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I’m having a challenge trying to identify the Sear electric pencil sharpener in the attached photos.

It’s 5 1/8” tall, 6” wide, 8” deep and weighs 7.5 lbs. I’m certain it dates back to at least 1970 (it was my father’s). I’d really like to find it’s date of manufacture and eventually find it in a catalog.

It works fine, by the way. I just needed to lubricate it a little. It produces a very narrow angled pencil point, maybe 16 degrees (but I’m not sure).

The other day we drove from Salt Lake City to Wendover, NV. Take a look at the satellite view of the route. The big white spot, outside of Wendover, is the salt flats, where they race cars. There’s a section of I-80 about 50 miles long that’s perfectly straight, new and in great shape with very little traffic.

My wife acquiesced to my request to have fun with the car. With the only traffic a mile or so ahead, I clicked the transmission into sport mode and lit the afterburners. I’d had the cruise control at 88, the speed limit is 75. I’ve talked with a highway patrol officer in Wendover (at the blackjack table) who said they really don’t pull people over unless they’re going over 100 out there.

The car leapt from 88 to 120 in a heartbeat, a few seconds at most. At around 125-130, it started to labor a little. I kept it floored. We were doing about 130 when we passed the semi-truck. The car is electronically limited to 147. When I hit 140 my adrenaline told me to let go. It took surprisingly long to go from 140 to back under 90, and a little longer for my heart rate to return to normal.

I don’t drive my car fast all the time, but do enjoy spirited jolts now and then. 140 is now the fastest I’ve been in a car. My brother’s hot rod ’66 Mustang had taken me to 135 many years ago behind the airport and I’ve been to at about 138 in a BMW on the German autobahn.

P.S. Don’t try this at home.

This is the last summer that the 3 youngest are all still in high school. Who knows what will happen next year, so we went all-out. Two weeks in Florida with my sister Sooz and her family and a 6 day cruise.

Saturday, July 19 – Linda, Katie and I arrived in West Palm Beach. CD and Connor flew in about 30 minutes after us. We all got settled at Sooz’s and hung out with Terry, Sam and Max.

Sunday – Hooked up with Sally and Jim. Went down to the waterfront for a nice lunch. Later, we went to go see mom. She’d taken a fall a few days earlier and was in a rehabilitation hospital. lots of stitches, looking pretty rough but in great spirits.

Monday – Sooz drove us down to Ft. Lauderdale to catch our cruise ship. Of course, the first thing you have to do is practice what to do if the ship sinks. That always throws me off…

Tuesday – Key West – We woke up with the ship already in port. A day of kayaking was in the cards for us. Linda really liked Key West. After a short drive, we settled into our kayaks and followed our guide through the mangroves around the islands and back. Much fun.

Wednesday – Cozumel – This was a day I was really looking forward to. We were destined to spend a few hours with the dolphins. A short bus ride got us to Chankanaab, a park of sorts, that had a large area with what seemed to be about 20 dolphins. After jumping in the water, we spent about 45 minutes playing with a dolphin. It started out with lots of petting and the dolphin showing off for us. Then we each took turns doing 3 different things. First, we’d do the whole “pose for the camera while the dolphin ‘kisses’ your cheek”. Then it got fun. We’d swim out about 60 feet and the dolphin would come up to us and roll over, then we’d grab the bottom fins and he’d pull us back – fast. Finally, we’d swim out with a boogie board, lay on it, and the dolphin would push us back with his nose against the bottom of our foot. It was really cool and he’d get cruising.

Thursday – Belize – This time the boat anchored offshore and we took a tender to the port in Belize City. An hour’s bus ride took us through a lot of diversity. A hurricane had been through just a few days before us and things looked a little weathered. We arrived in the jungle and first went tubing through a cave. It was pretty cool. It was very, very dark, but we had these strap-on lights on our heads to see with. Then we had a quick lunch and headed up to the jungle canopy for our zip line rides. There were 7 or 8 of them. In a couple of cases, you couldn’t see the ground, the sky or the other end of the zip line because it was so dense. We had a blast.

Friday – We had a nice, peaceful day at sea. We all mostly just hung out, relaxed and prepared ourselves for being back in the world of the living.

Saturday – Back home at the Clark’s, we had a very lazy day catching up on our rest!

Week 2 – Was pretty much as vacation blur. Highlights:

• Saw mom a bunch of times. She’s looking a lot better and finally got settled into a new place where she can get some extra care.
• Hit the beach a couple of times.
• Played Rock Band a lot. Sam’s incredibly good on the drums.
• Went swimming in the pool just about every day. Sometimes twice.
• Made tacos for dinner just like dad did (fried the shells ourselves).
• Sam taught Katie to play the guitar (a real one).
• Spend a day on the water taxi in Ft. Lauderdale (loved it).
• Amy came over for a couple of days.

Sooz, Terry, Sam and Max were all wonderful hosts (many thanks). We all had a fabulous time!

We got a Tivo HD about a year ago. We never watched much TV before that. Now we get to watch what we want when we want. But the Tivo can only store so much on its internal hard disk. So, I decided to upgrade the 160GB drive to 750gb. I ordered the special hard drive and found a good guide on the process here. I used WinMFS to transfer all the data around. Once I got everything hooked up, the data transfer took about 45 minutes. Now our TiVO is very happy and we don’t have to delete shows to make room for new stuff.

And it seems you can be too if you’re willing to spend a few days with your favorite video game console. We got Guitar Hero 3 on the Wii for Christmas. It’s the first guitar game in our house, but we’ve played Dance Dance Revolution (controller pad as a mat on the floor that you “dance” on) and Singstar (sing along with a microphone).

The basic idea of Guitar Hero is that you have a controller shaped like a guitar. You press buttons located on the neck of the “controller” and strike a “strum bar” in time with the “notes” on the screen.

I’m not rhythmically inclined. As a child, my piano teacher suggested I find another calling. For me, and the many people in the word like me, the game enables some type of participation in the music world that has never been available before. Even Linda and Katie (who are both miraculous on the piano) enjoy the game (and are far better than I).

The game quickly became very popular in our house. So much so that we went and got Rock Band for our PS/2. Same idea, but now you have 2 guitars, a drum kit and a microphone. A whole rock band. Personally, I like the Fender Stratocaster controller from Rock Band more than the Les Paul controller from Guitar Hero.

So, here’s the score: Connor is a beast, Katie is very good, Linda is great, I’m okay and CD’s getting better.

We had a great Christmas this year. CD & Connor came out. It snowed. Half of us ended up getting sick…

CD got sick first, then Connor and then me. That part wasn’t very fun. We played spoons. I never realized how bloody things could get when you play with girls that have nails. CD and I went skiing up at Alta, but it was too cold (-4 F) to last very long.

Linda got me Guitar Hero for my Wii. I’ve never really been very rhythmic, but it’s sure fun to be a rock star in a video game. Connor is beastly good, Katie is great and the rest of us are still catching up.

After the kids went home, Linda, Katie and I headed to Las Vegas to see Linda’s mom Chris and to see circ de soleil.

Check out the Christmas pictures here.

CD and Connor came out this summer and we headed to San Diego for a few days of relaxation on the beach. We stayed in La Jolla, rode bikes around Mission Bay and learned to surf as well.

Linda wanted to hit Nevada for her birthday weekend.  Mesquite is about 4 hours away, so we jumped in the car.  We took our bikes too. Mesquite is pretty much an island of green in the middle of the desert. There are about 4 casinos, a spa and all that kind of stuff.  It gets very hot during the day in the summer – about 110 most days. We rode our bikes early in the morning. The two rides were took are here and here. In the last 30 minutes before heading home, I was dealt 2 three-of-a-kind hands in 3 card poker. That just about paid for the whole trip!

I got an iPhone last weekend. Yes, I waited in line, and it was kind of fun. I want to say a few things about it.

First, this is the single most elegant computing device I’ve ever seen. This thing is not just a new cell phone, it’s a completely different tiny handheld computer that happens to have an awesome cell phone (and a gorgeous display). My RAZR had some kind of web access support, but I never used it because it was painful. This thing has a real browser like a PC does. Do you know which number you press while listening to your voice mail to rewind just a little bit? Neither do I, and now I’ll never need to know because the iphone gives me a slider bar that I can move around to hear any part of the message I want. That’s how radically different this is.

A lot has been said about the iPhone in reviews and in online forums. To its detractors, I ask: show me a better device. Silence will follow. You may find a few specific things that can be done better by other devices, but nothing even comes close to the iPhone’s combination of functionality and user experience.

If you want to know more about it, there are plenty of reviews all over the internet; I think the one at engadget is probably the most complete.

Linda and I rode the MS-150 this past weekend. The MS Society puts on a very nice event and raised over a million dollars for research. We rode about 77 miles on Saturday and around 72 on Sunday. We saw lots of old friends and made several new ones.

You can see the route for both days combined here

150 miles on back to back days takes some real work. The first day went pretty well, we spent about 4 hours and 43 minutes riding. On Sunday there’s a long climb up to Hardware Ranch so our average speed was a little little lower. Sunday’s total riding time was 4:47.