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.

So I think part of what makes Costa Rica (and other places I’ve traveled to in the world) so interesting to me is the learning that’s going on. Just going into a restaurant is a new experience, almost like when your parents let you order your own food for the first time. And many other basic things becomes a learning experience.

In Costa Rica if you don’t ask for the check (la quintaff cuenta) they’ll never bring it to your table. In England, in a pub, you have to go up to the bar in order to get drinks or food and many places will let you sit until you figure it out. It’s part of the fun at least to me it is.

When I travel, I don’t just want the sights, I want the learning that goes with it. I’ll hit the local places off the beaten path specifically to figure things like that out. In Costa Rica, taking the bus (the bus another post to come) or getting a driver’s license is an experience that lets you figure out how things work in that country. I find all those parts particularly interesting and enjoyable…

UPDATE: Usually, I don’t update a post as much as I’m about to…
But I’m reading a Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson, a humourous book about traveling in Europe. And he said.

I’m going to change the date on this so it floats up to the top, so if you saw it already, you’ll see it again for the new content…

As you all know I love time-travel, and while never being a Doctor Who fan this new (started in 2005) series is just brilliant! In case you didn’t know, the new Doctor Who is produced (and sometimes written) by Russell T. Davies (Queer as Folk and Torchwood) so it’s not your grandpa’s sci-fi show (and neither is Torchwood which runs later at night). Steven Moffat wrote this week’s episode as well as several other episodes, some older shows (but I’m not sure if they were specials or radio shows), many episodes of Coupling (US and UK) and more.

This week’s episode is just full of non-stop action and non-stop paradoxes and is just excellent! It’s kinda scary too(!), I think that’s what makes it seem so non-stop. This episode barely shows the main characters and instead focuses on a woman from London outside the normal time-line of The Doctor and Martha. As she’s piecing things together it’s very entertaining since you know it’s going to all going to tie up neatly by the end. But one of the best parts is when he’s explaining the non-linerarity of time and says “it’s like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff” and it makes complete sense to the viewer; it’s then you know the writers are doing something right..

The other good line is when Sally’s talking about talking pictures of old things (which makes her sad) and her friend asks her “What’s good about sad?” and Sally responds with “It’s happy for deep people”…

And the extra bonus is that starting next week (for 3 episodes) we have the return of Captain Jack Harkness!

HA! Never heard that one before!!!!

“The early bird may get the worm,
but the second mouse gets the cheese”
– Wendy’s MySpace Page

I Googled it and found all sorts of references but didn’t see an original source.

“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.

I liked this

Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable.
- Winston Churchill

I stole this from Sizzle’s…

It reminds me of

Man Plans… God laughs…

But I’m not sure who said it. Einstein?

A new season and it’s still a great show! I’m getting used to the new theme song (actually same lyrics but a different band or mix).

"Now maybe other people would say they’d never install a tracking device in their significant other’s car. But I think that’s just because they don’t know how."

— Veronica Mars

I just love Veronica Mars!

I just really liked how this sounded so you get get to hear it too.

‘‘There’s something sort of magical about putting flour and sugar and eggs and chocolate chips in a bowl and having it turn into cookies that taste this good.’’
— Mi

Mi from Le blog d’une voyageuse de femme said this and it stuck in my head (and now I want cookies).

At a certain age
you’ll find it extraordinary
the compromises
one is willing to make
for even the possibility of love.

That’d be Denny Crane from Crane, Poole and Schmidt in Boston.

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.

“I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every
other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the
locks, they are always locking three.”

–Elayne Boosler

Here’s another…

“Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I’m halfway through my
fishburger and I realize, Oh my God….I could be eating a slow learner.”
–Lynda Montgomery

From Don’t Forward.

Bumper sticker that I was just behind:

Peace on Earth for Everyone.
No Exceptions!

Or something close to that meaning. And I agree!

"Someone will invite you to a Karaoke party."

And my lucky numbers are: 49, 5, 33, 17, 23, 7

The food was pretty good too!

CNN says Rita becomes third most intense hurricane on record:

“Rita — the powerful Category 5 storm plowing across the Gulf of Mexico – has become the third most intense hurricane on record, according to National Hurricane Center data. Long lines of cars Wednesday headed out of coastal Texas towns and Houston — the fourth most populous city in the country. Evacuating parents were told to take photos of their children and to give them identification in case they get separated.”– CNN.com

Now that’s a nightmare, worrying about getting separated from your babies while during the storm, I can’t even imagine. What the heck is going on with the weather these days?!? I can barely remember any weather disasters compared to any of these hurricanes and tsunamis in the past year. I remember occasional hurricanes and tornados in my life, but it’s just been non-stop lately. They’re having to relocate the relocated people from Katrina. This is like Irwin Allen / Movie of the Week kinda stuff…

My thoughts go out to everyone who’s in this mess. The same for those worried about friends and family.

Tuesday night, the sheriff (from Louisiana) wrote a check for $2.5 million out of the department’s bank account — which only had $23,000 in it — to reserve 150 trailers for his staff.

I’m not sure how long NOAA will have this photo up (551k), but it’s amazing… They keep current events up for about 60 days, check out some of the archive.

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.

Another painted rock from my trip to Illinois (click picture to enlarge). If you haven’t seen them I’ve posted of few of these since the last weekend in June. It was really crazy how much I enjoyed walking along the shore reading these rocks. At least I’ve finally got that darn Avril song out of my head….

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.

And I don’t wanna fall to pieces
I just want to sit and stare at you
I don’t want to talk about it
And I don’t want a conversation
I just want to cry in front of you
Fall To Pieces – Avril Lavigne

So these darn lyrics keep running through my head (they play this part of the song in the iTunes preview so listen if you have it). I don’t know why they keep resonating in my head and my heart lately. I can certainly relate to the feelings in general, but nothing in particular currenlty, which is why I’m confused that they keep coming up. And it’s just this part of the chorus that sticks, until I looked the lyrics up I never even noticed that the next line was “Cuz I’m in Love With you” although it was perfectly clear to me that there was some deep love that was friendship or romance.

It makes me sad but but in a sort of good way. In the way that crying can be a catharsis and purge out the emotional stuff that made you cry in the first place.

I just wanted to check the spelling of catharsis and the definitions were interesting. Actually the Catharsis Wikipedia entry is pretty interesting too.

Did you notice how I jumped from talking about my emotions to the defintion of the word and the history of it? (You did? I thought I might just slip that one by you.)

This is a great album by the way I think I might be turning into an Avril Fan (now that she’s “not so angry any more”).

While I may have goofed the wording up, I see that my guess won for first place in the 100 best movie quotes of all time! As Casablanca was my second guess, I would have hoped it would have scored higher (but it did get six of the one-hundred quotes).

Some of my favorites:

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.

"We’re adults. When did that happen?!?

And how do we make it stop?"

–Merideth Grey

And her followup towards the end of the show:

Responsibility, it really does suck.

She did rattle off a lot of the bonuses of being an adult but it’s the blunt realities of the quotes this show that really help me to enjoy it.

There’s this baby up in the nursery, he’s brand new.
No one’s neglected him or damaged him yet…
How did we get from there to here?

That’s from Grey’s Anatomy, a great new show. It focuses on a group of four new residents who just started working those horrible 48 hour shifts at the hospital. The main character, Meredith Grey, has a mother who was a legend in the medical field so she’s got a variety o issues including living up to her mother’s legacy. There’s a few scenes up on the baby floor (at the observation window) that are pretty cute too. It’s on Sunday’s at 10 PM EST.

It’s an odd scene when they’re operating on the woman who was assaulted and raped, trying to be serious and also trying to break the tension by making light of it (which doesn’t work) and the one new doctor is freaked out because the woman was wearing the same bizzaro shoes that she wore to work today. But then they find something and it takes a minute to realize what it is… that it must have got bitten off from the man that assaulted her. It really bounces you from one end of the spectrum to another.

Then the police can’t make it right away so Meredith is stuck carrying around a cooler some they they don’t break the chain of evidence. As a bonus, guess who stumbles in to the hospital later in need of medical attention…?

Jane says:

I amaze myself sometimes. I lie to my mother about like, what time I woke up yesterday morning yet I’ll tell the complete, absolute truth on a two page internet quiz about Which Harry Potter House Do You Belong In?

That’s over at Girls in the Bag. A few different women post to the blog, but it seems like Jane does the most of them…

“How can you live in New York and not understand sarcasm!!!”

I just love this show… (Thursday nights at 8 PM and 8:30 PM EST)

“Through greater effort and hard work a precious dream comes true…”

Speaking of lucky numbers, did everyone get their Big Game lottery ticket? It’s up to 112 million tonight!!!

This is a the tag line on Carly’s blog:

What feelings I have for you I cannot say, I have not met you yet, But I am waiting With baited breath And pounding heart, To take your hands in mine And know you.

I can’t remember how I stumbled upon this blog, but somehow it seems to have more meaning / feeling that I realized she’s a seventeen year-old. You can read her writings at Paradise Will Wait.

So I finally saw it! It was really excellent. Kind of a Beautiful Girls meets Lithium… Zach and Natalie were perfect for the parts he had this lost/numb look when needed and she’s hysterical. She seemed really young in the movie reminding me a lot of her character Marty in Beautiful Girls (but that was 8 years). I will need the DVD for the director’s commentary (and any extras). Even the not funny scenes were funny in some way. I laughed lots! Out loud.

I always try to figure out what to say without giving up the movie… If you think you’ll like it, you probably will. It’s really got the gears turning in my head, I need the life altering experiences that some of the characters wen through so I can wake up and get moving with my life. Thanks to the motivators Maya and Jenni and everyone else whose been talking about this… I was halfway there when I remembered tissue, or more specifically that we didn’t have any, but I survived. The funny stuff offset the rest a bit…

A few good quotes (not in any order): A friend’s mom:

Oh… guys? Don’t stay in here all day. I had to take the batteries out of the carbon monoxide detector; it was beeping all night.

Sam (Natalie):

If you don’t laugh at yourself, life is going to seem a lot longer than you want it to.

Andrew (Zach):

We may not always be as happy as you always dreamed we’d be, but for once, let’s just allow ourselves to be whatever it is we are.

Sam (Natalie):

I know it hurts. But it’s life, and it’s real. And sometimes it fucking hurts, but it’s life, and it’s pretty much all we got.

I swear every week I get a few more dents in this thing. It’s work’s and even if I went through one of these things a year they’d get their money’s worth from all the little things I get done a home and weekends ’cause I take it everywhere.

I just went to change the battery and found another dent which made it hard to get the battery out. I de-dented it but it’s just one more thing. FYI it’s a 12 inch Apple Powerbook G4. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything but a faster smaller one. You can keep that 17 inch one, it’s too much to lug around. I do miss the plastic case of my old iBook, this does feel like it’s going to slip out of my hands (no that’s not the cause of any of the dents). Most of them just show up, kinda like that odd bruise on your shin/elbow/etc. that you don’t know how it got there. I just want this one to last at least until the 1.5 GHz ones come out…

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” That’s the original quote, but can you tell me who it’s from from?

 Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper . Crazy, geeky, cool Navy Admiral. Passed away in 92. She’s got lots of quotes I find attributed to her, but I never knew they were all hers…

I liked this quote. I don’t have kids, but I hope someday I’ll help them to carry (or be) a message that is a good one.

It was someone’s signature on SlickDeals.net but no link to anything that I can attribute it to…

So I’m reading Zhaba Zhournal and looked at her about zhaba link and one of the items says:

Married, monogamous, bisexual (no, those aren’t mutually exclusive)

and I just keep chuckling at her parenthetical information. Did she get comments or just put that in in the first place? (I’m pretty big on parenthetical information myself).

Quote of the Day (from my today info on the lower right of my page).

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

Grace Murray Hopper

I never knew she said that. She’s this wonderfully crazy Admiral in the Navy, had a lot to do with computing. She passed away in 1992 and I know I saw her on Letterman a time or two. She was great with analogies (which I love) when talking about technology. I remember seeing her on some show talking about the speed of computers and explaining it quite well with spaghetti and pepper.

The other thing that she’s attributed with (which I’m more certain she actually said) is:

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

She’s got her own entry in TV Tomb and I think there is a big computing conference with her name in the title.

From JoA – “Everyone has a part of themselves that they don’t like. They carry it around like a weight. But what they have to do is know when to set it down”. Maybe not an exact quote but the idea is there. Just set it down, ignore it, live the other 99.9% of your life. I know it’s a lot easier to say it than to do it. But sometimes we forget it. I know other’s do and I know I do too. I just thought it was an interesting thing to hear. It was a rerun of Joan and about everyone being upset or bothered about something.

I just really liked the thought. I’ll be thinking about it for a bit…

Today was graduation. I get to sit on the stage since I’m an administrator for the district. I was just going to comment on the class quote but now that I’m thinking about it I’ll tell you why this was extra emotional for graduation. I started this job three and a half years ago, just a few months before there was an accident in front of the school and one of the students died while crossing the street. That was shortly after they all just started a new high school. There were lots of speeches that mentioned her and a poem read by three of the women who then presented her father with a degree for her. Lots of tears and smeared mascara. I was very glad to be there tonight.

But back to the class quote, it was something like:

Your life isn’t measured by the number of breaths you take.
It’s measured by the number of times your breath is taken away.

I do wonder how my life will be measured by others in the future and I really liked how this made me think about how I measure my life.

There was one graduate walking across the stage, she just had this earthy quality about her. And then I noticed her (lack of) shoes. She’ll be remembered for that and many other things I’m sure…

I now have a new item in my Today section on my links column. So with the Sun, the Moon, “my” weather, word of the day there is now the Quote of the Day. As with everything else it gets updated automatically, so if it doesn’t change, it’s not my fault…

You can click the links to go to the main page of the site or click on the author to see other quotes by the Author. Today’s quote was
“Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.” – Mark Twain

PS – I’m always looking for more additions to my “today” section.

A quick evaluation on whether a technology is good or not. That is a pretty short evaluation and I like it (it’s short, it’s powerful and it meets my 3 second attention span requirement). I got this from a Mike Rohde blog entry that was referring to a Howard Rheingold article quoting an Amish person as to why cell phones are okay for them. It’s got to be causing some conflict for them, remember cell phones are a lot more these days than just phones they are e-mail, web browsers, PDAs, video games, calulators, cameras, mp3 players, etc… and some of those functions are standard these days. The Amish aren’t the focus of my entry but they are the round about source of the quote.

Back to the quote: “Does it bring us together, or draw us apart?” – While it is a nice short evaluation on technology, the continuum between the two ends of the spectrum leaves a lot of grey area. But I’ve been thinking about it every since I read the entry. Computers (sans Internet) can take people away from the people they know. The Internet can bring them the world but also take them away from people they know. But for some it could be a creative outlet – photography, music, movies, art design. This could be what brings them out.

My question is what are some very clear technologies that fit at one end of our spectrum or another?
There is no research here, I’m just making it up as I go along (so don’t get upset with me).

“Everyone has a part of themselves that they don’t like… You carry it around like a weight. The lucky ones realize that when it becomes too heavy, you can choose to set it down. That’s when you can see things they way they really are.”

It was probably my least favorite episode. So if it was the first time you had a chance to watch Joan of Arcadia, you do need to give it another try. Too many people arguing and fighting, not the normal happy go lucky show that I normally praise so highly.