We have power!

Yesterday: Carpets were installed.
Today: Electricity is supposed to be hooked up.
Tomorrow: Linoleum is supposed to be installed.
Friday or early next week: Sanding of wood floors, and installation of appliances.

Looks like things might be moving again. Maybe.

The phone company managed to put in one pole today (Horray!), but they still need to replace the one across the street that will connect to it.

But some progress has been made, at least.

Carpeting/Linoleum should be arriving this week. Finishing up the wood flooring is blocked on getting power. (Apparently the extension cord to my parents’ house isn’t enough for powering their big sanding machines, or something.)

On Saturday, we went to the North American Challenge finals at Milford, which Jessi had qualified for on Wednesday. Luckily, they took me on as a judge that day so I had something to do there. Jessi didn’t fare so well, unfortunately. They had brought in Sheldon Menery, a level 5 (“Professional level”) judge from the Maryland/Virginia area, as the Head Judge. We were ridiculously overstaffed, as there were 8 of us for a 90 player tournament, but that helped everything go relatively smoothly.

I certainly pray and wish all the best for the people being tormented by Hurricane Katrina.

At the same time, I have to wonder about the wisdom of building a large city below sea level. What did these people expect would happen?

Windows 95 was launched 10 years ago today.

It was a major improvement over what there was 10 years prior, and what we have now is so much better than Windows 95.

I wonder where we’ll be in another 10 years…

So, there’s this unpaved portion of Berry Corner Rd., which goes from my parents’ driveway and through to Sturbridge.

Latest Estimates:

• Utility pole: Friday
• Linoleum: Next week
• Carpeting: The following week

The accuracy of these estimates is unknown.

The quality of service from companies based in Charlton has been wonderful. The quality of service from companies not based in Charlton has been awful.

I recently got to thinking that many of the deficiencies in blogs, or at least LJ’s implementation of them, could be solved using Usenet. News readers understand only showing unread things, and people could just reply to posts to comment on them, and then I’d see the replies. I’d kind of like each person to have their own personal newsgroup. Plus, people would be able to start discussions on other people’s groups, which might make some sense in some circumstances. I’m not sure how well it’d fit into the current implementation of Usenet, so it might need to be its own hierarchy on a private server or something. And maybe there could be an RSS/News gateway to read other blogs and for others to read it who aren’t Usenet-savvy. But it somehow Usenet feels like the right tool for the job. Or at least, better than this mismatch of incompatible blogging systems that don’t support the user’s experience. I could just subscribe to what I want, and then read it with the rest of my news.

I normally don’t do these, but this was too interesting to pass up. I think the intent was to just use a first name, but this works just as well for my whole name, since it’s common enough.

So, interesting snippets from the top 10 Google Search results for “Peter Cooper is”:

• Peter Cooper is a venerated figure in the cultural history of New York. Among his many achievements is the invention of Jell-O®.
• That letter, which embodies so fervently the warmth, the humanity, and the high ideals of Peter Cooper, is here presented, 97 years later
• “Hiring Peter Cooper is a response to that challenge and continues our policy of building our team from the very best people the industry has to offer. …
• Mel Bay’s Complete Irish Fiddle Player by Peter Cooper is a treat!
• Peter Cooper is a freelance journalist, and is also an eBoz!
• Peter Cooper is currently the Chairman of the Department of Music and teaches piano at Andrews University.
• PETER COOPER is a researcher with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch; he previously worked for the Laogai Research Foundation.

(You can actually find me on the Internet on Microsoft’s site and on Wizards of the Coast’s site, if you Google right. I’m also on some random other pages at WPI and elsewhere. Searching for “Peter Cooper Jr.” does a better job of finding me, since there are fewer people with that name.)