Thanksgiving was at my folks' house in Clearwater, Florida this year. It was exhausting, but good. It almost seems like we're getting comfortable spending time as a family, something I wouldn't have guessed possible just a couple of years ago. Except for the pre-race photo, all of these pictures are from my new camera (and the pre-race photo is from Kathy's new camera). Generally i was quite pleased with the pictures I got, chalking up the ones that didn't come out right to user error.
Kathy reading to nieces Leynie and Lauren and nephew Hunter as my sister Shari looks on
Luke, Emelia's younger (by three months) cousin
Hunter
Leynie
Lauren
Most of us before the Thanksgiving Morning 5K (we walked)
Looks like Amazon is taking a stab at selling a new and improved e-book, called Kindle. It looks very cool -- the two big selling points are its size (about the size and weight of a paperback) and its readability (no backlighting, very easy on the eyes). The fact that you can get your reading materials (not just books, but magazines and books as well) wirelessly via free data connections is really cool as well.
That being said, at $400 I think it’s at way too high a price point, especially since that only gets you the reader (for that price they could at least throw in a couple of free downloads!). For $400 it's possible to get a laptop that can do all the things that Kindle can do, and then some. In essence, you're trading the versatility of a laptop for the size and readability of the Kindle. Apple showed with the iPod that it's possible to charge a premium for size, but the iPod offers features that are comparable, not inferior, to the competition.
There's also the risk that the market for these devices doesn't develop, so you've put a good chunk of money down for an item that won't be supported in the future (this wasn't such a risk in the early days of portable mp3 players, since mp3s were already being made and used en masse by the time portable players showed up). Then you have to pay for the content. At $10/book, the price is about the same as for a paperback, except you can't share it or sell it. There are also monthly subscriptions available, e.g., $0.99 for blogsites, and more for magazine and newspaper subscriptions, though the content for almost all of these subscriptions is already available for free online (I believe it actually costs more for the Kindle version of the Washington Post than the paper version does, without the coupons!).
The fact that Amazon is also using a proprietary file system is also troubling. Apparently it's possible to convert pdf files (the format previous e-books have used, and the standard for home computing) to a version that can be read with the Kindle, but why should you have to?
So I guess I'm pretty skeptical that sales of Kindle will be able to catch fire. I do, however, think that they could make it work in one of two ways.
The first way would be to, in addition to lowering the price of the unit, ditch the per item approach and follow the music subscription approach -- have a $14.99/month (or something like that) subscription to unlimited content that's tied to the particular device, and whose access is contingent on maintaining one’s subscription. I admit that I have no idea how such an approach can work as far as splitting the subscription fee among all the authors and publishers whose works would be used, but I'm looking at it from the consumer side, and this seems like a service that could have some appeal.
Another way that it could succeed is if they're able to make all textbooks available (something that doesn't appear to be the case right now). Given how much a semester's worth of books weigh (and cost), college students would be delighted to have access to a light (and hopefully more affordable) way to have all their books. And once college students have the device, they could conclude that purchasing additional reading material wouldn't be such a big deal, particularly if they grow to appreciate the format.
It should be interesting to see if the Kindle takes off. I think it can, but not unless Amazon makes some significant changes.
My sport is soccer, and I have a third row midfield season ticket to DC United. United had the best record during the regular season, but got eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. I had already purchased a ticket in my usual seat for this year's MLS Cup, which was being held here, but I didn't go.
My cousin Jeff has been a stage manager for various off-Broadway theater productions, and while someone might mistake that fact for his occupation (it isn't -- he's a high school English teacher in Brooklyn, a challenging task to say the least), it's much more accurate to say that role perfectly describes him. He's the guy behind the scenes who gets things done. That wasn't why I asked him to be my best man (technically he was also the maid-of-honor), but when I got sick the Friday before my Sunday wedding, that talent came to the fore when he and Kathy took care of the last-minute details. As it also did when little things needed taking care of at the wedding.
It's been a tough couple of months for Jeff. His father (my Dad's brother, Paul) died in September after a four-year battle with cancer. And for the last few months of his father's life and also during the aftermath, Jeff was shuttling down to Brevard, North Carolina, missing work to be there, helping his stepmom and being there for his sister. Both my Dad and I encouraged him to grieve for himself rather than continue his role as stage manager even then, but for Jeff that was easier said than done. There was a memorial service in Brevard at the end of October, to which Kathy, Emelia, and I went. As Kathy put it so succinctly, he's always been there for us, we should be there for him. During the ceremony, Jeff broke down when he was supposed to recite something, but later recovered in order to give an incredibly moving, eloquent, funny, and wholly spontaneous reflection on his father.
A couple of weeks after the memorial, Jeff's mom (my Aunt Faith) fell, shattering her left ankle, tearing all the ligaments and breaking her leg. As her only child, Jeff immediately dropped everything to be with her in New Jersey (Uncle Paul and Aunt Faith divorced when Jeff was a child), once again missing school, even though he had already fallen quite behind. After Aunt Faith's surgery, Jeff sent out an update to his friends, which said, among other things,
Beyond that my freaking birthday is next saturday and I could really really use time to see a bunch of people. I was just adjusting to my dad's death and trying to get myself back together this past weekend when i got the call about my mom.
It may not sound significant, but those two sentences were remarkable in that Jeff asked for help, rather than giving it. I gave my MLS ticket to a friend in the hope that he could sell it, and e-mailed Jeff's old roommate and best friend, Tony. I set it up with Tony to stay with him and his wife, and didn't tell Jeff I was coming. Tony suggested Jeff come over early to go out for dinner before heading to the bar where everyone was to meet up. Jeff's double take expression when he saw me was priceless, and the entire evening, from dinner on, was great. Tony observed that it was the most relaxed he had seen Jeff in about a year.
As for me, it was great to know that I was able to give something to him, and I didn't miss the game at all.
In the original Star Trek, the character Spock is a Vulcan, a species that prides itself on logic and rationality. Still, a Vulcan's logic and rationality must bend to erratic behavior every seven years, as part of a mating season. I'm pretty rational and fairly logical, but it goes without saying that I'm not a Vulcan. First, I can't wait seven years between matings. Second, my rationality apparently goes out the window much more often, at least every 2.5 - 3 years. But rather than being tied to mating, my temporary leave of my senses takes place because I go camera crazy.
I've been happy with my camera -- it's given me lots of great shots, and it shows no sign of falling apart. But it's got a weakness, and that weakness is the action shot. The action shot wasn't so important to me the last time I bought a camera because at that time I didn't have in my life a certain little girl who has trouble staying still. No matter that it has image stabilization, even that can only do so much -- virtually any point & shoot digital camera is going to have the same difficulties, given the little lag between clicking and the camera taking the shot. The alternative to a point & shoot is taking the plunge and buy a dSLR. Making the decision to buy one was easy -- picking which one was much harder.
While I like the idea of getting a camera that I can grow with, an opportunity that a dSLR affords, I knew I wouldn't be looking to become a serious photographer, and I don't have an interest in buying several different lenses. So it seemed that a "low-end" dSLR would be fine. The nominees were the Canon Rebels (XT and XTi), the Nikon D40x, the Pentax K100D, and the Olympus E-510. All of these are highly regarded, so in many ways I couldn't go wrong. Unfortunately, because all of these are highly regarded, I had a lot of trouble picking among them. The choice boiled down to picking between a less-popular brand with good quality, a ton of features, and a great price (either the Pentax or the Olympus), the popular camera (the Canons), or the ugly stepchild of the photographer's brand (the Nikon D40x).
Blah blah blah -- no one but a techno/camera geek would want to hear about how I chose among these options, so I'll skip that part of the tale and tell you that I went with the Olympus E-510. The price was great, and the camera has image stabilization inside the camera, mucho megapixels (10.1), a dust reduction system, and a mediocre live view (this isn't bad -- the other dSLRs don't have live view at all). Plus, the kit I went with comes with two well-regarded lightweight lenses that give me a huge range (28-300mm equivalent). I just got the shipping notice that it's expected to arrive on Tuesday, so if all goes according to plan I'll have it when I head down to Florida the next day for Thanksgiving. Hopefully my family will understand if I'm somewhat preoccupied with playing with my new toy instead of hanging with them (don't worry Mom and Dad, I'm kidding (mostly)).
For what it's worth, over the Thanksgiving holiday I won't be the only one with a new toy. Whether the decision was made as a salve to the guilt I'm feeling from my big purchase, or simply because she's been looking into getting a tiny camera with image stabilization, Kathy's new toy is scheduled to arrive on Monday -- it's a PowerShot SD850 IS, a seriously updated version of the camera she's had for nearly three years. At around $250, it's ridiculously inexpensive compared to what that price got you three years ago.
One of Emelia's favorite words is "cheese" -- I have a feeling that we're going to be asking her to say it more often than she already does, even though she might get disappointed when after she says it, her parents don't give her one of her favorite foods.
Emelia turned 1 on Wednesday (damn did that year go by quick!), and while I feel quite behind in posting about other things that I've done or thought about, or that have happened in the past few weeks, I figured the birthday photos needed to be posted regardless. We didn't have a party by any stretch -- the people with whom we share the nanny, as well as Tom, came over to sing happy birthday, and to eat the chocolate-frosted muffins Kathy made, but that was it. We hadn't initially planned on doing anything, but what kind of first birthday would it be without chocolate frosting (which Emelia thoroughly enjoyed)?
The folks had a time share that they sold a couple of years ago. In June they announced to my siblings and me that they had one exchange week left that had to be used by mid-November. When no one else could use it, we grabbed it for a week of Fall Foliage in the Poconos, a place neither Kathy nor I had been.
We headed North on Saturday, a day before our rental began, after I discovered that there was a beer festival outside of Philly on that day. Despite accusations from everyone I've told about it, I honestly didn't set this up -- we picked the rental for this week because I was off for Columbus Day. I only realized that I'd be able to attend the festival a couple of months after we booked the trip. While I was at the festival, Kathy and Emelia went 15 minutes away to visit with Kathy's grandmother.
The next day, we meandered through parts of New Jersey en route to the rental. Among other stops (i.e., stops other than the beer/wine store and brewpub), we visited a state park, where Emelia got to strut her stuff:
Alas, all that walking wore her out.
In the Poconos, our accommodations were at Split Rock, a resort by Lake Harmony. We stayed in a one-bedroom apartment with full kitchen. The resort itself had plenty of activities, but not surprisingly, there wasn't much geared toward children less than one year old. So for the most part, we used our rental as a launch point to explore the area.
Weather was warm, hot even, the first couple of days. On Monday we visited a nearby brewpub for lunch, and went past an outlet shopping center on the way back home. There, we picked up a winter jacket for Emelia (the blue Michelin-man one in the photos), and looked for a couple of other things. Even as we were doing it, we realized how idiotic it was to trudge through an outlet mall packed with tons of shoppers on Columbus Day on a sunny 85-degree day.
Our accommodations were less than 15 minutes away from a great state park, Hickory Run, with over 15,000 acres. Hickory Run was Kathy's and my favorite part of our vacation. We went there three separate times, and visited wholly distinct areas each time.
But just because Kathy and I enjoyed the hikes, don't think for a minute that nature was Emelia's favorite part of the vacation. Every time we entered the main entrance to the building we were staying in, we ended up passing a painting that made her smile. We even took her to that picture sometimes when she was getting a bit stir-crazy in the apartment, to her great delight.
Yes, our budding art critic was smitten with a painting of a dog wearing clothes.
Thursday was when the rain came, and cooled everything considerably. Fortunately we had picked that day as our pampering day -- I got a massage in the morning, and Kathy got a haircut and pedicure in the afternoon. By Friday afternoon, the weather had cleared again, and we returned to the outdoors.
It turned out that our week was a bit early for foliage -- we still got to see some color, but most of the trees were still green.
Other than those last two days of Maine, this also was the first vacation with just the three of us. Emelia didn't sleep as well as she does at home, and never slept through the night. The fact that I snored a couple of nights in a row meant that I was relegated to the sofa in the living room for the rest of the stay. It actually wasn't that uncomfortable (and the bed wasn't too comfy anyhow), but it still wasn't the ideal set-up. All of us were pretty tired by the end of our trip, but also pretty relaxed.
And no, I'm not making a pun about our 2002 Honda Civic. Apparently my neighborhood is one of the 10 best in the country, at least according to the American Planning Association. Of course, I didn't need an organization I've never heard of to tell me that.
A mediocre example of her walking (seems like she can walk forever), but since it's the only video of her walking that we have so far, I guess it'll do. ;) Besides, the highlight isn't the walking, but the smile.
Raise your hand if you know how the electoral college works. If you do and live in the United States, you're part of a small minority. For those who don't, here's a very brief civics lesson.
The general idea is that citizens of each state vote for representatives (electors) to a body (the electoral college) that selects the president, and the number of representatives each state gets for the electoral college is weighted, based on the number of senators plus representatives to Congress. As for how the representatives for a particular state votes, that's usually on a winner-take-all basis. In other words, if a candidate has more votes than the runner up in a state, all the state's representatives to the Electoral College vote for the winner. While this process usually results in the popular vote getter for the whole country winning the election, it doesn't always. The 2000 election is a good example of that. Because of the winner-take-all approach, in theory someone can win the 11 most populous states by one vote each, get crushed in the remaining 39 states, and still get elected president.
And yet, there is no requirement that a state have all its electors vote for the statewide winner. In 1972, Maine decided to have two of its electors vote for the statewide winner, with the other electors decided based on Congressional district. With Maine presently having four electoral votes, it's possible that Maine can vote 3-1 in the electoral college. In 1992, Nebraska (presently with six electoral votes) adopted what's known as the "Maine Method," and those two states are the only ones that do not follow the winner-take-all approach for their electors. Going back to the 2000 election, if Florida had also done this (and assuming no other state did), then Gore would have been elected president. [/civics lesson]
It seems so much more reasonable for the electoral votes to be assigned under the Maine Method that it seems a wonder that more states haven't adopted it. Actually, given the politics of getting laws changed, it's no wonder at all. If you've got a largely Democratic state, with its governor and state legislature majority Democrat, and most of its Congressional representatives the same, there's no incentive to change the state laws so that the Democrats lose electors to Republicans. And the same holds in reverse. Thus, generally speaking, about the only way to switch to this approach en masse would be at the federal level, where both Democrats and Republicans have something to both win and lose. I'm not sure, however, that even if there was the impetus, whether the change could be done by statute. If it had to be done by constitutional amendment, it would be much harder, given that it would need to go through all those state legislatures that aren't changing things right now.
The wrinkle to all this is that some Republicans in California are proposing an amendment to the California constitution that would adopt the Maine Method in California. The amendment, which can pass by a simple majority of voters, would bypass the legislature. California has by far the most electors in the country, and in recent years has voted Democrat in the presidential elections, by significant margins. But not all of California is Democrat. In the current Congress, 19 of its 53 seats in Congress are held by Republicans. Under the Maine Method, if only 15 of those districts voted Republican in a presidential election, California would shift from 55-0 to 40-15, i.e., from +55 for the Democrats to +25, a difference of 30. It's far more likely that Republicans would carry even more districts (according to the link above, Bush took 22 districts in 2004, so the "Maine Method" would have moved Kerry's net in the state from 55-0 to 33-22, a difference of 44, and made the count in Ohio irrelevant). As you can imagine, that would make a huge difference in the 538-seat electoral college, given Bush defeated Gore by only five electoral votes in 2000.
The Republican entities promoting the amendment contend that this change would cause candidates to pay more attention to California, but political scientists say it would have the opposite effect. That's because gerrymandering has created so many safe districts in the state that there won't be but a handful of districts in play. They say it would be far better for candidates to focus on states like Florida, with its 27 electoral votes all going to the winner, and a fairly even split of the electorate. But then again, no matter the assertions being made, as the numbers I pointed out above demonstrate, there's little doubt that the point of this amendment is to neutralize a key source of electoral votes for Democrats.
Will California enact the Maine Method? As I noted, in the abstract it seems like a very reasonable idea. The question is whether voters will be able to look past the abstract and recognize the partisan purpose of the proposition. Perhaps some will say that it's the right thing to do on behalf of California, even if other states don't do the same. Regardless, if it passes, it will have major repercussions for presidential elections for years to come.
In the first 11 days after Emelia took her first steps, she didn't do much walking. A step here, and a few steps there, but that was about it. Generally speaking, she still preferred to grab a finger or a hand, just for reassurance. Here are a couple of photos from Monday morning.
You can see plenty of confidence, but there's also the hand that she insists on holding.
Yesterday she finally started walking. Many steps all in a row, and not necessarily ending with a fall onto her tush. By this evening, she was taking more steps than crawling. As her success grew, she even started demanding "star treatment."
Okay, maybe not, but I think the photo's a keeper.
Blah blah blah -- no one but a techno/camera geek would want to hear about how I chose among these options, so I'll skip that part of the tale and tell you that I went with the Olympus E-510. The price was great, and the camera has image stabilization inside the camera, mucho megapixels (10.1), a dust reduction system, and a mediocre live view (this isn't bad -- the other dSLRs don't have live view at all). Plus, the kit I went with comes with two well-regarded lightweight lenses that give me a huge range (28-300mm equivalent). I just got the shipping notice that it's expected to arrive on Tuesday, so if all goes according to plan I'll have it when I head down to Florida the next day for Thanksgiving. Hopefully my family will understand if I'm somewhat preoccupied with playing with my new toy instead of hanging with them (don't worry Mom and Dad, I'm kidding (mostly)).
For what it's worth, over the Thanksgiving holiday I won't be the only one with a new toy. Whether the decision was made as a salve to the guilt I'm feeling from my big purchase, or simply because she's been looking into getting a tiny camera with image stabilization, Kathy's new toy is scheduled to arrive on Monday -- it's a PowerShot SD850 IS, a seriously updated version of the camera she's had for nearly three years. At around $250, it's ridiculously inexpensive compared to what that price got you three years ago.
