Molly went to Venice from Hungary. They spent 7 hours on the train to get to and from Budapest, and then 23 hours round trip on a bus in order to spend 9 hours in Venice.

Molly and Lea had fun. The pigeons were good, and they played in puddles until they were completely soaked, leading to the quintessential Molly line "We looked crazy, but we had the most fun."

"I hate to throw good stuff away just because I can't use it." My dad.

From her notebook:
Dear Lennox I still think that all the problems in the review are really easy and hopelessly annoying like problem 51 I think math is fun and you should brutally punish all who think otherwise

unfortunately as a teacher you are forced to at least pretend to like your students, other wise you risk your job and genaral (sic) well being. To continue with my complants (sic) I think that the questions we are made to answer should have some sort on meaning, I mean, like question 48. I mean who would put 11 bows on 1 box?

Talk to you soon, Molly/mepka/monkeybutt

ps I'm glad we had this little talk. And I will continue to write my comments about the homework on my paper in strange colors.

Once again I say farewell

Molly/mepka/monkeybutt

pss Don't forget to take your test on the next page.

(on top of next page)

Test #1 Just as a test to see if you check my home work please sign here (signed Lenx/can't read it)

by question 48 a drawing 'that's a lot of bows.'

later... about 240 min but I think this quesiton stupid because they could get in a traffic accident and die, then they would never get home & soon.

In back cover "Kendo boys are hot"

---

So there!

"I promised Nancy and Theresa that I'd make cars that don't run on gasoline, so I have to figure out what they'll run on. I might have to make potions to figure it out." Spencer 9/17/05

"Today was the best day of school EVER!"

"Why?"

"xxx was gone!"

Madeline, 9/15 or so Maddy to Spencer "There is no 'why' there's 'yes I'll do it." a few weeks back.

-- scratching an itch can make it itchier. Mikel Maron, 7/31/05 --

I thought it would be fun to tickle Madeline, so I suggested that to her. She had a different response.

"Daddy, I'm holding a drink. Nice green shirt Drink? I don't think so!"

9/8/05

And I only met him twice, that I know of. I only remember one of those visits. We went to his house, probably near medford, or, and I played in the back yard while my mom went in and talked to him. I must have seen more of him, but all I remember is this hulking form in the screen door.

But he was an author. One of his stories paid for my Aunt to be born. And he appears in the isfdb.org database of science fiction writers.

I know this, most recently, because I was reading Kathryn Cramer's discussion of hurricane Katrin, and noticed her link to her books, and figured I'd check it out.

And it pulled up this page, and there was a search form. So I popped in a couple of variations of his name, and damned if Winston didn't have a whole page. And it had his birthplace, Spooner, Wisconsin, and his life span, 1915-1979. And then the shocker: there was an email link, to me. And I remember now having sent in a correction to the page when I first found it quite a while back.

Ain't that amusing?

Molly is going to Hungary...

Shannon Applegate, "'Living Among Headstones'". More importantly, she owns the cemetary where my father, uncle, grandfather, great grandfather, great grandmother, great-great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother, and great-great-great-grandfather are all buried.

And assorted other great uncles/cousins/and misc Miller family hangers on are buried.

Pictures of the Yoncalla Cemetary, and gravestones for most of those people.

And it turns out that Shannon Applegate owns the cemetary. I mean, someone has to, right? And she is basically, well, trapped in Yoncalla, trapped in her heritage. What else can you do when you have that level of mouldering history to keep track of? I get to descend into maudlin fits of family history at my leisure, she does it full time.

I was reading The Fading Memory of the state, and article that talks about the task of being the National Archive and Records Administration, and being faced with 347+ petabytes of data in the next 15 years or so...

The irony is that while reading it I checked the mail, well, during a break from reading the article, and there was a package from my dad with a letter and a DVD of my Grandmother's funeral. That happened in Aug 2003, and I received the DVD on 6/26/2005, and of course it is just as relevant today as it was then.

So how does one manage it all? The basic answer is that you can't really...The other day I ran across an amusing article on wired: Keep Your Privates private. It talks about a product called Couple Box which claims to be a secure application for your personal home made 'intimate' files/pictures/video.

But clearly, in the decades to come, archives such as NARA will need to be staffed by a new kind of professional, an expert with the historian's eye of an Allen Weinstein but a computer scientist's understanding of storage technologies and a librarian's fluency with metadata. "We will have to create a new profession of 'data curator'--a combination of scientist (or other data specialist), statistician, and information expert," says MacKenzie Smith of the MIT Libraries.

How do you deal with all this data? Some needs to be private, some just needs to be preserved. There is an awesome slashdot post on the subject.

The slashdot comment:

this is actually a BIG question (Score:5, Insightful) by Ralph Spoilsport (673134) Alter Relationship on Sunday June 26, @12:13AM (#12912210) (Last Journal: Monday July 12, @10:38PM) And one that I have railed about for many years.

I have been in the same position the Author discussed, and I have come to ONLY negative conclusions. In a few words, and I hate to say this, but buddy:

WE'RE FUCKED.

Digital is a loser's proposition. backing up to analogue or even digital data on analogic substrates (such as DV tape) fail. Simply nad purely.

The *only* thing that comes close is some kind of RAID, and those, even with the plummeting price of storage, are still too expensive given the needs.

Also, a RAID assumes a continuity of several things that are not likely to be continuous:

With Video:

Framerate, number of lines, colour depth, aspect ratio, file format, compression format, Operating system compatibility, etc etc etc. All of these things are variables.

With Audio:

sample rate, compression format, bit depth, file format, etc.

Basically all of it points to very bad places.

I am fairly well convinced that our age will simply disappear. They will find our garbage, the few books not pressed on acidic paper, our paintings (fat lot of good the abstract stuff will mean to them) and drawings, that's about it. the rest will just be shiny little bits of crap in the landfill.

Since we will have used up all the dense energy forms, they will be appalled at the energy requirements just to get the few remaining museum piece devices to work. Archiving the 21st century will be impossible. To the 25th century, the 21st century will be seen as a dark age - not only for the holocaust of the die caused by the failure of the petroleum based economy, but from the simple fact that very little of the information formats we are totally geared into will survive, including this note on /.

His problem of saving personal video is just the tip ofthe iceberg. His problem is the problem of our very civilisation, writ small.

That's why I am abandoning video, and going back to painting. In 500 years, my painting CAN survive. the video simply won't.

RS

--

Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.

What do you mean?

I just folded about 18 pair!

Oh, that's okay. I have 19.

Another quote: "What has that azalea ever did to you?" (it is possible that those 'Master Gardener' classes have affected my mother...)

Spencer has some opinions: "These are my specialties: I have really sharp eyes and I find a bunch of things, making white vinager, making potions, riding bikes and scooters, and catching ants. They're pretty hard to catch. Making real batteries that can work out of dead batteries and digging tunnels is going to be one of my specialties."

"My jobs are taking care of people and dogs, and I forget the rest..."

Packing for Italy, for some reason it has been decided that we need to clean the house before we leave. Now this is sort of a good thing, since we can come back to a clean(er) house. But odd in a way. We are pretty much packed, I want to throw the guide books and my novel in my bag, but basically I think we are there. So...let's clean!

I'm listening to the Rocky Picture Show soundtrack. It is making me smile. Heather bought me a 512 mb compact flash card, and bought Molly a TI-33 graphing calculator. Uhh mama. Better than my 33e, I guess.

So I just came upon a sheet of Molly's notes for her 'corporal' speech. I have the speech in a DSS file. So some notes from her speech...note, the lack of context is part of the charm:

Corps-Croe
Now that just led to a long awkward silence. corporeal carcus Marine Corps A body of people Corpse A dead body Ronald Reagan The corpacse (?) of western literature is filled with the corporeal forms

"I want to be a builder, will you teach me."
"Oh, what does that mean?"
"It means I can make things."
And later he creates a unit of measure. "It is like me from my head to my toes, plus just my legs."

"Spencer, it is soup day, grab your vegetable to bring to school."

"I don't want to bring a vegetable, I want all the other kids to bring them."

Heather makes the categorical imperative argument: "But Spencer, What if all the other children think that too, and nobody brings a vegetable?"

"Good! I don't like soup anyway." And ZING! Spencer hits it out of the park!

Yesterday Spencer and Maddy used the leatherman tool and another screwdriver and dissassembled three pretty much dead power supplies. We now have a bag of connectors and fans and miscellaneous hardware that 'might' become useful for some project. But the main win was their enjoyment of the process.

I spent time giving them 'best practices' instructions in things like 'how not to pinch your fingers in the pliers.' And how to cut the wires around components that might be usable, like switches, so that you leave more wire. And I explained why you want those longer wire leads, and I explained about electricity running along the wires.

I also showed the dangers of cheap sheet metal, and told anectdotes of bloody misadventures from sheet metal mishaps past...

And we had a BIG DISCUSSION on not doing experiments with the house current...

"Do I have a wiq?" (like some character) "I'm deciding no because it looks like a dead rat."