In my humble view, Mom makes the best beet soup. I have sampled other beet soup across this country and even in London. But there is nothing like her beet soup. While visiting with Mom at her home in Florida, our conversation drifted towards food and our favorite dishes. I brought up her beet soup…. I got her to divulge her secret recipe. This is not something she has written down… it is something she just knows how to make. Mom is a spry 86 years young. Cooking to her is something that is just part of a person. There is no such thing as a recipe. Its just a bit of this and a pinch of that and bake, warm, or boil till done. Any way here is the recipe:

BEET SOUP
2 – fatty pork steaks
4 – qt.’s water
6 – allspice seeds
1 – large onion

Boil these together until the port falls off the bone. About 2+ hours.

Add:

6 – jars of pickled beets
1/4 – cup vinegar

Simmer for 1 hour.

MIX slowly into soup, so as not to curdle or lump

1/2 – carton sour cream
1 – tbls. flour

Simmer for 1/2 hour.

Best served over home made egg noodles. However, I find it wonderful just plain, or over store bought noodles.

CAUTION:
This soup is very addictive. One bowl and you may be hooked for life.

The third iPod failed. I brought this unit home. Connected it to my G4 and loaded 4.7 G of music. Everything seemed normal. The unit played well, and operated flawlessly. Two days later, I attempted to listen to some music and found the iPod dead. It was fully charged. Didn’t seem right. That evening I plugged it into my G4. Noted that it started to charge. After a couple of hours I noticed its screen was cycling between the Apple logo and blank screen. Also that iTunes had not opened. The Mac did not recognize the iPod. Attempted a hard reset of the iPod but nothing. Took it back to the Apple store the following day. The unit was dead when they opened the box. I could not get it to respond so it just sat and cycle itself until the battery went dead. The folks at Apple plugged it in and it worked OK for them . They used the wall plug to charge the unit. We discussed that the problem could be with my G4. However, the G4 is new and my old style iPod had no problems with it. Once again Apple replaced my iPod. I am getting good at opening the iPod box and installing music. After installing the music I charged the iPod for several hours using the wall charger. After charging I found it played fine. The next morning it still worked. Later that morning I flew to Tampa, Fl and used it for three hours with no problem. The following day it still played OK. Maybe the fourth time is the charm…..of course I have not attempted to recharge the unit

Sold my 20 G iPod on eBay and purchased a new 10 G unit. The new form factor, particularly the addition of the base and its ability to remain plugged into my home stereo, and of course the new look enticed me to make the change. Moving from a 20 G to 10 G was not an issue. All of my music plus some critical files and contact information account for only 4.7 G. I can double my existing audio library and still not exceed the capacity of this unit. When I got the first unit home, I found that the contrast control had to be set to its minimum value to get an acceptable screen. Also noted the sound control had to be set at almost full range for adequate sound. When I took the unit to work the next day, it died after only one hour of use. Charged it up that night using the charger. However, the battery wouldn’t take a charge. Our local Apple store replaced this unit. The second iPod, seemed to work OK. However, did notice the contrast control had to be set to minimum for proper viewing. Even when set to minimum there were a series of dark ripples extending from the left side of the screen. While loading it up I discovered a fatal flaw. There was a piece of crud on the display behind the screen cover. It actually looked like a piece of white plastic case material. Once Again the folks at the Apple store replace the unit. This latest one is great. The contrast and volume control work just as expected. The battery takes a charge and holds it. The screen looks crystal clear. Once again I am in love with my iPod.

Installed Apple Works 6.2.2 and upgraded it to the latest version 6.2.7….. With the latest announcement that Microsoft will no longer support/upgrade IE5 for the Mac the hand writing is on the wall in clear bold letters. Microsoft’s software support for Mac is going, going, gone….. Expect we will next hear about Virtual PC and Microsoft Office. So… for me its time to start using Apple Works. I have never used it. Every time I purchase a new Mac with Apple Works installed….. I send it to the trash and load up Microsoft Office. So far I find that Apple Works has a clean interface, and lets me save documents in Word format. I am sure there are plenty of i-got-you’s in this process….. but might as well start learning now. I loaded a Word doc file. Noticed the header was missing. When I attempted to insert a new header Apple Works displayed this option grayed out. I created Apple Works doc, inserted a header, and saved it as a Word doc, and opened it in Microsoft Office. The header was there. So…. seem that if you create a header in Apple Works it successfully moves to Word. But if you create a header in Word it gets lost on its way to Apple Works.

For the past three weeks I have dedicated myself to really learning C#. Now I have used C# on a couple of projects. Its not difficult to code. However, just felt that with a little better foundation I could code more efficiently. So… I picked up an O’Reilly book titled Programming C# by Jesse Liberty. This is a very good book. It’s a crisp 608 pages in length. Currently I am on page 288. Throughout I have found the text clear and to the point. The sequence of subject matter presented is logical and builds on what was previously covered. When complete, I am confident that my objective of becoming a better C# coder will be achieved. I really like C#…to bad there is no CLR for the Mac.

All of my C# development is on a Mac Duel 1 G G4 using Visual Studio running under OS X 10.2.6 and Virtual PC. I love my Mac… with Virtual PC I don’t have keep a PC around for windows projects or testing. The only downside is that windows applications run a little slower then on the 1.8 G PC I use at work. To bad there is just no work for Mac developers, at least not in my area, (Phoenix, AZ). The demand here is for C# developers. So C# it is.

Our latest family addition makes his entry into the world May 27, 2003. He is a beautiful addition and one more grandchild to spoil.

Ran across an interesting JavaScript anomaly at work today. We have instances where we want to limit the number of days worth of data that our customers can select for inclusion in a report. It’s a function of resource loading. To implement these controls, I wrote a JavaScript function, which just looked at the selected start and end dates and figured out what the difference was in days. If the delta was to big, the user received a message and was given the opportunity to change the date range. Nothing really fancy just used the date and time methods in JavaScript. The anomaly occurred when I tested its functionality. For the same input dates the function calculated different delta days when run on IE under Win2000 and Netscape 7.0 on Mac OS X 10.1. The difference was one day. Who would of thought that these implementations of JavaScript would do that? Wonder where else this is a problem and how it is impacting our other code.

Its over, the relationship with the Newton has ended. It was a whirlwind experience. It started with a stumble into splorp.blog along with some lurking on Newtontalk. I was totally hooked. Purchased my first Newton from eBay. When it arrived it was instant love. This device was everything I had come to expect and more. I even started this blog to conical the Newton experience. From the information gleaned at Newtontalk and the many sites it referenced I was able to configure my Newton to connect with my G4 via serial cable, ethernet, and 802.11b. Even managed to post to my blog with the little guy. I was happy. I was content. Sold my Handspring Visor and Jornada on eBay and went totally Newton. The problem started when Palm released the Tungsten C. The advertisement caught my eye. Thought this might be the 802.11b magic I was looking for and I bought one. The intent was to just try it out then return it. It couldn’t possible compete with my Newton. As expected, it could not compete and I returned it as planned. Unfortunately I returned it for a Tungsten T. Just wanted to check it out. Well, now my Newton’s are gone and I’m a Tungsten T guy. The Newton is still a very remarkable devise, but for me the Tungsten T just does it.

Well, I did it. Went out and picked up a Tungsten C PDA. Found it to be a really slick device. Nice bright colorful screen. Built in 802.11b, which connected to my airport with zero effort. The provided browser worked well. Displayed any site. Of course with your average site you only see a small part of the page. Sites designed for PDA’s were great. Had a terrible time getting the unit to sync. Don’t know what I did that finally got it to work. Found that it used Grafiti 2 and had no traditional palm writing areas. It has a 400mhz processor and is fast. The screen is fantastic. However, Grafiti 2, no traditional writing area, and keypad were just too difficult. So returned it. However, did pick up a Tungsten T. Just had to check out the blue tooth feature. I use a Sony Ericson T68i phone and just love syncing with my G4 using blue tooth. The Tungsten T worked flawlessly. Synced on the first attempt. Blue tooth connected effortlessly. The screen is bright clear and colorful. It has a slower processor, but seems just as fast as the C. It has a traditional palm writing area, and the original Grafiti. Seems to do a much better job recognizing my handwriting then my old Handspring Visor. It is definitely easy to read. Really never expected to keep it. However, found it to be an excellent tool. Sadly, it has replaced my Newton as my primary information tool.