Ring. Ring.
Jordan: Mushi Mushi.
Don: Hello, it's your dad. My phone rang earlier today and I missed it, but no one left a message and it doesn't show me who called.
Jordan: ...
Don: Did you call?
Jordan: Are you calling everyone in your phone to see if it was them?
Don: ...
Jordan: Cause if it was important enough to warrant that, I'm sure they would have left a message.
Don: So it wasn't you?
Jordan: Nope.
Don: Okay.
Click.
Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
- Mark Twain
"Do you ever entertain others at your place?" My father asked me this question as he looked about my apartment. The apartment is in one of its messier states and I didn't bother to organize it for his brief stopover. "Sure, all the time." A messy apartment is quite easy to make tidy. It merely requires stacking things up, and moving the stacks into boxes, or the closet, or some other out of the way place.
I think perhaps his mind was failing to differentiate between the important distinction of messy and dirty. My place is, in general, not dirty (Historically, especially when I was traveling for work, it would fall into a very dirty state. Now that I am home, I keep it mostly clean). I would defend it one step further and say that the "messy" state of the apartment is a state that has the place optimized for how it is generally used.
Is the power plug sitting in an ugly place instead of tucked neatly behind the desk? Sure, because I have to plug my laptop in and out each day. Is the scooter sitting in the middle of the floor? Sure, because I take it each morning when I leave. Are there clothes strewn about the sofa? Well, yes, but they are all freshly washed and folded. Why should I put them into closet, crammed with all my other hidden possession, when I will be needed them throughout the week.
He even made a face at the kitchen table that is covered with books, magazines, comics, candy and an assortment of other odds and ends. I looked at him and pointed out, "this was all stuff that was cluttering up a room in your house until two weeks ago! I don't have a five bedroom house to hide things in, I have to make do with an apartment that is smaller than your garage!" He chuckled.
You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
I did what I normally do when I come out of the pedestrian underpass leaving the train. I extended my arms straight out to either side and pretended I was an airplane all the way to my car. Zoom! Zoom! Tonight, after running about 20 feet, someone started running after me also with his arms to his side. He yelled, "Missile Lock!" and I thought, "Oh, [expletive], I'm going to be killed right now." I stopped next to my car and he went on zipped past me and said, "Jester's dead."
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde
I lie. I lie all the time. Does it matter? Heck, I put a disclaimer up because some people take my fabrications a little bit too seriously. Alas, others take my seriousness a little too lightheartedly.
I saw "Big Fish" last night and the main character's entire life is filled moment after moment with wonderful anecdote. The son is upset that he never got to know his real father, because he cannot winnow the truth from the tale. I sympathize with the father. I know where he's coming from. Of course, the story ends with son finally understanding things from his father's perspective. It's not Tim's best work, but it's well worth the couple of dollars and couple of hours that it cost me to see.
When you're telling a story for the entertainment of others, it's not the facts that are important, it's the smile on the faces of the listeners. I shun being the center of attention most of the time, but when I'm in just the right mood, I can be treated as an anecdotal jukebox one feeds quarters into expecting to hear a story that might not quite be right, but is certainly worth listening to. Well, I think they are worth listening to.
I worked at a day care center for a while in high school. (Okay, honestly, I was forced by my nice Jesuit high school to volunteer there for about two months one fine summer. Still, that's more information than you needed to know and it in no ways pertains to the point of this particular tale.) I really enjoyed my time with the kids. It was truly a phenomenal experience. I competed with one of the other teachers for the honor of leading the daily story time. We both loved to have the whole class sitting in front of us in a semi-circle as we spun together something interesting.
I recall being up late into the night with a little scratch pad trying to figure out what I could talk about for thirty minutes. Did the dragon eat the knight (pronounced ka-nig-it) in the end? Rarely. Usually, as is normally the case in my worlds, everyone learned everyone else's motivations and electrifying compromise ensued. Yes, I taught the excitement of issue-based problem resolution!
The most overwhelming feeling I had after seeing the movie is that my tales are just not tall enough. I have no stories of blowing up my high school incinerator or clock system. I never tell people about the time I found an unlocked cop car and rode it in neutral down to the bottom of the hill it was on. I've never had monkeys attack me in China and steal my knapsack. I guess I did move into the woods for a week and eventually used up one of my lives, but that was more allegory than tall tale.
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
- P. J. O'Rourke
I don't want to be a shove-it-in-your-face none drinker. You know the type, right? It's the person who has made a life choice and likes to bring it up often. You sometimes get the feeling that he made the choice purely for a conversation topic or to be self-righteous. Under my personal cost benefit analysis, I've decided that drinking is not part of the lifestyle I want to live. I like to be nice to my liver and in exchange it has promised not to go kaput on me in my youth.
I was out at a "mandatory" company sponsored drinking social gala extraordinaire. The whole department went down to a bar in San Francisco to socialize and drink. There were no pool tables or dartboards or anything of the like to distract people from the prime activity of drinking and talking. Many times, throughout the course of the evening people asked me why I wasn't drinking. "I don't drink?" "Why not?" "Because." That should be enough, right? Yes, it should. A few of the more evangelical drinkers put shots in front of me.
When the pressure is really on, sometimes I get myself a coke and say it's a rum and coke. Or sometimes at friend's parties I do shots of water. Still, it's lame. I won't take your shots away and you shouldn't give me any.
On an aside, on of the hot chicks I work with made this brilliant comment, "I like to be hot because when I get married I want my husband to be able to say, yeah, my wife is hot." That's keen.
He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Getting anything done is tough. I have this new process I'm trying out where each day on my way home I look at my list of to do items and pick one of them that I'm going to actually get done that evening. I'll see how well this works for me. My dependence on all these technological doohickeys is nearly complete. I don't think I could actually manage my life without them.
For example, tonight I have chosen the one where I call AT&T Wireless and ask them if I have to pay roaming fees on Cingular's network. Since Cingular recently bought out AT&T wireless, I know get phone reception in the wine cellar, but it clearly says it's not on the AT&T network, but on Cingular. Since I didn't get that before, I'm optimistic. Of course, I need to check. These companies do well at messing you up.
Subject: Photo Removal
As the [widget] you posted on your website is the property of [X, Inc.], I am requesting its removal.
You can contact via return email.....Thanks
First, I play nicely in the sandbox. You want something removed from my site and you are willing to share a half-decent reason for me, it'll probably be removed. I remove the photo of the widget within about an hour getting the message.
The question that has been rolling around in my head all day is if X, Inc., has any legal ground to stand on if I wanted to be a jerk about it (which I don't). The widget was entrusted to me. I can't remember if I signed anything when I got the widget in regards to publishing pictures of it, but I'm 99% sure that I did not. So, I took a photo of the widget one night at my apartment and published it for entertainment purposes.
The widget itself bears no form of copyright. The message doesn't even attempt to play in that area. Sure, X, Inc., owned the widget, but I can take pictures of whatever the heck I want from public property, right?
The only possible legal ground I can think is that X, Inc., has some sort of policy regarding this. X's contract with my former place of employment may have some stipulation about its consultants following X's policies. I definitely had a legal agreement with my prior company about following its policies, contracts, etc. Still, if I had no clue about this policy at X, Inc., which was a few degrees removed, it's unreasonable to expect that I should have to abide by it.
Anyway, like I said, the image of their precious widget was removed. Which is good, because I'm sure someone was mass-producing copies based on the design they were able to sort of figure out from low quality picture I had taken.
I'm exhausted! I think I got five hours of sleep last night. Okay, I was in bed for five hours; I probably got closer to three hours of actual sleep. I had a quadruple latte in the morning and was still ready to fall asleep. I was hoping to be bouncing off the walls.
I'm up for a non-trivial amount of work in the near future. Yes, it's a very non-trivial amount of work. It's one of those areas that have a whole bunch of really cool work but shackled to it is a whole bunch of really lame work. I just need some underlings to do the lame part and my life would be peachy.
I do like do at least part of the lame work. I think it's good to keep your hands dirty. Most higher up techies make the token statement, "I wouldn't expect more from others than I could do myself." I don't believe it for most people. I don't want to be one of those people. Worst-case scenario is I'll just say, "I have no clue how much effort that takes. It really sucks to me be you!"
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
- H. L. Mencken
I try to maximize time spent doing the things I love and minimize the time spent doing the things I hate. I suppose that's a pretty standard way of living, right? I hate dealing with finances! I despise the stuff to no end. Watching a stock price move around is similar to watching paint dry. Really! I have to admit, some years ago a friend successfully convinced me that I shouldn't hold disdain for people who enjoy the stuff; I'll just never be one of them.
My mother recently gave me a book called, "The Automatic Millionaire" that is written for those people who spend too much time worrying about money. The basic concept is that if your financial life is anything other than boring, you're probably doing it wrong. It explains all the various processes of setting up direct deposit, automatic bill pay, automatic investment into fully managed funds, and the like. The author is a bit of an amateur when it comes to hands-off money management. Still, he's a financial advisor by trade, he probably enjoys caring about money to some extent.
The author, David Bach, talks about the "Latte Factor" thing, which I guess was his invented term. I did one of the exercises and tracked my spending over the course of a week. I must be the exception that validates the rule. I have no Latte Factor in my life. The closest I get is the cost of train tickets for commute and two meals. Anything more than that is an impulse buy, and I rarely do impulse buys. Guess I'm just a cheapskate. Honestly, it's like I could get much cheaper on either of those two items either.
Maybe that means I'm an automatic millionaire and I can retire when I'm thirty or something. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
- Isaac Asimov
Sudden USB Death Syndrome (SUDS) for the Palm is an evil thing. It's characterized by the sudden loss of ability for the Palm to HotSync with the computer using USB. The m500 series had a bad gene that made them very prone to this syndrome. It afflicted my first Palm m505, named Alex, years ago.
The claim is that static discharge in the cradle fries the USB chip onboard the device. I called Palm support and they sent me a new cradle. It didn't fix things. If the USB chip on the Palm were fried, obviously a new cradle would solve nothing. I called again, and Palm sent me a new device. I'm pleased to say the exchange policy was simple. Palm sends you a new device and gives you two weeks to figure it all out and ship the old one back to them. When Betty showed up and had no issues, I packed Alex in the box and sent him to Palm. In theory he was refurbished and is out there at a new home.
Betty lasted a couple months and then was struck by SUDS. I called Palm and they were kind enough to tell me I was incorrect with the SUDS diagnosis. Betty had already been refurbished and was now immune to SUDS. I was told I needed to reinstall Palm Desktop. I did. It didn't work. I called Palm again, and they sent me a replacement.
Charlie wouldn't sync right out of the box. I'd try to HotSync and Windows detected Charlie as a "USB Hub" instead of "Palm Device." I called support. She told me I needed to use my original Palm install CD. I kindly explained that I always downloaded off the Internet, and what I was doing should work. I still remember clearly the sound of technical supports voice when I said I was sure I had never opened the original CD and she said, "I think you'll find you're mistaken." I wasn't mistaken.
So I had another call with technical support and was told Charlie clearly had a manufacturing flaw, He said I should keep using Betty and ship Charlie back and they would ship me Debra. At the time I did some research and learned that there is a home remedy for SUDS that involves purposefully locking up the Palm so that it totally discharges all its power well beyond the standard sleep mode. The USB chip loses power and resets from nonvolatile memory.
The next day Betty had been cured and was working great with the full discharge remedy. Debra arrived in the mail. I wished Betty a better life in her new home and sent her back to Palm, working fine, and hung on to Debra.
Around a year passed and Debra was great. She traveled all around the country with me. Just this past week, Debra was afflicted with SUDS. You have to be kidding me. I'm kind of tempted to give Palm a call and send her in so I can get a new Palm named Eddie. Whatever, I used the holistic medicine on Debra and she's working fine again. Seriously though, I'm one of the most loyal Palm customers out there. They owe me better than this.
Really? I've owned a Palm Pilot, Palm Pro, Palm III, Palm Vx and Palm m505.
For those of you playing the home game...
Dragon posted this on Friendster. I have a visceral dislike for the YASNs, so I go here.
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
- J. G. Ballard
"What is the coolest project you've ever worked on? What's your favorite technology? Why?"
When you see that spark go off, you know it, and you love it. It's the way someone's eyes light up when they talk about how they built this really pretty swing application. It's the way they describe what it was like to learn some new technology that solved their problem. Then, after describing it with the smile, it's the look of pride. The look that speaks out "Yeah, I built that. I made my/the world a better place with technology." That's what I love! That's what I live for when I'm talking with developers about their job.
What was mine? What project will invoke the love in me? It's usually whatever project I'm currently working on. It's the one that is solving an annoyance in my life right now. jAlbum or LinkChecker. If I really had to try and normalize over time, it would be a tie between Cranial Tank and Mobile Tarot. Why? Cranial Tank is just awesome! Developing a BNCF grammar and language to control agents that could be pitted against each other on a battlefield with a Swing front-end and Pac-Man sounds playing was one of the greatest intellectual growth areas of my life. Man, I'm still impressed I ever did that! Mobile Tarot wins from the practicality side of things. I can carry the complete meaning of the Tarot deck in an easy to use application ON MY PHONE! I'm smiling from ear to ear when I write about it.
Yeah, that's what I want to see. If you didn't have to develop this stuff to put food on your table, would still want to? I hope so. Nerd.
Wide awake I'm bored and I can't fall asleep.
- I'm Just a Kid (Simple Plan)
On my way back from Easter I took the top down, put the speedometer up and blasted music. I mentioned to Gumba on Friday that I needed something new to listen to an he tossed me Simple Plan's CD. I heard one of their songs some time watching Jingle Ball Rock (Hilary was on, okay?). It was nice to rock out to bubblegum punk. I can picture Neurotic Burrito and Flaming Hamster shaking their heads in disgust at the site of me enjoying that kind of stuff. Did you notice that my good buddy Wil has one the "The Get Up Kids" albums in his Listen section? Yeah, we could be friends, I'm sure of it. (4/12: I was reminded The Get Up Kids are from Kansas City. Maybe my brief trip their is what brought them back to consciousness.)
Must stay out of musical rut! Must not let songs I liked in high school and college be favorite music for rest of life! Stay on target...
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
- George Santayana
I finished reading the sci-fi novel "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow which is currently available for free download. Overall it was a good novel, but what really sets it apart from most of the sci-fi novels that come out these days is that there's nearly no extraneous crap. For example, "Cryptonomicon" was a brilliant two hundred page novel crammed into well over five hundred pages. So it's well worth the time one puts into it.
When you see references to Whuffie, restoring from backup and ad-hocs, they are all coming from this recent read.
One of the projects I was working on recently was an audiobook project. Cory has published this book under a Creative Commons license as encouraging people to do audiobook stuff. So, I put my other project on hold for a bit and tried my hand reading a few chapters of his book.
Ever tried to read a book you love aloud? Some authors, like Tolkien, impress me beyond belief when reading them aloud. Try it sometime. Pick up Fellowship and record yourself reading a lyrical chapter like "The Old Forest."
What's that? I saw the movie and I don't remember any old forest.
- Adzar
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
- William Shakespeare
On a much-needed break I finally had something spiffy happen to me. I have been a member of the Thawte Web of Trust for a while now. Back in the autumn of 2002 I was building up my trust power by finding trust notaries and getting them to add to my trust points. I finally became a Thawte notary right at the close of the year. When you first start in the Thawte notary system, your Whuffie is relatively low. To build it, it takes years of slowly and carefully notarizing other people. This work has been rewarded after around a year and a half, I got two times the trust points to assert to other people. Yes, I now radiate the power of a 25-point Thawte WOT Notary! All shall love me and despair!
We are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.
- Christian Nestell Bovee
My drive back from Sacramento on Sunday felt longer than most. The radio was never playing and I must have driven well over a hundred miles before I even realized it. I jammed a lot into the weekend, but at the very end of the trip I made it a point to swing by and spend a few quiet moments with April. I had yet to find a chance to see her this year and skipping out on a visit when I'm nearby always makes me feel a little remorseful. On top of that, her birthday is coming up, and ever since we first met, I've not let a month of April pass without seeing her at least once.
I took her some white lilies, which have always been her favorite flower. They are my favorite flower as well, but entirely by extension. In the Rider's Tarot, white lilies are symbolic for compassion unclouded with lust.
I needed to give her some updates on the progress of my new years resolutions. I have successfully accomplished two of them that were a holdover from last year and the third is scheduled to be finished by the end of this month with no intervention required from me. The dentist has filled many cavities in my mouth and my work travel has vanished for the foreseeable future; I am very far-sighted. I suppose more importantly that not having to travel is the fact that I do not have to plan my life around the idea that at any point I might have to travel. Already I have made commitments to friends and family that I can keep without the looming fear of having to tell them that I might, at any moment, have to cancel on them. So, with just three months of the year behind me, I have only one more resolution to get worked out.
What has always made April's friendship special is her ability to hear the most abysmally depressing statements and not react in a way I consider excessive. When we first met, we shared emotional waste with each other without judgment, and it has always been our special bond. So, as usual, I shared some of the most tragic moments of my life as well as the most dismal thoughts on my future and she listened well and smiled. Yes, I will finish up that final resolution this year one way or another.
Beauty and sadness always go together. Nature thought beauty too rich to go forth Upon the earth without a meet alloy.
- George MacDonald
I wrote a lot of private entries over the last few weeks. They are a mixture of bittersweet thoughts that I couldn't muster the courage to share. I've kept an electronic journal thingie since January 10th, 1994. That's over ten years now. Before that I have a pile of a dozen spiral notebooks that don't really have dates associated with them. It wasn't until very recently that I stopped thinking of my personal entries and my online entries as separate entities. These days, I find I write to myself around once a day. When not overly suffering from hebetude, I'll take the time to polish it a little and post it.
Only a small percentage ever tends to make it online. I usually end up splitting up what I'm babbling about to winnow out the pieces that I think are appropriate. There are three distinct trends to the content of entries that are kept secret and safe:
1) The entries are work related. This isn't the right forum to talk about work. This isn't the right forum to complain about it. So, other the mild allusions or comments, nothing really gets posted. For instance, I left my old job last week. I mentioned that I was retiring, but that message probably got covered up in the ramblings.
2) The entries have elements of the lives of my friends or family that I don't have the right to disclose. I know a lot of things about my friends and family that they don't want seeing the light of day. I also have a lot of opinions about that which aren't the most complimentary. It would be cruel of me to do that sort of thing.
3) The entries dwell on the bitter side of things. The world is a bittersweet place to live in. Everything has that tinge of happiness and that tinge of melancholy. I've always felt like I dwelt more on the melancholy view of things, but it seems like I'm giving them the fair share of time they deserve. I also think that most people in the world see gloominess in others as a state of mind that needs to be cured. Life is filled with joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, but in my experience, when I share the sadness, too many friends and family feel inescapable need to cure me of it. I don't always mind the pain; sometimes I revel in it.
There's a wonderful character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night named Olivia who spends much of the play wrapping herself in the sadness of her brother's death. The heartbreak is like a cowl that she uses for warmth in the coldness of the world.
That sounded pretentious. I'm going to bed.
Your growing insanity is starting to worry me.
- Marge Simpson (Homer to the Max)
I left my body swinging on a tree near camp. She should see it and assume the worst. I don't think she has any clue that I still have lives left. My manifesto isn't finished, but I've used up almost all the Whuffie I had when I retired. On Monday we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Patroclus: What the hell is he talking about?
Mr. Squirrel: It's fiction, ignore it.
Patroclus: I think it's allegory.
Mr. Squirrel: It doesn't make any sense as allegory.
Patroclus: Does it really have to make sense?
Mr. Squirrel: Yes. Besides, I think he shares Tolkien's view of allegory.
Whether hunting is right or wrong, a spiritual experience, or an outlet for the killer instinct, one thing it is not is a sport.
- R. Lerner
We went hunting today. I hid in the bushes with the spears ready to go. She ran up behind them screaming and waving her arms. They were frightened and went flying by without a second thought about what was ahead. It was the kind of carelessness you expected from domesticated junk food, but not their wild brethren. I threw a spear and heard the crackle of cellophane and crunch of plastic as it hit its mark. One kill was enough for today.
We skinned off the wrapper and dug the juicy flesh from the polymerized bones. It wasn't the herd of wild cookies we were expecting; instead it was fruit and cake. The last time I had successfully hunted this particular breed was in the wilderness near Carmichael. I brought back the carcass as a trophy and tossed it to the Viking. I remember the look of betrayal distinctly when he slowly took his first bite from the meat. All he said was, "this isn't fig."
Today, though we blissfully feasted on fig, the perfidy returned and my heart moved on again. Already plans were weaving in my head to leave her. Still, I guess it will be easier this time knowing she'll be pursuing me.