Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life
My life is, to me, ripe with frequent challenges, occasional successes, spontaneous laughter, adequate tears, and enough *life* to last me a lifetime. To you, however, it surely seems most pedestrian. And therefore, I recycle the name I used previously and call this my Notebooks of Daily Life. Daily, because it's everyday in nature, ordinary. These conglomeration of events that are my life are of interest to me because I live it, perhaps mildly so to those who are touched by it, and could only be of perverse, morbid curiosity to anyone else. Yet, I offer them here nonetheless. Make of them what you will, and perhaps you can learn from my mistakes.
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Monday, February 28, 2005
Well, I finally got my laptop working enough that I could get my posts off of my handheld and get them uploaded. They were all basically done by the end of February (except for minor editing and adding URL's and such); they were just stuck in my wee little Visor with no way to get out.
All told, I've been down for three weeks -- unable to post stories, check e-mail, or do any real work. If there weren't the concerns about data loss and the work to get things back, I would say it was actually kinda nice.
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I am quite sure that people such as those at the Cato institute have thought this whole idea of Social Security privatization through completely and are either certain that no one would ever end up with a zero balance when it comes time to retire or prepared to deal with it. Because I know that, if investing for my retirement were left up to me, I would end up with a zero balance.
That, however, is not what concerns me.
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I have yet to find a project that Yo-Yo Ma has worked on that I didn't like. I absolutely love Appalachian Journey, and, of course, his Bach Cello suites are fantastic. If you're not familiar with his work, just go pick an album at random. You'll be glad you did.
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I once worked on a project where the end result of my efforts was to be data written in XML format. For those unfamiliar with it, XML is a way to store data along with a description of what that data is. If you are at all familiar with HTML, XML looks very similar, with beginning and ending tags that both delineate and identify the data. My conclusion by the time that project was cancelled, was that XML was stupid.
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Many years ago, my brother and I were tooling about (on 7th avenue, to be exact) when I spotted a window.
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The English language reads horizontally. When discrete items are grouped together, therefore, they are best done so vertically. Indices, checklists, and telephone directories are all organized vertically. File system structures -- hierarchical listings of directories and files -- are also traditionally presented as a vertical list.
Why then do FTP clients, CD burning software, and other programs insist on using windows stacked above each other, thus limiting the number of discrete items visible in each window?
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I totally understand the unpleasant feeling that some people claim to have when they see a gay couple holding hands or kissing. I feel the exact same way -- whenever I see a "W04" sticker on a car. And as much as I want to grab the driver, shake them from head to toe, and cry "What were you thinking?", I don't. I have a better solution.
I look away.
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We had an incredible time at Lake Tahoe. Once again, we are indebted to our generous hosts for memories that will last a lifetime.
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Seppuku is the japanese traditional ritual suicide, commonly referred to by 'Murcans as hari-kari. It was officially abolished more than a hundred years ago and has been rarely used since. Until now. My copy of Windows disembowelled itself.
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Red Light means Stop. Even my not-yet-three-year-old son understands that. In San Francisco and in the surrounding areas, however, we have a problem with people not bothering to stop for red lights.
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Identify the television shows that featured these characters and the big names who portrayed them:
- Dr. Ruth Wordheimer
- Easy Reader
- Mister Noodle
- Mister Conductor
- Nigel Thornberry
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Hot on the heels of the death of my MP3 player, my laptop died. While pondering ways to recover (and typing journal entries on my PDA), I began making a list of the software I had installed on the machine. If I end up reinstalling windows onto a blank drive, I'll need to reinstall the software as well. Of course, in most cases, that means I'll lose my settings as well, but getting rid of slime left behind by poorly written windows software (no, that's not necessarily redundant) might be worth it.
So, without further ado, here is the list, as complete as I can make it, of all the software I had installed on my machine.
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I'm not normal. Nor are most of my valued friends and acquaintances. I like it that way.
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I wish that, just once, they'd pick the right ones for the lottery.
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Recently, my MP3 Player died. I'd had it for almost exactly a year. I had, in fact, just purchased a new 40gb hard (double its initial capacity) because I hit 20gb and I still have at least a third of my CD's to rip. So now I'm in the market for a new MP3 player.
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I found out that a dear friend passed away recently. She was a fashion model earlier in her life, using those experiences to build careers as a comedienne, as an author, and as a singer/songwriter. More than anything else, she was always the epitomy of grace, style, and, above all else, class. There was always a twinkle in her eye. She was truly a lady.
Good night Esther.
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My father did most of the cooking when I was growing up. Of all ths things he made on that old O'keefe & Merritt stove, my favorites were his famous Herman's German Swedish Meatballs, skirt steaks, and beef tongue.
I loved having tongue for dinner, but I loved it just as much for lunch the next day -- a couple of slices on white bread with mayo, mmmmm... Nowadays, I use the Spanish term Lengua that I've picked up from the taquerias hereabouts. You see, even though I can't cook it myself, I've found that the local burrito places prepare it pretty much the same as my dad did. That's why one of my favorite foods is a lengua burrito con queso.
What is also very gratifying is that one of my son's favorite meals is RiceBeansLengua -- a lengua taco (solo carne) with rice and whole pintos on the side. It is a part of my father that I can share with my son.
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Once again, we are being shown amazing kindness; my dear friend Stan is opening his home to us. So, early Saturday morning, we're off to Tahoe for five days. Don't expect to hear much from me during that time.
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I used to think, in my naivete, that the Shane Company was a local business. After all, if you give the location of your store as "across from the Dunfey", you've got to be a local, right? Not so, it seems.
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Idiocy Marketing is my term for advertising that relies on the stupidity of its audience to be successful. It pisses me off.
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I am not a prude. I have a fondness for weapons in general and firearms in particular. I understand that there are times when lethal force is the only option and I have no problem with that. I support the death penalty when the situation warrants it.
And yet, I cannot conceive of any circumstances under which it would ever be acceptable for killing someone to be "fun".
Any time it is necessary for a person to take the life another, it should be a sad and solemn occasion. Such an action represents ultimate failure -- failure of diplomacy, failure of education, failure of civilization.
If you find yourself in the position of having to kill another, I would hope you would do so with all the respect you would want shown to you, were the situation reversed.
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There is something very wrong with the common perception of the government these days. It might have something to do with the fact that those running it have been doing a piss-poor job of it. The fact of the matter is that the government should not be an adversary of its constituency, but its servant instead.
It seems that those in charge have forgotten that the role of the government is to address the needs of its citizens. The government is just a convenient tool created to take care of things we don't have the time or inclination to do ourselves or that require a pooling of resources. Things like delivering mail or building roads. Just as a neighborhood homeowners association would use its members' dues to hire a gardener to care for common areas, so should governments act as agents of the people, using the combined resources of the people for the good of all.
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In case you haven't figured it out, Dugh's challenge for February is to come up with a series of posts, where the first letter of each topic forms, in order, the complete alphabet. It's not as simple as it sounds. If you have a Journal, why not join in?
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I don't know everything. I do have a knack, however, for knowing who does. At least in certain areas. Therefore, I keep a handy-dandy little list in my head of who to turn to when I have a question, need an explanation, or want an expert opinion.
In the area of children in general and early childhood education in particular, there is simply no better resource than my dear Rachel. In matters of government, I turn to Craig. For matters judaic, it would be my friend Mitch and for musical theatre, my mother-in-law, Diane. If I wanted to know about PC hardware, especially graphics and such my pal Hal knows all that (and, actually, a whole lot more.)
This is a strategy that I heartily recommend to everyone -- don't get bogged down in the details (outside your own area of expertise, of course). Get to know who knows stuff and make some mental bookmarks, just as you would bookmark a particularly helpful, informative, or insightful website. The old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know" is definitely true.
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Or Dumbass, same thing. Okay, I couldn't stomach listening to the speech last night. I did read up on it, however, and have a couple of comments.
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The other day, I was in need of a snippet of code -- specifically, a Perl routine to check that an e-mail address has a valid format -- and it occurred to me that while there are websites out there that host libraries of free and commercial programs and such, I had never seen one that fulfilled the role of a CopyLib.
For those to young to know, a CopyLib is simply a shared library of record layouts, code snippets, and subroutines that can be referenced in a program and included at compile time. It's a concept I know from COBOL, but it may have found its way into other languages. The real impetus for using a CopyLib is laziness, but we've sold the concept to management by pointing out that it establishes consistency across programs and applications, extracts core business logic into a centralized repository, and makes programs more easily maintained by modularizing details.
What I was thinking of was a repository of stuff that would commonly go into a CopyLib. The regexp I found for validating an e-mail address, for example, would be a prime candidate. There would be different categories for different languages and subcategories for topics like record layouts, TCP/IP and sockets, file handling, graphics, user interface, and so on.
It could even be done easily with Blosxom. I checked, and, as of this morning, copylib.com is available. But do I really need another project? Could I sneak yet another domain registration fee past Rachel? I think I'm going to have to let this one slide, I'm afraid. But, if someone wants to pick up on the idea, I'd be happy to share my thoughts on the project.
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If you're thinking you'd like to have a baby, stop. Think about it. It's not that I'm recommending against it, just that you stop and think about it realistically.
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This Saturday is the monthly meeting of ABACUS. I plan to demo a couple of RSS readers that I've been evaluating -- primarily Tristana and FeedReader -- as well as Yahoo's service. Tristana and FeedReader are both Windows applications; Yahoo is, of course, web-based.
I would love to hear of any other solutions, especially mac or linux applications or web-based tools. If you're interested in joining us, by all means, drop me a line for directions.
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