with the rains finally stopped, i rolled out the motorcycle. can't leave it parked for too long, don't want it to get rusty on me. this year i may decide to put the bike away in storage earlier than usual. normally i wait until the first snowstorm, but that usually takes me into december, when it's just too cold to do a proper clean up before winterization storage. have you ever tried washing a car in freezing temperature?

i went to the belmont public library to check out a book for my mother i saw online: hattitude: knits for every mood by cathy carron. it'd been on my amazon wish list, but i didn't think to check the library first, and pleasantly surprised to find that belmont had a copy.

i hadn't been in the BPL for a long time. i wouldn't say since high school because i've been back since then, but probably half a decade at least. it brought back a lot of memories. i used to come here all the time, before there was the internet. nowadays libraries are more like a place to borrow dvd's or get online for free.

i had the catalog number written out but i couldn't find the book. thinking it might be new, i went to the recently released section. a librarian noticed i looked lost and asked if she could help. she ended up finding the book back in the crafts aisle, a thin paperback only 80 pages long.

i went to my parents' place where my mother was still home (she wouldn't leave for the cafe until the afternoon). i showed her the book as well as one other on color knitting. hattitude wasn't that great, maybe one or two interesting patterns.

my mother asked if i ate already, and made me some chicken noodles with braised eel. after lunch, i returned to cambridge, parking my motorcycle on the street (instead of on the dirt space down the private road, where the rains had splattered the underside with mud).

i went out again, this time on bicycle, first to rite aid to pick up some cough drops and snacks, then market basket for groceries.

i was making chinese chicken noodle soup in the kitchen when i heard about steve jobs. i had the volume on the television turned up so i could hear from the kitchen, but thought it was weird when i heard his name mentioned a few times. that's when i saw the breaking news report on the screen.

other than a brief affair with a timex sinclair in the early 80's (using a B&W television as a monitor and saving onto cassette tapes), i've always used apple computers. from the days of the IIc, to the macintosh plus, to the quadra (college), the 7500 (post-college late 1990's), the G4 (early 2000's), and now the powerbook pro (mid-2000's). funny i don't own any non-apple computer things, like the ipod, the iphone, or the ipad - but plenty of people do. what would the world have been like with steve jobs? personal computers without graphical user interfaces? (think DOS or unix terminal). mp3 players as a niche gadget for music nerds only? dumb phones instead of smart phones? no tablet computers? jobs put the "personal" in technology, opening up new markets not just for apple but for competitors as well. apple had the ability to sell you something you didn't think you needed until you saw it (and then it's all you could think about). for those of us who's stuck with apple through the decades, it's hard to imagine the success it's experiencing today, when back in the 1990's the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. could that happen again, now that jobs is gone? but apple has amazing brand recognition now, and a brand loyalty the envy of other companies. it'll be interesting to see which direction apple will go now. will the hits keep on coming? what's next after the tablet? but the world is a better place with steve jobs. his death at such a relatively young age will only age to his legend.