Some Hardware History

We were having a discussion during pre-standup about being old.  Obviously, this wasn't a typical discussion, because developers, on average, tend to be somewhat younger.  However, in this particular group, there are some folks in their forties.

After chatting for a few moments, one of the guys said, "You know how you can tell when someone is young? When you mention working on a 386 and they don't remember those having existed."  I didn't bother to mention that if I had been using that example, it would have been prior to a 386. But he's right.  It's like the we won't sell alcohol to you sign where the increase in now indicates when you were born.  Where you might have used an 086 in that example at one point, it's had to slide up to an 80386 to account for the fact that people are getting younger and younger and 1985 represents well before the birthdate and computer literacy date of some of the developers.  Not even the youngest!  You're almost 30 if you born in 1985.  Soon it'll move to an 80486 as those were introduced in 1989.

I countered that at least none of them could claim they hadn't used a 14.4 baud modem and one of the youngest made a sound that was dubious at best.  So I told him that if he'd used our internal printer/fax machines (which are gloriously SLOW) he was using a 14.4, and he could validate it himself.  Here's the proof.

Max Manus: Man of War

I watched Max Manus: Man of War while bicycling this weekend.  It's due to be removed from Netflix streaming end of month, so I was running out of time.  I'm very glad I caught it before it was gone.  It's an incredibly good movie.  Funny in parts.  Sad in others.  Full of introspection.

Three parts I really liked where 1.) any part where you realized every house and home in Norway during WWII had a pile of wood in front of it.  I've read about how horse crap used to be a huge issue for cities and we just never hear about it now.  Similarly, I never gave any thought to the fact that not having electric or gas heating might require an amazing amount of stored wood on every corner.  2.) Where Max is explaining to Tikken (the woman he's interested in) that he misses volunteering in the Finnish Winter War because everything was so straightforward there and being a resistance fighter is full of confusion and, basically, paperwork.  You see cuts of him in the Winter War, and he's killing Russians in their machine gun nest point blank, and by chasing them down with his knife, after which he has an emotional breakdown.  It does look more straightforward, but it definitely doesn't look better. 3.) Near the end when he's having a toast with his friends.  He's not toasting their passing.  They're all toasting his survival of the war from the grave.  A very moving scene and exceptionally well done.

The history is interesting.  I knew about the sinking of the Donau, although primarily because of it's hauling of Jews to Auschwitz.  But I wasn't overly familiar with the Norwegian resistance.  And although there was some contention that not everything was true in Max's biography, he did see machine gun fire and bombardment and had to deal with PTSD.

If you get a chance to watch it, it's well worth while.  And I'd recommend it as a double feature with Tavlisota, also a great film about Scandinavia during WWII.

All's Well That Ends Well

We had a busy weekend.  Saturday, we went to the Mall of America to use up two Nick Amusement Park ride bracelets that my mother had gotten as part of her holiday shopping.  There was only a week left to use them - less as the month ends early - so we didn't have time left to find a friend to go with Eryn.  Instead, it was up to me to ride all the rides.  Once upon a time, this wouldn't have been so bad.  Now it involves giant rotating seats on enormous skateboards, flipping seats with joy sticks to old them perpetually upside down, and the various rides that plunge and twirl.  I was feeling a bit uneasy in the stomach by the time we were done, and it wasn't because of the overwhelming smell of rancid seafood we'd been subjected to in the ramp on the way in.

Sunday we went to Republic in Dinkytown for brunch (excellent hanger steak) to use a coupon Theatre in the Round had provided with our flex tickets.  Good plan on Republic's part, as we obviously used the incentive before the play.  I didn't realize how long it had been since I'd really watched a lot of Shakespeare, so it entirely slipped my mind that we were in for 3.5 hours of play.  While definitely not my favorite play, it was enjoyable.  Eryn liked the parts that were grown up, with Lavatch the clown making rude thrusting and hand gestures, and Parolles extolling at some length about how Helena's virginity was a waste. Eryn commented that Parolles was the easiest character to understand, likely because his character, who seemed to be some pervier, more obnoxious, evil, version of Percy from BlackAdder, had shorter lines and much more facial and body language than the other characters.  Helena, who looked and sounded like Katie Holmes, was good, although sort of whiny overall.  And it was impossible to believe that despite tricking her husband, Bertram, into giving her proof of marriage and getting her pregnant, she'd want anything to do with such a turd.  Wikipedia says the exact same thing: "Helena's love for the seemingly unlovable Bertram is difficult to explain on the page."  When my wife called out how unbelievable it was that anyone would stay with Bertram, it kicked my old Shakespeare/Boccacio brain cells into use, and I said if it wasn't that they were supposed to be somewhat attracted to each other the whole time - playful in the beginning and touching heads later - it was probably the idea that a clever woman, or clever behavior, could make him have a bit of an epiphany that made him love her, at least in early modern magical thinking (and particularly in the spirit of the Decameron).  I was excited to see Wikipedia agreed: "Some suggest that Bertram's conversion is meant to be sudden and magical in keeping with the 'clever wench performing tasks to win an unwilling higher born husband' theme of the play."

It's probably also why there's a lengthy scene where the soldiers trick Parolles into confessing to all his obnoxious opinions about others and his own behavior.  To offset the clever women duping men, you have to have equally clever men duping men so there's no suspicion women have the upper hand overall.

What I was reminded of, more than anything, was that I shouldn't avoid my old habit of reading the play before I attend the play.  It's easier to pay attention to the intricacies of the language if you don't have to pay quite as much attention to the ebb and flow of the plot.  And despite the bawdy parts, it was fun to take Eryn to her first Shakespeare.

Bumper Sticker Extravaganza

We ended up parked next to this car in a downtown ramp.  I don't understand the "She thinks I coach tennis at Wimbledon" one at all.  Is the implication he's pulling the wool over someone's eyes, and that's to be lauded?  Is some guy from Minnesota trolling tennis courts with a shitty faux-English accent?  At least the lot of balls one makes sense, even if it's stupid.  That one even gets its own song.  Popular enough to get more than one YouTube video!  I'm going to add that this individual is a business professor to my list of reasons not to get an MBA.

Elfvators

I can't tell if this is on purpose or why anyone would do it.  But this sign at work clearly says Elfvators.  I know why you shouldn't use the elevator when Gremlins are around, we learned that at the Trylon watching Gremlins 2, but what do elves have to do with anything?  Or bear paws, for that matter.  I search for Elfvator doesn't show it to be a meme, although this guy found one.  And this guy found a better one.

Cowbell of Shannara

Eryn and I finished The Sword of Shannara and moved on to The Elfstones of Shannara.  It's a little better than the last book, but not by much.  While he did ratchet down the number of uses of "awesome" from 59 to about 4 (that's not a joke - use the word search in Kindle if you don't believe me), a lot of the weird overdescriptive, overinvolved sentences, and strange changes in pace and topic remain.  I don't think we've spent more than a few sentences on our main characters in quite a few chapters.

We did find some enjoyment in Brooks' villain, the Reaper.  The words fear and reaper appear in close proximity more than once, so I kept humming Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper.  Because we were reading on the iPad, when Eryn asked me what I was humming, I could boot up a video.  Now when the Reaper makes an appearance, we both scream "More Cowbell!" and start chanting "don't fear the reaper!" Then last night, Brooks launched into a chapter explaining why the Free Corps commander (like the French Foreign Legion) Stee Jans was called The Ironman.  Eryn is very familiar with that song, having watched the Ironman movies.  I don't think I'll ever look at a Terry Brooks novel again without a 70's soundtrack playing in my head.

Say Pencil

My recent (is it recent if it's been over a year) interest in things Bollywood means that several times I've run into a particular bit of Hindi humor on line.  It goes like this:

Person one: Bolo pencil.

Person two: Pencil.

Person one: Teri shaadi cancel!

I knew shaadi was something related to marriage, because of Band Baaja Baaraat.  Anushka Sharma's wedding planning company in the movie is called something like Shaadi Mubarak.  I threw it into a couple of Hindi/English translators with no success.  Or perfect success, as bolo meant say, pencil meant pencil, and cancel meant cancel.  So:

Person one: Say pencil.

Person two: Pencil.

Person one: Your wedding is canceled!

Which made no more sense in English to me than it did in Hindi.  So I asked a few folks at work, prefacing it with how I wasn't 100% sure I wasn't swearing using some sort of Hindi slang.  Three native speakers later, four if you count the fact that one of them routed it to her father, I still don't get it.  They didn't think it was very funny, and basically it came down to some sort of knock-knock type joke.  Yet the meme is there, at least once mashed up with the meme of The Rock from Escape to Witch Mountain.  It has it's own Facebook page and Twitter account.  It's on the meme generator.

So I'm left wondering whether it's a regional thing, or something that's funny only if you're involved in a potential arranged marriage...

A Young Me

My folks sent me a few pictures of me when I was a kid.  This is me at about a year old with my giant green bear.  Eryn has a similar bear my mom made her, named Bob.  Bob's currently missing his ear because he doubles as a trampoline for small children.  My own bear could not be handed down as an heirloom as I liked to share what I found in my pants with him by stuffing it in the hole under his red tongue.

Tonka!  They made them much better in those days.  You could carry most anything, including yourself.  My birthmark, over my left eye, is visible in all these photos.  I had it removed after we moved to Minnesota.  There were concerns about cancer or other issues.  Mostly it was like a particularly large eyebrow.  Gave me character.  Of course, so does the scar left behind after its removal.

Mmm...candy cane.  I was surprised to get photos of me without some sort of food in hand.  I think most of the pictures I've seen before either involve me messily eating something, or dressed up in an embarrassing outfit.  I've got one of those around here somewhere, so I'll make sure to share it.

From my birth announcement.  I look pretty happy in this photo.  And I think I look like me now, which is amusing.

Then and Now - Daddy Daughter Dance

I went to the Eagan Daddy Daughter Dance on Friday night.  This year, Eryn and I volunteered and took charge of the coloring station, setting out various drawings to color, welcoming girls and their fathers to the station, and making sure crayons were available.  We also did some dancing, coloring of our own, and had our picture taken.  Being volunteers meant we ran later than in past years and helped to clean up the tables and mess, but Eryn is older, so she managed just fine.  After the dance, we replaced the Daddy Daughter Dance photo on the fridge.  I thought it was the picture from last year at first, but turns out it's the picture from 2010.

Here's the 2010 version.  Eryn much younger.  Me much heavier.  Last year I had to ditch that suit and find a new one that was significantly smaller.  Eryn loved that cloth flower - she still points them out when she sees them in stores, as recently as last week when we saw them in the fruit and vegetable area at Cub Foods.

And here we are this year.  I'm getting shorter.  And thinner.  And wrinklier.  And balder.  It's a year for superlatives.  Apparently I'm getting shorter as well, or else Eryn is a bit older.

Linktopia and Various Other Bits

• Two links I'll need to share with Dan'l.  Axis and Allies is now open source as a project called Triple A.  As is Master of Orion as a project called Free Orion.  A bit different than the original, but once you start to play a round, you get where the differences are.  For A&A I made the mistake of starting with the big map: that's a bit overwhelming.  I'd start smaller and work my way up if I were doing it again.  You can find FreeCol and FreeCiv out there as well.  Lots of cheap gaming fun.
• Yesterday I saw Wired promoted Compounded, a Kickstarter funded game about chemistry.  Currently at about $139,000 out of their $15,000 goal.  Seriously.  I gave them some money a while ago because it seemed like such a great idea, particularly if you have a kid who's into both science and board gaming.
• I always wondered what those long Indian robes for men were called, the traditional looking vestments.  It's a Sherwani.  It's the national dress of Pakistan and associated with aristocracy.  Not surprising - it always gives off the same vibe as a tuxedo to me.
• The official name for what the cable and dish/direct tv companies are doing to you is called "drip pricing".  It's why your cable (or satellite) went up 3.3% last year and you didn't notice.  I noticed my change in billing.  It went down 100%.
• I've entered 15,392 Coke Rewards points for charity so far this year, after I do today's entry.  That's 5,130 caps.  I'll admit, there were a few box tops in there, but not many.  I try to focus on caps and leave the boxes to other folks entering.
• I heard Wye Oak's Civilian yesterday and really liked it: I'll be adding it to my Spotify list.  Apparently, I should have heard it on The Walking Dead, but that's not the case.  See bullet Number 4 about dropping cable and satellite: I don't catch Walking Dead until full seasons are out.  Of course I didn't catch it before either, because my satellite company didn't give me AMC.  Rather, I was streaming Safety Not Guaranteed on Netflix.  I really liked the movie: much more than my wife I suspect as she gave it three stars and I'd have given it a solid four.  Rottentomatoes backs me up, giving it a 91%.
• Kotaku's amusing stories about game shop incidents.  Obviously, the comments are 90% of the article.
• io9's list of creepy ghost towns of the world.  My first thought was, "I wonder if there are geocaches hidden in those towns?"  Followed by, "I wonder if Chernobyl doesn't count as a town?"  Certainly looks like one, and equally creepy.
• How Etsy Increased It's Number of Engineers by a Multiple of Four in One Year over at TheMarySue.com, one of my favorite places to go for day-to-day geek lately.  Given one of my externally imposed goals this year is to hire more diversely (I should be up front, it's never been an issue for me, I think diversity of developers creates diversity of ideas, creates better code), these are good ideas to share, although I worry my company will have an issue with initial layout expenses like scholarships.
• I missed the pancake breakfast for the Women's Prison Book Project.  I've decided I like the idea and I (we) should donate there.  We tend to find one place to donate to monthly, beyond the corporate annual donations that are deducted from my check each month for the Family Tree Clinic and Eagan/Dakota County food shelf.  They're having a movie night for the documentary Cruel and Unusual about transgender prisoners in men's prisons.  I don't plan on going, but I've often thought "movie day" might be a really good idea for the Community Volunteer Committee at work.  We could show that and Dudey Free and some other movies for folks to watch every other month over lunch.  Did I ever mention I'm now the cochair (subchair?) for the corporate CVC?  More through inertia of other folks I suspect, but sometimes that defines whole aspects/opportunities of one's life.
• Erik sent me this XKCD comic generator.  It's done with d3.js which I was looking at for a work project not so long ago.  It'd make even more sense for making comics for sites like snrky.com.  We didn't use it for my project, although we all got a good laugh out of the thought of dropping a spermatozoa demo out there for the business.  

What passes for humor at my house

I used the phrase rectaltopic pregnancy today.  I laughed.  My wife laughed.  My daughter laughed.  Bunch of juveniles.

Mulder

My wife drew me this picture in Draw Something. While not as terrifying as Ming's Milkman, I'm still very glad she didn't make his tie pink, because even in black, I wasn't sure during the drawing process what I was being led toward as a guess. I thought about just cutting it out with Paint so you could appreciate Fox Mulder's "tie" all by itself, but I don't want to get tagged as a porn site.  In real life, he has a teapot to cover that thing up.

[no audio]

I was watching an episode of Doctor Who today while riding my bicycling trainer.  When I do that, I tend to leave the subtitles on, just so I don't miss something if I'm busy messing with the wireless headphones because of sweat. At one point, Donna and the Doctor are communicating through windows and the subtitles state [no audio].  I've seen it before where the subtitles tell me what music is playing or what sound has just happened, but [no audio] was new.  It didn't occur to me that you might want to let someone who couldn't hear know if it looked like someone was talking when they really weren't.

I think sometimes my product has similar issues.  Several times recently I've found myself asking a designer, "How do you cancel?"  Or, "How do you undo that action?"  The answer has been, "There's no need.  They can check in preferences." or "They won't really do that in the first place, even though we let them."  Ugh. As a user, I always want the ability to say, "No thank you, not right now."  And, even better, "Not right now, and quit asking me; I'm sick of pushing buttons."  If you're doing something for me that I can't see, such that it's buried in a preferences menu somewhere, it's even more imperative you give me a way to bypass it without digging around the site map.  [No audio] reminded me of those recent issues because you should always be thinking about the cases where you account for something someone may expect, but which doesn't happen and all those other use cases that just don't seem obvious because you want to provide a specific piece of functionality and your ego is potentially tied up in how users will use it.

Bang Bang on the Head

This was once drawn for me by a friend during my short career as a manager.  Perhaps more accurately drawn for herself during a particularly long meeting, but she gifted it to me.  It's a metaphor about her experience with a project manager.  A bit of a transparent metaphor, given the brick wall she's banging her head against clearly says PMO.  I don't imagine the artist would be impressed with my current PMP studies so I can take the test with Ming after he finishes his continuing education.  At that point, should I ever become a PM because there becomes no need for functional managers, I will become another brick in the wall.  Hopefully a soft one.

Valentine's Day

I received some very peculiar pictures in my email.  They came from mingslittlekat@google.com.  Wasn't sure what that was all about, but the content was certainly amusing.

It must be nice to get a Valentine's Day card from your cat saying how much you're missed.

Cathedral

I've been challenging people to Cathedral at work.  It looks very nice sitting on my table, and a game takes about 15 minutes.  It seems to relax most folks, making one on ones easier.  Except for my old boss who just gets frustrated that it can't get the pieces all back onto the board nicely.

Basic game, the gray piece, the Cathedral, is placed on the board and belongs to everyone.  Your goal is to get as many of your pieces on the board as you can.  Left over pieces are scored one point for each square they would take up on the board.  More points is worse, like golf. So being left with bigger pieces is bad.  If you enclose an area, no kitty/catty-corner connectors, it's yours.  The other player can't put pieces in that area.  If you enclose an opponent's piece - only one, no more - then that piece is popped back into your opponent's hand and they have to replace it or end up with the points at the end.  Because the cathedral belongs to everyone, you can use it to protect your piece from being surrounded (and yes, you can surround the cathedral if it's the only piece surrounded).  This isn't the end of an official game, it's just me getting all the pieces back onto the board.  but that is my official guest chair.  It's never bothered me in person.  But a photo of it makes me question its aesthetics.


I like this picture better, although I never put my nose down this close to the board to play.  A general rule, which may be a house rule, is that if your piece touches the board, that's where it goes.  No waiting to let go of it, like in chess.  It touches.  All done.


The scores so far.  As you can see, there's an advantage to playing a bunch of coworkers who don't know the game.  Except in the case of Anup who outmaneuvered me and soundly ruined my initial winning streak.  Vineet has taken his loss personally and downloaded a Cathedral-like game for his iPhone, Tiling King, so he can beat me next time, or at least slip below his current score at last place.  The oldest scores are at the top, so Troy has gone from 5 to 8 to 12.  He's a board gamer, so I think it bothers him.  And if he maintains his almost Fibonacci sequence, his next score of between 20 and 22 will push him past Vineet, eliminating the need for an iPhone app.

Book of Mormon

Last night my wife and I went to see The Book of Mormon at the Opheum in downtown Minneapolis.  I purchased the tickets almost a year ago with a couple of guys from work.  I joked to one of my leads yesterday that given how long I'd had the tickets, pre-accident, my wife could have been going with her new husband by now had I not come out of my coma.  Ming and his wife were originally part of the group that was going (along with Joe, Jon, Dan and some others - Denise, a former coworker, was there as well, having been a late fill for someone else who couldn't go), but he had a conflict and had to sell his tickets on Craigslist.  I thank him for selling the tickets to a nice couple so I didn't have to sit next to someone annoying.  I told them the story about how Ming was going to put his tickets up for sale and still hadn't realized I'd given him two seats with a seat between them as a joke way back when we first picked up the tickets.  He did sell his tickets to someone who worked for a staffing company, which was a bit unnerving given the group that was attending.  Her first question to me, "You're all in IT?"  Ominous.

The musical was excellent, swear words and all.  And they went pretty far down the expletive continuum.  At first, the songs felt derivative of other Broadway songs, but after a few numbers, it was obvious a bit of that was on purpose and it added to the amusement.  I really enjoyed Two by Two where the elders are getting their assignments, Turn it Off which was a Simponsonesaque Ode to turning off your feelings and not just burying them like Homer does, Hasa Diga Eebowai where the villagers are cursing God, Spooky Mormon Hell Dream which is just as it says and was a big production number that included devils, mass murderers, serial killers, and cups of caffeine, and I Believe about all the things your need to believe to stay a Mormon.  The other songs were enjoyable as well, and Man Up in particular made you think that when they get around to casting a movie, you're going to see Jack Black as the sidekick.

Well worth the expensive cost of a musical, even in the Twin Cities, and I'm glad I lived long enough to see it.  We added a pre-show dinner visit to Buster's to our itinerary, avoiding some of the rush hour traffic, and a secondary stop for an espresso at The Angry Catfish bicycle and coffee bar.  It's always been closed when I've been to Buster's before, so it was exciting to have to waste time by stopping there.  Beautiful bicycles, a good cup of espresso, and some bike clothing that convinced me I don't have enough to feel well dressed.

Glass

This is a picture of the office wall closest to my head at work.  That's a bag full of the Mustang glass from the accident, including the piece I picked out from between my teeth (despite assurances from everyone it wasn't there) after being in a coma.  Any time I'm feeling a bit ornery at work, these pieces of glass do a great job of getting me back to a state of calm.  There's not much anyone can do that's worse than the accident.

I'm not generally the type to need mementos (an organized serial killer type).  Most days I'm fairly well grounded in the larger scheme of things.  But I find these surprisingly useful.  They remind me of the hospital and how miserable I felt, both physically and mentally, worrying about my family and whether I'd be bicycling and/or walking and trying not to hurt.  Puts everything else in perspective: everything else in a space relative to the accident.  On a continuum, that pushes everything else to the far end of the spectrum, or makes the spectrum so large that they appear to be stuffed up against the end for meaningless minutia.

Meg

I don't think crossing the talents of Michael Crichton and Clive Cussler would ever result in anything good.  Dirk Pitt fighting an alien infestation on a doomed cruise liner full of treasure in The Titanic Strain? Dirk Pitt fighting dinosaurs who were stowed away on a Civil War Nazi balloon in Jurassic Six? But this blurb did the job it was supposed to and caught my attention.  I just don't think the intent was to have me shake my head and immediately put it back on the shelf.

Korean Cinderella

I saw The Korean Cinderella on the shelf at the Dakota County Library and picked it up.  There were several different Cinderella books there each set in a different country.

This first picture convinced me it might be a good book for Adele.  I could tell her how it was like her real life with the pushy mom who made her do so many chores and the sister who thought she was so cool. 

But then there was this picture.  Apparently the author is a Hitchcock fan and wants to scare the crap out little hapa kolea girls.  I imagine my niece being terrified every time a bird came near her window.  Then again, maybe it would replace her fear of the strange man who hangs out staring at her window.

Remco Earthquake Tower

My parents sent me some old pictures.  I forgot about the Remco Earthquake Tower Andrew and I used to play with.  It had these knobs you could turn at each of the white levels to make the sections shake and turn so the poor folks would fall off the tower to their deaths.  And they complain about video games.  Probably not so PC anymore post 9/11.  It made the Cracked.com list of 10 old toys that made sense in their era and nowhere else: "it's important to remind children that you can't save everyone, and people die all the time, because life is arbitrary and ultimately meaningless."

And there was a record that came with it so you could pretend in style (that's a link to a YouTube recording of the noise! Imagine being the lucky parent who gets to listen to that over and over).  These things are upwards of $150-$200 now and very hard to find (surprise, cardboard deteriorates - you'd be better off finding the plastic and reprinting your own).  But below you'll see what they used to cost, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal in 1976, which is probably about when we got ours.

I loved the earthquake tower.  Basically a five foot tall dollhouse for boys where I could pretend to either help or hinder Ernest Borgnine.



Milwaukee Journal, advertising it for all of $12.97.

Sonata Vocab Lesson

I thought it would be interesting, now that I do a large amount of reading on the iPad where I can take notes, to capture some of the words that are either new to me, or that I just don't use very often.  Maybe do a bit of vocabulary building.

• Foveae - plural for a small cuplike depression or pit in a bone or organ.  For the purposes of Hydrogen Sonata, it specifically referred to "area consisting of a small depression in the retina containing cones and where vision is most acute".
• Fundament - I knew the use of this word meaning underlying principle.  I did not know it can simply refer to your bottom or anus (or a foundation).
• Evangelicalisation - not a real word.  But it's used in an article by Marsden about evangelizing military power under George Bush.  So you have to wonder if that's on purpose.  Seems to mean the process of turning something into an evangelical effort.
• Ructions - I knew this one, but never use it.  Quarrel, brawl, trouble.
• Nonary - seems obvious once you see a definition.  Relating to the number nine (9).
• Comms - I call this out only because I've seen Coms and Comms and I tend to use Comms when writing, but Erik H. uses Coms.  When I noticed that while proofing his book, I wondered where I'd gotten my spelling.  Perhaps from Banks.
• Timeously - timely.  I get this one confused with the mouse one: timorously.
• Punctilious - another one I know, but don't use.  Scrupulous.  Precise.  Attentive to detail.
• Funicular - moved by a cable or resembling a rope.  I usually think of this word as related to a hole, but perhaps that's because I'd use a rope to crawl out of a hole.
• sinecures - can't be a history major without knowing this word.  I'm just surprised at how seldom I've used it.  An office with little to no work, but it pays.  A favorite for the nepotism crowd.

The Hydrogen Sonata

The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks was excellent.  Banks has written better, in my opinion, but I really enjoyed this one.  It was a good start to the year.  Sonata captured a lot of the themes I associate with Banks and his Culture novels: god-like ships (containers for AI) with copious amounts of attitude, other cultures that don't necessarily make much sense but are beautiful (and deadly) in their own way, the role of the little person still having an outsized impact despite the machinations of bigger powers (a modified four-armed humanoid with an almost impossible to play instrument in this case, who by chance has met the oldest individual in existence who knows things even the Minds don't know), and the meaningless of humans (and human-like entities) pushing on with politics and petty desires and vices despite the scale of things happening around them (and the sometimes deadly and strange consequences this can lead to, particularly where it intersects religion, and the meaningless when they sublime to another state of being).

Some of my favorite quotes (in addition, I liked the ideas of ships that dance as they move and an accepted table of Recognized Civilsationary Levels):

• [A ship Mind thinking about the humans that inhabit ships]: “But what babble! What to-ing and fro-ing over such simple operational matters! A bunch of dim-witted, slow-thinking bios swimming in a tube clouded with their own effluent, trying to work out what was going on around them by staring through portholes probably. It was hard for a ship, a Mind, not to feel at least a degree of contempt.” – p. 41
• “some boring people began talking boringly.” – p. 161
• “I have managed to avoid learning too many lessons. That may be what keeps me alive.” – p. 211
• [I think this captures the attitude of the Culture ships well, although below, there's a quote where a ship is taunting another ship, trying to get it to commit to an attack so it's not the aggressor, which is even more apropos : “I’m a fucking razor-arsed starship, you manic! I’m not male, female or anything else except stupendously smart and right now tuned to smite.  I don’t give a fuck about flattering you. The few and frankly not vitally important sentiments I have concerning you I can switch off like flicking a switch.” - p. 434
•  [I liked this because I haven't seen Banks channel too much in the way of geek references, and popping his characters into this location screams Star Wars]: “We’re in the stern ventral waste disposal semi-solids holding tank.” – p. 461
•  [What I referred to above - if this was two humans or humanlike characters, it wouldn't be nearly as amusing as two kilometers long ships engaging in the behavior]: "We could start by sort of tussling with fields. I did that out at Bokri, in Ospin, with your pal the Uagren.  That was fun. Not something you get to do every day. Bestial, nearly, like locking horns. Actually, more like naked wrestling, all oiled up. I found it quite erotic, to tell the truth.  Homo-erotic, I suppose, technically, as we’re all just ships together and we’re all the same gender: neutral, or hermaphrodite or whatever, don’t you think?”  (ship being taunted attempts to attack the taunting Culture Mind/ship, “~Not even a nice try, shipfucker”) – p. 483
• [Bit of a spoiler.  Sometimes ships have names that end in an ellipse.  In this case, the Culture Mind/ship Mistake Not...'s name serves as the punchline and explains its choice to be involved in all the political machinations going on between various AIs and civilizations in Sonata]: Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome and Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans of Wrath  – p. 504

Pens

I mailed what's probably my last box of pharmacological pens today.  For ten years I've been sending the drug-company related pens and paraphernalia my mother gives me to a professor from Hamline who once made the mistake of telling me he collects them.  His collection probably hopped from a few dozen to a few hundred immediately, and a few thousand over the decade.  I suspect he just keeps the best ones for himself, and Hamline gets the benefit of all the extras that don't have little blue pills floating in them, aren't shaped like a bone, and don't look like they cost more than a prescription.  There are usually a few bonus items as well.  In this particular box, there's a big drug company stapler and a tab (markers for pages) dispenser, as well as an interesting highlighter.

But the age of drug pens has passed.  Companies can no longer distribute goodies the way they used to.  So my mother has taken to just grabbing what's left over and that can't go on forever.

I quote the New York Times from 2008:

"Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies — Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs — that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs."   

I'm hoping most of what I just sent is still good after 5 years.

Professor Sutin also collects postcards and even has a good book about some musings on his collection.  Actually, two books. I doubt we'll see something artistic featuring drug pens anytime soon.

IT Band

Sounds like I'm forming a band for developers.  Larry, did your wife get one of these for her IT band issue?  The first time (hopefully the only time, your comment made me very nervous) I had an issue, they recommended a roller.  The appropriate process is to sort of lay on it with the affected "leg" and then roll back and forth.  You know you're doing it right when actual tears start to flow.  Not out of your leg.  The normal way, tears of pain from your eyes.  And I don't say that meaning "until it feels like you'll cry", I will admit to actual shedding of tears.  Hurts like hell.  Not kidney pain style, but definitely unpleasant.

I tried these exercises too.  Seemed to be making a difference, although the exercises less so than the roller.

Why does the British navy have glass bottomed battleships?

So they can see the German aircraft carrier.  It's not looking good for Germany in the Med.  Particularly with every ally on the board hanging out there in some capacity.  If I was a Libyan fighter pilot, I'd be very nervous right about now.  It doesn't look nearly so fortuitous for the allies on the other side of the world.  The navies are gone for the most part, so the US can't back  up the USSR, which has a fairly empty Eastern front.  Going to be a while before things shift that direction, but the Japanese will be land-bound for a while, at least in any significant concentration.

Axis and Allies

Eryn asked me to get out the Axis and Allies game from the closet.  No winner yet.  We played a single round/iteration today.  She told me she wanted to be Germany and Japan.  It's a good opportunity for some World War II history, although so far Japan has waited for the US to come to them and Germany is doing likewise with the USSR and UK.  I think that's going to work fine for Japan, particularly given the amazing number of sixes I seem capable of rolling and Japan's first round acquisition of super subs.  But I have the strong feeling the Nazis will be eating a lot of borscht in a round or two unless they pull a surprise out of their pointy hats.  I wonder if this will change how they perceive of themselves as baddies (Mitchell and Webb).

We're playing the original version and not the Xeno World at War version which I'm more used to, if you consider "used to" to mean that's the version I played 20 years ago.  A few things trip me up, like not being able to place troops anywhere up to the value of the territory, and how battleships sink after just one hit.

Eryn pondering the board.  The picture is from her new room. Pretty cool that she has enough space to set up a gaming table.


Counting her IPC prior to the horrible attack on Japanese ships by the imperialist Americans.  In their defense, she will attack China first.  They didn't achieve much other than a mutual annihilation of boats, but their focus is shipping bombers to London and aiding in the pincer movement to crush Germany.  So things can coast a little for a while in the East.  Sorry, Ming.  You'll have to rely on the Russians, though they don't seem keen to push outside their own borders.


And this is for Kyle.  This isn't staged.  She did manage to keep it through the round which is more than Bill ever managed to do.  I think she'd have kept it even if I wasn't rusty.  I took the bomber out, so there may be a chance to shut it down next round.  It may be a target for the American planes.

Knee

I biked about 250 miles last month on the trainer.  It was all good until that last ride, and now my left knee hurts.  It seems to hurt in exactly the same spot it hurt prior to the accident after I did an energetic ride, so I can only assume it's not related to my broken hip at all, but a regular old case of strain.  It's not too bad at all, although I took six days off bicycling, and when I go back to it tomorrow, I'll be ratcheting down the speed from 20 mph to something more like 16.  Nice and easy with a bit of Advil and ice.

Just so I have a documentation to compare against next time, left leg, outside of the knee the nobby bit is somewhat tender, and then the knee itself sort of locks a little with an ache, particularly after using the stairs, but not always.  If I sit crosslegged with my right leg resting on the left, the pressure just above the knee translates into a bit of an ache on the top, side and bottom (not under the kneecap proper).  It's not a minor bit of pain when it kicks in, it's more of a quick ramp up that's rather surprisingly in intensity.  The closest comparison I have is a kidney stone without that level of pain.

Interestingly, I had an IT band issue before the accident (that the accident eliminated) and one of the symptoms of a recurring IT band issue seems to be pain that translates to the knee.  I hope it's not coming back.  I remember last time this happened, it was just before spring, and transitioning off the trainer to outside, where the bicycling is a little more varied in pace and on/off the bike happens more frequently, seemed to resolve the problem.  No chance of that for another month, so I'll have to work at keeping it healthy until then.