While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6†in the air with your right hand.
Your foot will change direction. (From psacake.com.)
Housing Update
Tonight we have our potential buyers doing a home inspection on our house in Brockton. Assuming it works out well (and it should), we will probably place an offer on a spacious house in Northern Nashua, across from the Nashua municipal airport. For more details, try our Handy-Dandy MLS Gizmo, and use MLS number 119010. The MLS number on our house in Brockton is 30752457.
Coming Soon to Country [Not] Near You—Your Job
My yaar Pankaj Verma sent me a link to this article this morning, which predicts that by 2015, 348,028 U.S. computer jobs will move “offshore.†This is a rather frightening prospect for those of us who have been burned by the dot-bomb crises of the past few years, although this report includes the comforting statistic that approximately 1,761,000 new jobs will open up in these areas by 2010.
While I’m on it, I still have two former co-workers who are looking for work after the big corporate “treatment†a year ago by [fomer employer’s name deleted]. These are both hard-working, highly-skilled, dedicated people, who, frankly, don’t deserve to have been unemployed as long as they have. Grrrrrrrrr.
The Dumbing Down of America—It’s Microsoft’s Fault
When did supercede become a nonstandard word? I use Microsoft Word’s grammar checking, set to very strict use (I’m something of a purist), and it flagged supercede as being nonstandard. Have people really become that uneducated? The answer—obvious as it is—frightens me.
The Return of the King Trailer
This is due to be posted on the Official Lord of the Rings site sometime today, but I managed to snag this one of many mirrors that is up. The Return of the King trailer (to download it, right-click on the link and choose Save Target As …).
A Reasonable Offer on Our House
Subject to change without notice: After a week of haggling, some interested buyers have made what is a reasonable offer on our house. This was unexpected, as the original offer was very low.
Now, of course, we face the home inspection, and, even more important, we need to find suitable housing in Nashua or Hudson. Keep praying.
Traffic
[doug]It took me 2 hours and 15 minutes to get to work today. I didn't get past second gear until I had already passed Needham. Yesterday it was an hour and 45 minutes. Last week as another 1:45 trip. I guess I should be glad the ride home is only taking 1:15 to 1:30, typically, but even there the traffic has been unusually heavy. :: sigh :: It will be nice to live closer to work.
Oh, That Lord!
This Is a bit dated, but yesterday’s post about David brought this to mind:
[david]From July 2002: All our children are big fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's works, but we hadn't realized what a large impact the recent DVD release of The Fellowship of the Ring had on our youngest son David, who is 3½ years old.
While supervising a group of children, one of our fellow church members asked him, “Are you thankful for the Lord?†He stopped what he was doing, looked up in careful contemplation, and then asked her, “The Lord of the Rings?â€
Yikes! I need to post something.
[david]We have a policy of 1 hour of computer or video game time per day on weekdays for the kids (they get 2 hours on weekends), but they can earn extra time, which they sometimes do, by working on educational software or activities, such as typing for Isaac, writing for David, and Web design for John). One of David’s time-earning activities is to run the Virtual Fish Tank, an online version of the full-size exhibit (once part of the Computer Museum) at the Museum of Science in Boston. Last night he was watching me work (well, play Star Trek Voyager Elite Force II) on one machine, and asked me to call up the Virtual Fish Tank for him. He then said, “I can earn game time just by leaving this running—I don’t actually have to play it, right?†For a 4-year-old, he’s getting much too good at trying to “work the angles.â€
Old House / New House (We Pray)
Today we placed an offer on a house in Hudson, New Hampshire, that we really fell in love with. This would place me only 18 miles from work, instead of 50—a big difference, especially considering the need for more family time.
We will know tomorrow (probably) if our offer is accepted, and it is, of course, contingent on our selling the house in Brockton. Today we had five showings, and have had one or two a day for the past three weeks. We reduced our price a little bit, as our realtor recommended, and are really praying that this “whole package†works out.
In other family events, the kids are getting ready to go back to school (here for a month or two), and Naomi is due in 8 1/2 weeks! Wow.