It has been a little over six years since we converted our old webpages to the WordPress publishing platform and started to blog. We try to have a new post up every day - some of them conservative political content, some of them about family activities and some of them posting Damsel’s photos. In fact, the first three posts from September 2005 were one of each type of post.

• My reply to Diane Feinstein’s ‘NO’ Vote on Judge Roberts
• The Famous Salvation Army Doughnut
• Damsel Sends You a Lovely Gardenia

The image at the right is the first of Damsel’s lovely flowers posted here.

Using smilies or emoticons on Wordpress® weblog sites. The table above summarizes the little graphic images available to bloggers and commenters on sites that use the Wordpress publishing platform. We. of course, have been using it for several years. Feel free to include any of these in your comments here or on the other blog. Click on the image above to enlarge.

We reported on our temporary cable installation over two weeks ago. A crew finally showed up today to dig the permanent trench and install the conduit to house the cable.

We were surprised by the extent of the installation process. Three men showed up with sophisticated equipment and had the entire job completed in less than three hours.

They had a pneumatic tool that bored holes through the earth, a pneumatic earth compactor and a gas-powered trench digger that cut an eight inch by one foot deep trench 30 feet long in less then five minutes. Damsel photographed the trench digger while it was in action. Click on the image to enlarge.

Our internet and CATV is working just fine now, without the worry that one of the trucks bringing materials for our new courtyard will damage the cable that was buried in a shallow trench and had surfaced in some places on the road in front of the house.

I think this is a pyrrhuloxia or cardinalis sinuatis, according to an image I see in my “Birds of Arizona” booklet. I wonder why ornithologists come up with all those gigantic, unpronounceable names for pretty little birds like this one?

The colorful little bird, let’s call it a Casandro Cardinal for now, perched briefly in the creosote by the road before flying down to get some of the wild critter food that I put out this morning. We also saw cottontail, jackrabbits, desert chipmunks, quail and a couple of days ago, we saw a mule deer bounding through the rear of our lot.

Last night, the coyotes serenaded us with howls and barks. Quite a change from the South Bay suburbs. I like it!

Footnote from Cap’n Bob:

This morning, the Site Meter ticked over 400,000 visits. Thanks to everybody for reading us over the years.

I felt sorry for the technician who performed the installation because he had to install a temporary coaxial cable in a trench he had to dig because the PVC pipe to the cable terminal was blocked. The company will send a special unit later this week to complete the permanent installation.

But, as of today, we have our high speed internet and can watch the BCS college championship game between Oregon and Auburn!

When I first spotted this in traffic on I-405 near LAX, I wondered “What’s a red soccer ball doing on the freeway?” It turned out to be one of Google’s fleet of spy cameras gathering way more information about you and your property than you might want other people to have. And they don’t seem very timid about letting you know what they’re doing. Click on the image to enlarge.

We’re in Arizona this week doing chores for the new house, so blogging will be light. We did not post yesterday because someone (maybe it was me) forgot to pack up the AC power converter/charger for the laptop. Damsel had hers with her but it isn’t compatible with my laptop. Since the battery only lasts about two hours (even with the low power settings), I budgeted the time for downloading Damsel’s photos and updating the money program.

Today, we drove to Surprise, AZ to a Radio Shack store to pick up a universal AC supply manufactured by iGo (seen at right). While we were in the store, I made them open up the package and demonstrate that it was equivalent to the charger I inadvertently left in California. Bottom line is that we’re good to go.

We observed good progress on our new Arizona house. You can see it on the other blog.

About thirty years ago, I worked in the Preliminary Design Department for a major toy manufacturer. Part of the daily routine on the development team was to play with contemporary games and toys to foster a sense of what kids might like. I remember one of the popular video games at the time was Space Invaders, where alien ships entered the atmosphere and it was the game player’s job to shoot ‘em down.

Since I am interested in development of on-line applications, I subscribe to a blog where Flash™ animation development is discussed. Last week there was a post about a game submitted to the developer’s forum called SWiSH Invaders. It is strongly reminiscent of the game I played (and was never very good at) 30 years ago. I post the game here for your amusement and, if you happen to remember that game, nostalgia.

Link to the on-line game is here.

Interesting . . .

Hat tip: Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin.

From National Review Online - Charles Krauthammer’s take on the Postal Service:

I’m kind of old-school. I like the delivery. I like the snow and sleet and time of day and all of that.

Look, it’s very obvious that you can’t privatize this. Three studies have looked at the postal service. Because of the new technology there is no entrepreneur in his right mind who would purchase it. So it’s going to be on the government dole forever.

The question is, is it completely obsolete? Look, it has one mandate which other private services don’t have. It has to reach every tiny hamlet everywhere in the country no matter what. It’s got to be universal. So that’s a slight handicap that the private companies don’t have.

Its main handicap, of course, is the crushing labor union contracts and the new technology, especially e-mail, which makes most of what it does obsolete. So that’s why it runs a huge deficit.

But, look, anything that is in Article 1 Section 8 of our constitution, anything that Madison had waxed enthusiastic about it in Federalist 42 — the postal roads that have kept us together — as an old-school guy, I don’t want to see it die.

As a conservative who believes in the market, it ought to die, but as a conservative that believes in tradition and stuff that really holds us together, I would subsidize until it dies a natural death in the next generation. But for old guys like me, keep it going for a while. …

[As for] the hard-hearted younger generation — well, if you ever got a sweet-smelling love letter at 17, you’d feel otherwise. Of course, I never did, but somebody did.

You can’t smell your e-mail.