Dave Mancuso dot Com

I was skimming the Classmates.com message boards for my old hometown and I came across a thread regarding Munchkinville.

Munchkinville? What the heck is that? It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. A place in Ridley where the houses were munchkin-sized? Where was this all the time I was growing up?

So I asked my family and had the answer immediately. Munchkinville was a lane behind the houses across the street from me on Swarthmore Avenue. It was an alley with small houses, but the odd thing was that the doors and windows were very small; hobbit-sized, in fact. I walked down the alley once, but I’d forgotten all about it. My father told me that these houses had been built long ago as small vacation cottages for people from Philadelphia. My brother told me that he was in front of the houses once talking about them and a woman came out of a munchkin house yelling at him. “Normal people live here! Go away!”

Munchkinville is gone now, all but a few of the houses, and they have normal doors and windows. Here’s to a unique architectural and historical landmark.

I drove my mom to the Philly airport on Sunday to take her flight back home. As we motored through the Departures lane, I saw a section of the airport made of tan brick with a turqoise control tower. It was the original airport from way back in the ’60s. It looks strange, surrounded by the white concrete of the current airport.

I remember that my dad once said that all the original airport needed in the ’60s was carpeting. It had red brick floors back then. They added the carpet, but they didn’t stop there. They never stopped at all. They kept adding, and adding, and adding. I’ve never seen a structure that grew like this airport–it just swelled piece by piece until it became the huge behemoth that you see now.

Even the terminals speak to the piecemeal construction of this complex. The A terminal was the last to be built, years after terminals B through E. After it was finished, it still wasn’t enough, and they had to add a terminal before A. What do you call the letter before A? Well, in Philly they call it terminal A-East and now terminal A-West. Wow. I realize that it’s one of the largest airports around, but the thing has become massively unwieldy.

Here’s another weird fact. If you work in the part of the airport that’s in Philadelphia, you have city wage tax taken from your pay–three and a half percent or so. However, if your employer is in the part of the airport that’s in Delaware County, you have no city wage tax–it’s almost like a 3.5 percent raise (if you look at the bright side).

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving…mmmmm…Turkey…mmmmm…no, I won’t fall asl….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…turkey…mmmm….zzzzzzzz

So I’m installing Linux in between other things today. Start the PC with the boot CD. Click through the install screens. Stop dead at the “no network installed” message. Click backward through the screens to the network card option. Select the proper network card in the list. Stare at the next screen, “Enter parameters for the NIC.” Enter nothing. Go forward. Network fails. If I can’t install the network card, I can’t download the rest of the installation files to the PC.

Look around on the Internet. Apparently I need the documentation. The documentation is supposedly easily available, but exists nowhere in downloadable form.

Find the documentation, but you need to be running Linus already to download/install it.

Try several parameters blindly–IRQ, base address, hex numbers.

Find out later on that I don’t need to enter any parameters. Hmmm. Why didn’t it work then when I left it blank?

Later in the day, come back to click other options. Amazingly, using the Install with ACPI disabled option works. What is ACPI? A new power management standard for PCs, which seems to kill the network card. Clear as mud.

Leave it to download and continue the installation. Realize that it will fail, since I won’t be there to click through the next screen that comes up, since I’ll be home. It will drop the connection (it installs over the network).

Linux, easier than ever. Definitely a learning experience, but how could this ever be for the casual, everyday user?

I’m installing Linux one more time–the first time I’m installing it on a decent system that’s not obsolete. I think I’m going to work with KDE as the interface (for lack of a better word) rather than Gnome.

I came across this quote at http://people.etango.com/~awaite/blog/archives/000004.html:

“Then I found kde-look.org and went nuts. I practically have OSX emulated perfectly. That is a great and active community of graphically inclined enthusiasts!”

Dude, not to give credence to what Brad’s been telling me all along, but why don’t you just get a Macintosh?

Tonight Alyssa came home with us from day care acting surly. It was weird, and not like her. After a few minutes, Denise dragged out of her what was really bothering her.

Alyssa: Mommy, it’s (Girl1) and (Girl2). They’re just driving me crazy!

Apparently they each want to be friends with Alyssa, but not with each other. It’s driving Alyssa to distress.

It’s really amazing watching your kids grow up. If this is already stressing her out at five years old (six on Tuesday), what will things be like in ten years?

Contrary to local office perception, it looks like Huey Lewis is still alive and kicking!

(Later)–Yep, and he just performed a few weeks ago.

(And I’m not talking about Frodo’s sword)

So Sting is doing a deal with Victoria’s Secret to perform at their fashion show. First it was the Compaq deal and now this. Sting, Sting, Sting. How the might have fallen. Are there no depths you won’t sink to?

Is it just me, or does news affect you differently as your life situation changes? I hate to hear bad news stories about children since I’ve had kids. Each summer I avoid the news with the inevitable caught in an overhot car stories, for instance. I just don’t want to hear it.

When I was a kid and in my early twenties, I prided myself on how I could take anything without blinking an eye. I was tougher than dirt.

I was so naive and stupid. Now I just deeply appreciate what I have every day and every moment. Sometimes you have to realize how lucky you are with the life that you live. And let the people you love know it.