What I'm Thinking

Moving On

2005-09-18T16:58:00.000-04:00

There is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. Or at least that's how the song goes. This is the notice that this blog is moving to the emerald isle. You can find me in Ireland at “What I'm Blogging”

We're Moving HERE.

Blogger.com has been a terrific home for my blogs and I since September of 2003, however I'm thinking about trying something new. I'm also thinking about consolidating all the various different blogs I run into one, and this will let me do that.

Hope to see you at the new place.

Cheers,
Ric

My Sunday Off

2005-09-18T09:44:00.000-04:00

Sunday off; a day free from labour; ordained rest by the Divine on high. Unfortunately, someone forgot to read the memo. My Sunday off is a little different.

...Sunday has really gone to the dogs...

Let's start with the dogs. If God had wanted Sunday to be a day of rest, you'd think he would have informed the dogs. But they still want out of the house early in the morning. There are neighbours to wake, cats to chase, and let's not forget nature's call. No, dogs definitely missed the memo on the whole day of rest thing. Mind you they are very well informed on the afternoon of rest, usually in my favourite spot on the sofa, but I digress.

Next is my day job. The place where I'm expected to be, 9 - 5, Monday to Friday. They missed the memo too. I don't think they were ever copied on the original. Instead of Sunday being a time of rest and time spent with family, for the best and brightest at Gigantic Concrete (and everywhere else I've worked too) Sunday is a change window. It is an opportunity to do all the computer and system work you need to do so that other people can be uninterrupted during their 9-5 work week. “The rocks must flow”. It sounds like a Frank Herbert novel waiting to happen. This Sunday morning I had a telco on the phone with a manufacturer of fine network equipment trying to recreate a problem we solved over a month ago to ensure that we really solved it.

To really top off My Sunday Off we need to look at the home front. There's the grass to cut, the hedge to trim, the car to wash, and groceries to buy. Worst of all there 's the calls of nature from my canine friends to scoop. Sunday has really gone to the dogs.

Undeniable Pressure

2005-09-15T06:53:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you read something and it just grabs you. It speaks to you in volumes of truths that wash over you. Truths that when you think about it, were slapping you in the face all along.

Poem: “The Undeniable Pressure of Existence” by Patricia Fargnoli, from Duties of the Spirit. © Tupelo Press.

I saw the fox running by the side of the road
past the turned-away brick faces of the condominiums
past the Citco gas station with its line of cars and trucks
and he ran, limping, gaunt, matted dull haired
past Jim's Pizza, past the Wash-O-Mat,
past the Thai Garden, his sides heaving like bellows
and he kept running to where the interstate
crossed the state road and he reached it and he ran on
under the underpass and beyond it past the perfect
rows of split-levels, their identical driveways
their brookless and forestless yards,
and from my moving car, I watched him,
helpless to do anything to help him, certain he was beyond
any aid, any desire to save him, and he ran loping on,
far out of his element, sick, panting, starving,
his eyes fixed on some point ahead of him,
some possible salvation
in all this hopelessness, that only he could see.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Mmmmmm Chocolate

2005-09-13T13:49:00.000-04:00

...too subtle for the common palate...

It's the birthday of Roald Dahl, born in Llandaff, South Wales (1916). He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing. Every so often, a plain gray cardboard box was issued to each child, filled with eleven chocolate bars. It was the children's task to rate the candy, and Dahl took his job very seriously. About one of the sample candy bars, he wrote, “Too subtle for the common palate.” He later said that the experience got him thinking about candy as something manufactured in a factory, and he spent a lot of time imagining what a candy factory might be like. Today, he's best known for his children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further delicious reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

Istanbul Was Constantinople

2005-09-08T10:18:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1664 that the Dutch surrendered the city of New Amsterdam to the British, who renamed it New York. The English navigator Henry Hudson claimed credit as the city's discoverer in 1609, when he sailed into its harbor and up the river that now bears his name, looking for a passage to India. Hudson was sailing for the Dutch West India Company, so it was the Dutch who moved in and settled the area in 1614, six years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. Forty years later, New Amsterdam became a city; its population, 800. In the 1660s the Dutch and English were at war, and on September 8, 1664, a fleet sent by the Duke of York seized the city and changed the name to New York.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

Where's Waldo?

2005-09-07T02:58:00.000-04:00

You want to know where Waldo is? Well Waldo is right here. Waldo is me.

...Now I'm in Big Sky country...

At the behest of Gigantic Concrete, I'm am sojourning in beautiful downtown Steinbach Manitoba. Home of, among other things, the Mennonite Heritage Village, Automobile Town, and a vast array of pawn shops, churches and car dealerships. Quick cash, religion and wheels seem to be the mainstay.

I must say it's a little unnerving to be here. Yesterday morning I was in the rolling hills of the Oakridge Moraine and the towers of Toronto. Now I'm in Big Sky country. It is flat. Flat; flatter; flattest. There are times you can actually catch the curve of the earth on the edge of the horizon. For someone from hill country, it's like being in a very large fish bowel.

So why am I here? Well it goes something like this. One of our plants had a circuit with telco #1. We ordered a new circuit from telco #2. By some “murphian” fiat of fate, we also cancelled circuit with Telco #1 thinking that the new circuit would be in place before the old one was disconnected. Wrong. So I'm here to figure out how to connect the site with no circuit. For my next trick, watch me pull a rabbit out of my rear...

Kindred Spirit

2005-09-07T02:31:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of the brilliant and unfortunate William Friese-Greene, born in Bristol, England (1855). Between 1885 and 1890 he built a series of four prototype motion-picture cameras and was granted a patent for a camera to record movement. He went bankrupt in the process and sold the rights to the patent for 500 pounds. During his lifetime, he took out more than 70 patents for other inventions, including X-ray and light printing on paper fabrics, ink-less printing, and electrical transmission of images, but earned little money from them and was on the verge of bankruptcy all his life.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Zen and a Harley

2005-09-06T07:33:00.000-04:00

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of writer Robert Pirsig, born in Minneapolis (1928). He's best known for his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), which 120 editors turned down before one finally offered a standard $3000 advance. The book is about the 1968 motorcycle trip he made from Minneapolis to San Francisco with his 12-year-old son Christopher. But the trip is really a backdrop for Pirsig's philosophical meditations on nature and technology. It was a completely unexpected best seller. He wrote: “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

My Brain Has a Pattern?

2005-09-05T08:34:00.000-04:00

Your Brain's Pattern

You have a tempered, reasonable way of thinking.
You tend to take every new idea in, and meld it with your world view.
For you, everything is always changing. Each moment is different.
Your thinking process tends to be very natural - with no beginnings or endings.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

London Calling

2005-09-02T08:08:00.000-04:00

...London was, but is no more...

It's the anniversary of the Great Fire of London in 1666, which began around 1:00 am in the King's bakery, on Pudding Lane. The buildings in medieval London were nearly all wooden and the fire quickly spread to the wharves on the Thames River, where oil and hemp, hay, and timber were stored. There the fire exploded, and over the next three days destroyed an area nearly two miles square in central London, though only six persons died. A man named John Evelyn wrote in his diary the next night: “Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! The sky was like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like a hideous storm. London was, but is no more!”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

Red Cross - Donate if You Can

2005-09-01T05:54:00.000-04:00

American Red Cross

DONATE if you can

Sleepless in Cyberspace

2005-09-01T04:29:00.000-04:00

Do you ever have one of those days where you are so wired that sleep evades you? Well I'm having one, and I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.The wife doesn't like it either, because when I'm up, she can't sleep. I haven't taken any real survey, but I don't think the dogs are impressed in the least.

...there's an addiction that needs feeding...

Perhaps it's too much coffee? I have been known to drink a lot of coffee. Sometimes 10-15 cups a day. I blame this of course on the Order of Friars Minor. Prior to my association with the Franciscans back in the early eighties, I drank no coffee. None. Nada. Not a stitch. Couldn't stand the stuff really. However, in order to perk myself up for morning prayers, I started drinking the black oily stuff. Now I'm hooked. Addiction has it's monkey claws deep in my left shoulder blade; the only surviving remnant of a shattered Catholicism. The Church faded away, the coffee remained.

Of course I could just be stressed out. There is a lot of activity going on at Gigantic Concrete and there are times I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water. So much to do, so much to keep track of, so many bloody emails to respond to (Yes, Matt this includes yours). There's also the burden of command. I had to chew out one of my staff today. I hate doing that. The guy isn't meeting expectations and now I get to be all managerial about it. I fear becoming a beloved one in my own right.

Whatever it is. It's left me awake, frustrated, and grumpy. I'd write more, but the kettle has boiled and there's an addiction that needs feeding.

Contingency Planning

2005-08-30T06:51:00.000-04:00

When you are planning your future, even at my late stage in the game, It is important to have a fall back plan in case things go wrong. What is my strategy? Simple, if things at Gigantic Concrete don't work out, and several thousand people perish unexpectedly, then I'm President. Planning is good.

Get your position here

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain!

2005-08-29T22:23:00.000-04:00

Your Hidden Talent

You have the natural talent of rocking the boat, thwarting the system.
And while this may not seem big, it can be.
It's people like you who serve as the catalysts to major cultural changes.
You're just a bit behind the scenes, so no one really notices.

What's Your Hidden Talent?

Animal Crackers

2005-08-29T08:14:00.000-04:00

Further hilarious reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

On this day in 1930, the Marx Brothers' movie Animal Crackers opened in New York City. The farce, the brothers' second film, was directed by Victor Heerman and starred Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Groucho, this time playing an African explorer who manages, among other feats, to shoot an elephant while wearing pajamas. He also performs the comic aria "Hooray for Captain Spaulding," in honor of himself. Margaret Dumont plays her familiar role as the long-suffering socialite, this time called Mrs. Rittenhouse.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

A Little From Column A, A Little From Column B

2005-08-28T21:32:00.000-04:00

How You Live Your Life

You seem to be straight forward, but you keep a lot inside.

You're laid back and chill, but sometimes you care too much about what others think.

You prefer a variety of friends and tend to change friends quickly.

You tend to dream big, but you worry that your dreams aren't attainable.

How Do You Live Your Life?

It's Not the Fall, It's the Sudden Stop

2005-08-28T08:00:00.000-04:00

Today is believed to be the date when the Roman Empire fell in 474 A.D., when the Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by a barbarian. What they called barbarians, we might call Germans or Swedes. One tribe, the Goths, had originated in Sweden, migrated to the Black Sea, and split into two groups, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. They were driven out of their own homeland by the Huns who had been advancing across Asia from the east. And so 200,000 Visigoths migrated across the Danube into the Roman Empire in 374 A.D. and were tolerated there by the Romans. But then the Romans tried to disarm them, and there was a rebellion. The emperor sent Roman troops into battle at Adrianople, and the Visigoths won and destroyed two-thirds of the Roman army. Their victory was thanks in part to the fact that the Visigoths had developed a horse's saddle with stirrups, which made the horses much more maneuverable.

Learn more at Amazon Canada, US and UK

Other Germanic tribes then began to move into the Roman Empire, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Angles, and the Saxons. Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410 and again by Vandals in 455. The Roman Empire was in shambles, and the emperor was deposed on this day in 474 A.D.

Edward Gibbon put forward a theory about the fall of Rome, arguing that the Christian Church was to blame, that after Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the best and the brightest became leaders of the church rather than going into the military or into the government.

Another theory says that the aqueducts, which carried the water supply, were lined with lead, and so the Romans slowly went crazy. One of the more recent theories is that the Roman army had been infiltrated by the barbarians themselves, and so when the army was ordered to attack the barbarians, they, of course, refused.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

This Must Be Rigged!

2005-08-27T22:43:00.000-04:00

Your IQ Is 140

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius
Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius
Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius
Your General Knowledge is Genius

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Separation of Church and Camp

2005-08-27T22:08:00.000-04:00

Today was child retrieval day. That is to say it was the last day of Summer Camp and NOS (Number One Son) needed to be picked up. In the past NOS had attended the camp of the United Church of Canada, a liberal bunch of theologians who provided shuttle bus service to and from their northern retreat. This year, he attended the Presbyterian (Read: Church of Scotland in Canada) Camp, and being Scottish, they skimped on some of the basic necessities to save money. Necessities like shuttle bus service.

Of course this meant that I had to take the drive to go get him. The drive north. The long, lingering trek from home to summer camp in the automobile whose only air conditioning system is all the windows open while travelling 100 kilometers per hour. Oh joy.

My journey began at eight in the morning and was uneventful. No car issues, no road kill, no coffee. NOS was retrieved and insisted that we stop at the Restaurant of the Scottish Clown on the way home. After all he'd been cut off from civilization for a week. No video games! No TV! He needed an infusion of Western Pop Culture stat! It was over the faux burgers that the metaphysics question and answer period started.

“Dad, If God made us and loves us, why does he send some of us to Hell?”

This is the point where I nearly spit my root beer out my nose. My seemingly non religious son was enquiring on points of theology after only one week's exposure. Isn't there supposed to be some kind of constitutional separation of Church and Summer camp? I never would have gotten a question like this had those cheap Presbyterians sprang for the bus ride home. He never asked those questions after a bus ride home from the United Church Camp. But OK, time to come up with an answer.... hmmm..... think, think, think...

“Son.... God doesn't send us to hell. If there is such a place, we send ourselves. We are completely responsible for where we end up in life.” He thought about it for a while. Took a bite of his burger and thought about it some more.

“That makes sense,” he said finally.

Good. Theology lesson over. God gets off the hook for sending us to hell, and next year a camp with a bus.

Happy Birthday Hegel

2005-08-27T17:26:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, born in Stuuttgart (1770). He started out as a theologian, particularly interested in how Christianity is a religion based on opposites: sin and salvation, earth and heaven, finite and infinite. He believed that Jesus had emphasized love as the chief virtue because love can bring about the marriage of opposites.

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

Hegel eventually went beyond theology and began to argue that the subject of philosophy is reality, and he hoped to describe how and why human beings create communities and governments, make war, destroy each other's societies, and then build themselves up to do it all over again.

He came up with the concept of Dialectic, the idea that all human progress is driven by the conflict between opposites, that each political movement is imperfect and so gives rise to a counter movement which takes control—which is also imperfect—and gives rise to yet another counter movement, and so on to infinity.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM

2005-08-26T08:24:00.000-04:00

Major kudos to Scott over on Acting Up for pointing out Word Verification for comments on Blogger. Good bye-SPAM-bots!!

At least, that is, until the next advance in the Spam Wars and they find a way to fool that system too.

This new feature of Blogger came at just the right time, I was running out of dogs, and would probably of had to go after Tim's cats.

Those Daring Young Men in Their Flying Machines

2005-08-26T08:12:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of the inventor Joseph Montgolfier, born in Annonay, France (1740). He and his brother Etienne were in the paper manufacturing business. And one night watching the fire in his fireplace, Joseph wondered what caused the sparks to rise. He made a bag out of silk and lit a fire under the opening and watched it rise. He thought it was smoke that lifted it. He didn't know it was simply heated air.

...the first human beings to take flight...

So the Montgolfier brothers decided to build a contraption for flight. At that time the only creatures who had ever flown were birds and insects. But in 1783, they made a huge bag out of cloth and paper, held the opening over a fire, and inflated the bag to a height of 110 feet. When it was full, they released it, and it rose more than 3,000 feet into the air. Then they sent up a balloon with a sheep, a duck, and a rooster in a basket under the balloon, with the king and queen of France watching. The balloon landed, and the animals were okay.

So on November 21, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers sent up the first human beings to take flight. Deciding not to do it themselves, they sent up two volunteers, one of whom was a major in the French army. A half a million people came to watch in Paris.

One of the people watching was Benjamin Franklin, and when someone asked him what practical purpose this contraption might have, Benjamin Franklin said, “What use is a newborn baby?”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Free Men in Paris

2005-08-25T07:19:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1944 that Paris was liberated from four years of Nazi rule. So many of the major cities in Europe were destroyed by bombing during the war, but Paris remained relatively unscathed, in part because the Nazis had marched into the city unchallenged, and the French, at least the French in Paris, had not put up much resistance. Many Parisians tried to be as accommodating as possible to the Germans. Most of the theaters and music halls, restaurants and cafés were open for Nazi soldiers and officers.

...but the idea of a curfew deeply offended them...

After D-Day, many people hoped the Allies would liberate Paris, but Eisenhower made a decision to go around the city. He didn't want to get bogged down there. And then, as the Allies got closer, the Germans ordered a 9:00 p.m. curfew on the city. The Parisians had not revolted against the German occupation, but the idea of a curfew deeply offended them, and the Paris police began collaborating with the French resistance. Fighting broke out in the streets. Hitler ordered the city be destroyed, but the German commander refused the order, and a division of French troops entered the city on this day in 1944.

Among the war correspondents was Ernest Hemingway, who said on this day, “I had a funny choke in my throat and I had to clean my glasses because now, below us, gray and always beautiful, was spread the city I love best in the world.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Stop or the Dog Gets It!

2005-08-21T18:00:00.000-04:00

You know who you are. The blood will be on your hands, you sorry bastards.

Down to the Sea in Ships

2005-08-21T17:55:00.000-04:00

“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.” And what works we saw.

...rhyming the ancient mariner are we...

My buddy Murray and I are completely insane. We push the boundaries of our physical limits and when we surpass them, we chase those gremlins even farther out. No we are not doing a remake of “The Right Stuff”, but rather we are undertaking one of those pastimes of human antiquity. We are become sailors; rhyming the ancient mariner are we.

Murray is the owner of a sixteen foot Hobie Cat. A Catamaran. A vessel offering passage to fun, excitement, and verification that two post 40 year old males are insane. The weather was gray, overcast, threatening thunder and lightning, but did this deter us? No not at all. We boldly went, and pit ourselves against the elements. The wind blew, the spray whipped our faces and the thunder clapped. This latter bit was a little daunting since we sat at the bottom of a twenty foot aluminium mast heavily conductive of airborne electricity known as lightning. But sail we did. We sailed for hours into the sunset, until our arms ached, until our legs could hold us up no longer.

The next day, of course, our post four decade bodies reminded us that we were not as nimble as we once were, but the memory of elemental wind and waves more than made up for the minor bruises and pains we suffered. Mind you, the aspirin and rum helped too.

On the Road

2005-08-18T16:58:00.000-04:00

This week I am either Bob Hope, or Bing Crosby. I'm not sure which one, but I'm “On the Road” - I just don't know which one. “I'm in a road movie to Berlin, can't drive out the way I came in”.

I've been travelling to many of Gigantic Concrete's sites bringing the technology of high speed network access. There are times I feel like a later day missionary spreading the light of broadband among the heathens clinging to the darkness of Frame-Relay. It comes at a price however, myself and my car are covered thick in cement dust; my feet ache from heavy safety boots; My body yearns for the sleep that one craves after a hard days work.

Oh ya, one more thing - little or no time to write

Tomorrow will be much better. Tomorrow I'm on the road again, but it will involve sailing and drinking at the final destination. Sometimes the road is worth it.

Contemplating Defeat

2005-08-16T06:05:00.000-04:00

The boys of summer are in full swing. The girls of summer are swinging too. This is Little League, and even Canadians play in the field of dreams of America's pastime. At this level it is a 2 hour practise on the weekend and one or two games a week that run a couple of hours as well.

...It is a round robin merry-go-round of athletic prowess, delivering victory and defeat...

The kids enjoy it. The coaches enjoy it. The parents enjoy it. Some of the parents “really”enjoy it, if you can gauge such things by cheering and other, sometimes inappropriate, verbal participation. Everyone it seems has a good time. This will end in a few short weeks. This will end in the fury that is playoffs.

Playoffs occur at the end of every season. The ritual of performance and reward. Games are won, trophies are given. Yet, there is a darker side of playoffs; playoffs as a forced march endurance test. You see, these games take place over a single weekend. From nine in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, game after game is played in the blazing sun of late summer. It is a round robin merry-go-round of athletic prowess, delivering victory and defeat. Those who loose are down and out. Those that win must continue the cycle. The defeated go home, the victors rest 30 minutes and charge once more into the breach.

The day drags on, the heat builds, the sun beats down on the dusty field. After three or four games only the most dedicated still hope for victory. After three of four games players, coaches and parents silently hope for blessed defeat and the chance to see home once again. Home. Air conditioned sanctuary from this Little League endurance test in the Sahara.

After two days, if final victory comes, the aftermath is crankiness and sunburns for all. Glory has a price, and in Little League that price is heat exhaustion.

My Postmodernism is Showing

2005-08-14T16:10:00.000-04:00

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist

88%

Cultural Creative

69%

Materialist

56%

Idealist

50%

Existentialist

38%

Romanticist

31%

Modernist

25%

Fundamentalist

13%

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

Found on outside the box

What's Your Summer Ride?

2005-08-14T13:12:00.000-04:00

Your Summer Ride is a Jeep

For you, summer is all about having no responsibilities.
You prefer to hang with old friends - and make some new ones.

What's Your Summer Ride?

Japan Surrenders

2005-08-14T12:29:00.000-04:00

Today is the 60th anniversary of the day on which President Harry Truman announced that the Second World War had come to an end. You might argue that more human beings were happy on this day in 1945 than on any other day in history.

...It was the worst war in history...

It was the worst war in history. An estimated 60 million people died; about two-thirds of them were civilians. In the United States, the war had been going on for three years and eight months. About one in every eight Americans served in the war—more than 16 million American soldiers. Virtually every American family had at least one member overseas. With 400,000 Americans killed, most families knew somebody who had died in the war, and the most American casualties had come in the last year of the war.

Most Americans had believed that the war was far from over. The first few battles on Japanese islands had been some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Military analysts were projecting horrific losses, casualty estimates in the hundreds of thousands. But after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese suddenly accepted terms of complete surrender. And the announcement was made on this day at about 7:00 p.m. The newswires carried the headline, “Japan Surrenders.”

There were spontaneous celebrations and parades in every major city in America. In New York City, more than a million people filled the street, overflowing Times Square, the crowd stretching from 40th all the way up to 52nd streets. Factories blew their whistles. Air raid sirens went off. Ships and trains and cars honked their horns. Churches tolled their bells.

Americans had been living under strict food and gas rationing, and once the news arrived, people went to the gas stations, filled up their cars and went riding around for the fun of it. Throughout the war, people had tried to keep their lights off after dark to save energy, but on this night, people turned on their lights and left them on all night. Some children who'd grown up during the war saw the streets lit up with lights for the first time.

And one thing that commentators noticed at the time was that nobody shouted, “We've won the war!” or anything about triumph. They simply shouted, “The war is over!”

The most famous photograph of that day in 1945 showed a sailor in Times Square kissing a nurse in a white uniform. The nurse's name was Edith Shain. She later said, “When I was kissed, I closed my eyes. I didn't look at him. It was a startling thing. But I thought, this man had fought the war for all of us.” The photograph of the sailor and the nurse was the cover of LIFE magazine that next week and that photo has been reprinted thousands of times.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

I Want a Smoke

2005-08-13T12:42:00.000-04:00

There's a time and a place for everything, at least that's what the Byrds tell us and by extension the holy writ the song was based on. “A time to live, a time to die; a time to smoke a time not to smoke.” I'm in the later of these two and the not smoking part of it too. My problem is that I want to be firmly on the smoking side of the bell curve.

I'm not, however, a smoker or at least not a “real” one. I don't smoke cigarettes and I never have. I am, rather, a pipe smoker and a cigar puffer - reformed. I don't do it any more for health reasons, but man do I miss it. I miss the way it feels, I miss the way the smoke curls out of the end of my pipe, I miss blowing smoke rings and I miss the smell of Black Cavendish wafting through my nostrils.

On a philosophical level, I suppose I'd miss my family even more after I'd have passed away early from complications due to lung cancer. So I stopped. But there are days the craving is overpowering.

Read a Good Caxton Lately?

2005-08-13T11:07:00.000-04:00

...people in England called printed books Caxtons...

It's the birthday of the first man ever to print a book in English, William Caxton, born in Kent, England (1422). He was a wealthy merchant, living in Cologne, Germany. The printing press had been invented about 25 years earlier and Caxton had just translated a book about the history of Troy. He realized that printing was the thing for his book, and so he printed it in 1475, Historyes of Troye.

He went back to England and established the first printing press there. In 1478, he came out with an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. For a long time, people in England called printed books Caxtons.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Something Has Got To Give

2005-08-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

Yes, I am on the verge of a decision. Decisions often float around in the gray matter of our mind unformed and unrealized. Decisions like should I ask the really cute girl from my english class to the dance, but I digress (and engage in time travel by about twenty odd years too).

...IT got lean, IT got mean...

This decision has been forming for a while; building on the foundation of earlier, less consequential choices. This decision is not about where to do what I do, but it is rather more about what to do. Period.

I have spent the last seventeen years working in the IT industry. Some of this work has been fun, some has been exciting even, but something changed at the end of the last century. IT got lean, IT got mean, IT started thinking of it's workers as indentured servants rather than as actual people. I'm told that this is common of most industries in North America, but I am familiar only with IT. As is the usual case, familiarity breeds contempt.

The contempt stems, I suppose, from the many long hours I have spent toiling over networks and servers at the expense of friends, family, and self. We work until we drop; we work to define ourselves. We seldom, however, work at just being happy. A decision is gathering on the horizon of my mind; swirling in the eddies of my thoughts; percolating into perception. I'm tired. I'm cranky. And Something has got to give.

Ending The Tale

2005-08-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since those heady days at International Greed Enablement Corp under the misdirection of the Beloved One. Well friends it is now in it's final chapter. WAN Guy #1 has tendered his resignation and is actually coming to work for Gigantic Concrete. The Beloved One has cycled through 100% of his department in a year and a half, and the current crop of replacements are just as disgruntled as the original alumni.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Back to the Grind

2005-08-09T08:34:00.000-04:00

I've just come back from vacation. Well it's not so much a vacation as a temporary respite from work. Work that didn't stop; that piled high in my absence; that waited for my return to pounce on me unawares.

Now I'm back at work [sigh], and I am again questioning the wisdom of rising early, because all I get are worms.

The Road Goes Ever On

2005-07-19T16:34:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1954, the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out, The Fellowship of the Ring. It was the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, which came out in 1937. Tolkien had written The Hobbit for his own amusement and didn't expect it to sell well. It's the story of a small, human-like creature with hairy feet named Bilbo, who goes on an adventure through Middle Earth and comes back with a magical ring.

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, "I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands. I smoke a pipe, like good, plain food, detest French cooking ... I am fond of mushrooms, have a very simple sense of humor ... go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much."

The Hobbit sold pretty well, partly because C.S. Lewis gave it a big review when it came out. And so Tolkien's publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien decided the new book would be about Bilbo's nephew Frodo, but for a long time he had no idea what sort of adventure. Finally, he decided it would be about the magical ring, though the ring had not been such an important part of The Hobbit.

Tolkien spent the next 17 years working on The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor at Oxford. He had to write in his spare time, usually at night, sitting by the stove in the study in his house.

He was well into his first draft by the time World War II broke out in 1939. He hadn't set out to write an allegory, but once the war began, he started to draw parallels between the war and the events in his novel: the land of evil in The Lord of the Rings, Mordor, was set east of Middle Earth, just as the enemies of England were to the east.

The book became more and more complicated as he went along. It was taking much longer to finish than he'd planned. He went through long stretches where he didn't write anything. He thought about giving up the whole thing. He wanted to make sure all the details were right, the geography, the language, the mythology of Middle Earth. He made elaborate charts to keep track of the events of the story. His son Christopher also drew a detailed map of Middle Earth.

Finally, in the fall of 1949, he finished writing The Lord of the Rings. He typed the final copy himself sitting on a bed in his attic, typewriter on his lap, tapping it out with two fingers. It turned out to be more than a half million words long, and the publisher agreed to bring it out in three volumes. The first came out on this day in 1954. The publisher printed just 3,500 copies, but it turned out to be incredibly popular. It went into a second printing in just six weeks. Today more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Fiddle with Fire

2005-07-18T11:52:00.000-04:00

Today, the 18th of July, is believed to be the anniversary of the fire that burned Rome in 64 AD, while the emperor Nero supposedly played his fiddle. In fact, he wasn't in Rome. He was away at his holiday villa on the coast, and when he heard about the fire, he rushed back to the capital and took charge of the operations.

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

The rumors about his playing his fiddle probably came from people in the Roman military who did not approve of Nero's artistic leanings. He'd come to power at the age of 16. He was the youngest ruler in the history of Rome. He was more interested in music and poetry than in battling the barbarians. And he didn't play the fiddle; he did play the lyre. But his real passion was singing. He was also known to be a transvestite, which did not endear him to the soldiers.

One of the rumors being spread at the time was that Nero had himself started the fire because he was disgusted by the architecture in Rome and wanted to rebuild the city. And to bolster his own image against these rumors, Nero decided that the fire needed to be blamed on someone else, and he picked out the Christians who were generally loathed by Romans.

The religion of Christianity was only a few decades old when Nero singled it out. Nero rounded up Christians; they were covered in the skins of wild animals, torn to death by dogs, crucified, or they were burned at the stake.

Most Romans at the time despised Christians, but Nero's program of persecution went further than the people wanted. It had the unintended effect of making people sympathize with Christians. And a little more than 200 years later, the emperor of the Roman Empire himself converted to Christianity, and it became the dominant religion of Europe.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Toronto Fringe Festival 2005

2005-07-06T16:12:00.000-04:00

The 2005 Fringe of Toronto Theatre Festival

July 6th - 17th

unjuried.
unexpected.
unforgettable

134 plays
25 venues
1000+ performances

Field of Dreams

2005-07-05T09:39:00.000-04:00

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It was on this day in 1921, several members of the Chicago White Sox went on trial for throwing the 1919 World Series. The White Sox players despised their owner Charles Comiskey. He was notoriously stingy. He would offer bonuses for performance and then take them back at the last minute. Gamblers knew that the players were frustrated and angry and offered several of them money to throw the World Series. The night before the series began, a Sox pitcher found $10,000 under the pillow in his hotel bedroom. The next day his first pitch landed between the batter's shoulder blades. The Sox lost the series to the Cincinnati Reds 5 to 3.

Many journalists knew right away that the series had been fixed. One of the accused players, one of the most tragic figures, was Shoeless Joe Jackson, who admitted to taking money, but during the series he didn't make a single error. He also hit the only home run of the series. All of the White Sox players were acquitted for lack of evidence, but the commissioner of baseball banned them from the game for the rest of their lives. None of the gamblers was ever punished.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

An American Tradition

2005-07-04T09:25:00.000-04:00

Today is Independence Day. On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, and the United States officially broke from the rule of England. The Declaration was written by Thomas Jefferson in a little second floor room on Market Street in Philadelphia—on a little lap desk that he designed himself. The Congress had wanted Benjamin Franklin to write it, but he declined, and then John Adams declined because he said Jefferson was ten times a better writer than he was.

(Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

Benjamin Franklin made a few new changes. Jefferson had written, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." Franklin changed that to, "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

The Congress cut out an entire paragraph in which Jefferson had attacked the king for perpetuating the slave trade. They cut about 480 words out of his draft, leaving 1,337. Jefferson found the whole process rather painful.

The 4th of July became a big holiday after the war of 1812 and out on the American frontier, it was the one time of the year when everyone gathered in town from all over the countryside for parades and speeches, and the prettiest girl would be named the Goddess of Liberty, and politicians would get up and denounce the king and men would get drunk and insult each other, call each other Englishmen, and get into fights.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Herman Hesse

2005-07-02T14:35:00.000-04:00

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of Hermann Hesse, born in Calw, Germany in 1877. He's the author of Steppenwolf and other books, including Siddhartha. He wrote Siddhartha when he was disillusioned after World War I. He was disgusted about the war, and disgusted with the idea of nationalism. His marriage was falling apart and his son had gotten sick. And so Hesse left his family, moved to a tiny Swiss village on a lake and lived in almost complete isolation. It was there that he wrote a book loosely based on the life of Buddha, about a man searching for enlightenment.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

For Want of a Badge

2005-06-28T07:54:00.000-04:00

There's an old Ben Franklin poem about how the empire is lost for want of a nail. Small circumstances lead to larger unforeseen events and all, or as Robert Burns notes, “the best laid schemes of mice and men oft gang agley”. Well today is such a day. I have been ill these past few days, no doubt from overwork and stress and a decidedly suppressed, if not depressed, immune system. So this morning I drag my weary butt out of my comfortable bed, get dressed, drive to work battling the 6:30 AM traffic. Why is there 6:30 AM traffic? Don't these people have something better to do? Alas they don't and unfortunately neither do I, but I digress.

“the best laid schemes of mice and men oft gang agley”

I get to the office ready to start they day early; early bird getting the worm, or in my case getting ahead of the 400 or so important emails that I have let accumulate during my absence. But do I get to revel in early avian worm getting? No, rather I get to walk up to the front doors of the glass and steel edifice sans identification badge. No Badge; no key; no entrance. My face pressed hopelessly against the window hoping that some other deluded corporate soul would also be in early. Not a bloody chance.

So here I sit, drinking fast food coffee, and typing away on my laptop at a picnic table. Hoping that someone will come soon. Hoping that my battery will last. Glad that i've got a wireless card so I can blog this rant.

Glad, on reconsideration, that I forgot my stupid badge. Glad that I have time to write; glad I get to here early morning bird song; glad the breeze is cool and refreshing; glad for the moment to finally have found some time for me...

Happy Birthday Mel

2005-06-28T07:15:00.000-04:00

(Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

It's the birthday of Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky, in Brooklyn, New York (1926). Mel Brooks and his three older brothers were raised by their mother who had come to the United States from Kiev. According to Mel Brooks, she spoke no known language and spoke it with an Irish accent. She was widowed and penniless. She found a job in the garment district, working ten hours a day. She brought home extra work for the evenings, but still kept her apartment clean, and her Children neat and well-dressed. Mel Brooks said, “She was my company. She really was responsible for the growth of my imagination.”

Mel Brooks is known for his comedies, including, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Producers.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Mead Glorious Mead!

2005-06-23T13:27:00.000-04:00

It's Midsummer Night's Eve, also called St. John's Eve. St. John is the patron saint of beekeepers. It's a time when the hives are full of honey. So the full moon that comes this month was called the "mead moon" because honey was fermented to make mead, which is where the word "honeymoon" comes from. It's a time for lovers. As an old Swedish proverb says, "Midsummer night is not long, but it sets many cradles rocking."

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

You're Not Here, I'm Not Here, There is No Beep

2005-06-21T13:50:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre, born in Paris (1905). He started out as a novelist and a playwright. He published his first novel, Nausea, in 1938, and received great reviews. He was drafted into World War II, and captured by the Germans. He was released, and went back to Paris in 1941 and joined the resistance. During that time, he developed his philosophy of existentialism which made him famous, in which he said that the world is basically meaningless, but that once we realize this we can each create our own meaning. He wrote about it in his book Being and Nothingness, in 1943.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Father's Day

2005-06-19T16:05:00.000-04:00

Today is Father's Day, a holiday in this country that goes back to a Sunday morning in May of 1909, when a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a Mother's Day sermon. She thought of her father who had raised her and her siblings after her mother died in childbirth, and she thought that fathers should get recognition too.

So she asked the minister of the church if he would deliver a sermon honoring fathers on her father's birthday, which was coming up in June, and the minister did. And the tradition of Father's Day caught on, though rather slowly. Mother's Day became an official holiday in 1914; Father's Day, not until 1972.

Mother's Day is still the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants and long distance phone companies. Father's Day is the day on which the most collect phone calls are made.

It was Strindberg who said, "That is the thankless position of the father in the family—the provider for all and the enemy of all." Oscar Wilde said, "Fathers should neither be seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life."

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Happy Bloomsday!!

2005-06-16T06:43:00.000-04:00

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

Today is Bloomsday, the day on which the action in James Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place in 1904. Leopold Bloom, the main character of Ulysses, does not have much work to do, so he spends most of his day wandering around Dublin doing some errands. He leaves his house on Eccles Street, walks south across the River Liffey, picks up a letter, buys a bar of soap, and goes to the funeral of a man he didn't know very well. In the afternoon, he has a cheese sandwich, he feeds the gulls in the river, helps a blind man cross the street, and visits a couple of pubs. He thinks about his job, his wife, his daughter, his stillborn son. He muses about life and death and reincarnation. He knows that his wife is going to cheat on him that afternoon at his house. In the evening, he wanders around the red light district of Dublin and meets up with a young writer named Stephen Dedalus, who is drunk. Leopold Bloom takes him home with him and offers to let him spend the night. And they stand outside, looking at the stars for a while. And then Bloom goes inside and climbs into bed with his wife.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

The Germans Wore Gray, You Wore Blue

2005-06-14T06:26:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1940 that the German Army marched into Paris. The French had surrendered the city a few days earlier. There was no violence when the Nazis came in. The German soldiers marched through the Arc de Triomphe, while Parisians watched from the sidewalks of the Champs-Elysèes. A few weeks afterward, Hitler made a visit. He came to the Eiffel Tower and the Opera building and visited Napoleon's tomb. Hitler said, in 1941, "I'm getting ready to flatten Leningrad and Moscow without losing any peace of mind, but it would have pained me greatly if I'd had to destroy Paris."

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Good Morning Dr. Chandler, Would You Like to Play a Game?

2005-06-14T06:23:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1951 the world's first commercially produced electronic digital computer was unveiled, known as the UNIVAC. It weighed eight tons, and used 5,000 vacuum tubes. It cost a quarter million dollars, but it could perform a thousand calculations per second, the fastest rate in the world at the time. The first one was bought by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

The president of IBM thought that computers were far too complex, and would never sell. But with the invention of the microchip in 1971, all the processing power of those thousands of vacuum tubes could be crammed into a tiny space.

In 1975, an engineer named Ed Roberts was one of the first people to try to market a computer to ordinary people. It didn't sell very well. You had to know how to turn hundreds of little switches. But it was an inspiration to Stephen Wozniak, who went on to found Apple, and also a young student at Harvard named Bill Gates.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Take Back Your Time

2005-06-13T21:40:00.000-04:00

Click here.

Take Back Your Time day isn't until October 24th, but there's no time like the present to start getting ready for it. The Take Time to Care conference is taking place at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington on August 4-7, 2005. Even if you don't plan to attend the conference, the web site has a lot of useful information about reclaiming your time.

After my last post, this is something I need.

Where Did My Day Go?

2005-06-13T21:25:00.000-04:00

Alarm goes off at five in the morning. I drag my butt into the shower, get dressed, and begin the commute into the smog covered city. I work, work some more, and just for fun, I work a wee bit more. I feel like a hamster in a wheel, I'm moving, but I'm not going anywhere. For every “todo” crossed of my list, I get four more to take it's place. At some point I check my watch and guess what? That's right it's seven in the evening and I'm just starting to pack up to go home. Lunch was three or four cups of coffee. Supper was a cold meat turkey sandwich because at 39 degrees celcius, it's way too hot to cook. Eat, write blog, kiss wife, go to sleep, rinse and repeat.

Where did my day go?

Anne Frank

2005-06-12T09:37:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of Anne Frank, born in Frankfurt, Germany (1929). On this day in 1942, her 13th birthday, she received a diary as a birthday present. She was living with her family in Amsterdam. They'd gone there to get away from the Nazis, but the Nazis had followed. Since 1940, Anne and her family had been living under Nazi occupation, though her life was fairly ordinary when she got the diary in 1942. Her earliest journal entries are about her grades, her classmates, and the boys that she knew.

She didn't have any close friends at the time, so she treated her diary like a friend. She addressed it by the name of "Kitty" and said, "I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me." Less than one month after she wrote those words in 1942, the Nazis began deporting Jews to concentration camps, and Anne and the Frank family went into hiding in an attic above her father's offices where they lived for the next two years.

While she was in hiding, she wrote regularly in her diary, not so much about the experience of living in secret, as about the ordinary details of her life: how much she hated potatoes, how her older sister was clearly her parents' favorite, the jokes that people made in hiding, her romance with Peter, the son of the other family living in the attic and her first kiss. After that kiss, she wrote in her diary, "My head lay on his shoulder, with his on top of mine. Oh, it was so wonderful. I could hardly talk. My pleasure was too intense; he caressed my cheek and arm, a bit clumsily, and played with my hair."

In 1944, Anne Frank heard on the radio someone saying that people should hang on to their war letters and diaries. They'd be historical documents some day. And then she started to think about the diary as a literary work and thought about turning it into a novel.

Near the end of her diary, Anne Frank grew less optimistic about the future. She wrote, "I simply can't imagine the world will ever be normal again for us. I do talk about 'after the war,' but it's as if I were talking about a castle in the air, something that can never come true."

On August 4, 1944, the hiding place was raided by Nazi police. The Frank family was among the last Jews shipped out of the Netherlands to concentration camps, and Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen Belsen camp six weeks before it was liberated by the Allies. Her father was the only member of the family who survived. He came back to Amsterdam and found Anne's diary. He took several weeks to read it. He could only bear to read a little bit at a time. It was published in 1947, and became an immediate best-seller.

The Diary of Anne Frank has now sold more than 25 million copies. It's one of the most popular non-fiction books ever written, and became the standard book used in schools to introduce children to the story of the Holocaust.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

I Love Coffee

2005-06-11T10:26:00.000-04:00

I love coffee. I love everything about coffee. I love he smell of freshly ground coffee brewing in an old fashion percolator on the stove. I live for the first dark steaming mug in the wee hours of the morning; the explosion of java deliciousness bringing my senses alive again for another day. “Hi, My name is Ric and I'm a coffee addict”

You're a Classic Cup 'O' Joe!

What Kind of Coffee are You?
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Found at Coffee Sage

The Calf-Path

2005-06-11T07:53:00.000-04:00

“Poem: "The Calf-Path" by Sam Walter Foss. Public Domain.”

One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made,
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed—do not laugh—
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet.
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare,
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed this zigzag calf about,
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.
Ah, many things this tale might teach—
But I am not ordained to preach.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

mmmmmmm Filipino Food

2005-06-09T09:41:00.000-04:00

Sisig: Diced meats seasoned with spices and served
on a sizzling hot platter

Which Filipino Food Are You?
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Found on Watson's Blog

Henry and I, Redux

2005-06-09T09:18:00.000-04:00

For those of you who missed the first episode you can catch up through the miracle of modern hypertext technology right here

Henry VIII
Gout sufferer

I am now going through the fourth attack of the dreaded disease gout. It's been ongoing since Sunday or so. Really a sort of self inflicted wound this time. I have been a little spotty about taking my meds, and too spot on with a handy pint of Guinness. This is the perfect environment for chaps like Henry VIII and me to end up sitting on our tushes foot, propped up on a pillow, and being generally annoying to those around us. Key difference, however, is that I do not have a royal axeman. More the pity for it to, as a good swift amputation might relieve the discomfort a little

I was bravely “soldiering on” until this morning. I went to the office; limped around with my cane; tried not to wince too much during conversations. My wife calls this activity stupid. She said “You should rest up or you'll make it worse. Come the end of the week you won't be able to move. You don't really have a good memory of the last time do you? ” Wives are particularly psychic when it comes to these things. She is correct on all three counts. Wives usually are, and “soldiering on”is not quite respected as it once was.

So now it's bed rest, anti inflammatory drugs, and back to the Allopurinol (Allopuranol). [sigh]. I'd rather a nice steak and a pint of the dark Irish brew, but that's how I got here in the first place.

My Year

2005-06-07T07:07:00.000-04:00

You Were Actually Born Under:

Fierce and courageous - you are the king of every situation.
You pounce and attack, until others give you want you want.
Daring and magnetic, you inspire others to follow your lead.
And while you're wild at heart, you have some hidden soft spots.

You are most compatible with a Horse or Dog.

You Should Have Been Born Under:

You've got a ton of energy - and need plenty of room to roam.
You tend to follow your whims, and it's hard for you to stick to one thing.
Specific jobs, loves, and friends are always changing and never a part of your life for long.
Very intuitive, you tend to know what people are thinking before they say a word.

You are most compatible with a Dog or Tiger.

What Year Were You Born Under?

The Longest Day

2005-06-06T06:47:00.000-04:00

It's the anniversary of the biggest military invasion in history, D-Day, (1944). It's when the Allied armies launched the invasion of Normandy. Dwight D. Eisenhower had planned the invasion, and had been arguing for it ever since America got into the war after Pearl Harbor. Most British military commanders thought it was too risky. Winston Churchill was particularly nervous about the idea of invading France.

“If we don't succeed in throwing the Allies into the sea, we will have lost the war”

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

But Eisenhower finally won the argument, and the Allies built dozens or airfields in Great Britain, stockpiled millions of tons of weapons and supplies, built tent cities along the ports of the English Channel where tens of thousands of soldiers would live.

The German commanders knew an invasion was coming. They'd spent weeks fortifying their positions, but the Allies had deceived the Nazis into thinking the invasion would come in near the French-Belgian border. They had a number of battle ships across from that point in the channel, and the Nazis took the bait and concentrated a good deal of their defensive forces in the wrong place.

June 6, 1944, June 6, was a foggy morning. Sometime after dawn, the English Channel was full of ships—a huge armada—1,200 fighting ships, 10,000 planes, more than 150,000 troops, a little more than half of them American. The plan was to bomb the beach to create craters in the sand for foxholes, and then send the ground troops up the beach.

When the troops reached the shore, they saw that the bombers had missed all of their targets. There was no protection on the beach. The landing craft were hit by a barrage of bullets. In less than a half an hour, more than two-thirds of the first company to reach the shore was killed. At first, the American commanders thought that the invasion had failed, but the first troops made some progress, and the second wave came in and slowly took over the fortified positions above the beach. By nightfall, more than 150,000 Allied troops had landed in France.

The Germans had tank divisions that could have driven the Allies back into the sea, but they got conflicting orders from the high command and didn't start to attack until late in the afternoon, almost ten hours after the invasion had started. The German commander said at the time, "If we don't succeed in throwing the Allies into the sea, we will have lost the war." The German tanks got to within three miles of the shore and then were driven back by Allied tanks and anti-tank guns, and no German unit ever again got so close to the beaches. Many historians saw that as the turning point of the war.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Hiatus Interruptus

2005-06-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

For the last few many days I've been on a work imposed hiatus. Things have been incredibly busy at the offices of Gigantic Concrete where I have become one of “them”. I have become a manager. I have become concerned with time lines, productivity, task assignments, deadlines and worst of all politics. It seems that no matter how I try to just do a good job and do the right thing, there are individuals and forces at constant odds with my efforts. Why can't we all just get along?

The reasons are not complex. We are a group of individuals subject to group dynamics. We all have different motivations and goals; different wants and desires that are often in conflict. I find myself having to curb my natural inclination to tell people they are blind idiots. I'm sure they are frustrated by some of my actions too. I'm just not sure that I'm going to enjoy this new facet of my work... How did my Kindergarten teacher sum it up again? Oh yes - “Doesn't play well with others and runs with scissors.” The past can and does map the future.

Sufferin' Suffrajets!

2005-06-04T20:26:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1919, the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress giving women the right to vote.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Sober Thoughts

2005-06-02T09:05:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1977 that the writer Raymond Carver quit drinking (books by this author). He'd gotten married young. His girlfriend was pregnant. He had to support his family with jobs as a janitor and delivery boy and gas station attendant. He tried to write whenever he could. He got a college degree and got a job editing textbooks.

“he once described those last 11 years of his life as 'gravy, pure gravy.'”

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

In 1967, he published his short story "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" which was selected for the Best American Short Stories Anthology that year—the same year he started drinking heavily. He said, "My wife and I had one bankruptcy behind us, years of hard work, nothing to show for it except an old car, a rented house, new creditors on our back. I felt spiritually obliterated, threw in the towel, and took to full-time drinking as a serious pursuit."

Even as his drinking got worse, his career took off. He published a series of stories about characters in dead-end jobs, dead-end marriages. He won awards, got invited to teach, but he still had money problems. His checks bounced, his cars were repossessed, and he got into fights at parties. He was hospitalized four times due to alcohol, and then his doctor told him he had to quit drinking or he'd live no more than six months.

He tried several times to get sober, but kept falling off the wagon. He finally got an advance for a novel, and used the money to rent a house in California. He never did write the novel, but he quit drinking. He later said, "Raymond Carver, if you want the truth, I'm prouder of that, that I quit drinking, than I am of anything in my life."

He died of lung cancer 11 years later, but he once described those last 11 years of his life as "gravy, pure gravy."

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.
Additional links by me.

Passing on an Angel

2005-05-23T12:14:00.000-04:00

This is a little item I received via e-mail. I'm not typically fond ofthis sort of chain letter, however, the digital art was quite good. Rather than clutter up the e-mail boxes of several friends and colleagues I will post it here for all and sundry to see if they want.

Click to enlarge

For ALL of the Angels that I know...
I'm sending you an Angel.
Most people just don't believe in stuff unless they can see it. Well here it is. I drew one for you and your friends, and their friends, and their friends. It's my wish to have this drawing travel around the world 100 times over to make people feel good and to show that someone is thinking about you.
-J.C. Paquet

What's in a Name?

2005-05-23T09:33:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of the man who gave us the system of classifying and naming all the living things on the planet, Carolus Linnaeus, born in Råshult, Sweden (1707).

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

He was a botanist. He taught at universities. At a time when Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe, Linnaeus set out to import exotic plants and animals, hoping they could be raised for profit in Sweden. He hoped to raise tea and coffee, ginger, coconuts, silkworms. He experimented in clams.

It was at a time when people named plants and animals in many different ways, usually based on what they looked like: Queen Anne's lace, ghost orchid, and swordfish. But even within a single country, a plant could be called by half a dozen different names by different people, so Linnaeus decided to develop a naming system based in Latin. He put each specimen into a large group called a genus and a smaller subgroup called a species, and that became the binomial naming system, which he published in 1758.

His botanical experiments failed. The tea plants died. The coffee didn't make it in Sweden, and neither did ginger or coconuts or cotton. Rhubarb did though, and Linnaeus, late in his life, said the introduction of rhubarb to Sweden was his proudest achievement. But today we remember him for his contribution to taxonomy.

When he published his taxonomy in 1758 he listed 4,400 species known to science at the time. Today there are more than one and a half million.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

20 Ways to Maintain your Insanity

2005-05-22T12:45:00.000-04:00

At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on arid point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down?
Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.
Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that.
Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In."
Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone Has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch To Espresso.
In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Sexual Favors"
Finish All Your Sentences With "In Accordance With The Prophecy."
Don't Use Any Punctuation
As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.
Ask People What Sex They Are. Laugh Hysterically After They Answer.
Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go."
Sing Along At The Opera.
Go To A Poetry Recital And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme
Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play Tropical Sounds All Day.
Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party because You're Not In The Mood.
Ask your co-workers to address You By Your Wrestling Name, RockHard.
When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won! I Won!"
When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking Lot,Yelling "Run For Your Lives, They're Loose!!"
Tell Your Children Over Dinner. "Due To The Economy, We Are Going To have To Let One Of You Go."
And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity
Send This E-mail To Someone To Make Them Smile.- It's Called Therapy...

Received by E-Mail

Rise Lord Vader!

2005-05-22T12:32:00.000-04:00

Star Wars Horoscope for Aquarius

You can be cruel and torment people who disagree with you. Deep down, there is a peace-loving, friendly side to you. You have a knack for inflicting pain on people and use your intellect during battle.

Star wars character you are most like: Darth Vader

What is Your Star Wars Horoscope?

Interesting and disturbing at the same time.... I haven't seen the new movie yet but maybe it will be a new job reward to myself this week.

Elementary My Dear Watson

2005-05-22T12:18:00.000-04:00

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of novelist and short story writer Arthur Conan Doyle, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1859). Conan Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh where he met Doctor Joseph Bell, whose amazing deductions about the history of his patients fascinated the young student. After completing his studies, Conan Doyle served as a ship's doctor on voyages to Greenland and West Africa, and eventually opened his own practice. In his spare moments, he began writing. Calling on his memories of Doctor Bell, Conan Doyle created a detective who used his great powers of deduction to solve crimes. The first such story, A Study in Scarlet, introduced the detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Doctor Watson, in 1887. All told, Conan Doyle wrote 56 Sherlock Holmes stories and four Holmes novels.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Reversal of Fortune

2005-05-21T09:17:00.000-04:00

It is amazing what can change in a short 4 days. Back then I was fortune's fool, now I am the recipient of fortune's goodwill. Yesterday I was called into the office of the boss of my boss. He had recently accepted a different post a Gigantic Concrete and was one of my chief supporters here. With his departure I had little hope of things working out for me; little hope of securing my position; little hope of salary improvement.

I thought this meeting was just going to be a standard Project update,but it wasn't. This meeting was a short affair, I was handed an offer letter guaranteeing everything I had been promised when I originally accepted the job here. My own boss had been in Toronto all week and never mentioned it. He left for Detroit early and never called to indicate anything was going to happen. Perhaps the boss of my boss is just setting things right before he goes. In any event fortune has seemingly turned my way. Let's see how long it continues to give me its favour.

Off half a pint of shanty was particularly ill....

2005-05-20T07:04:00.000-04:00

“One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests”

(Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

It's the birthday of political economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill, born in London, England (1806). He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a strict disciplinarian, and who, at the age of eight, was reading Aesop's Fables in the original Greek. He is best known for his defense of empiricism in his 1843 book, System of Logic, which espoused that all knowledge is based on information received through the senses and experience of the world, rather than on rational thinking. His two other famous books are On Liberty (1859), which argued for the importance of the individual, and Utilitarianism (1861). He said: “One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Continuing in the tradition of the Monty Phython Philosopher's Song

X Marks the Spot

2005-05-19T08:21:00.000-04:00

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, in Omaha, Nebraska (1925). When he was five, his home was firebombed, and a year later his father was kidnapped, beaten, and left on a trolley track to be run over and killed. His mother was later committed to a state mental asylum, and young Malcolm ended up being sent to a juvenile detention home for delinquency. After he got out, he made his way to Boston, where he got mixed up with a burglary ring, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. While he was in prison, he became a follower of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. His Autobiography, as told to Alex Haley, was published in 1964. Shortly before his assassination, he said: “I am a Muslim, and my religion makes me be against all forms of racism. It keeps me from judging any man by the color of his skin. It teaches me to judge him by his deeds and his conscious behavior. And it teaches me to be for the rights of all human beings.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Things That Go Boom

2005-05-18T07:06:00.000-04:00

(Further reading list available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

On this day in 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. First, an earthquake triggered the largest landslide in history down the north slope of the mountain. Then, five hundred and forty million tons of ash were spewed into the sky. Rivers of lava as hot as fourteen hundred degrees poured down the slopes at over a hundred miles an hour, along with twenty billion gallons of floodwater from melted snow on the mountain. In the end, ninety-six thousand acres of forest burned up and fifty-seven people died.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Fortune's Fool

2005-05-17T06:55:00.000-04:00

Sometimes fortune smiles on us, sometimes we are fortune's bitch. If I had to sum up my professional career in a single line, I think this would be it. The bloom is now well off the rose at Gigantic Concrete. I have been here a little under three months. I'm not in the position I actually interviewed for. I'm not in the salary range that we actually discussed for the job. I suppose desparately wanting to leave the previous toxic environment did blind me to the short comings of this place and the blame for putting up with it - mine alone.

So now what do I do about it?

No Small Thing

2005-05-14T08:58:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1796, that Edward Jenner, a doctor, inoculated an eight-year-old boy with a vaccine for smallpox. It was the first safe vaccine ever developed, and it was the first time anyone had successfully prevented the infection of any contagious disease. What made it so remarkable was that it was accomplished before the causes of disease were even understood, decades before anyone even knew about the existence of germs.

“Smallpox at the time was the most devastating disease in the world”

(Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

Jenner was a country doctor. He studied for a few years in a hospital in London, and learned something about the scientific method. Smallpox at the time was the most devastating disease in the world. It caused boils to break out all over the body, and killed about one in four adults who caught it, and one in every three children. It was so contagious, most people who lived in populous areas caught it at some point in their lives.

There were inoculations for smallpox, but they didn't work very well. People who were inoculated could still pass the disease onto others. Some people who were inoculated developed the disease and died from it.

Jenner knew that milkmaids who worked in his area almost never caught smallpox, and he figured that they had caught cowpox from the udders of cows and that this infection somehow helped them develop an immunity to smallpox.

He took some of the fluid from a cowpox sore and injected it into the arm of an eight-year-old boy named James Phipps who developed a slight headache and lost his appetite but that was all. And six weeks later Jenner inoculated the boy with smallpox, and the boy showed no symptoms. He had developed immunity.

At first, the Royal Society of London did not believe Edward Jenner, so he published his ideas about inoculation at his own expense in a book which came out in 1798, and was a huge success. The novelist Jane Austen said in one of her letters that she had been at a dinner party and everyone was talking about the “Jenner pamphlet.”

By 1840, the British government passed a law providing all infants with free smallpox vaccinations. It was the first free medical service in the history of the country. And today, so far as we know, smallpox only exists in the freezers of laboratories. The last known natural case occurred in 1977 in Somalia.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Not One to Cry Wolf

2005-05-12T16:07:00.000-04:00

Further reading list available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of Farley Mowat, born in Belleville, Ontario (1921). He is best known for his books about the Canadian arctic, including Never Cry Wolf, (1963) a best-seller, and The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, in which he wrote, “I suspect that at some early moment of his existence he concluded there was no future in being a dog. And so, with the tenacity that marked his every act, he set himself to become something else.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Moss on this Rolling Stone

2005-05-11T22:35:00.000-04:00

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in Canada (100%)

You Are Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (50%)

You Are Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (43%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the United Kingdom (38%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Western Europe (36%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the Western United States (21%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in the Southern United States (15%)

You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Asia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Eastern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%)

You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Southern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

When Puns Go Bad

2005-05-11T15:53:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time there were 3 kingdoms. one year they decided to hold a tournement to see which kingdom's knight's were the best. the first kingdom sent 200 knights & squires. the second kingdom sent 300 knights & squires. the third was a small & poor kingdom and only sent 1 knight & 1 squire.

The day before the tourney was to begin all the knights from the three kingdoms gathered together & decided that this tournement was beneath their skill & dignity. they opted to have their squires battle instead.

The day of the tournement came and the squires of all three kingdoms assembled. standing bravely & defiantly by himself was the squire of the third kingdom. he held his banner high as he waited. on the banner was a tree to represent the longenvity of his kingdom. hanging from a branch of the tree was a noose to show the justice of the kingdom. from the noose hung a cauldron representing the bounty & abundance of the kingdom. when the squires of the other two kingdoms saw him, they surrendered immediately.

This really shouldn't be too surprising since everyone knows that the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the other two sides.

Received by e-mail today.

A Great Day - Somewhere Else

2005-05-11T13:37:00.000-04:00

What a wonderful day. The sun is shining brightly and warm through a puffy Simpson's sky. There is a light breeze from the south, and birds sing sweetly in the trees. I can see all this from my office window. But that is on the good side of the glass. On my side of the glass there are deadlines, politics, and disappointed expectations. Projects are impossible and fit nicely into the Dilbert profile of “growing or doomed”.

I think my project is definitely doomed. This isn't so much pessimism, but an educated guess based on years of working on similarly doomed projects. We scramble to meet arbitrary delivery dates, with little support or guidance. Guess what happens when they get missed; does anyone stand up and say “Your right, should have helped you there - sorry” ? No they don't.

So inside it's dark and gloomy. Outside it's bright and cheery. Here I am looking for a door.

Leaving Normal

2005-05-10T15:03:00.000-04:00

You Are 35% Normal
(Occasionally Normal)

You sure do march to your own beat...
But you're so weird, people wonder if it's a beat at all
You think on a totally different wavelength
And it's often a chore to get people to understand you

How Normal Are You?

Found on Tim's and Rufus' blogs

The Last Lion

2005-05-10T12:45:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1940 that Winston Churchill took power as the prime minister of Great Britain. He was an English politician who had had a bumpy career. He had switched parties not once but twice. He started out conservative, became liberal, and then went conservative again.

"All I have to offer is blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

At the start of World War I, he was one of the few to predict how enormous that war would be. He advocated an invasion of Turkey and the result was a disaster. There were hundreds of thousands of British casualties and nothing to show for it, and he had to resign his office in disgrace; whereupon, he joined the Army, went into battle, commanding a battalion in the trenches. He was the only politician of his stature to serve in the trenches in World War I.

Between the wars, he was alienated from politicians in both parties who felt that he was an extremist, a reactionary. In 1932, he made a speech about the growing danger of a second world war with Germany. Nobody took him seriously. He was considered paranoid and a warmonger.

But things changed when Hitler took over Czechoslovakia and Austria and then invaded Poland, Belgium, and France. In less than two years, almost all of Western Europe was either controlled by or allied with Nazi Germany. And then on May 10, 1940, Churchill became the prime minister. He gave his acceptance speech in which he said, "All I have to offer is blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

The situation for Great Britain was dire. The British Army was decimated in a retreat from Dunkirk. Hitler was so confident that he delayed invasion. He thought it would be a waste of resources. He expected British surrender, but Churchill set out to rally the British people by sheer force of will and his personality and his command of English.

Today he's perhaps more idolized in America than in Great Britainwhere he's seen as an important statesman but not perfecta man who did not support independence for India and who, in the 1930s, thought that Communism was more dangerous than Fascism. And many British felt that he turned Great Britain into a junior partner of the United States.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor.
Available by e-mail daily.

Disaster and Recovery

2005-05-08T03:45:00.000-04:00

All IT professionals know the horrors os disaster recovery testing. You have production servers, routers and data. You have backup systems in place should anything bad happen. You dilligently plan and document procedures and eventually you say let's test it.

at least this time the disaster is in my favour

It's this testing phase when everything goes to the dogs and your world turns to sh*te. Case in point I am at the fine offices of Gigantic Concrete and all is not well. I've been here since 3:00 AM this morning. Other poor sould have been here since 4:00 PM yesterday. We are deep in the muck of it, it's not going as planned. No one is happy. No one except me that is...

You see my part of this little operation has been cancelled. We are just not going to get to that part of the plan. We are going to try to clean up the mess and complete the user testing but the network stuff? Hands off. This means, that although I've wasted a good 4 hours in the wee hours of the morning, I can go home. I can call my Mom on Mother's Day; I can spend my son's birthday being a visible, rather than invisible, dad.

Oh sure we are going to have to do this disaster recovery thing again, but at least this time the disaster is in my favour

Bars, Singing and Blogging

2005-05-06T00:44:00.000-04:00

Technology is sometimes a wonderful invention. I'm sitting in a bar, music pounding in my ears, the hour getting late, the beer flowing freely, and still I am able to harness the technology and post friom the raised bar stool. Always online. Always connected. It's a scary thing indeed.

I promise to use the power only for good.

I'm a sterotype!

2005-05-05T04:29:00.000-04:00

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous!

You drink everyone under the table.

Who's Your Inner European?

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

2005-05-05T03:26:00.000-04:00

Today is Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican holiday marking the defeat of the French invaders at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Cinco de Mayo is an even bigger holiday in this country than in Mexico. It's estimated Americans will eat 54 million avocados today, most of them in the form of guacamole.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor.
Available by e-mail daily.

I'm Apparently Rougish

2005-05-03T11:24:00.000-04:00

Not that I wanted to be a Han Solo type. I always thought of myself as more of a contemplative Yoda type. As we know however, these quiz things don't lie, so I am Rouge here me... (whatever Rogues do).

My Inner Hero - Rogue!

It's a good thing I use my powers for good and not evil, because quite frankly, I could get away with murder. I'm clever, tricky, and charming. I know how to make you laugh with one hand and pick your pocket with the other. Not that I'd ever DO that, of course...

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

I Think My Party Membership Has Lapsed

2005-05-02T16:01:00.000-04:00

I am:
-7%
Republican.

"You're a damn Commie! Where's Tailgunner Joe when we need him?"

Are You A Republican?

Found on Falling Upwards.

Good Book Birthday

2005-05-02T05:53:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1611 that the first edition of the King James Bible was published in England. It was one of the greatest works ever written by a committee, and it was produced during a chaotic time in England. There was an epidemic of the black plague the year before. 30,000 Londoners had died. Puritans in the country were agitating against the monarchy, and a group of underground Catholics were plotting to assassinate the king.

they saw the King James Bible as an artifact of a simpler time

King James I, had thought that a new translation of the Bible might help bind the country together. There had been other English translations, but he wanted a Bible that would be the definitive version.

Previous versions had been translated from Latin. This one would be translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. Other translations had had scholarly translators' notes in the margins. This one would have as few explanatory notes as possible and appeal to the widest audience, and he wanted it to sound right since it would be read aloud in churches. So when the committee of translators gathered, each man read his verses aloud, to be judged and revised by the others.

It was a committee of 54 of the best linguists in the country: Lancelot Andrewes, George Abbot, and John Layfield. At the time, words like "thee" and "thou" and "sayeth" had already gone out of fashion in England, but the translators wanted the language of the Bible to sound old, to sound like long ago and far away. Some of the phrases in the King James have become enduring expressions: "the land of the living," "sour grapes," like a lamb to slaughter," "salt of the earth," "the apple of his eye," "to give up the ghost."

For decades most people preferred the Puritan Geneva Bible because it was plainer. It was only after the civil war in England that the King James version came into fashion. People were nostalgic for the period before the war, and they saw the King James Bible as an artifact of a simpler time.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Death and Taxes

2005-05-01T19:54:00.000-04:00

“rendering unto Caesar”

You can run, but you can't hide. Through a fluke in the space time continuum April 30^th falls on a weekend. This means that I have until midnight tomorrow to file my taxes. Like other pecuniarily challenged fiscal lemmings, I am leaving the “rendering unto Caesar” as late as I possibly can. I mean it's not like Caesar is going to miss my small allotment, and you know he's only going to waste it on something like a salary increase for the MPs or another goodwill trip for the Governor General. Worse yet, it will probably be spent on federal advertising to let people like me know that it's tax time and we should pay on time. Better in my pocket I think. The illusion of paltry wealth, for at least the next twenty-four hours or so, is something I need.

Post Moving Day Post

2005-05-01T12:32:00.000-04:00

Morning broke cool and sunny with the glaring realization that I'm neither young nor immortal. I am in a fair amount of pain from areas of my body that I scant realized I had. Tim is moved. Boxes are piled neatly in the rooms they were ordained to be in. Furniture, formerly in trucks, now gracing the various rooms it was constructed for. Furniture; massive furniture; heavy German inspired furniture, bearing all the weight of the Black Forest, now ensconced in place, carried on the backs of the now broken movers. Why can't my friends decorate in light weight; in rattan, wicker or bamboo? These are thoughts I ponder as I lather up on the A535 rub and plan a long hot bath.

A Catch-22 Day

2005-05-01T12:12:00.000-04:00

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of Joseph Heller, born in Brooklyn (1923), best known for his novel Catch-22, (1961) about a World War II bomber pilot, Yossarian, who spends his time trying to get himself declared insane so he can stop flying bombing missions. There's a regulation called Catch-22 which says that if you want out of combat duty you are, therefore, sane and you will have to fly them. If you wanted to fly them, then you would be crazy and you wouldn't have to.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Moving Day

2005-04-30T09:16:00.000-04:00

Today is moving day. It is not my moving day, it is Tim's moving day. Friends help friends move. Friends help friends move, even though the last time we did this logistical mambo it felt more like Napoleon's retreat from Moscow than a simple apartment move. Things were a shambles. Things needed packing. Things were such that I silently vowed never to help Tim move again.

Vows often fall by the wayside. Vows especially loose their power after the statute of limitations on memory runs out. More importantly, friends help friends move, vow or no vow.

This time will be different. This time it will be organized. This time items will be in boxes with labels. This time, Tim has a wife.

Avast There Ye Scurvy Dogs

2005-04-28T12:06:00.000-04:00

It's the anniversary of the mutiny on the Bounty—which took place in the south seas in 1789 on the British cargo ship the HMS Bounty—the most notorious mutiny in naval history. Wordsworth wrote a poem about it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was based on it. And, of course, there was the famous book by Nordhoff and Hall, which was made into a movie. In that book, and in the movies, the villain of the story always was the brutal Captain Bligh, but historians have argued that Captain Bligh wasn't any harder than the average sea captain, and was actually the hero of the story.

“It was one of the most extraordinary feats of navigation in naval history”

Mutinies were relatively common at the time. During the Napoleonic Wars, there were more than a thousand of them in British naval records. And most scholars believe the cause of the mutiny on the Bounty wasn't the mutineers' feelings towards their captain so much as their feelings about the women on the islands that they had just left behind.

Captain Bligh was sent to the South Seas to pick up bread fruit trees from Tahiti and take them back to the West Indies. Tahiti seemed like a paradise to all of them. The women were so beautiful and compliant.

A few days after the ship had left Tahiti, 11 crew members burst into the captain's cabin, forced him out on the deck, dressed only in his nightshirt, put him in a small life boat. 17 other members of the ship volunteered to go with him. They were given some bread and pork and rum and wine and 28 gallons of water, and set adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a boat a little more than 20 feet long and 7 feet wide with one sail and 6 oars.

With so many men, so many supplies aboard, the boat sat low in the water, just about six inches to spare. They set out for the island of Timor, 3,900 miles away, and Captain Bligh, using only a compass and a sextant, navigated their way through the Great Barrier Reef. They went through several storms on short rations of less than an ounce of bread and four ounces of water a day, and after 48 days at sea, they reached the island of Timor where they were welcomed by Dutch settlers. It was one of the most extraordinary feats of navigation in naval history.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Dark Day in Spain

2005-04-26T08:41:00.000-04:00

It was on this day in 1937 that German bombers attacked and destroyed the city of Guernica in Spain. Hitler was one of the allies of the Fascist side, the side of Franco, in the Spanish Civil War, and he wanted to use the Spanish Civil War as a testing ground for his new blitzkrieg military strategy.

It was the first time in history that a city was completely destroyed from the air

It was a Monday, this day in 1937, a market day in Guernica, farmers were in the town square with their harvest, shoppers filled the street, and that afternoon the German Luftwaffe attacked.

The first wave of planes dropped blast bombs that destroyed the principal buildings; the second wave flew low, gunning down the citizens; and the third wave dropped incendiary bombs to burn any remaining parts of the city. The attack lasted for three and a half hours. When it was over, almost nothing of the city remained. It was the first time in history that a city was completely destroyed from the air.

One of the people who heard the news of the bombing the following day was the painter Pablo Picasso, who was in exile in Paris. He was trying to come up with an idea for a mural to be displayed at the World's Fair in Paris that summer, and when he heard about the bombing, he began a new painting called Guernica. He did it on a huge canvas: 12 feet high, 26 feet wide, worked on it for a little more than a month. The painting he produced showed no planes, no bombs, no explosions. It was just a black and white image of a wailing woman holding a dead child in her arms, a dead man on the ground holding a broken sword, a bull, a screaming horse, a woman on fire, a woman falling to one knee, another woman leaning in a window and shining a lamp on the whole scene.

It was done in a primitive, almost cartoonish style to look like newsprint. It was displayed at the Paris World's Fair and people weren't sure what to make of it. Leftist critics said the painting didn't have a direct enough political message, but some people saw the painting as a warning that everything they loved was about to be lost.

Two years later Hitler invaded Poland, using the same bombing strategy, and Picasso's painting went on to become the most famous antiwar painting of the 20th Century.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Global Stupidity

2005-04-24T12:05:00.000-04:00

Let's be careful out there people

First spotted on Moxie Grrrl

What's in a Name?

2005-04-24T10:05:00.000-04:00

Richard Harvey Knight's Aliases

Your movie star name: Peanut Butter Orwell

Your fashion designer name is Richard Nancy

Your socialite name is George Toronto

Your fly girl / guy name is R Kni

Your detective name is Dog Markham

Your barfly name is Popcorn Guinness

Your soap opera name is Harvey Willowgate

Your rock star name is Mars Bar Light

Your star wars name is Ricros Kniand

Your punk rock band name is The Happy Bagpipes

The Amazing Meganame Generator

Found on Martha O'Connor's blog

Birthday Bard

2005-04-23T12:45:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-on-Avon, England (1564), in a modest room above the shop on Henley Street where his father, John, made and sold gloves. As a teenager he married Anne Hathaway, an older woman. They had three children before Shakespeare went off to London to achieve greatness in the theater. By 1595, he was acting and writing plays for a theater company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and in 1599 he became a part-owner of the Globe Playhouse. Shakespeare returned to Stratford in about 1610, having written 37 plays and 154 sonnets. Stratford-on-Avon is now the second most popular tourist destination in England, after London.

Sonnet 144

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colored ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell.
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

A Real "Pissant"

2005-04-22T07:13:00.000-04:00

It's the birthday of Immanuel Kant, (books by this author) born in Konigsberg, East Prussia (1724), to Lutheran parents. He's the author of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), in which he gave the definition of the categorical imperative—morality dictated by actions based on rightness: “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become, through your will, a general natural law.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Now I've got the Monty Python Philosophers's song stuck in my head all day.

Meditating on Imperial Birthdays

2005-04-20T07:03:00.000-04:00

“we must get through the problems of our lives with patience and endurance”

It's the birthday of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, born in A.D. 121. He is not as well known for his leadership abilities as he is for his deeply philosophical nature. He was a kind and tolerant ruler who freed many slaves and tried his best to rid Rome of corruption. But Aurelius is best known for the writings he left behind. They were diaries and reflections he wrote every day, and were not meant for publication, but were his own personal insights into the stresses of ruler-ship and of everyday life, and fears about his own personal inadequacies. His writings, now known as the Meditations, also mark his beliefs in the doctrines of Stoicism: that we must get through the problems of our lives with patience and endurance, drawing on our own inner resources to see us through. He believed that most of life was predestined, but that much of it could be improved by our own discipline and will power. He wrote: “If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you might be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activity according to nature…you will be happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this. ”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Additional links by me.

Homework

2005-04-20T06:50:00.000-04:00

Today I'm doing something I haven't done for years. I'm working from home. Yes that's right. I'm at home, dressed in my PJs, drinking my own coffee, ensuring that Western Civilization does not fall from lack of concrete and gravel shipments, due to network glitches. This is the kind of thing that would never have been possible at International Greed Enablement. “Work from home? Are you Mad?” That was only reserved for the privileged elite of the executive wing. They guys who had their own company-paid-for satellite hookups at their cottages. To the rest, toil in the cube was our lot.

“Work from home? Are you Mad?”

It is surprising to me just how many managers in the corporate jungle can't function unless their staff are right outside their door where they can be seen. I can “Dog It” with the best of them in the office and you'll never know I wasn't actually doing anything. At home, you at least have to produce something to show for the fact that you're not in the office. If they can't see you, they at least need to hear from you. I can do that. That will be easy. It will be easier still as I brew a fresh pot of coffee, make some toast with jam, and relax on my sofa with my comfy slippers and my trusty laptop at my side. “Hi Ho Dell Latitude Away!”

I think I'm going to enjoy the change of pace a great deal.

Photographic Zeitgeist

2005-04-19T21:02:00.000-04:00

I've been having a lot of fun taking photos with my ancient digital camera that I purchased for way more money than I had back in 1999. I had been using Picasa and Hello.com to post photos to blogger.com. Lately, however, I've become very fond of Flickr. The collage below is a collection of photos I've posted to my photobog via the Flickr interface. I find that I like it better than what I've been using, and Flickr has a built in community of sorts of other like minded shutterbugs.

Come Up and See Me

2005-04-19T06:41:00.000-04:00

“ Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

(Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

In 1927 on this day, actress Mae West was jailed for her performance in Sex, the Broadway play she wrote, directed, and starred in. She served ten days in prison, and jail time seemed to have done her good - it didn't make her change her act, but it did bring her national notoriety - and helped make her one of Hollywood's most memorable, and quotable, stars. She said: “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Additional links by me.

What A Day

2005-04-18T23:21:00.000-04:00

The day was busy. It was busy like a nest of hornets. A nest of angry hornets. The telephone rang constantly; email was fast, furious, and endless; decisions within decisions within decisions. It felt like I was at the nexus of a corporate vortex.

“If it makes sense... We don't do that here.”

I am finding the pace enjoyable, if only because of the difference from the slow plodding that was International Greed Enablement. At Gigantic Concrete things move fast. Problems move fast, complaints move fast, blame moves fast and if you know what's good for you, you'll move fast too. The only thing that doesn't move fast is actual project results. If I try to analyze it too much I will probably go more insane than I am. To quote one of the architects, “If it makes sense... We don't do that here.”

So I'll muddle through as best as I can. I won't let it get to me too much, and I'll enjoy the ride while it lasts. How fatalistic is that?