A few quick notes from the field....
I got Kubuntu 10.04 installed over the weekend. There are a few graphical oddities — windows sometimes not refreshing properly, etc. — which I suspect are configuration issues of some sort. Other than that, it's quite stable and usable. I've finally come around to liking Plasma, and I liked what I saw of Compiz (which I don't quite have the horsepower to run full-time, unfortunately). I tricked my desktop out and made it look like a Mac. To which the thought arises... maybe I should just get a damn Mac.
I bought The Cult of Mac over the weekend, a book which explores
the subculture which has arisen from all things Apple, and it's a fun read
despite being several years old (from the markdown table). The paperback
edition came out in 2006 — one year before the iPhone came out and became
the "must have" phone. It might be interesting to see a second edition of this
book in a post-iPhone world. (I don't think we're in a post-iPad world yet, so
there's room for a third edition too.) And from the same markdown table, two
books on Ajax — unchanged enough in the last few years to make the
half-price books about it a bargain.
On Sunday we went to visit Mom and Dad and celebrate Mother's Day. I came home with two mint plants which are now potted up. Mint grows like mad and has taken over a good chunk of the area near their back porch, so they had plenty to spare. I plan to keep it in pots. If I plant it anywhere in the ground, it will be at the west side of the house where the garden used to be before I moved it up onto the hillside. The old garden area has become too shady over the last few years and really isn't a good spot to grow veggies now. Instead it mostly grows weeds. I'd like to get that under control.
Another treasure from the parents: even more books, all from the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series. I dig those books... they are well-suited for the task, and in general, well-suited for the short attention span era we live in. Plus — easily digestible, humorous trivia is always a good thing.
I find myself turning into my parents as I get older. Particularly, I find myself using, on my children, the exact same phrases my parents used on me. I suspect that's pretty common, and I submit that it's common enough that it should have its own word. So I give you... dadisms. (Please note this is not to be confused with dadaism.)
Here are a few examples. Far funnier ones can be found at Shit My Dad Says, but that's somebody else's dad.
- Do I have to come back there and sit between you two?
- When you have kids, that's all you have is kids. (Some sources claim "cats" was once used in place of kids.)
- If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass a'hoppin.
By the way, these were not at all funny when I was growing up... and I'm sure my children don't find them funny now. I sure as hell do!