Persistent Beta
The only constant is change.
Dear cancer: Fuck you.
Jul 8th
I originally wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t post it at the time. I didn’t think it was ready. With some time to reflect, I don’t think it’s going to get any more ready, so here we go.
No seriously. I’m saying this from the bottom of my heart: Fuck you, cancer.
My brother Mike’s been diagnosed with bladder cancer. We don’t know much yet, as many scans, procedures, surgeries and discussions with medical professionals of all sorts remain in the future. But we do know that yes, it’s cancer (specifically bladder cancer, if you care) and it’s “high-grade.” Which may be a good sign if it’s been caught early, but is a bad one if we didn’t catch it early.
It’s not like he needed another complication. After two divorces, the second one far from amicable, two motorcycle crashes, the second one less initially scary than the first but more life-affecting in the long term, and a recent bout of diverticulitis, along with going back to school and then to graduate school, there was really more than enough going on already.
I don’t know how to deal with it yet. It’s not about me, obviously, except that it sort of is sometimes. I mean it’s about him most of the time – he’s the one with cancer – but there is the matter of my own life to lead in addition to doing whatever I can to help him. Case in point: I’m in San Jose for a conference. When I set this up, I knew I was going to miss a couple of Alex’s baseball games, including at least one pitching appearance. I didn’t know I was going to be missing Mike’s meetings with the oncologist, and possibly surgery as well.
I’m feeling unprepared for almost everything at this point. I’m here for a conference, but I don’t really know if I’m going to be paying attention to it, to be honest. Depending on what we learn over the next couple of days, I may be heading to the airport to buy a one-way ticket home.
Have I mentioned that I’m proud of my kids?
Jun 17th
I am.
My daughter Nell is a geek, just like her dad. She went to w00tstock with me and thoroughly enjoyed it, although a fair number of the jokes were over her head. And when I set up the Neuros LINK earlier this week, she was fascinated and wanted to see what kinds of digital media it can get from the Internet. She’s reading voraciously, and is the kind of kid who hears the word “voraciously” and wants to know what it means and then uses it (correctly) in a sentence three days later.
My son Alex is having an excellent summer playing baseball. His team, the Maplewood Ironbirds, is undefeated through 6 games. He’s pitched four times, 3 starts and one relief appearance. He’s retired 20 batters, 19 on strikeouts, while walking just 5 and has yet to give up a hit. He’s also hitting well – on Tuesday, after pitching in the top of the inning (3 up, 3 down on strikeouts), he then led off the game with a triple.
Counterproductive biological functions
Jun 2nd
Some of the things that my body does (and possibly yours as well) are counterproductive. Case in point: I’m fighting a cold that makes me sound like Hellboy (according to my son Alex, age 11). My throat hurts when I swallow. So why does the condition of “throat hurts” produce the reaction of “salivate excessively”? Hello, more saliva means more swallowing, which hurts more.
To deal with this, I’m employing the tactic I used last night, albeit not deliberately: stay up so late that I fall asleep almost immediately when I go to bed.
It’s not what you might call a good plan, but it’s what I’ve got.
Gegen Raumnazis: Iron Sky is coming
May 14th
Okay, this is awesome. A team of people are making an independent SF movie called Iron Sky. They’ve done two trailers, both of which are very cool. The basic premise is that there are Nazis on the moon, and that we must fight them. I’m all for that.
To finance the making of the movie, they’re selling a variety of cool swag, including War Bonds. I wonder if we’re seeing an accidental or intentional lean startup here? Are they actually determining what movie to make based on the feedback they get? They’re certainly using that approach with their merchandise.
Check out the trailer and the store .
Oh, the title of this post? “Oppose Space Nazis” is the translation.
Update: Soundtrack by Laibach. Even cooler.
Command line fun
Apr 9th
I installed git on my laptop today. It was rather fun; I got to spend a bit of time using Terminal to interact with my Mac. I don’t get to do that enough.
There is something really nice about not using the mouse for anything except indicating which window I want to interact with.
I’m reminded of Neal Stephenson’s In The Beginning Was The Command Line, which is an excellent book that you should read if you have not. I can say that in confidence, because if you are willing to put up with reading my blog you’re at least a little bit interested in technology, and Stephenson is a terrific writer.
Eyeball farmers or phishing boats?
Mar 2nd
Despite not having updated in a few days, I’m getting a lot of spam comments on my posts. They’re fairly obviously from non-native English speakers (or people who are nearly illiterate), so they’re easy to spot, and since I have comment moderation turned on, they’re not making it through, but they’re still annoying.
The strangest thing is that Gmail flags most of the notifications as spam, since they contain the comment text with characteristic bad grammar and the associated link to some eyeball farm or phishing site. I glanced into my Spam folder a few days ago, saw one and then went looking for more.
Curious.
Foursquare: Neat idea, not-so-neat execution.
Feb 7th
I think I like Foursquare, but it is possible (even likely) that I like the *idea* of Foursquare better than I like its current reality. I find its UI frustrating, because it’s hard to check in. There are two improvements that would make this easier for me.
- Give me a favorites list of places at which I can check in. Or at least filter the set of items in a location to put the ones at which I have checked in before at the top of the list. Every time I try to check in at Best Buy HQ, I have to search for it. I get that the GPS has trouble in the parking lot, but shouldn’t the app have some kind of history that would make this easier for me?
- Let me sort places by type – if I am in a location with a lot of stuff around, filtering down to just the restaurants or just the stores would make the list easier to read through.
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