Following Edge

Oregonians are more affected by light than by cold and I think I have the proof. I know that there's lots of talk about seasonal affective disorder, where lack of light can create fatigue and depression, but I was surprised by the evidence of people "activated" by the recent week's sunny weather.

You may remember that we hid a GeoCache last year, and people find it periodically, but in just 2 days this last week, 5 people found it.

People must have seen the strange light from the mysterious orb in the sky, remembered suddenly what sunlight was like, and headed irrationally out for summer activities, even though the temperatures were in the 30s.

I recently harvested the camera from our cache, and you should go look at the fine specimens and total cuties that visited our cache in the last 9 months.

Not that we're any better. Anne Marie got me a new GPS receiver for our anniversary and so we were all out "digging" for caches recently as well. This picture of Lauren is from a park we visited to find a cache, where Lauren found a cool playground toy.

This is the story of how a promise of garden vegetable soup turned out to be a lie, deception and a farce!

Lauren and I visited Cafe Yumm this week. We go there often as it has plenty of comfortable seating, coffee, and plenty of vegetarian goodness. I ordered a sandwich and gazed at the soup board. I often get the Chilean Zuchini soup, but today, just above that was the promise of "Garden Vegetable" soup. Mmmmm... garden vegetably goodness... I'll have it!

A short time later, one of the staff (a Yummie?) brings the sandwich and a bowl of yellowish-brown mud-like soup.

"Uh... I don't think this is the right soup. I ordered the [rushing out to look at the soup list and back, just to be sure] Garden Vegetable soup."

"This is the Garden Vegetable soup. The vegetable is lentil. That's lentil soup."

What!? Despite the singular form of "vegetable", "Garden Vegetable" means a selection of vegetables that one might expect to grow in the garden. Let's see... tomatoes? squash? carrots? even cabbage or even kohlrabi, I suppose. You don't say "garden vegetable" if the only vegetable is peas and you're serving split pea soup. The same goes for lentil soup. If you've got lentil soup, you say "Lentil Soup", not "Garden Vegetable", for god's sake.

Anne Marie suggests that lentils and peas are legumes anyhow and shouldn't be stuck in with vegetables. I'm not so sure, but I don't think it affects may basic argument that "Garden Vegetable" is not lentils.

And, after a bit of a wait, Cafe Yumm did give me a bowl of Chilean Zuchini soup instead, so they are redeemed. I do highly reccommend them. But, remember, if you see them offer garden vegetable soup, be sure to ask "Which vegetable"?

Here's what my new office desk looks like. We just moved in today. Everyone thinks it's a big improvement from the underground office where I was working before, but I never minded it, even though there were other reasons that I had to move.

Maybe the windows will do Keith and I some good, but I'm just happy to have slipped into the office feeling  comfortable and productive within an hour or two.

As usual, despite the small space, there's room for Lauren to nap on days when I need to pick her up from school. I told her that we wouldn't be visiting the "underground" any more. She was sad, but eager to see the new office. It may be almost a week before she gets to visit the office, but I bet she'll like it.

Snow! We heard there would be snow, but we were dubious. I looked at the forecast from the Weather Service last night and was very surprised to  see it forecast "Snow", not "Chance of Snow" or "Slight Chance of Snow" as they normally say to hedge their bets. So, I shouldn't have been surprised to see it.

Alas, it is hard to photograph snow if it's not willing to coat the ground or collect in drifts. I took a handful of pictures that ended up simply showing curious photos of downtown Eugene to which you might say, "What is he trying to take a picture of", since the snow was not apparent. Finally, the snow was coming down with sufficient force that I got this shot, which looks like snow, if you really squint.

The forecast is full of snow later this week. I'm eager, but I doubt we'll have snowman-building snow, as much as Lauren is hoping for it.

Lauren has been taking swim lessons the last couple of months. Her grandmother often takes her, but I got to today.

I know there's a natural biological fear of being under water that a child has to get over as part of learning to swim, but it initially seemed to take so long for her to get comfortable with the water, that I was beginning to wonder how things would turn out. Despite my worries, she has been making good progress. This picture shows how much fun she can have in the water now.

The big test will be in a few weeks, when Lauren goes to Hawaii to play in the surf and try out snorkeling. You didn't know we're going to Hawaii?! Oh, we're not, Lauren is. Grandma Bonnie is giving Lauren a real treat and taking her to Hawaii for a week. Should be great fun.

Yes, Following Edge is back after a weeklong hiatus. Don't ask. It's sufficient to say that the time I usually spend writing had to be used to get the blog in shape to be online again. In case you missed my non-blog post this week:

Check out this article at Wired describing how to explain your suspicious web searches when the government gets access to records of your web searches. Funniest thing I've seen all week.

More will follow shortly. Thanks for sticking with Following Edge.

I've been hearing for a couple of weeks about a Windows computer virus called "Blackworm" or "CME-24". It's concerning for many because it erases many kinds of file (unimportant things like Word, Excel, etc documents). There was so much urgent talk about it 10 to 14 days ago that I thought it was going to do the erasing last Friday, but I eventually figured out that it's happening on the 3rd, this Friday.

Anne Marie naively said she expected news reports about it. I reminded her that, back at the time of the Code Red worm, I had been dealing with its affects on the network for weeks before the local news finally reported on it.

Humorously, the local news did get the news out before the event this time. Our local news reported on it this evening, and, while they can say that they reported the news before it happened, 6 hours of notice doesn't give most non-technical people much of a chance to figure out what to do about it. Hopefully, they already have up-to-date virus software, are skeptical enough not to open email files claiming to be Karma Sutra porn, or have a Macintosh, but competent reports claim that 300,000 computers are infected and will suffer major data loss tomorrow (or today, depending where you are).

I suppose I'm no better in my timing than the local news. I'm reporting this here when the damage is already starting, but anyone would be foolish to depend on this blog for timely, relevant, and accurate information. Many still cling to that expectation for newspapers and the evening news.

So glad today, as many days, that we don't run Windows in our company. It's sad that Windows is so frequently infected with viruses and that the local news waits to late to report on the issue when most of the affected people probably don't read the crazy high-tech news that I do. Hope none of you get hit by this, but, if so, there are some great deals on Macs right now with new models having just been released.