Nowhere that needs going to

We've kept the gate to our backyard open to make it easier for the guy who's delivering our firewood.
Time was, we couldn't do that. Marley'd be gone before we could call his name.
He has, however, in his 14+ years, seen, smelled, and heard pretty much all that he needs. He'll still go for a walk with us and seems pleased to find out what's new in the neighborhood.
Exploring on his own, however, is best done in our yard. He walks to the open gate, considers the price of wandering, and decides that it's best right here at home.

Nowhere that needs going to

We've kept the gate to our backyard open to make it easier for the guy who's delivering our firewood.
Time was, we couldn't do that. Marley'd be gone before we could call his name.
He has, however, in his 14+ years, seen, smelled, and heard pretty much all that he needs. He'll still go for a walk with us and seems pleased to find out what's new in the neighborhood.
Exploring on his own, however, is best done in our yard. He walks to the open gate, considers the price of wandering, and decides that it's best right here at home.

A note for my former co-workers at Rational Software

Now we know what a ClearCase VOB really contains:

After lengthy delays, Atria sausage factory opens near St. Petersburg

via Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition - Business & Finance

A note for my former co-workers at Rational Software

Now we know what a ClearCase VOB really contains:

After lengthy delays, Atria sausage factory opens near St. Petersburg

via Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition - Business & Finance

If you buy it, you will find it.

You'd think that after tossing out .895km of 300Ω antenna wire, I might have overlooked a 1.03135314m (close to four feet) piece from which I could fashion a dipole antenna to improve the reception of WBUR on my radio in our new-old downstairs bedroom.
You'd think.
Of course, if I go anywhere, online or in the flesh, to buy some of said wire, I'll have to buy it in 100 ft. lengths.
Doing so, I'll unpack the wire, make the cut, make the antenna, set aside the remaining 96', and then find a nice 10' segment from which I could fashion an antenna.
At which point I'll have more of this old wire than I started with, plus I'll be dissuaded from throwing anything away again for another 30 years.
No house-cleaning goes unpunished.

Exporting American cool

It takes a world of nerds to fill the minds of nerds with stuff that they didn't know that they wanted to know.
OK, so our lives would probably have been fulfilled even if we didn't get a chance to read about the guy who pioneered the ice trade.
Nevertheless, this article, The Forgotten American Ice Trade, from a blog in India by way of Hacker News | American Ice Trade, in its substance, shows how an entrepreneur built an industry of ice shipments from Boston to the India that Columbus thought he'd found and, eventually, to the India that really was.
By the methods of the 'net, we get to feel that same burst of connectedness and opportunity. It's doubtful that I would have sought out an article about the ice trade, much less tried to research the topic. Further, I read Hacker News because, as the name implies, it provides a stream of mostly technical topics. Somewhere on the line, some nerd found this article and posted it; other nerds found it interesting.

His name is Henry

For a couple of weeks, the weather was bad. (Remember all of that rain?) So, today, on this fine spring day, I was glad to see him. I took a moment to ask him his name and give him mine.
We didn't talk long. I could sense that the traffic behind me was getting impatient. The light had changed to green and folks were in a hurry because it was a nice day and all.
Each week, I pick up a supply of surplus bread from the Big Y in Holden and bring it to our Joseph's Project office. Other folks on the Project package what they need and make deliveries to our families. I bring what's left to Genesis Club where it's used for their lunch program and in their snack bar.
I'd seen this guy on the streets for a while. He has a sign that says that he's homeless and looking for money. I stopped one day and asked if he'd like some bread. He did. I told him to look in the back of my car and take something that he wanted. He took a loaf of bread and a package of cookies.
Since then, I've tried to make time to stop. Some days, I'm busy and can't get to where he hangs out. As I mentioned, some days, the weather is bad and he's not there.
Today, though, the weather was good. He took some extra bread, things that he can take with him to wherever he goes for the night.
"How are things going?" I asked him.
"Better now," he said.
After I left, I went up the street a ways, made a U-turn and headed toward my home. I saw him off to the side of the road, eating urgently.
I know his name now and it's a lot harder not to stop.

Happy Birthday, Adam

Can you imagine that this cool dude is now too old to belong to the Massachusetts Young Republicans


He's still young at heart and a nice enough guy that we're almost certain that we probably won't publish more embarrassing until this time next year.

The present of the past

What, you might ask, would a couple of semi-retirees need a day off from?
Themselves.
Call it what you want - downsizing, simplifying, getting rid of crap - we've worked hard at emptying the house and our lives of stuff that we haven't used in years and aren't likely to use. We've emptied the attic, moved our bedroom from the second floor to the first, and sent literally truckloads and carloads of stuff out the door and, most importantly, irretrievably away. The three bins of my mother's papers is now down to a six-inch stack of items to be scanned and sent along. We have a spare room that's holding stuff for the church flea market in June.
There's no special virtue in this. If we knew what we were doing, we'd have done it already.
But, back to that day off. On Sunday, we gathered up Lily. The next morning, the three of us went to Old Sturbridge Village. It was a fine day. We had a glimpse at life in the 1830s in America, a country on the edge of industrialization, decades removed from war, a time when life was hard but so very hopeful. (For a view of this exuberance, see Alexis DeTocqueville's Democracy in America. A new book, Tocqueville's Discovery of America by Leo Damrosch, was reviewed in the Sunday New York Times book review.)
With Lily reading the map and leading the way, we met with wool-carders and potters and printers, visited the school house, farm (listening to the ever-hungry lambs bleating for their mothers), homes, bank, stores, and church. We studied the post-and-beam construction and imagined what Adam's barn would look like in 180 years.

We, well, Lily, tried on clothes of the time.

We, well, Lily, got to clown around on top of replica cattle.
We were at the village for more than four hours on a sunny spring day. We gave ourselves over to the day and tried, as best we could, to look at the day in the way that a ten-year-old would see it.  There's no better vacation than that.

More on Massachusetts Republicans

For all of the brouhaha regarding the Tea Party this week, the Massachusetts Republicans wound up nominating a good-looking executive as their candidate for governor. Their state senate ranks drop by one because they've chosen a state senator to run for lieutenant governor. They couldn't even muster a candidate to run against a Democrat who'd been humiliated at the national level.
The party platform (here()) is not a radical document, but one that echoes familiar themes of transparency (with a embrace of the web as a way to make governmental processes more visible), lower taxes, fewer regulations, more accountability, and an overall goal of limited government.
There are a few items that might raise an eyebrow:

• Apparently, governmental regulations are standing in the way of reducing toxic building materials - "Supports prompt update of state building codes to allow rapid adoption of more cost-effective, more energy-efficient and less toxic construction materials and techniques." (p8).
• Tort reform, the battle cry in the national Republican health-care  debate, barely gets a whisper - "Generally supports tort reform concepts that limit malpractice awards, with certain exceptions. "(p11).
• Sounding as though they want to take on National Grid, the party "[d]emands the breaking of the monopoly that currently controls electricity generation and distribution in the Commonwealth." (p8).

They didn't mention marriage, abortion, or drugs other than prescription ones. (They'd allow us to buy in Canada if we want to.)
For a while, it looked as though the Tea Party movement would radicalize the Republican party. Not so, The biggest rousers of rabble at the party were Tim Cahill and Cristy Mihos. And, of course, without a major change in the legislature, there's little chance that any part of the Republican platform will pass.  For all the brouhaha, the Republicans aren't even going to put a full team on the field, Red Mass Group:: Great Seats with No candidates.
Dunno what all this portends for the fall elections. I try to avoid predictions just like I try to avoid guess people's ages or weights. The benefit of making a correct guess is very small compared to the damage done by an incorrect call.
Nevertheless, if a radical change is to come in this fall's election, it's not likely to originate in the Republican party in Massachusetts. Radicalism may propel them to victory, as it did with Scott Brown, but it won't make them radicals.

Local candidates need not apply