Wow, I managed not to log in here for quite a long time. Facebook seems to be a failure. It moves too fast, it's always feeding me advertisements, and it's constantly asking me for personal information. I think I'll stick to LJ. It seems like it's designed to be useful to its users, rather than to advertisers and data miners.

I just got back from a 30-day meditation retreat at Karmê Chöling.

Did I miss anything?

My grandfather used to wear an Irish woolen cap. When he died, I inherited it. It quickly became my most prized posession, and I wore it everywhere. About a year ago, it disappeared one day while I was working as a substitute teacher at Coventry High School. I checked all the rooms I worked in that day, and couldn't find it. I checked in at ( Read more... )

Recently someone suggested that I pick up a copy of Make: magazine. I did so, and heartily recommend it to you as well. The bulk of the magazine consists of recipes for building various gadgets. The issue I picked up features a very nice water rocket design, a backyard zipline strong enough to carry fat guys, an electricity-generating windmill ( Read more... )

I borrowed my brother's laptop to use as a word processor in the hope of getting some job applications out during downtime in the meditation program. It's set up in my room. I brought my cell phone into the room to use it as an alarm clock ( Read more... )

I've been running around like crazy trying to get everything packed for my trip while simultaneously working out some way to recover and print out the resumes and applications I had on my computer's hard drive. It's over an hour past the time I planned to leave at this point, and I'm at my brother's house (adding a half hour to my drive time ( Read more... )

Does anyone here know much about laptop hard drives? My laptop (a Compaq Armada V300) took a fall today, and has stopped working. I was planning to use it to print out some time-sensitive applications I'd like to send before I leave for Vermont tomorrow (I'll be gone a week and a half ( Read more... )

I promised naweiner a report on last night's "Bring Your Cynical Friend Night" open house at the Boston Shambhala Center.

I met lagaz and kaiwoklaw in Brookline Village, and we made our way over to the center at about 6:45. Sitting meditation began at 7... I went to the main shrine room to sit, while they went to the small shrine room for meditation instruction ( Read more... )

The science fair was very cool indeed. I hope I didn't judge too harshly - I didn't check off anything higher than "average" on my judging form unless the project actually seemed better than most in the category in question. That's what I was told to do, so it should be OK as long as most of the other judges also followed the directions properly ( Read more... )

I'm still planning to go to the Rhode Island Science and Engineering Fair this Saturday morning, so if any of you would like to join me for that, get in touch. You don't have to be cynical for this one, just geeky enough to enjoy going to a science fair.