Many little updates, in one convenient bulletted list!

[chronarchy]

I've been swallowed up by work recently, so please forgive me if I'm not overly responsive to things, but I have a short update on things in my life, some of which will be interesting and some of which won't.

• The Dublin Irish Festival has asked our Grove to provide the "Druid Service" on Sunday morning (Aug. 8) this year. They've never done a

Comments

[sweet_thyme]

I've been having a devil of a time with stability in both Thunderbird and Firefox recently, with each one crashing out hard on two different machines. I don't understand what's going on there, to be perfectly honest, but it seems that the two programs are becoming more unstable with each release, and lead to me considering a permanent move from the open source options to Outlook and IE. . . something I've always avoided in the past.

CHROME :D it rules the world...

Ooh, Weddings! *squee* you both are such the perfect couple. May I suggest New England as a honeymoon? the beaches of Maine, New Hampshire, Newport...national forests...camping, all the amenities and tons of color.

[chronarchy]

Maggie requires someplace sunny, so NE is mostly out in October :) We're looking at the Outer Banks, though, as well as Greece, Italy, Hawaii, and a few others.

Something tells me that we won't be camping during our honeymoon, though.

[nontacitare]

The Outer Banks is magical, romantic, and relatively cheap in October. Of course, Europe and Hawaii are a bit more exotic. ;-)

Congratulations on the Druid ritual at Dublin Irish Festival.

[chronarchy]

I'm noticing that the Outer Banks is the cheap option. Which, ironically, tells me we oughtn't do our honeymoon there. . . clearly, we can go whenever we want (assuming that the oil leak gets capped before the oil gets *that* far up the coast, of course). It's also hurricane season, so I am hesitant to hit the eastern coast, anyway. :)

[romandruid]

I used to LOVE CD101 when it first started and Maxx Faulkner was DJing there. (Wasn't he the programming director for CD101 a while before he left for WCBE?)
I guess it's like MTV; I loved it when it first started, but it's not even recognizable as the same broadcast anymore. *sigh*

I've been aiming for 45-60 minutes of exercise daily, and it's kicking my butt. Hang in there. This getting old stuff sucks.

[chronarchy]

I think that we all loved MTV when it was like what it was like when we first saw it. . . I suspect that there's a bit of a moving target there. . . though when I first started watching it in the early 90's, I felt there was already too much reality TV on it.

Damn you, Real World! You (and Cops!) set the stage for all manner of bad reality TV!

[romandruid]

Damn you, Real World! You (and Cops!) set the stage for all manner of bad reality TV!

Real World? I've never heard of it... I haven't had cable for a decade or more, and I haven't watched much TV at all in years. I don't miss it at all. I don't even listen to the radio (other than NPR) much anymore; I can't stand all the commercials. It's just too distracting and nonsensical. *bleah*

Are you old enough to remember when MTV started? I was in my first year of college when my sister and best friend got an apartment together that had cable TV. I remember staying up all night on several occasions, drinking beer, watching MTV, and playing Trivial Pursuit. (That was not a good year for my GPA.) I remember that first year of CD 101 much better, though. I was a grad student at OSU in 1990, and WWCD was all I ever listened to. Does Fritz the Nightowl still have that jazz show?

[chronarchy]

I am "old enough to remember" MTV going live ('82), just as I am "old enough to remember" Mt. St. Helens erupting ('80), Reagan getting shot ('82), and the Challenger disaster ('86). . . and by "old enough to remember" I should stress that I know that I was alive then and I might have a "real" memory of the events, or I may have just seen the footage enough to have a media-imprinted memory of the events.

I have such media-imprinted memories of Kennedy being shot, after all. I remember it like it was yesterday, even though I certainly wasn't around for it.

I started watching MTV in 1993 or so, when withak53 introduced me to music that had been recorded while I was alive.

The Real World was a reality show about a bunch of kids picked to live in a house and basically told to get along with one another in a (usually foreign) locale. It was kinda like Survivor but not half as dumb (which, I should point out, is still pretty dumb). From the low-rent success of Real World and COPS, the basis for today's glut of bad reality shows was formed

[chellyisme]

There are certain patches with regards to some of the plugins that are required for firefox that I know was causing issues for me a while back. You might want to check to make sure they are all up to date.

And yes, Windows 7 is quite the shiny, I look forward to building my new computer so that I can install it :)

[chronarchy]

Yeah, I've been updating the patches, when I can, and rolling them back. Neither strategy appears to be working for me.

Glad to see it's not just me who is/has been having trouble with Firefox.

[rfunk]

Before switching to IE, check out Google Chrome. I love it. The only time I use Firefox anymore is for development, and the only time I use IE is for testing. Not sure what to tell you for mail, though, since I use Kmail and most people I know seem to use webmail like Gmail or Yahoo Mail (or else use Apple Mail on their Macs). Maybe check out Claws Mail, if that's been ported to Windows. (Linux has lots of options for mail programs, and many of them have been ported over, but I don't know which ones. Kmail may be an option for you too

[chronarchy]

I've noticed that the 102.5 reception is stronger in-town, as well. But that could also just be me projecting yet another difference that isn't actually there as a result of the change :) I've no doubt that it's better outside the city, which is good news for long trips.

The "decade-and-genre where music stands still at the pinnacle" for me is 90's grunge-and-flannel-post-punk rock, so I'm okay with an overabundance of Pearl Jam and their ilk, generally. I'm pretty okay with Coldplay, too, though I'm not positive it's actually "quality music" in my mind.

I've looked at N. California, but a lot of the "stuff to do" there is wine country stuff, which doesn't really appeal to me. Still, big trees are on the list of "things we'd like to see," so it's not off the list, either. We just need to find something less alcoholic to do.

[rfunk]

Well, at least when I think about going to the Bay area, wineries and big trees are fairly low on the list of things to do. They do get higher as you go north though.

Of course, if you can make it out of the country that would be awesome. My experience there is basically limited to France and Italy in spring 1990, which was fun and sunny but probably hard to translate to your plans.

[chronarchy]

I once suggested to a friend that we go to one of the Franklin Park Conservatory's Thursday night events, "Cosmos at the Conservatory." I told her we could get drunk and stare at plants. . . which is really kind of a winning combination. . . but vacationing in California kind of has that feel to me. Granted, it's a huge state with lots of different things to do (I'm sure), but it's what I think about :)

Probably, on the translation issue, but if you saw some nice "gee-that'd-be-a-romantic-place-to-spend-a-week" spots, I'm all ears :)

[wcm]

My husband and I *still* haven't gone on a proper honeymoon. We just haven't had the cash. We did stay in a lovely bed and breakfast after our wedding. They had a clothing optional hot tub and an in-bedroom jacuzzi. It was so nice... We really want to go to Ireland but I'm afraid that our "out of town" honeymoon will have to wait another year or so. A lot of people I know have actually had to put theirs off...

[chronarchy]

I need a vacation, so I'm leaving, that's for sure. :) We may put off going out of the country, but the thing that worries me is this: will we be able to do it if we start having kids? And the answer to that, at least for us, is probably "no." Which leads me to "let's do it now so we don't have to wish we did later."

Some people travel well with kids, and perhaps when I have them I will feel differently. . . but today, I think about buying a plane ticket for a kid who probably won't remember the trip and I think, "Wow, that's a huge fee for what basically amounts to another piece of luggage you can't leave at the left luggage stand, so you have to cart it around."

Okay, so I really, really hope I'll feel differently when I actually have kids :)

[wcm]

LOL

I completely understand. Ron and I talk a lot about wanting a kid but not being ready and wanting to travel first. I think it would be hard traveling with children, especially to the sort of places we want to go to - ruins, museums, operas...