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It's that time of year again...
07-11-2015, 06:18 AM
We're off to our annual week-long multifamily, multihouse vacation on Long Beach Island. Assuming the wifi works properly, you should see no real difference in my presence (except maybe I'll be more present than I have been of late). Anyway, we hit the road tomorrow in the early afternoon and should be settled in by evening.
Edits: I can spell, really I can.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Have fun, Bob. I'll try and get another installment of DSKS out the door so you'll have something fun to read while you're out there. 
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I'm looking forward to it, BA... assuming the wifi holds out. The landlord used to have his own router, but no more -- I've been trying to connect all evening on any of several Xfinity wifi access nodes nearby, but frankly they all stink -- randomly varying between 1 and 11 Mbps, when they don't just dump me at random.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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If all else fails, I'll shoot you a plain-text email.
For some bizarre verisimilitude, try reading Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry while you're there.
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That's an old favorite, and Diane's an old friend. Well, acquaintance, and I haven't been in touch with her much since she moved to Ireland...
Net performance is somewhat improved since last night, though not so much so that I can play any online games.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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No shit! You know her!? (Not that I don't think she's unapproachable or anything like that, but still...) And yeah, moving to another continent can do that. Especially if you're like me and you suck at correspondence beyond message boards and the like.
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Back in the 80s she lived in Bala Cynwyd, PA, and she was invited to speak and hold writing workshops for Infinity Ltd., the (now apparently defunct) science fiction club at Princeton University, which is how I met her. (I still recall the time she read the passage from High Wizardry, I think it was, with the cameo by the Peter Davidson Doctor helping Dairine -- in advance of the book's publication.) She was also local to the location of Philcon, the Philadelphia SF convention, during those years, so I'd see her there. And we bumped into each other occasionally on CompuServe while both still had accounts there.
Anyway, back to topic. The wifi node is unreliable still, wandering in and out. But the weather is fantastic, absolutely beautiful, and I've been getting a lot of reading done on the deck, listening to the surf and feeling the breeze off the ocean.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:...
Anyway, back to topic. The wifi node is unreliable still, wandering in and out. But the weather is fantastic, absolutely beautiful, ... And if you had wi-fi, you would have missed (some of) that.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Nah, I've got nowhere to set up the laptop that lacks glare that makes it unusable during the day.
One of the more interesting experiences this vacation has been getting to know my niece Vivianne (aka Vivi) better. Since the last time I saw her just a few months ago, she has become a toddler and is almost talking. The really interesting thing is that although she is pre-verbal still, she's not unable to communicate -- my brother and sister in law have taught her a few signs in Ameslan which she uses to get some of her wants across in the absence of being able to speak. It's both amusing and intriguing -- I have to wonder just how much she is understanding around her to be able to learn stuff like that.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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I'm gonna have to remember that trick. Manual dexterity comes a lot faster than phonetics. Although I wonder if it would hamper a child's speech development if they had an easy workaround.
EDIT: Also, Bob, you may want to look into getting a 4G-WiFi hub. I had one while I was living in Japan and it was insanely useful. I'm pretty sure that some carriers have them available for short term contracts, like two to eight weeks, for business people visiting from outside the USA. How useful are these mobile hotspots? Whenever we were in line of sight with Japan, that meant we could usually pull a 4G signal from the weather decks, and I would Skype my mom back in the USA with my mobile hotspot and an iPod - so long as I never said where we were at and what we were doing, it was all okay.
Also, being able to pull high-definition streaming video while stuck on the ship during a duty day? Worth every fucking penny!
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I think both our phones can serve as hubs, but mine's an older Samsung Galaxy with only 3G. I've considered that solution, though.
As for hampering Vivi's speech development, I don't think it does any more than learning to hold out one's arms to get picked up, or pointing at things one wants, does. Vivi's very vocal, if not yet verbal, and if "da-da-da-da-da-da..." aimed at my brother-in-law Dave is any indication already has her first word under her belt.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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07-18-2015, 02:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-03-2018, 05:23 PM by Bob Schroeck.)
Last night. We just got back from a great dinner at The Arlington in Ship Bottom, and now it's time to start the packing so we can be out by 11 tomorrow. And I realize I've taken no pictures, done no writing (save for that tiny bit I posted earlier in the GGG nanoSteps thread), done nothing at all but a lot of reading and watching Vivi run around.
And I'm okay with that.
Vacation 2015 Part 1 is over.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Home again; we got back at about 3 because Peg was too tired to do the usual end-of-trip shopping around Schooner's Wharf in Beach Haven.
End of next week we start up all over again with a trip to Myrtle Beach with Kat, Joe, Scott and Nina.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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