Daynotes on a budget

The weekly diary of a PC Geek

Updated: Sunday, December 03, 2000 05:19 PM -0600

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Most Recent - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday
Monday, November 27, 2000

I know there are kids who manage just fine without daycare at all.  I'm one of them.  I also know that daycare when you're a full-time employee is somewhat necessary.  However, since I'm not full-time anywhere right now, I'm just working on making it work.  And it will.

However, before we go to do other things, here's a new set of pictures from the Laundry Room - yes, our building's laundry room has one of the better views in the complex...

	This is a view to the northwest.  On clear days we can see as far as Minnetonka and southern Plymouth, which are about 40 miles or so from here.
	For about three months out of the year, this view allows us to see downtown Minneapolis.  Provided there's no fog, snow, leaves, or other weather issues.
	The gap just to the left of center in this picture lines up nicely with the 35E portion of the I35E/I35W junction (yes, I live THAT far south - but not Texas)
	This is to the northeast - on really good days we can see both the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport and downtown St. Paul.
	In a more easterly direction, we can see Rosemount (home of a refinery with a large gas jet we can watch when it's burning), plus further.
	To the southeast we can see southern Apple Valley, north-east Lakeville, and other parts of the metro.

So yeah, it's a nice view.  Buck Hill?  If we can see it, I'll take a shot of it tomorrow (should I be home to do it - if I've got interviews or an actual job, then forget about that, man).  Probably more later when I've got the time to do so.

I was looking at my stats for this site again over the weekend.  I'm not sure why it's so popular, but I'm thankful to everyone who does come here and check it out.  Obviously, with a child on my hands now, plus another one arriving at 2 pm daily, things will get a little thinner here in terms of amount of content.  Then again, playing Mr. Mom might well provide a great deal of content for people to enjoy.  We'll have to see how it goes, and thanks for riding along on the journey!

And a couple of minor notes.  Most of the links on this page will open into new windows now (required Daynotes Element #22b, subclause 3c, paragraph 8), except for last week, calendar, and next week.  I'm assuming if you're moving through my stuff, you are traveling linearly (like I wish I could), while the other things are "jumps" elsewhere.

And one other note - I've completed a new version of my on-line resume, which can be found here - I've also added it to the links along the left.  Doing what I can, here.

And I'm reminded by some that Christmas is approaching.  Now, not to be a Bah Humbug like some I could mention, I believe strongly in preparing for Christmas - that's the four weeks ahead of time.  I think it was about four days after Halloween that I pulled into the apartment complex parking lot where I live, and shore-nuff there was some nitwit putting together the Christmas Tree - first weekend of November, no less.

Now, Christmas Trees are something I know quite a bit about.  You see, my mother is a crafty individual - I don't mean in the sense that she can con an old woman out of her slippers or anything, but more in the hand-made crafts assembly area.  Mom would spend quite a bit of her "free time" (this is laughingly referred to after she had five children, was a full-time stay-at-home mom in a rather large house in the country, and kept us all in line and out of major trouble) making Christmas Ornaments.

The last year that we counted, we had over 25,000 ornaments on the tree.  And no, I'm not talking each individual bead on the bead string, or each light on the nineteen or twenty strings of lights we put on the tree.  We had perhaps 3,000 glass balls and assorted store-bought things, most of them antique or of great sentimental value.

Most of the ornaments came from the fact that mom made six complete sets of anything she did.  One for her and dad to keep, and one set for each of us kids.  Now, mind you, with all that effort put forth, we were a bit loath to hide the stuff in boxes in the basement.  So, they all went on the tree.

As a very young child, we were told that Santa arrived on Christmas Eve, decorated the tree, and distributed presents.  That was in the old days, before the population explosion occurred, and he had the "free time."  

As I got older, we learned that we needed to pitch in to get all those ornaments up.  And we did.  For some time we'd put the Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve, like a couple of crazy folk, but we learned there as well.

Now, as noted above, we had a LOT of stuff to hang on that tree.  So we didn't get small or insignificant trees.  After my grandmother died, my father saved up, bought her old home from the estate (he lived within a mile of the house at the time anyway), and when I was eleven, in March of 1975, we moved into the house.  Dad had done some substantial remodeling, and added on a 24 x 26 foot "Great Room" with a vaulted ceiling which peaked at about twelve feet.  For those of you who use that other math, we're talking about 7.3 x 8 meters, and 3.7 meters high.

So we had the room.  One of my uncles worked at the railyard's blacksmith shop, and was able to build us "The Treestand" which was essentially a section of steel pipe, about 3/8" thick, about nine inches across, and over a foot deep.  They sliced it off, welded a waterproof bottom onto the pipe, added a four-inch spike to the bottom, and put three L-bolts into the sides of this canister.  They then attached three four-inch by inch wide by half-inch thick legs flat to the bottom.  The entire metal contraption weighed perhaps thirty pounds.

You didn't stick just any tree into this one.  We'd managed to visit many of the local tree lots, and had some fun with that, but after a few years, we found a local producer of trees who had heard of us, and started saving us a good one.  We'd regularly get a fifteen to sixteen foot tree, lash it onto the roof of the station wagon, and haul it home.  Then, the fun started.

Pine trees, especially Norway pines, with the short needles we preferred (the better to stab your unprotected feet with, my dear), typically weighed somewhere in excess of one hundred pounds when cut.  We would typically trim off the bottom few branches, as well as three inches of the trunk - we'd also drill holes up from the bottom of the trunk, and into the sides, and peel off the bottom two or three inches of bark.  This was usually done with a chainsaw, and old drill bits.

Once that portion was done, came moving time.  Now careful readers of this site will know that I had four younger sisters.  No brothers.  Also, my father had contracted polio as a child, and this left his arm and leg muscles rather weakened.  

Which left the job of hauling 100-plus pounds of dead wood from the garage through the front door to me.  And let me tell you, if I ever build my own house, double-wide front doors will be a requirement, not a luxury.  The 36" wide door (not quite a meter, but standard here) was just not wide enough to get the average tree through.

For a number of years we relied on my strong back and weak mind, until my mother had the inspiration (perhaps it came from one of my sisters - they tend to be equally as clever as I am about this sort of thing) to wrap a couple of sheets tightly around the tree while it's still laying down - the branches lay flatter that way, and it can be compressed somewhat.

One year in particular, and I think it was 1986 or 1987, we had "the monster".  This thing stood twenty feet tall in the field, counting the spindly little spike which added about a foot and a half.  We knew, from looking at it, that it would be "the tree."  You see, it was the first year we as kids were allowed to go get the tree.  And we wanted a real good one.

So, we picked the "monster" and hauled him home.  That was about CE-2 weeks.  We then began the preparations - reinforced the tree stand with a couple of three-by-eight planks we'd picked up from a book pallet (the "cup" was already mounted on 3/4" reinforced plywood we'd picked up from somewhere - a four-foot square chunk).  Put some eye-bolts in the corners of the planks so we could wire the tree more firmly into the stand.  Got a section of tubing, about eight feet long, and mom had an ornament that was about five inches around in an embroidery hoop - fit perfectly on top of the funnel we attached to the tubing.  I popped out to Radio Shack and picked up a little box, ran some wire back up the tubing from the bottom, and connected a little light bulb and a switch.

To haul the tree in, we wrapped it tight, and after about 45 minutes of heaving and ho-ing, got the thing through the door, up the seven steps, spun around, and base into the stand.  Then we started "The Big Tip" - took most of us to get that thing from horizontal to vertical, and then, gentle reader, yours truly had to lay on his belly or back, and tighten in those screws.  Belly was good because you didn't get snow, frost, bird crap, and various other things left in the tree dropping on your face.  However, it did land on the back of your head and neck, and there was no way to clear it without crawling back out.  Back was OK, but not nearly as useful in terms of torque, etc.

Once we got the tree into the stand, and wired in, I dropped my "invention" in place.  The batteries went on the stand below the cover, and two wires extended up to the tubing that went into the cup.  The wires were fixed to the tubing, and the tubing was lowered so that the wires extended about a half-inch below the bottom of the holes the screws came in to hold the tree vertical.

The wires were mounted on opposite sides of the tubing, and had no insulation on the lower end for about a half-inch.  This was what we figured the hose would hold in terms of water, as I watered the tree.  Yeah, I hated crawling under the tree, and didn't want to do it any more than necessary.

So I invented an easy way to water the tree.  We'd stand up, move the ornament that hid the funnel, turn on the alarm, and pour the water/sugar mixture (I'd usually use very warm water, not hot, when the tree first came into the house - thereafter any water with a little Karo syrup worked pretty well as I recall) into the funnel.  Once the water hit the bottom of the wires, the lightbulb mounted on the edge of the funnel (thank God for Duct Tape) went on.  If I stopped pouring within a second or two, the remaining fluid in the tube would bring the water level up to the edge of the holes, and I wouldn't need to lay on my belly more than once a season to get the tree up, watered, and going.

Anyway, after that fracas, we'd start stringing the lights.  I have a pathological aversion to being able to tell the strings of lights - I don't like where you can tell which light came from which string, so I'd start stringing lights running up and down the tree, pushing them deep into the tree itself to leave room for ornaments.  

After the first layer of lights went on, I'd go back and put a second layer on, wrapped around the tree, rather than vertical.  You see, I've always liked looking at a huge tree, in the dark, with no other room lights on.  And some day, I'm going to be able to read a book by that light.  It's a goal for my future.  And the electric company would be so proud...

That usually took most of the day.  Then the ornaments would start, with the glass balls up high, and the smaller, noisier ornaments down near the floor.  That took about four days to get all done.

Once we finished that, and then recovered, I think it was about time to take the damned thing down.  But we always enjoyed it.

Anyway, this year, as usual in our apartment complex, for "liability reasons" we will again put up our three-foot fake tree, festoon it with red, blue, green, and gold garland, and put pine potpurri on the stove and pretend it's a real Christmas.  Then again, any Christmas is real when you can give, and share, and enjoy with family and friends.  Off to prepare for that, and take the little energizer bunny I now care for (hopefully on a temporary basis) for a long walk to tire his butt out.  Maybe we'll have pictures.

And if you've got tree questions, go ahead, fire away.  I'll do what I can to help... ;-)

Later: Well, I've avoided the damned election this far today.  But I give.  Gore won the popular vote, which, in this country, means nothing.  Bush has managed by hook, crook, and skillful political maneauvering, to win the electoral vote.  The recounts show some movement, and I have no doubt that in the 900th recount, Gore will eventually win.  But we don't do that many recounts in this country.

For the good of the nation, Gore should conceed.  His behavior is no longer in the best interests of his ticket, his party, or the nation, but in the best interests of him and him alone.  I'm no longer comfortable with Gore as a leader.

As to Bush, well, once Bush gets sworn in and the Bush Leagues begin, we'll see just how incompetent he can be.  Bush managed to blow a huge lead prior to this whole campaign season, and has reached a point where he will claim a crippled Presidency, a feeble leadership of his party, and absolutely no mandate whatsoever.  I doubt the man has the capabilities to build consensus; most of his national TV appearances to date that I've seen have sounded much like the joke I heard just after the election - Bush Jr. looks to Bush Sr. on election night and says "But you PROMISED!"

Ach, well.  This has gone on long enough.  It's rather appalling to see that Gore lacks the character which Richard Nixon had.  If he steps aside now for the good of the country, he'd be doing many people, including himself, a favor.

Although I have to ask.  Is anyone else set completely off by either of those two slow southern drawls?  I just hear the voice and my teeth go on-edge.  Ugh.

Anywho.  I remember a few months/years ago, reading on Dr. Pournelle's site that he "found pictures he didn't think he'd linked to.  And I thought to myself "Just how on earth does THAT happen?".  

Now I know.  And it gives me a chance to show off some of my twisted DOS capabilities (which is yet another reason not to upgrade to Win-ME).  

Back a few years ago, when I first started saving stuff off the web (hey, everyone did it, and it was the only way to get your images if you weren't an artiste, ya know), I found that I needed a way to be able to view what I had saved.  For example, when I was hand-coding a page and wanted a specific image, background, divider, or whatever, I'd save the ones I liked off the web.

The problem became when I had "Background_001154.jpg", "bkgd.gif" and "Back.jpg" - which was which?  So, rather than do things the easy way, I returned to my roots - batch files.

I first created a couple of text files.  One had the basic HTML requirements in it; the tags <HTML><HEAD><TITLE> and that was it.  That was hedstub1.txt.  Then, I created a second file - </TITLE></HEAD><BODY> - and called it hedstub2.txt.  Then, <BR><CENTER>THE END</CENTER><BR><BR></BODY></HTML>.  That was tailstub.txt.

Next, I used Turbo Pascal to write a program that would read a bare directory listing of files and regurgitate them as "<IMG SRC="filename.read"> - that's all that I needed.

Fired up the batch file editor (I still use Word Perfect's Program Editor for this sort of thing) and created the batch file - 

@echo off
Rem mkpixhtm.bat
if %1!==! goto :noparam
if not exist .\*.jpg goto :CHKGIF
dir *.jpg /b > dirlist.txp
:CHKGIF
if not exist .\*.gif goto :nofiles
dir *.gif /b >> dirlist.txp
convimg dirlist.txp > imglist.txp
if exist %1.htm type %1.htm > %1.old
type c:\bin\texts\hedstub1.txt > %1.htm
echo %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 >> %1.htm
type c:\bin\texts\hedstub2.txt >> %1.htm
type imglist.txp >> %1.htm
type c:\bin\texts\tailstub.txt >> %1.htm
del *.txp
goto :door
:NOPARAM
echo NO PARAMETERS - PARAM 1 is FILE NAME
echo PARAMS 2-9 are part of TITLE
goto :door
:NOFILES
echo NO JPG OR GIF FILES FOUND.  
echo ABORT - NO FILES CREATED
:door

That's pretty much it.  Now, I can go into a directory, type in mkpixhtm filename title1 title2 title3 and have a file I can load in the browser to see what graphics I've got in a particular directory.  Slick, I like it, and saves a lot of time.

Anyway - the point is I took pictures today on our walk, and converted and saved them into the proper folder - but then promptly forgot which ones I saved in there.  Figures.

So now, if you go to this link, it will be a page of pictures.  I ran a wordperfect program editor macro through it to add the filenames afterward (I forgot to do that originally).  It works.

Anyway, pictures...  More of them, I know.  This time, of frost, and stuff.

Most Recent - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday
Tuesday, November 28, 2000

First, an open letter to the Vice President;

There.  Got that off my chest.  And some humor for some of you in our more northern climes...  I had my suspicions about icicles.

Looks like today's experiment in daycare will be the bad (yesterday was good, today is bad - could that mean Friday will be ugly?).  Much weeping, wailing, "I want my friends, I want my mommy."  But you know, I'll suck it up and be OK.

Actually, Jack's actions caused me to reflect on the friends I left behind at the previous employer.  I've really grown a pretty thick skin for some things, but I do miss the people I worked for at that place.  

Many people look at my resume and say "well, he was in charge..."  Yeah, I was.  Of an awful lot of expectations.  Computers never ever ever do what you want.  They do what you TELL them to do, and if you're proficient in your chosen software, you can make them do almost exactly what you want.

When you work in an I.T. environment, no matter what else your job description says, some how, some where, you're doing some Technical Support.  And that was a major portion of my job - enabling users to do theirs.

I think today will be the short version, at least until later.  I'm going to go wrestle with new cover letters and other "opportunities" this morning.  God willing, one will pan out.

Oops.  Before I go, a brief commercial - First is that I'm still looking for a job, and this is my on-line resume. /deleted by common sense and good advice - jd./

Later: Yeah, I know I promised.  But things have a way of getting ahead of me.  

Anyway.  I found old age creeping up on me today.  No, not chest pains, achy joints, general memory faults in the cranial unit, that sort of thing, but old age from the four-year-old perspective.  I swear to you that my son has been eating either Energizer batteries or that damned drum-playing rabbit - because he's always going and going and going...  

Case in point - yesterday we took a "short" walk around the block.  As a "computer professional" I'm used to running from disaster to disaster to fix them.  I rarely stroll.  Yesterday I attempted to do so.  And boy, he was way ahead of me for most of it.  Today, he was a little closer to me, and towards the end wanted to be picked up.  While I normally say "NO" and make him walk on his own unless he's very clearly completely exhausted, today I let him ride my shoulders.  For about a half a mile.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I know.  I think it was the stairs that did it, finally.  

Which reminds me, speaking of old age...  Chris Dishman, who cost the Vi'Queens their second loss a couple of weeks back, is now, as I predicted, seeking other employment.  Vikes cut him to bring back a couple of other fellows.  Obviously smarter than he.  Just goes to show that it doesn't matter what good you do in a job, screw up just once and you're hosed.  Big time. 

And yes, I've removed some stuff from above.  Primarily because some people came through in a much nicer way than I ever would have expected.  All except one, and that, well, we sort of knew was going to be a waste anyway.  Since I'm sure there are only about three people in the world (including me, my wife, and perhaps one of my kids) who have any clue what my veiled compliments/threats mean, just take it as I'm being nice to you and let it go at that.

Last night as I sat in the parking lot watching the new moon show the first sliver, I wished again that instead of a techno-weenie-geek-guy type of soul, I would have gotten one of a poet.  I think I got parts, but the third, or maybe fourth, time that a teacher began with "iambic pentameter" I think I went literarily off my nut and haven't been back since.  

I'm a simple sort, in a lot of ways.  Poems rhyme.  If they don't, they ain't poems, they're writing, and that's that.  People who glop crap onto a stick and call it art aren't artists, they're con-jobs waiting to happen.  But there are times when you see big fluffy snowflakes falling and you wish you could summon the vocabulary you wish you knew to describe the falling, darting, drifting flakes.  

Then, of course, you look at it, deliver unto the room at large a very unprintable expletive, and realize not only do you still have one more trip this evening to make, you've got to drive from one interview to another tomorrow in this stuff.

Which reminds me - I'll be late tomorrow with the post, pictures, and whatever other trouble I get into.  Off to polish the shoes - pointer number twenty-three in a series for interviews...  g'nite.

Most Recent - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday
Wednesday, November 29, 2000

(Seriously, it's a pacifier- or Nook - or binky, depending on where in the country you hail from and your colloquial use of the terms above).  

The interviews I had this morning went VERY well, as did the phone discussions I had regarding other potential opportunities.  The irons are hot right now, and I need to strike, as things will slow starting in Mid-December and stay slow until January - and I have no intention whatsoever of sitting here like a bump on a log that long.  I'll go back to my career in the fast food service industry.  It pays the bills, which is better than what I'm doing now does.

After last week's attempts to increase my advertising revenue, and a question posed by Uncle Daynoter himself, Bob Thompson, I re-read my terms of service agreement, and after due clarification, I freely admit that I have absolutely no understanding of advertising and the internet.  Please, do not click on my sponsors.  As I understand it, your clicking on them will require some serious-minded people to open me up like a split grape and search for gold, or something.

Well, seriously - apparently the good folks at Spaceports have had problems in the past with people padding their advertising revenue by cheating the ad system and actually clicking on banner ads for the simple purpose of learning more about the product/company in the banner.  This, as I learn, is forbidden.  Only if you're willing to buy should you click on the banner.

I don't get it either, but hey, I just work here.  Sorta.

More later, if I get the time.  Although it seems Thompson's off his feed somewhat.  Apparently he's sprouted antlers.  Yikes.  Someday I'll show you a picture of my Christmas Monkey.  (That mere threat should drop readership around here by at least 50%).  Oh. yeah.  I promised this time to be fully clothed when I took the picture.  Or was captured by the picture.  I'll have to dig out the plea bargain paperwork and re-read.  I'm sure there was something in there about clothes.  yeah.  And me wearing them.

And one more thing - Dr. Pournelle had a link to this - and it's really frightening.  Look at North America versus South.  Then scroll way to the right, and find Japan - it's the bright fishhook-like place.  Look just to the left.  The bright blob in the middle of nowhere is South Korea.  And we all know Korea's a peninsula, not an island.  Wow.  

Later: Well, I wasn't going to share these two, but I will.  First, yesterday, when I was preparing the Monkey Boy's lunch, I asked him to hold the hot dogs (leftovers from the previous evening, and one of his favorite foods), and sure enough, he looks at me (mind you, he's four) and says "Who let the dogs out, roof roof roof."  Except his bark was more like a chihuahua's yip than a big dog's bark.

Second was more technical...  My daughter now comes home via a carpool at 2:15-2:25 pm on weekdays...  So today, I got on-line, and started to upload the page updates.  And then had to run downstairs to get Rhiannon.  Just shortly after I left, I got a message in Frontpage which asked me to confirm a file delete.

One quarter of the way around the globe, Phil Hough, fellow Daynoter, viewed my page.  And hung on the part about getting the Christmas Tree on Monday, above.

Meanwhile, while I was playing hide-and-seek with a four-year-old while waiting for my daughter to be disgorged from the local friendly carpool (she loves it because she gets to ride with one of her best friends), FrontPage was hung, waiting for intelligent, or at least my, input.

Poor Phil fired off a couple of different browsers, tried two ISPs, and banged away on the door, trying to get my poor page to load.  I was racing a monkey boy around the lobby, and FrontPage was stuck.

If you would have told me six months ago that I'd be uploading pages to the internet daily, and someone halfway - oh, well, a quarter (figured by timezone offset, I'm so smart sometimes) of the way around the globe would be trying to view them at the same time, I'd have sworn you were nuts.  Not quite as far gone as Mr. Thompson, but 'tis the season.

And last, but not least.  I don't care who wins our "real" election any more.  If the next president's smart, he will lock Aaron Sorkin and the rest of the team that does "The West Wing" in a deep dark dungeon somewhere, so as not to make the present and future occupants look like absolute morons.

The problem with "The West Wing" is that the characters are so much like what I wish we had.  And really, since they're fictional, they can speak in full sentences in the show, and not in sound bites as ours do on the evening news.  They can bring out coherent thoughts and make them sound seriously reasonable.  They can make us long for the days when we romanticized the leaders we had and ignored the foibles and failings of those that occupied higher elected office.  It's a sad commentary on what we consider public service.  And it becomes doubly painful when you watch Gore and Bush play the "I Won" Sweepstakes.

Most Recent - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday
Thursday, November 30, 2000

I'm learning a whole lot about myself in this job hunt - I'm learning most specifically that I've got some rather nervous tendencies.  I get happy when I've got interviews scheduled; I get nervous when the schedule clears off, and there are no interviews scheduled.

This morning's interview was very good.   So good, in fact, that I may be working come Monday morning.  Clear across town, mind you, but hey, a job's a job.  And that's what we're looking for.

I heard an interview this morning on the radio with Gordon Parks, who is a photographer (which I knew), a best selling author (I'd heard that), a songwriter (hadn't heard that part, but wasn't too surprised), and movie maker (he made Shaft - that REALLY surprised me).  The interviewer asked him two questions that stuck in my mind - First question was "how did you get into all of this stuff?" 

Mr. Parks replied that he had a curiosity about life and everything to do with it, and just kept trying new things all the time.  People would say "I want to be an author" and he'd say "Sit down and write."  They'd come back with "But I don't know how!"  His reply to that was "How do you know?  Just write, and see what happens!"

The second question almost seemed like a throwaway - "Have you ever failed miserably at anything?"

Mr. Parks thought about that one (I guess that's one good thing about National Public Radio - they left the pause in instead of editing it out), and replied "I've never failed, because I've enjoyed what I've done.  Some reviewer or critic might call it a failure, but I enjoyed doing it and enjoyed learning."

I'm sure that when I'm 88, if I live that long, I'll be quite happy with my accomplishments if I can say those same things.  To paraphrase Yoda - Do, or do not, there is no try.

Well, off the serious topics and onto the fun stuff...  Some research into Project Management Methodologies, here, is fascinating.

And from the humor front...

Only in America.
1. Only in America......can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
That's true - but then, have you seen where the ambulance personnel eat?

2. Only in America......are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink
Okay, got me there.  However, you've seen a pig on skates, haven't you?.

3. Only in America......do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
That's because they want the drugs closer to the back door so you can walk past the perfumes, colognes, and hair color you can't afford to get the drugs you can BARELY afford.

4. Only in America......do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
That's true - top selling drink at the fast food place I worked at was Diet Pepsi

5. Only in America......do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
That's because most bankers have amnesia - think about it.

6. Only in America......do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.
It's not worthless, it's pre-antiques, appreciating in value.

7. Only in America......do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.
Only if we're dumb enough to answer the phone.

8. Only in America......do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
But if you cut a hot dog in half, you can fit it on a burger bun.

9. Only in America......do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'.
Or in this year's election, it's a Bush-League chance to get your voter's ox Gored.  HA!

10. Only in America......do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.
Which frightens the hell out of me, personally.  What if they're used?

Later: Wow, golly gee whiz, and great googly-moogly.  I was looking at the stats for this site - Sunday and Monday were fairly normal (about 10 meg/day for transfers, about 60 unique visitors), but Tuesday and Wednesday, wow.  Visitors popped up about thirty to 90, and transfer traffic more than doubled.  843 hits on Monday, went to 1657 hits on Tuesday.  Nine megs of transfer on Monday went to twenty-five on Tuesday.  Wow.  Strange, wonderful, and really, really neat.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  I guess I might have to look at the fine folks from SasKat after all - if I keep this kind of traffic up, I'm going to be in deep yogurt with the folks who deal with Spaceports.  Well, actually, not really, not yet, but you never know.

And before I go, two more scary events around here.  First - couple months back we ordered/purchased a big drum of popcorn from the Boy Scouts.  I didn't look too close at the handiwork of SWMBO, I just nodded stupidly.  Gentlemen, let me tell you, the best way to avoid arguments when married is nod, stupidly, whenever in doubt, and have a ready and respectful "Yes, dear" when pushed on a particular question.  Nothing better than a proper, respectful, "yes, dear."  Of course, when used improperly, one can suffer.  This is why I'm careful - I married a woman who is half German, half Norwegian by birth, and Irish, Polish, English, and Luxemburg-ian by upbringing.  She could once swear in seventeen different languages, including "zehemos" which I am told is piss-ant in some E.U. member dialect.

Be that as it may, the tub of popcorn had three different flavors.  You'd best sit down for this one.  The first, cheese, was not sampled by me, as the scarfers around here managed to nail that bag before I even knew of it's existence.  The second, carmel corn with pecans and almonds, is delicious.  The third?  You're sitting down, right?  Chocolate.  

Quickly, before you snap - the chocolate coating was on some of their better-quality kernels, and there seemed to be a slightly crunchy coating on the popcorn before it was slathered in a thick coating of chocolate.  That bag lasted slightly longer than the cheese stuff (you can tell we're close to Wisconsin here), but not by much.

Of course, SWMBO tells me today that the Medical authorities are most emphatically telling us that chocolate, in moderation, is good for us.  Lovely.  Where is this Moderation place, and how much chocolate can I get when I get there?

Second scary event. Today the monkey boy and I drove around the block, but not as an academic exercise - we wanted a true measure of the distance we traveled in our daily "walks" around the "block".  Turns out that the "block" is nearly a mile around.  That's not including our cross-street and back galivanting to the park, up and down the hill near it, and the various back-and-forthing we do on the sidewalk to get from point A to point B.

Gotta love that.

On to more positive news.  Looks like the job front is rapidly heating up.  I've got a number of friends who are telling me repeatedly that the job market will remain "lukewarm" here for about fifteen days, and then crash shut for the End Of Year cleanup and "status-quo" stuff.  

I think, however, I've finally identified one of the little annoying voices inside me.  For the last couple of months, I've been the master of my own time and what I did; however, going back into the corporate world is going to cut severely into that freedom.  Will I miss the freedom?  Heck yeah.  Pounding on a keyboard, with the TV rumbling along in the background, sitting in my own comfortable chair, listening to the wind chimes out on the deck; that's a nice place to work.  However, the opportunity to interact with real, intelligent, computer-literate people in a work setting is more and more and more attractive.

I can't help but think that I'm damaged goods, a bit, with the period I've spent out in the unreal world.  On the other hand, I've never wanted more to get back into the work world.  As a kid, I wanted to get to work to make money.  I've found that I really and truly enjoy working with technology, people, and getting in well over my head with technology.

90% of what I've learned about technology has been sheer, dumb, blind luck.  Quite often I'd encounter a situation or problem that I'd never run into before, and instead of running or ignoring the situation, I'd dig in and figure it out.  I remember one major problem we had back two employers now was with our UNIX Terminal emulation keyboard definitions.  We relied on function keys on keyboards to generate certain screens, such as data lists, help screens, and the like.

We'd often run into situations where the terminal emulation we had was just a little off.  I started poking around, found out what I needed to do, and made it work.  I messed with the Termcap files and got the emulations to work just fine.  Then I reported the results to the company we distributed software for.

Me: Hi - I just wanted you guys to know I found a problem with the Termcap files.
Tech Support: Sorry?
Me: Sorry - I couldn't get the help or data window keys to work at first.
TS: Yes, we're aware of that.  There are certain terminals that just don't work.
Me: Well, I fixed a couple.
TS: What!?!
Me: Uh, yeah.  What's the matter?
TS: (heavy breathing, I'm suspecting a heart attack) You're not supposed to do that.
Me: Why not?
TS: Do you have any idea what you're doing?
Me: Well, I just figured it out, and ...
TS: You're kidding, right?
Me: Absolutely not.  I had customers who couldn't use the software.  I had to do this to keep them happy and use the software!
TS: Sorry, you're officially unsupportable.  We can't help you if you've modified the Termcap files.  Have a nice day.

That's where I learned the first rule of crappy tech support - when in doubt, find any good excuse to blame the person for the problem, and clear them from the queue.  Most good companies will listen to what you've done and try to work with you once you demonstrate a clear technical competence.  Many poor companies measure performance by raw numbers like the number of calls cleared through the call queue.  Note that they don't measure SUCCESSFUL calls cleared, but just cleared calls, period.

The good news about the above is that I later escalated through a couple of levels of support and got to a product specialist who listened to what I did, went to the developers, and came back and said "could you send me what you did?  We'll add it to our files for future reference."

That's how I learn.  I had no idea what I was doing, or how the whole thing worked, but I fingered it out.  And that was fun.

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Friday, December 1, 2000

The above (SINCE REMOVED - jd.) is supposed to be for later this evening, but it appears Tom's gone missing already. Many of the other daynoters have mirrors of Tom's Daynotes page; if you head up to the top of this one and scroll down a little, there's a listing of all of us in the left yellow border there.  Tom's switching IP addresses in preparation for his new SasKat venture, and part of that switch necessitates moving from one address to another. Since we all know computers are instantly responsive when you make a mistake, but far less forgiving when things go right, the above will most likely be effective through the weekend. Come Monday, on my page for next week, I'll have the old/new locations for Tom's work; this stuff will be de-linked. If this doesn't make sense to you and you want a more clear, technical explanation, I'm sure Tom's got one posted.

As a parent, there's something both sweet and cruel about waking your children up.  Since August of last year, I've been getting my daughter up nearly every single weekday for breakfast.  The kids go to bed at 8 pm nearly every weeknight, so when I stumble in at 5:45 - 6:15 am to get her up, she's had somewhere between 8 and 9 hours of sleep.  Sometimes not enough, sometimes way too much.

I can tell you that there are times when it's sweet - she's sleeping on her knees with her rear end up in the air, or curled around a favorite toy or blanket.  You always feel a little mean, taking them from that nice, safe, warm, comfortable place and hauling them out into the cold, cruel world.  

In a small way, you regret it.  Every morning marks another day of childhood over with, and another day closer to the disappointments of the adult world.  Certainly there are great joys that come with those new days, but sometimes, the disappointments seem to be far greater in their own way.

I guess in many ways I wish I was still a child, back at my parent's house.  Unfettered with responsibility, with the capability of looking at a ten-foot pile of snow as my own personal Mount Everest, and seeing a two-acre yard as nearly the whole world.  Not looking at it for the investment potential, the future benefits, or all the yard work it took to keep it up.

But if I was, I doubt I'd ever really know the joy of walking in to wake my children; the smile on Jack's face always makes me want to know what he's dreaming.  Occasionally, you'll catch him in what I'd call a "doggy dream" - he'll be making rhythmic movements, and grunting, etc.  Smiling the whole time.

I can gauge the dream, sometimes, from his reaction to being awakened.  If you startle Jack into wakefulness, he will start crying, and not stop for quite some time - typically a half-hour or more.  I can honestly sympathize with that.  I never ever "rejoice" at the sound of my alarm.  

I've looked forward to getting to work, and getting opportunities to learn, to contribute, to grow, but that first shriek of the alarm reminds me that I just slept through another night, and put another day behind me.  Most are good; this last couple of months has even been a stretch of about half good, half bad.  But, quite frankly, I'm still not thrilled at the tweeting shriek I wake up to.

So it goes.  We all have good and bad days; today is destined to be another day in a series - this evening, lying in bed, I'm hoping it will fall into the good category.  We don't do a whole lot of fancy cultural evenings 'round the Dominik Demi-Chateau; part of it's the demands of kids, and part of it's the financial portion of the equation (you did note the name of the page, right?).  

But tonight SWMBO and I go to the Guthrie Theater (pronounced without the "r", please), to see their production of "A Christmas Carol".  Young man of Jack's acquaintance and overwhelming awe will be watching the kid this evening.  His mother will supervise our larger child, as we traipse downtown for her company's annual Christmas party.  

I'm told Kelsey Grammer will narrate this evening's performance - I doubt that will be in person.  Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek and theater fame, had done it for years previous; I'm not sure why he isn't any more, but Mr. Grammer will be good enough for me; heck, Casey Jones would work for me.

As I understand it, today is World AIDS Day.  While I have not been touched by this disease, nor has anyone I know personally, I do know that it's hurt.  One of my favorite rock groups was Queen.  Frankly, the first time I heard their music and connected it with them, I was put off a little - that damned "Another One Bites The Dust" was everywhere for about eight months while I was in High School.  

Freddy Mercury was a talented and gifted artist.  I've seen a number of specials and documentaries on Queen, the band, and how they dealt with the loss on a personal and professional level.

I remember seeing Live Aid, and watching Queen just tear up the stadium with Radio Gaga.  That flashing dark-dark-light, dark-dark-light as people would clap and hold their arms wide was, to use the term properly, awesome.  The overwhelming power of Freddy and the other gentlemen was evident that day.  I remember hearing later that Bob Geldof (the man who wrote my favorite way to start the week) was on the high-donation lines at Live Aid, and when he heard Queen, he set the phone down, went outside, and watched.

That's a supreme compliment.  To have lost Freddy Mercury to a disease that we still don't have a cure for is, to me, very very disappointing.  I remember one of the last videos I saw him in - it was very clear that he was ill from something, but he still had the charisma to draw your attention from across the room.

Many people who have died from this disease suffer far from the spotlight.  They huddle in hospices, broke, broken, and estranged from their families.  Some are forced to tell their families secrets they're not prepared to hear, and in their time of need of comfort, their own families reject them.

This disease has been fodder for jokes for many people, and has completely destroyed the lives of so many others.  The sad facts are that we had too many people making value judgements instead of trying to find a way to stop the disease when it first started, and so many others felt that it was just retribution on people who deserved it

Yeah, right.  Tell that to Ryan White.  Tell that to all the children who contracted this disease in the womb.  Tell that to all the mothers who watched their own children die before them, and they were helpless.  Tell that to all the children, who watched their parent die, fearing the future, fearing what would happen to them when one of the people who meant the entire world to them passed away.

I know, I'm an old softie.  But the thought that a disease could spread through deliberate, willful ignorance while we stood by and made pronouncements like "you deserved that" is disgusting.

No, I'm not singly blaming the government, or the medical community, or anyone else.  This was a situation that presented itself before us, and we just didn't know how to deal with it.  As a result, we let the loudest voices form "public" opinion and "public" policy.  Too often we take the opportunity to look elsewhere instead of speaking out.  In this country we occasionally scream when stepped on, we occasionally yell when provoked, but for the most part, we operate on the LMA principle - :Leave Me Alone.  

Certainly there are people who reach out and help - certainly there are people who are understanding, kind, and caring.  But it takes a lot to move certain individuals.  And that's a sad statement on what we've become.

As an economic power, we're pretty well set.  As a moral and/or character leader, well, I think our elected, nearly-elected, and unelected representatives speak for themselves.  Actually, they have trained media dogs to do the spinning and barking for them, so they can smile during the photo ops.  As a leader in compassion, in caring, and in decent treatment of others, we certainly have some ways to go yet.

I hope we'll get there, and I hope to see it in my lifetime.  But I fear that the possibilities of new outbreaks of different diseases could, over time, overwhelm our sense of compassion and instead leave us cowering in fear of even a simple mosquito bite, as I was once told AIDS could be passed.

It's going to be a long day, and a lot to think about.  I've got a number of opportunities that are finally leaning or falling towards the win column.  If things go well, some time this afternoon, tonight, or tomorrow, I'll crack open that Jif Chocolate Silk and celebrate.  If things don't go well, but go well enough, the celebrations will be next week.  I really hope this is the bitter end of this struggle, and I can get back to technology, putzing and fixing, and saying "gee, I've never seen that before, let's see how that happened."

However, after all that heavy thought, this morning I saw a young man in a parking lot, disposing of his breakfast in a rather unusual way.  Then again, as this is both Friday and the morning after a Viking's game win, I suspect the young fellow had probably celebrated a wee bit too much last night, and was paying his regrets to the pavement gods this morning.

Many's a time I've nearly done the same thing.  Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint), I've really only got squirrely-drunk about three times in my life - one was the night of my 21st birthday party; regrettably, it was also the night before a childhood friend's funeral.  

But perhaps the most fun I had was watching others.  I have a very good friend who experienced perhaps the most horrifying of those moments one night, back in college, at Homecoming.  This would have been the fall of 1983, when we were, uh, yeah, completely, totally, utterly legal.  I promise.  Under the state laws of the time.  

My friend was working construction at the time, and had hurried home to have a family dinner before rushing the 30+ miles out to see another friend of ours.  I, regrettably (yet safely) had to work most of that evening, and so missed the earlier events.  When I arrived at our other friend's dorm room, we got the wretched details.

Friend 1, Mr. Construction feller, had bolted his plate of bratwurst mit kraut, and rushed from his home to campus.  Friend 2, college student, had obtained sufficient intoxicating beverages to plaster at least a platoon of Marines (and yes, I do know how much that is).  Friend 1 and Friend 2 proceeded on a long, quiet walk in the woods near campus accompanied by a 12-pack of Jacob Best beer and a bottle of Southern Comfort.

Neither of these gentlemen, being either lightweights nor stupid, managed to get turned around and out of the woods before their judgment was critically impaired.  Friend 2 ended up carry/dragging friend 1.  

At this point Friend 1 made a series of mistakes which haunt all of us to this day.  His first thought was to drive home.  He sat in the front seat of his pickup truck, looked at the windshield, and then, for some unexplained reason, decided to donate substantial portions of his dinner to the dashboard Jesus.

As some of you may be unfamiliar with the dashboards and environmental controls of late 1970s Ford Pickups, you should be aware that anything liquid let loose on the dashboard of such a vehicle eventually finds it's way to an air vent if not cleaned immediately.  

They didn't clean immediately.

Friend 2, however, retained the presence of mind to pull Friend 1 out of the vehicle.  As he was turning the big lug around, he donated substantial portions of the Brats Mit Kraut to the pavement gods.  For a number of years following that, there was a distinct spot on the pavement on campus where the first snows would always melt.  Well away from the steam tunnels, and all the rest, it marked the spot where my friend re-wrote the words to Tears for Fears' song "Shout".  It became "Brats, Kraut, Blow it all out."  We never got much further than that.

Anyway.  Friend 1, at this point, was beyond caring.  Friend 2 picked friend 1 up out of the vehicle, and carry/dragged him to the dorm room.  Fortunately for Friend 2, it was on the ground floor.

Friend 2 propped friend 1 on the door, fumbled with his keys, and unlocked the door.  The door opened, and friend 1 did his little trick again.  

Clearly, participating in both choir and cross-country prepared my friend 1 for greater things.  As later measured using accurate tape measures, friend 1 managed to launch various things from himself to a wall.  Friend 1 was, and probably still is, five feet ten inches tall.  Assuming his mouth was about five feet five inches or so from the floor, he managed to "project" to a wall seventeen feet away, and two feet up from the floor.

That two feet up is significant, as you'll see later.

Anyway, friend 1, having redecorated friend 2's dorm room to his liking, proceeded to topple, face-first, onto the floor.  Friend 2 dragged him into the room, and up near the bed, conveniently using most of his body to wipe up the additions to the decor.

Now Friend 2 lived with a gentleman who was, by many accounts, a very neat and concientious person.  Never having participated in such shenanigans, he was offended that one of us lesser folk would.  So, after coming into the room, and preparing for his night's rest, he tucked the laces into his shoes and turned them, toes in, near the head of the bed.

At this point friend 1 roused himself, and, in possession of slightly more intelligent brain activity, sought a container.  Finding said container, he proceeded to fill it, and then passed out, again on a pillow.

It was shortly after this event that I arrived.  Having determined that neither of these two gentlemen were in any shape to run out for pizza, let alone see if we could get dates from the nearby women's college, I made sure neither were in serious danger, and went home.

The next morning, after several hours of hot showers, Friend 1 attempted to consume a plain old cake donut, and then was re-introduced around the dorm as "that guy from last night."  

One of the people he met was his future brother-in-law, which is a whole other story I'll let him tell some time.

But that two feet up part?  Yeah, you remember, his ability to nail the wall with his, well, donations?  I suspect that I earlier neglected to mention that as a steam-heated campus, we used a lot of hot water heat.  Hot water heat means baseboard radiators.  Baseboard radiators require openings on the top for the warm air to escape.

I don't think there was too much of a wonder why theirs was usually the coldest room in the dorm.  And when spring finally rolled around, friend 1 disassembled his dashboard in his old Ford Pickup, and rinsed out every single nook and cranny of the air vents, and then bleached them, and repeated the process several times.  No wonder we didn't ride around much in that truck that winter.

So this winter, if you're in a northern climate, and you see someone riding around in a vehicle with the windows rolled down, you can probably assume that they're just too cold to put up with it, but they can't stand the reminders of what they've done.

Me?  I don't eat Kraut any more, either.  Brats are still pretty good, though.

And no, I wasn't friend 1.  If I was, I wouldn't have been able to tell you all of these details.

Later: Chicken, anyone?

The thing to the left was found in a Newport  News, VA Mickey D's.  Not exactly Chicken Nuggets, I guess.  Though you'd think quality control would have caught that one...  ewwwwww...

And apparently there's another variant on the whole Navidad virus going around.  Ugh.  I hate this.  

Somehow, this is fitting.  Yesterday was the very last day of the "fifth dreariest November" we've ever had.  Very foggy, cloudy, and the rest.  I can sympathize at least a little with Dan Bowman's pleading that someone turn the lights back on.

And so today?  Very bright and sunny.  At least for a while.

And I forgot to mention this a while back, but Sjon's regulations for daynotes membership aren't strictly correct.  As I recall, there's a vote, then there's a recount, then ...  oh, just kidding.  I've been told to expect the ritualistic flogging forthwith.

Most Recent - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday
Saturday, December 2, 2000

After that, we cleaned up, and delivered our children, who had been looking forward to the event, to the house of friends, where they ran like wild animals.  Jack traveled up and down their stairs "at least 40 times."  I suspect they lost count.  It's always nice to have some reassurance that the estimations you make on your children are confirmed - we thought Jack was energetic; they confirmed it.

We rushed off to the Guthrie in Downtown Minneapolis.  The good folks at the Guthrie Theater would like to move from their present location just south-west of downtown to a location over on the river.  I'm of two minds on that.  The first is that, no matter what they do, they certainly couldn't have worse traffic problems.  It took us about 20 minutes to get from Burnsville to downtown.  It took nearly another 20 minutes to get from the freeway off-ramp to the parking lot - at total distance of less than a mile.  Sheesh.  We nearly missed the opening of the show.

Our seats were in the top balcony, at the center back, so we could see almost everything.  The Guthrie, as I remember, has a very unique staging set, with a very oddly-shaped thrust stage.  The production of A Christmas Carol did put it to good use.  

Scrooge was a very good Scrooge, as Scrooges go; however, I felt the production didn't allow you to identify with Scrooge.  In my humble opinion, the great value of A Christmas Carol is in all of us identifying, in some small (we hope, not large) way with Scrooge's early tight-fisted ways, and rejoicing in his experience in learning how NOT to do that.

Be that as it may - the play was well done, with the exception of Kelsey Grammer's narration.  A very effective speaker, his recorded narration was sparingly used in the second half of the play, but early on was rather intrusive.  

There.  My bid to be a theater critic.  Or not.  Perhaps the whole thing was affected by my overall mindset and other continuing issues (such as my job hunt).  But it was good.

After that, we decided to go out with SWMBO's boss and her husband for a malt at The Malt Shop.  Which, when we got there, was closed.  So we decided to hop into their new minivan for a hunt of places to snack, and found ourselves south of Downtown St. Paul in McGovern's pub for appetizers and pie.  Strange meal, but we all had a very good time.  He's a teacher, and she's an actuary - really nice people, and believe it or not, actuaries are actually fun people.  

So then we returned to get the kids, and come home.  I think I fell into bed something after one-ish (such as nearly two-ish, emphasis on the ish, a whopping 21 hours after the dreaded alarm went off), and then had to get up early today to head to St. Cloud for my mother's birthday.  Whoo hooo.  Mom is something older than I am, so we again celebrate another anniversary of her 29th Birthday.  Remember, folks, once you get too old, you can stop having birthdays and start having anniversaries.  I celebrated the thirty-first anniversary of my favorite birthday this year - good old number six.  You can do the math from there.

Off to prepare for the caravan to Cloud - more later, when/if we survive... .

Later: Of course we survived.  Of course, we had a good time.  And of course, I forgot the damned digital camera to record any of this for posterity.

I've been exceedingly fortunate to be raised by two parents with agile minds, quick wits, and very twisted senses of humor.  Mom's favorite shirt for a time was one that identified birds from their, uh, well, stains they leave behind.  My father?  He's just funny.  But if he stays on his meds, we're all much more relaxed (just kidding dad).  

We're all pretty quick-witted, and sometimes we do the strangest things with languages.  We'll pretend to mis-hear a comment, or twist the original meaning, and we're off into left field before you can indicate that a fellow named Robert is related by birth to your mother.

Return home to find that the gremlins of the phone lines, otherwise known as the trolls of the Frontier/Global Crossings combine have managed to turn a functioning and adequate phone system of 12 months ago into a slapdash job of baling twine, gum, and more than a little non-standard engineering.

You folks who are fortunate enough to have choices for your local phone service, or alternatives to connect to this thing called the internet, I envy you.  Many's the time I've just wished for a stout bottle and a body of water I could lob it into and send it on it's way to the internet.  Certainly faster and more reliable than this sort of monkeyshines.

There was some discussion a few weeks ago amongst the other Daynoters regarding Christmas shopping policies.  I refrained (from shopping, not discussing), as I try to do as little as possible (shopping, again).  Most of the speculation centered around the male of the species and the presumed regrettable tendency (presumption on behalf of the other half of the species, obviously) that we have to postpone our shopping to the very last minute.

Many view this as procrastination, sloth, or a general dislike of shopping.  Nothing could be further (remember, Farther is for distance, Further is that fellow from the Rocky Horror Picture Show - SWMBO's favorite movie, really.  You know, Dr. Frank N. Further?  Okay, got my joke out of the way now) from the truth.  Fact is that the shopping we do is concentrated, laser-like, into a few brief moments for the singular reason that we wish to preserve our own lives.  We don't delay out of sloth, but out of a desire to do it right.

If you are fortunate enough to have near you a "She Who Must Be Obeyed" you well know that these individuals will quite often give definite and clear directions on what they would like for a particular occasion.  What is also well-known, at least to us males, is the overwhelming number of times when the female of the species uses what is known amongst them as a "hint".  The fortunate few of these "hints" are delivered both clearly and verbally.  "Oh, that's nice" after a particularly grand jewelry commercial, for example, is what is known as a "hint".  A sigh after a commercial about towels and bathrobes, for example, is also a "hint".  The sidelong glance after a commercial for a cruise can also pass as a "hint". 

You will note that, of the above hints, two contain audio notification.  One is clear, the other is not.  The third?  You've got to be bloody lucky to catch that one, buckaroo.  As males, we long ago learned to observe the beasts in the wild, to stalk and kill our own food.  Then we began to domesticate the food sources.  And we stopped being quite so observant.  Foolish mortals that we were.  But remember, the point here is both to catch the "hints" and interpret them correctly, so that you can deliver it unto, and under, the tree come Christmas Morning.

For you see, females do not drop these "hints" to indicate a desire for a particular thing.  It's a test.  A cruel, vicious test, wherein we must be on our toes, every second, to insure that we acquire just the right gift, and right types of gifts, for our significant others.  It's not that we're not on our toes, per se.  It's that men think, quite often, like computers.  Certainly we can multi-task, but most of the time our concentration is on the foreground window.  Background tasks, such as observation of nature for dangerous situations, go into very low priority mode when we're in our own homes, relaxing with our families.

Perhaps this relaxation is a mistake.  Certainly we're often caught off-guard by an unintended "hint" delivered as we leave the room for chips/beer/bathroom breaks.  And then, well, there's the devil to pay and she's out with the checkbook.  So you sit, quietly, hoping she'll notice the thousand and one OTHER good things you do and miss the spot in the middle of the kitchen floor which you yourself couldn't detect with a whole laboratory of diagnostic and imaging equipment - she spots the offending microbe from down the hall.

Such is the nature of woman.  This is why men postpone our shopping to the last minutes.

Our shopping late is actually self-preservation.  We know the rules will change.  Hints dropped in October, November, and early December are quite valuable in allowing us to size up the lay of the land, as it were, concerning the gifts our significant others desire.  Our last-minute burst of energy in the acquisition stage, known as "Man-shopping" is merely self-preservation.  Better to get the right gift late than get the wrong gift over and over and over and over again.  I swear, that's true. 

Besides - since most of us can't manage scissors, paper, tape, and the box we're wrapping all at once, we can shop late, get one of those goofy gift bags, and say "look, I saved wrapping paper for you, too!"

It's worth a try.  And if it's not successful, just let me remind you that occasionally I let other personalities of mine out to type on the keyboard.  This one's on it's way to the funny farm as we speak, so don't blame me if the idea falls flatter than one of my pancakes.  Remember the true meaning of the word "Theory" - tested, but as yet unproven, at least until my wife takes a look at it.

Off to view the want ads.  Hopefully someone will want me.

Most Recent - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday
Sunday, December 3, 2000

Just so we're clear on this, in our kitchen the plastic cups are in a cabinet near the sink and dishwasher - this cabinet is about fifteen inches off the countertop.  The glass glasses, on the other hand, are in a cabinet that's up above the sink a good twenty-five inches above the counter.  And my son, who is perhaps forty inches tops, managed to get from floor to the counter top to get the class and then get it into the living room, without breakage.

Small monkey boy had managed to get this into the living room without the assistance of his elder sister, and without breaking his neck.  Is it any wonder I'm scared of this kid?  I'm expecting any day now to open the mailbox and the application form for the Syroid Chandelier-Swinging Academy to tumble out.  Then there's going to be trouble.

Of course, THIS morning he gets the plastic glasses, but can't pour the juice.  Phew.  And by the time I get out of the shower, I find them watching Star Trek (The Original Series) on Sci Fi.  It's pure camp, I know, I've watched it lots.  But it's fun.  And it makes them think, as well as making them aware of a whole universe that's out there - oh, no, I don't believe in the planet vulcan, despite the home of this page.  But I mean the fact that space exists, and the fact that there might well be things out there.

Ah, well.  Yesterday we passed the Champion Paper plant in Sartell.  When I was a kid, they had this rather small plant that produced newsprint.  They expanded when I was about fifteen or so into a huge plant that also produces coated paper for things like magazines.

A couple of weeks ago Mr. Andy Grove, all-around smart fellow, supposedly, announced that newspapers have about three years to live.  He's completely off base, and wrong.  Of course, his job (other than running Intel) is to gain headlines.

I think newspapers have perhaps another seventy-five years or so; at least twenty as a mainstream media.  Beyond that, they'll occupy a niche for a further fifty before they drop into a curiosity.

I don't think we'll see the disappearance of the newsprint media until Bill Gates' third or fourth version of the Microsoft Apple Newton.  In hopes of getting things to the correct version faster, here's some helpful tips for the boys and girls at Microsoft engaged in this whole project.

• Make it slightly larger than a legal pad in size, and slightly thicker.  Not more than an inch, though.
• Battery life must be at least eighteen hours in full-use mode, with the capability to recharge in less than an hour.  
• Spare batteries must be small, easy-to-carry, and also support the unit for eighteen or more hours.
• The unit should sport at least four video cameras on the edges, with the capability of producing a "fish-eye" video of roughly 170^o all around, off each edge.  
• It needs sixteen audio pickups, eight on top, eight on bottom, arranged at the corners and middle of each side.  The system should be capable of recording all sixteen channels independently, to produce a clear spatial record of who said what.
• Speaking of audio, it should be capable of voice recognition, in addition to handwriting recognition.  It should be also able to copy EXACTLY as we draw, to allow us clear diagramming capabilities.
• It must have wireless, reliable connections to the internet.  No "gee, almost" about it.  Either it works or it doesn't.
• It should have a screen that's nearly the full size of the unit itself, with 2400x1800 pixel resolution, at 16.7 million colors.
• The device should have integrated GPS modules, in addition to a multi-mode telephone capability.
• The device should be capable of storing and recording every instant of every day on audio at super-CD Audio levels
• Bideo should be captured at four frames a second every second, all day long, from all lenses, or full-motion broadcast-level video from one single video pickup for at least twelve hours without downloading.
• Total storage capacity above and beyond the above-mentioned requirements should equal at least fifty gigabytes of information.  With a full-time internet connection, the internal storage requirements could be less if the internet connection is truly reliable.
  

And it would probably help that it was marketed in designer colors and textures, and under $200 apiece.  Preferably, there would be a range of such devices that ran from the student-level (single video pickup, eight audio connections, all other features the same, $50) to the executive level (all of the above, in addition to faster processors, and a nice leather case, $900).

While the keyboard is a "necessary evil" in all of this, I think it's probably headed for the graveyard sooner than the newspapers are.  Once we see a large increase in repetitive-stress injuries, and once we see insurance companies paying for long-term damage not immediately related to a single company or single event, you'll see a marked increase in investment in non-keyboard input methods.  Which will make me happy.  

But, I digress.  In church this morning we learned many things, not the least of which is that we're going to lose only twelve more minutes of daylight in the next 18, which puts us at the shortest (in this hemisphere) day of the year.  Brrrrrrr.  And yes, I was the fellow trying to dodge those rare rays of sunlight in the front pew on the east side.  We sit there so Monkey Boy can see what's going on.  Coincidentally, everyone can also see him.  Though I was much relieved today that the toddler (14 months, at most) who came out to see if she could give Father a hand was not mine; a trick my wife tried as a youngster, along with calling the dogs in church.  Neither trick my kids have tried yet - though they've got more than a few of their own...

Off to have a little fun, surf the web, and play zombie for a while.  No one calls to set up interviews on Sundays, do they?  ;-)

One last note for the day...  I was watching something on CNN last night where one talking head was inquiring of another how long this BS in Florida could go on.  The one talking head indicated that the "drop-dead dates" that had been discussed weren't anywhere near actual drop-dead, and that this thing could go until past inauguration.  It could go until someone decided to pick a president.

'Scuse me?  Been - There - Done - That - Lived - To - Whine - About - It - On - The - Web - And - Get - Over - It - Already - Thank - You - Very - Much.  Nitwit.

Then they said something that completely stunned me.  

Female Talking Head (anchor): Does anyone know how the public feels about all of this?
Male Talking Head (analyst): I think we'll get the same thing we had last year with impeachment.  The public will let their representatives know who they want to see elected, and they'll get there.
FTH: Any idea how long that will take?
MTH: I think we'll see a groundswell in the next few weeks.

I think, back in the early 1970s, our media decided it was better at judging the news than we were.  You had Viet Nam, which, no matter what your opinion was on the war, was certainly a polarizing influence on public opinion.  You had Richard Nixon, who was perhaps the most disgustedly self-centered bastard to ever get elected President in my lifetime, and yet had more character than either one of the two bums we've got now.  You had a hundred other little things - environmental concerns, toxic waste, the Cold War, and various other events/productions/concerns, and the media said "well, we dun good on this one, let's see how far they'll let us go.

We've got a generation of people, perhaps more, who believe the television.  Walter Cronkhite I'd trust in a heartbeat.  Dan Rather?  Not any further than I could throw him (I still haven't forgotten what he did to Bush the Elder on a live interview before George The First ran for president - while I have little love for the Bush-men in general, one does not disrespect the office of Vice President like Rather did).  The remaining crop of anchors has all got my hackles raised, at least a bit, when it comes to "media pronouncements."  

These people aren't elected, aren't chosen by a group, they're not representative. What gives them any right to decide what we should or shouldn't feel?

Now I've been reading  Dave Farquhar for quite some time.  Dave and I agree on quite a few things.  We both like Amigas, we've both got cross-platform experience in Macs and PCs (His PC experience, obviously, is been in a slightly different area than mine - I bought new PCs and installed them, he kept a bunch of older clunkers screaming and wrote a book about it in the process), but when it comes to matters political, I think we're probably on either end of the teeter-totter.

He's got some pretty accurate analysis and reporting on the current situation, and I think, though it pains me to admit it, he's right.  Gore, I think, might have been a good president.  I doubt he could screw up as badly as Clinton did.  Bush, now, I expect great things from.  Given that he's from Texas, and already a pretty laid back "good ole' country boy" at heart, I suspect that we'll have more than a few major screwups in the four years he will be president.

But that's the way it goes in this country.  No one individual can really screw us up long-term any more.  Unfortunately, no one really good individual will get to a point where they will be able to lead us into a better mode of life, either.  It's something we've all got to do individually.  Not the media, not the pundits, not the politicians, or anyone else.  One good person, or one evil person, will not make a difference.  Not any more.

Slightly Later: I went and visited an old friend today.  Tommy's list of live web-cams world-wide.  Back when I first was fiddling with the net, there were about a half-dozen of these things.  Tommy, a Minnesotan who's moved south to escape our winter cold (gee, why didn't I think of that?  Oh, yeah, sunburn) has been at this since before my son was born.  If a month is an Internet year, what's four calendar years?  Something closing in on a century, right?  Wow.  Tommy sure doesn't look old.  And he's picked up a ton of real winners.  Some day I'll get DSL or something in here, and point a camera at Buck Hill - that should be fun...

But then Tommy, as he usually does, bouyed my spirit with this link.  Oh, dear.  SWMBO is not going to like this one bit.  "But dear, it's healthy! - THUD (sound of head, hitting floor)"  Yeah, right.  Once she reads the treatise on shopping, above, I'm likely to be in severe danger.  Oh well.  What's life for if you can't live a little?