The first leg of the journey took us to the Fort Worth Texas Airport. We grabbed some breakfast and I bought a hat. So now I have a Texan hat. I have recently lost my favorite hat so being on vacation is a good time to keep an eye out for new hats. I’m not too happy with the Texas hat, but it is a genuine Texan cowboy straw hat so what the heck.

Between Texas and California, I ran a race between my netbook battery running out and finishing John Irving’s new novel, In One Person. Made it with a few minutes to spare. I keep changing the settings and turning off programs to prolong the life of the battery.

Interestingly the plane from Texas to California was the first plane I have ever been on with onboard wifi. It wasn’t free of course. I think the cheapest you could go was purchase a $9.95 one time permission. But the connecting page did have some free stuff including a nifty real time map of where the plane currently was. I love those. I would have continue to use it but alas the battery was gone after Irving.

I liked the Irving quite a bit. His skill as a plot maker and story teller has improved since the last book of his I read. That may have been Hotel New Hampshire. I recommended the book to Eileen. It’s a good solid story and captures an awful lot about what is happening in gender politics in the USA right now.

This morning as I lay in bed suffering with the three hour time change I listened to a book talk with Irving recording in February on the Scottish BBC. Kind of cool.

We had a good portion of the day to spend with my daughter-in-law and grand kids. As I have mentioned in this space I have been chatting on line with my 12 year old grandson. It was fun to talk to him in person. I showed him the OED online. He is a reader and seemed quite interested in anything I wanted to talk him about including the OED. My grand daughters seemed pleased to see me. Even the dog seemed more relaxed.

After treadmilling, I joined them in the back yard pool. The weather is pretty much perfect right now. We spent a good deal of time squirting each other with the handy dandy “aqua zookas” they had laying around.

My son had a long day of work and came by for a hug, some food and a chat.

I skipped reading first thing this morning. I thought I would blog first since I’m residing in a bit later time zone. My son told me last night he checks my blog daily. I didn’t have a chance to blog yesterday, so I thought I would try to get one up here before morning is entirely gone in Michigan.

Vacation off to a good start. Today I plan to check in to finding an organ to practice on. On the AGO LinkedIN group which I recently joined someone suggested I  use the Organ Historical Society’s index of pipe organs to do this. As far as I can tell they list one organ in Corona at the Lutheran church.

I am designated driver to my grand kids’ piano lessons today. I’m going to ask their teacher if she has any ideas.

My grand son seemed interested in learning a bit more about what the heck a pipe organ is. Yesterday I pulled up some pictures to explain to him how one uses one’s feet to make music on it.

Well it’s about 6:30 local time and no one is stirring here yet but me. I’m going to sign off and put this up on the web.

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How Liberals Win – NYTimes.com

Thoughtful analysis of how political change happens.

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NYTimes eXaminer | An antidote to the “paper of record”

A web site dedicated to criticizing the NYT.

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Hacks/Hackers » Journalism x Technology

Crowd sourcing and changing journalism as we know it.

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Article Changes Are Shown in a Tool Created by Outsiders – NYTimes.com

I’ve taken several of the links today from this article by the NYT public editor. He describes how online articles change over a period of time. He mentions that he publicly called the NYT to track this and create a better understanding and transparency of this process. They said it was too expensive. Now someone else has done it for them and some other news sources. It looks a bit klunky but very interesting and good to know about if you are tracking down a specific emerging story or its history.

NewsDiffs | Tracking Online News Articles Over Time

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I have been reading in James Joyce again. He makes me double check my understanding of concepts and words as well as learn new ones.

Pyrrhic victory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stephen Daedalus is teaching his students in the first part of Ulysses. He expects them to know quite a bit. I checked out his reference to Pyrrhic wars.

I also ran down the origin of “The Ballad of the Joking Jesus” which Joyce uses in this novel. Apparently it was written by a friend of his.

The Song of the Cheerful (but slightly Sarcastic) Jesus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Sri Lanka Arrests 9 Web Site Journalists – NYTimes.com

It’s dangerous to be a journalist in many places in the world.

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In Health Ruling, Vindication for Donald Verrilli – NYTimes.com

Some behind the scenes about the lawyer who argued for the government in front of the Supremes on what it’s like to get lambasted and then slightly vindicated.

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Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld – Telegraph

Thank you to Jeremy Bastian my quasi son in law for linking to this obit on Facebook.

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