Wasps!

So, entering the house this evening, I run my hand across the railing and approach the door when suddenly AMAZING PAIN. I get inside, and within 5 minutes my whole hand in pink and swelling. I get the first aid kit with the epi-pen, and Alison gets the car keys before we realize it is going down, slowly. Still hurts half an hour later, but I'll clearly survive. I worried, and considered hospitals, as I am allergic to bees and probably other things. I've traditionally allergic to like...everything. Anyway, we go outside with a light, and look at the railing. Wasps. No. Not wasps. WASPS!!! Yes, with three exclamation marks! I guess this is what it looks like when they are about to make a hive or nest or whatever those are called. Pile of them, wasps on top of wasps on top of wasps. A writhing mass of wasps. Plus wispy bits like spider webs against the railing. Terrifying. Oh, or maybe they were hornets. I am not clear how to tell the difference. I Raided them, and now they are wandering around the front deck, covered in liquid death. In other news, woodpeckers are starting to peck holes in the house again. Nature is against me.

Updates

First off, I'll admit I am not posting here much. Not tired of blogging as much as I am overloaded with it. Many of the things I want to talk about in this sort of detail are about mobile telephony, or design, so I just put them on the company blog. Sometimes quite random gripes, or personal news (Alison won a cool phone at a developer conference) and usually several a week:

http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/posts/

Since I get asked by folks who know me, and no one else from the family, my dad's cancer update: He's still got it. Scan results just revealed this morning show the big ones shrinking, but not disappearing. Disappointingly, very small spots are now appearing in the liver, adrenal glands, a rib, some spinal bones, and some other places. We were always worried that the fact it had metastasized to the brain meant that it might be everywhere else, and it has. They are small, so there's time and the chemo is beating it up a bit, but eventually that will probably add up and get to him.

However, the new set of doctors are much, much nicer. And the new treatment center is rather nicer and closer. That all helps. The docs say he's still super-strong, so there's a long ways to go still.

Why I hate Google Chrome

Simple, really. Because it's already ruined a perfectly good word used for describing bits of a browser. I am specifying [something about a browser] and have used it to good effect several times in the last two days. Chrome is the stuff around the edge of the viewable area. The toolbars, scrollbars, status bars, and so on. But I am pretty sure it's already starting to confuse others, and people regularly email or IM me about "chrome" and I have to contextually figure out they mean "google chrome web browser." I have much the same argument with many of Apple's apps. Mail, for example is resolutely un-googleable. A convention has popped up to call it mail.app (which it sort of is, though the dot app bit is hidden usually), so you can actually tell when a discussion of it is happening, versus the USPS or email in general. But I am probably just an old curmudgeon.