Living through the morning after the night before.

looks like all my ladies have their evenings well in progress. Eloise is hosting a party at home. I will be discrete.

Back in Paris. Went out for dinner then watched movie. Today Cynthia is twenty. Happy Birthday Cynthia!

It's snowing. Half an hour from Paris.

We are driving back to Paris. Bye bye Capons.

We've finished lunch at the original Leon de Bruxelles, now almost finished shopping.

Visiting apartments in Brussels - that our friends the Capons might move into. Also nice way to explore a city.

Eating very slow breaksat. Talkinh with James and Ann. Daughters waking up slowly.

Good morning Bruxelles. Clear and quite cold.

We had such a lovely dinner. Put two families together and, presto, you have a party. Good night from Bruxelles.

at the Capons. All 10 of us have known each other for 16 years. 160 years of friendship. not bad.

Finished lunch. back on the A7 on our way to the Capon's house.

Stopping for lunch at 18th C restaurant at Le Roeulx.

Visiting the world's highest ship elevator - 73 meters high.

Driving past Cambrai - famous for the treaty of northern countries against Venice.

Five of us in the car. We are driving north through Paris.

Isabelle made crepes for breakfast. Eloise's friend Marion spent the night. Now packing for our trip to Brussels.

Time to say goodnight.

Lunch at "La Comedia" - our local. Dinner at home - finishing all our leftovers - foi gras, salmon, turkey, Champagne, whatever.

Home from seeing a delightful musical and a digestif at the Cafe de la Paix.

Sitting in the theater. Curtain about to go up.

Finished a light supper (turkey bouillon etc). Going to see a play.

Back from a little walk in Paris - very sunny very cold. Had lunch with Cynthia at Zanga on rue d'Daguerre.

has eaten foie gras, turkey, brussel sprouts, chestnut puree, sweet potato & marshmallow, mashed potato, salad & cheeses & a 'charlotte'

Went to early "Midnight Mass" at Eglise St Germain. Arrived late but Church only quarter full. It was mass in Spanish. Randomly so intimate.

Just bought four bottles of Champagne. and a box of chocolates for my former wife.

Good morning Paris. Good morning Christmas Eve Day. Good morning all my ladies together with me. Good morning happy.

Enjoyed the baked apples we had for desert

Listening to my ladies prepare dinner - chop, chop, chop - lentils and Morteau sausage.

Waking up after a long winter's nap in Paris.

is eating lunch with his ladies

Riding the RER to Paris. One or more daughters will meet me at DenfertIRochereau station to help with bags. It's their presents after all.

Arrived safely in Paris

Sitting on the plane. Waiting to take off for Paris.

Just landed in Salt Lake City. Yay! Looks v cold.

On the plane. To Salt Lake City. First ever visit to Utah. We should be leaving in a few minutes - on time.

Eating lunch at Perry's at SFO. I nearly got everything done that I should have before leaving.

h ome after last minute errands and a glass of Christmas Champagne with cousin Diana at winebarsf.com.

Last day before going to Paris. Let me count the number of things I have to do. No, that would take all day.

a quiet day working at home - except for a super effective Christmas present buying spree,

Home after a pork tenderloin and marrowfat peas at the Doyles. What could be better? A glass of grappa? We had that too...

scanning paper and scanning more paper. Everything must be digital.

Walking home through an electric city.

At Varnish off Second St. Why are they going to tear these places down? Art. Alcohol. Ambiance. What more could you want?

Sitting under a big bold blue sky - a bit chilly though.

Woke up at 6:45. Looked out the window and saw a beautiful bolt of lightning. It was electrifying. Later: went Swimming In The Rain.

I am back from dinner

Just back from dinner at Max's (fulll of young ladies & families dining before seeing the SF Ballet's Nutcracker) with Bill and Merle.

playing with Twitter.com. Installed TweetDeck. Adding more people to follow.

Searched Twitter for "Shorty Award": http://tinyurl.com/6df9hj

Back from dinner with Diana at Wine and Osha Embarcadero.

my archive of 3.5 million computer files is starting to behave itself again - at last.

testing ping.fm

testing ping.fm

Going out to dine with the Doyles tonight. Now bashing my head trying to synchronize 3.5 million files on 5 machines and many hard drives.

Must help Cynthia with her paper on EU & Turkey

Two Weeks until Paris

Two weeks until I go to Paris. The race is on. How much can I get done before I have to start getting ready to go? How much more weight can I lose to make up for what I will gain? And will I be able to balance all the holiday season events with both of these?

And then, can I do something about my email situation? Over 170 emails in my inbox. Some have been there for MONTHS! Yikes.

back from my monday swim. so many things to do. so little time for each.

I hope to have a quiet day at home getting things done.

on bus returning to San Francsco after daytrip to Santa Cruz. Cynthia shared a very private moment dinner with Chapgiers saw Dylan's film

off to the Four Seasons for dinner with the family

having lunch with Alix at the Ferry Building

Back from touring the town with Franny and Larry

I just saw a helicopter take off from the 'MSC Beijing' - a container ship. I wonder why...

My new BlackBerry bold has just arrived. I am very happy

having lunch with Nigel

Watching the French frigate "La Prairial" leave San Francisco harbor.

listening to Ken Goldberg interviewing Laurie Anderson at Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley

going to breakfast at Buck's in Woodside

Here's a picture of the Angel Island fire: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aceit/2936627413/

there's a huge fire burning on Angel Island

watching the liberty ship, fireboat, destroyers, ferries, coast guard cutters, stinkpots, sailboats, tugboats, etc all watching airplanes.

Sitting in the best seat in the houser - watching the Blue Angels control the airspace outside my window

watching the Canadian Forces Snowbirds

watching the fireworks are just outside my window

watching the Blue Angels practicing under my window

thinking that If Palin won on style, then Biden won on substance...

Having a Anchor Steam at Grumpies

just sitting in the Ferry Building, wondering.

WordPress vs Blogger

Wordpress
. Revision history
. Category and tags
. 3 GB storage
. Limited number of gadgets

Blogger
. Free custom url
. Free Templates &CSS
. 1 GB storage - organize using picasa
. Probably easier for others to edit
. Access to full google gadgets

I'm walking OBAMA-self, just BIDEN my time, with MCCAIN and a PALIN my hand...

Just back from a sublime supper at the Peterborough Diner in Peterborough NH - birthplace of Byte magazine.

About to eat lunch at Bee and Val's condo in Newport then Eloise and I will drive to Dublin NH

Just back from an out on the town in Newport RI. H20 was great. Ditto Zelda's. And home too...

Having iced coffee at Expresso Yourself on Thames St in Newport RI

New blog post: test 2 http://tinyurl.com/5mwapo

New blog post: test 1 http://tinyurl.com/6lqoer

Sitting in Starbucks at Lex & 83rd. Very hot. Walking in New York is so exciting. So different from my Paris and my San Francisco.

Greetings from 30 feet from the Apple Cube on Fifth Avenue. It's like every tourist in the world has passed by here today.

For six hours today I walked & worked in New York. Tiny Eee PC with huge battery life. ATT wireless broadband. Full desktop power anywhere!

Arrived in New York in blinding, beautiful thunderstorm. Here 'til Tuesday.

Going off to buy sunglasses and more shorts for Eloise for sailing camp next week.

At Oakland Airport waiting for my JetBlue flight to Boston. Will meet Eloise there arriving from Paris.

the sky is gorgeous tonight. There are clouds. Like in Europe. Here it's usually just white or blue.

Instead of sitting at my desk today, I took my computer for a walk around the city. We worked at three different places today.

Saturday today: Yeah! Laundry to do: Boo!

New Asus Eee PC 1000H has arrived. XP, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HD. 3 lbs. Only $549. And it's quite fast. Looks like a keeper...

There is a huge US Navy supply ship sitting in front of my window.

day 21 of my home workout plan.

Another day of scanning and digitizing old paper files coming up.

Back from my swim. Drinking a delicious chamomile? tea

20th day of rigorous home exercise. Yay!

Am I in Beijing? Actually it's just San Francisco fog.

Just back from barbecue at cousin Cynthia's house in San Rafael. Very Marin. Very nice.

Performed my new rigorous home workout program for the 19th time this morning. Adding to the punishment? There are jackhammers on Saturday!

Just listened to a half of Barack Obama's speech in Berlin. Very statesmanlike.

Today is Tall Ships Day. I see five from my window right now.

Attending an IDSA conference on sustainable design @ Temple - hot new joint on Howard St.

Fog is burning off. Flock of pelicans just flew by. Children at summer camp next to my building just let out a cheer. Happy San Francisco.

drinking a glass of Portuguese red wine at winebarsf.com.

went to Mill Valley to get more boxes from storage. Also stopped by to see Nancy Hayes. Now eating dinner.

Exercised, showered, shaved and washed the dishes. Now, at last, I can do something

here i am

sitting at winebarsf. it's been terrible. nothing has been saving - even locally. yikes!

well, at last, something is working: blogger.com. even google docs offline was not working.

so here i am on blogger. there is no control S. and I have to scroll down to save. thren go to the manager and then come back. wordpress.com is much friendlier. but then again, this is working.

takes your choices.


so i was meant to be writing for artofthenet - on internet bios - biornet -
interbio - webio - autowebio - webiography << yes that's the one!


***
back in blogger after WP

does this autosave? not sure. difficult to comparewith wordpress. the big disappointment is google docs. couldn't work offline on my Eee PC for reasons i do not understand.

this cannot save on a control S. Hello what are you supposed to do?

tags but no categories here. lot's of small diffs. which is better. blogger or wordpress. very not easy.

both WP and Blogger versions saved. three glasses of wine. time to go home.

Le Quatorze Juillet! Vive La France!

Sundaying quietly at home. Morning exercises done. Reading the news half-way done. Soon it'll be time to define what this day will be about.

Add This: http://tinyurl.com/6lgyzk

Driving down with Alex and Marissa to Nikki's 21st birthday party

Eating a vegetables with pasta sauce lunch - having exercised, blogged and scanned old data. Yay!

Home Exercises

I'm writing this while sitting at my desk - sweating. OK, it is fairly hot in here. Thermometer says 77 F /25 C degrees. But really I'm sweating because of forty five minutes of exercising quite hard. This is the eighth time I have subjugated myself to a home exercise program. I am over one quarter of the way to 28 days of home exercise. People say that if you do something for 28 days then it becomes a habit. What started as a resolution becomes routine. Twenty eight days is sort of a month with a few times missing. Not perfect but doable. Anyway who decided on the 28 days (or one month as other say) anyway?  Got to look that up.

There are several reasons for home exercise rather than classes  - such as the Pilates classes that I have been taking  at my Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club since 2001. First is that I can't seem to make my classes travel to France and elsewhere with me. I can't do classes in San Francisco and home exercise while I'm on the road. At least I have not been able to do this in the past. Even with the best of intentions, my home exercising on the road has only lasted for one or two rather desultory sessions. My hope is that I will soon be so acclimated to my home exercises that It will naturally follow that I continue the routine while traveling. Knock on wood.

I'm out of the stuck elevator. After a while the doorlock released and I was able to pull open year door. I'm on tram on way home.

Stuck in an elevator at UCSF. A lady said she would call for help.

Somebody thinks my eyes are pretty. My eye doctor wants to take pictures of them. Going to his office.

Going home after long dinner. Diana said 7 to me and 8 to Ken. Anyway venison chili was delicious.

Going for dinner at Big Four with Diana and Ken.

Going for a cup of coffee at MoMo's with Philip and Helen.

Three things I'd like to see

1. De-criminalize drug usage

2. Re-purpose the military

3. Fix education and health???

3. More power to the States.

What are the very biggest over-arching objectives for the future?

encourage more smaller companies. family companies like in China? break up the military industrial complex.

Fog is rolling in - very dense. Time to do my laundry.

Still scanning thousands of pages of old paper notes and files.

2008-07-03

More scanning of old files. I've scanned thousands of pages in the last few days. Mostly personal notes and files from the 1990s. Lots of memories of life in Mill Valley and work at Autodesk. Good times and not such good times.

It 's difficult to do anything else while scanning because the scanning requires so much but not all attention. So I'm trying blogging while scanning. Can I do some lightweight writing while I can. Well, for the moment it seems possible.

I just had my first issue with the Fujitsu ScanSnap 300 scanner. It 'lost' a two hundred plus page scan - about twenty minutes of work. I have upgrade to latest revision of the software. I should probably stop the scans at 100 pages and start a new file. it does not seem to be possible to append to an existing file using the ScanSnap driver. On the whole, the scanner is working really well. Ir scans fast. makes small files, and very rarely misfeeds.

I am learning how to hack it. If the top of a sheet - an old fax for example - is ragged, you can open the scanner and insert the paper just beyond the ragged edge. Also if you see a sheet going in slightly crooked, you can gently hold the tail end of the sheet - causing the sheet to straighten. If worse comes to worse and a sheet is being mangled, you can open the scanner in mid-scan to stop the scanning. The you can re-feed the scan and resume exactly where the last good scan finished. The ScanSnap is an excellent product. A nice benefit is that it is quite small and, in particular, not high - making it easy to feed in sheets while it is sitting on a normal desk top.

Last night I went out for drinks at WineSF and dinner at Sens with Pierre Gasztowtt. We talked of the differences between life in San Francisco and Paris, between city and country life. We talked about the in and out of his finite element analysis software. We had a good time.

Blogging Idea

I'd like to start an unofficial Safeway blog. The blog would offer suggestions to Safeway about what products people liked or did not like. There would be a good number of contributors - basically anybody could join. But all posts would be moderated. The idea would not be to dump on Safeway but to offer constructive advice.

I shop at Safeway several times a week. It's my most frequent shopping experience, So I might as well be part of the story to make Safeway even better.

Mobile blogging

Blogging from my BB. It looks like it's better to blog by sending an email. Cannot edit a post. Just create a new one. Well you can keep one going. But feels easier in gmail.

title testing

I can't seem to find out how to get Blogger to use nice URLs. So I am creating a new post to see what happens. ... OK so it looks like this is a good URL for this post: http://theoarmour.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html#title-testing

test

Conceptualizing random endpoints in a access matrix provides reach extensions enterprise wide. Respective divisions historically insignificant, upscale trend lines in a management inventory analysis survivability format.

We've Moved

I have just moved all the data for this site from the Dreamhost server to the WordPress.com server. The downside will be that there is less flexibility in customizing the site. The upside is that WordPress will take care of all the updates, hosting, and protection. Before too long, I hope to get all my sites on WordPress (or Google) and get entirely out of the hosting 'business'.