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.