Spindle by Dustin Shuler (1989)

Spindle 1989 by Dustin Shuler, originally uploaded by sailorbill.

Artist Dustin Shuler's "Spindle" located in the parking lot of a Berwyn, IL strip mall in the Western suburbs of Chicago may be removed permanently and replaced by a Walgreens according to a story published by the GateHouse News Service.

“The ‘Spindle’ may or may not be maintained,” said Michael Flight, president of the management company. “The current ownership would have to spend a tremendous amount of money if they relocated it. The current ownership is not sure what they would like to do with it at this point.”

Back in February, I was heading into the western suburbs of Chicago from the city when I saw the sculpture off to my left and I slammed on the brakes, did a u-turn and shot a few photos.

To be replaced by Walgreens. Hrm...

Tracy's old iPhone

Tracy's old iPhone, originally uploaded by sailorbill.

One of the reasons we waited to get the iPhone is that Tracy runs with a rubber band connecting her old flip-phone and her iPod Shuffle (minus the cap and strap.

Friday night, we each picked up an 8 Gb iPhone. I came home and set mine up immediately. Tracy was afraid to run in a 10K here in Rochester on Saturday morning while carrying the new phone, so we waited to set up her new iPhone.

We connected her phone to iTunes on Saturday morning after the race. Sunday, 10:45 a.m. and we are still waiting for activation. We did get a order number in an email from AT&T. I guess AT&T never had this quantity of people swamp their set-up process before.

Mine is working fine. Calls are clear. The keyboard is getting easier to use with each attempt. The phone is very intuitive to use. The Safari web browser is amazing once you figure out that you can turn it sideways and double-tapping zooms the text.

More updates to follow, I'm sure!

(Oh, yeah, Tracy finished 12th in her age group in the Furry Scurry 10K - her first race!!)

8, 9 & 10 = 8 GB iPhone

Emily, Tracy and I went to the mall at 4:30 p.m. this afternoon and saw the very long line at the Apple store so we cut through the FYI store to the other side of the mall and found only 7 people in line at AT&T, all waiting for the new iPhone this afternoon. (We were numbers 8, 9 and 10).

At six on the dot, the doors opened. Ten minutes later we walked out with the last three available 8 Gb models at that store. The people behind us were not happy. The store got 10 of each type.

(They were planning to place orders for the rest of the people in line, they said.)

Anyway... now, after owning this thing for 3 hrs, I've got a new phone number, I've surfed the web and read the press release from my company tonight, SMS'd with a vendor, called Tracy (first) and then my Dad, answered a call from Howard, found Pizza in zip code 14450... and I can safely say this thing is amazing.

More to follow I'm sure.

NuHull boat cleaner is simply amazing

I've been messing with boats for over 17 years. I'll spare you the full story and just say that if you have a boat with stains on the gelcoat, NuHull is the only cleaner you need.

I'm rarely 100% satisfied with anything. This stuff is amazing. Before I could wipe off the spray, the stain had already disappeared.

The cleaner has a slight rotten egg smell and you need to wear a pair of rubber gloves.

I ordered a gallon jug online and used about 15% of it cleaning a stained white hull on a 20 foot boat and the full job took about 30 minutes. Last week, I spent 3 hours trying to clean the hull with other marine and household cleaners, scrubbing while laying on my back getting soaked in the process.

If you order a bottle of NuHull, you won't be disappointed and I bet you won't go back to regular cleaners for your boat.

The instructions also talk about diluting the solution in water and using it for all type of cleaning situations. I'll give that a try at some point and report back on that as well.

One note - rinse your driveway really well if you are on pavement because if not, you'll have a large clean spot underneath the area where you were working.

Oppressively hot

We finally got packed up and moved out of AL last week. This pic was shot from the front porch at my in-law's house one day when we weren't packing. 98 degrees!!

iGoogle ate my homepage

My personalized Google home page just reverted to defaults with an old zip code from Birmingham, AL and in the process lost all of my additional tabs, rss feeds, bookmarks, etc. Everything except for my gMail and some old stocks that I used to watch. This was probably 40 regularly used bookmarks and a dozen or so RSS Feeds from bloggers I watch and friends who bookmark using del.icio.us regularly. Not good. I have faith that Google will fix the problem and I'm sure they know what used to be on my page. The logo and new name for the Google personalized homepage changed to iGoogle last night.