Thursday, April 28, 2005

Ew! My keyboard is disgusting!

I sat down to post and made the mistake of looking at my keyboard. With my new glasses I can now see every speck of dirt and debris on every key. Ewwwww! It is soooo gross. I don't even really eat at my keyboard and it's still disgusting. It's dusty and there are little crusty spots on some of the keys. I can only imagine what germs I'm infesting myself with every day. But then, they are my germs, so maybe it's not so bad. I really need to take every key off and clean this thing thoroughly. I could just go get a brand new keyboard from my supply closet and avoid the ordeal of cleaning this one, but there's a problem. This keyboard is special. It is a wave keyboard, for one thing, and it has a touchpad in the keyboard, for another.

I love this keyboard. Most keyboards with touchpads - well every one except this one - have the touchpad in the middle under where your two thumbs go, like laptops. I hate that location. It's too easy to accidentally hit the touchpad with your palm or your thumbs. This keyboard has the touchpad under the arrow keys. It's the perfect spot. I scoured the internet for every keyboard with a touchpad that was available and none of them had the touchpad in this location. My keys were wearing out - the letters were worn off of at least half the keys - and I needed a replacement. So, I contacted Cirque, the makers of this keyboard, to see if I could get another one. They had 2 left in stock - that was it. They were no longer making this keyboard. So, I did the logical thing and ordered both of them. I put one of the new ones in place of my existing keyboard and was dismayed to find that they had changed the texture of the touchpad on the new keyboards so it wasn't as slick and didn't seem to be as responsive as my old keyboard. So I took all the old keys off my old keyboard, took all the new keys off the new keyboard, and switched them. Voila! My keyboard had great new keys and my old favorite touchpad. I just hope the touchpad doesn't wear out. Anyway, it's been a while since I did that, and now that I can see, I see that it's time to clean the keys. How do the sides of keys, the part you don't ever touch, get so dirty? It's mind boggling.

Guess I'd better start pulling keys off.....

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

What season is this?

First - I'm a bad blogger. I have been so lax in blogging lately that I'm sure I've completely lost my readers, the three I used to have. Guess I'll just blog for my own entertainment.

Second - this is the most bizarre weather year ever. We barely had a winter this year, which was both good and bad - bad for skiers, snowmobilers, and the water situation, but good for those of us who hate driving in snow and ice, shoveling driveways, gray winter days, and stuff like that... you know, those of us who grew up in Southern California where, as we all know, it never rains (tell that to the So Cal folks this year!). Now, here it is, April 26, and it was 82 yesterday! EIGHTY-TWO!!! In Sandpoint, Idaho! In April! I've already mowed my lawn three times! I've lived here for 22 years and have never, ever seen an April like this. WARNING: It could still snow before summer actually arrives.

The accepted logic here is you can't plant your garden until "the snow is off Baldy" - a medium-sized mountain under which the town sits - and it's not, but I think this year all the accepted norms should be tossed aside because nothing is normal. Everyone was saying before winter we were in for a bad one. The caterpillars were really fuzzy or something like that, the geese left early...well, bzzzzzt! WRONG! So, I'm thinking it's definitely time to plant SOMETHING despite the fact that it's only April 26 (which is also my son-in-law's 30th birthday). I think this weekend I will put my patio pots together. It is weird though - my grape hyacinths are barely blooming, the tulips are still just buds, and daffodils are still bright and perky, so how can I even ponder putting together a pot of geraniums, pansies, nemesia, and the like? It's just not synching in my brain...

Speaking of this weekend, Sunday, May 1, is Bloomsday, the largest timed road race in the world. I have "run" this race about 10 times or so. My first one was May 1987. My husband and I ran and pushed a stroller with Jonathan in it. He was not yet a year old. Right before we crossed the finish line, I got him out of the stroller and let him walk across on his own. We had entered him so he got a t-shirt too. We ran it for the next three years, with Tom carrying him on his shoulders for 7.46 miles when he was 3 and weighed about 45 pounds. He finally got too big to carry and they stopped letting stroller pushers run so we took a break. We ran it again a few years later when he was big enough to do the whole course on his own two legs. Now I do it with some co-workers or my daughter and her friend. Last year Shana and I did it, just the two of us, and without any advance training on my part, we finished in 1:43 - pretty good for someone with two bad knees who doesn't run and hadn't trained at all. This year I don't expect to do as well. I'm about 20 pounds heavier (ugh) and my knees are worse than ever AND I haven't even been walking in advance of Bloomsday. I'll be happy to just finish under two hours. At least this year the weather should totally rock.

So, one of my favorite TV shows is Joan of Arcadia. I love the way she is so sarcastic to God and yet does what he asks her to and sees how what He asks her to do affects others. Anyway, I read that it might not come back next year. That would be tragic. So, if you like Joan, I suggest you join me in emailing or writing CBS on behalf of Joan. It is a great, wholesome show and needs to stay on TV.

Ciao! Sieze the day!

Friday, April 08, 2005

A chip off the old block

Jonathan called yesterday to say he wasn't so sure he wanted to continue to major in computer science. His exact words were "I can't see myself sitting in front of a computer coding all day." Deja vu! I said words very similar to that back when I was in college majoring in electrical engineering. I think my comment was "I don't see myself sitting in a cubicle punching out punch cards all day" (I date myself with punch card comment). I changed my major to art, hoping to study graphic design. Unfortunately, UC Santa Barbara didn't have a graphic design department, just a fine art department, so I majored in art with an emphasis in painting. Ah yes, such a lucrative major. And I SO never used it....

Now Jonathan is repeating my lament, pondering his future. It's what you do in college - explore things you never got to explore in high school, figure out what you want to do with your life - I totally get that. But I can also look back at that fateful decision in 1974 and see how shortsighted I was. I made that comment after trudging through the horribly boring courses you have to take as the foundation to prepare you to do the more exciting, fun stuff. Being an engineering major didn't mean I was doomed to cubicle-sitting for the rest of my life. I didn't have an advisor that knew me from Adam to help me think through my decision, and computing was a relatively new field then (they didn't even have a computer science major at UCSB then), so who was going to talk to me about all the cool, creative stuff that I could end up doing if I'd just do the drudgery of the first couple of years? No one. Jonathan, on the other hand, has a great advisor - a guy who actually worked at Microsoft - and he KNOWS Jonathan from Adam so, I did what any good mom would do - I told Jonathan to talk to Pete. Hopefully, Pete can give Jonathan a little insight into what might lay ahead for him. Maybe Pete will see that CS really isn't his thing and point him toward what Jonathan has always said he wants to do - computer animation and graphics - or maybe he'll be able to point out how the two can be combined. I don't know what he'll say, but I'm going to trust him to do his best to help Jonathan decide what to do.

If Jonathan does decided to pursue the more artistic end, I know the struggles he will face. I changed to art and entered a world in which I had never before walked. I was surrounded by kids who had been "artists" their entire lives. These kids had taken art classes for as long as they could remember. I had taken only the one I needed to fulfill the graduation requirement. I'd always liked to draw and paint but had never considered myself an artist, and besides, I was too busy taking math, science, foreign language, and advanced English classes to have time for art or photography - both of which I love now. Jonathan has followed much the same course - except he's never taken even one art class. It can be daunting to take a design or drawing class and see masterpieces being created by your classmates while you're scratching out something that looks like a 3rd grader drew it. Been there, done that, it wasn't fun. But who knows, with some guidance, some training, he might do really well. He does seem to be a natural when it comes to photography (according to his photojournalism teacher) and he obviously has an artistic eye. From what I could gather from the Whitworth catalog, he could take the digital art/printmaking track and not be forced to take ceramics, sculpture, painting, and drawing like I was. He would have to take design - a very good thing - and then could focus on the digital aspect and throw in some computer graphics, Photoshop, and photography. So, we'll see. He certainly has more options than I did for combining his analytical and artistic sides. I just want him to be happy and thrive.

I do worry that one reason he is rethinking CS is because it's hard and "not fun". How do you tell your kids without them rolling their eyes at you, that a lot of college is hard and not fun? If it were easy, everyone would go, and do well. Jonathan is not used to working hard for things, especially in school. Too much has come too easily for him and what hasn't been easy he's been satisfied to just get through. He needs to learn that, at some point, you do have to work really hard at stuff that's not fun so you can get to the fun stuff. I hope maybe Pete can help him see that too.

Off I go to do some not fun hard stuff at work....