Ah, it feels better to be able to edit directly again! When I use a plain text editor to update my page, I feel in control and know what’s going to happen (even though I do have to type tags by hand in some cases). When using Radio Userland, I felt very frustrated because what I wanted to do wasn’t what what the system made easy — and once I had started yesterday’s page with Radio Userland, there was no way out. Even after convincing Radio Userland to hand me my page as HTML, I couldn’t get Manila to accept it — it demanded OPML.

I got a very nice Hanukkah gift last night (yes, I know Hanukkah hasn’t started yet, but the giver specifically asked me to open it) — a Lego Droid Construction Set. It should be fun to play with, and I know Jeffrey is looking forward to helping me — his eyes really lit up when he saw it!

The weather is boring here, thanks

John is talking about the blizzard conditions in Iowa and says “We’re always talking about the weather. You might think this is boring if you live in San Jose. But in this case, the weather could kill you.”

By coincidence, today’s Merky Nooz had Jan Null’s weekly column on meteorology, in which he explains his Camelot Climate Index, on which San Jose scores very high (but slightly below San Diego). Iowa doesn’t even come close.

Need a CPLD?

When we went to see 102 Dalmations on Sunday, we got there early enough to see the slide-show ads before the movie. There were the usual Coke ads that appear everywhere, but some of the ads were, I suspect, uniquely Silly Valley in nature. Lots of companies were hiring, of course, but the ad which really got my attention was from Xilinx, touting their CPLDs. If I had had any clue what a CPLD was, I might’ve even been interested. I guessed that the “PLD” part was
“Programmable Logic Device”, but I still don’t know what the
“C” is. CMOS? Complex? Chocolate?

We had an entertainment-packed weekend — so packed, in fact, that I never got around to editing my page. Herewith, a brief review.

Enter the Guardsman (San Jose Rep) 

Every year, San Jose Rep has a “fun” play for the holidays. They’ve done The 1940’s Radio Hour three times; last year’s play was The Matchmaker. They try to entertain but not challenge the audience, and I think they usually succeed.

This year’s holiday play is Enter the Guardsman. It’s not deep (though it is recursive); I didn’t come out singing the songs, but I enjoyed the play anyway.

Quest of the Delta Knights (MST3K) 

Jeffrey really enjoys watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000’s combination of bad movies with funny commentary, and usually, I do too. But this movie was so bad that I had to leave the room about ten minutes along, and I never returned. Miss it if you can.

102 Dalmations 

At our last Havurah event, we decided we’d go see a movie, and this seemed to be the best bet at the time, considering how many young children we have. And it probably was the best movie playing at the AMC Saratoga 14, which says something about the state of movies this year.

I actually enjoyed the movie more than I’d expected to; the first half-hour was very slow, but then things picked up a bit. The dogs were clearly more intelligent than the people. And the kids all liked it, so I guess it was a good choice after all.

The Blob 

Despite being a long-time science fiction fan, I’d never seen The Blob until last night. Now I have.

Caution: New tools being tested!

Playing Radio 

I’m editing today’s entry with Radio Userland and I’m having “a learning experience”. I’m finding it far from a natural process; I don’t find the structure forced on me by using an outliner helps me, at least not for something as simple as my weblog. Unfortunately, I can’t go back to manual editing for today’s entry, because the Edit this Page button gives me the OPML for the page, which is not very well-suited to manual editing. Tomorrow, it’ll be back to the standard tools.