Russell Beattie

I'm hanging out at the breakfast table drinking my coffee and browsing my Bloglines subscriptions while Alex eats his toast and watches Maisy. Ana's in the kitchen determined to make juice from the oranges that came from our tree out back. Alex doesn't like pulp, so I think it might be an effort in futility but we'll see. Oh, I'm now eating a banana (we bought those.)

The newspaper is sitting out in the front of the driveway still... The San Jose Mercury News insisted on sending us two weeks free - most of the time they rarely leave their blue plastic bags. Having spent a few years learning everything there is to know about publishing a newspaper this is somewhat sad. I knew how to do everything from writing news and creating ads to loading 800lb rolls of newspaper onto a four color printing press, filling the ink wells with globs of sticky newspaper ink and fixing the folders. Now I'm just generally annoyed when I have to handle a newspaper. Both because it's so big and uncomfortable (I still don't understand why American newspapers stick to such a huge format and don't go to a tab like the Christian Science Monitor) and because of the general choice of front-page news. Today it's "How to Snoop on your Kids" and more about Barry Bonds surrounding a big feature on Faith and Culture. Ugh.

Ana's got done with the juice (Alex isn't drinking it) and she just looked at Maisy, and at me typing, and then walked out to the end of the drive to get the newspapers - which is how I know the headlines. Oh! I'm writing all this and I forgot about the inserts! (I love the inserts - I guess print isn't dead yet). Ana's now reading the Ikea catalog. Our house is completely furnished with early 21st century Ikea. God I hope she doesn't see anything else she likes, I have an enormous box in the bedroom still waiting for me to put together. It's a huge drawer set which is going to take hours to assemble. It's been sitting there for two weeks. I've also got an outside table and chairs set to put together as well. It's going to be great to go with the barbecue. Wait did I write about the gas grill we got a few weeks ago? It's awesome. I love this whole domestic stuff. (After it's all put together of course).

By the way, I'm writing this on my new 15" PowerBook G4 I got for work. I've finally done the complete switch to the Mac and am very happy! (Jeez, how long did that take me?) This particular laptop is amazing - I mean, it's so well made it's incredible. And it's great for development - it comes with Apache, Perl, Python, PHP and more already pre-installed, and as you know Mac OSX is Unix, so it's just a joy to work on. I haven't had a light laptop with decent battery life for years! It's so nice to get up, grab the computer and head out to the living room to drink my coffee and browse the web. I guess this is the modern equivalent of reading the morning newspaper (where's my pipe?). The other thing that's nice is that I don't have to "context switch" any more. I have my Mac mini at home and my PowerBook at work and I don't have to think about Windows any more at all (well, for the most part). Elle thinks that PowerBook owners are poseurs (Mike just got one too) but I disagree - I haven't felt this productive in years. I definitely need to publish a list of my essential Mac apps sometime soon.

Anyways, we had a little Easter Egg hunt for Alex this morning in the back yard. It's a bit chilly and damp this morning, but Alex didn't seem to mind. We got him a little playset as well which he was enjoying. I'd love to say its because we're such great parents, but it's really so we don't have to trek down to the park two times a day when Alex is bored in the afternoon. Now we have to find some little playmates for him to hang out with and we'll be all set.

Okay, back to my news...

-Russ