My Garmin GPSmap 60CSx betrayed me this afternoon, but only briefly. I wasn't geocaching at the time, only driving back from an errand, but I turned on the 60 and realized at home that it was still Acquiring Satellites. Off, on, off, on, batteries out, batteries in, system reset, SD card out, SD card in, nothing. I could hear the voices...
"Chuck it in the trash... 40% off Best Buy coupon... Colorado 400t... you deserve it!"
But, no, I love my 60CSx! After some searching around the internet, I came across this post on the Geocaching.com forums, installed Webupdater from the garmin.com website, updated the system software and the chipset software, and once again everything works like a charm. It was startling to see my old piece of s*** Vista gobbling up those satellite signals while the 60CSx looked around, saying, "Huh? What satellites? Where are we?"
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Look, kids, ice cream cones!
C and I don't often hire a babysitter and get out for a nice dinner, but yesterday we had two reasons built into one day -- C finished her second book and sent it off to the publisher, and she wanted to do so by my birthday, my 38th.
We went to W.A. Frost in the Cathedral Hill area of Saint Paul. The patio area was packed on such a nice evening, so we sat in the dining room, even though we ordered bar food. I wanted a burger to go with my beer -- in an effort to become a Beer Geek I aim to have a different beer every time I order one... for the rest of my life. We'll see.
I took my wedding band off in the car somehow, and C made me walk back to retrieve it. While I did, she ordered an appetizer that was amusing enough for me to take a photograph of it.
This was the Tasting of Savory Cones, featuring, left-to-right, wild acres duck rillette and lingonberry with chive batons, red snapper ceviche with local corn and avocado, and smoked salmon mousse with dill. (I plagiarized that description from the W.A. Frost website.)
Very tasty, if a little precious for my tastes, and it definitely met our Rule #1 of ordering in restaurants: Don't order something you're likely to make for yourself at home. Anything in a cone at my house is going to come out of a 5-gallon tub of Neapolitan.
I ordered a pint of Flat Earth Cygnus X-1 (my favorite beer -- I know, I already broke my promise) and a sample of the Surly Bitter Brewer, which according to the Surly website they only made 30 barrels of. I wasn't particularly impressed, but it's not my favorite style anyway.
We had some other stuff, but I'm not doing a restaurant review here. We then went over to Muddy Pig, where I had a glass of the Belhaven Wee Heavy scotch ale and picked up a free copy of Beer Advocate magazine to continue my Beer Geekification.
C drove home, we sent the babysitter on her way, and we discovered raw sewage backing up into the basement. Happy birthday! Plumber on the way.
We went to W.A. Frost in the Cathedral Hill area of Saint Paul. The patio area was packed on such a nice evening, so we sat in the dining room, even though we ordered bar food. I wanted a burger to go with my beer -- in an effort to become a Beer Geek I aim to have a different beer every time I order one... for the rest of my life. We'll see.
I took my wedding band off in the car somehow, and C made me walk back to retrieve it. While I did, she ordered an appetizer that was amusing enough for me to take a photograph of it.
This was the Tasting of Savory Cones, featuring, left-to-right, wild acres duck rillette and lingonberry with chive batons, red snapper ceviche with local corn and avocado, and smoked salmon mousse with dill. (I plagiarized that description from the W.A. Frost website.)
Very tasty, if a little precious for my tastes, and it definitely met our Rule #1 of ordering in restaurants: Don't order something you're likely to make for yourself at home. Anything in a cone at my house is going to come out of a 5-gallon tub of Neapolitan.
I ordered a pint of Flat Earth Cygnus X-1 (my favorite beer -- I know, I already broke my promise) and a sample of the Surly Bitter Brewer, which according to the Surly website they only made 30 barrels of. I wasn't particularly impressed, but it's not my favorite style anyway.
We had some other stuff, but I'm not doing a restaurant review here. We then went over to Muddy Pig, where I had a glass of the Belhaven Wee Heavy scotch ale and picked up a free copy of Beer Advocate magazine to continue my Beer Geekification.
C drove home, we sent the babysitter on her way, and we discovered raw sewage backing up into the basement. Happy birthday! Plumber on the way.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
This blog post is not plagiarized.
At the risk of turning this blog into the "Central Ohio News Source", I have more news to report from my childhood home.
The 2008 valedictorian from my alma mater, Circleville High School, has been stripped of his status after admitting that he plagiarized his valedictory speech from another graduation speech that used Beatles lyrics. Now, he is threatening a lawsuit against the school district if he is not reinstated.
The YouTube video from which he apparently stole the idea and words has been taken down (as has an AOL video version), but it appears that graduation speech was patterned after an earlier graduation speech that can be seen in this blog post about the chain of speeches.
These events interest me because I, too, was a valedictorian at Circleville High School in 1988. Well, whoop-de-ding-dong-dandy, you might be saying, especially if you're from Circleville, Ohio, where folks say stuff like that.
Notice that I said "a" valedictorian, not "the" valedictorian. There were five valedictorians that year. It wasn't that hard to be valedictorian at Circleville High School, was it?! There were 168 students in my graduating class, which means that nearly 3% of the graduating class were valedictorians. Two of them went to Ohio State, one went to Miami University (in Ohio), one went to Princeton, and I went to Ohio University.
In case you'd like to call my status as valedictorian into question, you can look at this older post about how I maintained my grade point average in drivers' education.
I'm particularly amused by this quote from his lawyer that appears in the Chillicothe Gazette: "He had the highest G.P.A. in the history of the school." Well, sure, that's easy to do when you can earn 5's in courses when formerly only 4's were possible. When they start awarding 6's for students who suck up extra hard, then the Fifth Beatle's record will be surpassed.
This all might sound like I'm defensive and still hung up on things like this, but to tell the truth I think being a high school valedictorian actually hindered my education. When I went to college, I chose courses based on whether I thought I could maintain my grade point average rather than whether I thought I could learn and grow in that course. I turned away from learning opportunities out of fear.
Well, everyone has to learn that these things are not that important. It took me a while down the road to learn. It's unfortunate that the Fifth Beatle has to learn in a particularly public and painful way.
Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, life goes on.
The 2008 valedictorian from my alma mater, Circleville High School, has been stripped of his status after admitting that he plagiarized his valedictory speech from another graduation speech that used Beatles lyrics. Now, he is threatening a lawsuit against the school district if he is not reinstated.
The YouTube video from which he apparently stole the idea and words has been taken down (as has an AOL video version), but it appears that graduation speech was patterned after an earlier graduation speech that can be seen in this blog post about the chain of speeches.
These events interest me because I, too, was a valedictorian at Circleville High School in 1988. Well, whoop-de-ding-dong-dandy, you might be saying, especially if you're from Circleville, Ohio, where folks say stuff like that.
Notice that I said "a" valedictorian, not "the" valedictorian. There were five valedictorians that year. It wasn't that hard to be valedictorian at Circleville High School, was it?! There were 168 students in my graduating class, which means that nearly 3% of the graduating class were valedictorians. Two of them went to Ohio State, one went to Miami University (in Ohio), one went to Princeton, and I went to Ohio University.
In case you'd like to call my status as valedictorian into question, you can look at this older post about how I maintained my grade point average in drivers' education.
I'm particularly amused by this quote from his lawyer that appears in the Chillicothe Gazette: "He had the highest G.P.A. in the history of the school." Well, sure, that's easy to do when you can earn 5's in courses when formerly only 4's were possible. When they start awarding 6's for students who suck up extra hard, then the Fifth Beatle's record will be surpassed.
This all might sound like I'm defensive and still hung up on things like this, but to tell the truth I think being a high school valedictorian actually hindered my education. When I went to college, I chose courses based on whether I thought I could maintain my grade point average rather than whether I thought I could learn and grow in that course. I turned away from learning opportunities out of fear.
Well, everyone has to learn that these things are not that important. It took me a while down the road to learn. It's unfortunate that the Fifth Beatle has to learn in a particularly public and painful way.
Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, life goes on.
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