Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Went to Fry's this morning and picked up some things I can't get at a reasonable price in Mexico…. An 8-port gigabit switch, a new digital camera to replace my broken one (nothing special; a little 7.1 megapixel SD550), some cables, and a new laptop (not a replacement; I'm starting to rework the BME software to run on multiple machines since both Phil and I are processing images). It all fits in my luggage, but wow is my backpack laptop bag heavy with two multi-drive 17″ laptops!

Other than that it's really nice here at Barry's place in the mountains… Big trees, lucious undergrowth, great hiking, quiet, stars, misting rain, and we just saw a deer wandering peacefully across the back yard. I love visiting here, but at the same time it's really heartbreaking because it's a place I'd love to stay but without either big changes in the way BME is run (and changes that I think would be destructive to its spirit), or some serious personal risks for Rachel and/or me, we're exiles that are just barely tolerated as visitors. One day I believe America will straighten out and become more tolerant to this stuff and I can stop forcing my family to become involuntary expats because of the path I've chosen in life.

I'm going to try and get a members update posted tonight or in the morning but this laptop (my development machine; I can't prep the other one on the road) is getting really really low on drivespace (it's got a RAID-mirrored pair of 75 gig drives, so not a lot to work with)… I have only a few hundred meg of wiggle room, and members updates often modify gigabytes of files so it may not be possible. I'll do my best but in a worst case scenario it'll get pushed back to Wednesday. I'm very sorry if that happens.

PS. No, we did not shoot the deer!