Category: family

Hangout with Ivi!

This morning Ivi  cranked up a Google Hangout session (similar to Skype, in case you were wondering) from the CIEE office at the U. of Ghana.  She was using her new Chromebook, delivered by emergency “courier” (thanks to the wonderful generosity and helpfulness of the Africa-visiting Hughes family from New York!), to replace her purloined MacBook.  She reports that the new device boots super-fast and even though cloud-centric, should meet all of her needs, particularly with the offline versions of the requisite Google apps.  Alas, I was saddled with a non-mic, non-audio and non-camera’d desktop machine in my office so my participation was mostly limited to silent one-way video, but I did get in a little texting now and then between work spurts.   Can’t tell you how great it was to see her smiling face even if I didn’t catch her voice.  But I’m sure Kim will tell me all about it over lunch.

Over the Mountain and Back

Rain, constant rain, today.  We attempt to depart at noon to pickup Nik’s incoming flight, but a mechanical failure prompts the use of a backup vehicle if we are to come even close to our schedule.  Rain turns to snow as we near the summit.  By the time we arrive and find Nik waiting during the half-hour delay, all is clear and bright.  Again we slog through rain and snow and fog during the return, but this time we have Nik to regale us with stories of his past few days with his friends.  And at the close of the afternoon, safely back home:  a rainbow.

Nik Breaks for Spring

We run over the mountain today to drop Nik for a commuter flight to Portland where he will share his college spring break with friends, some coming from as far as Kentucky.  We wonder if Nik’s 6′ 3.5″ frame can be accommodated by the cozy aircraft, but not that long after we arrive back home, we start receiving texts announcing his successful touchdown and hookup with his friends.

An African Election

Africa, of course, is on our minds these days.  So tonight we tried something a bit different and simply did a search on Netflix for everything that matched the keyword, “Africa”. The most promising search result seemed to be a film called “An African Election”.  And it turned out to be a documentary of the 2008 Ghanaian presidential elections.  Highly recommended, even for those who may not be tuned into Ivi’s current adventure there.  Here is the trailer for that fascinating film:

Btw, I heard three distinctly different pronunciations by different Ghanaians in the film of the name of the Ghana capital, Accra (where Ivi is living now).

So Here’s What Happened …

Remember this?

 

So I went into the office early this morning, right after Ivi asked me in email in our earlier exchanges today about getting pictures of Charlie, found a video clip and posted it to YouTube.  Minutes later, the guys in our office who monitor DMCA violations* started laughing and showed me this:

 
 So we inspected the video, and realized that some music — apparently that copyrighted by WMG (Warner Music Group, one of the “big three” recording companies) — happening to be playing in the background, escaping my notice while I was innocently documenting Ivi and Charlie’s antics.  Minutes later.

*DMCA, by the way, refers to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1996.  We, speaking of my employer, receive DMCA notices regularly, mostly for our subscribers who are caught in the act of downloading mostly movies, and are required to take “appropriate action” (we typically notify the offending customer and warn them that we will suspend or relinquish their Internet access if they do it again, as we as an ISP — Internet Services Provider — may be held liable or could be threatened with direct legal action).  Anyway, the whole office got a great laugh at my expense today.

So — it would seem that NSA has nothing on the reach and view of the recording companies.  Well, on the other hand: