Tuesday, November 01, 2005

For My Grandfather Today, November 1, is my grandfather's birthday.  He turns the young age of 76.  He is not the emotional type, and he has always been the stern voice I have known since I was a kid.  He spent over 20 years in the US Navy, and then he returned to private life to begin a contracting business in Glen Burnie.  He ran that for a few years with my father and uncle before he and my grandmother retired to Ocean Pines in 1986.  The retirement life did not last too long for my grandparents--shortly thereafter they began working again.  My grandfather returned to the contracting business--doing finish trim work--and my grandmother worked at the cafeteria at Stephen Decatur High School.  As both of them got older, they gave up these jobs for other reasons--my grandmother's health created some difficulty in working and my grandfather was starting to get to the point where he really should not be doing that kind of work anymore.  For my grandfather, it became hard to read the marks on the measuring tape when you are laying out the railing for a staircase.  Later this month--12 November--it will be two years since the death of my grandmother.  If my grandmother had not passed away, last year would have been their 50th wedding anniversary.  My grandfather has occasionally mentioned how he misses my grandmother, and he is certainly not alone in feeling that way.  The good part is that he is surrounded by family--my uncle, great-uncle, and some in-laws all live in Ocean Pines as well.  Although he is missing a large part of his life, he is still the stubborn and proud man I grew up with.  The purpose of this post--knowing that my grandfather will probably never read it since he uses his computer for games of Solitaire while in the company office--is to have a somewhat permanent thanks to he and my grandmother.  I owe both of them for who I am and where I am today.  Given the family issues I had (and continue to have), my grandparents stepped into the breach when I needed them the most.  I know my mother was a bit jealous of this, but she finally realized that my grandparents were doing what they thought was right.  My grandparents helped me through college at Boston U. and through grad school at Maryland.  My first car was their old Buick Regal, and they helped me occasionally with that car as well.  When I was studying abroad in Oxford, they helped to fund my experience there.  They even joined me during our break in the program, spending a few days in Oxford and taking a tour of London with the program participants.  I still maintain the weekly phonecall tradition I started as a freshman in college--once a week, I call home.  My grandfather--and to some extent my uncle--have become my surrogate parents.  I probably have not said it enough to him, but I would not be the man I am today had it not been for the love and guidance I received from he and my grandmother.  I know I am one of those lucky few to still have their grandparents around, but I do appreciate my time with him.  To this day, with me now in my thirties, my grandfather still calls me his "bud" and I call him my Pop-Pop.  So, to my Pop-Pop, from your "bud," Happy Birthday.  May there be many more to enjoy.  12:44:07 PM    comment []  trackback []

Make Windows Clipboard Useful In my usual massive intake of technical news, I came across this pretty interesting tool that expands the Clipboard in Windows immensely.  Instead of just containing the last item you copied, the clipboard contains as many items as you can configure the little applet to handle.  Omar Shahine recommended a cool little applet, clcl.  It was in response to a query by Jeff Attwood who was wondering why the clipboard in Windows was so woefully underpowered in this day and age of 3.x Ghz processors and gigabytes of RAM.   I took a look at it, but then I saw Jeff's post about what he discovered.  I installed clcl, but it requires very minor manual intervention that was quite trivial--place a shortcut to the executable in your Startup folder.  Based on Jeff's research I installed and started using ClipX.  It has a nice handy installer, and it also has a plugins feature to allow for update notifications, among other expansions.  It now sits happily in my system tray, allowing me to bend the Windows clipboard to my will.  12:02:25 PM    comment []  trackback []