Ever drive down the highway and think about all the
stone that makes up the road?
Think of it — the highway is miles long and nearly
a foot thick.
Think of how many mountains of rock were dug up and
amd trucked around.

If you go flying much, you do see missing mountains.
Around every major city, there is at least one
hole where a hill used to be.

There were plays at my son’s
school tonight.
They are excellent actors.
And, it’s hard to pull off a scene with an ice pick in your head.

You people in the rest of the United States probably won’t
believe it, but, here in Oregon, we don’t pump our own gas.
Yes, we sit in our car and a trained Fuel Technician puts
the gas in our cars.
In fact, it is illegal for people to pump their own gas.

On my
trip to New York
,
I had to refill the rental car and there, on the pump
handle was an ad.
Service stations are getting like athletic stadiums:
every flat surface is covered with advertisements
(although, stadiums have most things beat with those
rotating ad panels so they can get more than one
ad on a surface.)

And this gas station ad wasn’t for a gas additive or
similar. It was for spam software.
Just what I’m thinking of when I’m pumping gas.

My son is growing up and it is getting to be time to
go off to college.
Part of this ritual is visiting colleges and getting
the vib of the campus — one doesn’t want to spend
a year living somewhere one hates.

So, this weekend, we travelled to New York and
visited
Rochester Institute of Technology
(”RIT”)
and
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(”RPI”).
You can tell my son is into engineering.

Check out the
pictures and commentary
of the colleges.

I haven’t been making any blog entries because work has been driving me crazy and I have been travelling a bunch recently.
Monday through Wednesday of this week, I was in Palo Alto, California.
Deep in Silicon Valley.
As proof, I present the picture at left which shows that, along with the chips and candy bars, the hotel vending machine included flash memory and blanks CDs.

The rest of the week, I’m flying to the east coast to accompany my son on visits to universities.
He is a high school senior and next year he (and piles of my money) leave the nest.
I’ll post some updates as we travel.