Admiral Grace hopper lived from December 9, 1907 to January 1, 1992 and had a lot more to do with computing than most names you know today.

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for. ”

She graduated from Vassar in Mathematics and Physics and got her Ph.D. from Yale in the same subjects. She to a leave of absence from Vasser, where she was an Associate Professor of Mathematics, and joined the Navy Reserve. I’ve got a few quotes of hers in this post. She’s also attributed to phrase “bugs” in the computer (or maybe “debugging”), but I’ve heard so many stories about that I’m not so sure but here’s a photo with notes.

She served on the Mark I computer programming staff at Harvard.

In 1949 she was a senior mathematician on the team developing the UNIVAC I.

In the early 1950s she worked on the A-0 programming language compiler. This is the first computer compiler!

A lot of her compiler work is said to be the basis of the COBOL computer language.

In the 1970s she pioneered the implementation of standards for computer languages (like COBOL and FORTRAN).

“It’s always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”

She was on 60 minutes in 1982, here’s part 1 and part 2, she’s pretty funny.

Here’s a video of her on Letterman (Oct. 2, 1986). She holds her own pretty good and explains how fast light and electricity can travel. It’s some of the same jokes from the 60 Minutes interview, but dumbed down for Dave.

Here’s the original YouTube link.

In 1971 ACM created the Grace Murray Hopper Award which is awarded to the outstanding young (35 or younger) computer professional of the year, selected on the basis of a single recent major technical or service contribution. Be sure to click the link, you’ll see some familiar names (Wozniak, Joy, Kurzweil, and more).

“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”

Additional info on Admiral Hopper: There is a conference named in her honor Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. She’s received 47 honorary degrees. When she retired she was the oldest active person in the military! She was in the Navy for 43 years; from 1943-1966, 1967-1971, and 1972-1986. The Navy’s USS Hopper, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, is named after her.

Why am I talking about her today? Because I signed a pledge that said “I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same“. I’m one of those 1,000 people, actually when last I looked it’s up to 1,610 people (I think I was number 844 to sign up).

Info on the post taken from here, her WIkipedia entry and some other info I’ve posted before.

Later: I see Brenda Wallace, Kathleen Weaver, Miguel Esquirol Ríos, cr0n.net, Joanna Bryson, Carolyn and Andy Roberts chose the same topic as I did.

The video shows it all.

Here’s the original Detroit Fox video. Or try here.

Shouldn’t this be illegal since she’s buying votes?

I’ve never understood how technology seems to trap some people and when I say “technology” I’m talking about mostly low-tech. The most common thing that I can’t understand is the phone.

Gotta Get It – Some people have to get the phone when it rings no matter what they are doing. It doesn’t matter what is happening they have to go answer the phone if it rings. They already have an answering machine so they aren’t going to miss any information.

Gotta Check It – Other’s have to know who it is even if they aren’t going to answer, they have to check the Caller ID to see who they aren’t going to talk to. These are the people in the past who would have monitored their answering machine to get the same information.

Gotta Be More Important – If the call waiting is going off they have to switch over, doesn’t matter if they know who it is or not, they’ve got to switch over to the other call. I can see this a little bit if they don’t have voice mail at home, but if they’ve got Caller ID they can call them back. The need to put someone off for a few minutes so that they can talk to someone else first compared to just calling the second caller back a few minutes later doesn’t make any sense to me.

Voice Mail Inconsistencies – What’s confusing (to me) is some people have to also check their voice mail as soon as they see they have a message, but others can let it sit for a while or not even check to see if there is a message on their answering machine. My experience is the more that a person have a “Gotta” issue (see above) the more likely that they have the ability to let messages rest on a machine somewhere.

The Phone Victim is the worst of most technologies, maybe because it’s such a simple technology it doesn’t seem to be hindered by age it affects both the young and old.

If it’s important – they will leave a message, they will call back and they’ve got other ways to contact you (other phones, e-mail, etc.).My issues – I’d completely disable the call-waiting on my phone but it’s the only phone I have so if someone is trying to reach me they can’t call another number (but they could leave a voice mail). Personally, I try to only switch over to an incoming call when it’s someone I’m meeting shortly in case something is changing our plans. I’ll also switch over if I’m expecting some info from someone that requires some quick interactivity but I’ll warn the call I’m on at the start of the conversation. I’m also more likely to switch over on long-time friends that I talk to all the time but that’s the benefit of

These are my new rules for campaigning:

• You can’t talk about your opponent.

That’s it. I’m tired of them answering a question by talking about their opponent. It doesn’t tell me what they are thinking. It’s a waste of time if I want to hear what a politician is thinking and planning if they are wasting half their time talking about what their opponent is (or isn’t) doing.

They need to sell themselves! Show us what they can do. Convince me to like you not to dislike the “other guy”…Imagine if you were trying to get a job and you spent half your time talking about (and bad mouthing) the competition. Or if you were trying to get a date and badmouthing the other guy trying to win her heart. Or telling the police office who pulled you over that guy in the other lane was driving faster. You’re not going to get very far.

Speaking the competitions name over and over and over again can’t be great marketing either. How often do you see Coke or Pepsi mention their competitor in an ad?

I saw this at Dean’s World. It was a interesting not-normal sports story and I decided to put it up a I was watching it.

But as I teared up a few times during the video, I decided I should share it with you all too…

There’s a story here to go with it..

So I was Burger King today and once in a while I’ll see one of the local homeless people in there (usually it’s when it’s really cold out), I think there’s 3 in particular that I recognize. Today, all three were in there (actually one was on the was out as one came in) which I thought was strange since I’ve been at BK a little more than usual lately and today it’s nowhere near as cold as it has been. Two are schizophrenic, not that I’m qualified to judge, and the other is kinda quiet. The one guy just seems to drink his coffee and step outside for a smoke and talks to himself, he seems to be the most well off, I’ve even seen him get a beer or two at the bar before (it’s possible this guy isn’t homeless). The quiet guy seems to have all his stuff with him (3 big bags) and he must have been there for a while, I saw someone ask him to leave after a while. The woman, I’ve seen her pull stuff out of the trash, and she asked me for my left over fries one time and I gave he those and some cash. Today I intentionally left my uneaten onion rings and my half-eaten Whopper on my tray at the table and she had grabbed it before I got out the door; I’m not sure why it’s a problem for me to just offer her a few dollars.

When I’m out of town if someone asks nice (even semi-nice) for some money, I’m easy to cough up a buck or two; and in some places, that’s every block or so. I always make sure I have some cash on me for that reason. But the local homeless, I never know how to deal with them, actually they’ve never asked for money at the Burger King but I’d be glad to give them some money, but I hate to offer and for some reason I’d hate them expect it from then on (not that it’d really be a problem).If I’m somewhere around town and someone asks for cash, I’m more likely to buy them a meal if there’s an opportunity, I’d rather spend $5-10 on a meal then hand them a few dollars cash if I can (especially if I can smell alcohol or see bloodshot eyes).

It’s when it’s the locals that I see often when it throws me. And I’m not sure why this keeps me so off balance…?

It all makes me sad and feel pretty ungrateful when I complain about stuff in the wonderful life that I have. I’ve got a nice paying job, no debt (other than my house) and I’ve been doing pretty good at saving for my retirement someday. I give money to the shelter when they are doing fund raisers and to school when they’re having auctions and other things when they are happening around town; I could do more I’m sure, but I could certainly doing less too.

So I’m sure many of you know about the student at the Kerry Forum at the University of Florida (here’s one of many videos available). What I don’t seem to understand is why everyone is upset that they tasered him for what he was speaking about. From what I saw, they made him leave for not giving up the mic (which was cut off) and possibly what he was speaking about (and the audience applauded for them making him leave). What they tasered him for was for fighting as they were trying to escort him out. There were four or five police trying to get him to leave and he clearly wasn’t leaving. To me, it looked as if he wanted a scene or had some kind of mental instability.

Am I missing something?!? I’m not saying the tasering was or was not excessive, but let’s be clear as to why they zapped him, it wasn’t for his words (I can’t imagine the zappers were even listening that close) it was for resisting to leave. I will agree the extra zaps were probably too much (it sounded like a few), especially if cuffed already, but it didn’t really slow him down so I can’t imagine it set as a regular taser (it never took Veronica Mars more than one zap to get someone in line). I generally don’t mess with the law, but I do know you don’t mess with security / police / secret service when it deals with senators / presidential candidates and when a bunch of people are escorting you out the building, you’re probably going to lose if you fight with them about it.

From this Blog from the Washington Post I get the feeling this student was familiar with the local police.

Here’s a local Miami news survey and 44% (of over 18,000 votes) say he deserved it, cast your vote! The results really surprised me…Random extra thoughts:

It didn’t even seem like he was listening to Kerry when he was talking to him.

When he was screaming “don’t taser me”, I have to assume they were threatening to taser him if he didn’t calm down. Otherwise why scream it?

It’s possible I’m mistaken and the audience was applauding him just for making the scene, but I don’t think they applauded until he was being escorted out. I don’t think he was considered to be under arrest until he was actually resisting leaving, I don’t think they arrested him for his words.

Watch some of the longer versions of the video that show after they get him out of the room and down the stairs (about 2 minutes in). He keeps acting like the “inciting a riot” charge was due to the talking and not the resisting to leave. He wouldn’t give them his name, or ID and acted like they were “going to give him [me] to the government”. It’s all cRaZy talk at the end.

He has his own web site at theandrewmeyer.com , please note his e-mail address if you visit.

The Bloggerheads do a lot of looking at the different angles and timelines.

Hint – It’s an anagram. And it’s cute (and geeky), so don’t watch it if that doesn’t appeal to you…

My worry would be what if you didn’t get the answer you wanted…“Serge Gandaora”, the make believe artist, is actually another anagram – “George and Sara”

I thought this was funny. I usually ignore these but I clicked this one…

It was titled Funny Father Daughter Dance “A Wonderful White Wedding”. It takes a minute to get to the good part but it’s definitely different for a wedding.

On a (completely unrelated) side note Wedding Crashers is a kinda funny candid camera show on Monday Nights. You need to fast forward through the talking parts but the practical jokes are pretty good. If you’ve only seen it this week, try it again this weeks episode was kinda weak…

It’s kind of a simple question, but I can’t find a specific answer. Do the terms, WhiteList and BlackList, that we commonly use these days to block/allow e-mail, web sites and comments have racist origins?

I can’t find the answer. I think about it every time I modify instructions for our mail filtering at work, just waiting for someone to ask me, but I can’t find an answer anywhere on the history of it. I’ve found some things when looking on-line related to hollywood (usually political writing) and on blackballing people (also from work or organizations) but nothing on the origins of the word even in that context.

I’ve seen some software FAQs skate around it with some stupid explanations to avoid the issue, but I think red + green universally mean stop + go so greenlist and redlist makes sense and since we don’t have green people it wouldn’t be considered racist (or even incorrectly thought to be). Maybe this is a non-issue, but I’m wondering what you think.There are tons of options: stop/go, allow/deny, junk/non-junk, etc. Also, even if it doesn’t have racist origins if people perceive it to be, then how much of a difference is there.

Later: Ah, I found this and I do recall part of the origins of blackball, I knew this, I just forgot that I knew it….

So I made the 2000 bloggers list that I mentioned last week. It was kinda hard to find my picture (the one to the left) buried in with the other (almost) 2000 but I found it. As of today it looks like there’s still room for about 400 or so more (nope see the update below).

If you arrived here from a 2000 bloggers list PLEASE leave a comment! UPDATE: Due to all sorts of reason dealing with linking and indexing the 2000 bloggers list has been removed from the original site. Worries and threats of it being considered a “link farm” to trick search engines caused Tino to remove the original list. It’s funny because while the list was replicated, I don’t think anyone was told to replicate it (even though the code was easily made available). And some people were put on it without their knowledge so how can you penalize them? I just wanted on the list to generate some new viewers (and it has). Forget raising my Technorati, since my posts somehow don’t show up on their site (everyone else seems to index me), how does a higher ranking help me?!? Getting a few more readers (and being more findable) is one of the reasons I signed up on Technoriti, but without content, I’m not very findable (even if my rank goes higher). I’m not sure if anyone came here via Technorati (did you?).

I’m not sure if the list ever actually made it to 2,000. Does anyone know for sure?

So while I’ve done my share of dating (friend set ups, personal ads, on-line, etc.) my blog has never factored into dating. I don’t really mention dating on-line and I generally don’t mention blogging to people I’m dating. But when you look at some of the stats from QuantCast and the make up of what they think my readership is you’d think I might have gotten a date (or two) due to that last 3+ years of blogging or at least a little more flirting…

Now these are stats probably mostly guesstimated from where people are geographically. And since my blog is definitely not a he-man’s sports/gambling/you-get-my-point blog they probably are semi-accurate. Although the Asian stats have to be off (maybe spammers?) since I don’t get any comments that make me think that guesstimate might be accurate.

It’s just an observation, and some silly points to bring up the fact the the stats here are interesting in the way they present them. You can get a bit on your blog by just putting your site in the search box. Some sites seem to have more information than others, I’m not sure why but it must get some info from other sites.I did put the QuantCast tracker on my site a week ago so the daily stats are probably semi-correct on the web visitors, but I’m not sure how many users use blockers that might stop that tracking, but I’m sure it doesn’t compensate for RSS readers and stuff like that.

One of my favorie parts of the movie Running Scared (1986), is when Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal (who play Chicago Cops) are in Florida (Key West, I think) and see a bunch of people standing by the pier. They think ’someone must have found a body’ or ‘a car must have drove off the pier’. As they try to get closer they ask someone ‘what happened?’ and the response is, ‘they’re just watching the sunset’ and the both look at her and say, ‘no, really, what happened?’ and she replies, ‘everyone comes down every night for the sunset’ and they just don’t believe it. But sure enough, it’s just the sunset and they’re hooked they watch it every night get hooked.

That’s what it’s like here in Jaco, Costa Rica, everyone starts showing up on the beach in the evening. Even if they aren’t going to get in the water they just show up to watch. Some show up just a few minutes before, some show up an hour or so. They bring the kids, the babies, the grandparents and just watch it set and the colors fade away…

(I’m just paraphrasing the movie, I can’t find the actual quotes, anywhere on-line, but you get the gist of it.)

As usual, click the photos for larger views.

“If you want a better world…
…you’re going to have have to be better people”

Found on the chalkboard at Trixie’s coffeehouse in Roseville, MI.

So I’ve seen web sites where they tell you how popular your first or last name is. This is the first on that I’ve seen that tells you how unique your full name is.

How Many Of Me.com

There are: 40 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

What I don’t like about this is it sticks with the number I’m given today. If their list changes it doesn’t make another calculation query to the list. But how many more can there be like me?!?

So I found a new visitor map widget for my site. This one uses the Google Maps for viewing and exploring. It shows where it thinks you are and if you click it, it shows all the recent visitors. I always like to know where people come from (and maps, I like maps). How close does it show you to where you think you are?!?

It seems like it just counts each visitor (or IP?) once, so that’s good, it takes about a half day to update the chart but I think your location is always correct.

The image in this post is “static”. To see the “live” image look in the footer of any page.

I got this from here. It’s set up as a myspace tool but it looks like it’ll work fine if you just copy the image and the link.

I originally didn’t think this was working but I guess it just took a few hours to kick in (I had actually removed the post and had to repost it).

I’m sure they thought it would look cool to film their buddy doing this…

Posted by Jon

I hope they don’t show the video to the insurance company…

So this Tuesday the U.S. Population is supposed to hit 300 Million people. I was looking for some kind of cool counter to put on my page (even just a graphic that changes with each page load). Not having any luck, but I know I’ve seen one before. Here’s the current numbers, looks like only 10,500 to go…

FYI, if we round the world’s population to Six Billion (6,000,000,000) that means we’re only 1/20th of the world’s population. That’s not very much considering how big we think of ourselves in a global way.

Remember a few years back I talked about your ecological footprint and how much of the world’s resources you use. I thought I’d bring it up with the 1/20th number in mind and let you take the ecological footprint survey again.

I found a crappy JavaScript/CSS one but it just looked like it’d eventually become problematic sticking it in the post. Can anyone help me find one? I can find pages with the info (like this) but I wanted to embed it in my page.

So I was watching a re-run of Grey’s Anatomy last night. It’s the one where the wife has the fork stuck in her neck; her and the husband were being adventurous since she has an aneurism and only has weeks/months to live. So they are traveling and doing all the things they’ve always said they’ll do some day.

This ties back in with the meme from a few weeks ago about what would you do this six months to live. This also ties in with the new show Three Moons Over Milford where the moon gets hit with an asteroid and everyone knows it’s only a shot amount of time before the pieces fall back to earth. Several of the people and episodes are all about living life to the fullest.

So back to my question: “Why wait?”

If there is all sorts of stuff I want to do, what am I waiting for? What are you waiting for? Now I know some of us have responsibilities so that has all sorts of implications. But many of us are single with no responsibilities. Why not quit the job and just travel to those places that I’ve thought about? Go volunteer. Go move somewhere interesting and get a job for a while? I could probably figure something out so I could do some reasonable consulting via the net regardless of where I might live.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. My best friend just keeps waiting for the day I call and say see ya, I’ve off to move to Costa Rica…

So I’m at Einstein Bros Bagels getting lunch and they’ve got the little sign where they list the soups they have that day (they removable pieces so they can change the sign depending on availability). Now today everyone seems to want Brocolli Cheddar (including me), which they happen to be out of, but it’s still on the sign. They actually have three choices: Leave it (the likely choice), remove that soup from the list, make more soup. I don’t think Mr. Einstein would be very impressed with their smarts…

I know I’ve been back for over a month but here’s another 80 photos from Egypt from day four, we’re still in Luxor: there’s a lot of local shots, some temple photos and a felucca sailboat ride..

Around town – Various shorts from around Luxor (Marilyn and I walked ALL over town). Photos of a place where I bought a scarf, a few odd internet places, some apartments and a few street scenes.

Temple of Luxor – Some more photos of the outside of Luxor Temple (as were were walking around town).

Faluga Ride – A sunset ride on a felucca sailboat ride which is named for it’s different shaped (but we had no wind).

Luxor at night – A carriage ride around Luxor at night, dinner and some photos from around town.

I know I’m only on day 4 of the bulk photos, but it’s been busy. I’ll get some more out the next few weeks, it’s less cRaZy at work, plus I’ve got a few more days off.

So we met at Piece Pizzeria there was a bunch of us. Kevin (with wife Katie and brother and future sister-in-law ), Dave, Jenny, RW and wife, Kelly, Ariana, Steve and Susan, and myself.

We had all kinds of pizzas, I mostly ate the standards and the weirdest was cheese with mashed potatoes (I wasn’t as fond as some of there others were). Chatted, took photos and more. After we were there for a while most of us left and went to a tequila bar but I don’t think anyone got any tequila, maybe I’m wrong and it was just a bar (it turns out it was the Salud Tequila Lounge) and chatted some more…

It was great meeting everyone and I look forward to doing it again some time. It was night to see some faces and expressions and voices. I’ll be able to put some of that in my head as read their blogs in the future. I’ve met a few bloggers before but never as a group so I’m game for another, didn’t get to chat with everyone very long but I’ll be reading their blogs to fill in some gaps. I need to get a few missing addresses still. I think Dave came the farthest (from Washington) and I was the second (from Michigan) and I think everyone else was within a few hours…

I got to chat with Jen and Ariana more as we were taking the same train and it was a bit of a walk to get there.

Sunday (today actually) I’m going to meet Dave and Jen to go to the museum (which one escapes me right now) but I probably should get to bed so I can do that. I need to get my stuff together too since I’ll be heading out of town from there.

I’ll have to check out the photos later and see how they came out.

So earlier our Guide told us we’d see pirates down by the dam. Sure enough, as we slow down dozens of rowboats surround the ship. And it’s “street” vendors trying to sell us stuff.

What they do is toss it up 4 floors for us to look at and it hits the railing and falls back down into the water. He throws another and it goes over us and lands in the pool. It’s really hard to negotiate when they are down so far. A few of the ladies bought some nice table cloths, I didn’t see anything I liked enough to have him send up (and then have to send back down arguing all the way). But it was just hysterical to see, we were all laughing the whole time. It’s just so bizarre.

Then we watched them leave to lay siege on another ship…

INTERNET: The hotel I’m at only offers wired Internet in the business center (it is 24/7) they want 20 LE (egyptian pounds) which is probably about $4-5 for 15 minutes, I think it’s a little better deal if you get 30 minutes. But when it’s closed (most of the time) you have to get someone to open it. The bonus for me is I have the laptop pretty prepped for what I want to do: I’ve already written e-mails and hit send, I’ve written posts (such as this one) and saved them, I only have to hit send and I’ve organized the photos I want to upload. So 15 minutes is actually quite a bit of time since I have the laptop. Anything more and I’d probably just be screwing around. They are working on wireless in certain areas but it’s not complete enough to work (but it is complete enough to stop you from using it).

MONEY CONVERSION: I did what I usually do, I went to the ATM. I took out 1000 LE (think of it as a cursive L like the Brits show it) and when I checked my bank’s web site I see they took out $174.56 with a $1 surcharge (that’s about what I thought it should be). I should have checked the sign at the bank for their conversion…

PHONES: No one can tell me what it’ll actually cost to use the phone in the room (actually they’ll tell me but if you ask two other people you get three different answers) and they have no pay phones here. They said I can use my AT&T calling card (but I’d still pay some undefined rate), but last week when I called AT&T they told me Egypt didn’t allow foreign phone cards to be used. So I went back up to the business center and Skyped out (using Skype computer phone software). I had to pay for the computer time and a few cents through Skype but it was still pretty cheap and now my Mom knows I’m alive (she can’t check the net to see if I’m posting, which infers I’m alive).

PENS: I couldn’t find the pen they supplied with the room so I went to the desk and asked for another one, you’d think I had gone and asked for a second television set. A call to housekeeping and hassling a maid I did finally get a new pen.

So I’ve complained before about my long route to JFK airport in NY from Detroit (via Atlanta). So today I took a trip out to the airport (DTW) to see what Delta could do for me. Janine was very helpful, I find they are way more helpful in person than on the phone (plus they print you out your ticketing information, which I like). We had pretty much narrowed my best options down to going to NY the day before and spending the night (which is an option I would have considered). So we canceled the tickets and then realized that my tickets were bought in a way that she couldn’t substitute them (actually I think she could have but it would have been only $12 credit). But then she had a problem rebooking the original flight. So we (she) called somewhere else, three somewhere else’s actually, but she finally got someone to answer and they fixed me right up! I failed that mission but it was worth a drive on a nice day (and $5 for parking). I’ll bug the travel group once more (maybe twice) and see if I can get someone there to fly me in the day before.

Plus I ran into a guy from high school, I actually recognized him but had to read the name tag to be sure. I think he graduated two ears before me it took us a few, but we figured out that we knew each other from yearbook. So I got to chat with him for a few minutes while waiting for Janine.

She had 1 penny, $400,000 and $750,000 on the board so they offered her $375,000. A very generous offer as the show goes. If she doesn’t take the money she has to open one more. She said she was a gambler so this should have been easy and Howie pretty much spelled it out for her that there were 3 options if she picked the case:

She could pick the penny and the offer would go up (probably to about $575,000, IMHO) and you could play between $400k and $750k or go.

She picks the $400,000 case and the offer stays at about $375,000 (the logical spot is the same amount, but I think Howie inferred it’d go up) and you should quit.

This is the worse option, she picks the $750,000 and the offer drops to $200,000 (Howie did the math for her on this one and I’ve never seen him be specific before) and you’d have to quit then.

It’s all a win at that point, so to me you keep on playing. At that point even making a bad choice you still have $200,000!!! And the good choices (66%) are better!

She would have been my hero if she kept going but even so she’s still a winner (and she really doesn’t care what I think anyways). She took the $375,000 and ran. I would have been tempted too, but the odds were pretty good to keep going.

God they dragged it out, she had already started playing last week and they kept her going for another 75 minutes this week (lots of ads). Although they did show some behind the scenes stuff…

So the the guy who accepted the oscar for Tsotsi (Director Gavin Hood?) for the best foreign language film was very interesting. He starts by saying ‘I have a speech written in my pocket but the TelePrompTer tells me I only have 38 seconds so please go to tsotsi.com for a list of everyone I need to thank.’

He then goes on to that the two stars and asks them to stand up and asks the cameras to point at them. Then says “10 seconds” and thanks a few more people. And wraps it up…

It was just a different speech than usual and educational for me as well (to how things work up there). And the site was very slow after he gave the web address.

I usually don’t watch the award shows but I was just organizing some stuff and it wasn’t to distracting. And I like the montages, especially the one with all the quotes.

I also got up to watch because I could tell something happened with Jennifer Garner when she came out (TGFT) and she did an interesting slip/shuffle/almost fall.

So eight people at a meat packing plant split the $365 million PowerBall prize. After taxes it was about $15 million a piece! That’s great I’d hate to see one person get all that (unless it was me) it’s just so much money. It’s going to affect so many more people this way. The people ranged from 26-56 years old and some had played for years and some played just a few times. This is the way I like to see the wealth spread!

I’ve got more info (and how I’d start spending $365 million) in my earlier post. Read the full story at CNN.com

So I don’t consistently or the same place. Especially since it means I have to get up on Sunday early to go to the place I like best. Besides, I don’t like my organized religion too organized.

So we’re reading one of the the prayers out loud and there is a page turn in the middle of it. It’s something they print up with the hymns and readings of the day and a few things just happened to paginate badly. So I read it real quick to see if there are any differences (different churches use different versions) so I don’t actually have to turn the page in the middle of it and draw attention to myself. It’s one of those things everyone should know and I was just checking for variations and I’ve already set my booklet down. So we get to the part where it splits and I practically jump as everyone turns the page, it sounds like a flock of damn birds just took off.

It just struck me as pretty funny at the time. Although my writing here doesn’t really convey how humorous it was then.

I was starving towards the end of the service, I didn’t have time for breakfast since I was in a hurry to go. Now I’m at the goldfish cafe eating waffles right now. Yum!

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Robert Heinlein

For a science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein has a lot of great short quotes that have nothing to do with Sci-Fi.

There is a reason that there is no mail and the banks and (some) schools are closed this Monday. Don’t forget…

Listen. Look. Learn. Pay attention, listen to what people are saying in person and on TV the next few days.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the third Monday in January, was first declared a public holiday in the United States by President Reagan in 1983. Born on January 15th, 1929, Martin Luther King became a Baptist minister and doctor of theology. He travelled extensively throughout the United States, preaching and working for Afro-American civil rights and was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee on 4th April, 1968.

The following is part of his famous speech “I have a dream“:
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I stll have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream, that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream, that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners, will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood – I have a dream.

The audio of his speech is on-line.

(Yes, this is pretty much the same entry I posted before.)

It’s national de-lurking week so to celebrate be sure to post a comment on one of my posts. You wouldn’t want to be a party pooper and just lurk around here would you?!?

Thanks to Sheryl who started this and to WebMiztris for tipping me off that it was a national holiday!

So I have to give Jeremy Hermanns credit, it looks like his third personal blog post is about his airplane de-pressurizing and having to wear an oxygen mask. Oh, did I forget to mention that he manages to snap some pictures with his Treo during all the action.

It looks like he runs (works with?) a few other blog sites, but looks as if he just started his personal blog the week before.

I’m glad he thought to take photos, he’d have been kicking himself later since he had it on him.

If you actually want to hear about the incident, you’ll have to read it for yourself.

So I remember having to come home from college one week when my Grandfather was really sick. I was really close to him, my Mom and I lived with him and Grandma until I was six or seven. I don’t even remember what it was for but I know it was a really big deal. I had to get a professor to let me have an extension on a big exam (maybe it was a final) for a “family emergency”. I really liked the Prof but he was a pain in many ways and he asked for a note. I remember saying that “if everything went well there wouldn’t be anything to get a note for”, he said no problem and told me to reschedule the exam later.

We were there for hours, I don’t remember much of the day, I remember reading that damn calculus book but not much else about the day. What I really remember is going into see him after the operation. Someone, maybe my Mom, said he was in bad shape but the operation went well. I went in the room and he had a ventilator tube down his throat and about a dozen IVs in him and a bunch of beeping charting machinery. I had no idea, I had to get out of there and go out in the hall, it was too much for me. I was probably twenty-two or twenty-three at the time and someone followed me out of the room to check on me, one of my uncles maybe, I think they were afraid I was going pass out or something. I don’t remember what they said, something like ‘we knew it was going to be bad’ and I wanted to scream “I’m just a kid. I’ve never seen anyone like that before. How am I supposed to know what’s bad!?!” Before then I probably hadn’t seen anyone with more than an IV or two. Nobody had been really sick since I was younger and they had kept me out of the hospital those times, so I was pretty clueless. I did go back in the room, but was a bit more prepared when I went back in, as I said I had no clue.

It’s funny because I probably never would have referred to myself as a kid at the time but I certainly felt it. But I didn’t have any other frame of reference to put that in. He did fine afterward the surgery, he lived about another decade afterwards…

That whole scene’s been popping into my head a lot lately, not sure why. No one’s in the hospital, no one’s sick. My other grandfather died just about a year ago so I know that’s been in my head. It just keeps coming up. Plus, I always get a little morbid around the holidays from missing “the way it used to be”. Tonight there was a hospital scene on TV that looked too familiar and made me start thinking about it, so here I am…

FYI – the comment about ‘we knew it was going to be bad’ was re-written several times, it was very caring and not condescending. But I can’t get it written the way I want so you get this little disclaimer.

So whatever happened to Tara Lipinski? It’s not a name you hear much any more. I haven’t even seen her on television much (acting or skating). It’s skating season so she’s popped into my head a few times lately when I see it on TV. Plus I saw some Champions on Ice posters at Breslin last week (even though she was with Stars on Ice) which also made me think about her.

I’ve seen her a few times, something (fundraiser?) just before she got big, a few times with Stars on Ice and some Tara & Friend’s show in East Lansing. She was very impressive each time.

It just seemed as if she completely disappeared. It seems like Sarah Hughes dropped off the map too…

Later: With a little Googling I see she’s going to be inducted into the hall of fame next month. I think that’s at a show in St. Louis which I think it’s where she hurt herself which lead to her not skating so much (anymore?); I have no idea if it’s the same arena. She’s got a story in International Figure Skating this month, I’m assuming that’s related to the induction(?).

I know I’ve mentioned Diane Duane several times before. But I just got her last two Wizardry books (7-The Wizard’s Holiday and 8-Wizards at War, the latter which came out early!) for my birthday (I read the one, but it just recently came out in paperback and I hadn’t gotten it yet since I had it on my Wishlist) the other is my only hard cover of it. She writes a wide gambit of stuff but the Wizardry books are my favorite and the first two are among my favorite books ever. As books like that go, they are probably more Narnia than HP. Part of what I like are there are rules that define How Wizardry Works, you just don’t wave a wand…

So I’m excited about the new book that’s coming out later next year, A Wizard of Mars, generally if they leave the planet it’s for another galaxy or dimension, this will be pretty close to home. Probably tie into some real science and be more fun that just some make believe planet.

This is a great thought, in an effort to support Hurricane Relief, Dean says:

For a confirmed donation of $50 to the American Red Cross, I’ll write a 600 word essay on the subject of your choice, with a minimum of two references.

I say you’ll be getting a deal for fifty bucks and he’ll post it or e-mail it to you privately. If you don’t read Dean’s World check it out (he blogs from Michigan). He’s “Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy” and he talks about normal stuff like TV shows and the like…

I’m sure this is a limited time offer (and void where prohibited).

Brice Mellen is on G4 TechTV (Attack of the Show) right now. He plays Mario World and Mortal Combat and he’s blind. And in a few he’s going to play another sightless gamer in “the world’s first Sightless Gamer Mortal Kombat Challenge!” Here’s a link but they don’t really do show notes like they used to…

Here’s a little more from USA Today, CNN and Wired.

Plus they are going to show doom on the iPod (which I talked about last week).

One of the last of my painted rocks entries (see some other painted rock posts).

So when I first saw this rock and noticed the way it was written I thought that something happened to Meghan, maybe she died or was in a coma or something, but later when I was looking at the images I didn’t think see it that way so much. But now as I’m writing this post I feel it again. Something about Meghan makes me feel like she’s in the past tense (especially the last sentence), I get the idea that Meghan was never going to see this rock and it made me wonder why? What do you think when you read it?

As you all know I had that sad Avril song running through my head as I was climbing along (and I thought it was sad when she sang it at the concert). But that hasn’t been as all-consuming in my brain lately.

One of another from my painted rocks series from Evanston, IL. This one was a unique one in that in was a two part rock. One with a question and one with a Yes/No option to complete. It’s a unique way to propose and I’m all for that. It was interesting because the rock looked old.

But take a look at the corner of the first photo, there’s a date and I’d assume it’s the date he asked. Obviously that’s not the case, it’s in the future (at least it was when I wrote this). Why would that be? If Maggie is busy that weekend it’s a no go? It wasn’t on the rock where she was to put her answer. Anyone going to a wedding in two weeks for Maggie?

So this seemed like an interesting story so I googled the ‘net and the closest thing I found was at a prom dedication site. (Very strange.)

LATER: It bothered me that it was word for word when I found it on-line. So I googled it without Maggie’s name and realized it’s the chorus of a George Strait song (I believe written by Danny A. Wells/Dana Hunt Oglesby).

I still want to know about the wedding…

1. Who do you owe?

Just the mortgage company. Probably about $100,000 still. I also owe for some retirement year purchases which will be paid off at the same time it’s time to retire. Actually paying it off will let me retire fiver years early.

2. Does anyone owe you?

I don’t think anyone owes mw anything at this time.

3. How many credit cards to you have?

Four; I generally just use two, the MasterCard and Kohl’s (Kohl’s gives me good rewards). They all (bills, mortgage and charge card) get paid off automatically every month. This forces me to make sure I have the money in the bank…

4. Do you care about national debt?

Yes. But I’ll help them crank it up some more if we can get more money for schools and the poor people who don’t have enough.

5. Would your friends be surprised if they accidently saw the balance in your checkbook?

I don’t so. They be surprised on how I organizes it. Different accounts for vacation, technology, yearly bills and future car purchase, etc…

From Friday Fiver.

Another rock from my walk along Lake Michigan. I liked this one, but the squiggly heart didn’t come out in any of the pictures that were of the whole rock so you don’t really get the full effect. But I like the soda and pop comparison (I generally say soda), generally the only difference (in the U.S.) between soda and pop is a 1,000 miles.

So here’s another painted rock with a quote on it (click image to enlarge) that I saw down by Lake Michigan. As I was walking along all these rocks (which really means jumping precariously from rock to rock) I had the darn Avril song running through my head. It was really kinda sad as I’m reading these rocks with different inspiring and sad messages running through my head. There were some really great ones but they were too faded or just too difficult (lighting/angle/shadows) to get a photograph of.

It was an experience to see the beautiful peaceful water on one side and also be climbing all over the rocks and then pausing to read some of the writings or to see some of the pictures. And then that darn song which always makes me feel little was running through my head.

So this is one of the many rocks that are piled up around Lake Michigan around the campus at Northwestern. There were tens of thousands of rocks and I’m sure there were thousands with writing on them. Many were too faded to photograph but I captured some of the ones that I really liked. I’ve got a few more of these that I’ll be sharing with you later…

Every time I read this post I get a chuckle out of this part…

“They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for over 200 years and hell, we’re not using it anymore.”

I stole this from Lisa at Glimpse of a Grrl.

The biggest problem with incompetent people is that they don’t know that they are incompetent. I don’t know if Sarah got that from somewhere or she paraphrased it, but it’s so true. I had to deal with several customer service people today (me being the customer) and I just wasn’t getting anywhere.

I just wanted them to listen. And if you can’t listen, at least wait until I finish the question before you jump in with an answer that clearly indicates that you didn’t listen.

For example: I’m supposed to call the pharmacist tomorrow at noon to see if they could get my non-generic prescription (if they can’t I’m happy with the generic). Now they had to call me to tell me this because they assured me while I was there that they could get it (so I actually could have gotten it while I was there). So for fifteen minutes I’m on the phone with them (they called me) and all I want to know is if they have the generic if the other doesn’t come in. They swear they have it, but I should call at noon to see if they received the non-generic. Why? Either way I’m getting something when I go there after work. So I wasted a few minutes trying to get them to explain why. As far as I can tell it’s so I’m not disappointed later…

Why would I want to be disappointed sooner?!?

That’s fifteen minutes of my life I’ll never get back…

So kellidiane noticed she was in my blogroll so I’m now officially some “random guy” linking to her blog. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but this is a new one…

I see it did inspire her to go out and get her own blogroll! And the important part: I’m on it!

If you’re a time traveler it doesn’t really matter when the convention is. So an MIT student is scheduling a convention on May 7th, 2005. Listen to a KOMO News story and an NPR story on this topic. So it looks like he’s a quirky college kid, but if it works, he’s famous! Plus he might inspire someone to grow up and build a time machine. Although he sorta got the idea from a comic strip on-line, if it works who should really get the credit?!?

Here’s the problem with this. It’s possible that when we invent time-travel that we won’t be able to go into the past before time travel was invented. It may require some sort of anchor or beacon that we need to connect back to (or maybe something more complex like one end of a wormhole generator or one end of a singularity duct taped to a tree or something).

We’ve guessed how aliens might send us a radio signal from far away and built antenna arrays to recieve the signals. Maybe we need to figure out what kind of a beacon a time traveler would need to jump back to our present (or maybe a radio receiver to get radio signals from the future). The interesting thing is that we can publish the specs so they know exactly what were looking…

I know they’ll never invent time travel in my lifetime because I’ve looked in all the places when I would have hid something for myself to find it already.

Anyone happen to see Anna Nalick in Chicago tonight at Borders? If so, two three questions: How many songs did she play? Anthing not on Wreck of the Day? and (of course) how was she?!?

So Sarah and I are out to lunch today, we work in the same building and get lunch occasionally (and she calls with computer problems occasionally). We’re at Subway, where I usually don’t go, if it were a place I usually go, I’d know what I wanted before we even got there. So were in line chatting while I’m trying to figure out what to get and the subway lady (SL) is waiting for us. After we order and the SL is making our subs we had something we were talking/disagreeing/bantering about, so I said to the SL, “So… How long do you think we’ve been going out?” Sarah managed to keep a straight face and we proceeded to pressured her into giving an answer. Her answer was something like, “Not very long, since there wasn’t any yelling”. But she never asked us how long, which was good since we would have had to lie or fess up that we aren’t dating.

That brought a smile to my face multiple times today, “since there wasn’t any yelling”…