The word from across the pond is that MG Rover, heir to the British Leyland automotive lineage, is heading for bankruptcy and may go out of business altogether. An industry analyst noted that the car manufacturer, the last British-owned, would likely be remembered for poor quality and poorly designed cars.

My friend, Don, liked to work on the cars in this family. His first order of business was to replace the Lucas electrical system. (One Internet commentator calls Lucas, the Prince of Darkness.)

In the 70s, my father owned a couple of old Land Rovers. He used one when he needed to get railroad ties from an old railroad bed near the camp. (The railroad company already removed the rails.) The ties were so long and heavy, however, that they broke the rear axle. The second Land Rover was for parts.

I had an Austin-Healey Sprite during this same period. A real fun car to drive, but so very useless in New England winters. You couldn't see over a tall dog, let alone a snow bank. In cold weather, I had to park it where the morning sun would shine on it. The springs were bad and, during the night, the car body would settle on the tires and the car wouldn't move. Once the sun had warmed the car, including the springs, the body would rise up again and I could drive away.

This little book is essential for anyone who writes. It's also a good resource for those who read; it shows us what is good writing and why it's good. I've known of instructors who would put Strunk & White 14 next to an offending sentence. The book is necessary, but not sufficient. For example, in its list of commonly misspelled words, floccinaucinihilipilification is conspicuously absent.

Some Ontario hospitals have significantly better wait times for various surgical procedures. It's almost like have a FastPass® ticket or Fast Lane transponder for your health care.

Most days I work right up to the end of the day. It's rare that I take the time, particularly at the end of the day, to wrap things up, to review what's been accomplished and not. As a result, the days can tumble over one another, the last one not completed before the next one starts. This article, You can do anything - but not everything, was very helpful when it was first published five years ago. It still makes sense.

[Blogger.com was off the air for most of the day yesterday, so I was unable to post the day's journal entry. I'm not the only one affected. (The piece includes a link to a Wired article with a PG-13 comment.) ]

perl -e "print \"Hello, World\""

I spent most of yesterday working on some scripts (small programs) to automate some repetitive tasks that the writers must perform when writing or verifying their documents. I'm not sure which is more frustrating - working a long time on something because it's hard or because it can't be done and I don't know it. The work is further complicated when I use multiple languages (JavaScript, shell scripts, FrameScript, Perl, and others). Each language is slightly different, so it's easy to get them confused. In addition, these scripts can behave slightly differently on Windows and UNIX.

One time when we were complaining about finances or work or something along those lines, a member of our family said, "I'll trade checkbooks with you."

Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal has updated his computer buying guide. Walt's clear and respectful writing is unusual among technology professionals. A recent study of AOL users in the UK showed, not surprisingly, that a large percentage of users did not understand the terminology commonly used to describe computer security threats.

By some accounts, between 4 and 10 in 100 email users have bought something from spammers, making it an attractive business.

My grandfather thought that the English system of measurement that was crazy, that it made carpentry and just about everything else more difficult. With the metric system, you can do the arithmetic in your head. (I've worked with engineers who can do hexadecimal math in their heads. It's fun to watch until you realize what they're doing and then it's scary.) On the other side, however, a pilot told me that he didn't like the metric system because a degree covered a wider range of temperature. A temperature of -.5°C is, to this pilot, significantly colder than -.5°F when you're watching for ice formation on your wings. Anyway, today is the 210th anniversary of France's adoption of the metre (meter). A couple of years ago, Ken Alder published The Measure of All Things, telling the story of the astronomers who tried to establish the length of the meter.

If we have time on Saturday, we'd like to get to the River Rat Race in Athol.

Instant Birds

There's a large spruce tree in front of our house. When I came home from work yesterday afternoon, the tree was filled with the sounds of birds. Until now, the tree has been mostly silent. We used to have a pair of Springer spaniels, Bob and Raye. In the good weather, we'd leave a window open in the laundry room where they stayed during the day. A mockingbird in the spruce tree was able to mimic Raye's keening perfectly.

On the way to work yesterday I stopped for gasoline. It's difficult to buy gas because so many people have parked their cars and gone in for their white chocolate raspberry latte (which, you'll be pleased to know, contains no crustaceans). The station had run out of 2s for its price signs and had to make do with hand-drawn numerals.

[At a well-known coffee chain]
"A venti Americano, please."
"Room?" asks the young woman behind the counter.
"?"
"Room?"
"Oh, ah, no, black"
[a couple of minutes later]
"Venti Americano with room," says the barista.

Peter Jennings of ABC News announced yesterday that he has lung cancer. It's been nearly 20 years since my last cigarette and longer for Sandra, but stopping confers no immunity. It probably didn't help that, as a kid, I played with the sheets of asbestos cloth that my father had for his welding business.

The overnight news brings the report of Prince Rainier's death. His son, Prince Albert, who assumed royal duties during his father's illness, is reported to be an interesting guy.

During my evanescent graduate career, I took a course with David Hackett Fisher, who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for history.

A Boston-based restaurant chain, Legal Sea Foods, has joined the boycott of Canadian seafood products in protest over the seal hunt.

Enough of the ice has melted on Lake Quinsigamond to let the rowing crews get in some practice time. Even though they're working very hard, it had to be cold on the lake that's just above freezing. I could see the skullers as I drove home along Route 9 after I did some grocery shopping. Commuting is a lot easier now. For the years that I was driving to Lexington, the weekly Starts & Stops column in the Boston Globe was a must-read.

The rains have let up and the floods were not as bad as predicted.

My return to the office was alright, at least until the afternoon. I met with an engineer who had a lot of comments (few favorable) about a book that we'd just released. My biggest problem wasn't that I made mistakes, but that I'd not included him in the final review. He wasn't on the formal review list and should have been. There were just a couple of minor things that were actually incorrect. Several sections were not clear and could lead the reader to do the wrong things. It's too late to fix these sections for this release. We may be sending out an update in a month; I hope to make these corrections this week.

A VP at a former company used to say, "Make new mistakes."

I can take a small measure of comfort that I'm not the only one who's making mistakes these days:

• "The exact time of death, I think is not something that matters so much at this moment...," notes Fox News Channel's Shep Smith, after prematurely announcing that the Pope had died. Transcription and video are here. Of course, none of the media was flawless.
• Yesterday's mail brought me a free Schick Quattro.
  
• The Red Sox made two errors in their opening game.
  

I think that I'm being careful, but I'm not always sure.

We're meeting with the Phillipston Conservation Commission on Saturday to inspect the site of our proposed septic system. So, we won't be able to attend the rescheduled event. I guess we'll just have to send a gift.

4/4. Perhaps the most commonly used time signature. It's also a day in April. A month from now, the time signature of the day gets more interesting.

Yeah, the Red Sox lost the opener. Reality trumps fantasy this week. Pitching is going to be their weakness, as it is most years. And no one is going to win a lot of games against a first-ballot Hall of Famer such as Randy Johnson. (Here's a video clip of RJ's most famous bird-hunting trip.) These guys are, IMO, doing an interesting job of chronicling the baseball season as they see it.

Yesterday morning we had the chance to babysit for a few hours. We had good fun. They're such great kids, each unique, a lot of fun and very responsible. When we had a question, particularly regarding the care of Cassandra, Tess (6) was quick to find us what we needed.

My father continues to do pretty well at this new, slower pace. During our visit, I reset the clock on his television to the time of the season. He didn't need much more assistance this week. Stairs are still a problem for him. He needs to go to the cellar to have his sauna and, during rainy spells such as this, to check on the sump pump. We're still hoping that we can get a railing for the stairs that lead from the parking area to the camp.

Recently I received a call from a friend looking for advice. A dentist had refused to work on him because my friend's blood pressure was too high. My friend called, looking for another dentist. He hasn't been to a doctor in many years. He didn't like the doctors he'd seen because it seemed like they were too willing to prescribe a lot of pills. I suggested a few resources where he might be able to find a doctor with a different approach to healing and medicine, including osteopaths. That led to a discussion of chiropractic and massage. He'd recently had a massage and was particularly pleased, not only because the massage was helpful, but also because the masseuse is a bartender.

We can be comforted that, no matter when the Pope's funeral will take place, the Royal Wedding will go on. I know that you were worried.

The National Weather Service has been declaring, rescinding, and declaring flood warnings throughout the state. (I've used the Emergency Email service for several years; it provides me with email notifications of watches and warnings. Sometimes I have the messages sent to my cell phone when we're going to be at the camp and away from the Internet.) The flooding looks to be damaging, but not deadly. Snow is troublesome, but water is much worse. A snowplow or snowblower isn't much good against rising waters.

It will be windy for the seal hunt.

Spring forward, fall down.

Sandra has brought in forsythia cuttings and placed them in water next to the stove. They are flowering, first yellow, then green.

The Vatican will be center of attention during this time of mourning. We'll see centuries-old traditions to guide and strengthen the Church. But, we'll see these traditions played out on massive TV screens in St. Peter's Square, the images broadcast by satellite to all the world. The Vatican press service sends SMS text messages to journalists, telling them when to expect an announcement from the Vatican press office. I remember watching television and seeing the puff of white smoke that signified the election of Paul VI. It could have been a live broadcast, but I suspect that it was on film.

John Paul II's contrition and strength, his own and on behalf of the Church, brought great healing between Catholics and Jews. "You are our elder brothers," he said when visited the Synagogue of Rome in 1986.

He spoke of peace. He spoke directly to the powerful, saying that peace was their obligation. That our leaders choose now to talk of his message of freedom, rather than of peace, is telling.

And he gave us the gift of a brave death. It's truly brave to share with us a failing body and to show the acceptance of death as a part of the whole of life. My mother and step-father were similarly generous, for which I will be forever grateful.

What, then, do we make of other matters, such as the ordination of women, putting doctrine ahead of life, and a slow and muted response to a contemporary evil? Every person, from the most lowly to the most exalted, brings a wealth of beliefs, strengths, and weaknesses. If we're to have a relationship, we'll have a relationship with the whole person. We'll live in the midst of contradictions in us and in the other. And that's what makes the days worthwhile.

In a parallel universe, where the old are young forever, it's Opening Day, the Red Sox against the Yankees.