Visit the Owl’s Head Transporation Museum

The antique autos here are works of art all on their own, but with some I couldn’t resist taking a little artistic license. The day we visited there was also an antique motorcycle rally. I’ve been meaning to visit here for years and glad that we finally did:

Visit an alpaca farm

Take a ride on the Maine Eastern.

Train travel is a very relaxing way to travel, and the trip from Brunswick to Rockland and back makes for a lovely day trip here in Maine.

Spend a relaxing day at a lake.

This photo is the calm before the storm – sunset on Beech Hill Pond the night before Hurricane Irene.

Manual - with carbon paper and lots of whiteout.

Woohoo - electric!

Note the one line window for text preview/correction. When you hit return it sounded like machine gun fire as the line typed out at "super" speed.

CRT connected to a central computer somewhere "out there".

Word Processing! Beam me up Scotty!

And the personal Mac journey begins.

Then they start to get pretty.

Can it get any better?

It can get better!

Now I'm working on the amazing MacAir

The transition from work to play time is complete with my ipad2. Not as practical as the MacAir but oh the hours spent on non-productive games

What has your technical journey been like?

While I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, I found it interesting and did appreciate that it was a good catalyst for conversation after the movie. I found myself trying to figure out whether the couple in the movie had really married long ago, or just met.

At the beginning I was convinced they had just met, at the end of the movie I was mostly convinced they had been married long ago. It was a day or two later when I was describing the movie to my sister that it struck me how much I had reacted exactly as the director wished, thinking the copy of a marriage might in fact be an original, or real couple seeing each other again – I could not tell the copy from the original.

I’m not a big fan of 3D movies, it seems to me that the energy and resources have all been focused on the special effects rather than story and character development. So what I’m asking here is – what makes a real 3D movie – a special effect needing glasses, or is it when the movie reaches out to you, grabbing you so that two days later you’re still discussing the thoughts and ideas it evokes?

Over the past couple years, my siblings and I have made more progress in tracing our Irish roots than in previous decades. We knew our paternal side could be traced back to Ireland, but with that generation gone by the time we started looking, we had only a few family stories to go on.

This is one of the areas where Baby Boomers are getting an incredible boost from the internet. With every passing year more paper records are transferred to electronic availability. In our case, it still took some physical visits to City Hall or other offices with public records (thanks Greg!), but we are still finding new information on the web this year that we could not find just a year or two ago.

Recently my sister managed to contact a cousin when she found his updated information on the web. Now, you must remember that at the time baby boomers were young children, the easy technology of today’s digital cameras and video did not exist yet. Many families did not have the means to take photos as a camera and film were luxuries. And so it was that my cousin sent Pat a scan of a photo in his family’s album. My first surprise was that my father (James Arnold Maher) was known as Arnold to several members of his family. I had always heard he was called Jim. My next realization was that this photo, titled Uncle Arnold and Family by my cousin, and blurry though it is, is the first and only time I’ve ever seen a photo of my entire family in one shot. (My dad died when I was 6, so much of what I know is through stories) That’s me sitting on my dad’s knee.

I want to urge all my fellow babyboomers out there to start searching now for those ancestor photos and stories. Not only is more information available on the web than every before, but also you can tap into the family stories and photos before they are lost forever.

I was reminded of this over the past couple weeks as I changed my internet service and phone provider. My existing DSL service (OTT-formerly MidMaine) was pushing out a measly .5 – .8mbps (yes, that’s point eight) and the time had finally come to just change to another provider. I chose GWI because we use them at work and service seems fine. The combined DSL and Phone package requires Fairpoint to be a contributor as well – something to do with the combined wiring at the end of our condo building.

I was really excited, thinking about that awesome speed I was going to see when the switch happened. GWI guy showed up on time, was courteous, and explained to me that Fairpoint had not been out and done their part of the job – possible communication breakdown. My switchover was rescheduled for a week later.

Next GWI guy showed up on time, was courteous and helpful, and explained that the Fairpoint people had been there but still hadn’t done what they needed to do for GWI to complete the work. He called his office to touch base and the person on other end told him I have Time Warner (I don’t). I pointed out to them that Time Warner does not even come to Brunswick. Again, no switch completed, but he checked wires, set up my modem and generally did what he could in the moment.

The next night I came home from work to find I had no phone dial tone and no internet connection. Since the order for the switch had been submitted almost two weeks ago, my current provider assumed ok to cut off my service. I tried not to break into a cold sweat and panic from not only tech withdrawal but feeling cut off from the world. Without my beloved internet I was bereft.

When I got in touch with them this morning they apologized and explained that a vendor meet appointment was set for this afternoon and I would finally be reconnected to the Interwebs. Fairpoint even came a little early and got my phone back online.

Each person was courteous and helpful, but by the time each had done their job, the process as viewed from my side had been seriously lacking in quality and satisfaction.

The cascade:

1. Communication between vendors took too many attempts. (Multiple trips expended resources both in productive hours and in gas for vehicles.)
2. No one thought to stop the end service order to my existing company when problems were encountered. (Using up more productive hours in phone calls and follow up.)
3. For the most part they did not take a view higher than the scope of their current job to visualize what was happening upstream or downstream – not looking at the big picture and the details at the same time resulted in loss of service (and extra expenses for them) during the handoffs.
4. I had to use a vacation day in order to be home to make sure all was finally completed, which in turn affected my productivity at my workplace (and the possibility of my spending money on a “real” vacation day if I hadn’t had to use it for this instead).

We are all worried about this economy.

When it comes to the environment, we often hear that even little things like turning off a light or recycling the newspaper can make a big difference if we all do them.

I have to wonder as I set up my own small side business, how much of a difference can we all make to the economy if we pay attention not just to doing our own jobs well, but also keep the broader perspective in mind, including where things might be improved in our work handoffs before and after our step in process. Each small improvement we make in our productivity can trickle down to the next part of the process – more efficiency, less waste = better economy.

I made the recipe below and there was plenty for the 16 or so people attending.  If I were making is just for dinner I’d probably cut it down by at least half.

——————————————————-

N’awlins Bread Pudding

8 cups stale bread (1 medium loaf)
-  I didn’t remember to let it go stale so took fresh bread and toasted it

1 cup peanut butter chips

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup butterscotch chips

1 cup chopped nuts

1 cup shredded coconut

½ cup dried cherries

1 ¼  cups sugar

2 cups skim milk

3/4 cups heavy cream

1 ¼ cups light cream

3 eggs

8 tablespoons melted light  butter

2 teaspoon pumpkin spice

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

—–

WHISKEY SAUCE (makes 1 cup sauce)

1/2 cup light butter

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup bourbon (any)

Directions

Combine all ingredients in large bowl.
Pour into a buttered 9×13 inch baking dish  or two 8″ square pans.
Place on middle rack in non-preheated oven.
Bake at 350°F for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until the top is golden-brown.

When the bread pudding is done baking, prepare the WHISKEY SAUCE.
Heat butter and sugar over medium heat until all the butter is absorbed.
Remove from heat and blend in egg yolk.
Pour in bourbon gradually to taste, stirring constantly.
Sauce will thicken as it cools.
Serve warm over bread pudding.

***BOURBON NOTES: Using Jack Daniels will result in a stronger taste, whereas Southern Comfort will give you a sweeter taste.  (I used the cheapest I could find it was still very good.)

The original recipe can be had at Recipe Zaar.

Yesterday I had brunch (all day) with friends to plan our next murder mystery dinner party.  The theme is Mardi Gras so of course we had to try on some masks to get in the mood!  Much laughter, creative fun and silliness later we had come up with enough characters to stretch a boxed party planner game meant for 8 to instead cover up to 16 people.  During the day it struck me many many times how important it is to be silly and have fun and laughter, particularly in these dark days of winter.  So when setting your priority list of things to do, consider putting Silliness high on the list.  Need some inspiration?  Here are some pics and a fantastic quiche recipe to help you drop that frown line between your eyes!

Seafood Quiche

Saute 2 tbl onions in 4 tbl butter for 1 or 2 mins

add 1 cup chopped cooked shellfish (we had Maine shrimp – yum)

Cook 2 mins w/salt and pepper

Add 2 tbl dry vermouth

Raise heat and cook a minute.  Cool slightly.  Beat 3 eggs with 1 cup whipping cream, 1/2 teas salt, pepper.

Add dash of Ketchup and 3 drops tobasco sauce.

Gradually blend in fish mixture  and add steamed asparagus cut up to bite size pieces.  Put all in 10″ uncooked pie shell.  Top with 1/4 cup (or more) of grated cheddar or swiss (or both)

Bake at 375 until done.  See more options from the cook in comment below.

I’m not going New Age on you.  Really, I’m not.  But not long ago I came across a set of Runes that I bought many years ago.  Am I superstitions?  Do I believe in magical properties of fortune telling stones?  No – or at least not TOO much.  But I am a strong believer in the power of Intuition.  Runes are considered by some to be an ancient alphabet, and some consider them to be a gate to reading the future.

Like many mystic questions, I think there may be an interpretation for both.  Consider the typical fortune teller.  Unless truly gifted with a possibly real talent, the majority are simply very very good at reading body language and making some interpretive guesses from acute observation.  If indeed history repeats itself, then you have a halfway decent chance of “telling the future”.

With Runes you are bringing your own interpretation to the speculative definitions of various runic combinations, cast in different patterns.   Runes fell out of popular use when they were taken up by German Scholars associated with the Nazi movement.  In the 1980’s they came back into favor with New Age popularity.

According to the dictionary, intuition is:

direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process

Actually I found several places that had very vague definitions – after all, it basically boils down to suddenly knowing something that you supposedly did not already know, without any reason to know it.

I’ll offer a different theory here.  Intuition may just be your synapses connections between the neurons in your brain pulling in extra information like a wifi google search – and returning something you never expected.  We take in a great deal of information in our lifetime.  Do we really forget, or does it get stored somewhere like a remote brain server waiting to serve up that snippet of forgotten code?

Back to the Runes.  The approach I like is once you look up the interpretation, don’t really put any weight behind that interpretation or “prediction”.  Pay attention instead to your reaction.  That reaction may be your intuition trying to tell you things from a new and more accurate perception.  Basically like standing in front of lateral blinds in an office that are slightly closed. From one angle you can’t see anything but the blinds, but walk a few feet and turn in the other direction, and suddenly the blinds practically disappear and you can see the view outside.

Nurture your intuition – it might just have a magic all it’s own.