Space — The Final Frontier….

Shipped:
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie

On Order: Star Trek Original Serie

They get full marks for effort, but lose a few points on execution. Of course, they do make all the information available on the website, and that was only one click away (hmmm, wonder if there’s a patentable idea there?), and so I know that the missing disk (which is now “shipping soon”) is Volume 3.

Frontier, The Final Space…

I spent the day at home so I could work on my Frontier server, and after much grunting and groaning, I figured out how to adapt the “list sites” script from the control panel to become a macro so that others could also list all the sites on my server (with only 8 sites, this is probably reasonable; I don’t think it’d be such a good idea on EditThisPage). The task wasn’t hard (basically, all I had to do was copy the script to another place in the database and declare it “legal”), but it was my first actual attempt to work in the Frontier environment, and there were a few things which weren’t obvious to me (such as how I could copy the script from one place to another!). The online documentation helped a lot — so did having two machines, so I could keep the documentation on one screen and hack at Frontier on the other.

And now I’ve even managed to hack the script to show the number of messages on each of the sites. Someday, I’ll figure out how to right-justify the number so I can read it, but that’s not a project for tonight — instead, I shall declare victory for the evening and move on.

Spacing out on the home frontier…

I called a couple of drywall contractors Wednesday evening to get estimates on texturing the ceilings in the rooms which we weren’t able to have done during the kitchen remodelling project. Much to my amazement, one of them actually answered the phone on the first try (he’s supposed to be here tomorrow to give us an estimate), and the other one called back early the next morning and agreed to come out today at 2pm to take a look. The doorbell rang at 2:05 — that’s the first time I’ve had a contractor show up on time (the FAA considers 15 minutes to be “on time”; why should I worry about 5 minutes?) in a very long time. I guess the economy must be slowing down. Maybe I’ll be able get an electrician here someday, too.

Wine of the Day

1998 Firestone Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc (Santa Barbara County). Diane says it was “cheap”; we got it at Lunardi’s. I thought it had a bit of a metallic aftertaste, but it was otherwise OK; we had it with PG&E Chicken, which we all enjoy. Jeffrey, of course, had caffeine-free Coke with his chicken rather than the wine.

Book of the Day

No, it’s not Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — it’s not midnight here yet and so it’s not yet available. I am, however, trying to decide if I want to stay up until midnight and pick up a copy tonight, or wait till tomorrow — I won’t read it for a while in either case, since I have to finish Kaaterskill Falls for the Shir Hadash Book Group next weekend. We’d actually rather have a UK edition to match the first three volumes in the set — I picked up the first two on a trip to the UK because I’d read how Americans were buying them from Amazon.co.uk and I was curious. I enjoyed them so much, I made a special trip last summer to pick up the third volume.

Well, it wasn’t a special trip to the UK — it was a special trip to the WHSmith’s at Heathrow’s Terminal 1; we were changing planes there en route to Israel a week after the book had been published in the UK, and so it was pretty easy to get a copy right there, without having to wait for the US publication date. And we read the book before we got back to the US, anyway.

But I wasn’t going to talk about Harry Potter — I guess I got caught up in the excitement. Instead,
the Book of the Day is A Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss. This book is set in London in 1719 (during the South Sea Bubble); the protagonist, Benjamin Weaver, is a Jewish ex-pugilist turned detective, who is trying to find out who killed his father, and, in the process, is drawn into the South Sea Company’s orbit. It’s a historical mystery with religious and business overtones; I found it fascinating (though I didn’t guess whodunnit), and highly recommend it.

Shabbat Shalom!