Another quickie

I’m off to Austin later this afternoon, arriving far too late to want to update my page (not so much because it’ll be late when I arrive as much as it’ll be morning much earlier than I like tomorrow). I suspect the election coverage in the American-Statesman is far different in flavor to that in the Mercury News.

We just got back from the 1st quarter parent/teacher conference; no surprises, which is good (pleasant surprises would be better, but the teacher’s done a good job of keeping us informed all along).

Silence is golden

So I won’t say anything about today’s edition of the Florida Follies.

I also will be losing my network connection in a few minutes (the perils of having one’s employer be one’s ISP…when they do maintenance, access from home goes away too), so I don’t have anytime to say anything profound.

But I didn’t want to miss a day, hence this brief entry.

A quietly busy Sunday

Today was the last day of Pete and Debbie’s visit, so a trip to SFO was on the agenda for the afternoon. Before that, though, we had to take Jeffrey to Sunday school (though apparently a lot of people took the day off — he said there were only five other kids in his class today!), and I returned the remains of our door installation project to Home Depot. It was very difficult to get their count of what I was returning to match what I’d brought back — and no, they weren’t using a butterfly ballot. Instead, it was an unwillingness to move 80-pound bags of stucco around to find a small piece of wood and scan it — but eventually, we reached an agreement and I got my refund. Then, to my delight, I found out that I was also entitled to a refund for some unused labor on the installation, so all in all, it was a moderately successful and financially painless trip.

Even though Pete and Debbie had a 4pm flight, they didn’t want to take any chances on missing it, so we left for lunch and the airport at 12:30, arriving at the airport just after 2pm. And then they got in the endless United check-in line; I had forgotten how poorly airlines treat “regular” (non-elite-level) passengers, since I do almost all my flying on airlines where I have elite status. Not only was there a very long queue, but they hadn’t been given pre-assigned seats and couldn’t get two seats together — they did manage to score exit-row seats, but they were middle seats.

We saw them off (SFO is not a bad place to kill an hour, especially if you’re carrying anything — the bookstore in the United concourse is very nice, as is the fast-food court there), and then headed back home, returning library books and a tuxedo along the way. Then I had my new watch’s band resized so I could actually wear it, and that was about the end of the productive activity for today.

Bypassing a Microsoft bug

In today’s Scripting News, Dave Winer complains that the MSIE 5.5 text entry box has a bug making it impossible to select one-and-a-fraction words, because the selection moves backwards to encompass a whole word. This is true, but only if you use the mouse; if you use the keyboard to manipulate the selection, you can select any portion of the text you like.

20/10

ice sculpture: Tonight is Shir Hadash’s 20/10 Gala (celebrating 20 years of the congregation and 10 years with Rabbi Aron). We’ll be there — I’ve even rented a tux. Sheesh!

dressed up for the gala: All dressed up for the Shir Hadash 20/10 Gala

Book of the Day

Actually, it’s a trilogy — Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. I just finished volume 1, The Golden Compass and have started volume 2, His Subtle Knife. Officially, these are children’s books, but I don’t think I’d describe them as such; they are quite a bit darker and more grown-up than the Harry Potter books.