Dancing with the Ugly Dolls

This week I attended the Licensing International 2006 trade show at the Javits Center in NYC. The reason I went was to learn more about the licensing industry and how it applies to Mochi Kids!™, see what other artists are doing regarding licensing out their artwork and/or characters, figure out what next steps I need to take, and meet people who might be able to help me take those next steps.

But most importantly, I went to dance with the Ugly Dolls! I think the Ugly Dolls are hilariously cute in their ugly sort of way. It happened that their trade show booth was right next to Sonic the Hedgehog's booth. And it just so happened that I walked by Sonic the Hedgehog's booth right when the folks at Sega were celebrating Sonic's 15th anniversary. They had a little band playing music, all the Sega people were wearing blue hair in honor of Sonic, and they had a giant birthday cake that they cut up and served to all the passers-by, of which I was one. The Ugly Dolls came over from their booth to dance with Sonic and celebrate with him. So of course I had to get a picture of me dancing with them too!

I also got to play with some other fun characters, like Pikachu and Miffy! But I don't know where my Miffy picture went. When I find it, I'll post it here. There are also some other pictures of me posing with random characters and monster trucks, but my friend, Robert, took those pictures on his camera so someday hopefully he'll get around to sending them to me.

So anyway, some things I learned while I was at the trade show... Well, I already knew this one - which is that I have a whole lot of work to do to really get started. But the benefit of attending Licensing International is that I have more concrete ideas of what some of those things are.

For example, I need to beef up my portfolio of designs, including increasing the number of cetral images I have. And to go with each central image, creating background graphics and patterns, icons and border images. This is necessary to make it easier for licensees to apply my images to different types of products - some products, like t-shirts, lend themselves nicely to central images. While others, like bed linens, work better with a repeating pattern of images.

I'll also need an intellectual property attorney, and I'm pretty certain that I will want to work with an agent, to assist me with developing the brand and connecting and negotiating with potential licensees.

And I also want to add depth to the Mochi Kids! characters. Since I don't have the expertise to create animations, or the funding to hire someone who does, I'm going to start the kids off with their own little blogs. Of course the challenge I'm running into here is thinking of things the kids can post about. Unless I'm just babbling off the top of my head like I do here, I do find it a challenge to write things that require more direction. Plus the other thing they told us at one of the seminars that pertained to using blogs and other forms of digital media for marketing was if you are using a blog to promote your character, buisness, etc., "post often, post short, and always post a picture!" So I gotta try to keep the kids' babblings to a minimum, and make pictures for them to post. And my goal to start with is have the kids post at least once a week.

What I need is more time! So yes, I'll be quitting one of my jobs in the not-so-distant future... I'd say by the end of August.

Surprise Trip to Philly!

This weekend instead of the usual grind of spending my Sunday working at Crate & Barrel, I took the whole weekend off to accommodate a friend who was coming into town to stay with us. But then at the last minute we learned that my friend was not going to stay with us after all. That meant road trip!!!

We decided to go to Philly, because I'd never spent any time there before (we drove through Philly on I-95 a couple months ago when we went to Maryland, but that doesn't count), and plus it's really not that far away - only a couple hours drive. So we got up bright and early Saturday morning, had breakfast along the way at a diner near the Menlo Park Mall down by Woodbridge, New Jersey, and made it to Philly well before noon.

On our way into downtown Philly, we took this photo of the traffic light. It just worked out that City Hall happened to be right behind it.

Since it was so last minute, we didn't have much of a selection of bed and breakfasts to choose from. We ended up staying at The Inn Between, which is in the University City district of Philly. The inn is one half of a pretty amazing duplex built in 1903. The owner has only been operating it as an inn since January, so I think she has quite a ways to go in getting her business up to the standard of the other B&Bs we've stayed at before. It really just felt like staying over night at some old house. The furniture was a mish-mash of styles that looked fresh from local yard sales and flea markets. Cleanliness would not pass the quintessential mother-in-law test. And breakfast was ho-hum - nothing I wouldn't be able to fix for myself. The innkeeper was pleasant to talk to though, and she had a lot of good info about things to do in Philly to impart verbally; however, she didn't have many of the free brochures or maps available that many B&Bs offer for the convenience of their guests.

One of our main objectives for this trip was to catch the Phillies' game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. So our first order of business upon arriving in Philly was go to the stadium and pick up a pair of tickets. Who knew I would fall victim to the giant black and white ghost of former Phillies pitching great Robin Roberts. I don't think he actually meant to smack me on the head, but he really oughtta watch out during his follow-through.

After securing our tickets for the Saturday night game, we headed back into the heart of Philly in our terribly hot, un-air-conditioned car. We bit the bullet and spent $7 on flat-fee parking in a garage near Chestnut Street and 7th. We were glad to have the car parked in the shade instead of on the street where it could just bake and bake and bake some more. So that we ourselves wouldn't keep baking while exploring central Philly, we ducked into a museum where Kenji met up with the venerable Ben Franklin (and some air conditioning).

I have to say that Ben's aged pretty well for a 300 year old guy, don't you think?

Next we tried to visit Independence Hall, but not unexpectedly, all tickets for entry were already sold out for the day. But that didn't stop us from wandering around and peeking into free places like the Quaker Meeting House and the Independence Hall/Liberety Bell Visitors Center, where Kenji was able to get his face on the $10 bill!

We were too cheap to go or do anything that might cost more than $20 apiece, but before we knew it we were hungry. Of course you know what that means...

...Philly Chesesteaks!

Yes, we made the trek all the way from central Philly down the Federal and 9th where the famous Pat's and Geno's cheesesteak sandwich rivalry happens all day, every day (and night).


This of course is Geno's, the flamboyant cheesesteak place. It was for that reason we decided to just take a picture of Geno's, and actualy eat at Pat's, a more simple and down-to-earth cheesesteak place, instead. Pat's doesn't use any bright colors or Hummers to attract it's customers. However their ordering process is a bit like the Sienfeld Soup Nazi. Very stressful.

After lunch, we wandered back to our car and made our way over to the Inn Between to get ourselves checked in and take a nap before going to the game. I forgot to bring my camera to the game, so sorry no pictures of Philly's version of the green monster for you.

Sunday morning we followed the advice of our hostess, and made a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On Sundays it's pay-what-you-want-to-pay day. So we paid a little bit, but not anywhere near what the normal entrance fee is. When Mochi Kids!™ takes off someday we'll go back and overpay
instead.

The museum of course is huge and even though we spent four hours there, we still didn't see everything. I can never remember the names of artists or works that I see when I go to museums, so suffice it to say there's a lot of cool stuff there. Besides, I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone would I?

Naturally we had some photo fun outside the museum, with me trying to bring some shady releif to this statue:

And I took this picture of Kenji because he likes the color blue, and the top of the buiding behind him has blue behind all the figures, but you can't really tell from the photo:

And wherever there is a giant spider, naturally I want to be there:

After we finished with the museum, it was time for another cheesesteak. This time we drove down the south Philly to check out a place called Tony Luke's, recommended to us by my friend, Steven, who lived in Philly for a few years some time ago. I thought the bread was better than the bread at Pat's, but the meat was a whole lot more greasy. Sorry to say, but my favorite cheesesteak ever so far I got in Hilo, Hawaii of all places. I don't know why that cheesesteak tasted so darn good that time... maybe I was just super-hungry? I don't know. I would tell you what the the name of the place is but unfortunately I can't remember. I think it's in the little strip mall that is kinda-sorta near the mall in Hilo that is on the road that you take to go visit the volcanos.

Oh well, anyway I guess I'll conclude this post by saying that although the cheesesteaks didn't live up to my very elevated expectations, I though Philly was a wonderful city. It was so easy to get around and figure out how to go places that I feel like I sort of know the city already. I also enjoyed that they have a lot of buildings with crazy murals painted on the sides... two of which we managed to snap photos of here:

There was another really cool mural of some of Philly's famous musicians/singers that should be here as well. After all, it was on the wall of the building facing me while I was eating my Pat's cheesesteak. I must have been so hungry I forgot to take a picture. Oh well.

Busy-Busy

I haven't had much time lately to update my blog. Too busy working six days a week at two jobs, and then also trying to finish up Mochi Kids™ in time for the Licensing International trade show that is coming up in a couple of weeks. Anyway, just thought I'd mention that before heading off to sleep. Aloha!

Job Perks

I just started a new part-time job. It's with a company called The Run-A-Ton Group, Inc. Among the several brands they have, Wholly Wholesome is the one I do the most work on as their Marketing Assistant. Tonight I got to bring home one of their bake at home cherry pies. I baked it, and it's really yummy. :) Sometimes we also have to bake cookies for donating to various charity and community events. The rule is if you bake cookies for an event, you have to bake some extra for the staff. I think that's a pretty cool job perk.

At Crate and Barrel, of course there is the employee discount on their merchandise. Also, if I make a single sale of $1K or more, I get to pick out one item valued up to $10 to take home. This perk is a perk offered by our particular store, rather than a corporate-wide perk.

When I worked for HTDC, I think my favorite perk was getting to ride in a black hawk helicopter that one time. That was way cool. Then I also got to meet ambassadors and other dignitaries from small southeast Asian nations. The vacation days weren't bad either. Plus working in Manoa was nice. But most of all the people were super cool.

Olives Olives

I forgot to blog about the olives I bought on our last two trips to Wegman's. A few weeks ago, I picked up some Maddalena olives, and last week French Picholine.

The two varieties are very different from one another. Maddalena olives are large and dark purple, and the meat almost falls off the stone, which makes it easy to eat. The flavor is ok but not as fun as the other olives I've tried so far.

Now that I know that Spammy likes olives, I gave a little piece of the Maddalenas to him. He sniffed it a whole bunch, licked it once or twice, and then tried to bury it with his paw. I think the sweeping paw motion is the kitty cat version of two thumbs down.

Picholine olives are small and green. Their meat doesn't fall off the stone, but it's by no means difficult to eat. Both Spammy and I agree that Picholine olives are the yummiest we've tried so far. No sweeping paw for Picholine. Perhaps the kitty cat version of two thumbs up is when Spammy tries to climb up my leg to get an olive from me. :)

From the Martyzone: Who's on First Zone

I haven't even read the rest of the newsletter yet, but I got a kick out of this:

After having dug to a depth of 1,000 meters last year, Korean scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1,500 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors had a telephone network all those centuries ago.

Not to be outdone. Chinese scientists dug to a depth of 2,000 meters and shortly after headlines in Chinese newspapers read: "Chinese archeologists have found traces of 3,000-year-old fiber-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the Koreans."

One week later, Portuguese newspapers reported the following: "After digging as deep as 3,000 meters in a Lisbon marketplace, scientists had found absolutely nothing. They therefore concluded, that 4,500 years ago, the Portuguese were already using wireless technology."

Coffee Table Anniversary

Today is our Coffee Table Anniversary. I'm not sure what other couples call their 2nd anniversary, but ours is Coffee Table. That's because we finally bought ourselves a coffee table - the one we've been eyeing at Crate and Barrel from before I started working there. Indeed, it is one of the reasons I decided to work there.

Oh, and did I mention that I somehow won part time employee of the quarter this quarter? I'm thinking it must be because they give that award out to employees in alphabetical order by first name. The last part time employee to win it was Manahz (I think that's how she spells her name). Either that or it's because I proudly wear the "Marsha Marsha Marsha" name tag they made for me. ;)

Right so getting back to our anniversary... Kenji took us out for nice dinner at Chart House, right on the Hudson river across from Manhattan. As you can see, we had a very nice view of the city.

Dinner was very nice. The only thing detracting from the experience was the couple that was seated right next to us - the woman suffers from a terrible condition - diarrhea of the mouth! But the food was really yummy. For starters, we shared the seared ahi; Kenji had the fillet mignon for his main course and I had coconut crunchy shrimp; and for dessert we shared hot lava chocolate cake, covered with vanilla ice cream and bits of Heath Bar candy. Yum!

Oh yeah, so anyway I just thought I'd add that photo of us from two years ago today.

Gone to a Go-Go

I managed to get some free tickets for Kenji and I to go see the Go-Go's perform at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ. We just got home - it was a lot of fun! Well, the Go-Go's performing was fun - of course they played all kinds of songs that I haven't heard in twenty years. I'd listen to them again right now, except all those songs are on vinyl, hiding in the top of my old closet in Massachusetts. Yep, so even if they wern't in Massachusetts, I still wouldn't be able to listen to them. And no I'm not about to go download them all. Why not? Because I'm lazy. And cheap.

The part of the concert that was not fun was...

The opening act! Some loud whiny acoustic guitar strumming chick named April something or other. She was so depressing to listen to. She made me just want to plug my ears. I would gladly have kept listening to recorded 80s music instead of her, thank you very much.

But the Go-Go's rock! You'd never know they are middle aged, except they do look a little like really cool moms rockin' out on stage.

Harriman Hike

Ok so it took a while for me to post about it, but a couple Saturdays ago, Kenji and I went hiking with some of the same folks I've gone hiking with before, and also some new people. This time we went to Harriman State Park, which is just across the border in New York.

Our friend and hike leader, Jason, says that Harriman has many different trails - the one he chose for us that day was in the Seven Hills Area of the park. I didn't count how many hills we went up and down, but it was hilly. And we were all complaining about it by the time we were halfway through the hike. ;) I'm not sure we ever really officially got onto the seven hills trail, as we never followed the path indicated by the arrow painted on the rock in this photo of Kenji.

As proof that we did manage to climb at least one hill along our way, here's a picture I took of the distant and hazy NYC skyline:

Here's the whole group of us, after we finished lunch.

We met some cool new people on this hike. In particular was Nancy, who when she was twenty-six, decided to fly off to Ghana just for the heck of it and see what she could do to help out over there. She said when she got off the plane, one of the first things she did was go to a bar and talk to some of the people who happened to be there. They ended up showing her around some. Since then, she's gone back every summer. She even started a rural school, which she helps to fund through a non-profit organization she founded, Global Youth Empowerment.

Mission Impossible, Day I Dunno

I could go back and figure out how many days it's been since I started my kitty-cat potty-training project, but I'm too lazy.

Today I learned I must have at least six people who have read at least parts of my blog, because I got a message from peace chik'n (peace chik'n actually posted a comment on my blog, which automatically emails me a copy of the comment) saying that s/he'd like an update on how Spammy is doing with the CitiKitty.

Well, he's doing about the same as he has been, which is to say that he's pretty good with doing #1 on the potty but not #2. A couple of weeks ago I witnessed him actually doing #2 on the potty, so I know there is hope. However, I think I may have stymied the process a bit because I had to change the brand of litter we were using. Well, to tell the truth, I didn't have to change it... but the store I usually go to for it was all out of flushable litter altogether, and the other store I tried didn't have our kind, but at least they had some.

So anyway, here's an obvious tip to you CitiKitty users out there - don't change kitty's litter while you are in potty training process. Spammy still uses it, but I can tell he's not as comfortable with it. Musubi, of course, is not phased by it in the least. I'm still considering whether to go back to the old brand, or still give the new brand a chance for Spammy to get used to. I'm also considering abandoning the whole potty training process, but dammit, I'm determined! Especially since I know Musubi would be totally trained by now if we weren't waiting for Spammy!

From the Martyzone: Self-medicating sheep

My favorite from this week's newsletter from Marty Plotnick:

Self-medicating sheep shake off the 'stupid' label

Maybe in another few centuries sheep will be starting their own pharma companies. ;)

Laundromat

Our king-size down comforter needed a cleaning, so this morning I took it over to Laundryland... not the closest laundromat to our house, but much better than any of the others I've either seen or used already.

The one laundromat we used a few months ago the last time we washed the comforter was very noisy and uncomfortable, and the change machine short-changed us by 50 cents! When I complained to the staff, all they did was show me that the change machine worked fine for them. Anyway they can take their junk customer service and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Laundryland is much nicer. First of all, they have ample parking right out front. And they at least make an attempt to make going to the laundromat a pleasant experience. Nothing frilly like a cafe or anything like that. But on the walls they have painted murals - on one side is the African bush with lions, zebra, elephants, giraffe, impala and cheetahs. On the other wall is an underwater scape with a SCUBA diver swimming amongst bright-colored tropical fish, whales, dolphins, shark, turtles, jelly fish and a lively coral reef. Artificial potted plants hang from the ceiling alongside cardboard decorations leftover from Christmas. There is also a multitude of large televisions suspended from the ceiling to entertain patrons.

Sitting here almost captive (I suppose I could go do something somewhere else, but it's not the best neighborhood to go wandering around in, and I don't feel like driving anywhere), reminds me of the first time I ever was called up for jury duty, when I was held captive in a room for several hours with a television on that I really didn't feel like watching. The shows that are on at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning are so terrible. Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, Judge so-and-so... they always show just about what is the worst and certainly most idiotic side of human beings. I don't say worst, because I suppose the talk show guests could be killing or maiming each other instead of just screaming at and verbally abusing each other.

Yet, I have a hard time not looking. It's like a car accident on the highway... you almost have to look. These kind of shows are so gawd-awful yet they persist. I mean, that time I had jury duty and had to watch (or at a minimum hear) these shows was probably ten to twelve years ago, yet the same shows are still on!

It must be because the networks either have no other content they can use fill up the late morning hours with, and the people who watch these shows do so because seeing such idiots on TV makes them feel better for a while. I mean, who couldn't feel like they have some redeeming qualities when comparing him or herself to a grandmother who pimps our her granddaughter and then goes on Jerry Springer?

Weekend in Maryland - More Pictures

These are pictures that didn't make it into the other two posts about our weekend in Maryland. This was one of the first things we saw when we arrived in Chesapeake City - the Chesapeake City Bridge:

In an earlier post, I included a photo of the exterior of the Inn at the Canal, where we stayed. Here's a photo of the dining room, where we ate two very delicious breakfasts:

And here's the kitchen:

For dinner on Friday, we checked out the Bohemia Cafe (it's located on Bohemia Avenue). Nothing fancy, just had sandwiches. We also folded a couple of paper cranes out of their paper napkin rings:

Right next to the canal was this cute little birdhouse and garden. On the opposite side of the canal is the north side of Chesapeake City, which is the more residential and less touristy side of town.

We also found this little mini lighthouse - so I took a picture of that for my mommy too. :)

This little gazebo-thingy is on the grounds of another inn that was a couple doors down from us. Earlier in the evening, somebody got married there. By the time we took this picture, everyone was already at a neighboring restaurant partying it up.

And this was Friday's sunset behind the bridge, as seen from the waterfront of the Chesapeake Delaware Canal:

We really lucked out this weekend - the Mariners won, and we had three beautiful days weather-wise.

To top things off, we had a nice lunch on our way home in a little New Jersey town called Moorsetown. Moorsetown is just outside of Philly, not far from the New Jersey Turnpike. The reason I chose there to stop this morning was I remembered that last year, Moorsetown won national acclaim as being the best town to live in in the United States. Indeed it is a very nice little town, with a tree-lined main street that sports nice shops and cafes. There seems to be a healthy art scene there, and we noticed that the Moorestown high school has acheived some national blue ribbon award for excellence. Plus, like Chesapeake City, Moorsetown also has a pretty birdhouse just hanging out on the side of the road. :)

Weekend in Maryland - Baseball!

Yep, so as I mentioned in my last post, the main objective of our trip to Maryland this weekend was to see the Mariners beat the Orioles. But the baseball part of our trip started long before we got to Maryland. Along our way to Maryland, we took a side trip through Pennsylvania, and drove through Philly on I-95. We didn't really feel like stopping, but Kenji managed to get this shot of Phillies Stadium (do they even call it that? I mean, shouldn't it be named for some corporation or something?). If you click on the photo, you can see the full-size image:

But that was Friday. The game we went to wasn't until Saturday afternoon, and it was in Baltimore. We left Chesapeake City probably around 10:00am, so we had plenty of time to kill along the way. We stopped in Havre de Grace, which is where Cal Ripken is from. My mommy likes lighthouses, so we took this picture for her benefit:

Originally we thought we would stay in Havre de Grace, but then the bed and breakfasts that we call there were already booked up. Serves us right for making plans at the last minute. But it worked out, as I think I liked Chesapeake City even better.

So anyway, back to baseball. We don't really know our way around Baltimore, and the map we had of Maryland was the "Scenic Byways of Maryland" map. What that means is all the roads we didn't need to know were on the map, and all the roads we did need weren't. In fact, the space where Baltimore should have been was covered by a big white square.

Fortunately, we managed to guess our way to Camden Yards pretty well, but parking was another story. To make a long story short, after missing the Camden Yards entrance on our first attemp to park, and then driving out of the stadium grounds by mistake in our second attempt, we decided to make use of off-site stadium parking. Which means we parked way on the other side of the Ravens' football stadium. You can see the football stadium on the left in the distance in this picture, taken from the top of the upper deck seats behind home plate in Camden Yards:

Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a nice stadium. The end of Eutaw Street is pretty much part of the park, running alongside the stadium behind the outfield. Along Eutaw Street you can see little baseball-shaped plaques like these that indicate where home runs have been hit and by whom.
Saturday was also the day that they were giving away little cows to the first 10,000 fans to enter the park. We started off with just two cows, but then Kenji found another that was abandoned by someone else.

By the end of the game, we came across two more deserted cows. One we gave to our friends who showed up for the game in the second inning, and the other we kept so that we could make a barbershop cow quartet.

Of course, I had to have my picture taken with the biggest cow of them all!

Of course one of the cows wanted to have his picture taken with the ball field in the background.

And a closeup of the cool scoreboard:

Of course I had to take a picture of the field with players on it...

And our new favorite catcher at bat - Kenji Johjima. We missed him the last time when we went to the Mariners/Red Sox game because he didn't play.

Anyway, we did accomplish what we set out to do, though it looked really grim for the first four innings. Before we knew it, the Mariners were down 4-0. But by the sixth inning it was a whole different ball game. The Orioles started to make a comeback, but the Mariners managed to stay on top and in the end they won 8-6.

Weekend in Maryland - Friday Afternoon

This weekend we are spending time in Maryland. Our objective is to see the Seattle Mariners beat the Baltimore Orioles. We are staying at a lovely bed and breakfast in Chesapeake City, Maryland, called Inn at the Canal.

Kenji has been getting up at 4:30am for work all week long, and last night he didn't get home from work until almost midnight. Therefore, upon our arrival at the inn, he's curled up and gone to get some shut-eye. I decided to take a stroll around Chesapeake City to check things out.

Once again, it is a glorious day, still the perfect temperature of warm. Chesapeake City is a quaint little tourist town, just across the state line from Delaware. It seems to be the perfect weekend to be here. Shops that were in hibernation during the winter months have just reopened, and there is only a tiny trickle of tourists.

First I wandered around the shops for a bit. I love how all the beautiful old buildings are packed together so closely, with their front porches right up alongside the sidewalk, giving Chesapeake City a very intimate feel. Someday I'd like a house like this one with a nice front porch to sit on and say hi to my neighbors as they walk by. So far, all the shopkeepers I've encountered today are genuinely warm and friendly - they are not pushy salespeople, and nor do they ignore you when you walk into their shops.

I also like how many of the houses here are painted in funky colors. I really liked this blue houses' pink windows with yellow trim:

And yes, the window is an image I doctored up a bit before adding to this post. I didn't like how the windows' reflections distracted from the colors of the paint, so I got rid of them.

Next I checked out the canal area of Chesapeake City. I was pleased to find a swing set in a little park that was just the right size for me. Since I was on my own, I took a picture of my swinging feet and my shadow, to prove that I indeed played on the swings today. Um, I added the motion-blur into the photo with Photoshop later on. ;)

Leaning back in the swing, looking straight up to the sky, I saw three hawks circling around. I think they must have been planning their dinner. ;)

It also pleased me to see that Chesapeake City has a little public horseshoe game area. Not that I play horseshoes, but I might if I lived here.

So now I'm making use of the back porch at our inn. I found this birdhouse the innkeepers have used to decorate the wicker coffee table. It tickles me to see that the bird must go inside the cat's belly to make use of this birdhouse. =)

Stop and Smell the Roses

Or in this case, the lilacs.

Kenji called at about six and said he would be home late, so I decided to go have a nice long walk before supper, and before it got dark. It was the perfect temperature of warm with a little bit of a breeze. And it sure was smelly outside, with all kinds of blossoms and fresh grass clippings!

My favorite of all the smells of course are the lilacs, so every time I encountered a lilac bush along the sidewalk, I stopped and took a nice, deep whiff. This of course brought me back to small kid time when we used to like to pick the lilac blossoms and bring them inside the house for Mommy.

Apparently taking a nice deep breath of lilac scent also triggers memories of bugs flying up my nose. Each time I stopped to smell the lilacs this evening, I fully expected to have a little black fly, hidden among the little flowers, get sucked right into my nostril. Fortunately none did.

And now for something completely different.

Just before I started this post, I noticed that so far I'd made a total of 99 posts to this blog. That means this is post #100! Woo-hoo!

Cool Tools

I'm a member of Burt Lum's Bytemarks Yahoo group/mailing list. Lately there have been messages flying around about Ruby on Rails, an "open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness" (and so on). I say it has to be good, if they use copy like this!

Anyway, one of the list members sent us a link for 37signals.com, which has a suite of productivity applications written in Ruby. I started playing around with Writeboard and Ta-da List this morning.

Writeboard is a collaborative writing tool you can use to compose documents as you would in applications such as Micro$oft Word, except it's free! And it saves all previous versions of your document for you! And you can send anyone a link to your Writeboard project and have them make edits or comments, and you don't have to get confused about which version is the latest version or combining one person's edits into another person's edits... and... it's free! This tool would have been oh so helpful that year when I got to be in charge of collecting everyone's revisions for my former employer's annual report - ha ha ha.

Anyway, so there's Writeboard, and then the other thing I started to play with too is Ta-da List. Basically it's a tool you use to make and store to-do lists that you can keep all to yourself, or share them with other people. Oh yeah, and this one is free too.

So I'm using Writeboard now to create and store the copy I plan to use on MochiKids.com (coming soon) (how soon, I'm not sure, but for now just enjoy the little people jumping around and winking and blinking at you), and Ta-da List to create lists to keep all my Writeboard links organized and easily accessible to me.

Little Hike with Daddy :)

After the baseball game on Saturday, Kenji and I drove out to stay with my parents in central Massachusetts. On Easter, my dad and I took a nice walk along one of the old defunct rail road beds that are nearby. Here's some of what we saw...

The first two pictures are of a little dam that gave out after all the rains they had last fall. It didn't seem to me that the dam break had that big of an effect on things though, since the beavers took care of building their own dam just a little upstream of this one.


I don't think this is the beaver dam I was referring to earlier. It's just one of the many beaver dams that we saw along our way.


This is my friend Sankey. If you click on the picture, you will get to see a little movie of Snakey attacking me (and rightfully so, because I was bothering him, trying to get him to stick his tongue out at me for the movie!). If you watch carefully, you'll see that Sankey does stick his tongue out at me after he finishes his mighty lunge. :)

Yep, another beaver dam. This one is slightly upstream of a little footbridge that also got washed out in the rains in the fall. As you can see, the footbridge was replaced by a dead tree (I think chopped down by the beavers), and a nice little lenth of rope for a handrail. :)