My brother Andrew earned a reputaion last week at the car model store for big purchases. Today he got to go into the back room, and hunt through the most expensive car models (By expensive I mean expensive. Some of the cars had prices of $250). Andrew knows a car bargin when he finds one. With the air of a Connoisseur, patiently choosing the best, he picked out out fifteen cars in fourty five minutes of hunting. Then we had to help him carry them all out to the car. When Andrew finds a good deal he strikes like a rattlesnake.

The data that I create on my computer belongs to me, not the program that I created it in. Some programs understand this. Some don’t. If I want to open my letter in another program, I should be able too. Why should I not be able to open my accounting information in another account program, just as I am able to open my pictures in many different programs. Data belongs to the user! [/rant]

(Sorry for poor grammar - it’s midnight here ::grin::)

I think I earned a reputation down at the bank today. As you may know, I’m just learning how to drive and I also live, work, and play at home. Trips to the outside world are pretty seldom. Today it was time to take the family business’s received checks off to the bank, so Mom called me up on my cellphone as I was setting up a CVS repository for a new web project, and offered to let my drive to the bank. “Great”, I said, “I’ll be right there.” We stopped to pick up the Buckie dog, who loves to go for rides, and off we went.

Everything went fine going to the bank. I pulled into the drive in, rolled down the window, said “Howdy” to the familiar teller, leaned way out to put the checks in little drawer. Then things stopped going according to plan.

The van is a big 15 passenger Ford. To reach the little drawer which was placed a level to be used by little cars, I had to lean way out. In doing so my foot came off the brake pedal. The van began rolling away from the window! I had forgotten to put it in park! I quickly leaned back inside and stomped on the brakes. Sadly, my moving back inside had moved my foot over a few inches. Instead of still being over the brakes, my foot was over the accelerator. Now you have to understand that in addition to being able to take our family across the US, or haul a ton or so of C-Clamps around town, our faithful Ford van has the spirit of a race car. Many are the times I have meant to come gently out of stoplight and almost burned rubber, being used to driving one of our other cars. When you press the gas down about half way you get slammed into your seat. When I meant to stop rolling, I did not press down just half way. It was all the way down. We went flying out of the covered bank drive through like we were bank robbers.

As soon as I felt us rocketing off, I hit the real breaks, and we slowly backed up to the window again. Nobody could stop laughing. The tellers were rocking back and forth behind the bullet proof window. Mom in the passenger seat was laughing and asking me what I had just done. I was grinning quite sheepishly. The other bank teller managed to use the microphone and jokingly ask if this was my first day of driving.

At least if you have to make a big fool out of your self, it’s good not to have to do it in front of strangers. And also it’s a good idea to use park when you stop!

My little brother Andrew is coding his first website. Gallery du Tervuren’s Automobiles is to show his photos of his huge model car collection. He is coding by hand, with Textpad, and learning a huge amount as he goes along.

It was dentist time today, and when six of us go to the dentist, it takes all afternoon. I grabbed the Powerbook on the way out - Elizabeth had an old Disney Movie on DVD that she thought I would enjoy watching while waiting. About half way to the dentist, I suddenly thought “Hey! This is a great chance to see if I can find any wireless networks.” So I pulled the TiBook out, flipped it open, and started MacStumbler. Within five seconds the computer made a little sound. We found a network! That was unexpectedly soon. A half a second later it disappeared, a natural consequence of traveling 55 miles per hour. Two minutes later we spotted another one. This was beginning to be fun. On the rest of the way there we drove by five more networks.

On a different part of the way home, we were watching for them again - and finding them. The little monotone mac voice would proudly announce, “NEW ACCESS POINT FOUND. LINKSYS.”. Then we would all try to guess what building it was coming from. Dad was having fun too, and suggested we drive down into a nearby subdivision to see how many we would find. So we did! Four more wireless access points were discovered, (I had guessed that we would find only two there). Great fun for the whole family. ::Grin::

Conversational Cheap Shots is a hilarious list of the things people say to avoid the truth. I can remberer quite a few of them from argueing with my brother over Legos when I was very small..

Given time, in the next week I hope to set up a RSS feed that will show all trackbacks, comments, and referring links to Braino. It will be powerful to see what people say about what I say, right in with all the other news I read in NetNewsWire. This should let me respond faster, and spend less time digging around looking for the info.

The Carolinas are covered with snow, to depths we rarely get to see. It’s 6-8 inches here, and still falling. Schools are closed (But they close for less than two inches here anyway). Snow is wonderful - at least for snow starved South Carolina.

Look at this catalogue photo from this week’s Tiger Direct catalogue. So many outright lies and total exaggerations….

That 366MHz PII would be great for a “High-Level Executive”…..

As spelled out in our National Agreement, all career postal workers have a lifetime guarantee of job security after six years of service. – American Postal Workers Union FAQ

And you wonder why we ship our stuff FedEx?