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In need of a cool picnic spot

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Three picnic tables in a park after a fresh snowfall. The tables are covered with about 8 inches of snow.

While I do enjoy the warmer weather of summer, when it’s hot and muggy for extended periods of time (like it has been in Madison), my thoughts turn to winter. I would much rather deal with below zero temperatures than it being in the humid 90’s.

Sadly, these heat dome conditions are only going to keep happening with more frequency, thanks to human-induced climate change. I wonder if, as a society, we’re ever going to wake up and do something about it.

Longfellow’s laughing Allegra

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I was telling some friends about my Mom’s situation (currently in hospital), and they asked about her name (which is Allegra). When they asked me where the name came from, I didn’t know.

So today when I stopped by to visit Mom, I asked her if she knew how her parents chose her name. Mom said she believed it came from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who had a daughter named Allegra.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

Mom told me she heard this story much later in life, from her sister. Apparently there is some question as to how true it is. Nevertheless, I thought it was an interesting story and worthy of posting here.

If you’d like to read the entire poem, here’s a link to The Children’s Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

R.I.P. Exec-PC

I signed up with a new ISP the other day. It felt a little weird as I’ve had the same ISP for seven years. Unfortunately, because of corporate buy-outs which led to bad service at inflated prices I was ready to leave. It’s a real shame. Long before the Internet was available to the mass public I was a member of Exec-PC BBS (a computer Bulletin Board Service). Even though the Internet has Flash animations, fancy graphics and a global community, somehow it was more fun reading simple text only messages and exchanging files with a local community of users. I think it was around eight years ago, they began to offer Internet service and it had the same high quality as the BBS. Five years later Exec-PC became the largest ISP in the midwest and the owner decided to sell his company (a good decision, I would have done the same). Service has been on a steady decline since. I am especially pleased about one thing though — all the sleazy, scum-sucking spammers have yet another dead e-mail address in their databases.