Harry's Ruminations

Well, after 10 months, I'm right back on the same floor in the same building I was in for 6 years. I'm sharing a 12'x12' office with a boisterous guy, Patrick, and have a terrific view out the window onto "downtown" Lexington (such as it is). This building also shares a parking lot with Del's building, so we don't have to drive to pick one another up. Good all around, though I'm now much farther away from the other guys on the printer I need to be working with.

10pm: Well, I subconsciously forgot for a couple days, then I thought I'd just wait for ______ Just wanted to remember that one. Boring, out-of-context, yet utterly significant.

So, last Fall, I drug my beautiful wife to my 10 year high-school reunion to her great amusement, disgust, indifference, and consternation. This past Memorial Day, it was my turn. Ten year reunions are pretty egotistical things, everyone showing-up in their best (rented) sports-car, displaying the hot wife/husband they caught, and boasting about the great job they're using to climb that ladder of success. Old flames are to be properly derided like a decade-old divorce proceeding. Old social pecking-order is to be re-established, if only for one shining moment of decoration and falsity. Oh, and one's kid is supposed to run around like a maniac and split her lip wide open. Wait that was just us. Quote of the day: Me: "Wow, that was a total trainwreck. Seemed like everyone was having a blast except for us." Bella: "Yep, welcome to my LIFE throughout high school." * * * So yeah, in true type-A fashion, this mighty crew of 20 persons had not only planned ...

or "Man, do I need a swaybar" Six runs on a ~70 second course where you hit 60mph before a 10mph right-hand hairpin. YEEEEEEHAW. It was a good day, except: I came in second, I forgot to pack lunch, and I forgot to pack sunscreen. I've a nice beet-red thing going on on my arms, legs, and face. I think a front swaybar (at minimum) is in my future, if not a full STX-compliant wheel & tire package. I'm a tad tired of playing on (and destroying) my all-seasons. DO WANT:

Let's get this out of the way first: This is an unnecessary movie made solely to bilk folks out of their hard-earned money. It stars an over-the-hill actor (Harrison Ford) and features a contrived plot line with holes like Swiss Cheese. It's also great fun, laugh-out-loud funny in places, well-paced, and genuinely exciting. It doesn't take itself too seriously, since the whole thing feels like National Treasure 2 and 1/2, right down to the treasure map and the hokey history references. In this installment, we find "Doctor Jones", 20 years after his Last Crusade, happily teaching in his tweed jacket after running afoul of the KGB--specifically the mentat Thufir...whoops wrong movie... noted psychic Irina Spalko, played by a sword-wielding Cate Blanchett. A greaser straight out of Brando's Wild Bunch turns-up delivering the suddenly jobless Indiana a treasure map written in a dead pre-Columbian tongue (which, naturally, he and he alone can decipher). Fast...

We had a share-session on Polyglot programming the other day, after Mark returned from SDWest 2008. Tonight, I had an evil thought: Half of these languages are ones most in the audience have neither seen nor played with--what if you added some "trick" language names to the slides to see how full of crap your audience was. It's a play on the same allegory from "The Emperor's New Clothes": "...yes, and so your application logic should be components written in a systems language like java [ sic ], with the higher-level being in a dynamic language like JavaScript, Ruby, or Dimebag." "Dimebag? "Yes, you've surely heard of it! It's a language represented using flickr images manipulated using 4D Holographic gloves that parallelize any algorithm using only 2 lines of code. And it compiles down to machine independent machine code." ... "Oh yeah, I've heard of that. Just testing you." Manager: "Say, could we re...

Link There was one gal who I had a devestating (and persistent!) crush on for 3 years. Never heard from her except when something was broken on her darn computer. She'd flash that megawatt smile, though, and there I was, fixing it again. And hating myself in the morning.