NPR came on the radio, interrupting the classical music on schedule. The story was about an Iraqi man living in the US who took an eight hour buss ride with his wife and sick kid to vote in the absentee Iraq election in Chicago, before riding back another eight hours to get back in time for work at a cereal factory.
Since when does NPR run a story with a positive side on Iraq?
At Mom’s request, Andrew and I had a photo session with his Porsche this morning.
I learned that:
Here’s a photo of Andrew, taken in the office while he was looking up into a florescent light.
He seems to have an inordinate fondness for beetles. —Evolutionary Naturalist J.B.S. Haldane (on God)
And who did He announce the birth of the Messiah to? Poor shepherds, on the outside of town, at night. God is consistently unguessable.
I keep getting addicted to free games. Once I realize I’ve hit the point of madness, I drag the game into the trash bin and empty the trash. Then a week later I pick up another game, and it starts all over again.
Usually, I’m pretty competent at the things I do. (I do things I enjoy, and with enjoyment comes practice, and with practice comes skill.) And I’m fairly good at games. So when I downloaded BzFlag, an online first person tank game, I was just subconsciously expecting to do well. I started out on the bottom of the score list. No surprise there.
But after weeks of playing, I was still at the bottom of the score list. I stank. I would get killed three or four times before even getting a shot off. I’d press the home key, to look at stats and my accuracy would be the lowest in the server.
This much skillessness was unheard of. I couldn’t stand seeing “Brains”, my game nickname on the bottom of the list all the time. I did something I have never done since I first played online - I changed my nickname. “Wallace” was what I came up with, and as “Wallace”, I continued to dominate last place.
Until three days ago. With no warning, I found myself in second place. Then several times I’ve been on top of the score list.
Then randomly, I’m back to doing poorly. Oh well, the change was nice for a while.
As an experiment, I’m starting a seperate blog for personal stuff.
My sister has too much fun posting on her blog. I find out about her shopping, her stories, and trips I’m about to take but don’t know about yet. I, however, have kept to technical subjects (with occasional photos) on Braino.org. Web sites have a way of taking on a personality of thier own and being intractable to changes. Braino is great for the world at large, but sometimes I just want to post on things that won’t fit there.
I won’t announce this personal blog for awhile, since I don’t know if it yet another passing fad. One of the secrets of apparent success is to do lots of stuff, and only talk about the things that turn out well.
Mom and Elizabeth bought twenty four Nancy Drew novels (among other things) on a shopping trip today. Looking through the stack, I asked why they had purchased books 1 to 12 and 44 through 56. Mom matter-of-factly replied from the kitchen, “That was all they had.”
Our family does things all the way.
The dear old Mercedes is now up to 230,000 miles and counting.
Ruby is a subtle language. If you come to it after mastering another language like Perl or Java, it’s easy to write Ruby code that looks a lot like the code you used to write in your previous language. Now, writing code that way won’t take any longer than it would’ve taken in your previous language. But if you decide to become another disciple in the burgeoning Ruby cult, you’ll have a lot to gain by absorbing the various Ruby idioms. You’ll write clearer code in less time, and you’ll write less of it while accomplishing as much as you had before
A recommended read.