Thursday, April 30, 2009

Eat

I'm eating better and feeling better.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Fwd: Norway May Ban Gas Cars After 2015 : Gas 2.0



Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jerome Haines 
Date: April 27, 2009 9:15:39 PM EDT
To: Jerome Haines 
Subject: Norway May Ban Gas Cars After 2015 : Gas 2.0

Friday, April 24, 2009

life tweeting


I just put my son down to sleep for his nap. This is not the usual way that a professional starts writing about a trendy web service, but it may as well be usual as a starting point for talking about Twitter.

I always sing my boy a song when I put him down. I hold him on my shoulder, cover him with a blanket, and whether he likes it or not, I dance around his darkened room, patting him on the back to keep a beat while I softly sing a song I make up on the spot. They're usually about sleeping, looking at stars in the night sky, dreaming, waking up happy. Most of them have a river or a stream in them. The noise machine in the hall makes white noise, but to me it sounds like a river rushing. I never remember to write them down or record them. They could all be hits as far as we're all concerned. But they're just for him. I sang songs to his sister, and I will sing a thousand more for him.

I've always believed my life is going to be rather short - too short to see my kids' have children or for my own children as adults to really know me. My father's father died when he was 45. My father died in 1997 at the age of 59. From what I know and have heard they were both extremely funny and generous men. I never knew my grandfather. My Mom always said he was handsome, charming and delightful. My dad was always a bit quiet about it. I don't know if he ever said much about his dad to me, but that was just the way he was. Quiet. I don't think he was trying to keep secrets, it just wasn't in his nature to talk about such things. When my father died, I thought about what I knew about him. They were all feelings, not a whole lot of facts. Obviously my Mom knew my Dad far better. My own memories lack the details to round out the man who loomed so large in my own early life. Which leads me to Twitter.

Details which are not of singular importance are ultimately what make Twitter so very important. I would even go out on a limb here in my own little world and say that Twitter actually goes far beyond any form of communication seen on this planet in the last 10,000 years. Cave paintings were probably closest to it, now that I think about it... Life experiences, mundane levels of detail, that which would bore you to tears at a cocktail party, on Twitter flit by you barely noticed but in the same instant serve as concrete reminders of why life is so wonderful in the first place.






I wish my Dad could have Tweeted. I wish all sons could read a lifetime of their fathers' tweets.

I hope that little plant will be ok

My daughter just ran in with this watering can and a freshly yanked
tulip. "Daddy, it needs some water really fast. Here. I'll go get some
dirt to throw on top of it!"

And off she ran on this gorgeous spring day.

Apologies to any cube workers who are reading this today.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Children

Put a smile on your face. Have a kid.

And his dog

A boy...

Lesson

I read this article in The New Yorker (it may not even have been the
most current) on a Tues. Thurs night I took my wife to see one of the
movies reviewed therein. This is a great way to include the word
therein in a blogpost.

Springtime for engineers

Friday, April 17, 2009

Me

Mom

Gaining a Customer For Life



Observe this good business practice. Two weeks ago we had what seemed
like major issues with our '91 Volvo (eg it broke down on the Mass
Pike). Over the years we religiously took it to be serviced at
Performance Motoring in Hadley, MA. They never found the clogged air
intake, that took a mechanic in Sturbridge 30 minutes to fix. For 5
years the car would hesitate when you stomped on the gas. Fuel pump,
old car, that was all I heard. $68 later from the great mechanic in
Sturbridge and the lovely 1991 Volvo 740 Turbo 5 door (wagon) runs
like new. The Pioneer Volvo folks checked it all out for us when we
brought it home from Sturbridge, to glowing reviews from their
mechanics leaving me the happiest I've been all year. This car was the
biggest wagon Volvo ever produced. It's huge (way, way, way bigger
than my neighbor Jon's 2008 Volvo XC90 or my inlaws 1996 850GLT 5 door
or their 2008 V70). It had 150k on it when we got it from
@nikkistevens' parents, it has 193k now. Here's to another 193k under
the car of Pioneer Volvo.

Sorry Ron. You had your chances. Muffed it.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Rain for singing in

What a great picture to unwind the day. Pure entertainment.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Temptation

Personally, this would be a tough one: you're napping, content to wake
slowly from peaceful slumber, from your bed awash in late afternoon
sunbeams of a glorious Spring day. You did after all spend a solid 4
hours of exercising outdoors. Suddenly you notice a half eaten Oreo
("or is it... yes, why it looks to be a Joe-Joe! What luck!") on your
nightstand. "Curious, I don't remember getting into those! But that
does look tempting."

But not to Rose, the Queen of Restraint.

Changing the World in the blink of an eye

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/europe/08moldova.html?_r=1

Read this, then sign up for Twitter. You don't have to be a young kid growing up impoverished in Moldova. You can use Twitter to keep in touch with people you actually know, and you'll know things about them that will bring smiles to your face year after year.

A larger post will come. I need to work on some other project, then I'll come back to this.

Parking

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Where to?

When I unexpectedly was laid off in late January, I wondered "what
next?" I'm 36, so getting a bit long in the tooth to be starting over.
I liked what I was doing (online business development primarily in
reference publishing & eBooks) but my entrepreneurial drive was always
nagging me to get out the door... So that's where I'm at right now.
Looking for a job that's close to home while I take a walk and drive
these ideas out into the world.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

This album is stuck in our car CD player

And it's a great album.

Lately I'm needing some hipster fun, added into my daily nutritional
supplements...So we're going to the show.

Floating countertop

I constructed a temporary open table design out of 2x4s to house our
microwave a few years ago, but last night was inspired to take the
design one step further and create a wheeled 8' tall mobile linen
closet for our rather new walk in closet. My aim is to make it sturdy,
cheap, accessible, and multifunction. It will have doors on either side.

Friday, April 03, 2009