Tokarski

A Corona, some meat sizzling on the grill, and the view off my deck into the back yard… it doesn’t get much better.

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After promising that we’d do so ’soon’, I finally took Allie (our oldest) on a bike ride through the ~3 mile Northern segment of the Poplar Creek Trail bike path. We’ve lived near this path for over 7 years, and this is the first time I’ve been able to ride it.

Allie complained about it being too long (we did about 6-7 miles round trip), but I’m hooked and plan on doing the full circuit one of these mornings. Another good side effect: Emily, our middle daughter, has been kind of slow on the uptake with her two-wheeler - today, she was wizzing around the block like and old pro. I think a family bike trip is not too far off.

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Tonight, I added a site search capability and have started using FeedBurner for my blog and photo feeds.

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to add a search capability to the this site (if only so that I could find something I once wrote a bit more easily)….I tried Google’s site search, but it seems I never get indexed (only very old and outdated results are returned). So, I searched and searched (no pun intended) until I found something that did the trick: FreeFind. It was easy to set up; it’s free (some ads are displayed on the search results page), I can schedule the re-indexing frequency, and I can customize the look of the search results page. Good enough.

While I enabled feeds to my site and photos some time ago, I was prodded by my FeedBurner buddy to give their service a try. Now, I can verify with some good data that only 2 people visit this site. (I’ve listed links to the feeds below, as well as in the ‘feeds’ section of my sidebar).

Subscribe to my site feed or my photo feed.

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This summer, I’ve rediscovered how much I enjoy reading. I’m a voracious magazine reader (I know that doesn’t ‘count’) - especially my car and tech mags - and I’ve finally polished off a few of the books I bought a long time ago and have been ‘meaning to read’.

Recently, a chance reference in a magazine turned me on to a couple of very interesting books - interesting for me in light of the events of the past year or so - changes in my professional life and my pursuit of overall ’simplification’ and ‘zen-like calm’.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Steps toward enhancing the quality of life) and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, both by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

No, I’m not wearing togas and shopping for beads - the books aren’t as ’self-helpy’ or ‘touchy-feely’ as the titles may suggest. They’ve really hit home since they reinforce / resonate with the hours of deep conversation I’ve enjoyed with a few of my very close colleagues / friends over the past year (you know who you are).

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Inagural Turkish Grand Prix at Istanbul Park saw Räikkönen leading almost from beginning to end; Montoya giving up second place with 3 laps to go (flat-spotted tire giving him problems under braking) and Schumacher spinning out during qualifying, having multiple problems during the race, and not finishing.

Result: Räikkönen, Alonso, and Montoya.

Alonso still leads comfortably in championship points; with Räikkönen 24 points behind with 5 races left (Alonso: 95, Räikkönen: 71.)

Next up: Italy (Monza) on 04-Sep (6:30 AM CT pre-race on SpeedTV).

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I remember reading that Steve Jobs did the commencement address this year at Stanford - I ran across the transcript of his speech and found it pretty relevant and inspiring.

Text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

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With all the craziness we see on the news each day, it’s wonderful to see the occasional positive, uplifting story. Welcome home, Discovery.

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I happened to briefly look at the calendar this morning and the date struck me as interesting for some reason. August 5th…. 08/05….. hmmm….. 08/05/85.

Twenty years ago today, I started my first ‘real’ job out of college at Sargent & Lundy Engineers in Chicago. Twenty years.

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Ferrari #2 driver Rubens Barrichello reportedly leaves the team. He’s replaced by Felipe Massa - who’ll drive for Ferrari in the next race in Turkey.

Rumors have Barrichello going to Bar-Honda - “The big news in the Budapest paddock is that Ferrari’s Rubens Barrichello appears to have signed a two year deal to drive for BAR-Honda from 2006.”

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