Lee.org

This was a really great Father’s day!

Family let me sleep in late, oh so nice! We went out to Cafe Leila in Berkeley and had a great brunch. We had fun chatting and playing while waiting for our food. Their pancakes were impossibly fluffy “like chewing on a cloud”, Leila Omelette with sauteed spinach and mushrooms were divine, and Abigail’s breakfast burrito was pretty darn good! Then off to Target for casual shopping! I got some nice clothes and we stayed for almost 2 hours. I was actually happy that the store had remodeled, I was beginning to think that ALL stores were on their way out in favor of Amazon. At home, I got a wonderful dad nap while Megan and Abigail played. Then Abigail and I spent a good while washing her tricycle, sitting out there watching the garden grow, Abigail pay attention to the suds, and the sun shine was oh-so nice! Abigail was bent on cleaning some windows of the house so we went around to the front of the house with a bucket of water and sponges at it went well. Then it was off to a new Nepalese restaurant in the neighborhood, Zomsa that had just perfect noodle bowls and dumplings and everything else! THEN Baskin Robins! We laughed and had so much fun trading ice creams: their cotton candy ice cream is so light and cotton-candy-ish!! And their chocolate cheesecake ice cream is so chocolate cheesecakey, and mint chocolate chip so cheerfully mint chocolate chip! Hurray!

And I got to talk to my father, whom I love so much!

(this was supposed to be published After Father’s Day 2019 but didn’t make it out of my Drafts folder until June 2020, during the stay-at-home pandemic. I don’t know how the post languished in my Drafts folder for so long except to say that I spend a lot of wonderful time with my daughter Abigail! I’ll try to be more prompt about my Father’s Day posts in the future! :-) )

It is just impossible to track how much and how wonderfully Abigail is growing. So many big and little things! Here’s a couple examples:

Until about a month ago, she often made up words, throwing syllables   and phonemes together with joy. I certainly encouraged her! She’d throw her body at a couch cushion, throw up her arms and proclaim “Gurumph-a-do!” She doesn’t -randomly- put together words any more. Now it’s more refined. For example, her hedgehog stuffies are named, in order of getting them: Hedgy, Baby Hedgy, and now Hedgy-Rinsterstein! Rinsterstein?! I love it!

Today, out of the blue, she told me how “drum” was an onomatopoeia and she happily banged on the dining room table describing how it sounded like the word :-)

For a long while, Abigail’s 2 favorite (only?) TV shows have been Tumble Leaf and Daniel Tiger (I totally recommend them). She always says that she needs to watch while pooping in the afternoon, a practice that Megan and I haven’t really been down with. She’ll sit on the potty forever watching unless we go fetch her. Yesterday, she said, “Mom, where is Purple (her purple tablet computer)? I have to poop.” Megan said, “You can have a book.” And amazingly, she said “Ok!” and ran off to fetch a book to keep her company in the bathroom!

We read every night. In April we started reading chapter books. We made it through the first Captain Underpants book with gusto. I started reading the new (2013) illustrated version of The Hobbit to her. She was nervous at how many pages the book had, and kept flipping through it and asking to find the part with the dragon. I told her gently that we would get there eventually as we started. By the second page she didn’t want us to stop! We made it about 25 pages over a few nights before having to take a real break but she now can tell you all about Bilbo’s hobbit hole and Gandolf and the dwarves…

Megan and Abigail went to Texas for 6 days to visit Megan’s dear friend Jane and family. When they came back a few days ago, I swear that she had grown so much in body, speech patterns, and thoughts that I barely recognized her!

I tabled for The Crucible today. I presented several items that I have grown fond of…

• A 3d printed hand that moves straight off the printer, via.
• A 3d printed figure of my DnD character, Newnam Hrothnor, printed by Devon.
• A laser cut and assembled Walking Man Automata, via.
• My daughter Abigail’s bust, 3d printed by Devon!

I just got an oscilloscope and the manual mentioned “Locating Sleeve: Using locating sleeve could ensure the stability and reliability of the tip exposed to the test point.” Say what?

Here is what a locating sleeve is for. If you need to carefully touch just one point on a PCB, you can take off the tip of your probe off, that is the tip with the spring loaded hook, and then attach the locating sleeve. Now it will be easier to touch just what you are intending to.

Hypermiling is so 2010. Well, I did it anyway.
When I was commuting to grad school, I’d sometimes get stuck in slow, steady traffic on the highway. And sometimes I’d get… 87 MPG for 12.5 miles!

This always gives me a peaceful, easy feeling!

Three happy words, “No new mail!”

A friend I haven’t seen in almost 20 years died last week.

Tim, your light of a smile and perennial cheer echo in my eyes and ears these nearly 20 years since our meeting. I miss you. You are with me, always.

His obituary

Dear Lazyweb,

I fill out about 10 web-based time-sheets every day, taking notes on each of the clients I see with a clunky mix of clicking, tabbing, and copy-pasting.  The website simply wasn’t built for easy data entry. Do you know of a program where I can write my data in a neat format, for instance, a spreadsheet, and then the program does all the ridiculous  click-type-click-tab-type-typing for me?

Megan, Abigail, and I will be moving from our apartment in Berkeley to a much larger house in El Cerrito on January 2nd!

We’ve loved living here with the quiet street and long driveway (we’ll miss jumping in Avery’s Puddle when it rains!), the short walk to Monterey Market, and especially King Park. But we’ve been feeling growing pains in our apartment for a while.

Just ask and I’ll tell you our new address!