On Saturday morning, as I sat here checking my email and lamenting the nasty vog outside, I received a nice surprise. The phone rang. No, that's not the surprise. Although I did jump a little. The surprise was the voice on the other end. It was familiar, yet distant. A voice from the past. It was my college roommate Colleen. "I'm here. On the Big Island," she said. She was visiting with her son and an old friend who now lives on Maui. I met them in Volcano Village that night. We had a lovely dinner and talked story well past my usual bedtime. It was really great to see her after so many years. She looked pretty much the same. Mostly, I found it was good to hear her laugh. She has a great, infectious laugh. Sometimes it bursts. Sometimes it's a little ornery and lecherous. Amazingly, there was not one nanosecond of awkwardness between us. We just seemed to hit it off where we left off.
The vog is now gone. It was brutal. For three days it lingered, frying leaves on plants and trees, traumatizing the dogs, making my throat scratchy. It was equally bad in Hilo Town, obscuring what little sun there was. The vog hung in the air because the tradewinds had died. So not only was the air hazy and stinky but hot and humid as all get out. It was downright miserable. All better now. The cooling trades are blowing with gusto. We're back to paradise as usual.
It occurred to me after experiencing the computer crash that I still have all my music. It's on my iPod. It seemed there ought to be a way to copy it from that "little" 20 gig drive back to the computer. But as those of you with iPods know, you can't just plug the little buggah into your computer and do that. What will happen instead is that iTunes will update you iPod with what it has in the library. Which, on this new computer (and the old one for that matter) is nothing! So, I hopped on line to do some research. There, I found a software company called purpleghost that makes just the product I need to allow me to copy music from my iPod to my computer and restore iTunes without letting it zap my iPod. I'm pretty excited about it. It's called TuneJack. It costs $10. Beats losing it all or spending thousands to get it all back. Not to mention the hours I spent importing songs from CDs. A bargain at twice the price if you ask me.
Today is election day! I'm excited. Really. I'm almost always excited by the prospect of leadership change. Here in Hawaii, we have one contested senate race. Daniel Akaka (D) is running against.... I forget her name. Oh yeah. Cynthia Theilen. She's actually an excellent candidate, a moderate republican running on a save-the-environment platform - and has been endorsed by several papers. Trouble is, expecting people to vote against Akaka is like expecting them to vote against their own uncle. He's like family to many with long, deep roots in the islands. Even at age 82, I just don't see him losing.
All this election talk has me thinking that I'd better get my big, fat okole out to VOTE!
A hui hou. Aloha!
The vog is now gone. It was brutal. For three days it lingered, frying leaves on plants and trees, traumatizing the dogs, making my throat scratchy. It was equally bad in Hilo Town, obscuring what little sun there was. The vog hung in the air because the tradewinds had died. So not only was the air hazy and stinky but hot and humid as all get out. It was downright miserable. All better now. The cooling trades are blowing with gusto. We're back to paradise as usual.
It occurred to me after experiencing the computer crash that I still have all my music. It's on my iPod. It seemed there ought to be a way to copy it from that "little" 20 gig drive back to the computer. But as those of you with iPods know, you can't just plug the little buggah into your computer and do that. What will happen instead is that iTunes will update you iPod with what it has in the library. Which, on this new computer (and the old one for that matter) is nothing! So, I hopped on line to do some research. There, I found a software company called purpleghost that makes just the product I need to allow me to copy music from my iPod to my computer and restore iTunes without letting it zap my iPod. I'm pretty excited about it. It's called TuneJack. It costs $10. Beats losing it all or spending thousands to get it all back. Not to mention the hours I spent importing songs from CDs. A bargain at twice the price if you ask me.
Today is election day! I'm excited. Really. I'm almost always excited by the prospect of leadership change. Here in Hawaii, we have one contested senate race. Daniel Akaka (D) is running against.... I forget her name. Oh yeah. Cynthia Theilen. She's actually an excellent candidate, a moderate republican running on a save-the-environment platform - and has been endorsed by several papers. Trouble is, expecting people to vote against Akaka is like expecting them to vote against their own uncle. He's like family to many with long, deep roots in the islands. Even at age 82, I just don't see him losing.
All this election talk has me thinking that I'd better get my big, fat okole out to VOTE!
A hui hou. Aloha!
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