I recently asked James to take a panorama of his hotel room in Nashville with his cameraphone. He thought that might be a bit tough to do. I agreed with him, but just to show that it can be done (and to egg him on a bit) I decided to try it. This is a panorama done in the basement of a place I was pulling cable today taken with my Tréo 600's built-in VGA camera

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For anyone who doesn't already believe that Homeschooling is for Idiots I present The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homeschooling.

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My real desktop isn't tidy, but I like to keep my computer desktop organized as much as possible. I file things away where I think I'll find them again later and I can usually locate the document I'm looking for without resorting to Spotlight to find it. Things that are in a queue for filing are kept in a folder on my desktop with the uninspired title of "Stuff". If it's in there too long, it gets trashed or filed eventually and if it's something I just downloaded to look at later, that's probably where it is. I noticed this morning that "Stuff" was missing from my desktop. Probably because I emptied it and deleted it but don't remember doing it. I'd like to search my hard drive and verify what was in it and when it was deleted, but I ran into a few problems.

Ages ago, Norton Utilities was the killer app for defragging and otherwise maintaining and repairing your Mac's hard drive. I actually just bought a new version this September in order to use undelete. Well, Symantec has stopped supporting most of their Mac products and now I just don't know where to turn. Any suggestions?

Apple's website only seems to have a link to Micromat Inc. and their TechTool Pro software. I think this is the same thing they're selling in their brick stores too. It seems good, and their TechTool Protege product is really cool if really expensive.

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A while ago, I purchased a product from Transparent Language and I have to say that it could work for someone who can learn in a very abstract way. I thought that was me, but I guess I was wrong. I guess I can't say it was wasted money exactly, because I learned something about the way my brain works.

I've been checking out a company called Rosetta Stone for the last week or so to see if their software is a good fit for me and I'm starting to think it is. It's not cheap though. As of this date, the price for German: Level 1 is $195 as compared to Transparent's $39.95 for German Now! which is what I got. Looking at the Transparent Language website, I may have just gotten the product that doesn't work for me, but Rosetta Stone has been doing nicely with their pictures-and-words approach. Rosetta Stone also has an online version that is a little bit cheaper if you learn quickly and, since I have already taken German 1, 2 and 3 in High School hmphm years ago, I may do just that.

We just got out of the hot tub a little bit ago and saw 8 deer heading out across the lake and away from the pile-o-corn. It looked like a buck and a doe and 6 fawns keeping together to make it through winter. It makes me wish I'd gotten a deer this fall so that not so many of them would have to tough it out through the cold Minnesota winter.

Peace Out

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We've been up here on vacation for half a week now and I've really been enjoying the time off for sleeping.

I've made progress in some video games, we watched Super Bowl XL and swore at the referees' bad calls. I've even done some work-like things with a wireless router and some cat 5 cable.

One of the things I was introduced to recently was the PhotoStitch software that comes with Canon digital cameras. Since I bought a used 10D from my uncle-in-law last summer, and he's organized enough to still have the original box and documentation, I now have a Canon CD with all of the software I usually think is just junk since it's free and I have Photoshop. The PhotoStitch package is great though. Here's a sample QTVR of the place we're staying this week.

The Back Deck of The Lodge. 832KB QTVR. You will need Quick Time from Apple to view this image properly

We just got out of the hot tub after watching several deer wander in across the lake to munch on the corn tossed out by the neighbor for them. I got a real appreciation for they way they'll look at you as long as you're not moving or making a sound and then run away as soon as they figure out you're not part of the terrain. Of course these particular deer ran away only as far as the pile of corn they new was their duty to eliminate from the terrain.

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Way back in August of 2005 I mentioned in passing that my iPod had died while I was on a road trip. Well, the iPod I was given under warranty in early September was working fine until a couple of days ago. Since I didn't really go into detail, I'll elaborate here.

The first failure started as an occasional faint clicking sound while playing, I suspect it came from the hard drive, and the occasional tendency to skip forward, out of the song it was playing. I didn't think much of it at the time since it had also had the occasional tendency to reboot while playing. I figured it was a corrupted mp3 file that I just needed to find and remove since that was what all the forums recommended for that particular problem.

After a while, I was driving through Missouri or Illinois or someplace like that and the iPod just stopped playing. "Ok, maybe it's a dead battery." I thought. When I connected it up to my laptop that night, it started up and gave me a complaint about not being able to communicate with the device and suggested that I restore it using the iPod updater. Well, screw that: I've got 37GB of music on there and a week left on my trip. Of course, rebooting and recharging did nothing, so I ended up restoring it using the iPod updater but that didn't fix the problem. What I got was a little folder icon with a warning sign in it and the text "http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/". Anyway, nothing I did would help and I ended up taking it back to the Apple Store in Roseville where they said "Yeah, if it asks you what language you want every time you reboot, the drive's dead." They also listened to it really close when rebooting it to see what kind of noises the hard drive made. I can tell you, none of them were good.

So, one iPod replaced under warranty. Woot!

The second iPod died in a similar fashion. I would occasionally get a message from iTunes saying that the device MiPod could not be written to, please restore it using the iPod updater. If I just disconnected the cable and reconnected it (it wasn't mounted at this point so that's Ok to do) it would suddenly be recognized by iTunes and the automatic playlist update would work fine. Then, one day, that didn't work. since I was at home, I found that restoring my iPod and clearing off all the music was a much easier thing to deal with, so I did that and got that same "http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/" message I had dreaded, yet thought quite cute. Back to the Apple Store

At the Apple Store, they listened to it boot, connected it to their laptop and got all the same messages I did. They ran the iPod updater's restore feature and it worked for them! Yay, my iPod is Ok. When I took it home however, I got the same "device could not be written to" message while I was copying files back onto it. After 2 more restores and tries to write to it, I found that it would die at around 100 to 150 songs. Back to the Apple Store

At the Apple Store, they said "here's your new iPod". Well, they also said "your warranty is up" and "your Apple Care policy will cover it".

So I am now on my 3rd iPod and, at $250 per replacement, my Apple Care Warranty has gone way, way beyond the paying for itself stage

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I've wanted to do this for quite a while but, when we got our first Roomba, I would have needed to mount a light on the top so that you could see the thing. The newer Roomba models have status LEDs on the top for power level and for the cleaning cycle that is running though. It's taken me almost a year since we got the Roomba Discovery to realize that and set up the tripod and take the picture, but I think the results of this first try are enough to make me try again. I'll have to find a darker room to do it in at some point since the street lights outside the living room window fogged the image somewhat.

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On October 3rd our 2001 Subaru Forester was totaled.

While driving north on Park Avenue in Minneapolis, on my way home, I passed 27th Street as I have done countless times before. I was driving in the right-hand-most lane since I'd be turning right on 24th Street in a couple of blocks.

"Why is there an air-bag in front of me and why am I going so slow? This can't be good." Was the next thing to go through my mind. Apparently, a minivan had pulled out of a parking lot to my right and was making a right turn into my lane. It would have been too much work, I guess to have looked and seen if anyone was coming and if maybe that might cause a problem.

Anyway, I'm OK, but the car is totaled and towed. Here are some pictures.

	This is an overview shot of the damage. The yellow cable you see under the fender is connected to the air-bag sensor. That was part of the answer to that initial question.
	Here's a closer view of the damage. It doesn't look like much so it wasn't obviously totaled. The insurance guy took 24 hours to make a decision and he had to talk to his boss about it first.
	This is the spot where I hit a pillar at the mall of america the second year we had the car. The accident creamed all the evidence of that event and I finally got my wish to get rid of that ugly purple paint.
	I took these pictures the day after the accident and had intended to get this post up last week. Of course, most of my spare time was spent looking for another car. We wanted something like our Forester, and I wanted something that didn't feel like a step down. I also refuse to own an automatic transmission car so that really limited our options. Anyway, after just one day, you can really see the rust attacking that unprotected metal.
	In order to get the car home, I had to wad up the air-bags so that I could see out the windshield and use the steering wheel. You can kind-of see where my nearly-empty mug of cocoa flew out of the cup holder and dumped the thick, rich dregs of cocoa on the dash and driver's seat.

So now we own a 2002 Subaru Outback Limited and are making car payments again.

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I have received some suggestions as to the real meaning of the radar-enforced no-parking zone and I thought they needed sharing:

1. The cop beats you over the head with his radar gun to keep you from doing it again. If your head is not availble, he beats on your car.
2. Your car gets microwaved because of all the radars pointed at the area.

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The only thing you are doing when you put a flier on someone's car is littering by proxy. How many returns out of 1000 fliers do you expect to get? Maybe 100? That means that 900 of those fliers are going straight to the roadside, or if we're lucky, the trash or maybe recycling bin. Any time I get a flier on my car, I call the number on it and complain that I now have to dispose of their trash. I don't think it's going to work though and I'll probably give up in frustration long before people stop doing it.

I wonder if there are any movements to make fliering illegal.

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