Welcome to New York City

Well, it's been a while since I posted to this blog.

Judy and I were married in March. We celebrated with a reception at SAFECO field in August. And now we're in New York.

I had worried about the dogs. Teddy grew up in the burbs. Goober grew up on a ranch in Tenn. Both dogs have taken to NYC like natives! Goober was leery of the elevator at first. He didn't want to go into it. Then when it started to move, he got really worried. That was 3 days ago. Now he's a natural. When the door opens he rushes inside and he's still not totally at ease wen the elevator moves, but he doesn't look panicked.

We walk over to Central Park and before 9a.m. the whole park is off-leash for the dogs, so we let Teddy off immediately. She just follows us as we walk, unless she needs to go off to pee. Goober is too excited to let off the leash all the time. He has pigeons to chase, litter to sniff, people to investigate. He's learning not to bother all people - to distinguish between those who want to pet him from those who don't want to be bothered. When we run into large congregations of dogs, we do take him off leash because he stays with the group to play - run, play-fight, jump around. He loves it.

Today on the way home we walked with one of Goober's new friends - Penny, a 12 month old sheepdog puppy easily twice Goober's weight and height - and they were play fighting for a whole long block. When we got home and I asked Goober if he enjoyed the walk, he got all excited, jumped up on me and clearly wanted to go back out and play some more - RIGHT NOW. I had to disappoint him - but we'll take him back out tomorrrow.

Science Debate

There's an effort to get the presidential candidates to engage in a debate strictly on science and science policy issues. I've signed their petition and added my favorite question to their pool of questions. See their web page.

My other blog

Although I have neglected this blog, that's nothing to the neglect my other blog has suffered. I started that as a gathering place for the old Ad Hoc Singers - from SLC, UT about 20 years ago. We had a reunion, mostly to get together with Vicki before she was too weak to enjoy it.

No End in Sight

I've been neglecting the blog for a while - but Judy and I saw this movie a month ago or so - and it was wonderful! I was expecting a Michael Moore style slam of the war. The occupation does deserve to be slammed - but this movie was a balanced documentary along the lines of a Frontline report.

If you can see it, I strongly recommend it!

Robert Heinlein born 100 years ago

Robert A. Heinlein was born 7/7/07 - 1907 that is - in Butler Missouri. Amazing that someone of that vintage could see what was coming so clearly.

More DST Woes

I came home to find my older Panasonic recording a program - when it shouldn't have been.

Turns out, its clock had been set back to standard time.

I went to the setup menu and told it to do an automatic clock set - and it did - and came up with standard time.

All I can figure is that one of the PBS stations has a problem with its clock and is sending incorrect times out. This auto-set worked just fine on Sunday. The clock was right this morning, but sometime between 10:30 and 17:00, it got changed.

I tried calling the PBS stations, but it's too late to raise anyone. I'll have to call back tomorrow.

Das Leben der Anderen

We saw that movie Friday night and I was bowled over. It was fantastic.

I have a slight misgiving about one plot detail (the speed with which HGW converted), but that's nothing compared to most movies. I've ordered the book and will see if it makes that point any clearer.

It's a good thing that we'll never see a regime like that again, where the government feels it has unbridled power to root out enemies from within the citizenry - the ability to arrest and hold people without charge and without habeas corpus - the ability to use "stressful" interrogation techniques on prisoners that intelligence agents suspect are enemies of the state - the ability to spy on citizens - the ability to have citizens inform on other citizens - .... That would be a horrible country to live in.

DST change: more than 2 different results

So, this morning, I went around the house looking for how my various clocks handled the new Daylight Saving Time rules.

My XP and Vista systems handled it just fine. My Pocket PC on my iPAQ did not - still thinks I'm on standard time - but when I synced my calendar with Exchange, it shows appointments 1 hour earlier. So, the appts are at the right time, if I leave the clock on the Pocket PC alone. I'll do that and see what happens when the 1st Sunday in April comes along.

My Casio watch (setting itself by time broadcast) was correct. My Oregon Scientific wall clock, also setting itself by that broadcast, was wrong - but it rarely picks up the broadcast from inside the house. (You'd think with more space for antenna, it would receive better - but no.)

My oven clocks were all wrong, of course - because they're manual. So was my little wall clock.

The fascinating things were my video recorder clocks and my cell phone.

The cell phone didn't change times! You'd think it would be in touch with the base station. I had to turn it off and on again before it would learn the new time.

The 3 video recorders gave THREE different results, even though all three set themselves from PBS time signals.

My new Panasonic was correct when I woke up. I don't know when it made the switch, but it was between 2 and 8 a.m.

My old Panasonic was still showing standard time, so I had to goose it via the setup menu. Once I forced an auto-sync with PBS, it was correct.

My old JVC VCR was still showing standard time, so I goosed it also to sync with PBS. It did - and at 8:44 in the morning, PDT, it showed 9:44. I'm going to leave it alone, showing one hour ahead of current time, until April to see how it behaves. But, I'm puzzled. What kind of programming in the VCR's controller would lead to that result?

Great new GPS product

As advertized on Prarie Home Companion, on 10/28/2006, it's the latest in GPS devices.

The ad at this link starts at 21:48 into the show.