Cheryl’s horse collection is taking over her room, so we proposed adding some shelves in the corner to provide space for arranging and showing them off. Doing this also means that we could move her bed and dresser into a more convenient (for me) layout. So, Ikea on Monday to get some shelves!
Another winter has passed, spring is in the air, and that means I am thinking ahead to August! My family writes to ask for your continued support for the Pan-Mass Challenge, which raises money for cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The DFCI is making great strides toward understanding the mechanisms of cancer and learning how to treat and cure it. Your support will help fund basic research, clinical trials, and treatment at the Jimmy Fund Clinic.
This year, John will ride a two-day route from Wellesley to Bourne to Provincetown on August 7 and 8, 2010. Susan, Cheryl, and Audrey are cheerleaders and also training assistants (trailer, trail-a-bike and tandem). This is John’s fourteenth year of participation!
This year we hope to increase our fund-raising from last year’s $6000 to $7000, as part of the overall PMC’s $31 million goal for the 2010 ride. We hope that you will help us reach this goal.
On Sunday, John will wear a jersey to honor the people in your lives who have been touched by cancer. Please send us any names you’d like us to add to his jersey. (John uses the same jersey every year, so if you’ve already sent a name you need not send it again.)
There are two ways to donate:
1. Online: Go to https://www.pmc.org/egifts/ and follow the online directions. John’s eGift ID is JK0059. If your company will match your donation, please fill out the matching gift form and mail it to us at the address listed below. IBM employees and retirees can visit http://www.john.kohl.name/pmc.html and download a preprinted “IBM matching” form with instructions for completing the matching gift form.
2. By check: Please make your check payable to “Dana-Farber Cancer Institute” and mail it (along with your company’s matching form, if applicable), to:
John Kohl
34 James Street
Arlington MA 02474
Thank you so much for anything you’re able to give, and please hope for good weather for the ride!
My father passed away yesterday after a long illness.
Memorial service will be 11am Monday March 29, at the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church.
After 10 years, a wire on my upper retainer broke.
I’ve been wearing it usually 5 out of 7 nights or so since I got the braces off in 1999. (I can still feel some wiggling of the teeth, probably since I had braces as a child and the tooth roots are not quite as long as normal.)
Oh well, I guess it’s time to stop, and hope the teeth don’t move too much without the retainer assistance.
a museum. We visited the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art today, near Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.
The gallery was a bit too museum-ey for the girls (lots of “hands off” signs), but they enjoyed the library of children’s books and the art studio where the project available was making maps of imaginary or real places. They had fun gluing pictures onto old unused maps.
The maps were marked “discarded” from various museums, and included things like rural US maps (both photo and topo), and some maps of Japan (marked as only for military use, dated 1945).
Along the way there, we visited Northampton (Susan’s old haunts from college) and the Montague Book Mill (we had a gift certificate, now expired).
Foliage was showing some color, but not peak yet–a lot of green still. In places it was nicely mixed colors (green, orange, red), but others were mostly green.
Webkinz are just like real pets–eventually the parent ends up caring for them!
One of the nice things about this time of year is smelling the wild grapes that grow on trees, walls, etc. (lots of places). At my office building, there are some grapes accessible from the parking lot. They taste OK, but I’m not fond of grapes with seeds in them.
I tried using iMovie ’09 (version 8.0.4) (part of iLife ’09) to put together a quick DVD copy of video from my miniDV video camera.
I didn’t particularly care for it, compared with iMovie HD (version 6.0.3).
iMovie ’09 takes the DV files and reencodes them to some intermediate format, which then iDVD has to reencode them again. Double the time, plus potential image degradation along the way.
iMovie HD will export a .mov file which is in essence a reference to video clips in the iMovie project, then iDVD eventually reencodes that into MPEG-2 format during DVD burning.
Only reencoding once, and a reasonable amount of time to do the encoding.
Good thing the iLife installer did not erase iMovie HD but merely moved it to a different location.
Maybe iMovie ’09 is good for non-DVD output projects, but it’s pretty much the wrong thing for DVDs if you’re trying to be efficient with your time.
You’ve all heard the advice: to reduce identity theft risk, don’t give out your SSN to people who ask for it (without legal basis such as tax-related reporting), insist on alternate IDs, etc.
Turns out the US government doesn’t understand this part of it–they’re requiring SSNs now for health insurance coordination of benefits (even for people not eligible for Medicare). Sure, let’s make it mandatory for many more organizations to have my SSN, and my children’s SSNs–that will do wonders for identity-theft protection!
Cheryl and I walked up to “The Farm” at the top of the hill in Winchester today. In late summer and autumn, it’s staffed by volunteers for pick-your-own raspberries.
Boy, it sure is full of delicious berries. The canes are full of ripe and immature berries, should be a great harvest for the rest of the season.
Some of the canes are so full they’re bending over and making an archway between the rows!
