My father has been battling cancer for the last five years. It was five years ago that he had a cancerous bladder removed. Ever since he’s been feeling fine, and getting used to using an urostomy system in place of a bladder. Last year, however, he started having kidney troubles, and was scheduled for surgery to clear the blockage over Thanksgiving. When they opened him up, they found the cancer had returned, and was spreading to his lymph nodes. Not good. His health continues to decline, he’s tired all the time, and is going to bi-weekly chemo treatments. It’s been difficult seeing his health decline so quickly. Last year at this time he was celebrating his 80th birthday with friends and family. This year it’s an accomplishment just to leave the house.
Which brings me to today when, with the help of my brother who’s visiting, he finally got to see our house. Even though we’ve been here since September, this was Dad’s first visit. He was tired and weak, and spent a majority of the time sleeping. He finally woke up for the last few hours, and joined us in the family room to watch a special on Magic Johnson and Larry Bird that I taped for him on HBO. He also brought us a Jewish housewarming gift of salt and bread, along with an apple pie. I had to look up the significance, and here’s what I discovered:
Bread, Salt and Sugar
A traditional Jewish housewarming basket contains “bread so that you shall never know hunger; salt, so your life shall always have flavor; sugar and so your life shall always have sweetness.” The bread is often challah, the traditional Judaic bread, and salt is often represented by a salted snack or a container of Kosher salt. Sugar can be given in the form of wine, pastries or sugar
It’s become an annual tradition to attend Opening Day with my friends Matthew and Spatz. I’ve only missed a few Opening Days since the Rockies first came to Denver 18 years ago. And for the past four years, we’ve been attending some GREAT tailgating parties, compliments of friends of Shotgun Willie’s and Penthouse Club, where a new tradition began with getting my photo taken with some of the “Promo Girls” from the club. CLICK HERE to check out Opening Day photos from 2007-2010.
It’s a new year, with a new location for our annual St. Patty’s Day Dinner. Our good friend Matthew finally has a house to call his own, so we gathered at his newly purchased home for corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, Guinness, Jameson, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and of course, LIMERICKS! Here’s this year’s batch: Continue Reading »
Monday November 30, 2009 02:29 PM EST
Written by Eric Slivka
In a report posted yesterday, TechCrunch points to a Twitter posting from Mike Pinkerton of the Chrome for Mac team noting that there were only eight bugs remaining to be addressed before the Mac beta of Chrome is ready for its launch expected for some time in the next month.
‘8 remaining M4 Mac beta blockers! Go team! #chrome’
This means that there are only 8 things standing in the way of Chrome for Mac going beta. ‘M4′ stands for ‘milestone 4,’ which is how they phrase ‘version 4,’ which the Mac beta build of Chrome will be (the current dev channel version is 4.0.249.12, for example).
Speculation on the eight bugs noted by Pinkerton centers on this list, which is already down to four outstanding issues.
In a follow-up article, TechCrunch looks at the features for Chrome that will not be included in the initial beta release and have been pushed out to the next beta version in order to allow Google to meet its goal of releasing the initial beta before the end of the year.
- Bookmark Manager
- App Mode (allows Chrome to run Web apps in their own simplified windows)
- Task Manager
- Gears (offline support for Web apps; apparently being scrapped entirely in favor of HTML5)
- Bookmark syncing
- Multi-touch gestures
- 64-bit support
- Full support for extensions
- Full screen mode (possibly)
Developer builds of Chrome for Mac have been available for several months, but the move to a beta version suggests that users can expect to see a fairly stable browser with a number of significant features included. Work will continue on Chrome with additional Developer Preview releases occurring on a regular basis. Refined versions will then periodically be released as new additions to Chrome’s Beta channel. Releases will eventually make their way to Chrome’s “Stable” channel, which will offer “rock solid” performance without the inclusion of features still under development and testing.
Yesterday we celebrated Leah’s 40th birthday by throwing an 80’s theme party. Even though her birthday was last Sunday, October 18th, we wanted to accommodate her friends’ schedules and throwing the party a week later. Leah’s been talking about doing an 80’s party for a very LONG time, so it was nice to finally make it happen. There were some funny outfits, spanning all types of 80’s music. Of course, Leah and I was New Wave, since that’s what we were in those days. And, I got to break out my “Zipper Shoes” that I got in Germany back in ‘83, which helped complete my DEVO outfit. CLICK HERE to see the photos Leah posted on Facebook.
