Category Archives: Life
I find myself in an increasing funk the last few weeks. By now I’m feeling maximally funky, but unfortunately not in the good way. Funky often refers to smell, and in this case the increasing stink is mental. I’m just … fed up, halfway between tired and disgusted, many miles south of annoyed.
Work accounts for much of that, perhaps all of it. Yet another week of literally zero progress. In fact there was a setback: vendor work that didn’t, and the vendor is being difficult about dealing with it. I seem to be on the IT project equivalent of the Titanic (and there are a scary number of parallels).
And for a variety of reasons I’m feeling a strong sense of impedance mismatch with the world.
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9 Comments | tags: Bill Gates, buffalo, internet, Joni Mitchell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, technology | posted in Computers, Life, Science, The Interweb
I was reading the fan and detractor blog posts about infamous Valentine’s Day. It strikes me that being against it still acknowledges it. I suppose if one wanted to abolish it, that would be reason for protest. (Maybe they regret the killing of all those roses!)
I’m inclined to let the romantics have their harmless fun. No skin off my nose. Oktoberfest for lovers (with chocolate rather than beer — a nearly acceptable tradeoff)!
There are those who say it’s silly to have this one day a year where we observe and honor love (and murder roses). We should observe Valentine’s Day all the time.
I’ve decided to take to heart that idea.
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26 Comments | tags: characater, every day, holidays, Lucy Liu, Waiting, Watching the Detectives | posted in Brain Bubble, Life, Movies
Think my readers are trying to tell me something??
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20 Comments | tags: fingers, middle finger, stats | posted in Life
This is my third attempt to write a post this evening. No amount of editing seemed to make the other two worthwhile. I don’t expect this one to be much better.
[…all efforts deleted after several tries…]
No, ain’t happening. I’m in a major funk and sick to death of my own words and thoughts. I’m not going to subject any of you to any of it.
8 Comments | posted in Life
The week is off to a weak start. Last week I thought things at work would finally start to move along on my project. But it turns out the guy who told me “next week” didn’t expect me to read his email until last Monday. So this week turns out to be the week he thought he’d have something.
No word so far, and he didn’t answer my email this morning.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the data chain, oh, it’s a big disaster that makes me shudder. Late today we got an opportunity to test just one link in the chain I’m trying to build. Tests failed, so it’s back to the vendor.
I’ll rant about that later (and you’ll be free to leave). First, I just want to share the only time management tip I ever learned that turned out to be hugely useful.
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6 Comments | tags: Babylon 5, bill, Captain Kirk, cow, Fruitcakes, Jimmy Buffett, Shadows, time management, tips, Vorlons | posted in Basics, Brain Bubble, Life, Rant
You know the story about that nice family of bears whose home is invaded, robbed and vandalized by some pre-teen female hoodlum? I have a vague feeling of how that poor Ursine family must have felt when they discovered their food missing.
Indeed, we all must identify with the bears these days. There is a huge Goldilocks in our midst, and she’s been nibbling away at everything! We’ve all seen the candy bars get smaller while the price gets higher. And that space-reducing dome at the bottom of most plastic containers gets bigger and bigger. Consumers purchase ever-increasing amounts of air these days.
This is brought home to me full force every time I open a container of raisins.
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16 Comments | tags: ginger cookies, Goldilocks, humor, product packaging, raisins | posted in Life, Rant
Another quickie today (makes a nice break, right?), mostly just dropping by to show you my (work in progress) TARDIS. I think you’ll agree it’s looking a lot better than it did yesterday. I’ll show you that in a moment, but I have a mildly amusing story to relate first.
At least I find it mildly amusing, but then I find it mildly amusing that my fingers insist on typing “amuzing” every… single… time. One of my mental block words apparently (or a sign of encroaching senility). It (by which I mean the story, not my spelling) reminded slightly me of a similar story.
A time when I participated in events that led to Blast Damage!
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10 Comments | tags: blast damage, camping, diet mountain dew, Dr Who, ice, TARDIS | posted in Life
This is a bit of a drive-by posting. (Look at it this way: “Oh, goodie: more pictures!”)
I confess part of my distraction these days is being caught up playing with POV-Ray (which I’ve described quite a bit recently). Boy with a toy, I guess, but it’s just so much fun! It does open some great doors for blog illustrations down the road, so it’s worth building some degree of skill. (Plus, did I mention the fun?)
So just to keep my hand in posting-wise (it is so easy to get out of the habit), here are some pictures of what I’ve been working on while I’ve been ignoring you.
Bonus points if you know the post’s title reference!
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4 Comments | tags: planets, POV-Ray | posted in Computers, Life
Feeling a strong sense of blog ennui. Work is part of it. After five months of largely fruitless effort, my trees are showing signs of budding and maybe eventually bearing fruit. After a holiday slow down, things are heating up, so my attention is focused there.
And as I’ve mentioned before, this new position has a lot of communicating — it’s really a combination of architecture and project management — and it tends to dry up my usual urges to communicate. Sculpting a blog post too closely resembles the careful sculpting of work communications.
So this post has a bunch of pictures instead of words.
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25 Comments | tags: cute, pixels, rainbows, sunshine | posted in Life
This is a post I’ve had sitting on the shelf for when I wanted an easy one. I don’t know about other bloggers, but it takes hours for me to crank out a post. Some can take most of a day. (There are some where I spent days making graphics, and an upcoming one has work that took weeks! (You saw a glimpse in a recent post!))
The situation this concerns is long past. This is no rant, just a piece on a life change that surprised me a little, made me sad a little, and which doubly reflected the end of an era.
I could write this any time, but today I got another plea from Scientific American magazine. Again they beg me to come back. Again I won’t.
This, then, is an open letter to SciAm, a dear old friend with whom I’ve parted ways.
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17 Comments | tags: Carl Sagan, Scientific American, trees | posted in Life, Science
Logos con carne 