The view from the top floor

So, on this trip, I get an upgrade to the "Club Level" of the hotel. The room is about a third larger and I have a love seat instead of a chair. But, we've been on daylight saving time for more than two weeks and the alarm clock is still on standard time. Being on the top floor, I spend more time in the elevator. One of the boxes has a very clunky ride, like the cog railroad going to the top of Mount Washington. There is a free breakfast buffet, so I eat better and the company doesn't have to pay for my meal expense.

Last night we went to dinner with several members of the team. The sales people on our project picked up the tab in celebration of the signing of a new contract. It was a nice night so we walked to and fro. On the way, we passed a new Wal-Mart being built on the ground floor of an office building (?!). (We're were just a couple blocks from one of the most high-priced malls in the area, with Brooks Brothers, Louis Vuitton, Nordstrom, and Tiffany.) Returning, the long-time employees brought us past a shoe store, above which was the original home of this division of the company. We genuflected appropriately and got home a bit after 11.

I heard In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on the radio when I was driving here. Few people clean and sober will care much for this song, but it lives on in legend. The car radio isn't really the best source for this kind of sound. Speakers facing out of the windows of a college dorm room, volume turned up to 11, on a spring afternoon, young people face down in the mud - that's where this song belongs.

Love the Diversity of God's Creation. ... A Beautiful Rainbow - And the Lord Said His Creation was GOOD!
Sounds nice, doesn't it? Think again.

It's a reef dweller, so the Humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua'a, Hawai‘i's soon-to-be official state fish, isn't likely to wind up in Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.

I knew a guy who was an Elvis impersonator. He headed off to Las Vegas and, by all accounts, is doing well. This news, then, is likely to be unsettling, that the person who owns the rights to the Elvis images is trying to get unauthorized Elvii out of the building.

If you're out and around on May 25th, you might want to wear a hat, probably made of tin foil.

Of friends and family

We had Easter dinner at Mike and Lynn's, a grand gathering and a great feast. Adam and Lily joined us. (Jennie had to work on her recertification exam.) We had lamb and ham and potatoes and salad and summer squash casserole and on and on. I lucked out (in many ways). While the last-minute preparations were underway, I got to hold Miss Cassie.

Late in the afternoon, we brought leftovers to my father. His friend, Ted, had come over for sauna. Ted's an interesting guy, a member of the ski troops in WWII, a working artist in Finland for nearly 20 years, a teacher of art at a local community college for another 20 or so, a Ph. D. in linguists or anthropology or somesuch, with a thesis on commonalities of Nordic languages, including the Inuit and Sami. Ted comes for sauna every three or four weeks and usually brings a load of firewood in payment.

After our brief visit, we went to the camp. Half up the hill on the camp road, we let Marley out of the car so that he can run. A short way up the road, we met a neighbor who was letting his new golden retriever, Max, run alongside the ATV. Sometimes Marley isn't the best behaved around other dogs, particularly males, but meeting was jolly. They charged around the woods and had a grand time. We went to the camp with our neighbor and the dogs continued with their play date.
As you might suspect, I read a lot of stuff from a lot of web sources. RSS makes it too easy to keep track of 100s of web sites. Most of the material I find is useful in one way or another. A lot of the news, however, focuses on the strange doings of celebrities. It's interesting for a while, but gets stale and then dreary.

Friend Tom cites Bill Russell when saying that the only thing that a performer owes his fans is the performance. It's a way of saying, "My life off-court is mine." It applies to performers in other fields as well. A few years ago, I listened to a reading of Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea, read by Charlton "If they want my gun, they'll have to rip it out of my cold, dead fingers." Heston. His reading was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

This comes up because there's a lot in the news these days about the off-screen, off-stage, or off-field behavior of many performers and celebrities. Take Tom Cruise. Please. Norman Mailer has been a mind-numbing loony and yet will write some of the best prose of his time. Shirley MacLaine, Robert Downey, Jr., Dennis Rodman, Ted Williams, Curt Schilling (Republican), Barbra Streisand - all are or have been loopy until the lights come on. Oh, and then, of course, is the King, Elvis, whose off-stage wackiness killed him, even as he brought his career around with one of the most stunning comebacks ever.

And so, it would be nice to step back from our celebrity obsession for a while so that we can focus on the serious problems of the world, such as two young women from Orkney who are afraid of ketchup.

Music and coffee for the ride to work

[Ed. note: with corrected Starbuck's link]

On the way to work yesterday morning, I heard East-West by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. It's probably been 30 years since I've heard it on the radio. The first time was late one night in 1968 as a new radio station in Boston (WBCN) was coming on the air. East-West remains one of my favorite tunes. I wore out my LP copy to the point that I was putting pennies on the arm of the turntable to keep the needle from skipping. That LP is long gone, replaced by a CD and then another. Ten years ago, the record company released a CD with three live versions of East-West. The sound is murky and the performances are sometimes uneven, but even when they're playing at less than their best, it's still a great band playing their best music.

My commute is quite manageable these days, certainly not like this guy's. On average, he drives 3 1/2 hours each way, each day, and has done so since 1989.

And for those 30 cups of coffee he drinks each day, he can step right into the coffee wars. Dunkin' Donuts is in the process of converting its shops to look more like Starbuck's.

William Sloane Coffin, former Yale chaplain and activist in the peace movement, died yesterday at his home in Vermont. My mother, not surprisingly, corresponded with him.

I had to stop at my doctor's office yesterday. As I left, I wondered why they would have a person with severe laryngitis answering the telephone. When I was talking with her, it was as though she standing out in the parking lot.

A week or so ago, Sandra and I received post cards inviting to a commemorative event for Ken Olsen and a new facility named in his honor at a local college. We're grateful for his brilliance and good work.

The good thing about HempPlus Toaster Waffles is that you don't need a Cinderella Waffle Iron. Hemp waffles? Some jokes just write themselves.

Two years in the back of the blogatorium

The first buds are appearing on the lilacs out back and the honeysuckle in front and the forsythia that isn't yellow is on its way to green. And the Red Sox won their home opener.

Yep, two years of this journal. 'Nuff said.

Work remains a full-time endeavor. We are starting interviews tomorrow to fill a couple of positions, an exciting prospect for a new team. I've been working on a problem that is moving as I would wish. I want to be able to map a set of customer requirements and design documents against a set of product features so that we can show that we're delivering what the customer wants. There are big and expense tools that would do this, but I'm trying to do it on the cheap and, ideally, presenting the information in graphical form. I've learned a lot about some nifty things - Perl, XML, UML - but I need to have something that I can show my boss and, ultimately, the customer.

In the Almost-A-Good-Idea Dept., a British doctor has suggested that it would be possible to create a drug that provides the euphoria of alcohol without the bad side effects such as violence, vomiting, amnesia, and liver failure. Here are two takes on the idea, one from a tabloid, the other from a science web site.

The lifespan of most software is usually quite brief. Many companies try to issue updates once or twice a year. Successful products can last quite a while, at least in computer years. Microsoft Word was released in the 80s. My favorite text editor, Emacs, was released in the 70s; I've been using it since 1981 on various systems. Most out-dated software is discarded, often for good reason. But, in our haste to discard what is old, we risk losing important understanding of how computing was done in the days of small processors, limited memory, and slow data storage.

So, there are initiatives underway to preserve software, to ensure that we can read the media years from now and to ensure that we will be able to run the programs. You can, for example, download a copy of Visicalc, the first piece of best-selling software and arguably the prime mover in the sales of PCs in the early 80s.

The Library of Congress, on another front, is selecting essential recorded material, mostly music, but some spoken word, to add to its preservation collections. This year's inductees range widely, from Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, and the Firesign Theater to the Modesto High School band. The full Registry list is here.

Happy Birthday, Woody.

Opening Day

Baseball returns to Boston today. We've had some anxiety about this team this year. So many new players on the team and several key people gone. (Johnny Damon is doing ok with that other team.) The Sox, however, have shown that they have some good stuff and that they'll give us a fun season. Oh, and did I mention that the Yankees are in last place?

This morning's Boston Globe had a couple of additional Sox items. The Olde Towne Team used the most smokeless tobacco (free registration may be required at the Globe site.) of any of the teams in the 2004 or 2005 World Series. And, there's a self-published kids' book by North Shore writer, Todd Balf, called, Manny Being Manny.

When people ask me how I'm doing, I always stumble a bit as I gauge how much I can say. Sometimes, I just don't know. It can be a bag of adjectives and anecdotes that make little or no sense (yet). I mumble something and change the subject. I'm not at the curmudgeonly level that lets my father say, "Who the hell knows?"

For many folks, "How are you doing?" is just a greeting, a different way of saying, "Hello." When asked how she was doing, a college friend would answer, "Yeah." Most people never noticed.

Cell phone technology, as the pundits have observed, can render location almost irrelevant. My boss needed to take a business trip on short notice, so we had our regularly scheduled one-on-one meeting via phone. I needed to speak with my doctor yesterday. He returned my call while I was standing in line at the grocery store check-out. I stepped out of line and had the conversation while next in the frozen food section.

If you have a choice about where you are when a fire breaks out, don't be here. (via)

I wouldn't think that you could find a way to do $100,000 worth of damage in a salvage yard, but five kids from Gardner figured out how to do it.

If you want to be a successful project manager at NASA, here are 100 things to remember, just for starters. Or, if you'd like to start with something simpler, you can become your own web host in 75 steps. Step 71, for example is:

Type "cat >r;>r; /usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf". On the next line type "AddType application/x-httpd-php .php" and hit CTRL+D.

This Macintosh ad, in my opinion, was second only to the 1984 Super Bowl ad in power and effectiveness. In brief, it shows how much more documentation is required to use an IBM PC that with a Mac. The site has a link to the full series of ads, but the files are on the far end of a slow line, so you may not be able to get there.

Spring and all that it brings

Except in the shadiest of shady places, the ice and snow are gone. There are no leaves on the trees or bushes, so sunlight can get into places that will be blocked a few weeks from now. The sun is high and clear day can be very bright, indeed. At the camp, we noticed the first few bugs swirling in the sunlight.

My father's friend, Ted, took down a few maples trees that were posing a danger to his house. Ted's been bringing a VWful each time he comes for a visit in payment for a sauna. The ground around the wood that Ted had left is soft and uneven, so it was difficult for my father to load the wood onto the small trailer that he pulls with his garden tractor. Yesterday, he and I cleaned up the area. I filled the trailer and he drove it to his woodshed.

When we got home, I dozed off during the Red Sox game (even though it was a good game). Sandra worked in the yard. We have many nice flowers coming into bloom, thanks to her good works. And then it was time for me to finish the taxes. As I've mentioned before, most of the time comes from trying to locate the required bits of data; the calculations themselves aren't bad and take little time. One part of the tax software had me talking to myself (and to Sandra), but I was able to find an answer online, in the part of the company's web site where users write in to ask and answer questions. The forms and the accompanying payment are ready for signature and mailing; we'll wait a day or two before putting the envelopes in the mail.

From the Almost A Good Idea Dept. comes a coffee maker for your car. My fellow travelers certainly need one more distraction for their ride to work in the morning. This site, as with most traffic simulators, doesn't take into account the somewhat unique behaviors of Massachusetts drivers. There was a study at either Harvard or M.I.T. about 10 years ago. The researchers were stunned when an ambulance would be dispatched to a busy highway. The other drivers would deliberately get in front of the ambulance, using its lights and sounds as a way to clear a path through traffic.

If you find me with a sucking chest wound, it's ok to call 911 instead of looking up treatment procedures on my Blackberry. By the way, Sucking Chest Wound would be a great name for a rock band, except that it's already been used.

Yesterday's New York Times carried a wedding announcement for a couple married by a Universal Life Church minister. I'm assuming that it's the same ULC that guys tried to use in the 60s to obtain a draft deferrent because they were clergy. Anyone can be a ULC minister, just for the asking.

Words and then some

The headline on the top of the front page of yesterday's Boston Globe said - Red Sox Hammer Orioles Pitching in 14-8 Victory. Guys, the Red Sox pitchers gave up eight runs. That's not a way to make the case that the other team's pitching stunk, even if Baltimore gave out more bases-on-balls than the Easter Bunny gives out eggs . Last night Curt Schilling threw a brilliant game and the Sox won 2-1.

We made a quick trip to the Cape yesterday with Sandra's parents to Scott, Val, and Russell's house. Along the way we passed signs urging us to vote Blank for Town Moderator. The occasion was the celebration of Woody's birthday, which we'll celebrate on the official date later this week. It was cloudy and cool all day. Sleet mixed in with the heavy rain from Franklin down to about Taunton.

We had a wonderful gathering and feast. Scott cooked meats from various animals on the grill in the garage. Others brought salads and cakes and pie, oh, my. Val is due to deliver twins in a few weeks, so we had good fun speculating about names. Sandra had researched names of twins in their family's lineage; the list sparked a whole new line of discussion.

On the way home, Sandra and her mother sang in delightful harmony. They sang rounds, old hymns, a couple of Christmas carols, several songs that shared the lyrics "dee-dee-dum-deedly-dee," and the jingle from the Ipana toothpaste commercials. It was fine and fun music.

A few notes on language:

• Can someone please tell me why the word 'kidney' shows up when I search thesaurus.com for the synonyms of the word 'description'?
  
  "Yes, ma'am. We will catch the perpetrator. Now, can you give me a kidney?"
  
  
• Words get hijacked often, taken from their original context and used in new and often incorrect (and even ironic) ways. Factoid, for example, was a word coined by Norman Mailer to describe the facts that he made up when writing a biography of Marilyn Monroe and used extensively in The Executioner's Song. Mailer himself described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper". [1] Factoid is almost always used now to describe a tidbit of news. The speaker or writer is typically unaware that a factoid is something that isn't true, but was made up to make the narrative flow better.
• Meanwhile, we read that Air France is trialing cell phones in flight. (Google found more that 600,000 occurrences of that word.)
• The New York Times has an article (free registration required) about the new words that we've needed to describe the technologies and activities of current-day work.
  

Would you want your chiropractor to treat you by going back to the time when your injury occurred or by treating you telepathically? Me, neither.

There is a video of Yoko Ono on stage while audience members came up and cut off pieces of her clothing with scissors. I watched so you don't have to.

Our tax dollars at work. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has a kids' web page where the young'uns can learn what they need to know about trademark law. There are age-appropriate activities, such as a trip to the USPTO museum.

Sandra and her mother were wondering if there were any hymns specific to Palm Sunday. The Pope might know and he might even be listening to them on his iPod.

Work splashing over the gunwales

So, I have a day ahead with no meetings scheduled, no conference calls, nothing but open space, open time, and work.

This article provides the result of a study that shows that the less skilled that we are, the less likely that we are to admit it. Humbling.

We're very close to obtaining the final approval for hiring. It will be fun to have some new people join us. A couple of people have already been hired, as replacements, in our New York office.

A while ago, I mentioned that I was using del.icio.us to manage my online bookmarks. I've added a link on this journal's home page that will take you to the Del.icio.us site. As I find things of interest, that may or may not wind up in this journal, I post the on Del.icio.us. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Yesterday I mentioned the Dummies series of books. Later in the day, I found this site, which lets you create your Dummies book cover.

The President, according to "Scooter," authorized the leak of a CIA agent's name. Well, isn't that special? And now that Justice O'Connor is free to speak, she's speaking freely. (A tip of the hat to SR on another mailing for bringing the speech to my attention.)

Fudd. Paging Mr. Elmer Fudd.

Say what?

A friend of the family learned that, with a coupon from the local paper, he could get a (much needed) hearing aid for $495. At the store, he learned that $495 product, however, wouldn't be good for his type of hearing loss. (You can probably guess where this is going.) The product that he would need costs $5,600, but they'd let it go for $4,800.

I've had a couple of dentist appointments this week. The anesthetics continue to improve, making the procedures minimally discomforting. Not like the old days. The very old days.

We picked up about three inches of snow yesterday at work, and much less at home. We may see more snow showers today, but nothing that requires much attention. (Note to self: put stabilizer in the gas tank of the snow blower before putting it away for the season.)

Yesterday's mail brought an offer for one of the Dummies books. This one, Guide to Life After 50, 60, 70 & Beyond For Dummies, has tips on how to block cancer, cure high blood pressure, eat sweet potatoes, buy golf balls, and feel like I'm 25. The Dummies series of books came out in the mid-90s. A friend of mine edited a couple of books. I argued that it was demeaning to refer to users as dummies (to their faces) and made it hard for the users to value their own skills and knowledge. My friend replied that the users, of course, loved the books. "Have you got something really simple for me?" they'd ask. "Something really basic. Sometimes I feel like a complete idiot." With a gazillion copies sold, the Dummies series has certain found its mark. Of course, Cliff Notes were my only way of making it through Shakespeare's plays in high school.

And, did you know that there is a Koran for Dummies?

So, now, I'll go read Depression for Dummies. They don't make mention a recent study that shows that John Kerry is depressing.

Nice mention of Niece Lori's blog in an LA media trade paper. (Next-to-last item on the page, just above the obituary.)

A study shows that other cell phone users are annoying, but not me.

If you are planning to walk to Russia, call ahead to let them know that you're coming.

Imagine that an American and a Scot would be ahead of a Canadian in curling. 'Tis true. The Finn, one Markku Uusipaavalniemi, misspelled as Uuspaavalniemi in the story, is still in contention, despite an injury.

We're almost adjusted to daylight saving time. About the worst that we have had to ensure is the loss of an hour of sleep on Sunday. Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka claim that their time changes caused the tsunami. The government is discussing a plan to return Sri Lanka to +5.5 hours GMT, the same as India and the same as it had been in 1996.

The keys to a German nuclear power plant are missing. Many people would suspect terrorists. I think it's this guy.

Bugs and other pests

If you use the American-style dates, then a bit more than an hour after midnight tonight is a special time; 01:02:03 04/05/06.

During a conference call yesterday, the project leader told us that our customer was taking a particular issue very seriously. "They're holding the stick to the mud" said the project leader.

A local extermination business has a sign on the side of their building, showing the pest of the month. This month it's skunks. On the front window, they have a sign about the Bug Club, where kids can learn about entymology. "Have your next party here." Um, no, thanks. Besides, Yucca Mountain looks like a much better place for kids.

Periodically, I check the referrer logs for this journal. The logs don't tell me the user name or email address of the person visiting the site, but they show details such operating system, browser version, IP address and domain name of the Internet service provider. It's interesting stuff. Someone from Costa Rica visited yesterday. Some of entries show up frequently; others are new. This one, though, spooked me a bit.

You may to give up your plans to build a new communications infrastructure with tin cans and string; someone has already patented the idea. (Via)

Finally, Tom DeLay, aka "The Hammer," is stepping down from Congress and will not seek re-election in the fall. Schadenfreude is a malicious delight in the misfortune of others. Shall we succumb to that temptation? Well, maybe a little. (His congressional site is here. His official website is here. As a footnote, his web site has no privacy policy.)

Hey, there's a trunk in my engine.

So, I'm wandering around the net and I see that some guy has posted his Nerd Score on his web page. This might be fun, I say to myself, so I take the quiz.



I work with nerds all day long and I certainly wouldn't rate myself this highly in comparison. Maybe I do know what to do with compressed air, that I take notes in more than one color, that I used telnet daily. I'll bet that there are lots of high school sophomore who do the same.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall...or a stack of wood. We went to the camp yesterday and discovered that the stack of wood at the end of the wood shed had tumbled to the ground. This after another, smaller stack had partially fallen about a month ago. The wood at the camp is cut shorter, about 12", and so isn't as stable when stacked. Nevertheless, everyone's susceptible. My father lost a part of his stack when the sun warmed the frozen ground and caused everything to shift. It happens and it's not a moral issue, much.

There's a small, spring-fed pool by the side of the camp road. The pool was full when the freeze came earlier in the winter and about 3" of ice former. Over the dry winter, the water below seeped back into the ground, eventually leaving the ice to collapse into the dry hole.

My father doesn't wear his hearing aids when he's at home alone so he can save the batteries. Sandra and I have a bit of gentle fun as we wonder how long it will be until he gets his gear into his ears. Usually, it's five to 10 minutes. Yesterday it was 35. It isn't an official visit with one's parents unless you are talking to yourself as you leave.

I was walking from my hotel to the office in White Plains last week when a new Volkswagen Beetle pulled into a parking space. The driver got out, open the rear hood, and took something from the trunk. "That's just wrong," I said to myself. The engine's supposed to be back there with the trunk in the front. The first VW that I saw in person was owned by a family friend, Kaija, in 1957 or '58. I called it the "backwards-frontwards" car.

Dang. We missed Spamarama.

In this article, Dave Eggers explains why nearly every kid in America plays soccer until age 10. After that, they'll do almost anything else. (Which is why ESPN is thinking about broadcasting domino matches.)

In less than two weeks, western Christians will celebrate Easter. (The eastern churches observed the holiday a week later. More about that here with the math that lets you calculate the days yourself.) It's time to think about those traditional meals, such as cooking with Peeps.

The 23-Hour Day

So, when the clock said that I was getting up at 5:45, it was really 4:45. We'll be doing that all day - I know what it is, but what time is really?

The Red Sox open their season tomorrow in Texas. The local papers are working hard to help us get to know the new players. I can recite the 1975 Red Sox lineup, but I know barely half of this year's starting team. Meanwhile, the folks in New York are wondering if the ex-Red Sox players will be ready.

Just after noon yesterday, the April Fool's jokes on the web started getting tiring. The "Hubble Resolves Expiration Date For Green Cheese Moon" photo was clever. There were stories of several key Microsoft employees going over to Google. Meanwhile, Google launched Google Romance, a dating service based on the premise that Google knows more about everything than you do. "When you think about it, love is just another search problem." The British newspaper, The Independent, carried a story about a long-secret romance between Chuck Berry and Sylvia Plath. And so on. There was some fun stuff, to be sure, but the net certainly doesn't need a special day to be weird, foolish, or funny.

And, of course, I was looking around the net because I was doing my taxes and was easily sidetracked. The calculations aren't hard, particularly with a program such as Turbo Tax. The difficulty comes as I try to find that one bit of paper with the information that I need to complete a section. Sandra asked me, at the end of the day, how much more I had to do. I said somewhere between 10 minutes and four hours, depending on the status of that particular piece of paper.

We used Quicken to handle our finances. We've used it since 1992. It has a feature that allows you to rate vendors to whom you've written checks. When I was looking up what we'd paid to the Feds for taxes last year, I noticed a little "Rate Treasury" link in the lower left corner of Quicken. It was asking me if I wanted to rate the United States Treasury. Words fail me.

For supper, Sandra and I went to George's Coney Island Hot Dog in Worcester. We each had a pair of their great hot dogs. The place has lots of booths, most of which were empty at the time we arrived. A passageway opens to the bar next door, where a half dozen denizens were keeping watch in the dark. The only change since our last visit was that there are three signs, one on the door and one behind and one above the counter, telling patrons to turn off their cell phones. I guess they don't want to disrupt the ambiance of the eatery or the bar. You guessed it; one guy came in, walked past all three signs while talking on his phone.

The hot dog place is in a ragged section of Worcester. So, it was a bit surprising to see that, next door, Sonia's Used Cars next door is selling a Mercedes M-class SUV and several other Mercedes sedans, along with the expected collection of used cars. "Hey, honey, let's go get a couple of hot dogs. We can get that Mercedes that you've wanted while we're down there."

Frank Zappa is quoted as saying, "Jimi Hendrix 'There's a guy who shouldn't have done drugs.' Eddie Van Halen: 'There's another guy who shouldn't do drugs.'" Jimi died of an overdose at age 27. Eddie lasted longer, but doesn't look much better than Jimi.

An actually-free zone

It's great to be home. Even though I have a wild day ahead of me at work, it starts from the comfort of home and family.

Spring is sprung and all that. We have the window open overnight and the birds are getting louder by the day. It's nice to see the green showing up on the front lawn. The ground is very dry, so the new growth isn't bursting forth, but it's making progress. We may get some much-needed showers this evening and tomorrow. The dawn was red this morning.

One report concludes that spring in New England starts a week earlier than it did 150 years ago. Meteorological trend analysis is very challenging because 150 years are but a flicker in the earth's timescale. Nevertheless, it's clear that something is happening, even if our attempts to find a cause get all tangled up in our politics and economics.

Besides, New England has enough quirks and foibles, as show in the Strange New England web site, that, as the old song goes, believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

I was on a conference call yesterday morning. One of the participants lives in Indiana, so we talked for a couple of minutes about this weekend's time change. For the first time in a long time, all counties in Indiana will observe daylight saving time. Not only is the state in two time zones, but the counties have been able to determine if they wanted to observe daylight saving time or not. The workarounds that the computer folks had developed to keep computer clocks in synch now no longer work.

Last night Sandra and I watched a PBS show that included a tour of a Washington D.C. historical site that is currently undergoing renovations. Interesting material. The guide, however, a U.S. Park Ranger, said the word "actually" at least 10 times in the four minute segment. (I counted 10, but there may have been one or two before I started counting.) The only times that I don't cringe when someone uses actually or actual is if that person is singing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. Then, pretty much everything is forgiven.

This hardware and software is intended to assist people with autism learn about social cues and interaction by providing indications when the other person appears to be getting bored or annoyed. I can also imagine a time when such a device would be standard issue for people in the workplace. Most nerds roll right over folks, barely noticing if the other person knows or cares what they're talking about. (Via.)

The view from Westchester County

I'm back in New York for a few days for training, my personal development goal for this quarter. It's been nearly 20 years since I've taken a programming course. So far, I'm keeping pace. It's a scripting course instead of a pure programming course, but few people in the course could tell you the difference.

This trip is more draining than most. I made the commitment to be here about a month ago, but really wish that I could be at home. I talk with Sandra a couple of times during the day and had a nice IM chat with Krista last evening, but it would still be better to be home.

The hotel continues its gentle decline toward its future as Fred and Ethel's Cadillac Motel and Bait Shop. The heat didn't work in my room yesterday morning. The latch on the window is missing a couple of screws. It's the not-caring about the little things that makes the difference.

A couple more notes on hitchhiking from Mondays's post. The first time that I hitchhiked anyplace was when I was 14. My father was working construction at UMass in Amherst and my mother was taking a summer course. I'd often go to the campus and hang out, sit in the student union, drink coffee, read newspapers, play songs on the jukebox, and watch people. One afternoon, I got bored and decided to go back to the camp, about 35 miles away. I left a note in my mother's car and headed out. I don't remember anything of the rides themselves, except that I got there safely and quickly enough.

Of course, if one of our grandkids who are in the 14-year-old range decided to hitchhike without permission, I would expect that the kid would be grounded until the Singularity.

On the trip to Toronto, we had some trouble getting through the border. The Vietnam War was on and there was a steady stream of young men crossing into Canada to avoid the draft. In fact, we were going to visit one, a guy who had come home on leave from the Army and slipped into Canada. He was working as a reporter for a left-wing paper. Canada was having its own crises at the time as turbulence among the Québec separatists would lead to the kidnapping and murder of the vice-premier and the suspensions of civil liberties in Québec. Me? After a week or so in Toronto, I got out of town, catching a rider with a trucker to Montréal and then re-entering the States at Swanton VT. The rest is kind of blurry. As David Crosby is credited with saying, if you can remember the 60s, you probably weren't there.

It was winter, so we weren't carrying bees. Now, even in the good weather, we can't bring bees from the states (except Hawaii) into Canada.

Grady Booch is a really smart guy. A few years ago, I spent a day working on a project at his house. He has the kind of workspace that you'd expect from an ÜberNerd - massive table, bookshelves on every non-windowed wall, wired and wireless networking, and, of course, Grady, who does his best work with 5"x7" index cards. He travels with the elite of technical world and, occasionally, touching the world of politics. Here, he tells the story of a meeting with Caspar Weinberger. The closest that I can get to that is remembering that my high school principal mispronounced my name at my graduation.

I offer this one without comment: a study reports that men read the news to stoke their anger, while women go to the news to chill out. (via)

That sound that you hear is the crunching of mental gears as depressives learn that eating chocolate can make your depression worse.

A sad note this morning: a former teacher at my high school and, later, a co-worker at a couple of high tech companies passed away on Monday. He was 64.

Travel, as it was and as it is

When I was checking out of my hotel last Friday, I tried to use the automated system that you access through the television. After clicking through a half dozen menu selections, I get to this 404 page. A 404, in web parlance, is the error message means Page Not Found. The system could find the specific page that it was supposed to display and so puts up this default page instead.

The trip home was uneventful, except that it was another full flight. I had the middle seat in the very last row. There was cloud cover over central Massachusetts, so I couldn't see the camp or Mt. Wachusett as we followed Route 2 on our approach to Logan.

As I travel more, my sentiments toward my fellow travelers have soften. These are not intrinsically mean-spirited, self-centered, or feral people. They are, just like me, trying to get someplace and are working overly hard to make this alien world conform to something they can understand. So, after I left the airport and headed out on I-90, it was a nice Welcome Home touch to have someone cut me off at the toll booth.

I'm fortunate that I can drive or fly as I want or need to. For one job, working the graveyard shift, I would get off of work at 7AM, go home, sleep a bit, and then hitchhike to the restaurant so that I could borrow a car from someone working the evening shift, and then go back home until it was time for work. That way I didn't have to rely on hitchhiking at 10 at night. Hitchhiking is an unpredictable mode of transportation. A 10-mile trip could take anywhere from 15 minutes to however long it would take to walk 10 miles, not a good plan if you're trying to get to work on time.

My hitchhiker tales aren't terribly exciting. My longest trip was to Toronto and back (through) Montreal. We took a bus for part of the trip after spending all night standing at the entrance ramp to the New York Thruway. It was early January and the temperature was below zero for the whole night, warming up at dawn so that it could snow. Other trips were of the 50-200 mile variety. I never felt in great danger and never rode with anyone too much weirder than me. During the winter I could tuck my long hair under a knit cap so I would have a better chance of getting a ride. This writer provides some good tips for those few hitchhikers on the road these days. It's been a long time since I've traveled anyplace by thumb and almost as long since I picked up hitchhiker.

Haven't put enough into your IRA to retire comfortably? No problem. We now have learned that pet food is pretty good for you, better than most take-out offerings. Of course, no brand of cat or dog food has made it onto the list of the world's healthiest foods.

Why go to Easter Island when Dublin, Ohio is so close?

It's time for spring, whatever time it is

The snow flurries have stopped, the forsythia are showing a hint of color, and a bit of sunshine is peeking through. The ground, however, is still mostly frozen. We can't call it spring without the mud.

Nevertheless, some places, such as Europe, including the UK, are changing their clocks to Daylight Saving Time this week. Others, such as Australia, are not changing back to standard time because it might bring confusion to the Commonwealth Games, preferring instead to bring confusion to most of their computers. Next weekend, the U.S. will change, except for Arizona, Hawaii, and selected counties in Indiana. (The Navajo nation observes DST because it's spread over three states, one of them Arizona.) All this when there is little data to prove that DST saves any energy and much to suggest that people use more energy (drive) with the increased evening daylight. GMT is fine with me.

The travelers returned in good form yesterday afternoon. The house and other buildings survived the winter well. They left Canada before the start of the Great Seal Guts Battle of 2006. (It wouldn't surprise me if you didn't follow the link tot the story. The short version is that the losers, as always, are the seals.)

The votes are in regarding iPods in the workplace. They're OK or maybe not.

Of course, we could be in Denmark.

Want beef with your Rice Krispies? Didn't think so, particularly if you are a member of the Hare Krsna Society.Well, the same article reports that you can snack on unfrosted Pop-Tarts, even though the law may not let you hang around airport terminals anymore. (I have met a couple in Chicago's O'Hare airport.)

On the other end of the spectrum, my automated search for a technical documentation job found a listing for Director of Research and Development for Buffalo Wild Wings.

And, finally, in the "Lowells talk only to the Cabots and the Cabots talk only to God" Dept., we learn that 'Executive' monkeys are influenced by other executives and not by subordinates. Where are you on the monkey bars?

Colts Sign Away Patriots Super Bowl Hero Vinatieri

First, the Red Sox let Johnny Damon go the Yankees. Now, Adam Vinatieri goes to the Indianapolis Colts. What's next? Are we going to trade Barney Frank to Texas?

My Way - Sports News

Who brings you the morning coffee?

The customer site where our meetings are taking place has a coffee station in the middle of the building. Each morning I pick up a coffee with an extra shot of espresso (the "Eye-Opener"). The woman working at the station started my order as soon as she saw me walk across the floor. "Nice to see you again," she said as I paid for my selection.

Now that we've kicked the United Arab Emirates out of our ports, are we ready to kick them out of our Dunkin' Donuts coffee shops?

There was a time in my life when it was a shot and a beer; now it's espresso and Kenyan.

One writer's comparison of life in junior high school and in a Bush presidency.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has a kids' web site. There you can see art work from the children of agents to get their perspective on their parents' work.

The first Trader Joe's market has opened in New York and they're going bonkers in Yonkers. (The store is actually in Union Square.) These folks have provided a primer on how to shop at TJ's. We've had one nearby for several years; I shop there every week. Good stuff.

Nice touch on the new Chevvies. If you're listening to the radio, you can turn the car off and even remove the key. The radio will stay on until you open the door. On Chevvies in the 50s and 60s, you could remove the key while driving.

Of rock and roll and leftover candy

For the second time in this series of trips, United had trouble assigning people to seats on the plane. Their excuse, again, was that the seat configuration on the 737 that arrived at the gate was different than the one shown on their computers. As a result, there were several duplicate seat assignments. In addition, up until a few minutes before we pulled back from the gate, they weren't sure who was on the plane and who wasn't. The flight attendant would ask, "If M. So-and-so is on plane, please press your attendant call button. If M. Thus-and-such is on the plane, please press your attendant call button." I don't know if everyone who was finally on the plane was supposed to be there, but the flight to Chicago was uneventful.

Late last night we received email from the systems engineer who has been the lead person on our team in these customer meetings. He's running a fever of 102° and won't be able to attend today's meeting and perhaps not tomorrow's, either. In a word, yikes.

I'm listening to my collection of various versions of Johnny B. Goode. It's one of the most durable rock and roll songs for guitar heroes. The song was among a select few chosen to represent humankind on the Voyager Golden Record. Chuck Berry's version remain the reference standard, but Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter take it wider, higher, and deeper.

This time my rental car is a Chevy Malibu. It's a nice enough car. It has, however, this silly little rear spoiler. When I was a kid, I'd attach a playing card to my bicycle frame in the hope that it would sound like a motorcycle.

There are splotches of snow in the shade. Everything else in the open is brown, desperate for spring.

When I arrived yesterday, there was a strong north wind feeding a big storm in the south of the state. I stopped at a supermarket to pick up some fruit and stuff for breakfast. On the exit door, they had posted a very nice, four-color sign that said, basically, that there are high winds today, so please put your grocery carts at the collection stations in the parking lot. That they have enough high wind that it was worth it to them to print these nice signs says, well, none of the other supermarkets that I frequent have such signs.

Mmm, gummi lights.

I've spent too long already trying to think up captions for the stuff on this site. If I had an extra afternoon, I drive to the store to see if they are indeed real.

Before I left, I had to pick up a couple of things at our local drug store. Amid all of the Easter baskets and candy and decorations sit four boxes of leftover Valentine's candy. The candy was marked down 75%.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Accepted by iTunes

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Accepted by iTunes

Fitchburg State College, my mother's alma mater, will no longer send the traditional acceptance letters to their applicants. Instead, they'll learn about their future via podcast.

Tra-la again, spring is here

The vernal equinox, allegedly marking the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, occurs at 18:19 UTC today. It's still well below freezing. The sap buckets aren't collecting much because the daytime temperatures are still too low.

Even as my doctor and I try different approaches to my treatment, it's still a "Doc, will I be able to play the piano?" situation. When I'm well, I'm still me. As a friend of my mother's used to say, "We do the best what we are."

We saw a number of long-time friends last night. Some were having a great time, particularly those who were retired. One couple had just returned from Finland. They were there when Conan O'Brien made his visit. Other friends weren't doing so well, their knuckles and fingernails pale from hanging on so tightly. As we drove home, Sandra and I talked about how grateful we are, that, in spite of some troubles that are very real, we have, at the core, a very good life. We are fortunate in more ways than we can say.

In the UK's proposed budget, women can receive free training as "plumbers, sparkies, and engineers." I had to dig around a bit, but I think that sparkie is colloquial for electrician.

I received this note from a list that tries to match freelance writers with projects.

Writing / Editing Write MLM/Network Marketing Articles 3/16/2006
I am looking for a writer that can write original, professional articles about MLM or network marketing. These articles will be used to post to article directories and will be used to promote an MLM lead / MLM education company. I will pay from $5 - 7 per article depending on the length.

So, not only do these folks want us to do evil, but they'll pay less than minimal wage. (I'll reserve my rant about the that vs. who usage for another day.)

Speaking of rants about grammar 'n stuff, always, always spell-check material before you send anything. I apologize for the typo in the title of Saturday's post.

Taking the tin-foil hats to a new level, you can now buy shirts, hats, aprons, and scarves that afford you EMF protection.

Of politics and pie

The travelers left at 7:20 this morning. It will be clear and cool for most of the ride, with flurries in the forecast for PEI for the next few days.

We haven't armed our Coast Guard ships on the Maine/New Brunswick border, as was done in the Great Lakes, but it's only a matter of time. Who knows when the bad guys will come charging across the St. Croix River?

Last weekend, Sandra and I went to Boston to see Spamalot and to spend the night at the Parker House. Good show. Could have been better. The all-white audience seemed to have fun. One family brought their four daughters, ages seven through about 17. It seems that some of the material might have been a bit rich for the younger kids, said by one who sang the Lumberjack Song to his grandchildren at bedtime.

We went to Quincy Market for lunch. Outside, on the back steps of Faneuil Hall, Deval Patrick was having a rally. Patrick is a Democratic candidate for governor. He's making a good challenge at the front-runner, Attorney General Tom Reilly. Patrick's speech was clear, forceful, and inspiring, marred only by the pre-recorded applause that punctuated each of his major points. Oh, and, the crowds for the juggler and the escape artist were a bit bigger.

The Parker House looks a bit worn, like an old rug at an estate sale. The room we had was oddly shaped, with the walls higher than they were wide. The Parker House has a lot of history associated with it. Ho Chi Minh worked there in the pre-WWI years, as did Malcom X. Parker House rolls originated there, as did Boston Cream pie. The rolls were that much different from what you'd get from Poppin' Fresh. The pie, though, was nothing like the layers of foam rubber and Cool Whip that passes for pies elsewhere. As lightning is to a lightning bug.

A few days ago, a drug on human subjects went very bad. Six people people were injured, two critically. The tests were conducted at the UK labs of Waltham, Mass.-based Parexel International. A British tabloid tried to find out from Parexel's CEO, Josef von Rickenbach, if the company would issue an apology. A company spokesman said, "He’s too busy to say sorry."

On the way home from work last night, I heard Bob Newhart's "Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company." It's one of the finest bits in comedy delivered by one of the finest comedians.

Green stuff run wild

One would think that the good folks of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts would have found a way to make St. Patrick's Day a state-wide holiday. Apparently, however, the religious and ethnic issues proved too daunting. The commissioners of Suffolk County (Boston, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop) went back to the books and discovered a historically significant event - on March 17, 1776, the British were run out of Boston. So, since the early 20th century, Suffolk County has had Evacuation Day as a holiday. The school kids can walk right past the Revolutionary War exhibits on their way to the local pub for corned beef and cabbage.

Back then, in the late 19th centry, school was tough. How tough? This tough. Let me know how well you do with trigraphs, subvocals, diphthongs, cognate letters, linguals.

Woody is making corned beef and cabbage for our supper. I was tempted to make a novel dessert - Spam Swiss Pie - but won't have the time. (Mmm, Spam, whipped cream, eggs, cheese.)

Tomorrow, Woody is going to PEI with John and Suanne, They'll leave around seven in the morning. Tignish, where images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary have appeared on a cloth, is about 100 miles (160 km) away, so they probably won't have a chance to visit the site.

I like cats and I like guitar music, but that doesn't mean this is a good idea.

Tony Blair doesn't know how to use an iPod, but the Pope isn't afraid to try. Draw your own conclusions.

David Weinberger is one of the smartest people I know. Well, I don't know him directly, but we have mutual friends on a technology email list. So, I was a bit surprised when he wrote this in his blog. Of course, I wear penny loafers almost all of the time and shoes with Velcro straps aren't too many years away.

More on working

From Tuesday morning's Worcester Telegram, and I quote, "The Wachusett Regional School Committee decided last night not to revote its decision to set no date for reimbursing $3.1 million received from the state for modular buildings." Standing boldly, they decided not to reconsider a decision not to set a date to do something. They done our town proud.

The problem with a job, says Jackie Mason, is that it takes all day.

And then some. I received an email last night around six, asking me (but not really asking) for a document that needed to be sent to a customer this morning. The material that the customer is seeking hasn't been documented before. It should have been, but it wasn't. So, I'll need to research, write, and verify the material. Fortunately, the customer is in the central time zone, so I get an extra hour of morning.

The white board in my cubicle is located inconveniently at the back of the fixed counter that is my desk. As a result, I can scribble just a few things, such as my phone numbers. (I don't call myself often, so I have a tough time remembering my internal line, external line, and new cell phone number.) It's almost impossible for two people to work at my white board, trading ideas and markers; some problems are better addressed visually than verbally. Anyway, I asked our office administrator if the facilities people could move my white board to the opposite side of my office. She said that she would ask, but that it probably wouldn't happen. "It's against company policy," she said.

"Is yours is like everyone else's?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Well, then it probably won't happen."

In preparation for the bird flu pandemic, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt recommends that we put canned tuna and powered milk under our beds.

Did you know that if you lose a mitten in Canada, the National Mitten Registry may help you restore it to its mate?

How many ways can you make this guy sick? My score is 8.

One more from the Department of the Flippin' Obvious: "Heavy marijuana use for five years or more may impair memory and slow cognitive function, according to researchers here."

Pi-Search Results

Today is day in the U.S. (3/14).

• At this site, you can locate the digits of your birthday in pi. (Mine is at position 125,165,142.)
  
• Here you can see not only pi to one million digits, but also one of the coolest (geekiest) domain names on the 'net.
  

Green for a day

It was the best treatment that the family name has received. Mike gathered family and friends and family of friends to march in yesterday's St. Patrick's Day Parade in Worcester. The float was a trailer carrying a replica of a housefront. Mike's box truck pulled the trailer. Atop the truck was Nate Schroeder, fresh from his heavyweight boxing championship at Notre Dame. The participants wore green t-shirts provided by Mike and his crew. During the parade, the crew handed out balloons to children of all ages.

When Sandra and I arrived, Marian was sitting on a couch with little Cassie asleep in her arms. In front of the truck and in back of the float, various youngsters carried banners of greeting from the Hakkarainen family. At several points, the gang started a chant - "Hakk a rai nen" - particularly when the announcer at the reviewing stand mangled the name. The weather was cool, occasionally showery, but all had a great time.

Worcester County - St. Patrick's Parade

Mike, with family and friends, will have a float in this year's parade:
Worcester County - St. Patrick's Parade (#33 in Division 2). The O'Hakkarainens hope that you'll join in the celebration.

About this thing called work

Our afternoon turned into evening as my boss met with a few of us to plan our project activities for the next few months. To quote a former co-worker, "We're doomed." We have much too much work for the people we have on staff. We have a handful of open software engineering positions now and will open a few more in other disciplines, perhaps as early as Monday. Of course, the time spent recruiting and interviewing those people will consume the time that we need for work. My manager has a strong preference for personal recommendations, so anyone we bring in would have a fast track through the processes.

Geek to Live: ETech Highlights, part I - Lifehacker: "“Continuous partial attention” leaves us overstimulated, overwhelmed and unfulfilled" - they've been readng my mail.

There are some jobs where women make more than men. I don't know about pay, but, in my business, here and before, men and women were pretty much equaly represented up to the director level. Above that, into the VP and Chief Whatever Officers, it's mostly white guys.

Fortune is carrying an interesting piece on the origin and evolution of the cubicle. Cubicles weren't intended to be evil. As with reengineering, however, once the concept became known as a cheap solution, well, game over.

My automated search for a technical documentation job turned up this offering - On-Site Coast Guard WMD/HAZMAT Professional. Yep, I could go searching for Weapons of Mass Destruction, provided that I had the right HAZWOPPER skills.

Mental Typewriter? Really? - Gizmodo

Mental Typewriter? Really? - Gizmodo. When our thoughts can go straight from our heads to our computers, we've turned a corner and are heading down a new and twisting road.

When I saw this story, I thought of a line from Bruce Springsteen's Johnny 99, "And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head ..."

Of work and sleep and stuff between

Note to self: near the rocks at the opening of the cove leading to the boathouse, there is a small spring. The spring water wears away the ice from below, so that the ice looks safe, but isn't. The water at that point is knee-deep.

On Friday afternoon, Miss Cassie came for a visit. We fed her, read to her, and tried to teach her to make a raspberry sound whenever she saw George Bush on the TV.

I didn't watch much of the Oscars. Lots of other folks have witty things to say, so I won't clutter the blogwaves. I'm glad that Wallace and Gromit won.

It's quite common in our business for people to work at home. Everyone has laptop computers. Most people have high-speed Internet connections at home. Add a cell phone or landline phone and you're all set to work. It can require extra effort to stay focused. A recent study has shown that many people find that they're more productive and less stressed in the, um, more casual environment.

According to this BBC news item, your sleep position can describe facets of your personality. The fellow who replaced me in a previous job not only slept in his office, but he snored. I guess sleeping in a office chair describes your future state as being unemployed.

Finally, these luncheon meats, ham and chicken in one package, pork in the other, are made with beef and mutton. And don't forget Purplo's, the purple sausage.

It's snow, y'know, and it really should go

One time a friend asked me how I was doing.
"Fine," I said.
"Great. Why don't you tell your face?"

I'll never ridicule the Massachusetts Highway Department again. During yesterday's ride home from New York, through Connecticut, just a few of the 150 miles of highway were cleared of snow. Most roads had one, some two lanes covered with a slushy two or three iniches of snow. It had stopped snowing hours before, except for a few flurries. My fellow travelers were well-behaved, moving along at speeds appropriate to the rotten conditions. In a comparable snowfall last weekend, the Massachusetts crews laid down sand and psuedo-salt before the snow fell to ensure that drivers could get traction. Later, after the snow stopped, they used this marvelous contraption, and someone really should tell Connecticut about it, called a snow plow. It pushed snow off the roads. Can you believe it?

The folks in Aberdeenshire in Scotland have found a way to bring technology to their snow management tasks.

To be fair, the forecasts called for up to eight inches of snow. I counted two in New York and somewhat more in Connecticut. Fully half of the people in the New York office either stayed home or went home early. The office HR director sent mail at 11AM saying that people could go home if they wanted to. We were working hard and wanted to have lunch brought in. None of the area caterers were delivered because of the storm, so we went out. We worked through the afternoon and I left for home at 5:00.

At home we received an amount of snow that you could clear away with a sneeze.

On the ride home, I listened to Bonnie Raitt sing the John Prine masterpiece, Angel from Montgomery. If he wrote no other songs ever, I still say that he had a successful career with that one tune.

The latest in a series of web sites that explain grown-up things to kids: all about Dubai Ports Authority.

This guy may love Jesus, but not so much that he'd give up wireless broadband access.

If Geraldo Rivera and Madonna try to move to Israel, I don't know whether it's better for Israel not to let them in or not to let them out.

Report from where the York is New

I've been sitting in meetings in a small room for two days, with another day to go. Naturally, my attention wanders.

The folks at Microsoft Research have come up with a way for you to read your email while dancing. It could be a happy dance or a stomp on that pointy-haired boss's idiotogram - your choice.

My automated search for a technical documentation job turned up a Supervisor of Housekeeping job in Oakland. "Maintain a high level of cleanliness in assigned areas." Yeah, that has my name on it. And, the job is made more attractive with "Will be exposed to chemicals on a constant basis requiring special clothing or safety equipment."

Sir Paul arrives on PEI to slay the dragons. No, wait, to protect the seals.

When you meet the Buddha, run away.

Dick Cheney wants one of these for Christmas.

When I walked out of the building after our meetings concluded at 7PM, the security guard was already sound asleep in his chair.

10 times 7

Sandra had been reading the local paper and had seen a classified ad for a black Lab. The dog had been in a shelter and the folks in the shelter couldn't keep him much longer. Day after day, Sandra read the ad and wondered aloud if we should take the dog. My mother was living with us. It would affect her more than anyone. Ever agreeable, my mother said that it was fine with her if we got a dog.

So, on the last night that he would be in the shelter, on the last night of February in 1997, we drove to West Brookfield to collect our new dog.

We named him Marley, after Bob Marley. The shelter didn't know his name. He was found wandered along the road some weeks before and taken to a pound. The pound went out of business and the shelter, affiliated with a vet's office, took him in. The staff nicknamed him Reebok because he always had a tennis ball in his mouth. They didn't know his exact age, but estimated that he was a year.

He was (and is) exuberant, affectionate unless you are a dog. We walked him around the building and knew before we were halfway around that we wanted him. We went to the office, settled up with the paperwork, and put him in the car. He showed his gratitude by eating the small plastic wastebasket in the back of my car.

And my mother was the one most affected. The two of them became best buds. She would make a large salad every afternoon for our evening meal. Marley came to like broccoli stalks, tops of the tomatoes, carrots, and pretty much every else except celery (unless it had salsa on it). She was the only one who could get him to sit and wait before diving into a bowl of whatever.

So, Happy 10th Birthday, Marley, whether it's today or some other day.

Bouncing around zero

This is one of the coldest mornings of the season, if not the coldest. The temperature touched zero before bouncing back up. It shot up to .5 and now sits at -.1. I received a digital thermometer as a gift last year, so this is its first winter with us. The outside sensor is about a meter off the ground on our fence. We didn't receive the snow that was predicted for Saturday, but the few inches that fell have made everything look fresh and clean.

Yesterday afternoon was full and, for the most part, fun. We went to Mike and Lynn's to celebrate Lynn's birthday. Several folks asked if it was going to be a big party. As we've noted before, what we might call a big party Mike and Lynn call lunch. A splendid time was had by all.

Afterwards, we went to my father's. He'd been having trouble with his garage door opener. The Jeep with the plow was on one side of the door and the driveway with the snow was on the other. He was finally able to get the door open, the driveway plowed, and the path to the wood pile cleared. He was tired, but doing well.

He was also subdued. His long-time friend, Arne, died yesterday morning. Arne was the last of my father's friend of the same age. Arne used to come to my father's house for coffee on Sunday mornings. He was a nice guy - soft-spoken with a good sense of humor.

The more I drive it, the more impressed I am with my Subaru. It has about 130,000 miles on it; there are dog hairs all over the inside and more than a few scratches on the outside. There are some rattles, but none that can't be overpowered with the radio. Yesterday we drove to the camp. The car walked up the hill through the fresh snow as though it was springtime.

We walked around the lake some. It was windy and very cold. In many places, the wind had blown the ice free of snow. On the southwest corner of our property we have a small pond, perhaps 40' square. We often forget that it's there, as we did yesterday, until we stepped onto the ice and slipped and nearly fell. Marley came running, slipped and tumbled, reminding us of how my mother would say that Marley enters a room like Kramer.

According to the folks at the Pew Research Center, I'd be happier if I was a Republican. Sometimes, as we know, the price of happiness is too high. (Here's more about the study.)

OK, I don't dispute that this trial program might be working. Nevertheless, the idea that you'd treat homeless alcoholics with maintenance doses of wine seems, well, seems loony to the eighth power. I'll grant that science sometimes proves that the obvious isn't true, proving, for example, that the Earth revolves around the sun when our eyes would tell us otherwise. But, still, I mean, c'mon.

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Several people have mentioned that they have difficulty getting to the blogspot web site, either because of problems with their email or browsers or because their workplace is blocking such access. So, I will resume sending the full text of the journal entries in email. If you'd rather not receive these mailings, please let me know and I'll remove your name from the list with no further questions. Thanks.

Winter tries again

The earthquake that rumbled through Upper Canada last night was not the ruling on the Blackberry. The judge deferred a decision, although it remains likely that the court will order Blackberry to stop using the technology in question. The Ottawa area, meanwhile, had a real earthquake, magnitude 4.5. Maybe it's retribution for the easy passage that, according to Bill O'Reilly, Canada offers to "Muslim crazies."

For a couple of days, the weather forecasters have been saying that we'll have light snow today. Just a few minutes ago, the National Weather Service sent out a heavy snow warning for up to 8".

If you're going to have a donut in Massachusetts, make it a Boston Cream. It is, after all, our official donut.

Bill Clinton has established a foundation in his own name, William J. Clinton Foundation, to do lots of good things around the world. Even better, he's hiring interns.

Yesterday afternoon I had to make it across town and little spare time. I don't think of myself as a fast driver until I get behind someone who's doing the speed limit.

According to this study, we say that we dislike meetings at work, but secretly, we think they're kinda ok.

Happy Birthday, Lynn.

Black Friday?

Well, today will lead to something. NTP and RIM will be in court today to hear the judge's ruling on a possible shutdown of Blackberry services in the U.S. There are lots of stray threads on this one, any one of which could change the outcome of the case. So, we'll watch the news wires and, more importantly, that little red light on the top of the Blackberry that says we have new mail.

Bunny Wailer was part of Bob Marley's band before starting a solo career in the mid-70s. On the way to work the other day, I heard Wailer perform that old folk standard "This Train." There's one reader on this list who will cringe when thinking about that song. He and I lived through the Great Folk Music Scare of the 60s. We sang "This Train" so often and sometimes so not well that we sent the song into permanent exile.

I attended a product strategy presentation yesterday. The senior program manager was using a set of marketing slides. One of the slides showed three people in a pyramid (teamwork). The PM said, of the people on the bottom of the pyramid,"These two are basically women."

Indeed.com is a job search site. You can see trends regarding various jobs, based on keywords that you provide. This chart, for example, plots the jobs that match the keywords "village idiot" and "Massachusetts". Although trending slightly downward, prospects are mostly steady.

Every once in a while, I'm asked about my hobbies. I usually mumbles sometting about music and maybe computers and related technology. These hobbies can get a bit expensive, but they're mostly harmless and don't creep people out, not like this mole trap collector.

Looking up as best we can

Our driveway gives us a good view of Orion's Belt, the three evenly-spaced stars mid-way up in the southern sky. The trees and hills don't permit a good view of any of the horizons, except for a slice of the east. So, we don't see the sun or moon rise or set, but there's still plenty of sky above. For my five-year anniversary at my last company, my manager gave me a nice set of binoculars to bring more clarity to our night-time viewing.

Some sports car drivers develop a heel-and-toe technique, where they have the toe on the accelerator and heel on the brake. Then, with a slight shift, they can quickly change from going faster to going slower. So that's how it's been as my doctors and I try to get the symptoms, treatments, and side effects in the right balance.

Thursdays can be hard days. All that was possible on Monday, if it's not well on its way to completion on Thursday, isn't likely to get done this week.

I think that the only thing that could make Massachusetts drivers worse would be for them to have Ozzy give them directions on their satellite navigation systems. His voice is available for the Brits and look what happens - they drive on the wrong side of the road.

We'll be taking up a collection to buy tin-foil toques for the students at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Citing concerns about the effect of radio transmissions on young brains, the president of the college refused to allow a campus-wide wireless network.

And, on the other end of the spectrum, so to speak, an Amish teenager was fined for wiretapping. What did he use, barbed wire and old cans?

If doctor's surgical equipment cabinet says Craftsman, you might want to get a second opinion. Now.

Wondering what to do with that tax refund? "Scooter" needs help.

Wisdom from Scott Adams to new graduates and to the rest of us who show up at work every day.

ScienceDaily: Oceans Are 70-Percent Shark Free

ScienceDaily: Oceans Are 70-Percent Shark Free: That doesn't quite bring the comfort that one might expect.

Paper makes good insulation

We spent a bit of time moving stuff this morning. A tricky piece of furniture went up the narrow ladder to the attic and one box of Sandra's college papers came down. There are still several boxes of receipts, some dating to the 70s, tucked away in the attic. Y'see, the IRS says that you need to keep records for seven years. There is, however, no statute of limitations on tax liability. In one case back in the 90s, I received an auto excise bill for a car that I hadn't owned for 20 years. Fortunately (and somewhat miraculously), I still had the bill of sale and so was able to prove that I didn't owe the taxes. That one incident justifies keeping stuff for another 20 or 30 years. Add to that my mother's papers and we have quite a stack o' boxes.

The company where I work has instituted a new policy regarding expense reporting. Instead of submitting printed reports with receipts, we fax the receipts to a system that matches up the image with the electronic version of the expense report. The managers then approve the expense reports online. It saves the accounting office a lot storage. But, and there's always a but, we (the employees) have to keep the original receipts, in the case of audits, for five years. Just what my office needs - more stuff for a longer time.

It seems early in the season, but the beavers have brought down many trees, mostly small, some large, and have built another dam in a nearby stream. There was no sign of beavers at the camp yesterday; the lake is still completely frozen.

Some businesses, such as Coke or Pepsi, aim for near-universal appeal, while others are content to satisfy a niche. In this case, boys of a certain age would be very interested in shoes that will help them run away from girls.

When I first saw the headline, Top stars picked in alien search, I thought it was going to be another story about Tom Cruise or Britney Spears, but it's just a story about the possibility of intelligent life someplace else.

The Blackberry isn't very comfortable to use just as a phone, so I often use a wireless headset if I'm on a lengthy call. Invariably, when another guy (and it's always guys) sees me while I'm wearing the headset, he'll check his phone to see if anything cool is going on in there. Guys may be enchanted by the coolness factor, but women are not immune to the cell phone obsession. (You can now say, "Eww.")

Watch your feet, knees, and elbows

My flight from Chicago was delayed by nearly three hours, mostly the result of bad weather in the East. We were, as has become typical, crammed in, with all of the overhead bins full. I had to check my suitcase at the gate. As the flight attendants wheeled the beverage cart from the back of the plane, they politely, but resolutely, let us know that extremities in the aisle were in harm's way. The plane ride was somewhat bumpy as we neared the coast, but not too bad. The Logan parking garage has one four-story elevator that doesn't go to floors one and two and a seven-story elevator that only covers floors one through four. I parked my car in Row Z-1 which is right next to Row S-1.

There was a foot of snow on the ground when I left on Monday morning. Now it's gone. Who took it? And why?

Hot dogs and beans are the traditional New England Saturday night supper. After our trip to Britain a few years ago, Sandra and I have been having eggs and beans. In either case, whether served with hot dogs or with eggs, beans are best served with not very much bird head.

On the plane ride home, I sat behind a guy who was preparing a presentation with PowerPoint. He was copying the text, including pictures and tables, from a Microsoft Word document, and then hacking and stuffing to make the content fit into the slides. I pity the folks who have to sit through that presentation. A Google search of "Death by PowerPoint" comes up with 47,000 matches. In one case, we might have a clue about why the war in Iraq is going as it is. An American government worker acquired an insurgency training manual from a web site, translated it, converted it to PowerPoint, and posted it on a web site to make it available to U.S. troops. Whatever was retained from the translation from Arabic to English was squeezed into sloganeering by the time it was brought into PowerPoint.

(There's an interesting thread coming from this story. The insurgency web site, Al-Rashid.com, is a bit of an odd name for a domain in Iraq. They'd have to do business at some point with U.S. domain registrars. And, now, that site points to a escort service in the U.K.)

We have a long weekend (President's Day) and a somewhat quiet week in the office. Several co-workers are taking the week off to be with their kids who are on school vacation. Sandra and I have a list of fun things to do and will get to more than a few of them in these three days.

Homeward bound

The Chevy Impala used to be a great car - big, comfortable, stylish. I'm driving one this week. Avis calls it full-sized, I can't tell it apart from the Hyundais, Kias, and other Camry wannabes. If it wasn't for the remote door opener that flashes the lights on the car, I'd never be able to pick it out in a parking lot.

Think nice thoughts about your water. Did you know that "water registers and faithfully transmits any frequency it is exposed to?" Did you know that the vibrational frequency of the label on your bottle of water is so important? Are you surprised that all this comes from California?

Technology has given the whole world access to the best that America has to offer. As a result, a prime-time slot on ESPN had an hour of flag football.

I'm flying home later today. No meal on the two-and-a-half-hour flight, just beverages and a bag of pseudo-snacks. On the flight out on Monday morning, we received a packet of cookies. You know that brown pegboard that we use in our cellars and garages so we can hang things on hooks? Well, these cookies were the same color and density as that brown board, but not as tasty.

Instead of letting passengers board from back to front, some airlines, including United, are having the passengers board by seat assignments. After the royalty boards, window seat passengers board next, followed by middle seaters, and then those on the aisle. The boarding process does seem to be smoother, except for the aforementioned goofiness that's endemic among the traveling population.

The weather forecast calls for strong winds by the time we get to Boston, suggesting a bumpy ride into Logan.

Set mode=grovel. Happy Belated Birthday to Jennie.

Rain, wind, snow, flying cows

We have a rain/snow mix, along with thunder, ahead of a cold front. The frontal passage (aka fropa, for the weather nerds) will bring strong winds and much colder air here this evening and tomorrow night back home.

After a time of travel, my physical and mental shirt pockets eventually fill up with scraps of paper. And so, lucky reader, it's time to dump the scraps onto the desk.

There was a cocktail party last night, sponsored by one of the vendors. I didn't go and am grateful for my choice. This morning's reports include cell-phone video clips of conga line and pleas for more scotch.

Speaking of phones, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal mentioned a product, called CellStik, that lets you back up your cell phone contacts to a USB drive.

On the way to the airport the other day, I heard a bit of flotsam from the Bosstown Sound-era - Sacrifice of the Moon by Ultimate Spinach. There's a good reason why I hadn't heard it since the late 1960s.

From the Department of the Flippin' Obvious: a study informs us that people use the Internet for fun.

Canada has a program to discourage people from letting their cars idle too long. Walking past the neighborhood Dunkin' Donuts, it's amazing that there aren't more cars stolen.

South Koreans are fighting back against bird flu with kimchi.

In several meetings, I've been sitting with a fellow who reminds me a great deal of a former co-worker. This person has the same kind of accent, same sardonic view of the world, and similar physical features, all the way that he clears his nose. Both have a quick and clever wit. Both are very smart. The fellow here calculated 26^6 in his head as a part of a discussion on acronyms. At the start of the day, he spent 10 minutes talking with his broker, so we now know how his investments are going.