I Thought That Cover Looked Quaint

Stanley Dudek, on behalf of his mother, returned Facts I Ought to Know about the Government of My Country to the New Bedford, Massachusetts library a little late. The due date was May 2, 1910. The $360 late fee was waived.

On the Off Ramp

I have several different routes to and from work. The variety helps relieve tedium. This habit of mine drives my wife crazy, as she likes her routes well-mapped out and consistent. I try to remember this when she's riding with me and keep to the same routes, because giving her a nice comfort level is worth it to me.

Part of my route this morning was on the interstate. After taking my exit, I had to stop for a red light at the bottom of the off ramp. I was in the outside one of the two left turn lanes. There was no car next to me for a couple of minutes, and I had a clear view of a fresh cigarette butt. I watched the smoke rising from it as it rolled away from me toward the edge of the road, and I envisioned a tumbling, fiery wreck. After all, cigarettes are dangerous -- no one but those who are ignorant of a half-century of scientific research, those who are willfully delusional, or tobacco company executives can believe differently -- just much slower in the damage they inflict. And in this mental image, I felt strangely, strangely alone.

Then, the light changed, and I came on in to the office. I think I need another cup of coffee.

A Breakroom Exchange

A co-worker was filling his water jug when I walked in to get hot water for my coffee. Here's a portion of our conversation:

Co-worker: And how are you today?
Me: I can't complain.
Co-worker: You could try.
Me: I could, but it wouldn't do any good.
Co-worker: I like that, a self-aware man.

Not a bad way to start a morning, being called self-aware.

The Things Twitter Leads You To

The personal trainer t-shirt. If this doesn't have a bigger future than the pet rock, it should at least have a more practical one.

A Doggone Good Job

Thanks, Sandy!

A Moment of Recognition

Yesterday, I left work at 7:00 pm, in the late autumn evening darkness. I noted a clear sky, a warm temperature for the season, and twinkling stars. Once I parked my car outside the apartment, I looked through the open patio door and saw our Christmas tree and my wife sitting at her computer.

My thought right then? I'm richly blessed.

50 - 238: The Holiday Moratorium

Monday starts an annual event at work. For three weeks, lacking executive management approval or a system outage affecting customers, we can't move any changes to production. This is a self-defense mechanism implemented by the European parent corporation, a reaction to the sheer number of people taking time off from the job. The reasoning goes, "Where is the production support coming from, if a change breaks something?"

While I enjoy my Christmas vacation as much as anyone, I've been on-call during the holiday period, and I've handled work calls on Christmas Day before, so I just can't imagine a purely American company operating so.

This is simply one of a myriad of cultural differences.

The most prominent difference is that the parent culture prizes consensus, the prolonged decision making where everyone is welcome to question and to provide input, up to the point that the group realizes a decision has been reached. At that point, everyone is expected to conform to the group decision and not rock the boat.

American culture prizes individual initiative, giving the one who takes the lead the freedom to rock the boat, as long as the path taken works without exorbitant costs in either money or process.

In the current structure of my company, this difference is exacerbated by a recently completed reorganization. Here in Greensboro, we used to act like the internal IT department for our largest local client company; we're under the same corporate umbrella. Now, the parent company's mantra is that we work with common methods on global solutions. Further, over the next few years, the company will be creating centers of competency, thereby locating specific functions at one or two sites, each serving the entire corporation. This means that jobs will be rightsized to a rationalized cost structure.

Because I have a good deal of contact with my customers, because I have accepted the function of maintenance manager for multiple applications, and because I already work on a global application, I'm not really scared of losing my job. At this point, I'm more concerned that the nature of my job is going to change into something that is less enjoyable than what I do now.

Be that as it may, I have a job that I am reasonably well compensated for, that lets me support my wife, that lets me pay my share of the college tuition for my two oldest children, that provides shelter and clothing and a few luxuries for my family. I have programming challenges that keep my mind engaged, customers that I generally keep happy with the support I provide, and colleagues with whom I enjoy mutual respect.

And oh yeah, quite a few genuine friendships at work that I treasure.

So, how's the holiday moratorium going to affect me this year? Well, I got the last of several required user approvals on a package of enhancements to my global application this morning, IT approval to implement this afternoon, and tomorrow right after the end of the business day, I going to move this set of changes to production. Good for me.

There's a change to one of my web services that I'm working with a European consumer on, and we've had coordination problems for the last month. I've already started the process to get executive approval on a moratorium exception on this one, since project funding runs out at the end of the year. There's still testing to do, but I'm optimistic that this will work out.

A Christmas Greeting

Compare And Contrast: A Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert And A US Airways Flight

In the past two days, I've attended this year's TSO concert in Greensboro and taken a flight on US Airways to visit my kids at Thanksgiving. Let's examine a few aspects of the two experiences.

Food. We ate a meal at CiCi's Pizza before the concert. It's certainly more expensive there now than when I could take all the kids and feed all four of us for under $15. Still, it's filling (very), there's plenty of variety, the pizza is quite tasty, and we were satisfied.

I took a couple of breakfast bars on the flight out Greensboro, Chex Mix Turtle bars, to be exact. They're my favorite quick breakfast this side of Chick-Fil-A's chicken burritos, but they left me feeling hungry.

My connecting flight was through Philadelphia, and I had enough time to get a larger breakfast of scrambled eggs, home fries, and sausage. Yummy, and reasonably priced for airport fare. It's a little bit surreal that I got this from an Italian eatery...

All told, the concert experience wins the food battle.

The wait. We got into the parking lot at the Coliseum with very little delay. TSO scheduled two shows in Greensboro this year, the four o'clock show started a half-hour late, and since they perform for 2.5 hours, we had to wait to enter the arena for the 8:00 show. Of course, that show started about 20 minutes late...

Both of my flights arrived at their destinations on time, but they were stuck on the tarmacs before departures. In fact, the flight from Philadelphia to Indianapolis left Philly about 20 minutes late, but we still arrived early in Indy.

This one's a tie.

Seating. There was more room on the airplane than at the Greensboro Coliseum. The flight wins this leg.

Noise. Who are we kidding here? TSO puts on a rock concert, wired for sound and light and light and sound, and they rock hard. Next category.

Speed. Greensboro to Philadelphia to Indianapolis in less than six hours, including 2.5 hours of airport wait time. Point to US Airways.

Atmosphere. The air at the Greensboro Coliseum was smoky from the pyrotechnics used in the show. The air before the flight from Greensboro was foggy, enough so in Philly to make us wait on the runway. Tie.

So, Eddie, who won? I did, in every way imaginable.

This Makes Me Happy

I had a similar experience, way back in the dark, dark pre-YouTube days. I didn't have a camcorder back in 1994, so there's no record of David shakin' it to Alan Jackson's Livin' On Love on the radio, but the memory gives me great joy.

50 - 254: Where He Says "If", I Am

In my Taking Stock series, I usually do not rely on the words of others, but the publisher of Skeptic magazine captured my belief on religion vs. science perfectly.

If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe -- 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened.

Likewise, it should not matter how God created life, whether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The grandeur of God's works commands awe regardless of what processes He used.

As for meanings and morals, it is here where our humanity arises from our biology. We evolved as a social primate species with the tendency of being cooperative and altruistic within our own groups, but competitive and bellicose between groups. The purpose of civilization is to help us rise above our hearts of darkness and to accentuate the better angels of our nature.

- Michael Shermer, cnn.com

I'm Just Wondering

Would the world be a better place if folks did like I did at the grocery store this morning? After I unloaded my cart and pushed it over to the cart return, I took the time to gather the scattered carts together. I normally only do that with my cart, but there were only three others this time, and by taking about 30 seconds out of my day, I made things easier for the next store employee who will be sent out to bring carts in, and I made sure that three carts were less likely to roll around the parking lot.

It's a simple courtesy that I didn't used to care about, but I find now that, like giving a smile to someone as I walk by, it costs me next to nothing and brightens my small corner of the world.

From 4 To 5

There's always been a periodic something, throughout my whole career, about that last hour of the workday. I experienced it twice this week, for the first time in quite a while. It's something you'll probably understand, if your labor is more mental than physical, as mine is when I'm deep into a programming task.

I literally cannot count the number of times that I've opened my work day optimistically, just knowing that I've picked apart a knotty bit of logic and that I was going to dazzle myself and my fellow developers. Almost every time, I would have been better following the old saw about being a pessimist -- you're pleasantly surprised when things turn out well.

Programming is described by Fred Brooks, the project manager behind IBM's OS/360 and the author of The Mythical Man-Month, as the discipline of building things out of pure thought stuff. This means that there's no limit on the raw material needed for the job. It means as well that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to do any particular task, and even more ways to it wrong.

Programming is an exacting discipline. Computers make no assumptions, provide no defaults. This means that developers must supply all the details in every layer, from the bare metal and plastic and silicon to the operating system to the network to the database to the web page in the browser.

It's those little details that trip me up: the need to specify an absolute path to the directory where I want to write a file rather than a relative path from the web page I'm programming; drilling down to the exact property of an object to get the value I want to work with rather than stopping at too high a level; forgetting a period or a semi-colon (depending on the punctuation a programming language demands) and thereby blowing the scope of a conditional statement.

These are just a sampling of the reasons that programming, testing, and debugging are still more art than science.

So after the optimistic start to a day writing computer code gets shot and left dying in the dust, after frustrating hours of echoing obscenities in my head, how is it that in that last hour of the workday, my subconscious mind is liable to offer up a solution? Not only a solution, but one that is usually not only workable, but even elegant?

I rather hope this remains a question whose answer eludes me. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have graduated from craft to engineering, and I'll feel more like a cog in a wheel than a mystic.

The Lil' Spittle Maker

He drools. He sticks one leg straight up in the air when he licks his nethers; I think of this as his "little teapot" pose.

There are commercial opportunities to be had here. I wonder if anyone is cybersquatting on TheLilSpittleMaker.com.

Yankees 4, Phillies 2

Well, I can't honestly say that there's a lot of joy in the World Series results for this National League fan. However, I must acknowledge that the best team in Major League Baseball did win.

I was right a couple of years ago when I said that Alex Rodriguez would succeed in the post-season when Curt Schilling did not. After all, retiring from the game would preclude success in the October (and November) baseball.

Homecoming

This past Sunday was Homecoming at Pleasant Plains Baptist Church. My parents' church, the one I grew up in. It was also the final celebration of the church's 175th anniversary.

The usual order of the day at Homecoming is, as with the invitation to family and friends and former members, to invite a former pastor to come back and deliver the message. This time, instead, there were three speakers, members at Pleasant Plains, who gave testimonials to what the church has meant to them, to the history of the church.

The most noteworthy of the speakers, to me, was Dan Gore. He's a scholar, a farmer, a preacher, and an accomplished storyteller. He rambled a bit, as all the best Southern spinners of tales do, and one of his vignettes concerned a heavy church bell installed in the steeple belfry back in the 1930s. About a year after they got the bell, several church members were concerned that it might be too heavy for the structure to bear long-term. Several trustees of the church were nominated to climb up in the belfry and inspect the bell. Dan's dad Scott was one of the trustees, so he got to tag along.

The stairwell up through the steeple was dark, Dan recalled, but there was plenty of light at the top. They examined the timbers holding up the bell, and one of the trustees said, "You couldn't blow that out of there with a charge of dynamite."

That's all there was to the story, except for two small details. The trustee didn't pronounce the word "dine-a-mite"; he said "din-a-mite". And the trustee's name was Don Ward.

My granddaddy. I heard him say "din-a-mite" many, many times.

This was a new story to me. It's been nearly 30 years since Granddaddy passed away, but for a few minutes last Sunday morning, in a rare and precious gift, Dan Gore brought him back to life for me.

This Old Lady Has It Down Pat

Two old women meet for the first time since graduating from high school. One asked the other, "You were always so organized in school. Did you manage to live a well planned life?" "Yes," said her friend, "My first marriage was to a millionaire; my second marriage was to an actor; my third marriage was to a preacher; and now I'm married to an undertaker." Her friend asked, "What do those marriages have to do with a well planned life?" One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go!"

via Varley.net

Quote of the Day

There are a lot of voices calling for sf/f to get the recognition it deserves, but I think that's wasted breath. We're trying harder and harder to get recognized and admitted to a club that just keeps getting smaller and duller and less important. What we need to understand is that sf/f is the seat of innovation, modern creativity and true cultural relevance. Of course the literary establishment is borrowing from our toolbox. It's the best toolbox there is, and they're welcome to borrow it. It's kind of amusing to watch them treat time travel, or the apocalypse, or whatever else as a shiny new plot device. They probably won't hurt themselves.  - Tim Akers

via SFSignal.com

Quote of the Day

Someone in the 2009 World Series will likely hit a home run with a piece of carefully turned, meticulously sanded wood that a year ago was living on the 8,000 acres of woodland that Louisville Slugger owns in Pennsylvania and New York. Babe Ruth held a Louisville Slugger when he called his Game 3 shot in Wrigley Field in 1932. Jackie Robinson had a special bat for the Series in 1955 when next year finally came to Brooklyn. Roberto Clemente got his 36-inch, 37-ounce World Series model in time to hit .414 over seven games for the Pirates in 1971. The players change and the game does too, but one thing remains the same: get to the World Series and the folks at Louisville Slugger will make a bat for you.  - Kostya Kennedy, si.com

Quote of the Day

A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.   - Walter Bushell

Quote of the Day

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. - Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

via Wordsmith.org

RIP Alton Mathis

Here are the basic facts. He was born in June 1918 and died in October 2009, age 91. He lived his entire life in Newport, Arkansas, except for his time in the Army during World War II. He made his living as a farmer and service station owner. He was married to Liz for 62 years and survived her by a little over 6 years. He was the father of Mary, Dianne, Ronnie, and Kathy. He was a grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather 37 times over. His oldest grandchild is my wife Lisa, and she misses her Papaw more than I can adequately convey.

Here's my own surreal moment concerning the man: I was 45 when I first met my grandfather-in-law at a family reunion in 2005.

During that visit, while we were watching a baseball game, Papaw asked us if we "could hear those birds chirping." He was adjusting the volume on his hearing aid at the time, and yes, we could hear "those birds".

A little later that evening, he encouraged Lisa and I to take his bedroom and "do what young people do." I refer you back to how many descendants the man has.

The rest of that visit, and a similar one in 2006, were full of the details of daily life, the kind of things that enrich a family without making for riveting reading for those outside the family.

Sadly, I didn't see him again in this life. I did get to hear many kind and admiring things said about him this week, from his fierce independence and self-reliance to his delight in holding his youngest grandchildren on his lap. I didn't know him nearly as well personally as I would have liked. I do, however, know quite a few members of his family very well, and I know Alton Mathis through them. My life has been deeply enriched through his, and I can only say, "I miss you too, Papaw."

Quotes of the Day

Have you ever noticed that an angry man can only get so far, until he reconciles how he thinks things ought to be with the way things are? - Don Henley, "My Thanksgiving"

The question was not why it had happened, but how to stop it. - Brandon Sanderson, "The Hero of Ages"

Go For It!

Here's a look at an unconventional high school football team. Thanks to Jon Wertheim for the story.

RIP Mary Travers

Peter, Paul & Mary were all about honesty and sweet harmonies in the service of social justice. I fondly remember my vinyl 45 of Puff the Magic Dragon, as well as many radio broadcasts of Blowin' in the Wind and Leaving on a Jet Plane.

There really aren't many musical groups that remained a going concern for nearly five decades. PP&M deserve our respect for their passion, their talent, and their perseverance.

RIP Myles Brand

As President of Indiana University, Myles Brand will be recalled most strongly as the man who fired Bob Knight. As President of the NCAA, SI.com said this about him:

The first former university president to run college sports' largest governing body, Brand worked to change the perception that wins supersede academics and earned accolades for his efforts.

Too bad those efforts didn't achieve a greater or more lasting effect.

RIP Patrick Swayze

He was a breathtaking dancer who lived life to the fullest, and as an actor, he had a couple of blockbusters in Dirty Dancing and Ghost. He deliberately pursued idiosyncratic roles, which likely robbed him of a bigger career. And he never quit his three pack-a-day cigarette habit, even while fighting the cancer that killed him.

You've got to admire a man who lives life on his own terms, even when you think he made the wrong choices.

My Life in Books Meme, A Response

Using only books you have read this year (2009), cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title.


Describe Yourself: The Complete Sherlock Holmes

How do you feel: Bone Crossed

Describe where you currently live: Titan

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: The Dirty Secrets Club

Your favorite form of transport: A Midsummer's Night Dream

Your best friend is: Agent To The Stars

What's the weather like: Lightning

Favourite time of day: The Temporal Void

What is life to you: Just Another Judgment Day

Your fear: Turncoat

What is the best advice you have to give: Magic Bites, Magic Burns, and Magic Strikes

Thought for the Day: Daemons Are Forever

How I would like to die: MythOS

My soul's present condition: Gone Tomorrow


Care to have a go?

Via A Book A Day, Or The Year Of Reading Dangerously. Thanks, Fifecat!

A 9/11 Remembrance

Eight years ago, at almost this exact moment, one of my co-workers walked by the work pod I shared with a couple of other folks and told us that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. A bad and very unfortunate accident, I thought. A half-hour later, I knew, along with the whole world, just how wrong that assessment was. Two hours after that, both of the Twin Towers were piles of rubble and remains. Yes, a few walked out of the rubble alive, a very few. There have been far bloodier days in American history, but not involving civilians.

We've been at war ever since. Not with Iraq, nor Afghanistan. Most certainly not with Islam. No, with barbarians who have perverted a religion that has common roots with mine, one whose holy writ espouses peace.

Let's remember, in appropriate silence, those who fell. Let's give thanks for those who survived, and for those who labored to rescue the injured, then to identify the unknown. And let's fight the good fight, both to make peace with those who will live along with us and to end those who would destroy us, simply because we live free.

50 - 332: I Lost A Vote

The 2010 Greensboro Relay For Life Committee met last week to begin planning next year's event. The final item on our agenda was a proposal to change the time Relay is held from Friday overnight to Saturday from noon to midnight.

The ACS website has this to say about Relay: The American Cancer Society Relay For Life is a life-changing event that gives everyone in communities across the globe a chance to celebrate the lives of people who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against the disease. At Relay, teams of people camp out at a local high school, park, or fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Each team is asked to have a representative on the track at all times during the event. Because cancer never sleeps, Relays are overnight events up to 24 hours in length. And in 2006, a Texas Relayer said this.

You might say I have strong feelings concerning Relay as an overnight event.

Greensboro's 2010 committee, by a two-thirds majority, disagrees. I've spent most of the last week just plain pissed off over the issue, to the point that I discussed moving to some other community's Relay with my wife. Then, over my last two lunch breaks at work last week, I watched The Last Lecture again, and one of Randy Pausch's points really hit home.

Paraphrasing: The brick walls are there to make us show how much we want things.

I want Relay to succeed in Greensboro in 2010, with my help and participation. I still believe that the overnight symbolism is extremely important and should be imprinted on the psyche of every Relayer, but not as important as the cause.

I do intend to vote for the event to be held overnight in 2011 and beyond, but the issue is decided for this year.

RIP Ted Kennedy

The "Lion of the Senate" was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery today. He was a veteran, so that is totally appropriate. I find that I believe in many of the same end goals as Senator Kennedy, especially in the area of health care. I contend that, in a country as affluent as America, that no one should have to go without health care, and everyone knows that was one of Senator Kennedy's passions.

I differ with Mr. Kennedy on the methods of reaching the goals we both believe in; I am leery of government financed public compassion. No, I don't have the answers, since I haven't devoted my life to the issue, but I do believe that America can solve the problems we face.

I knew that the Senator was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act, but I was truly surprised that he was equally involved in the No Child Left Behind Act. This only illustrates his ability to work with his fellow legislators of every political stripe.

He was a hardcore American liberal, and he never wavered from his convictions. Even though I am much more the conservative, I salute his constancy.

Of course he was flawed. His political career would have ended with the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident had he been anyone other than a Kennedy. But he was a Kennedy, and he was larger than life.

Joe and LaToya Were Right

Michael Jackson's death has been ruled a homicide. Not a conspiracy, just a doctor who was either incompetent, overwhelmed by celebrity, or bought off.

The mind would spin with befuzzlement, were such stories not so prevalent nowadays.

Did I Say...She?

We took the cats to the vet overnight Tuesday when we went to visit family in Whiteville, and the professionals there had something different to tell us than the volunteers at the SPCA. The new cat is a three year old guy.

We haven't figured out his name yet.

She Followed Us Home, Can We Keep Her?

Lisa and I have been discussing getting a companion for Blazer. Earlier this week, a co-worker sent me a flyer from the SPCA of Guilford County, about their "Adoption Frenzy" this weekend. We went to take a look around, and this two year old girl came back with us.

We're trying different names. She's sort of responded to Piper and Tempe, so far. Something will work out soon, I'm sure.

And, of course, Blazer is going to learn to tolerate her. One step at a time.

Sunday morning edit: I believe her name is going to be "Tempe", as that what she actually responds to.

David Turns 16 Today

Today has been a reprise of a couple of years ago, of sorts. David is here in Greensboro, and he's flying back to Indiana tomorrow. I captured him doing something he truly loves, and I'm very proud to share it with the world.

Happy birthday, son. I have loved these past two weeks, listening to you play your guitar (and Lisa's keyboard), riding along while you drive, watching movies we haven't watched in ages, and catching up on Burn Notice. I wish you could be here longer, but work, school, and friends beckon. Lisa and I both love you, more than we can adequately tell you.

2nd Anniversary

I've now been babbling here for two years, and I couldn't have cheaper therapy. Nor a more enjoyable catharsis.

Sleepy Man

Last night, like many nights lately, I settled in our reclining love seat after a big dinner, popped the foot rest up, laid myself back, and fell asleep about 9:30. Lisa woke me about 11:15, and we went to bed. I got myself in bed and was almost out before Lisa came out of the bathroom. She leaned over and said, "Sleepy man." I was just awake enough to respond: "Somnambulist hero of legend, when only stillness and even breathing will do." She said something back, but I was already drifting off again.

That often happens with us, a silliness where we riff off of each other. Our dialog is often juvenile, puerile, intimate, or some combination of the three. We laugh until it hurts, sometimes until we cry, and our world is a better place for a while.