Monday at Folklife
May. 27th, 2003 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSomething else I noticed yesterday: a girl with perfect, elfin ears. She wasn't dressed particularly spectacularly, wasn't in garb or anything like that. She had mounds of curly black hair and she wasn't trying to hide the ears. It was just as though she had these wonderful, naturally pointed ears.
Monday, we started the morning with home-made blueberry pancakes. It was a bit of a struggle to get them to come out right; I confused the burner for the pan with the one for the tea kettle and at first turned it up too much, then turned it off, before realizing either.
We spent an hour cleaning up and getting ready to go. I tested my builds that I had left running last night: 3D works on Linux now (I have great screensavers. Nifty!), but Wine (the Windows interpreter for Linux) doesn't. I suspect the problem is how I'm using it. It has some client/server setup that it didn't have a few years back.
When we got to Folklife, Kouryou-chan and Omaha went for rice pudding while I stopped to grab some roast corn. While I was enjoying my snack, Omaha calls me on my cell phone to inform me that the two ATM's between me and the rice pudding place are out of cash. I wander down to the one by the Experience Music Project; it's empty, too. I find one still in use: the one by the Space Needle, but the line is 11 folks deep. I wait anyway, then catch up to Omaha. Kouryou-chan is hawing a blast, running around with some kids in the Children's Sculpture Park. While Omaha finally gets her snack she dispatches me to take Kouryou-chan to the bathroom. She's been low on fluids the past couple of days so, business done, I get a gigantic lemonade for the two of us.
The sun beat down on us as we made our way across the entire center to the English Country stage at the Northwest Corner. It was hot; this had the delightful side effect of encouraging people to take off much of their clothing. In retrospect, however, I suspect that when Kouryou-chan hits thirteen I'm going to lock her up in a box for five years; after all, there are people like me in the world, and not all of them have my commitment to self-control or respect for the autonomy of others.
Coventry was a great band, very talented and consistent musically, which made an improvement over many of the performers we'd heard that day already. We ran into a whole bunch of people we knew; hugs and kisses all around for a moment, but a squirmy Kouryou-chan wants to go into the wading pool again. I take her down there and wander into the water with her. Another family we're acquainted with is there, and we take shelter near them and away from this creepy guy with greasy hair who's trying way too hard to be "friends" with every small child who comes within his shouting distance. There were a lot of people there and the world has all types, but he made hackles rise on just about everyone who heard him.
Kouryou-chan went wading but soon came out when she scraped her chest and belly on one of the decorative rocks about the side of the pool. It wasn't deep-- just surface damages, mostly, but there was one small cut on her left flank that was bleeding, so I dried her off and dressed her. Then we wandered.
We looked through the shops and examined the trinkets here and there. She was actually very good, only once demanding "I want that," and actually taking "no" for an answer. Amazing child. The funny thing is we met a lot of kids there who were 3½, but none of them are quite as articulate as Kouryou-chan. Omaha and I worked hard to make a kid who can communicate, and it shows; she's clearer about her wants and needs than any other kid I know her age, and some much older. Even Yamaarashi-chan, who's going to be six next Sunday, isn't as concrete and expressive.
We stopped to listen to two women singing some lovely children's songs, surrounded by kids singing along. But I was disappointed when they used their moment on stage to try and sell their "Summertime Meditation Camp." Vegetarian food, meditation instruction, the words of "my Yogi": bleah! What kid wants to do that?
We caught up with Omaha and, to my surprise, FallenPegasus, who told us all the things we had missed while he hung out later last night. We had dinner on the auditorium lawn-- mmm, bratwurst-- and then Kouryou-chan and I headed home while Omaha went to her weekly radio show.
I picked up some Ravioli and cooked for Kouryou-chan, stunning her momentarily with a Dumbo video while I tried to sort through all of my correspondence for the week. I even found time to play the first few rounds of Half Life, which I can finally run on my desktop box. It's nifty; I like the set-up, with the carefully crafted walk-through of your character going about his daily routine before, well, all Hell breaks loose. Unfortunately, it crashed while drawing a crowbar. I'm going to download patches for it and Unreal at my first opportunity. Omaha came home and I put Kouryou-chan to bed, reading a bit of Bertrice Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester and some Mercer Mayer to her. She went to sleep fast enough.
I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep myself, though. I tossed and turned until at least 11:30. But I think I slept well enough.
It's 4 am. Folklife has caught up with me. Thanks to the miracle of wireless technology, I can finish this post from the comfort of my, um, throne. Let's just say I'm feeling a little bit like Nick from Red Meat right about now...
Monday, we started the morning with home-made blueberry pancakes. It was a bit of a struggle to get them to come out right; I confused the burner for the pan with the one for the tea kettle and at first turned it up too much, then turned it off, before realizing either.
We spent an hour cleaning up and getting ready to go. I tested my builds that I had left running last night: 3D works on Linux now (I have great screensavers. Nifty!), but Wine (the Windows interpreter for Linux) doesn't. I suspect the problem is how I'm using it. It has some client/server setup that it didn't have a few years back.
When we got to Folklife, Kouryou-chan and Omaha went for rice pudding while I stopped to grab some roast corn. While I was enjoying my snack, Omaha calls me on my cell phone to inform me that the two ATM's between me and the rice pudding place are out of cash. I wander down to the one by the Experience Music Project; it's empty, too. I find one still in use: the one by the Space Needle, but the line is 11 folks deep. I wait anyway, then catch up to Omaha. Kouryou-chan is hawing a blast, running around with some kids in the Children's Sculpture Park. While Omaha finally gets her snack she dispatches me to take Kouryou-chan to the bathroom. She's been low on fluids the past couple of days so, business done, I get a gigantic lemonade for the two of us.
The sun beat down on us as we made our way across the entire center to the English Country stage at the Northwest Corner. It was hot; this had the delightful side effect of encouraging people to take off much of their clothing. In retrospect, however, I suspect that when Kouryou-chan hits thirteen I'm going to lock her up in a box for five years; after all, there are people like me in the world, and not all of them have my commitment to self-control or respect for the autonomy of others.
Coventry was a great band, very talented and consistent musically, which made an improvement over many of the performers we'd heard that day already. We ran into a whole bunch of people we knew; hugs and kisses all around for a moment, but a squirmy Kouryou-chan wants to go into the wading pool again. I take her down there and wander into the water with her. Another family we're acquainted with is there, and we take shelter near them and away from this creepy guy with greasy hair who's trying way too hard to be "friends" with every small child who comes within his shouting distance. There were a lot of people there and the world has all types, but he made hackles rise on just about everyone who heard him.
Kouryou-chan went wading but soon came out when she scraped her chest and belly on one of the decorative rocks about the side of the pool. It wasn't deep-- just surface damages, mostly, but there was one small cut on her left flank that was bleeding, so I dried her off and dressed her. Then we wandered.
We looked through the shops and examined the trinkets here and there. She was actually very good, only once demanding "I want that," and actually taking "no" for an answer. Amazing child. The funny thing is we met a lot of kids there who were 3½, but none of them are quite as articulate as Kouryou-chan. Omaha and I worked hard to make a kid who can communicate, and it shows; she's clearer about her wants and needs than any other kid I know her age, and some much older. Even Yamaarashi-chan, who's going to be six next Sunday, isn't as concrete and expressive.
We stopped to listen to two women singing some lovely children's songs, surrounded by kids singing along. But I was disappointed when they used their moment on stage to try and sell their "Summertime Meditation Camp." Vegetarian food, meditation instruction, the words of "my Yogi": bleah! What kid wants to do that?
We caught up with Omaha and, to my surprise, FallenPegasus, who told us all the things we had missed while he hung out later last night. We had dinner on the auditorium lawn-- mmm, bratwurst-- and then Kouryou-chan and I headed home while Omaha went to her weekly radio show.
I picked up some Ravioli and cooked for Kouryou-chan, stunning her momentarily with a Dumbo video while I tried to sort through all of my correspondence for the week. I even found time to play the first few rounds of Half Life, which I can finally run on my desktop box. It's nifty; I like the set-up, with the carefully crafted walk-through of your character going about his daily routine before, well, all Hell breaks loose. Unfortunately, it crashed while drawing a crowbar. I'm going to download patches for it and Unreal at my first opportunity. Omaha came home and I put Kouryou-chan to bed, reading a bit of Bertrice Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester and some Mercer Mayer to her. She went to sleep fast enough.
I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep myself, though. I tossed and turned until at least 11:30. But I think I slept well enough.
It's 4 am. Folklife has caught up with me. Thanks to the miracle of wireless technology, I can finish this post from the comfort of my, um, throne. Let's just say I'm feeling a little bit like Nick from Red Meat right about now...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-05-27 10:44 am (UTC)True, it was a pretty amazing thing to have seen.
about operating systems
Date: 2003-05-27 08:00 pm (UTC)Re: about operating systems
Date: 2003-05-30 11:20 am (UTC)But it's "just an OS"; it doesn't come with editors, word processors, image manipulators, and all of the rest that Linux people are used to seeing with their distros. I mean, all of that stuff is Free Software (as in speech and beer), and there's no reason not to kitchensink it onto the CD if you're putting together a distro in the first place.
Install RedHat or Suse. They're cheap, they come with Everything. Consider buying Windows ($200) and Photoshop ($600) and Office ($300) -- you can get that kind of system for fifty bucks from RedHat if you want support and documentation, or free if you can hack without it.