Archive for October, 2006

Grocery Shopping Revisited

Several years ago, I designed a spreadsheet for grocery shopping in Microsoft Excel. The idea was that we would no longer forget certain things when we go shopping. With (now) six children, the human brain can only hold so much information. We’ve tried shopping in larger amounts and cooking in advance (known as freezer cooking), but for day-to-day life, when things get kind of hectic and we lose our ability to plan, we had to have a more consistent approach to fall back on.

Tire Blowout - Almost

Almost had a tire blow on me yesterday. The van had been pulling further and further to the right the prior day. Yesterday morning, as I got off the interstate, it was thumping rather loud and pulling hard - even at low speeds. I pulled over in an empty parking lot to check it out. Both tires looked fine and I was just thinking maybe it was totally out of alignment somehow. Just as I got ready to get back in the van, I saw this shadow coming from the inside passenger front tire. I thought some child’s toy ball had rolled up against my tire - which was really weird since the parking lot was empty and I was almost sure there was nothing around when I parked.

The Downtown Library

My home from my youngest days has been Melbourne, Florida. One of the earliest memories I have is the downtown library, its tall stacks of books, the groaning of the shelves under the weight of its contents, the small children’s section, the wooden card catalog with its smooth cornered drawers and cards typed with the occasional smudged printing from the librarian’s Selectric. Story day was the best, and the two man-made lakes outside were the wonder of every child. We brought our last crumbled piece of bread with the plastic wrapper that held the original loaf - throwing it to the ducks and the geese as they surrounded us. We’d walk with mommy around the lake, crossing over the little wooden bridge that was between the two lakes. The sun shone every day we were at the library and a trip home with armfuls of books was our just reward for being quiet.

Fiorina typical of Career Women

A recent Wired Magazine story chronicles the adventures of Carly Fiorina, who most will recall, was the celebrated female CEO of Hewlett-Packard for six years before being asked to resign. It also examines her newly released book, Tough Choices, in which Wired Magazine says Ms. Fiorina claims that she was unfairly scrutinized as a women in business and opposed by people who feared the big changes she needed to make at HP. She labels herself a change agent and talks a bit about what it takes to be a change agent.

Rhyming Dictionary

I found a cool little pocket Songwriter’s Rhyming Dictionary you can use when you are writing songs that I was giving to a friend of mine. You probabaly wouldn’t discover on your own a few of the following rhymes I found in this book:

Excuse: Syracuse (a - ha! And you’ve always wanted to write a song about the whining that goes on in upstate New York).

Moan: Dictaphone (I think this one speaks for itself - just ask any Dictaphone employee).

Oddly, the only two words that they say rhyme with Quiet are Diet and Riot, which makes me realize that the heavy metal band of the 70’s/80’s called Quiet Riot, despite the strange name, definitely chose the better of those two words.

100 Pages on Salberg.Org

As of this post, Salberg.Org now has 100 pages on it. Seems like a milestone worth mentioning. I hadn’t even noticed it creeping up until just checking a few things on the site after posting the previous article. I’d like to say I have 100 posts, but that isn’t entirely true. There are a lot of static pages on the site such as the archives page, my general information pages like my favorite talk radio shows, my long lost friends, and so forth. I believe this is actually the 77th post.

Del.Icio.Us Finally Snagged Me

A few years ago, I heard about the rage of saving your favorites online (or “bookmarks” as Netscape and Firefox calls them). The advantage was that you would have all your bookmarks in one simple place. For those of us who use multiple computers (home, work, laptop, friends, etc), this was certainly an attraction. I couldn’t recall the number of times I would have to “re-Google” something because I was at the wrong computer. I don’t mind re-googling when it is something easy. For instance, I already know that Dreamweaver’s extension list is at adobe.com and I can just click a few times to get to it. But there is really a better site called…. something about a zone…. dreamweaverzone.com? No, that’s not it… dmzone.com?… no…. ahh, yes.. dmxzone.com. Having your bookmarks with you can really save time.

Yet Another Excuse NOT to Get Married

I was recently informed about a new website called Dodgeball that, unbelievably to me, has been purchased by Google. Now, in theory, anything that Google does is typically genius or at least smart. This, however, was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Which means, of course, that it necessarily involves cell phones. Almost every “cool” website that uses any kind of interfacing with cell phones, is typically, about as uncool and geeky as I can imagine.

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