did pretty much. (And before I get any complaints, I know there are people who are too busy for the luxury of such a treatment plan, and I appreciate that I am fortunate that I can do so.) Otherwise I read a couple of library books I probably would not have gotten around to reading.
One was “Off The Planet,” by Jerry Linenger, an American astronaut who spent five months on the aging and malfunctioning Mir space station in 1997. Though the author comes across as full of himself, it is an interesting story. Space travel is usually portrayed as glamorous, clean, and well lit, as in “Star Trek,” but Linenger’s experience is more like “Das Boot,” or “The Poseidon Adventure,” with coolant leaks, equipment breakdowns, and even a fire. And in case you were wondering, the station was de-orbited around the turn of the century, and burnt up in the upper atmosphere.
The other book was “Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship,” by George Dyson, about a US federal program in the late 1950s to design spaceships powered by small nuclear bombs. The idea was to chuck them out the back, behind a stout shield, and the explosions would kick the spacecraft along. Technically the idea seems to be OK, enabling spectacular performance (such as hauling a 1,000 ton payload from “Jackass Flats,” a well known nuke test site, to Saturn orbit, and back to Earth orbit, with a single stage). But concern about radioactive fallout, and the 1963 partial test ban treaty (outlawing atom bomb explosions in the air and outer space) put an end to the project. But seems a good idea to keep mind, in case humanity needs to get off the planet in a hurry.
Anyway, I was feeling much better by Friday, so I decided to drive up to Rogers, in Benton County, to get a free H1N1 (“swine”) flu shot, at a mass vaccination event up there. There was a similar event here in Fayetteville today, Saturday, but I thought since I was still in a blah mood from my cold, and I figured it would be a total mob scene at the Saturday event, I decided to take care of it Friday. Well, it seemed a mob scene anyway, the whole thing from out my front door to back home took two and half hours, mostly waiting in lines. Also, when I finally got to the nurses who give the vaccine, they decided to give me the nasal spray version. I thought that was for kids, which maybe indicates how immature I seem, but I figured “Hey, no needles, cool!” So I snorted up the vaccine, one small tube per nostril, and was on my way. It wasn’t until I was on my way to the car that I wondered if the residual glop in my sinuses from my cold might interfere with the absorption of the virus particles. Not feeling like going through the whole process over again, then or in the future, I decided to compensate for my residual congestion by not blowing my nose for the next hour, which got pretty comical by the end, with me snuffling and snorting, as if my snot was some vital substance not to be lost. Let’s hope it works.
Otherwise I try to keep warm. The temperature outside got down to 9 degrees one night, and Wednesday morning it even snowed! (This all a big deal to LA boy Conan.) It’s warmed up a bit since then, but I suspect it will get plenty cold again in the next couple of months. Here’s hoping all of you are keeping warm this winter.

Life in Arkansas.

lifeofconan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:16:17 +0000

This week’s entry is delayed because instead of staying home Saturday night pecking at my computer like a good little computer nerd, I went to a blues festival in downtown Fayetteville, at the world famous (?) George’s Majestic Lounge. It was a fund raiser for the local Blues Society, which my sister-in-law is a big-shot in. I was a volunteer, so for doing a few minutes of equipment hauling, I didn’t have to pay admission and got to listen to three hours of highly regarded blues. When I got home, it was too late to write highly entertaining blog entries, so I just went to bed.
Work this week was mostly evaluating Microsoft “Visual Basic Express,” a simplified version of their programming language Visual Basis, that one can download off the internet for free (as opposed to the full commercial version, that costs hundreds of dollars). It’s part of my search for a good programming language for the robot simulation program, which is meant to be widely used by others, so I need a language that is as un-hard as possible, and easily available and well known. Visual Basic Express is well suited as far as availability and relative ease of use, but for simulating robots it may have limitations, especially in the area of time control. I need to investigate further.
The other main activity this week was keeping warm. Before moving here, I’d heard that Arkansas winters were “mild.” That’s hard to believe this week, when the highs only got into the 30s, and the lows were well below freezing overnight. I’d go for my exercise walks at midday, and find that not only water puddles frozen, but even the water in the gutters and small creeks partly frozen over. When I went to the blues festival, after I parked my car, I tried to take a drink from water bottles I keep in the car, and found them mostly frozen solid, despite having been in a car that had sat out in full sunlight all day. The long time locals say the extra cold weather lately is “unusual,” and that it isn’t usually like this in December. Hmmm… I am noticing a pattern, first they say the torrential rains were a fluke, now this. What’s next? “Oh, we don’t usually have six feet of snow in January”? “Golly, we don’t usually have brain eating zombies roaming the streets in these parts”? “Jeepers, we never had an earthquake before”? For now, I have the dilemma of either bundling up in my bedroom, or running up a big electricity bill.
And speaking of Arkansas, I will close with this week’s “I’m not in Los Angeles anymore” moment. I was driving my little Chevy Metro on some errands, and paused at an unregulated intersection to make a right turn. Before I could do so, a big SUV driven by a bespectacled, white haired gent in his 60s pulled up in the left turn position of the same street I was on, blocking my view of traffic coming from the left. Back in Los Angeles, all I could do in such a situation was fume at the inconsiderate SUV driver, and hope gas would go back up to $5 a gallon to make him pay, or worse fates. But this guy quickly noticed his SUV was blocking my view, and actually shifted into reverse and rolled back a few feet, so I could make my right turn safely. I waved to show my appreciation, and sped off. Such a thing never, ever happened in Los Angeles, in my 46 years of living there. Maybe it’s something in the water, or maybe people actually take church sermons seriously here. Whatever it is, it’s one reason I’m still glad I moved to Fayetteville, despite the frozen water laying around everywhere.

Family Fun.

lifeofconan — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:03:50 +0000

This week was more fun than usual, due to Thanksgiving festivities. Monday and Tuesday I managed to squeeze in some work, mostly on evaluating a simple, easy to use programming language from Microsoft called Small Basic, which turned to be too small, and too basic for robot inventor use, though great for its intended purpose of teaching newbies how to program a computer.
Then on Wednesday I drove out to Branson, Missouri, to meet up with the parents and an aunt of my Fayetteville, Arkansas sister-in-law Sandy. Branson is a mid-west entertainment and tourism center, sort of a family oriented Las Vegas, without the gambling, and even alcohol is hard to find. After a two hour scenic drive from Fayetteville to Branson, they took me on a tour of Branson, which has many glitzy show venues featuring music or comedy, plus theme attractions, like a “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not,” go-cart racetracks, and a Titanic museum. The place also has a surprising number of miniature golf courses, though due to the sunny but very cold weather no one was using them. Sandy’s parents (Janet and Al, in case you are wondering) had coupons that could get me and “Aunt Linda” into a large theme park called “Silver Dollar City” for a fraction of the usual price. The park has a western theme, full of clichés about the wild west and cowboys, though the main draws are the roller coasters and the stage shows (though for the more educationally oriented, they had glassblowers and blacksmiths doing their thing). Us old folks passed on the rides as too stressful for our aged nerves, so we just went to the shows. The Dicken’s Christmas Carol Opera was quite spectacular, with a large cast on an elaborate stage with moving sets. We also took in a silly saloon show, full of bad puns and ham acting, with a Christmas theme, including pulling some poor schlub out of the audience for their cowboy version of “A Christmas Carol.” We hung around until dark to see the vast number of lights strung up around the park. I drove home later that night, after an admonition from Janet to watch out for deer in the road.
Thursday of course was Thanksgiving, and as you might expect I went over to my brother Roy’s house for the big turkey dinner. This time it was the grandparents and the Aunt who made the two hour drive between Branson and Fayetteville. With them, five of Roy’s six kids, and the other grownups, we had eleven people around the dining table, all related. It was the most familial Thanksgiving I’ve had in years, and one of the biggest payoffs of going to the trouble of moving to Arkansas. Of course, in terms of actual activities it was mostly the usual Thanksgiving marathon of talking and eating, which besides the traditional turkey and stuffing, included three kinds of pie (apple, cherry, and pumpkin, all home made). Good thing the grandparents gave me a ride home afterwards, so I didn’t have to retrace my walk over there.
Then Friday and today, I spent a lot of time calling friends and family to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. Seems everyone is doing well.
Otherwise, the big goof-off activity this week was watching all six hours of “Angels in America” on DVD. Years ago I had seen a fragment of it in a motel room on some road trip (it’s and HBO production), and was intrigued enough that when I saw the DVD recently in the DVD bin at the local library, I checked it out. It took several late night viewing sessions to see it all, but I was glad I did. Despite the length, it goes by quickly, due to the intense emotional drama. But I don’t know if I can recommend it to everyone, being as it is about gays and AIDS circa 1986, and since it is based on a stage play it is rather talky for a miniseries. And they use the f-word, a lot. So if seeing too guys kissing (yuk!) is too much for you, then see something else. But if you can be at least a little tolerant, then you’ll find it intense and surreal, yet compelling. I can see why it won so many awards. But I suspect most of my readers won’t be able to, because they don’t have six hours to spare. Oh well, maybe when you all retire. (Ha!)

NOT Singing the Blues.

lifeofconan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:49:16 +0000

Despite my high hopes of having gripping, exciting news this week, the fact is I don’t. The last week has been pretty much what has become my usual routine here in Arkansas.
Sunday pancakes at my brother’s house was more subdued this time, because he had a serious upper respiratory infection, and in fact his wife had to take him to a medical clinic while I kept an eye on the kids. The good news is that he has recovered nicely.
Tuesday night, I went to a seminar kind of thing arranged by the Blues Society, that my sister-in-law Sandy helped organize, to explain the history of the blues, and what style elements make it the blues. Since I knew nothing about the blues, I found it quite informative. Another leader of the Society, Liz, who sings in a local band called Lafuso, provided a humorous handout that explained the “Rules For the Blues.” From that I found out that I am not entitled to sing the blues, due to my lack of the proper kind of suffering (for example, you need to be in jail, a flophouse, or a shack (preferably in Memphis), unemployed, in a dysfunctional relationship with someone unattractive, while having a substance abuse problem (whiskey is the ideal), while “fixin’ to die.” Just having a computer apparently takes me out of the running, according to Liz.) But maybe I can do rhythm-and-blues, because Sandy’s pal Chris (Kris?) says you can be more cheerful in that style. I guess I can’t be doing too bad, if I get a credit card application for a graphite “black” card, that is so high and mighty that it has a $500 annual membership fee. I shredded it of course, but I did consider it odd they would think I would be interested in something like that.
Otherwise, like I said, the usual routine. Work continues on the robot simulation, though I don’t know how convincing the super-simplified simulated robot I am working on now will be. Well, I can always just fancy it up later if I need to. In the meantime, I hope everyone is getting psyched up for Thanksgiving!

Slow Week.

lifeofconan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:04:16 +0000

This week not as productive as others, because for most of it I wasn’t feeling well. Not sure what my disease was, felt like a mild cold, with some aches, a bit of sore throat, some sneezing, and a general run-down feeling, but nothing major. So I was functional, but not at my best.
But rather than becoming totally catatonic, I decided to take care of some car business being as I was still ambulatory. So Monday I changed the oil in my car at a shop down the street, and on Wednesday I had the cracked windshield of my car replaced. I was annoyed at the $202 expense, but I was amazed at how clear the new windshield was compared to the old one. As I drove home, looked like I didn’t have a windshield at all (I guess ten years of grime and grit on the old one made it ever so slightly foggy). Of course it didn’t last; that night apparently a cat parked itself on the roof of my car, leaving kitty footprints on the windshield. I bet the little creature could tell it was new. And while discussing cars, I also shopped around for new car insurance, since my old insurance only available in California.
Tuesday night I had recovered enough to go to a fundraiser at the elementary school of my youngest niece, called “Noodle Night.” For your ticket, you get to stand in a long line to have a small, mediocre spaghetti dinner, and the chance to bid on class crafts projects made by the students. My niece’s class had made a cookie jar decorated with grapes, each kid painting one grape. The school did it as a silent auction, with clipboards at every art item, for people to write their name, phone number and bid. When I was there, the bids were already reaching fifty bucks, so I passed. The event was in the school cafeteria, and the place was a crowded bedlam of screaming little kids. My little niece had a great time, because all her little pals were there, but my brother and especially the other three nieces roped into this seemed much less enthused. I found the energy level invigorating, and gave me an idea of what it is like to be a parent of small children.
In other trivial news, motivated by the pile of old newspapers, junk mail, magazines, and cereal boxes getting alarmingly high, I finally tracked down the location of the Fayetteville recycling center, and drove over there to dump it all. The center is located on a small side street in an industrial part of town, so naturally I got lost on the way there. Despite it being a Friday morning, the place was busy with people pulling up to the bins to toss recyclables. Fayetteville has small household bins for detached houses, but not for apartments, unlike in Los Angeles where everyone has household recycling bins. I appreciate the recycling center, but seems to me they need to make it easier to recycle; I know at my current building most people take the easy way out, and just toss everything into the ordinary trash bins.
To finish off the week, today I drove up to Neosho, Missouri, to have lunch with one of my internet pals. The friend was charming company, and gave me a tour of downtown Neosho, which amounts to one lap around the block with the courthouse on it. The area beyond that seemed to have a lot of burned out or abandoned buildings, so the place seems to have seen better days. But there was no graffiti, and no bars on windows, so the neighborhood not too bad to me, compared to the really bad neighborhoods in Los Angeles. I managed to get home before the traffic got too bad from the big football game at the University.
Hopefully, I will have more exciting news next week.

Me and My Crack.

lifeofconan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:53:47 +0000

As you might expect, not much going on since my last entry Tuesday. Besides recovering from the trip to Tennessee, I was back to work. A lot of that was evaluating a programming language called “Simple Basic,” available for free from Microsoft. It’s a superficially modernized version of the Basic available on PC’s way back in the 1980’s. It’s childishly easy to use (which figures since it is meant for teaching programming to kids), but surprisingly powerful. It would be good for trying out programming ideas on the fly, but is probably too slow and limited for serious robotics research.
The big goof-off this week was seeing “Forrest Gump” on a VHS tape I brought from LA. I was inspired to do that by having dinner at “Bubba Gumps” in Tennessee, which has a big “Forrest Gump” theme to it. The movie itself holds up pretty well, fifteen years after it came out.
Meanwhile I am back to my usual routine. The weather had been exceptionally nice this week, with cloudless skies and temperatures around 70 during the day, making my exercise walks a pleasure rather than a chore. The trees have lost most of their leaves by now, so the neighborhood has a more barren winter look to it. As I walk along, I notice an occasional abandoned bird’s nest in the leafless branches. Seems to me there should be more of them; I would have thought from all the birds flying around in the summer that there would be a nest in every tree.
And as for my witty title for this entry, I have mulling over the crack in my car windshield, which I measured as about ten inches long. From my research, looks like I will have to get the whole windshield replaced, for about $200. Not too happy about that, but also means I don’t have to be in a hurry about it – - if the whole windshield has to be replaced, then doesn’t matter how long the crack gets. And it’s better than getting a replacement car. I guess it’s part of the thrills of owning a ten year old car.
Here’s hoping you all can see the road before you without cracks in your field of view.

Trip to Tennessee.

lifeofconan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:08:36 +0000

Once again, I am writing on a Tuesday night about a weekend trip I came back from the day before. This time I went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to visit my oldest brother Andrew and his family.
The drive out there was very tiring, because for 300 miles of the 700 mile drive I was caught in a rainstorm. When I left at 5:20 AM on Friday, the skies were clear, the heavy rainstorm of Thursday having moved on. But turns out as I headed east on I-40, I drove right back into it. I tend to slow down in heavy rain, but appears I am the only one who does so. The regular cars dodging around me were OK, but the mist kicked up by the large trucks reduced my visibility to zero briefly. Wiggling through Memphis especially stressful, due to reduced visibility (hard to read unfamiliar direction signs in the rain), heavy traffic, and the detours around construction zones.
Between Memphis and Nashville, the rain faded away, and the rest of the drive was easier and more scenic. I noticed on two occasions impatient speeders using the emergency shoulder to go around small clots of vehicles in the free flowing traffic, which made me wonder if it was some peculiar Tennessee custom. One misfortune during this leg was me noticing that my windshield had acquired an eight inch wavy horizontal hairline crack, extending from the left pillar to the right. It stayed the same throughout the rest of the trip, but now that I am back home I suppose I will have to deal with it somehow. Anyway, I made good time to Knoxville, but then got hung up in a déjà-vu inducing Los Angeles style traffic jam just a few miles from my brother’s place, caused by several semi getting into a smashup at an off ramp.
But all the troubles were made worthwhile when I got to Andrew and Kathy’s house. I received a warm welcome, and immediately served a hearty beef and potatoes dinner. My nieces Tori and Becca were there, and were very glad to see me. My nephew Ian stopped by later, and he told me about his adventures on the rugby team at high school, and about his apartment which he recently moved into. We spent that first Friday evening mostly catching up. Despite Kathy losing her job a couple of weeks ago, they are all doing very well.
The next day, it rained all day (the storm catching up to me now), so we all mostly stayed home. During a lull in the rain, I walked about the neighborhood taking pictures of the fall foliage. The girl’s boyfriends came over for a few hours, and me and the youngsters played a card game (the name of which I forgot) that involved putting down cards and watching for particular patterns in the cards, and if they appear slapping your hand down on the cards to claim them, with the one who acquires all the cards the winner. A fun game, but I was at a disadvantage against two athletic eighteen year old boys in the reflexes department, so of course I lost. The rest of the afternoon was taken up preparing a sumptuous Halloween feast, my contribution being using a simple metal contraption to peel, core and slice the apples for something called an “apple macaroon.” Sort of like an apple pie, but without the bottom crust.
As evening the fell, the trick or treat kids came by. Not many, only about a dozen or so rings of the door bell. Mostly it was very polite little kids, usually with hovering parents nearby. Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz seemed popular this year, but we also got a Darth Vader, a cop, a fairy princess, a devil, a bear, and a ninja, among others. Kathy said one visitor was a visibly pregnant fourteen year old girl, about six months along, but I was stuffing my face at the sumptuous feast at the time, so I didn’t see that one. Kathy and Andrew, having only moved into this house last February, had stockpiled plenty of candy, so every kid got a handful of candy. After that, I, the girls, and Andrew went to visit Ian at his new place, a small studio apartment near his high school, that features of all things a good old fashioned Murphy bed! I thought those only existed in old movies. After we got back, the rest of the evening was mostly watching the movie “Music and Lyrics” on cable TV.
Sunday, the weather cleared up, and so we were able to see the sights more. In the morning was church, which first meant going to Sunday school (even for the grownups, which I went along to), and then church services. It’s a Baptist church, but the service seemed a typical modern Christian service, with the band on the big stage, followed by an easy to understand and often humorous sermon (this one about the lesson from the parable of the prodigal son), that was light on the fire and brimstone. Then it was off to Applebys for lunch.
The afternoon was taken up by a drive through the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Since it is unlikely I will visit again this late in the year, I thought I should see the fall colors while I could, and the mountains did not disappoint. We mostly went along the Little River Road, a twisty two lane road at the bottom of a deep valley along a small river, which at the time was swollen from Saturday’s rain into a roaring torrent. We stopped at a pullout, and walked along the side of the boulder strewn river, and some of us used rocks as stepping stones onto a small island near the edge. I hopped back and forth OK, but Becca ended up with one foot soaked. It was all very scenic, though we had to head back soon after five o’clock because we were losing the light due to the time change and the high walls of the valley. We celebrated our adventure with dinner at “Bubba Gumps” in Gatlinburg (I had the shrimp scampi, which makes sense if you ever saw the movie “Forrest Gump”). Then it was time to drop off the girls at their Dad’s place, and the rest of us went home, and soon to our respective beds.
The next day I was up before dawn, for the drive back home. Both of my hosts got up to see me off, and Andrew loaned me a scraper to get the ice off my car windows. I was on the road by 6:20 AM, as the horizon began to lighten. The drive home was much more pleasant than the drive out. Except for some fog early on, the weather was perfect, with not a cloud in the sky. Finding my way was no problem, and time passed quickly because with the clear weather I could relax a bit and listen to a good book on CD as I drove: “Kitchen Confidential,” by Anthony Bourdain, a no holds barred description of what goes on in the kitchens of the restaurant business, full of advice for people who are thinking of a culinary career, or want to invest in a restaurant (his advice: don’t), and those who go to restaurants. I can see why it was a best seller. I arrived back home about 7:45 PM, pleased with a successful trip.
And with that trip, the Conan Travel Season comes to an end. After a wild summer and fall of road trips, flights to exotic New York, and three day driving journeys, twice, to move to Arkansas, I’m buttoning up for the winter. So for at least the next five months, I’m staying right here in NW Arkansas.
Today was of course catching up. As for the few days before I left on my trip, besides the usual stuff, I was shopping around for a computer language for robot simulations, and also stopped by Target to get some thermal underwear (they have a whole section of cold weather clothes that doesn’t exist in the sunny Los Angeles stores). Naturally, today was a beautiful day, and more is coming. So I guess it doesn’t rain here ALL the time. Thank goodness. Here’s hoping you all had a fun Halloween weekend.

Recovering from excitement

lifeofconan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:05:35 +0000

(This entry originally supposed to be posted Sunday Oct. 25, but forgot.)

    Since everyone has been asking, perhaps I should elaborate on what is going on with my relationship status. The charming lady I visited in New York state turned out to be very charming indeed, so much so that we agreed on trying to have a long term romantic relationship. But when I got back to Arkansas this week, I had some questions about some issues I had concerns about, and after talking about them on the phone with the charming lady, I decided to break it off. This is not the place to blab about the charming lady’s personal life, so I won’t get any more specific than that. I’m of course bummed that another relationship didn’t work out, but I’m still glad I went on the trip, because I had never been to New York state before, and I needed to resolve the relationship with the charming lady there eventually. But for now I am back to being single.
    Otherwise, since my last entry, I have been getting back to my normal life. I finished a book I started on the planes to and from New York state, “The Soul of a New Machine,” by Tracy Kidder (the author is a guy by the way), which is about the development of a new mini-computer back in the late 1970’s. The book “Dreaming in Code” reminded me of this book, which is kind of the flip side of “Dreaming,” (“Soul” is about a high pressure money making operation) yet also shows that some things in technology development never change.
    I also went to a blues competition at a local nightclub called “George’s Majestic Lounge” (which is more like a wooden barn inside), at the invitation of my brother and his wife, who were involved in the organization that set up the competition. The winners go to an international competition next year in Nashville. It was a good way to see a variety of good blues acts in one night.
    And of course since I was in town this weekend, I went over to my brother’s place for the irresistible chocolate chip pancakes (excellently made by his wife), and to hang out with the kids. For the younger ones, their favorite toy these days is to rake up a big pile of tree leaves in the side yard and then jump into it, tunnel into it, or bury themselves in it. I’m sure my brother likes to have the kids volunteer to rake up the leaves without being nagged.
    Speaking of leaves, while on an exercise walk, I took some photos of the local trees to show how they are changing for the fall. Some are posted here on MySpace, but they didn’t turn out well on this site. To really appreciate them, you need to go to Facebook, which is odd since both websites had the same digital photos uploaded, so why they look grainy and off-color on one site, but not the other, I have no idea.
   That’s all for now.