Walking on the Moon

I’m out in El Paso, bringing 32169 back to SoCal.

Without Brenda, my heretofore unbroken streak of showing up in El Paso and having a reasonable room available has been, well, broken.  I managed to find a room near the airport, though for more than I expected to have to pay.  Apparently there’s something up in El Paso today; several places were full, and the remaining rooms were at a premium.  There is an upside, though.  The desk clerk booked me into a suite at no premium.  It’s a pretty nice place to crash for the night.

Weather looks good, so hopefully we’ll be back tomorrow.

Aaron Falk’s keen eye brings this tale of love and centralized backups to you from gizmodo.

People ask me how I know of so many movies, but never seem to see any.  These summaries might be the reason.  You really don’t want to miss The Wrath of Khan in 5 Seconds or Attack of the Clones in 5 Seconds.

Brenda pointed these out to me.

Well, it’s New Year’s Eve, and we’re in Little Rock, AK (LIT).  Brenda’s napping and I’m planning tomorrow’s bucking of the winds.

Hope you’re all snug and happy.

I’ve updated grap to handle some emerging standards and pickier compilers.  There are no new features, but you can compile the new code under G++ up to 4.3.  This was motivated by a Debian bug report that I’ve closed with this update.

Over on BoingBoing, Cory Doctrow put in a plug for Neal Stephenson’s Interface.  It’s one of my favorites, and with the election year coming up, I encourage you to get a copy and enjoy it.

Brenda has run across a wonderful thing, and I am going to let you all in on it.  There’s this guy in New Jersey who’s a huge wine fan.  One of these guys of unrelenting passion and enthusiasm – and no little knowledge – who just lights up a topic.  He’s got a wacky, infectious, informative daily videocast over at http://tv.winelibrary.com/.  Stop by and check it out.  Bet you can’t watch just one.

Flying airplanes is a constant learning experience. Today I learned how to jump start a Piper Archer.

Brenda and I are getting ready to fly out to see our respective families for the holidays, so I’m trying to log a little extra time in preparation. I’m looking to make sure that I’m reasonably current on my skills and that the plane’s also ready to go. Today I stopped off at Flabob field for lunch, and almost didn’t get back out.

A couple weeks ago, I had a battery go completely dead causing me to miss an afternoon of instruction. After that, I had some starting problems that my mechanic couldn’t repeat. And today I had more of the same, to the point where I ran my battery completely down. A helpful fellow who was nearby offered to jump, and after I realized that I did indeed have a 12 volt battery, we gave it a shot. It worked like a charm, and away we went. It was an interesting thing to learn how to do, and I’m happy to know it.

But I think I need a new battery.

Those are up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

If you only look at one link in here, have a look at these maniacs.  Link from Ray Lovinggood in the reader mail column at AvWeb.

More microcars, from BoingBoing.

Boy, George Bush travels with a lot of people.  (BoingBoing, again).