I took some nice pictures of the snow this morning – check ’em out here. It’s still snowing. And my company’s moving today. In the snow. Without movers. Ugh.

I saw several amusing things on my walk from Harvard Square to Porter last night, including:

• A sign that read: “No parking. Violators will be towed perfunctorily.” Only in Cambridge, I fear.
• A rabbit in the front yard of a real estate office. I don’t think it was a pet (no leash), but I could be wrong. It was pretty happily enjoying its meal of grass.
• A book of palindrome cartoons, including one captioned “Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.“

The other day, as I was riding the T, the train conductor on the red line accidentally drove past a stop! Not just a little bit, either – we flew through Harvard Square, and didn’t stop ’til the whole train was well past the station. There was a bit of backing and forthing between the train operator and the central dispatch, as evidenced by the backing up and advancing of the train. In the end, though, we skipped Harvard and went to Porter. Asleep at the wheel of the train? That’s no good at all…

I got this email from a friend of mine. It’s sadly not a useful way to protest terrorism/bad foreign policy in the Middle East, but there are some easy ways that you can change things instead:

• Buy less gas. Duh. Try not to drive everywhere. Sell your car if you can, drive it less if you can’t. Bike instead.
• Write your representatives and tell them you want:
  • less dependence on foreign oil
  • less dependence on non-renewable energy sources in general
  • stricter regulations on fuel consumption for automobiles (some SUV’s get less than 18 mpg)
  • more money for research into alternate energy sources (bio-diesel, electric/hybrid cars, etc.)

  It’s easy to write them. See: Write your Congressperson -and- your senator.

• Tell your friends to write their representatives.

This message brought to you by your local enraged citizen sick of money & politics getting in the way of a better society.

I updated the Projects page with a new project: the Homemade Yarn Swift. Ta-da!

In other news, I’ve spent about a day working on my home computer (an iMac). Figuring I should be at least close to up-to-date, I installed Mac OS X. This was not, however, a trivial undertaking. In moving from version 9.0 to 10.2, I was required to individually install versions 9.1, 9.2, 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2. Now Apple, is there really no possible way to have one installer do that for me? I spent about 8 hours in front of my computer to do this (granted it worked like a charm), and I actually know what I’m doing when it comes to computers. There were a few times (when I tried to skip a version, &c;) when the installer spat out cryptic messages (e.g. You can’t install this software on that disk – well, why not?) and I guessed what it meant. Overall, though, I’m happy with the new interface & applications, and still would recommend Mac’s over Windows machines these days.

I also managed to hook up the motor encoder from the robot arm to an oscilloscope at work today, and determined that it’s a pretty standard encoder. I’ll post some links & info on the Robot Arm page in the next few days.