Terebi II

April 11, 2001

Overhead For Article Posting

On Terebi II I noted that the speed with which I could post an article seemed to influence how long my articles were. I.e., since this weblog experiences a lot of latencies due to server overload and whatnot, it is more trouble than it is worth to post a short article.

So I tried timing posting this article. The first two times, the browser timed out after 2:32 and 2:07 respectively. I'm timing this post, and will post an addendum with that time after completing the initial posting. To be fair, I'm not including the time taken to enter the article.

Okay, the timings are over. To post this article to the site, not counting in time to enter the article, cost me a total of 5:45! Crikey! On the other hand, posting to Terebi II using the same rules, cost all of 50 seconds. So guess where I'll be posting most of my shorter articles now?

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:29 AM

April 06, 2001

Spring Classes

Jean was out last night attending the orientation session for her Spring Telecourse. She's taking a biology course which consists of around 26 audio lectures (on tape) and six televised presentations. But she has to show up in a physical classroom to take the exams, and last night to find out what the class was about she went in to PCC. I'm looking forward to seeing how this 'remote' course works out.

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:22 AM

PS2 First Impressions

I spent around a half hour last night fiddling with Bust A Groove
2. On the face of it, a very simple game. I won't go into details, but the goal is to match button presses on the controller to the beat of the music (in 4/4 time). Press the arrow keys on the left of the controller during the first three beats (as directed by the game), then a symbol key from the right side of the controller on the fourth beat (again as directed by the game). Miss the beat/keypress synchronization and your dance character actually stumbles! Keep up, and your character rewards you with smooth moves "qbullet.smiley". Given my extreme lack of
coordination, it will be a long time before I get my game characters
dancing smoothly.

I didn't try Tomb Raider III at all yet, since Kelly was upstairs by herself and I didn't want to completely abandon her. I played the Onimusha demo, and I have to admit that the graphics of a game coded directly for PS2 are much smoother than those in the games I bought, which are both coded to PS One standards.

Why was Kelly alone upstairs, you ask? Subject of the next article "qbullet.smiley".

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:45 AM

April 05, 2001

New Review Up!

Well, it took me a couple of months to finish it (okay, three), but my
review of Megami
Kouhosei is finished. I published it last night on
Terebi II,
since Weblogs.com was down for
Spring Cleaning. But I've moved it here now, and it's called "Top Gundam"!

Posted by dpwakefield at 03:18 PM

Tea-time on the Titanic

Gah! I'm going down! I've got more fun things to do than I can possibly
make time for!

In addition to the microscope, the PS2, the monthly subscriptions to Scientific American and Atlantic Monthly, the weekly subscription to New Scientist (I've given up all pretense of keeping up with those), the ReplayTV and my self-paced study of Haskell (and let's not forget that Spring is here, and the roads are drying up enough for me to try taking out the bike again), I've got another distraction coming up!

Recall that I've been studying functional programming for a short while, really only taking a couple hours a week, using the Haskell programming language as a launching point. Over time I've formed a (weak) opinion that Haskell is not suited to the performance intensive applications that I tend to work on.

So I have been casting around for a candidate, and I think that Objective Caml (Ocaml for short) is a good enough choice. Where Haskell is a 'pure, non-strict, functional language', Ocaml is an 'impure, strict functional language with imperative features'. So there is enough orthogonality to make things interesting, especially considering that the syntax of the two is so different. Moreover, Ocaml has won first and second place in last year's Functional Programming Languages contest (I forget the official name).

But it is an academic language, so documentation is usually of the form "if you understand the language, this documentation will make perfect sense." Not a lot of help for an outsider. So I ordered the only book on Ocaml in the English language (it's designers are French professors). And it arrived today! Gah!

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:54 PM

Timesink Ahoy!

When I left this morning on my errand to fetch a microscope, I knew that
I'd be passing Toys'r'Us on my return
trip, and that they'd be open by the time I got into their
neighborhood. So I jotted down their number and took my cellphone
along.

Why? Because Amazon and Toys'r'Us have been in a partnership offering Playstation 2 bundles (overpriced packages with three games I didn't want) for sale online for months now. But they've mostly been 'out of stock', and when they do get them in stock, they sell out in seconds to minutes. The last few days, however, they have had them in stock and not run out.

So I decided that the PS2 pipeline must finally be filled. On the way back from getting the microscope, I called Toys'r'Us and asked if they had them, and the saleswoman answered in a very matter-of-fact voice, "sure do." Yowza! So I swung by and bought one. As I was dropping the microscope off at home anyway, I just stopped in and set up the PS2 too. Then on the way to work, I stopped at Fry's and picked up:

• A ten-foot extension cord for the controller
• An 8Mb memory card for saving game settings
• Tomb Raider III (older PS One game, but fun)
• Bust A Groove 2 (still PS One, but one I really wanted)
• Free, non-playable demo of Onimusha

I took a pass on Oni, since I'd played the demo on my iBook, and found it less interesting than I'd thought, and at $50 bucks, I wasn't sure I wanted to dig deeper to see if it was better than the demo. What I'm really waiting for is Black and White. According to this article, the graphics look great on a souped-up PC, and lame on a Playstation, but the gameplay is the same on both, and that's what I'm waiting for!

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:04 PM

Welcome Back!

Terebi is back online after a twenty-four hour hiatus. It seems that the servers for www.weblogs.com were overloaded, and had tons of old cruft on them. Userland took them down for "Spring Cleaning".

Fortunately, I didn't have all that much to say, so I wasn't choked out of my venue. But from now on, if Terebi goes down, try Terebi II, which is an experimental weblog I'm trying out on my ISP's website.

I have a couple of minor news items today, which I'll post as time permits. See ya!

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:44 AM

Fantastic Voyage

I took a half-day off this morning in order to meet with Marv Bielsky at
Stoller Middle School. Marv is a retired science teacher who now runs
his own small business, Scientific Instrument Service and
Repair. He travels around the region repairing and calibrating
scales, microscopes, telescopes and the like. As a sideline he rebuilds
used microscopes, sells them for $100, and donates the money to
charities.

It was under the last heading that I was to meet with him. I agreed to buy a standard high-school grade microscope from him for Jean's birthday (and for Kelly to share, under supervision). The catch is that he is based in Vancouver Washington, and travels all the time. So I had to meet him at a school where he was working. Stoller Middle School is way the heck north of where I live or work, but it was the closest he was likely to get, so I made the trip.

I've got the microscope now, it is a standard 4X, 10X, 40X with a 10X wide-field eyepiece. It is really sturdy, and gives tons better results than the plastic telescope Jean bought for Kelly for Christmas. The difference is like night and day. Marv said that if we had bought a new microscope of similar quality it would have come to $500. So it was worth the trip.

While I was there, I found out that Marv doesn't just do technical instrument repair. In the summer, he lives in Montana, where he runs his own business as a fishing guide. Interesting guy.

Posted by dpwakefield at 12:31 AM

April 02, 2001

April Idiots

Yes, I have a sense of humor, albeit a weird one. But I generally have no patience for the phenomenon known as 'April Fools'. Least of all on the Internet, where I am subjected to a blizzard of inane jokes masquerading as news items on various sites. "April Fools! Hah hah, that sure was funny!"

It's not that I fall for them. I don't. Most of them are transparent, and the rest only require a little careful reading, and I'm constantly amazed at the prats who dive right into the hoax and are completely fooled ("no man, I was just going along with the joke, that's it"). So for two or three days I have to wade through a bunch of moronic and pointless 'humor' to get to the normal gems I come to these sites for. Well, the pipe will be cleared soon, grump, grump.

We now return you to your regular broadcast day.

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:20 AM

March 30, 2001

Wings of Cotton

I give Kelly her bath as often as Jean does, and it was last night that I realized that Kelly and I had more or less drifted into a post-bath ritual. After the wash, she climbs out dripping, as I stretch the towel out behind her like wings.

Kelly backs into the towel, and I wrap her in it, enclosing my arms around her. Then I pick her up into my lap, and I hug her dry. My shirt and pants usually get wet, but that doesn't matter.

I don't know which of us enjoys this ritual more.

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:26 PM

March 29, 2001

Sharp Lifestyle

This is my day to catch up on posts, it seems. Jean and I went out on
Tuesday afternoon, before picking up Kelly from daycare, and
visited Sears, with an eye to replacing our ailing microwave. Before we
left for Vegas, Jean detected a funny plasticky smell, and assumed it
was the microwave. So we got an older back-up model out of the closet
and began using it, with the intention of shopping for a new one when we
got back from our trip.

After we got back, Kelly and Jean went to bed early, and I was futzing around in the kitchen in the dark. I looked for the light switch over the stove, and hit the fan switch by accident instead. I immediately heard a strained humming, but no air movement. I got the light on, and popped the filter off the hood over the stove. Out of the hood fell a strip of wood, looking somewhat beat up. The fan started to creak around. Turns out that the dang thing was jammed by the strip of wood stuck between the blades!

So my new operating hypothesis is that the smell that Jean detected was coming from the fan. Coincidentally, our back-up microwave decided to stop working just then, so I plugged in our main, supposedly broken microwave and tried it out. No funny smell. Jean agrees that it might be okay, but with no back-up microwave, and the fact that we hardly ever use the stove, we agreed to make this microwave the backup, and buy a new one.

So we made it to Sears, and found the microwaves just fine. We looked them over and narrowed it down to a couple of models. One of them, a Sharp (our current one is also a Sharp), had a metallic finish (burnished aluminum such as you see in professional kitchens) and it really appealed to me. By this time there was a sales lady hovering around asking if she could help us. Jean asked if there was any unit I liked, and I said "that one. I want that one. Let's get it now." "qbullet.smiley"

Jean was dumbfounded. She said later that she'd never seen me react to an appliance that way before. But I was adamant. I wanted that microwave, and said so in no uncertain terms. So what did the sales lady do? She started giving us a sales pitch! "This feature is fun. Just enter a number and punch this button..." "Uh huh," I said. "We'll take it."

"I think you'll really like it. Look at what else it can do..." This went on through three or four exchanges, with me always saying the equivalent of "can I buy the damn thing already?" But she was a sales bot, determined to walk nonchalantly through her sales brochure, pertaining to the sales of microwaves, Sharp brand.

Finally she agreed to actually find the model for us in the warehouse, and it turned out that they'd have to order one, not available until mid-April. At this point I was unwilling to negotiate the sales bot routine on yet another model, so I just said "please order it for us, then." I believe that the microwave we have will last at least that long, so cross your fingers. Oh, by the way, did you know you can now scramble eggs in a microwave?!! "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 05:14 PM

Viva Las Vegas

Last night I fired up Napster and
searched for "Viva Las Vegas" (as sung by Elvis Presley). When I
searched on Elvis Presley, I found nothing. Those RIAA filters
are working overtime. So I searched on 'Viva Las Vegas' and got
tons of matches. I found one accredited to 'Elsiv Presley', and
downloaded it. Sure enough it was Elvis. Guess those filters aren't up
to snuff just yet.

Anyway, what prompted this sojourn was that I wanted to commemorate the trip to Vegas by playing the song for Jean and Kelly. Maybe I'll buy the album some day, but to be frank, I'm not that big an Elvis fan. If the RIAA would get off their butts and sell songs online ala carte, I might be interested, but they are a bunch of crooks and cheats, so I Napstered this one (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of calling them crooks as I download a bootleg of Elvis).

My memory betrayed me again, as I recalled the opening bars following a sort of brisk samba pace, "dot dot Dot, dot da-Dot-da-da". But when I actually played it, it was much livelier, almost manic, "da-da-Da-da-da-Dadada", practically twice as fast as I'd remembered it.

I told Jean that I was downloading it, and she looked at me with a "are you crazy" look while saying "okaaaaay." I asked what the big deal was, and told her I just wanted to play the song for her and Kelly, and she said "OH, the song! I thought you were downloading the MOVIE!" "There's a movie?" I said. More cluelessness from Daddy Wakefield.

Today I drove Jean to see Dr. Ma, the opthalmic specialist she sees due to her eye problems (no problems today, just a regular check-up, which went okay). I had to drive because she was going to get her pupils dilated enough to park an SUV in, and couldn't drive back home herself. So after we returned, and before I went on to work, I played the song for her. She agreed that it was pretty manic, and noted that Ann-Margret was in the movie.

This is important mainly because Ann-Margret has a body of work in musicals where she dances in the most frantic manner imaginable, and Jean pointed out that this song would definitely kick that style into overdrive. As I was leaving for work, she said that Ann-Margret was a "hysterical seductress". I laughed nearly half-way to work.

Posted by dpwakefield at 04:46 PM

The Agony and the Ecstasy

The other evening I was having dinner, and Kelly had not yet eaten. For
the record, I had (among other stuff) some 'baked beans' which were
homemade, from Great Northern beans, by Jean. I also had some homemade
whole wheat bread sticks.

As I ate, I asked Kelly if she was hungry yet. She said no, and I told her to bear in mind that 'the kitchen closes at 7:30 pm.' This is a rule in our house to curtail foot-dragging come bedtime. So Kelly wandered over to see what I was eating. I offered her a fork-full of beans, and she wrinkled her nose.

If that was all she'd done, that would be the end of this note. But she cranked herself up and began a rant, purely for dramatic effect:

Eww! That's disgusting! I can't believe you're eating that! I think I'm gonna be sick, yuck!

This rant is notable because it is the same one I give her, whenever catch her putting paper into her mouth, especially tissue. It really does gross me out, but I add a lot of drama because it seems to give her pleasure. So here she is doing the same thing to me, over beans.

After a short while, I finished a mouthful of beans and reached for the bread stick. I took a bite, and offered the end to her. Kelly walked up, looked at it for a moment, and then said "that looks appetizing." My five-year old daughter just flashes on the most adult phrasing sometimes. So Kelly had mostly bread sticks for dinner. "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 04:00 PM

March 27, 2001

An Entirely Personal Reference

I've linked to Greg Knauss' An Entirely Other Day before (see "In the Name of Halloween..."), and I think that time too was one which had more personal impact than general humor. Still, I gotta inflict this one on you, as it had me stifling chuckles for a whole minute.

The Harlan Ellison references will be lost on you if you didn't grow up reading his early belligerant stuff, as I did, and of course it's these references which got me chuckling.

I stumbled across this one while reading Kottke.org. He pointed to it and I followed. I don't read Greg Knauss' site regularly, but I should. EOD is sort of like a fortune cookie for the weird, or Suburban Snot-nosed Humor on Steroids. Perhaps I'll put it on my regular link rotation

Posted by dpwakefield at 01:52 PM

March 26, 2001

Picture == 1024 words

Do you think pictures capture memories in a way that eludes the mind? After a decade, many events have completely left my fragile braincase, and it is not uncommon for Jean to go into intricate detail describing some event which for the life of me I cannot recall. If she'd taken a picture, would it have lasted longer?

I've got a digital camera, a geek toy really, which I use when the mood suits me, or when a holiday arrives. Lucky for you I don't use it more often. But the point I guess I'm trying to make, is if a picture is worth a thousand words, why don't I take more pictures?

I just realized that what makes this weblog work for me is that I don't think in pictures. I think in words, inner monologues, sometimes inner dialogues. Images figure into things, and when I need to diagram some complex interaction, I'll draw something or visualize it. But I don't visualize life. I write my novel in real time, with words, well chosen or otherwise.

That's probably why I've been so taken with this web logging phenomenon. I've always been an avid reader, and even though parenthood has taken my book consumption down an order of magnitude, I'm always reading something. Now I'm frequently writing something as well. Will it clear up that foggy window into the past ten years hence? No, it won't embed my memories any more firmly, but I'll be able to browse the words the way some folks browse photo albums, and since words are my sea, I'll swim here more readily.

Posted by dpwakefield at 05:31 PM

March 25, 2001

Trip Report

Well, we're back from Las Vegas, and the threatened back spasm didn't happen, at least not yet. We had a great time, and I took a couple of hours to jot down my impressions of the trip, recorded in "Las Vegas Diary".

Posted by dpwakefield at 09:52 PM

Las Vegas Diary

Las Vegas Pilgrimage

We are back from our vacation, a mere four day jaunt to the desert climes of Las Vegas. No horrors occurred, many experiences were had, and in general, everybody had a good time. Jean realized her dream of taking a vacation with the family for the first time since Kelly was a little baby. Kelly had great fun greeting many strangers, and cleaned up in the souvenir department. For my part, I sought out the two or three gems in the trip which would distinguish it from a tourist junket.

This then is my 'diary'. It wasn't written on the trip, or it would fill several dozen more paragraphs than exist here. Instead, highlights, impressions and stream-of-consciousness reign freely. I'll do my best to recall all the interesting items from my point of view. Jean and Kelly will have to write their own accounts if they want to be heard "qbullet.smiley".

The trip down was uneventful, and anybody who has travelled anywhere at all can 'insert experience here'. I'll just observe that we had no traffic on the way to the airport worth worrying about, and we made our flight with plenty of time. With Spring Break commencing, the plane was full, but no drunken rabble rousers were on board, so it was a pleasant flight. That said, let us commence with my diary, or Las Vegas: Carnival of the Senses "qbullet.smiley".

The Arrival

Anyone who has been to Las Vegas by plane knows that as you enter the terminal you begin your acclimatization to the world of chance. Before we even left the gate, we heard the sound of bells, chimes, ratcheting gears and computer bleeps. As we disembarked our eyes were assaulted with the flashing lights of slot machines, arrayed in the center of the concourse. Welcome to Vegas, indeed.

We claimed our luggage after a brief amount of difficulty, then caught the shuttle to the hotel, The Orleans, themed after New Orleans, as you might guess. Every hotel has a gimmick in Las Vegas, from mimicking the New York skyline, to reproducing the canals of Venice. In our case, every day was Fat Tuesday, as Kelly seemed to accumulate cheap plastic beads and necklaces (some with faux crawfish attached) faster than she could break them.

As we walked into the hotel, our senses were assaulted again. This time, in addition to the chorus of slot machines clamoring for attention, there was another sense assaulted: smell. In Nevada, they seem not to have discovered the 'no smoking' laws. Yuck! Many was the time during our trip that I traversed the casino barely able to keep my eyes open. And there are people who sit in that casino for hours on end, pushing buttons, pulling cranks, feeding quarters, shuffling cards, and breathing, breathing, breathing smoke. First hand, second hand, thick, thin, omnipresent. We had a no-smoking room, and it smelled of smoke. As I write this, all our clothes are undergoing a rigorous washing. When I finish this, I will undergo a rigorous washing.

Another complaint, while I'm whingeing. The water was rather unpleasant tasting. If I hadn't needed to rehydrate frequently to deal with the desert air, I'd have found some other way to imbibe fluids. Since the hotel had on the order of five bars, I could easily have pickled myself. Instead, I chose to drink lots of pop. That might not have been healthy, but the water certainly drove me to it.

The final culture shock was the presence of a sales tax! I know, in most states, that is the norm, but I've gotten so used to living in Oregon, and venturing outside of the state so infrequently, that I constantly had to correct my expectations during purchases to factor in the sales tax. Okay, enough culture shock, on to the trip...

Thursday

Here we have a not-too-interesting day. We checked into the hotel around noon, but had to wait around until three to get our ostensibly no-smoking room. So we wandered the casino, watching people play the various machines and games available. I was interested to see that the roulette tables were manned by no less than three employees. One ran the wheel, one was the croupier, and a third kept a running tally of activity on a clipboard. Is this normal? I don't know.

Eventually we got our room and unpacked. Kelly immediately began clamoring for a trip to the hotel pool, so Jean and I escorted her outside for her swim. I wasn't in the mood for swimming, indeed I had not packed a swimsuit. Jean was too tired to go paddling about either.

But Kelly dove in, and began her routine, which was to continue all weekend, of greeting any and everyone. She is so extroverted that I don't know who her actual parents are, since Jean and I are both introverts. I think she may have gotten it from my own mother, who was also an extreme extrovert. This went on all through the weekend, and was a constant source of amusement to me.

After the swim we checked out one of the restaurants in the hotel, of which there were several, and more being built. The one we chose was called Bones, and was a barbeque ribs joint. Given that it might surprise you that we ordered pizza (for Jean and Kelly) and a fish fry for me. I dunno, I'm just not into ribs. In any case, after dinner, we just rambled about for awhile, let Kelly play some games in the local arcade, then retired to our room to read books and prepare for bed.

Friday

Friday saw our first day on the 'Strip'. We concentrated mainly on the South end of the Strip, or Las Vegas Boulevard, as it is officially labelled. The owner of The Orleans also owns two other hotels, The Gold Coast and The Barbary Coast. The Orleans and The Gold Coast are off the strip by about a mile, but shuttles are available between the three hotels, so you can catch the shuttle to the Barbary Coast and find yourself on the Strip without blowing a ton on cab fare.

So we grabbed a shuttle and hit the Strip. Initially we wanted to hit the MGM Grand, but we knew Kelly would not be able to walk the length of the Strip, which runs over two miles. So we hunted around for the fabled monorail, which covers a large stretch of the Strip. We found out that it starts at Bally's, and runs directly to the MGM Grand. This has the effect of partitioning the Strip into a North and South end, with a hazy middle which we never visited.

Before discovering the monorail at Bally's, we had to wander around in the immediate area of the Barbary Coast, passing through Bally's, Paris and a few other places we didn't catch the name of. This jumbled journey had the effect of baptizing us in the sometimes gaudy, sometimes exotic, sometimes highbrow atmosphere of Las Vegas. By the time we had found the monorail, we had seen at least three distinct architectural styles and three different casino layouts, each attempting to lure and entrap the passing gambler.

Indeed, the architecture of the various casinos was quite reminiscent of Disney World, where a great deal of 'crowd engineering' is expended to shape the visitor experience, and ensorcel the visitor into staying and spending a few more dollars. In the case of the monorail, each endpoint of the monorail had only one exit, through a lengthy mall under the destination hotel. You simply had to walk past each and every store in the mall to get out of the depths into the casino proper, then you had to cross the greater portion of the casino to hit the street.

To get to the point, we found our monorail, travelled to the MGM Grand, and walked out into the street. Our destination was the Excalibur, partly because Kelly thought the building looked like Disneyland, and partly because I wanted to check out the Tournament of Kings, which is the nightly dinner tournament, where each table in the restaurant has a champion knight, who defends the table's honor on the field of battle--a jousting field, that is. Unfortunately, I got sticker shock when I found out it was $40 per person, so we didn't go this time. Next time, I've sworn to save the entrance fee out of my own allowance before we go, so Kelly and I can have a chance to cheer on the King of England, or some other notable, in battle.

After that, we went back to the MGM Grand and had lunch at the Rain Forest Cafe, which attempts to mimic an actual rainforest, in a lowbudget Disney sort of way. Kelly was fascinated by the animatronic gorillas, and the real 'rain' coming out of the ceiling, as well as the jungle mist. I had the 'plant sandwich', which Kelly had the Jurassic Chicken Strips (shaped like dinosaurs). I confess I can't remember what Jean ate. Afterwards we made our way back to the Orleans, since we'd expended a lot of time in figuring out the shuttle and monorail system, and we wanted to get back and prepare for the evening.

Here's where the vacation turned into a hegira of sorts. Jean has over the last few years had an interest in the comedian Jerry Lewis. She is fascinated with the public/private dichotomy, and interested in his history and development as an artist. So she was immediately taken by the notion of seeing him live when the travel agent offered her a hotel package at the Orleans which included a show with him.

The big problem was what to do with Kelly. We knew that no matter how captivating Jerry Lewis might be, Kelly would tire of him before the show was over, and we'd have to leave. It turns out that the Orleans has a child care facility which is really very well equipped, having a play structure, a small movie theatre, snack area, Nintendo game consoles, and on and on. I checked it out that afternoon, and encouraged Jean to try it out. So that evening we dropped Kelly off at Kid Tyme, with Jean experiencing every motherly pang in the book. While Jean was asking one of the caretakers another anxious question, I watched Kelly enter the play area. She ran into the open space with her arms held high, shouting "hello friends! I'm here!"

So I told Jean to stop worrying, and off we went. We were seated in the theatre for about half an hour before the show started. I don't want to give a blow-by-blow account of the show. I'll just observe that both Jean and I had a great time, and there were moments when I couldn't stop laughing. Most of the time was more low key, and it was apparent that Jerry Lewis was beginning to feel his age. The routines were chosen with a 75-year old comedian in mind, and every few routines, he stopped and showed a 'classic moment' from his career on a large video screen, which we decided was artfully arranged to give him a chance to catch his breath.

Finally the evening was over, the show having run around two hours. We went to collect Kelly, and she had to be called three times before she finally showed up. It turns out she had had a great time, and had finally come to the conclusion that Las Vegas was a really great place "qbullet.smiley".

Saturday

Saturday saw us exploring the North Strip in a more thorough manner. We spent the better part of the day in a single hotel/casino: Caesar's Palace. Here we spent a lot of time walking around two malls, though they were called the Forum and the Agora. Kelly's high point this day was a visit to F.A.O Schwarz, a three-story toy store filled with stuffed animals, Pokemon and every other manner of toy on this earth. We did not get out of there easily, though we managed to do it fairly cheaply, buying her a stuffed animal for a mere $14.

After our visit to the toy store, we went to the central market to await the latest gimmick, talking statues. More animatronic fun, these told a story of the fall of Atlantis, and by the end it was clear that they were shilling for a 3-D simulator ride about Atlantis. Kelly actually backed into a store at one point because the thunder and flames were getting too scarey for her. I gotta give it to her, she knows her own limits well.

We wrapped up our time in Caesar's Palace with a visit to their food court, which was actually not any more diverse than the usual mall food court in Oregon. But the food was good, and tasted better for our having worn ourselves out. After buying a few souvenirs (Caesar's Palace hats in my case), we headed back to our hotel.

Finally, on our way back, I had one of those magic moments. I got to see a 3-card monte game in the wild. I've seen them on television, complete with explanations of all the mechanics of the game, but this is the first time I've actually seen the con in progress. Once I heard the shill and the conman doing their patter, I looked up, and spotted the lookouts at either end of the block. It was really cool. I pointed it out to Jean, and another pedestrian commented on how there were better ways to lose money in Las Vegas.

Miscellaneous Observations

It may just be the effect of the monorail but it feels as if 'the Strip' is clustered around a North and a South Strip, with not so much in the middle. Looking over the map, I certainly don't feel there are as many recognizable names centered as at the ends. So for us, the drill of shuttle & walk & monorail may have been the most effective way of seeing Las Vegas.

As much as the architecture was responsible for crowd engineering, so too was the ample availability of rich food, the constant smoke, easy alcohol, and skimpily clothed waitresses part of the gambling infrastructure. They each existed as distractions, and helped to reduce the judgement of the players, making the house the easy winner in many more instances.

I discovered a new variation on the game of poker, which seems to exist mainly to complicate matters. It's called Paigow Poker, and requires each player to play two hands at once, a five-card and a two-card hand, where the five-card hand must be arranged in such a way that it beats the two-card hand held by the same player, using the regular poker rules. What follows is an image of some of the rules for Pai Gow Poker:

Here's a list of some of the hotel/casinos missed this trip which we'd like to see if we ever go back: the Venetian, Treasure Island, The Mirage, Harrah's.

The Trip Home

Sunday was almost entirely a travel day (and a recovery day once home). So in actuality you could call this a three day junket. We left the hotel early in the morning, and as we were waiting for our shuttle to the airport, a man approached us, seemingly friendly and casual, and commented about luck and winning. Then he leaned over Kelly, and thrust $10 into her hand. He said, "do you know who St. Gabriel is? The blessed St. Gabriel? That's me." At this time hotel security came rushing over and hustled the guy away, and we gave the $10 to them. We don't want to encourage Kelly into accepting money from strangers.

Jean clearly had had enough with Las Vegas' tobacco fascination. As we entered the airport, we approached the security gates where our belongings would be scanned in the X-ray machine. Jean looked at the lines for each gate, then said "let's take the non-smoking security gate." Of course there's no such thing, Jean had just seen an airport sign admonishing 'no smoking' just before the sign directing her to the security gates, and conflated the two. But I wish there really had been one "qbullet.smiley".

A sign of the big city is that the men's and women's restrooms each had needle deposit boxes for used needles. I don't think I've ever seen that at the Portland airport.

I felt slightly nostalgic for my youth when I was walking down a corridor to the gate and saw a young guy, shaved head and sunglasses, backpack at this feet, lying full out on the carpeted floor to one side of the corridor catching a nap before his next flight. He seemed to be able to sleep quite comfortably as people walked by not two feet away.

On the flight home, Kelly shared a theory with us. It seems that the left side of plane is for homebound travellers, while the right is reserved for visitors to the plane's destination. She came to this conclusion because when we were riding down to Vegas, we rode on the right side of the plane, and returning, we were on the left side. I can't find any fault with her reasoning!

So now we are home. The laundry has run several cycles, and I'm typing up my impressions before they fade. Sorry if this isn't very coherent, but it catches the way I feel anyway. Will we go back? Possibly, but before that I want to see the Oregon coast again, and Jean thinks a trip to Vancouver is in order too.

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:34 PM

March 21, 2001

Gambling Trip

In short succession I've had the stomach flu, a cold, and periodontal
surgery, the healing of which has taken about twice as long as last
time, so on the eve of our flight to Las Vegas, for what Jean terms our
first real vacation since
Kelly was born (no, Moyer Family Reunions don't count), it is only fitting that I should be receiving warnings
from my back of a potential spasm. I was getting water at the coffee
station this morning when I felt the first twinges, and since then I've
had that 'sensitive' feeling in a band about the lower third of my
ribcage which often warns of worse to come.

So even though we intend to do no gambling on our trip to Las Vegas, we will in fact be doing just that. Most of our heavier luggage now comes on wheels with a long handle, so Jean can take charge of that, and I won't have to heroically horse unwieldy bags around the airport. But the exigencies of travel often stress the body, and I think sitting in the airplane seat alone could trigger an onset if the flight to Las Vegas wasn't so short. In any case, I'll be taking a very hot bath tonight and every night on the trip, which often helps the muscles, and I'll be packing Alleve in the suitcase.

Posted by dpwakefield at 03:57 PM

March 19, 2001

Get Out The Vote

Just can't get enough of that democracy "qbullet.smiley"! Saturday was
"NOVA"'s annual elections, and I actually had a lot of fun. I took tons
of pictures, which eventually got culled down to 12 which I published on
the web. Three of my friends are officers for a year. Poor blokes!

After the meeting, since nobody had had a chance to go out and get something to eat (we were all waiting on the results, which were held up because there was a tie between the two Prexy candidates, and one of them had gone to Kinokuniya's to buy Japanese comics "qbullet.smiley"), we went to Carrow's restaurant. As it turns out, this is the regular gathering place for several "NOVA" members after a meeting. I never knew this, because Tom, Alan, James, John and I typically either take in a movie or go to Tom's apartment to watch more anime or Hong Kong Kung Fu flix.

As we began showing up, it soon became clear that there were going to be over twenty people from "NOVA" showing up to eat. We ended up getting the 'banquet room', and constructing a makeshift round table out of the various small tables in the room. I ordered the meatloaf sandwich, and wore my plastic insert to cover the spot in my palette from which the skin graft for my periodontal surgery was taken. It worked fine, and I had fun chatting with various members. By the time I had eaten and paid, it was 11 pm. I got to bed around 11:45.

Posted by dpwakefield at 04:49 PM

Age of Dinosaurs

Kelly watched one of Jean's biology shows yesterday evening, and we have evidence that it sank in. As Jean was driving Kelly to Kid Connection today, Kelly asked her if she knew how the dinosaurs died. Jean said "how?" Kelly replied:

"Because red hot lava came pouring out of Russia, and killed a lot of them. Then, when they thought it was over, a giant meteor came crashing down and killed the rest of them, and only tiny animals were able to survive, and they were mammals, and they had teeth, and they changed until they became us, and the world changed until it's like you see it today." So there "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 03:38 PM

March 17, 2001

BiWebual

I'm experimenting with a weblogging package called Greymatter. The author is Noah Grey, so the package name is actually a pun. How it works is that it is a suite of Perl programs, which run as scripts on a web server (called CGI programs). I got Alan, the owner of Agora to enable cgiwrap, and installed the scripts. So now I'm writing in two weblogs. If you are one of my friends reading this weblog, be sure to check out the other one as well.

Jean has just handed me a pile of check balancing to do, so I'll post more later.

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:59 AM

We're Back!

After several days of monkeying with the Radio Userland "Mirror to Manila" feature, and discovering that it simply couldn't do what I wanted, I've switched the site back to News Items mode. And like a bad dream, all the intervening posts have gone away!

I'll be fiddling with style sheets over the coming weeks, but dont' worry, until this site is shut down by Dave, who has been generous with his servers for far too long already, I'll keep posting news and thoughts. Take care!

Posted by dpwakefield at 09:20 AM

Farewell to Flippy Pages

Well I'll be. Yesterday survived! Apparently, RU only wipes the day in which it is posting. So this experiment was worth something, I'm just not sure what, since I'd like to be able to interleave posting methods in the same day. With true mirroring, that'd probably work. Oh well, having found this out, I'll now try to switch back to News Items mode...   7:54:20 AM

Just flipped the home page, now I'm making a post via RU mirroring. Watch all of yesterday's posts go bye bye!   7:51:01 AM

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:45 AM

March 16, 2001

Farewell to Flippy Pages

Another Post

Support for adding individual articles in Flippy Pages is also limited (just another random post).

Nothing Here

This is my last day of using Flippy Pages. Or rather, I'm going to do one more experiment before switching back to News Items mode. Here is the experiment:

Post via forms for the whole day (just disposable posts). Tomorrow, flip the page, and post only via RU mirroring. See if the flipped page survives. I'm guessing no.

In any case, there is a high probability that I'll be switching back by Sunday. Take care...

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:59 AM

March 15, 2001

Do Not Taunt Flippy Pages

As I suspected, simply changing the formatting of the RU weblog template didn't prevent it from overwriting entries made via the forms interface. This is disappointing, since the only real attraction to using the RU weblog is that I could compose and store a series of posts on my iBook offline, then mirror them to Terebi. When not near my laptop, I'd still be able to use convenient desktop machines to post via forms.

Given this fact, I think I'll be reverting to the News Items format soon. And since there is no advantage to using Radio Userland to post interactively to Terebi, I'll probably stop using it until Dave Winer makes it a condition of having Terebi on his servers. Then I'll most likely switch over to Terebi II.   8:20:04 PM

This morning I posted an article to Terebi via the Web forms interface. Now I'll post an article from the Radio Userland 'mirror to Manila' interface. I fully expect the forms-based entry to disappear.   7:50:22 PM

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:15 AM

March 14, 2001

Daily Topics Are Weird

Qouted in whole so that I can follow the links and read his article tomorrow at work during long compiles "qbullet.smiley".

I just wrote a story on the XML-RPC site with four sample scripts, that show you how to edit a Manila site's home page using SOAP. Here's a quote from Scripting News:

"We'd like to see two specific projects come from this. An editor that runs on Unix, perhaps emacs or vi, that through Apache, allows a user to create and edit stories and update the home page of a Manila site in the same natural way that Radio works with Manila. The other project is to write a .NET application that allows the CLR to be a great editor for Manila text in the same way...



"All you'll have to do is emulate the functionality in other scripting environments. Then we'll have a very important kind of interop, between writers on all these platforms."

It's important to note that you can do this with XML-RPC too. You're not tied to SOAP. The RPC interface to Manila is identical, no matter which protocol you decide to use.

4:25:22 PM   
   10:04:30 PM

Terebi II

By the way, stop by Terebi II and let me know what you think of it. It's in super-duper beta mode, and will probably change a lot in the next few weeks, but it may be the replacement for this weblog sometime in the future.   9:56:16 PM

Best Andromeda Line

Okay, Buffy is in reruns, so I have to refer to another 'guilty pleasure' show, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. There is a character, Trance, who plays her role like a ditz, but is allowed to transcend that stereotype to embody a different one. The main character, Captain Dylan Hunt, realizes that she is clairvoyant, and lets her pick the escape route in the most recent episode. Unfortunately she picks a dead end.

Hunt: I thought you were clairvoyant.
Trance: Well... That's the thing about guessing, 90% of the time, it's 50-50

   9:51:29 PM

Well, one thing has gotten better. I found a hint by one Slyvain Carlyle, suggesting that the template for formatting within RU was messing up the template for formatting in Terebi. Delete the table row and data tags, they said. So I did, and it appears to have worked!

I'll keep struggling with this model for a little while, but I'm also working on a parallel weblog on my ISP's servers, using Perl scripts and CGI, called Greymatter. It's a pretty cool tool. I like it because I'm still able to log from work, home, where everf, without some funky tool losing posts.   9:38:58 PM

Posted by dpwakefield at 09:37 PM

March 13, 2001

Daily Topics Are Weird

First Tuesday 'Mirror' Post

Just testing once again. I'll be asking the community for help today, I guess.   7:32:16 AM

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:26 AM

March 12, 2001

Testing Stories

Just to decide how stories show up in a non-News Items site (during my experiment with Radio Userland 'mirrored' weblogs) here is a super-short post.

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:18 AM

Daily Topics Are Weird

Well that's super-puke ugly! And moreover, the two posts I made earlier in the day via the forms interface have been chopped off! So now I'm really disappointed. Crap.   10:58:36 PM

Wishin' and Fishin'

Here's the first post from the iBook using RU, after flipping the page and adding a couple of messages via the Web browser forms interface. I don't expect things to just work, especially since there is a bogus reference to Saturday at the top of the homepage that won't go away.   10:54:22 PM

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:53 AM

March 11, 2001

Radio Userland Just Fell In My Bathtub

Getting Over the Shock

I think this is going to take a few days to get used to. I don't like that Saturday is listed as a newsday even if I posted no articles that day. I need to explore how mirroring will work when I post some articles over the web via forms, and others via Radio Userland's Web Server interface on my iBook.

And this isn't really mirroring, as far as I can tell, since I'm only uploading articles from my laptop, but not downloading an image of my Terebi site to the desktop server. More exploration to do...   5:54:46 PM

Can't Change Fast Enough

Looks sorta ugly, don't it? My only hope is that when I get permission to flip the homepage tomorrow, it will clean up somewhat. At this point, I don't believe that I'll be keeping the 'homepage' format. I liked News Items much better.

The consequence of this is that I won't be able to use the Radio Userland Mirror to Manila feature. Since this may be the wave of the future for users of weblogs.com, I may have to find a new home for my weblog, and new tools!
   5:00:48 PM

Changing Modes

In order to work with Radio Userland's Mirror to Manila mode, it seems I may not use the News Items format. Instead I have to switch to the more common Weblog format. So Brenda, Mike, Nami, I apologize for changing things, but if you missed the last few days, you'll have to drill down through the calendar to find them.   4:20:05 PM

Posted by dpwakefield at 04:18 PM

March 10, 2001

Posted by dpwakefield at 06:25 PM

March 07, 2001

More Periodontal Surgery

I'll give a fuller report as things develop, but this Friday (10:30 am
PST) is the date of my second, and hopefully last, periodontal
surgery. The first was a success, both by the assessment of Dr. Levin
(if he does say so himself) and by the assessment of my hygienist and
dentist.

I get to drive out to West Linn, have the surgery, drive myself back home, then sit or lie still for the rest of the day. The next couple of days, it's all soft foods and no conversation. So it is interesting that Jean's parents will be here at the same time, since they are garrulous, and would most likely try to draw me into the conversation so I wouldn't feel "left out". As a result, even on Sunday, I'm planning to camp out in the den or downstairs while they do their various field trips.

Posted by dpwakefield at 05:28 PM

Appliance Junkies

It is so nice having our new water heater. The water during
showers is noticeably warmer, longer. Baths can be as hot as one can
stand. The gradual failure of our old water heater had left me with
diminished expectations. But pleasure is never fated to last, alas.

Tuesday evening, after getting used to limited utility from our
dishwasher, again so gradually that we almost didn't perceive it, we
started a load only to hear a high-pitched whining. Clearly the
dishwasher wasn't going to complete the load without exploding, so we
shut it off, and I proceeded to wash things by hand.

As I felt my back begin to ache, I discovered a truism that is perhaps
only so in a house with spouses of radically different heights. The
cupboards are too high for Jean, and the sink is too low for me! My mind
went back to the days in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, when we always
washed our dishes by hand. I'm so glad those days are past. But they are
here for awhile once again.

Yesterday I came home from work to wait for the repairman, as his only arrival window was during Jean's class. He arrived, spent some time examining the dishwasher, called in to request a price quote on a part, and gave me the bad news: $290 to get it running again. Ugh. Given that that was better than half the price of a new one, I opted not to fix it.

We went to Fry's last night, but they didn't have a suitable dishwasher,
so we went on to Sears, and purchased a Maytag 9100
dishwasher. Unfortunately, it won't be installed until next
Thursday. If that doesn't seem too annoying, I agree with you. Normally
it would be no big deal, except that Jean's parents are visiting
starting this Thursday, through the weekend, which would double our
dishload, if Jean hadn't decided to run out and buy a pile of paper
plates. "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 05:01 PM

Kelly the Rebel

Kelly's pushed the envelope on rebellion a little too far this
time. We've tried to work with her on getting enough sleep, and on
eating enough in the morning to have fuel for the day. But today, she
chose not to yell or throw a tantrum when disagreeing with a
teacher.

Today, she chose to quietly peel a patch of wallpaper off the wall in
her classroom. The teacher told Jean, and Jean asked her why. Kelly said
that she was mad the Mrs. Wentzell insisted that she do her work like
all the other children, and she pulled the wallpaper off to get even
with her!

Jean and I had a conference in the woods, and the concensus is as
follows:

• Tomorrow, Jean will meet with Mrs. Wentzell with Kelly, to determine if the damage can be repaired by a small child using common materials, like glue.
• If so, Kelly must seek out the janitor and ask for said supplies. She has to own the repair task.
• Kelly, with supervision, will make the repair.
• If, on the other hand, the repair is beyond simple techniques, Jean and I will offer to pay for it.
• Kelly will be banned from treats and new toys until we judge that 'she' has paid us back for the repair.

On top of all this, I'll be letting her know how disappointed I am in
all this, and letting her know how lucky she is that I am not my
dad. Otherwise, it would be 'the belt'. Ugh.

Posted by dpwakefield at 04:45 PM

February 27, 2001

Professional Reading

I finally got my copy of The Haskell School of Expression. It looks like an interesting book, and will perhaps be more engaging than the other Haskell book I've got, Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming.

As I read the introduction, I downloaded a copy of the most recent edition of Hugs98, which is an interpreter implementing (most of) the Haskell 98 standard. This, and the Hugs Graphics Lib, are used in all the examples in the book. There is just one problem:

Warning! The Hugs Graphics Library does not work with the February 2001 release of Hugs. We hope to release a fix soon..

And the 2000 release of Hugs98 is nowhere to be found. Since I'm not so expert a Haskell user as to be confident patching libraries (thanks to the helpful soul who made some such suggestions), I will be waiting for said fix. In the meantime I am left reading...

Modern C++ Design, by Andrei Alexandrescu. I've read his articles posted to the Usenet groups comp.lang.c++.moderated and comp.std.c++, and the guy is a mad genius! The first chapter of the book is interesting, and of course, it is all about features which are not available in the version of the C++ compiler we use at work. Fortunately, there is one inexpensive compiler I can get from Comeau Computing, for around $50, which Alexandrescu says supported all the features used in the book, so I'll probably be getting a copy. First I'll try the 2.95.2 version of gcc, but I suspect there will be problems...

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:22 AM

Bush in Florida

Various articles have been making the rounds this week, most seemingly stemming from a Knight-Ridder story, reporting that ballot examinations in Miami-Dade indicate that Bush would have won the election even if the ballots in that county were recounted.

Get over it! the Republican apparatchik will crow. Bush is your President, fair and square. Well, he ain't mine. I don't just mean that I didn't vote for him. I mean that the majority of folks voting in the United States didn't vote for him, and it took a doubtful ruling by a dangerously prejudiced Supreme Court to put him in office.

No, he is the Great Pretender, the Imposter In Chief. The most remarkable thing about this feeling I have, is that I've been much less interested in the news and in American politics in general, since I don't really feel a vested interest in what the puppet government is doing. Is that radical enough for you? http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010226/us/media_ballot_review_8.html

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:02 AM

Stuffy Snoot

My cold is fading, but reluctantly. As I anthropomorphize the virus, I see it 'deliberately' clogging my sinuses, so I'll only get five hours of sleep (as I did last night). In this way, the cold hopes to weaken my defenses and prolong it's stay. Bad cold!

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:45 AM

February 26, 2001

Sick of Sickness

I got over the stomach flu, and this weekend saw the advent of a cold! I hate it when I get a one-two like that. It was also a bit ironic, as we were having a pizza-and-cake party with Kelly to celebrate everybody being over the flu. The pizza was Jean's idea, the cake Kelly's. "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 01:05 PM

February 21, 2001

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

You've seen the Dancing Baby, you've seen Dancing Hamsters, and any number of crazes and manias which sweep over the Internet from time to time. For the past couple of weeks, I've been seeing references to the phenomenon in the title of this article. Now I know what the talk is about.

The line in the title is one of many fractured English translations found on an old, low-resolution videogame called Zerowing. The link gives the opening sequence along with much of the wooden dialogue. This apparently so tickled some net geeks that they began making Photoshop images where street signs and such were altered to have the text "All Your Base Are Belong To Us."

Finally, all this evolved into a techno-beat video collage of these images, found here.

Update! There's a pretty good story with links and pictures at The Register

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:21 PM

Diet Levelling

Today I packed a lunch of a banana and applesauce, but I was just getting tired of this bland stuff. I went over to the company cafeteria and built myself a salad. I'm still constrained in some ways, though, since I explicitly excluded broccolli from the salad. A broccolli salad was the last thing I ate before the stomach flu hit me.

Jean was able to eat scrambled eggs for lunch today, so I think it's fair to say we are all on the mend. Real food is just around the corner!

Posted by dpwakefield at 04:48 PM

February 20, 2001

Best Buffy Line

Many good lines this week, but here's my fave. Buffy's latest nemesis is a god who looks like another small-statured woman, but who can whoop Buffy's butt. So this episode she encounters a cute young woman, perky and sincere...who throws her across a room because Buffy is keeping her from searching for her boyfriend. Later that night at 'the magic shop', she is nursing her sore arm and says:

Ouch! I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting tired of superstrong little women who aren't me.

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:29 PM

February 19, 2001

Sickness Wind-down

Jean spent most of yesterday with the follow-on headache that I experienced as I recovered. I think it is a side-effect of vomiting several times. That is, the electrolytic balance of one's body chemistry gets trashed, and causes a headache.

While she was down, I took Kelly to see Recess. I was surprised to see, hear rather, James Woods playing the bad guy. I know he played Hades in the Disney movie Hercules, and Recess is a Disney movie, but it is a television spin-off, so I was totally caught by surprise that Disney would spring for even one big name actor.

Admittedly I've been in a surreal state due to eating only toast and applesauce the last couple of days, but I actually enjoyed the movie. They tried to pull a Bullwinkle and put some grown-up humor into it, which worked okay. And my overall humor level was pretty juvenile at the time, so joining in with Kelly to laugh at the burp joke was fun too.

We came back home, Jean was still sick, so we turned around and went to McDonald's Playland for a couple of hours. On the drive home, I began to feel nauseous uh oh!, and slowed down for the rest of the night. No recurrence of illness, and I got away with a Poptart and applesauce before bedtime. "qbullet.smiley"

Now I'm at work, taking a break while the compiler is running, and I've had some hot grain cereal and split pea soup. I think I'm on the mend. Hopefully Jean is feeling better too.

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:54 PM

February 17, 2001

Full Circle

Stomach flu makes the rounds. It is the pervasive nature of the virus. I'm still feeling ratty, but have progressed beyond the vomit stage. Now I'm eating light foods -- bananas, toast, applesauce, the like. Even that seems to tax my stomach, but it would be okay without the headache. I've had that most of the day, and I don't think my stomach could handle aspirin or alleve, so I just deal with it.

Kelly has been pretty helpful, not being too five-year-old-demanding. I just put her to bed after reading her the conclusion of Moominsummer Madness. We'll see if she manages to keep abed.

Jean did the grocery shopping this morning, then went to Mentor to exercise on the treadmill. After she got back, she began to notice a certain queasiness in her stomach. By now she is laid low with a fever of 100.8 degrees. It's climbed from 100.3 when we first started measuring. She hasn't vomited yet, but I'm guessing it's only a matter of time.

As Kelly has already gone through this, she seems to be a bit more empathetic than usual. She is generally obeying my requests that she keep her voice down and entertain herself. I hope that she gets to sleep quickly, so I'll only have Jean to look after. Since I'm not fully recovered yet myself, I doubt I could keep my temper if Kelly started pushing limits.

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:49 PM

February 16, 2001

Hot Water

Ron Hardy arrived late this evening with the replacement water heater. It's finally installed, and the hot water should be coming out in a few more minutes. I drove down to work to take a shower at the gym this morning, but that was an adventure, given the condition of my stomach.

So now everybody can have baths and showers again, the dishwasher can work on the backload, and laundry can be done! Yeehaw! Oh, and it effectively cost nothing, since I had just gotten a bonus for the year at Mentor "qbullet.smiley".

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:53 PM

It's a Stomach Flu

I can now say definitively that Kelly's ailment was a stomach flu. News is percolating back from her schools that other kids have had it, and "it's going around." Don't I know it. Today was my turn. I won't go into graphic detail, but the vomiting was most dramatic. It seems to be over now, though I'm playing things conservatively.

Given Kelly's behavior, I'm going to cancel my attendance at this weekend's "NOVA" meeting. Even if I'm not aiming volleys at the toilet, I can't imagine being away from home and comfort for two or more hours tomorrow night. Too bad. "NOVA" is my release.

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:49 PM

February 15, 2001

When It Rains, It Pours

So I was leaving for work this morning, after Jean got back, and I heard a strange noise in the garage. It sounded like running water. A quick check confirmed it. Our water heater is leaking like a sieve. So we called our plumber Ron Hardy, and the earliest he can make it is 7 pm. So we are without hot water for the rest of the day. Fun, huh.

Posted by dpwakefield at 12:52 AM

Kelly Sick

Valentine's Day started off reasonably enough. As I mentioned, I got woken up early to receive Kelly's homemade Valentine. We did in fact have lunch together. Kelly had pizza and an icecream bar. By the time I got home yesterday evening, Kelly was throwing up.

I've got a long record of sympathetic vomit, so Jean just shooed me away and took charge. By all reports, Kelly threw up about once an hour throughout the night. It is now Thursday, and I went in to work late so that Jean could drop some stuff off at her work, and go for a walk, before I left.

I just returned from work so that Jean could go to class. Kelly seems happy enough, though we've been restricting her to stuff like chicken soup. There are no reports of similar illnesses with other kids at either Bridgeport school or Kid Connection, so I'm partial to the notion that something Kelly ate was off. Of course it could still be a virus.

I'll be going back to work after Jean returns from her class, but I plan to make it a short day, cumulative time about a half-day.

Posted by dpwakefield at 12:37 AM

February 14, 2001

Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day, significant historically as a tribute to St. Valentine, occurring at the same time of month as a Roman celebration of young males' rite of passage, and more recently, the date of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. We have Hallmark and their ilk to thank for the commercialization of the holiday.

Last night I went to bed early, treating myself gingerly due to my recovery from a cold, and this morning I'm awoken early by the cries of Kelly, who has sprung out of bed as if it is Christmas, declaring the arrival of Valentine's Day. It turns out that she had made a card for us at school, and she wanted to give it to us both. It was a cute mouse that opened out into a heart shape.

I'm meeting Jean and Kelly both for lunch today to celebrate the holiday. If anything significant turns up, I'll report here.

The only other Valentine news I have is that I received an email 'card' from Nami, my penpal, noting the holiday. Happy Valentine's Day, Nami. Though we don't write each other as frequently any more, I will always think of you as my friend.

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:37 AM

Word of the Day

Polysemous, a word which I've never heard in my life. And I got a 99% on the verbal section of the GRE a few years ago.

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:58 AM

February 13, 2001

Computer Science Reading

In my never-ending quest to find interesting papers about Haskell, I recently downloaded a paper entitled From Fast Exponentiation to Square Matrices, by Chris Okasaki, of Purely Functional Data Structures fame. I started reading this last night, and all I can say is beware of technical papers which contain a sentence which begins "the reason is easy to see." I spent ninety minutes on the first two pages of this paper.

The reason I'm wading through papers is because I'm getting bored with the presentational style in my Haskell book, Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming. I've ordered a copy of The Haskell School of Expression by Paul Hudak, reputed to be very good. But until I get it, I'll keep wading through the papers.

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:28 AM

February 08, 2001

Testing Radio

Dave Winer hosts these websites out of the goodness of his heart, and to have tons of people hammer on his Manila server, shaking out the bugs in it so it is of even higher quality than if it was only tested internally. I've appreciated using the service, and I'll have to find some way to continue weblogging when and if he discontinues this free service.

And discontinue it he may. He has made noises in the past about how badly his servers are getting hammered. He's said he doesn't want to be in the business of serving web pages, so he won't take money for it now. Finally, he's hinted at a model whereby folks buy his Radio Userland software, and then edit their weblog entirely on their local system, only sending static pages to his servers, so they don't have to do any computation. Therefore, I'm now testing out the tool Userland is promoting for managing web content, Radio Userland. It's quite probable that I won't like it, but I think I'm going to have to learn it, given Dave's hinting.

I don't mind paying for the service that gives me Terebi, but I really find this tool clumsy to edit with. Dave is famed for having invented computer-based outliners, and so his editor paradigm is based on outlines. Well, guess what. When I write technical documents, I often think hierarchically. But when I write creatively, or compose an epistle, I'm much more nonlinear, and outlining just gets in the way. I'd rather just create text in the editor of my choice and paste it into the form window on the web. Well, we'll try it anyway...

Posted by dpwakefield at 09:13 PM

February 07, 2001

Do a Little Jig!

Yesterday evening, Kelly and I went downstairs to watch Red Dwarf VII - Duct Soup. It was fun, but the humor is a bit subtle at times, not to mention British "qbullet.smiley", so I had to pause a few times to explain things to Kelly (who nevertheless seems to enjoy watching; there is usually at least one slapstick element per episode that she can get into wholeheartedly).

The upshot is that we got back upstairs at around 7:45pm, just fifteen minutes before she was supposed to be in bed. We still had her shower to do, her teeth, and cleaning up her toys. Since watching Red Dwarf was my idea, I didn't want to get heavy-handed on her for being late. Instead I did something I occasionally do, which probably continues to work because I only do it occasionally. I began chanting "Hup! Hoop! Hreep! Horp! March!". Kelly seems to love this, and we both have to march, arms swinging wide.

I got her into the shower, told her it would be a quick one. Washing and rinsing went quickly. Then I told her "depress the plunger please!" This switches showerhead to bath faucet. Then I shut the water off completely, and said the following, with little pauses between each:

Please open the drain...
Remove your visor...
Step out of the tub...
Do a little jig...

Kelly started doing a goofy dance without losing a beat. I just about cracked up, which was clearly what she wanted. So after I got her dry, I told her "let's go into the living room, and when I say 'do a little jig', do your dance for Mommy."

We went into the living room, Kelly standing there in the middle of the room prim and proper, hands clasped quietly in front of her. Jean looked up, and I raised my hand over Kelly's head, and said "Kelly, do a little jig!" She started bouncing around, and Jean cracked up. Kelly had to tell us to 'do a little jig', and then we got her to bed.

When I left for work this morning, it was Jean's turn to take Kelly to school, so I said goodbye to Kelly, and asked for a goodbye hug. She gave me one, then asked, "how about a goodbye jig?" So I got one this morning too .

Posted by dpwakefield at 01:38 PM

Keychain Computer Storage

It's begun! Agatetech now offers solid-state disks small enough to hang on your keychain, holdin 16, 32 or 64MB of memory, and accessible from any USB port. That's not entirely true, the machine does need drivers to read the thing, but it looks like a small disk to properly equipped computers. For now they don't have Mac drivers, but when they do, I'll probably get one. Totally cool!

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:26 AM

Keychain Computer Storage

It's begun! Agatetech now offers solid-state disks small enough to hang on your keychain, holdin 16, 32 or 64MB of memory, and accessible from any USB port. That's not entirely true, the machine does need drivers to read the thing, but it looks like a small disk to properly equipped computers. For now they don't have Mac drivers, but when they do, I'll probably get one. Totally cool!

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:22 AM

Steganography In The News

USA Today reports that Osama bin Laden communicates with his terrorist fellows by hiding messages in posts to sports chat rooms and pornographic images found on the internet. This is a timely example of steganography, which I discussed here in the past. Declan McCullagh has a nice little article on the current flap over at Wired News. http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm

Posted by dpwakefield at 09:54 AM

February 06, 2001

Movie Note

I went to "NOVA" Saturday, and afterwards, Alan, John and I went to see O Brother, Where Art Thou?. As with most Coen brothers movies, it was creative, took a few risks, aped a few other movies and stories (based on the Oddysey, after all), and was generally fun. It wasn't nearly as weird as Raising Arizona, Fargo or The Big Lebowski, but definitely indulged in the occasional surreal segment.

George Clooney was surprisingly good as Ulysses Everett McGill, a convict leading a pair of fellow losers on a run through depression-era Mississippi. He alternates between a normal conversational tone and a bouncy banter reminiscent of Clark Gable astride the shoulders of Cary Grant. I've decided that this was a deliberate dichotomy. When talking normally, he's usually being himself, talking to no audience or the audience who can't be fooled. When bantering, he's using his gift of gab to full effect.

Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro are both excellent partners in crime, and the movie is enhanced by the appearances of John Goodman and Holly Hunter (whose merest smile still makes my heart race).

Maybe the biggest star of this movie, however, is the music. T-Bone Burnett is credited with the music, though maybe that should be the musical choices, since the movie is salted with varied numbers from religious favorites to bluegrass and blues. Being a lover of wide varieties of music myself, I was enthralled.

Some reviewers are panning this movie, or damning it with faint praise, and I suppose I can see their point. It isn't the best movie the Coen brothers have done by most measures. But still, most any Coen brothers movie is better than any ten movies out at the time of it's release. When we were leaving the theater, we heard some Gen-Y kids coming out of the same show talking. One said, "well, I'm allowed to choose one bad movie, aren't I?" Alan and John agreed that we'd seen a very different movie from those kids.

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:22 PM

February 02, 2001

Headgear

As of this morning, I'm instituting a new rule. I may not enter or leave the car without wearing headgear. Why? I wear my hair extremely short (not that there's a whole lot of it on top anymore anyway), leaving little padding. When I got out of the car this morning at Bridgeport, dropping Kelly off, I bonked the top of my head on the doorframe. It stung, but I quickly dismissed it and moved on.

Later that morning, at work and pondering a difficult problem, I ran my hand over my head, as is my wont. This time I felt a sticky spot. I asked a colleague, and sure enough, there was blood up there. Nothing serious, but it could have been prevented by the flimsiest of baseball caps. So I'm putting one on the driver's seat this evening, and whenever I get in the car, I'll put it on first. On leaving, I'll take it off and put it on the car seat before locking the door.

If it's cold, I'll keep wearing it, but there's the usual absent-minded danger that I'll forget to bring it back to the car. Hmm, two hats? Sort of like having reading glasses and working glasses (neither of which I have yet, thank goodness). Won't I seem the complete twit? "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 01:11 PM

Jean Again

Jean's been taking anthropology courses at the local community college, and for fun has been reading a beginner's book on microbiology. So her head is full of terminology and it affects her analogy construction process.

Last night she informed me that when she suffered migraines regularly her chemistry was so screwed up that she would often give in to bouts of self-loathing. As she was watching John Edward last night, the old thought floated into her head "I hate myself." Only this time it was followed immediately by the thought "I don't have to think like that anymore!"

Jean told me, ala microbiology, "It's like I've been innoculated. Now whenever I have the old habitual thought, it'll get shot down with the don't-have-to-think-like-that immune response." "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:09 AM

Kelly's Field Trip

Trying to extract useful information from a five-year old about her day is generally futile, so this is a very short note to observe that Kelly had a field trip yesterday. She successfully accompanied her class in a bus to a Max station, rode the light rail to the airport, had the grand tour, then reversed the trip to return to Bridgeport school, where I picked her up. She seems none the worse for wear, but the most we could get out of her in the way of details is that she enjoyed the trip on the Max light rail most. Oh, and there were no animals on the train "qbullet.smiley".

Posted by dpwakefield at 12:21 AM

February 01, 2001

Jean Mots

Lately Jean has just been dropping the curiously funny phrase every day. Before sharing this one, I'll set the stage.

For as long as I've known Jean, she's had migraines. Bad ones. Ones that send her into a darkened room to lie quietly for hours. These migraines take their toll, and leave little energy for everyday life. Since she could get two or three a week during a bad week, that meant she was always playing catch-up.

Over the years, medications for migraines have improved, certainly becoming less toxic, making the trade-offs more palateable. But none of the meds sufficed to truly control Jean's migraines. But this last year has been different. After working with her doctor to gradually try out an array of new drugs, some of which gave her nightmares so severe and disturbing that she had to get off them, she now has meds that are very effective.

She can go weeks without having a single migraine (the record was eleven weeks). She still is prey to ordinary pedestrian headaches, but after years of migraines, those are merely tiring, not oppressive. So now her body has resources to fight all the other things, allergies, colds and flus, that she normally had no energy left to fight. Result: happy Jean.

She told me last night she is waiting for the other shoe to drop. "I'll be sitting there, thinking about something, and the sky will open up, as if the sun is coming out of the clouds. Only it isn't cloudy. Maybe I'm not even outdoors at the time." So the pessimistic part of her says, "it's probably a stroke." But she knows that it is probably just that she has resources and energy she never had before.

Now to the bon mot of the week. She said these sudden onslaughts of happiness are unpredictable, and so far not followed by corresponding depressions, so no developing bi-polar disorder. Instead, she says, "It's like I've been hit with the Rubber Chicken of Happiness." "qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 12:38 AM

January 30, 2001

Superbowl Jews

The above title isn't meant as a slur on Jews. Rather, it refers to the fact that Jews celebrate Hannukah, Christians celebrate Christmas, and the dominant media shitstorm is all about Christmas. By extension, I don't care about sports, nor does Jean. Superbowl is now referred to by many in the media as a national holiday, "bringing everyone together in a common experience." Um, excuse me?

So in the spirit of being a sports apatheist family we went out for dinner during the game. Yeatsy's is a restaurant in Lake Grove, serving Mexican food, though rather richer than what I think of as 'real' Mexican. I had Pollo Asado, Jean had a Spinach Salad, and Kelly had a Soft Taco with beans, cheese and black olives. Much more fun than watching football or commercials!

Fair credit, Jean came up with the Jews and Christmas analogy, and the label 'Superbowl Jews'.

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:24 PM

January 27, 2001

Tonight's Music

If you've never heard of Danny Elfman, he is most recently known as a film score composer. He's done the music for movies Batman, Darkman, Peewee's Big Adventure, Good Will Hunting and many more. On television, he's done the theme for Tales From the Crypt and The Simpsons.

But before he was a movie composer, he was the creative genius behind Oingo Boingo. This was a pop band with a seriously goofy attitude during the 80's. So tonight I'm listening to a song which is credited to Oingo Boingo, but which was also the theme to a very popular movie of the 80's, Weird Science.

Before that, if you didn't think that was strange enough, I was listening to After the Flesh, by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. This song was featured in the movie The Crow, and was the song which made me seek out more music by the group. I've got their album Confessions of a Knife, but this song is from Napster. Deal.

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:12 PM

Would You Like To Take A Survey?

On the way home from our Saturday walk, somehow the subject of surveys entered the conversation, and Kelly wanted to know what a survey was. We explained to her, down to the notion of asking multiple choice questions to make it easier to collate data from tons of people. She was fascinated, and asked if I would "give her a survey" when we got home. I agreed, but she and I got sidetracked going to McDonald's.

When we got home, Jean and Kelly started playing indoor soccer with a punch-balloon. By the time that was over, it was time for Kelly to take her shower, then clean up her toys, then have her teeth cleaned, and by that time it was time for bed. She was disappointed that she hadn't gotten a survey, so she decided that I should give her one instead of reading to her. So I just started making up multiple-choice questions on the fly.

An example: "If you had to eat something yucky from the following list, which would it be? A worm (yuck!); boiled spinach (eeewww!); spoiled milk (uuggh!); a frog (puke!)." Kelly replied "I'll drink the spoiled milk!"

Another example: "If you could travel to one of the following countries, which would it be? Japan, Italy, England, or Mexico." Kelly immediately replied "Mexico!" and began to improvise a mariachi song. I enjoyed it, but I only later realized that she was trying to imitate the music she had heard at Mentor during the Cinco de Mayo celebration held there. After a little thought it occurred to me that if I'd offered her the choice of Germany she might have chosen that as well, since Mentor also has an Oktoberfest celebration.

All in all, the survey was a huge success, and Kelly has asked to have another survey for bedtime tomorrow night.

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:35 PM

They Call Me Trinity

Kelly's friend Trinity came to visit today. I missed the first few minutes 'cause I did the grocering, but Jean tells me that Kelly was so excited to have Trinity over that she couldn't bring herself to eat a breakfast. This showed, because Kelly was very possessive of her toys the whole morning. I tried to intervene a few times, but this only made things worse.

Trinity is from Kelly's daycare, The Kid Connection. Jean says that the teachers there have told her that Kelly and Trinity are cut from the same cloth, both possessive, both gregarious. So when I came down on Kelly to behave and share her toys, Trinity twigged to it immediately, and began complaining that Kelly wasn't sharing, over every little thing.

We broke for lunch, and fed the kids PB&J sandwiches, chocolate milk, Cheetos, and for dessert, mint chocolate cookies and orange sherbet. That seemed to help, as Kelly became a little easier to live with after lunch. I wised up and took myself out of the mediation game. Shortly after, sitting in the den playing with my Pilot PDA, while Jean wrote on the computer, we heard Kelly and Trinity playing nice as you could wish.

Trinity's dad had never met us before, but he must be a trusting individual. He dropped Trinity off at 10:15am, and picked her up at about 2:45pm. I'd be a little nervous dropping Kelly off at someone else's house and leaving her there for four and a half hours. Even when I've known the parents, the first visit to their house was limited to about two hours. Guess I'm a conservative at heart "qbullet.smiley".

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:22 PM

January 26, 2001

Toy Jail Parole

Kelly ate her breakfast completely for the last few days. Unicorn is out of jail. Kelly is very proud of herself.

A side-effect, I think, is that Kelly has been striving to be helpful the last few days. I don't know how long that's gonna last.

Posted by dpwakefield at 03:50 PM

January 25, 2001

Synchronicity Is My Middle Name

As I was riding home last night, I caught a short segment on Fresh Air about Bing Crosby. The guest made the case that Bing Crosby was, in his early years, something of a radical, introducing swing into a stodgier orchestral milieu. Unfortunately I didn't catch the guest's name. What I did catch was a rendition of From Morning On, which starts out as a corny barbershop tune, and transforms into a much more up tempo swing number.

I went home and immediately tried searching for it on Napster. I succeeded, and gave it another listen. It's actually pretty cool. I've since tracked it down to several CD's, so I'll probably be picking one up, such as Bix and Bing.

So now for the synchronicity. I was browsing Robot Wisdom during my lunch, when what should I see but a pointer to a review of a book on Bing Crosby by Gary Giddens called A Pocket Full of Dreams. That's not the full title, you can get that from the Atlantic Monthly book review pointed to above. In any case, the guest on Fresh Air was Gary Giddens. The synchronicity is not that I spotted two instances of an author flogging his new book, but rather that I spotted one instance on a snob radio show, and the other on an eclectic weblog. Go figger "qbullet.smiley".

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:03 PM

Terebi Dodges a Bullet

Dave Winer writes on Scripting News:

...Anyway, one of our machines is offline, the one hosting EditThisPage.Com, and a bunch of user sites. We will probably have to restore from a backup, but we're not totally sure at this time. We're going to find out how good our backup system is...

Dave's company, Userland, runs three (free!) weblogging sites (albeit running the same server software): Weblobs.com, Manilasites.com and Editthispage.com. It's the third site which took the hit, but it coulda been me! I gotta figure out how to back up this site...

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:58 AM

January 24, 2001

Exodus Synchronicity

Funny thing. As I was driving home last night, I was listening to NPR News, and they were doing an in-depth story on the California power crunch. One of their tidbits was an interview with an executive of Exodus, who assured the interviewer that they had their own diesel generators ready to go online for each cluster of servers they own.

So I don't know why things have been so sluggish of late.

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:43 AM

January 23, 2001

Kaiju Best Fighto!

Kaiju means "mysterious beast" in Japanese, and is also the source of inspiration of Kaiju Big Battel. Created by the Borden brothers, and supported by a fleet of actors, cameramen, set and costume builders and more, this Boston-based performance group puts on a unique form of entertainment.

From their website, we learn:

What is Kaiju Big Battel?

Look out! Danger Can Happen! Kaiju have the many monsters which are making destruction the whole city! Also in the fair fight, the referee Justice keeping Dr. Cube from throw building at the mighty Silver Potato! See bizarre wrestling matches between gigantic absurd monsters! Watch Tokyo-style monster movie erupt into real life performance-art lunacy! Shudder as Hell Monkey plucks the wings off American Beetle, while Club Sandwich liquefies Kung-fu Chicken Soup! Buy our monster-produced fashion accessories and novelty items! Collect them All! We Are Monsters! Kaiju da yo!

What it is is a group of white boys (and girls) putting on faux Japanese monster wrestling matches, in WWF-style wrestling rings, surrounded by cardboard-cutout cities. A lot of humorous antics ensue.

So who do you suppose sprung for a videotape of one of these performances? Who plans to share this with his five-year old daughter and his friends? You guessed! And it arrived yesterday. With luck Kelly and I will be able to watch it soon, at which time I'll report back here.

Posted by dpwakefield at 03:54 PM

Toy Jail Gala Opening

This morning was the grand opening of the Toy Jail^(tm).

Kelly decided that eating breakfast at school wasn't so much fun after all. They didn't let her play with her friend Brianna while eating breakfast (or not eating it, as the case may be). So yesterday she started back on the breakfast-at-home gig. Yesterday she dragged her heels, and ended up eating very little.

This morning she tried it again, and I could see a trend developing. So I told her that she had to eat what was on the plate or be punished. Time came to leave, and she hadn't made a dent in it. I told her, "looks like it's time to open up the Toy Jail." She tried to tell me what I could and couldn't take, but of course I wasn't having any of that. I decided to go easy on her, and didn't take her 'very favoritest' stuffed animal, her huge stuffed dog. Instead I took a stuffed unicorn which I know she likes.

There were no screams or tears, so I guess that's good. It could mean I didn't choose well enough. Tonight I'll explain to her how to parole her unicorn ("eat your breakfast every day when told for one week"). If that doesn't work, unicorn goes on a long trip to the Goodwill truck at Fred Meyers. Next animal will then be big-stuffed-dog.

Reports as things develop.

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:51 PM

Idiot Vector

Jean took Kelly to her dance class yesterday. As Kelly was dancing, in a small class with maybe two other students, Jean noticed a mother sitting with a child on her lap, seemingly in pajamas. Jean struck up a conversation, and it turns out the child was in her pajamas because she had the flu! This was apparently her first day out in a week.

"This is the sickest I've ever seen her." said the woman.

"Well, she's not contagious now, is she?" asked Jean.

"I don't guess so," said the woman.

"Does she have a fever?"

"Well, it was a little over 99 degrees this morning."

Jean didn't know what to say after that. It isn't like the kid had a cold. She had a flu, and was "the sickest I've ever seen her." The woman seemed to be waiting for Jean to say "that's okay."

When Jean and Kelly left, she made Kelly wash her hands, since the older sister was in the dance class. Let's hope this idiot's clueless selfishness didn't rub off on Kelly.

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:21 PM

Sluggish Service

I can't complain since this is all free, but Weblogs.com is sluggish as hell right now. I'm wondering if the rolling blackouts in California have anything to do with this. Traceroute reveals that this site is hosted by exodus.net, located in Santa Clara, California.

Even if the server is not directly in California, it's possible that Exodus is feeling enough of a crunch from it's California customers to be shifting traffic to servers they own outside the state. I don't really know, or understand how this works.

So if you're having difficulty reaching the site from time to time, all I can do is ask for your patience. Thanks.

Posted by dpwakefield at 01:52 PM

CTHD Wide Release

Of course, the very Friday following my exceptional Wednesday night sojourn downtown to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Regal Cinemas does the uncharacteristic thing and picks up a subtitled foreign film for wide release. Ain't that a kick in the head?

Their track record is exactly the opposite, ignoring foreign or indie films, or consigning them to one or two theatres in downtown Portland. They seem to assume that folks in the suburbs don't want access to quality films. So I think I was justified in my approach of catching it while it was at Cinema 21, but it would have been nice to have some notice.

I went with my "NOVA" friends on Saturday night to see the film Snatch, which is a British comic crime film about assorted losers trying to get a 28 carat diamond--for the money or to save their lives. Guy Ritchie directs this movie, his second effort two years after Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which I also saw on a "NOVA" night.

Both movies do a damn fine job at telling one of my favorite kinds of story, the Comic Crime story. Another example of this is The Hot Rock which was based on a Donald E. Westlake novel. Another is The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. And just about any movie made from an Elmore Leonard novel.

But I digress "qbullet.smiley". While we were getting our tickets we observed a huge line inside the theatre lobby. Folks in front of us were getting tickets for CTHD, and the ticket seller was informing them that only front row seats were left. Apparently, CTHD had been selling out all showings in all theatres since it opened in the Regal chain. Checking box office numbers, I find that the total earnings since it opened on October 9th is $37m, but that it's weekend earnings since wide release are $6m. That makes it the number eight earner for the weekend, against such filsms as Castaway and Finding Forrester. So folks have just been waiting for it to come somewhere other than the art theatre at the far north of town!

Maybe I'll be able to see foreign films at a suburban theatre after this. Yeah, right.

Posted by dpwakefield at 01:05 PM

January 19, 2001

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Okay, it's Friday, but I needed to mull this one over. Alan and a friend of his whose name I've forgotten, Tom, James and I went downtown Wednesday night to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Wednesday nights are usually a night when I do self-paced study, so I did a deal with Jean to stay out somewhat later and went to the movie.

Alan was somewhat disappointed, having seen a million Wu Xia movies before. I have too, but I didn't buy into the hype, so I didn't have inflated expectations. This was clearly an Ang Lee movie, to anyone who has seen any of his other films, from Taiwan or Hollywood. While he was careful to include nearly every requisite setting (Governor's compound, wayside, restaurant, forest) for the martial arts sequences, there was a great deal of attention paid to character.

Much of the acting was very subdued, with a lot of subtle dialogue. Even so, I didn't feel that there was a huge amount of character development. Rather, the choice of Chow-Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh and other cast members allowed their rather intense screen presence to boost the drama to a higher level. When two actors can sit quietly, amiably drinking tea, and charge the scene with energy, something is being done right.

This picture opened here for one week at a local art theatre, Cinema 21. It's the only place it's showing in town, and the house has been full for all showings, according to reports I've received from friends and acquaintances. It was packed full when we went, and when we left, there was a line around the block for the 9pm showing. The local megaplex chain hasn't picked it up yet, but they'd be idiots not to.

Is this the best martial arts movie ever? No, it's not. It is very good, with some interesting fight sequences and reasonably cool wire work. But really it is a hybrid. At the risk of sounding Hollywood High Concept, it is Sense and Sensibility meets Fong Sai Yuk. That is to say, a parlor drama crossed with a martial arts fantasy.

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:10 AM | Comments (1)

January 17, 2001

QOTD

Anent Hemingway:

Inside every hypermacho stud is a girlyman fighting to get out.

Heather Henderson

Posted by dpwakefield at 01:51 PM

Breakfast Club Meets Peyton Place

I've been watching Kelly at her Bridgeport breakfasts, and I think she's working things out. Her friend Brianna was sitting with her when I left yesterday, and yesterday evening she affirmed that they had eaten together.

I was worried that she was eating alone, because initially she was chattering to Brianna (according to the teacher) without actually taking the time to eat before class started. Her teacher Mrs. Wentzell had to separate them initially.

Brianna has a cousin named Johanna (I've since determined) who elected herself Brianna's guardian, practically dragging her away from Kelly so she wouldn't "get in trouble." This kid is about a year older than Kelly and Brianna, and so damn earnest in a stool pigeon sort of way that I just let it go.

So yesterday was apparently a turning point, if Kelly is to be believed, since Johanna didn't 'intervene' in Kelly and Brianna's little breakfast club. More on this as things develop...

Posted by dpwakefield at 11:16 AM

Hide In Plain Sight

The phrase hide in plain sight is a part of our cultural vocabulary. You won't hear it in casual conversation very often, but it occurs frequently in written works.

I knew that there was a movie of the same name, and found a book with that title after a brief search. News stories and essays are a favorite playground for this phrase as well.

I haven't had much luck searching etymological dictionaries on the net to track the origins of the phrase. Poe's The Purloined Letter is the earliest example I know of the concept, though he doesn't ever use the phrase:

"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter...

"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be
that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance,
radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so
minute a description ...

"But, then, the radicalness of these differences ... were strongly
corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to
suspect."

Cryptographic lore contains a notion of hiding a message in plain sight, called steganography. One cute example of this is Spammimic, which will hide your treasured message in a faux spam email. Be careful if you use this, since spam is now under legal assault (and about time too).

Posted by dpwakefield at 10:12 AM

January 16, 2001

Writing for an Audience

There's a joke that's probably as old as Vaudeville, where a speaker says something like this:

I've received many kind comments from my fans, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank both of you.

This isn't very far from the truth. Terebi has one confirmed reader, my sister. It might have as
many as two other regular readers, though neither have informed me in
email that they do or don't read the log, so I have to go with
one confirmed reader.

Now granted, if I look at the most read messages, I have to assume that some of these people are
stopping to actually read my essays. I know people often just
come, look at a page and move on, but my Furi Kuri review
has had 366 hits to date! I have to assume that maybe ten percent of
those visitors actually read the thing.

Still, Terebi doesn't have enough traffic to rise to the level of
having a demographic "qbullet.smiley". So why do I insist on writing
this as if I were addressing an audience of more than three? Especially
as I range over topics which are bound to be a total bore to most of
those three?

Well, why for centuries have some people kept journals where
every entry began "Dear Diary", or more baroquely, "Dear Reader?"
Because, I believe, it motivates one to place those thoughts in
print. Otherwise we'd all just run around churning our internal
monologue like everybody, and accomplish much the same thing.

Not the same thing, really. When you write for an audience, even a
presumed audience, you actually have to pull your thoughts out
and structure them. Sometimes you have to think about the motivating
pressures behind the day's events, sometimes you actually admit you did
something stupid or embarassing, rather than just engaging in
"Esprit d'Escalier". Have I admitted to stupid-fu yet?
"qbullet.smiley"

Finally, writing here in public, presuming a wider audience, a phantom
presence which in my mind is a composite of my friends and some
sympathetic strangers, I let it hang out somewhat. I'll always assume a
role, when in public, constraining the tooth-gnashing id which rages in
my head, but you'll still see a little more of me here than when I'm
just talking about family, or just talking about computer games, or
just--you get the idea.

Besides, this is all very ephemeral. Any day now, the Userland folks may
decide to take their ball and go home. Then this entire web site
disappears into the mist. Or maybe not. In any case, I'll
write my words in the sand as if somebody will see them before the tide
comes in.

Posted by dpwakefield at 03:03 PM

Turducken, the Sequel!

For folks like my wife, horrified at the excess that is turducken, I have two words:

Corndog Soup

"qbullet.smiley"

Posted by dpwakefield at 02:34 PM

January 15, 2001

Quote of the Day

For Geeks Only:

Chat Apps Over Freenet:

In case you're wondering, yes, we know that chatting over Freenet is a fairly insane idea due to the lag. We're going to do it anyway because we are in fact insane.

Posted by dpwakefield at 08:50 AM

January 13, 2001

Field Report

Jean made it to her lecture, and was fascinated and saddened at the same time. The crime science was fascinating, but it is clear that it is a competitive field, so any dream, however remote, of doing it herself, becomes more remote still.

Kelly and I did the grocering, and I tried to find some shoes which would look non-sneakerish while providing Nike arch and pronation level support. No go. I'll continue looking. The bike adjustment trip is postponed until sometime during the week. It seems they have no mechanic on the weekend, which is just plain silly.

We all went up to Beaverton, because Jean wanted to pick up touch-up paint for her new car, to protect from future dings. I got some for the hatchback too. At only $5, it's a reasonable preventative measure. Then I suggested we go to Tower Records, so I could look for Moshi Moshi or a Barcelona album. We went, they didn't have either, but Jean bought two CD's, by Bobby Darin and Patsy Cline. We listened to them on the way to Mentor to take our walk.

Kelly decided that she should get a treat too, so after our walk I took her to Fred Meyer to buy a video. She bought The Land Before Time VII. Not too bad, by direct-to-video standards, but not top of the heap either.

Now the night is winding down, and I guess I'll be giving Kelly her bath in around fifteen minutes. Then it's off to attack that huge pile of reading "qbullet.smiley".

Posted by dpwakefield at 07:13 PM

Planck's Anniversary

The December 9, 2000 issue of New Scientist has an essay on the anniversary of Max Planck's formulation which laid the foundations for quantum mechanics. The formula is E = hf, where E is energy, f is the frequency of black-body radiation, and h is the new constant, first and last of the Twentieth Century, Planck's Constant.

Before you cackle, yes, I've just finished this issue, and have two in the chute. I'm also reading the January issue of the Atlantic Monthly. And I'm still only a third of the way through the Nixon biography I started ages ago. Get over it.

The thrust of this post is to share a little quote from the essay, written by Graham Farmelo. It is not directly applicable to the gist of the essay, but noted a phenomenon I hadn't noticed before. Here we go:

Quantum theory overturned the universally accepted notion that energy was smooth and continuous, and replaced it with the