The average computer user, even those fairly knowledgeable about their computer, contemplates their computer as much more than a tool for browsing the web, updating various digital music players (iPod, Zune, Creative...etc), playing games, keeping various documents (various media, text, spread sheets, power points...etc) or communicating with friends and family. Even as one ascends up computer literary hierarchy and associated knowledge base people are still prone to miss innovative computing solutions that they may wish to either participate in or help design. Although there are a myriad of options available none of them are both as useful and interesting, in my honest opinion, as volunteer computing.

            “I don’t think it’s going to happen today, Madeleine.  I’m meeting a friend in town for lunch.”

            It was a bright day yesterday, the second of September, and I decided to spend a little time getting some sun, while I still could.  I had just started working on a new story for Country Folks – a profile of a sheep farm – so I took my voice recorder out with me.  I could wander around in the sunshine and go over the previous day’s interview at the same time.  How efficient!  It almost made me feel like I was working. 

It seems to me that McCain is treading on thin ice with his constant questioning of Obama’s judgment. For openers, what does his constant stream of ad hominem attack ads say about his judgment? But much beyond that, McCain should take another look at his own judgment – experience notwithstanding.   

Many years ago I knew a guy named Alan. We were both regulars at the Nelson Coffeehouse, where he would often play the banjo. In spite of that we become friends. For his day job, Alan was a minister in one of those pristine white churches that characterize our small New England villages. He seemed to enjoy his work, and I suspect he did okay at it. At the time he was also going to graduate school, to become qualified as a therapist, and his rationale was thus: he was on the threshold of being forty, and he was predicting that some time in the next decade he was going go have a mid-life crises which would, among other things, create a desire for a career change. He wanted to have alternative credentials in the bag so that when that happened, he could just turnkey into his new line of work.

 Get up predawn - go out, eat breakfast, back to bed and wait for sunrise.

Get up bwtween 7:30 and 9:30AM.  If I am not up by 9:30 my friends demand that I get Up and get going!

            Just last night, our new exchange student from Croatia told me how he wanted to keep a raven – as a pet – once he got his own place someday.  Just a few hours before, I had read Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy,” the poem that gave Maya Angelou the title for her autobiography: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  (http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Paul-Laurence-Dunbar/15528)  Our exchange student loves ravens and loves Edgar Allen Poe.  I love ravens, too, and can understand Poe’s appeal.  Hoping our shared appreciations would give me passage into his belief structure, I ventured a question, “Do you think this kind of bird would be happy in a cage?”  “Oh, I would let it out three times a day,” he replied.

A quick clarification, yesterday's entry was written by Dave, not Barb.  We are sharing this blog, so sometimes you will get the witty Barb and other times the plodding Dave.  I've got to go to bed, it's after 9:00pm and morning is coming.  By the way, thanks for the positive no rain thoughts.  The hay got into the barn without getting soaked. 

From Farmer Dave: Got up early.  Yes, it’s true, most farmers get up early.  Although based on the traffic going by the house in the dark hours, lots of non-farmers are getting up early too.  Milked and fed the cows, fed the pigs, chickens, turkeys and sheep… no milking involved there.  Put the milk away, washed the milker and got the milk in the cooler.  No bottle washing today.  Let me tell you, want to score points with your farmer, return your bottles in a timely fashion.  Want to really score points, return them clean.  Yep, that really does it.  Nothing kills the joy of a morning like having to wash bottles.  

For only the second time, I am watching a Presidential election without my father Marvin Braiterman (1925-2004).  We bonded over politics, even more than baseball, though we didn't always agree.  He respected me for disagreeing. I'm remebering him now, and reading a book about other people's memories of their fathers.