The Bible turns out to be a handy unit of measurement,
particularly when you’re trying to help folks some grasp
large storage media or data transfer rates.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe in what’s in it, of
course, it’s just that most folks have seen one. I’d wager
that most folks have a reasonable concept of its size, even
if only in heft or “thud factor”.

I used it as an example way back when as I tried to convey
some concepts to my parents. This disk? It could hold X
bibles! And this connection here, we can send the entire
Bible in Y seconds! Wow!

A random copy of The Bible, text only, from project
Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org) “weighs in” at roughly
5 megabytes.

With that as a unit of measure:

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OK, this is a test for everyone who claims to be a Seattle native/local.

What is this:

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Yes, yes, I know that the two heavyweights in the Seattle
marker, KIRO 710 and KOMO 1000 both claim to be news
stations. And yet…

KIRO changed branding some time ago from “News Radio” to
“News Talk” to finally reflect more accurately what they
really broadcast: News and Talk. More of the later than the
former, I’m afraid. Fair enough, at least they’re honest
about it. (And I’m a fan of the talk part … if
that’s what I happen to be looking for.)

The real offender, in my mind, is KOMO.

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During my recent trip to San Antonio, I found myself in a small shop
(gourmet dog cookies, if you must know) across from a Starbucks.
I told the proprietor that I was visiting from Seattle, and she immediately
said, “Yes, the home of Starbucks!”

Indeed.

It made me realize that I’m really, really from Seattle, because:

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So my credit card company (or rather, the credit card company that issued the
corporate cards used for my wife’s business http://dollsandfriends.com) “upgraded”
their card access web site recently.

Already you can see where this is going.

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I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about what was
coming next for her web site. She has a new site design. The design itself is
ready to go, and I’d say that the “important stuff” has been moved into it, but
not everything. A bunch of older content hasn’t yet been moved. On top of that
the older content needs updating as it’s moved into the new design.

So she’s been waiting to release the new website design until more (all?) of
the old content has been revised and moved. And of course, that’s just an
overwhelming amount of work – all those pages. It’s a big deal.

So naturally, since it’s such a daunting task, it’s not happening.

My response? Just do it.

No, not the old content migration. That is an overwhelming
task.

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As I mentioned elsewhere,
my 11 year old big screen TV decided it was tired, and wasn’t going work
any more. That, of course, accelerated my HDTV education and upgrade
timetable.

My replacement HDTV is on
order.

But as I mentioned to Kathy, this is a slippery slope. Programming.
Audio. Recording. Etc.

And so I found myself on the phone to DirecTV to upgrade our programming
to their HDTV package with their HDTV DVR. No problem, they said. They’d
be happy to take more of my money. No surprise really.

We scheduled an appointment for the upgrade, which includes a new
(bigger) dish and the DVR. I made note to the representative to make sure
to mention that a 30 foot ladder was going to be required, as the
existing dish was at the peak of one end of our house. No problem, they
said.

And here the enumeration begins by visit and technician contact… (you
know it’s bad when a numbered list is the right approach)

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Inspired by a post by a former
colleague of mine I decided to grab the Canon (camera that is) and throw my
volley into the “show us your geek” competition.

This is what’s tacked up on a wall in a room in my basement:

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We’re having all of the woodwork in our home re-varnished. The time came
for my office, which from the following picure you can see is mostly woodwork.
We took advantage of having to empry the walls and bookshelves to go one step
further and empty the office and move the carpet to a different room so it could
be cleaned as well.

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Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books I thought I’d read. I’m a Sci-Fi fan,
and ate up a lot of the “masters” of Sci-Fi years ago. I started with Arthur C.
Clarke (Childhood’s End was
my first Sci-Fi read, what a way to start!), and quickly ran through most of
the works of Heinlein, Asimov, and others, including, I thought, Ray
Bradbury.

Apparently not.

My only thought is that perhaps I got sidetracked by the weirdness that is
Something Wicked
This Way Comes, and set Mr. Bradbury aside.

Fast forward some [mumble] years, and I find a reference to
Fahrenheit
451 in the always popular and thought provoking This Is True weekly email.

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If my math is right as I write this we’re coming up on 80 hours without
power after the windstorm that partied on the Seattle area Thursday night.

Various thoughts in no particular order…

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The typeface was smaller than I expected.

But then it would have to be.

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Today’s my birthday.

No big deal, really. Life’s actually too busy to pay much attention to it. It’s not
one of the “milestone” birthdays or anything – that’s next year. And for the most part, most of the time
“on the inside” I feel about half my age.

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I’ve tried to explain this enough times that I decided just to write it up
once and (literally) for all.

We opened my wife’s doll shop in 1994. This month marks the completion of
our 12th year.

This month also marks the end of our current lease. That’s a decision point
– knowing this, last year we started asking ourselves: stay, move, go
internet-only or close down completely? The internet has changed the landscape
of doll selling fairly dramatically in recent years, and the expenses
associated with running an actual retail store don’t quite make sense in
comparison to the revenue generated by in-store sales. Internet sales were
“carrying” the business.

If we were going to be profitable , we needed to reduce expenses. Next to
inventory, which is kinda necessary, rent and payroll were tops on the list.
The status quo wasn’t going to cut it.

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