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.