The Day After 'Tek's Day

Jason Varitek has homered on the last five May 20ths.

We had a quiet celebration of our anniversary. We exchanged some cute cards. (Sandra and I don't give each other gifts for holidays such as anniversaries, birthdays, or Christmas.) We had an early dinner at a nearby restaurant that wasn't as good as we'd remembered it. Back home for a couple of our favorite TV shows - Greater Boston and Washington Week, and a movie. It sounds like a quiet evening and it was. It was also a fun evening. We enjoy each other's company.

The weather forecasts are drifting between rain and not rain. We'll go to the camp anyway. We have several things to bring there and look forward to sauna again.

This will also be Marley's last weekend at the camp for a while. He's going to summer camp at PEI. When Sandra and Mike go to the Island, they'll leave Marley with Woody and Marian. They're excited about having him there. It's a great wide space where he can run. The property is on the ocean, so he can play in and around the water's edge. It will be a good adventure. Sandra and I will miss him. He and her parents are great friends.

Let me see if I've got this straight. A country, bordering Israel, still not recognizing Israel, in fact, seeks to limit nuclear inspections because they say they don't have nuclear materials, much. Oh, wait, I forgot. It's Prince Bandar's country we're talking about. Never mind.

[I let a note slip earlier. The longish explanation is that the key strokes that I use to add a link - Ctrl-Shift-A - can slip into Ctrl-S, which means Send. I'm sorry for the confusion.]

A spring in our steps

It looks like I've solved the programming problem that had been vexing me for several days. I need to run a couple rounds of more rigorous tests, but I think that I've got it.

With the proliferation of just about everything electrical, this could be really handy - electrical outlets that rotate.

There were 15 people in the room, beginning the second of two two-hour meetings yesterday. Amid the chatter, I heard one of the writers say to her friends across the table, "Do my lips look shiny? I plan to use them this weekend."

In these fractious times, it's good to see that wiser minds can develop a spirit of compromise for the benefit of us all.

If Dilbert needed to seek out a saint, who better than ....

Yesterday I learned that the requistions for permant jobs have been frozen at the place where I work. As a result, no permanent jobs will be opening up anytime soon. That doesn't affect my contract.

Today's automated technical documentation search results: U.S. Sanctions Advisor - reports to the [company] Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Officer. Perform research, analysis, and coordination necessary to support Anti-Money Laundering Officer responses to any regulatory or enforcement inquiries concerning compliance by any [company] entity with U.S. sanctions, 314(a) information sharing, special measures, or the Travel Rule.... Consult with government authorities, including prosecutors, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Treasury, and other agencies concerning possible and verified customer matches to 314(a) subjects in terrorist financing and money laundering investigations.

Happy Anniversary, Sandra. We've still got it.

Sunny, with a slight chance of car-swallowing fissures

Is it likely that there will be an earthquake in California today? The good news is that an earthquake is not likely. The bad news is that we have to ask the question.

Work remains a struggle. I'm a few days late on delivery of four small programs. The things work pretty much ok on my system, but they aren't stable enough to hand over to someone else. While donating blood last night, I had a chance to think about the project and have a couple of new ideas to bring to the office today.

The neighbors across the street are putting in a small parking area on what used to be lawn. The boys, aged five and three, sit on the front step and watch excitedly while the little tractor clears and smoothes the soil. We sit on a hill of sandy soil, but the neighbors have, at least in that spot, more than a foot of good topsoil.

Next week brings us the Memorial Day weekend. Lots of people will be traveling. Sandra, Mike, and Marley will go to PEI (more on this later), as will Scott, Val, and Russell. Gas, as we know, is expensive. Using Google Maps, Ahding.com can help us find cheap gas. It covers only the U.S. right now, but GasBuddy provides Canadian resources.

Let's see if I've got this straight. My doctor is too busy to come to the operating room for my operation, so he sends R2D2, whom he can control using a joystick while hanging out, oh, I don't know, here?

Unsolicited emails of the day:

• We found you contacts in our resume database. We are a Lithuanian company which sells software and electronic in the USA, Canada and other countries. We are looking for a Financial Manager. No special knowledge, no education required. You can earn up to $500 per week working only some hours a day.
• THIS WILL BE OUR ABSOLUTE NOTICE
  We have aimed to write to you on a lot times and now is the time to respond!
  Your current home loan certifies you for up to a 3.30% lower rate.
  However, since our previous attempts to write to you have failed, this will be our final effort to get for you the lower rate.

Today is the birthday of James Gosling. Although he's gained most fame for his design effort on the Java programming language, I think that his pioneering work on Emacs is a bigger deal.

Fwack. Gznort. Fluwabbaba.

No one epitomized Mad magazine more than Don Martin. There were other very good artists - Mort Drucker, Dave Berg, Dick DeBartolo, and others - but Martin was it, in all its manic glory. I gloriously wasted hours of my youth reading his stuff (as well as the rest of the magazine). Don Martin was born on this day in 1931 and died in January 2000.

This year's hurricane forecast does not look hopeful, calling for a strong season in the Atlantic. We're seeing some early development on the Pacific side. In addition, we learn that FEMA didn't exactly bring the A-Team when it was inspecting last season's destruction.

Last week I mentioned transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a new treatment for depression. ABC News ran a story about TMS last night.

A friend observed that a mark of his maturity is that he's learned to speak up when he doesn't want to speak up, shut up when he doesn't want to shut up.

Today's automated job search for technical documentation positions brought, lo, a technical documentation listing. The morning mail also brought a job titled Manager, Custody Operations. It's not a job running a jail, but something to do with managing financial transactions.

Here's one more reason not to use your cell phone while you're off in the wilderness.

The Republic still stands

When my mother wasn't sleeping well, she would pretend that she was traveling and so make the tiredness an adventure.

On Sunday we had a belated birthday party for Tess. Sandra had arranged for a Barbie birthday cake. Tess had seen the Barbie cake in the grocery store and pressed her nose against glass display case, admiring it.

I spent a lot of time yesterday, time I didn't really have, trying to understand why one of my small programs was producing unpredicted results. Finally, about 4:30, I figured it out and wrote a four-line workaround. For those of you who care about such things, wildcards in Windows behave unexpectedly. With two files in a directory, named test.htm and test.html, you'd think that dir *.htm would match only test.htm. It matches both.

C:\temp>dir /b *.htm
test.htm
test.html

My work no longer requires regular cell phone usage, which is a good thing at many levels. Some new research indicates that cell phones can lead to premature aging.

But I may not need to work much longer. The morning email brings the good news. "This is to announce today, 16th May, 2005 result of winners of our yearly SCIENTIFIC LOTTERY GAME PROMOTION held on 25th March, 2005. Your email address attached to ticket number 05-765204AC; with serial number 00349 draw the lucky numbers 5-9-31-20, and consequently won the lottery in category A. You are therefore entitled to a cash award US$1,500,000." In addition, I stand to win another $8M or so, according to a letter from Dr.Roland Themba, Director of Projects, South Africa Department of Minerals &
Energy. I only have to provide a small amount of assistance with an international transfer of funds.

And if those fall through, today's automated search for a technical documentation job has a lead on a position as an associate buyer for the Home Shopping Network.

HSN has to work hard if it's going to keep pace with eBay. For example, it's peak wedding season and HSN doesn't have even one John Deere wedding garter.

It's been a year since gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts. It's one of today's bigger non-news items. The Herald, example, has stories about the price of tickets for the upcoming Rolling Stones concert and the return of Oil Can Boyd to the pitching mound.

The Boston Globe has come out with the Globe 100, its annual survey of the best and worst performing Boston-area companies. A few years back, I worked for a startup that was the worst performing public company for the year. I'd include a link to the Globe's site, but they've adopted a very annoying login policy. It's free, but it asks more information than I want to provide. For certain premium resources, Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports, for example, I don't mind paying for access. Those sites just want my account number and then I have the access I want. I'm not ready to drop my home subscription to the Globe yet, but I've stopped reading their web site.

omething for everyone

The sign in front of Kay's Dairy Bar has trouble keeping all of its letters in place, reminding me of the Fawlty Towers sign. We had dinner, chili dogs, at Kay's on Friday night. Coney Island Hot Dogs has little to worry about. We'll stick to the regular foot-long in the future.

The Gardner News has new by-lines on its front page, a crop of new reporters making just above minimum wage. Twenty-five years ago, I was a reporter for the Hudson Daily Sun (no longer in business). I asked for a raise to bring my salary more in line with the folks at McDonald's and Friendly's. I didn't get the raise and took a job in documentation group at Digital, where Sandra worked.

We opened the camp this weekend, cleaning up, unpacking things that had been in a big plastic barrel for the winter, turning the water back on. I crawled on the dirt and rock that is the cellar, the space just three feet high in places, to which the bump on my head will attest. I had to close the valves that I'd opened last fall. I was reminded that my father was 10 years older than I am now when he put in much of the plumbing. The plumbing system is cleverly engineered and is easy to fill and empty. You need just one tool, a pair of pliers. Well, there are a couple of other tools. One gadget, although I don't know if you'd call it a tool, is a one-pound coffee can (from the days when a one-pound can contained a pound of coffee), to which my father had welded a pipe fitting. We use the can to connect to a pipe to prime the pump. The other tool is a large spoon, with USN on the handle, brought back from the war. We use the handle of the spoon to lift the edge of the trap door that leads to the cellar.

The beavers have been sampling the young trees at the water's edge. Some of the cuts were very fresh, less than a day old. There was little other damage. The mice did chew into a half dozen plastic water bottles.

There's a disheveled house on a corner not far from the camp road. The tenants used to have a dog that they kept tied outside. Marley would, of course, have a lot to say to and about that dog. The family and the dog moved away last year. When Marley went out on Saturday morning to get the Finnish coffee bread, he let out a low growl. "And stay away!"

For the first time in nearly a year, my father made it up the steps to the camp. He has a pair of Nordic walking sticks (ski poles without the baskets) that he used to steady himself as he climbed the stairs. We had coffee, coffee bread, and cheese for lunch, talking about how the opening-up had gone. We also had visitors, first our next-door neighbors and then Jan. That was the cue for my father to leave. Crowds get to him very quickly. That evening a couple of friends visited us.

It was a busy and a social day. We had our first sauna of the season. The water, as you'd expect, was quite cold. It was probably just under 50°.

My father told a story of being at the camp alone in December. It was a calm day and the lake started to freeze. He watched as the shards of ice grew across the still surface.

A gap in the tree cover let Sunday morning's light rain fall on the two chairs on the front deck, leaving the rest of the deck dry.

Today's automated search results for a technical documentation position:

• Traffic manager for a major pharmacy chain: Leads four Traffic Associates in consistent on-time, on-budget, high-quality, client-focused creative services delivery for all Tier 3 Advertising projects...Demonstrate competency in DAM system usage...Acts as initial gatekeeper to the department...Determines appropriate tiering of project and manages routing to either Account Services or Traffic.
• Language Specialist Spanish (Temp-to-perm): Spanish Translator Native speaking individual from Spain or Spanish speaking countries to assist with Spanish language translation activities.

[I clicked the wrong key and so inadvertantly posted an early draft of this entry. My apologies for the confusion.]

Friday the 13th comes on a Friday this month

The birds have strapped on little skates and will do figure-8s on the ice-covered bird bath.

As Churchy La Femme observed, when Friday the 13 falls on a Friday, " Be resolute. Be unafraid. Hide early." (Because Pogo is out of circulation, but still under the family's copyright, it's difficult to find good examples of that most excellent strip. I have several books of collected comics, still hilarious, insightful, and heart-breaking after more than 30 years.)

I dropped off some ginger ale and Popsicles to Mike's family. Everyone's been sick, even the cat. Cassandra was the last to catch it, while the others are returning to normal. I asked if there was anything else they needed. Matt said, "A heal-the-family pill."

Maybe we should arrange for this guyy to make a house call. But, wait, there's more.

Everyone has a dream. This dog-washing machine looks new, but the Three Stooges demonstrated the idea in Mutts to You in 1938.

Today's automated search for a technical documentation position: Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Advisor.

Yesterday afternoon I met Sandra at a local mall where we were going to have dinner. I sat outside for a few minutes, watching the people and the traffic. It's a marvel that we don't do more damage to ourselves and property with our cars. Even at parking-lot speeds, we're dangerous, inattentive and in a hurry. Of course, sometimes it's due to our passengers. More than a few times, I saw an annoyed teenager hop out of a car to get into the mall; moments later, a relieved parent drives away.

"We made too many wrong mistakes."

In May 1977 my father had his sailboat on the trailer in the backyard, ready for the new season. He has a picture of the boat, with a foot of snow. We're not going to get snow, but the National Weather Service has sent out frost warning bulletins for tonight.

We had our supper on the back porch yesterday, enjoying the mild breezes, sighs, and sounds. The soft green of the new growth is filling out, except on one tree. We have a honey locust in our front yard. We call it our Stephen King tree, because its twisted branches, thorns, and pods make it look as though we're having a glimpse of the Territories. Each year we wonder if the tree is dead. Each year, later than we'd expect, its leaves emerge.

Tess was sick, so yesterday wasn't much of a birthday celebration. This illness has been making its way through their household, so it may be a few days before the parents can sound the All Clear. Matt was home for a couple of days as well. He and I had a very nice IM chat yesterday afternoon.

When the grandkids were younger, before they discover just how badly I sing, I would the Monty Python Lumberjack Song as they were going to sleep. (I didn't sing in Polish. It just sounded like that.)

Self-replicating robots. What could go wrong?

Most people who are treated for depression respond well to medication. Some do not. Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) provides a good meaure of relief. This study is exploring magnetic stimulation as a more focused, less voltaic option.

Toyota is playing Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up in their new ad. The music isn't loud and is easy to miss.

He's not a member of our immediate family and he did play for the Yankees, but, Happy 80th Birthday, Yogi

The mail is here. It's not for you.

When Mike and Adam were teenagers, Sandra and I pretty much stopped answering the telephone because it was never for us. Even now, we still get calls for Mike, Michael Francis, or Matt. We receive letters for Adam occasionally and most days we get at least one mailing for my mother. Yesterday, though, was something new. Some mail, addressed to my father at this address, asked he wanted to sell his house.

In the evenings, now that we can keep the windows and screen doors open, we can hear the sound of the ice cream truck in their neighborhood.

My father brought an armadillo home from his travels during the 30s. His mother lined the innards with satin and made it into a basket for her sewing things. We now use the armadillo to hold our napkins.

Let me see if I've got this straight. Not content with outsourcing its call center operations to India, a subsidiary of ebookers is sending young Europeans to India and paying them Indian wages.

The Canadian Air Guitar Championship competitions are underway in Québec. The world championship will be held in Oulu, Finland. My mother's family comes from the Oulu area, Oululanni, in the northwest of Finland near the Arctic Circle.

Seven years ago today, Sandra called me on my cell phone to tell me about the birth of our second granddaughter. At the time, I was driving on Route 101 in Santa Clara, California.

Happy Birthday, Tess.

Gateway to Tree of Knowledge Corner

When we arrived at my father's house, he was looking through a basket of old photos. All of the pictures we saw were from a time when the world was black and white. It included the obligatory cute picture of me having my bath in a tub in the back yard. My father was looking for some pictures of a friend who'd recently sent him a letter. "When I get some time," he said, "I'm going to organize these." I was reminded again, as I was when my mother made a similar remark about getting organized, that there's no real hope for me on this front. I've seen my future and, although it's pretty good, it's got a lot of stuff in it.

Today's automated search for a technical documentation position: "US Citizens: Sr or Lead SAP ABAP with some Public Sector (*HOT*) #909. It's in Munroe Station MA. I didn't know that such a place existed, but, then, there are lots of places in Massachusetts that I didn't know about, such as Hephzibah Heights, Zylonite, and Dingley Dell.

The Wall Street Journal reports, in a copyrighted story, that, and I quote, "More employees are spending time on the Internet, for both work and personal reasons." Maybe I can get a job at the WSJ. The title of my first story would be, "Marley Wants a Pork Chop."

A friend claims that Willie Nelson and Hank Williams that they are as good at writing songs as they are bad at singing them.

More job interviewing tips, from a professional. “Candidate inquired about the location of the company’s security cameras.”

In town news, one of our favored candidates won in yesterday's election, while another lost. We had to re-vote because, at first, we thought we could vote for two selectman candidates and then discovered that we could vote for only one. The scanning machine wouldn't let us vote for too many candidates. Imagine, a machine that prevents us from voting stupidly. I can hear Karl Rove whimpering softly.

Of course, because we've had enough rain this year, the town lifted restrictions on watering our lawns. If the rains stop, we won't be able to water. Whether we can water or not, at least we can be stylish. In addition, a local vendor assures us that we can get drinking water from the air.

It looks as though the police haven't scheduled radar locations near our house for this month.

Happy Anniversary, Adam and Jennie

Noises not of our own making

We had a delightful Mother's Day lunch with Mike's family yesterday. They're a wonderful crew. Cassandra joined in the time-honored tradition of pulling pens from my shirt pocket.

Our town has published a book that shows not only the names of people at each address, but also the birthdates and occupation. Our copy of the book is nearly 10 years old. I was listed as a consultant at that time. The book is both handy and a bit creepy. I've been somewhat secretive about my birthday, particularly at work, because I've not wanted to draw too much attention to myself. (He says while writing a public blog accessible to countless millions.) I like my birthday and want to have a lot of them.

For a while now, we've been hearing a 'thump' in the house. At first we thought it was a bird hitting a window, but it's happened too often and at too many times of the day and night.

Speaking of ghosts, a minister noted that many churches started using the name Holy Spirit, rather than Holy Ghost, when referring to the Trinity. Most kids, and many adults, heard the name Holy Ghost and thought of Casper.

Why would there be a billboard on the side of a laundromat in downtown South Gardner advertising Rolex watches?

From The Copy Editor's on Vacation Dept., I saw this sign in a local business:

Ring"s and Pendant"s at Price"s you can afford

And, on a website selling premium trash cans:

20 Liter (5.5 gal.) "Slime Line" Step-On Trash Can

This group of Extreme Ironing enthusiasts was featured in yesterday's Parade Magazine. I'll let you decide if they're nuts or, well, that's probably the only choice.

Today's automated search for a technical documentation position brings a listing of junior marketing job for Kay Guitars. In addition to some college courses and experience with office software, the requirements include "[m]ust have a better than average attendance record and job tenure (we do check)." My first guitar was from Sears, but I had a Kay for a while.

Students in England can get an extra two percent on their exam grades if their pet dies. If I was a hamster, I think I'd want to hide under the sawdust during exam time.

I cut it twice and it's still too short

Happy Mother's Day to those who are mothers, have mothers, remember their mothers.

I've often thought that it was unfair that my mother's birthday was so close to Mother's Day, that neither holiday received their full measure. I/we tried to make sure that we observed each day fully, but the gravitational forces are strong. And by itself, Mother's Day can be a tough holiday for some. Father's Day has some of the same barbed wire around it, but motherhood has a special sentimentality. It's tough to get it right. Me? Well, I wouldn't mind a do-over or two.

I'm pretty sure that today would be Aitienpaiva in Finnish, but I'll have to check with my father.

Sandra's a good and careful worker on home-repair projects. A few years ago, she received a reciprocating saw for her birthday to go along with the fine collection of tools that she keeps in the cellar. I provide the oatmeal power. I lift what needs to be lifted, push what needs to be pushed. I can tell the difference between a cross-cut saw and a rip saw (learned that in junior high shop), but that knowledge doesn't translate to an ability to cut a straight line. Yesterday afternoon we trimmed a piece of plastic that is part of the vent for our air conditioner. (Yes, we believe that summer is coming, even though it's 41° now.) Sandra did the cutting and it fits nicely.

Today is also Victory in Europe day, marking 60 years since the surrender of the German army in World War II. We have parades and speeches and political brouhaha.

In the There will always be a Britain Dept., while peace was breaking out in Europe, we find a notice in the May 8, 1945 edition of The London Gazette, the paper of record for the United Kingdom, announcing the appointment of a second handmaiden for Princess Elizabeth. (PDF reader required to view the gazette. There's a list of similar official publications for other countries here.)

One of our favorite PBS shows, Ballykissangel, was unexpectedly replaced with another show last night. We wandered with the clicker and settled on the National Geographic show about the Yellowstone caldera. I'd heard the word caldera before, but mostly thought of it as a Linux distribution. So we watched the show and got suitable scared at the prospect that thing will blow. Then, in one my online news sites, I find that Yellowstone is a high threat for explosion. Yikes.

An added footnote: One of the side effects of a major volcanic eruption is global cooling. The ash (pulverized stone) goes into the stratosphere and dims the sunlight. In 1816, an eruption in Indonesia caused what's called The Year Without Summer. There were killing frosts in July and August. That was also the year that our house was built. (No mention in the historical records about cold weather.)

Seventeen syllables in the rain

Today, 05-07-05, is seen by some as Haiku Day. On this day, choose Haiku as poetry. On others, choose Haiku as a place in Hawaii.

National Weather Service: "quite an impressive coastal storm for so late in the season with WV loop showing classic comma configuration. ... impressive isentropic lift and frontogenetic forcing wraps northwest from the ocean."

Don't tell the bad guys. An anti-terrorism drill at Logan Airport in Boston has been postponed because of today's stormy weather. The apparel industry, though, is ready. But, talk about your weapons of mass destruction - there are news reports of an Iranian bid for MG-Rover.

Oliver Wendell Holmes characterized the State House in Boston as the hub of the solar system. Since then, Boston is often call The Hub. It seemed a bit odd that a news story from CBC Charlottetown would carry this headline: Stones to rock hub city. Oh, wait, Moncton?

Adam took Sandra to breakfast for Mother's Day yesterday. It was a fine visit. Last year, he and I went out for lunch on Father's Day. We sat and talked for a couple of hours. It's not often that we get a chance for unbroken time like that.

My manager stopped by my office this week to talk about my assignments for the upcoming release. Much of the work will focus on our products' support for NFS V4. I'll also continue to provide systems and tools work. He was also encouraging about long-term, permanent prospects. He couldn't make commitments yet because there are other gears in motion elsewhere in the organization. All the same, I was pleased.

Which is a good thing, because today's automated job search for technical documentation positions turned up leads for:

• Preschool Director in Gardner, Kansas
• Accessories Developer for a company in Santa Fe Spring, California, that design, markets, and distributes snowboard boots and bindings, helmet, and pads.
  

Happy 80th Birthday, TJL.

Apostrophes would be out of control!

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

BPF stopped by last night with a sweet gift of flowers from her garden. She was on her way to a 9PM choir rehearsal. She said that she's teaching Spanish, folk dancing, and golf at an elementary school in a nearby small town.

Often I will see people (men, mostly) walking down the corridor at work, carrying a laptop and a cup of coffee, the cell phone held against their ear uncomfortably with their shoulders. Something like this might make that contortionist act easier.

People who have worked in companies with energetic marketing department know that it's very easy to accumulate many t-shirts and regular shirts with logos and commemorative designs. When we get too many of them, the good shirts go on to a shelter, the not-so-good ones are torn up and used to clean what the dog didn't eat well enough. In spite of last year's purge, I still have a couple stacks o' shirts in my closet. Anyway, here's another solution, a quilt made of old t-shirts. (The author has nice things to say about his mother-in-law, too.)

The University of Minnesota chose the name Scholars Walk, rather than Scholar's Walk, for a walkway. According to news reports, the school's style guide avoids use of apostrophes on building names and in other titles. The CEO of the university "was concerned that an apostrophe signifies ownership that could be misconstrued as exclusivity."

05-05-05

The bird bath is a little skating rink this morning.

Today's three fives augers well for Tony Blair's election chances, or so say the numerologists across the pond

We bought a new microwave oven recently. There's a little display above the command buttons. When I first connected the oven, the little display said, "Welcome to Panasonic. Please read the owner's manual." Nice plug for our profession. Even better, the unit is designed well enough that we don't need the manual very much at all. Our only complaint is that the oven plays havoc with the cordless telephone nearby. I guess it's time to upgrade to a 5.8 Ghz phone. Companies ought to sell microwaves and cordless phones in pairs.

In Australia, in order to qualify for unemployment insurance payments, the unemployed need to work on projects that will help their chances of locating work. A group is trying to match unemployed tech folks with with open source software projects to help them meet their community service obligations. OpenOffice and Ubuntu Linux Documentation are among the projects. (Via ./)

I just installed the Google Web Accelerator beta on my home system. So far, it appears that web pages do load more quickly. If you decide to install GWA, read the privacy policy carefully first.

Just in time for Mother's Day - an iPod shuffle made from everyone's favorite meat-like substance.

Next laundry day, I'm going to try these instructions for folding a fitted sheet.

This morning's email brings a request for assistance from Mrs. Suha Arafat, the widow of Yasser Arafat. She needs my help to retrienve monies from a secret bank account. My reward, if I can figure out how to parse this, is "we shall share in the ratio of 30%for you 65% and 5% for expenses incured,as you know there is know transaction of such huge amount that does not require expenses." I'm flattered and humbled.

We in da' house, ayuh.

Clouds like blankets

A few clouds came in overnight, holding the heat close to the ground, so we didn't get a frost. It's still chilly in the house, though. Marley has found a spot in front of the stove and in the sun.

Sandra and I working from home today. I have a medical test this afternoon (routine), but, in preparation, I couldn't eat for a day and a half. Some people fast as a way of gaining physical and spiritual focus. Countless millions go without food because there is no food. Some just eat because they don't know what not to eat. Anyway, I can have coffee, so life is good.

Today's automated job search for a technical documentation position:

• Executive Staffing Assistant. I'm pretty sure that I know what they mean when the job description says, "This position requires a high level of customer touch," but, well, ..... Also, would you work at a place that describes your "general accountabilities"?
• Lone Star Research Doctor Wanted in Houston! "*We are NOT looking for a doctor who has gone into patient care or treatment"

I carry a Swiss army knife, a modest-sized one with scissors, screwdriver, tweezers, toothpick, and, oh, yes, knife blades. I use it every day for something or other. I also lose the knives, once every two or three years. Now I know where I can go for a lifetime of replacement knives. The National Transportation Safety Administration (NTSA), through state surplus offices is selling confiscated items on eBay.

Change is the new normal

Our neighbor is in Florida this week, visiting family. She has MS and has been house-bound for as long as we've lived here. This is her first trip away from home.

Another neighbor has put her home up for sale. She moved in with her son several months ago after falling often. The ambulance was regularly visiting her house. Increasingly she was needing help maintaining her house. Her husband died 20 or so years ago.

I read in the trade journals that a couple of executives from IBM Rational have moved on.

Over the weekend we watched The Anchorman. I thought that it was an entirely forgettable movie, but I was mistaken. One scene has the male performers singing that annoying 70s song, Afternoon Delight, albeit in pretty good harmony. (The song showed up in a Simpsons episode as well.) So, now, I have that song stuck in my head. Given that we have a limited number of thoughts for a lifetime, I wonder what I won't be able to think about when the time comes. Oops, there goes another one.

Not only that, but it's only going to get worse. Some hacker has found a way to store songs on an RFID tag, such that when you move the chip near a reader, the song plays. (The telling comment is "the application is best explained by reading the sourcecode.")

Today's automated job search for a technical documentation position produced listings for a Senior Executive Secretary and Executive Secretary. Oh, but I also received an email informing me that I've won ZAR 18,000,000 in the South African lottery (about $3M). Opportunities on all fronts.

Green, green, rocky road

Near my father's house is a field where we played baseball and football. After we got out of high school, the family sold the house and moved away. The new owners at first kept the field mowed, but, after a few years, they let it go. The field is now woods, blending nicely with the deeper woods in back. You'd never know that kids used to play ball there.

And along the narrow roads, you see stone walls, tumbled down and nearly overgrown with trees and brush. They're all over New England. No matter how rugged the terrain, you'll find these stone walls, meaning that some brave or magnificently deluded soul tried to farm this land. They cleared the land for plowing and every winter brought forth more rocks for the field and tosses the rocks in the wall to the side.

Telecommunications, as Tom Friedman observed, has made the world flat. I had to order some supplies from a company that makes financial software. After the usual hops through the telephone options, I speak to a person. He's a pleasant man with a fairly thick Indian accent. "Hello, thank you for calling Intuit supplies and service. How may I help you? My name is, uh, Joe."

Hauskaa vappua

Rabbit, Rabbit.

It's also May Day, the worker's day in much of the world. In Finland it's a very big deal. I remember getting May baskets from my grandmother. They had candy 'n stuff and looked a lot like Easter baskets. Our family wasn't very political. Some Finns were communists and May Day had worldwide meaning. Other Finns were as conservative in their politics as they were in their religion. Throughout the year, unless you knew the people well, you stayed away from politics and religion, keeping the conversations to sauna and the quality of the year's blueberry crop.

We had a chance to get together with Mike and Lynn this weekend, the first time in quite a while. They're good company. Most of the talk focused on the family, because the family drives much of what we do, think, and feel. It was a good time and we returned home restored.

Our public TV stations concluded another fund-raising screed last night, featuring bands such as Procul Harum, as they try to mesmerize baby-boomers into giving up their credit card numbers. Now, PH had a couple of big hits back when people said, "Groovy." They even had a song, Repent Walpurgisnacht, the kind of overbearing instrumental that sounded deep then, but doesn't hold up well over the decades.

The U.S. has had a boycott of Canadian beef because of mad cow disease. It's hit Canada hard and in ways that we wouldn't expect. Canadian ranchers have had to reduce their herds, meaning that there are fewer cows for young people to tip. As a result, they've had to seek other outlets for their passions. The victim's profile is here.

110,000 volt Taser Cannon. Probably too tame for Florida.

Prognosticated instability

Rain is coming, often heavy, lasting through mid-day tomorrow. So, we've decided not to go to the camp this weekend. Most of the work there is outdoor work that's not easily done in the rain. Instead of having our first sauna this evening, we'll probably go to Sears and buy a stove.

The long-range forecast from the NWS says, "Will be inserting a slight chance of thunder into the grids with the prognosticated instability. "

Today marks 30 years since the U.S. left Vietnam. As you might expect, the Vietnamese government is regarding this as an independence day. In this country, we are still sorting through what the war meant to us and to southeast Asia. To those who served, we can, at least, say, "Welcome home."

Again with the confluence of holidays. Today is Holy Saturday for the eastern churches and Walpurgis Night, a springtime rendition of Halloween.

Today also marks the day in 1993 when CERN, the Swiss nuclear research institute that sparked the development of the WorldWide Web, announced that the web would be free. The Internet predates the WorldWide Web by at least a couple of decades, depending on how you define it. The Internet is big, but not limitless.