Charity: Water

Eliza-Jane and Scott HarrisonYesterday afternoon, EJ and I set out on the bike with a destination in Manhattan. We were headed to [[Battery Park]] in downtown Manhattan. We arrived with a purpose, our buddy Scott Harrison, of the MercyShips fame, needed help. He is running a new charity called Charity: Water. His mission is to build wells in countries that do not have clean drinking water. Very Important.
So, EJ came to lend a hand and her Dad, too.
Putting it all away in the TruckWe got there just in time to load up the truck with the display, but first EJ insisted that she would like to donate some Public Relations time to the effort. So, we set up a short little photo shoot with Scott. After the photo-op, EJ was her charming best with some of the other volunteers while I was left to do the heavy lifting, but hey at least I got a t-shirt out of the deal!
I suggest you go to Scott’s Website, Charityis.com and donate $20 to help one person drink clean water for the next fifteen years.

Found this today

Goodbye Og, Congratulations!

OK.

My new friend, Og Maciel has just accepted a job in Chapel Hill, N.C. I am quite certain that he and his family will be well received in the Tarheel state, and some of those relatives of mine down there should reach out to and offer them some good old Southern Hospitality, or at least a glass of sweet Ice Tea.

I am sad because now who will run the Ubuntu Local Community Team? I am quite certain that Luis is too busy with reading tort reports to spin that plate on a stick - and I am way too frightened to even wade into something like that, I have only been using [[Ubuntu]] [[Linux]] for a year. So, Many great wishes as you head off to new pastures Og!!

Tags: Ubuntu

Trying to get it all together

Ok, so after a recent family reunion, I ran out and got me some new software for the website. Ok, so I downloaded it from SourceForge, the Open Source project repository. I installed it and even uploaded a couple of GEDCOM files into it just to test the database connections, and it works!

So, now, I have some items ToDo in order to have it all set up and working.

Problems to solve
1. Integrate WordPress users with phpGedview users for single password operation
2. Add a Permanent PageLink (Static) to the Menubar just beneath the Header image
3. Adjust the phpGedview Theme in order that it matches the rest of the site
4. Configure Gallery2 in order that Family members can upload photographs to go with the GEDCOM
5. Get the Family to help me out with the content

If you can help me out in anyway with completing any of these tasks, it would be immensely appreciated.

Yup, we got photos

So, like I promised, there is a new album in the photo gallery. It contains pictures from Pastor Jaime’s birthday party at Connect Group.Here she is, blowing out the candles. As well as some other things, like Our Wedding Dinner thrown by Jaime and her husband Anthony. This was really something which we were supposed to have when we got back from our honeymoon in Curacao, but as all he affluent New Yorkers were summering out of the city at the time, it got postponed. So that happened last Saturday.
During our visit to St. John the Divine, Eliza-Jane used her toddler’s backstage pass to get right up next to the altar and play peek-a-boo behind the altar cloth. If you look closely, there’s a guard in the background charging in to chase her away!!
Today, EJ woke up from her nap quite grumpy so I took some drastic action and took her shopping, check out her stylish new outfit!
So, there’s some of my favorite’s.

Ubuntero Lunch

Today, Eliza-Jane and I made our way all the way up to [[Columbia University]], where we had a splendid luncheon with Luis Villa. I have been reading his comments about Ubuntu as they are syndicated on Planet Ubuntu for a few months now and he always has some interesting and noteworthy comments. Then recently, I became a aware that he had moved to New York City ( It wasn’t until he posted a photograph on his blog that it really sunk through my thick skull!!), so I reached out to him and we set up a lunch date to meet and chat.

I thought it was really nice to meet him and am quite impressed that he has decided to pursue a law degree in order to give the Open Source movement some needed assistance on the legal front - I hope I interpreted that motivation correctly.

We mostly chatted about shopping and gossiped about various happenings, nothing deeply philosophical, which would have totally ruined a perfectly clear, cool and sunny day. have I ever mentioned how much I love Autumn in New York and not just the American Standard written by Vernon Duke.

After lunch, Luis walked EJ and I over to the cathedral of St. John the Divine where we got some lovely photos, which I’ll put up tomorrow. It was a real joy meeting him and hopefully we can do it again sometime.

Tags: Ubuntu

kisses

While I was lying on the bed this afternoon, falling asleep to [[Motorhead]]; because I needed the extra rest after last night’s training session in the goal and yesterday’s weight lifting session in the gym; Eliza-Jane was reading her favorite book in bed next to me. She took a sip of milk from her cup and then after a few moments, she leaned over and gave me a real kiss. Her mouth was puckered up and she smacked it right on my chin! Then several other times she graced me with kisses before I fell asleep.

When I woke up about ten minutes later, the house was a wreck! Well, it was before I went to sleep so what was I to expect? I’m tired, sore and lethargic so it looks like Hurricane EJ made landfall about two degrees south of our coffeetable. Incidentally, why is it called a coffeetable if we never have our coffee on it, shouldn’t we instead call it our dinner table, as that’s what we use it for!

Relatively Painfree

This weekend I just absolutely had to tweak things up. I have not used OS X on my laptop except for the very very very odd moment when I am just double checking something out of sheer nervousness/frustration. So, I was getting a little peeved that I could not write to the directory with all my music, since it was owned by OS X. Plus, I was beginning to run out of space on my Linux drive and there was all that empty real estate over in Appleville. So, I completely reconfigured my partitions and installed a new version of Ubuntu, to boot!!

Edgy Eft Knot 3 is the latest release of the development branch for Ubuntu. I downloaded a CD image and burned a new disc with the KDE environment - [[Kubuntu]] if you are keeping score. Then I took the most profound step of all, I backed up my entire home directory!! Yay! No more lost data! It was really easy, just passed the command:

tar mybackupfile.tar /home

and then BANG!! Forty-five minutes later, I had a neat little 4 GB file to move to the other computer on the network. That took nearly three hours, because I sent it all over WiFi - not the smartest step but I slept while that was happening.

Then I set about configuring my Hard drive, actually, I just stuck the CD in the optical drive and, well it didn’t work right away - I tried to be fancy and was not very successful, so I had to workaround by reinstalling OS X and then tricking the computer into thinking that was going to be the final step. Finally, I got it all loaded up and installed and boy am I impressed!

This is only the third draft of the new Operating system that is due out in October, but boy is it classy! Anti-Aliasing fonts all over the place makes things very pretty, plus easy user control of screen resolution ( who knew that users wanted things easy!) which lets you set things really finely and creates a nice and crisp environment - plus the translucency and drop shadows that were experimental before have become standard so that you do not need to log out of the [[Xwindows]] system to use.

Once, I untarred my backup and finished setting up my home directory everything was very nicely done. The only caveat I have is that with this new resolution control, I have to set the fonts for various things at 12 points instead of the default 10, does this mean I am getting old?

Tags: Ubuntu

Protected: New Wedding Photos Added

Some unrelated things…

One of my new favorite holidays is coming up International Talk like a Pirate Day! Just to give it the true festive spirit I have added a new Political Link to the sidebar.