Notes on a Sunday Afternoon

According to the blogger post counter, I've written 2,266 posts thus far since starting in January, 2003. That's something of an amazing number, for me. I started not being sure if I could write more than an occasional item, and in looking through the archive, I'm surprised to see that there are months where I only wrote one or two things. Being retired has certainly opened the floodgates, though, given the paucity of responses, I have to assume it hasn't done much for the quality. They're automatically forwarded to a specific email box which now monotonously says 'There are no new messages on server'. I'm thinking of leasing out the space to a spider with references.

Our neighbor is outside with his power mower. I shudder at the sound. I haven't quite put away the mower -- with an electric one, there really isn't much maintenance to accomplish -- but I'm hoping not to have to use it again this year. There's a patch in back, where the blue spruce blew over, that is quite lush; its fun to look at, and to walk through barefoot, but its a real bear to mow. And the rest of the sloped ground back there isn't much fun, either. Every month, I give serious thought to hiring someone to smooth the ground out -- to flatten it and put in a retaining wall, or to just smooth out the small bumps that make running a manual mower over it feel like doing a miniature version of the Baja run, but I never do.

We do seriously love this new washer and drier. They're quiet, effective, cheap to run. Why, it almost induces me to do laundry.

I mentioned that we had the freezer installed downstairs. I'm glad that we got it. Though its not as delightful as a new television, there's a solidity about it that pleasing to me. I don't know what it says about me that I can be more pleased by having a freezer than a new television! Perhaps, if I were more of a tube watcher, I'd feel differently. But, you know, The Freezer Channel is really quite interesting.

I've been doing some reading lately on artificial intelligence and robotics. This isn't even a hobby -- I don't do any programming in it, don't buy three hundred dollar Lego Mindstorms robotic toys, any of that. Its just something that I occasionally read about, and try to understand a little more than I did before. Sometimes I think I like tormenting myself, reading things like this. I ask myself whats the point, if I don't do it for a living, don't talk with anyone else about it (literally; occasionally, I'll tell my wife about it, and she's nice enough to listen, but she doesn't get even the little bit that I do, and unlike me, she has a real job). I guess I really can't answer that. I wish that I could figure out a way to put some of this interest to some kind of practical use, but I'm afraid that my knowledge level is at the tin can and string level, whereas the people doing it are more at the photonic energy level. I do get a small intellectual pleasure from understanding it, somewhat; I guess that will have to be enough.