And one of the things that happens when you move is you find dozens of things that you no longer want or need.  So we have.  We are planning on donating these or recycling these in one form or another, and figured we’d offer them to you, our friends, first.  All items are free, first come, first serve.  Don’t want it, or think it is junk?  Say nothing, and it will end up passed along to the Salvation Army, or Goodwill, or some organization set up to help find new homes with those less fortunate.  And seeing as we move by the end of the month, stake a claim before then.  So, on with the items:

First up, we have a fruit bowl for washing and serving Claimed.  This bowl and platter combination are lovely, but serve little function in our house.  The bowl has holes in the bottom so you can wash the fruit in the bowl, then set it on the matching platter to serve.

Next is a glass vase. Tall, good for longer flowers.  Or, perhaps, one epic jello shot.  You know.

Hey, you want utensils?  We got utensils.  Not any more. Claimed and delivered. Like Spatula City, take 10, get the 11th free! Need to outfit a starter kitchen? Need a cheap-o item for camping, theater prop, or raw material for a miniatures project? Or, you know, whatever.  Take a look, see what you like. Don’t know what something is? Ask away.

Onwards – a set of lovely glass items Claimed, awaiting delivery. Paperweights, perhaps, small sculptures of sorts.  They’ve been sitting on shelves making them look pretty. Blue one is a fish, green one is a dolphin. Or maybe a porpoise.

A few other trinkets, this time easter themed item.  I can’t see much market for these, but hey, free if you want them.

I promise, there is good stuff in here too.  Lots of good stuff.  It just isn’t for us any more.  Maybe it is for you Maybe it has been claimed already. Like this set of bread dipping bowls and oil decanter.  Rather elegant with the right meal (say, lasagna and salad?).

Books! Bubbles! A photo frame and a theromstat…

We’ve had a shelf of free books sitting in our hallway for a long time. But you never visit. So you never got to look at this often changing shelf. Authors include Stephen Donaldson, James Clavell, JK Rowling, Raymond Feist, Piers Anthony, and Robert Fulgham, amongst others. A book on wedding ettiquette (seems a little past it’s “use by” date for us), a handbook of public speaking, and a few other non-fiction items. Including the very non-fictitious bubbles. Free bubbles, fun for all ages!

Now for the largest items on our list – a pair of Vestby wardrobe units from IKEA very popular, quickly claimed, quickly delivered. We’re blessed with a walk in cedar closet in the basement of the new house, so need not these items to store our garb and costumes. If you are in the SCA, or a LARPer, like us, chances are you have plenty of clothing that only comes out on special occasions.  Take one or both of these to get these things out of your closet and into a more manageable separation. They disassemble (one was actually never assembled) for easy transport. Very lightweight as well. Actual photos along with catalog shot:

Cook your food the modern miracle way with this microwave! Good unit, compact size, strong, attractive. Redundant. Now with a new home arranged.

One advantage to central air is not having a need for this otherwise awesome floor fan This too has a new home already. Three speeds, all fast enough to get the smoke out of the kitchen before anyone knows you burnt the roast. Might I suggest using the above microwave instead of the oven?

After a decade of good service, I am offering up my old television. 27″, good color, but it does suffer from having S-Video as its most advanced input.  So while it will take a signal from that DVD player, I wouldn’t try anything newer.  Worked well with the PS2 and the Gamecube though.  It has sat unused this entire past year. Good as a second dedicated game television. Probably too large to be a bedroom TV.

Ok, we all know we should keep a spare tire in the car, and to keep it in good shape.  But what about the tools to actually -change- the tire? Amanda’s last car didn’t have anything in it, so we picked up this cross shaped socket wrench for her.  4 different sized sockets, so it should work on your car, and the shape lends to lots of leverage on the stiffest lugnuts.  It should have gone with the car when that went, but it was donated and was probably going to a junkyard, and so it would have been a waste to leave this in the car.  Turns out it isn’t needed anyhow.  Now taken and hopefully put to good use.

Lastly, an ironing board. The small variety that you get to go in the college dorm room.  I know, because that’s why I got this one, was to go in my dorm room.  And contrary to popular trends, I actually used it.  It is still perfectly functional, but if you want to coat it in cheap cloth and paint it to be a shield in your halloween costume, I won’t hold it against you. Or maybe you want to prop it on a few rocks and make a killer ramp for your matchbox cars. Go for it.  Or maybe you have some great Rube Goldberg contraption that needs a small ironing board. Perfect.

There you have it.  Thanks for looking and maybe for helping us freecycle these things.  But again, they’re all being carted away in the very near future, so please please let us know if you have an interest.

Looking forward to a week of fresh air, a little kayaking maybe, some hiking, and stars that we just can’t see clearly this close to the Hub. Campfires and marshmallows, and bug juice.

Interested in joining us? If you’d like to get away for a week or a part of a week, it’d be a lot of fun to have a few friends up there too. Reach me through non public channels (email, IM, phone) and I’ll give you the dates and the campground information so you can make a reservation too.

Now, I know there are those on my friend’s list of a theatrical bent. For you, there is something extra.  Next weekend they are auditioning a select number of people for roles in the show.  There are some openings for main performers, and a few for what might be better descrived as ‘ambience’ roles.  See bostonbabydolls.net… for full details.

*Now in it’s 150th year of operation, and totally deserving of such a long lifetime!

While we’re gone, my office is moving to a new location in the same building.  I’d have liked to be there for that, but oh well.  At least I won the fight I had some weeks ago, and we’re moving spaces based on my suggested plan.

Congratulations to all the class of 2010 who graduated last weekend or are graduation this weekend.  A special nod to those at my own alma.  I’d have enjoyed being there for that too, in part because Paul Simon is singing at it.

The house hunting continues, but that, I think, may get its own post.

Alright, back to packing I go.

To quote John Gruber of Daring Fireball,

“That’s exactly what’s going on. Apple is testing whether a tightly controlled and managed app console platform will succeed or fail based on its own merits, as determined by customers. There are different levels of competition. Apple has made its choice about how it wants to compete, and there’s nothing Adobe can do about it — other than proving Apple wrong by shipping compelling excellent software for Android.” (daringfireball.net…)

Except that this isn’t testing. We’ve seen this before. Tons of times. On almost every game platform out there. 20 years ago games had to be up to snuff to get a Nintendo Seal of Quality. And games were developed using official developer toolsets. That were produced by Nintendo. And that’s not to say that a Developer couldn’t try to create a game some other way, but I’d be willing to guess that road didn’t work so well. Sony did the same thing with games on its consoles. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised of Atari worked that way. And we’ve all seen complaints about games that are poorly ported from one console to another – cases where the graphics and sound don’t take advantage of the capabilities of the platform, or where a game simply dumps some portion of content because the discs don’t hold the same quantity, or some platforms have a built in hard drive and others don’t, etc.

So a large part of the conflict comes from the perception of the iPhone. A lot of people, developers especially, are viewing it as a mini-computer. And from their perspective, it kind of is. It runs a modified OS X Darwin system, it uses fairly standard Objective-C, and it is a fairly accessible system to developers, and it lends itself to a wide range of unique applications. Game consoles tend to, well, run games, and not much more. Now, if you start thinking of the iPhone as a console, it works better. Limited channels of production and distribution, which, to be honest, is still more than cell phones of yore (where everything came -only- from the manufacturer), restricted access to hardware (funny how no one really complains about protected memory in the modern OS), and capabilities that vary from device to device. And as Gruber points out, if you want a platform that behaves very much like a computer platform, there’s always Android – which has an even wilder future in front of it if the hardware platforms keep forking the way they’ve been doing lately.

Back on Sunday. See you all then.

It started this morning, when we went out and did some house hunting, including seeing one that we’re heavily considering putting an offer on.  Then zooming to South Station to catch the megabus down to NY, as mentioned.  See, I was invited to an invite-only dinner for a ‘who’s who’ of the a cappella world, taking place before this year’s ICCA finals (varsityvocals.com… for full info).  And after some thought, A. and I decided to go crazy and go for it.  So we’re meeting for Dinner at 5, seeing the show tonight, and then at 1:30 am catching the last megabus back to Boston.  We’ll get in around 6:45am.  Drive home, crash for a few hours more, and then we both have to get up again. A. is taking the niece for a few hours and heading off to girls night, whereas I am going back to Boston to do tech and prep and stage managing for the latest Boston Babydolls show, French Kiss (bostonbabydolls.net… for full info).  It is looking to be a fun show, with a lot of comedy sprinkled through.  Tickets are between $15 and $40, so you should all come see it.  If, like me, your weekend is already way overbooked, come out Monday night and see the show, as it’s running -two- nights at Club Oberon.

So, yeah, 8 hours of bus, 9 hours in NYC, 2 hours of house hunting, 8 hours of theaterwork…  somewhere I sleep in there, somewhere I eat in there, somewhere I don’t go crazy in there….  WHEE!

P.S…  wifi and power outlets on a bus?  PURE GENIUS.