Most of the time, when I’m not listening to music, there’s something playing in my head. Sometimes it’s a piece I’m thinking about that I’ve heard somewhere, sometime. Sometimes I only remember a snippet, and take that snatch of cloth and spin it out into an endless variation. Sometimes it’s just the smallest wisp of an idea, and the music in my head is analogous to watching a leaf turn in a gentle breeze. Gentle exploration.
These last things are the seeds of the music that eventually makes its way to paper or tape. You Are An sprung quickly from one of those seeds, and I present it fresh from the mind, ever-so-gently edited. Chava’s four year old daughter says it makes her “think of a loving person.”
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My boss just sent me nine packages of coffee, gratis. Those who truly know me will recognize what a delightful bonus this is.
I re-learned a valuable lesson this afternoon . I was working on fixing a pesky problem in the system. After trying a few obvious things, I did what smart developers do and look for documentation; chances are, unless you’re really on the bleeding edge (and I’m not), that someone, somewhere has whined about it on a message board. In this case, I found the fix I was looking for, which in this case consisted of upgrading a particular Perl module. Install module, problem solved.
Literally minutes after I pat myself on the back for a job well done, things start breaking. Turns out that the new version of the module fixed the bug, but in return broke practically everything else. Whoops! Abort! Uninstall! After mopping up and reopening my poor bug, I did a bit more research and found out that a lot of other people had whined about this as well, but I didn’t look further into it than the immediate fix. The moral for today: look beyond the horizon of the fix and check to see what havoc the fix might cause — it doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
Sue’s moving across town, and I lent a hand with the moving. It went well, and I can’t say that she’s settled in, but at least her stuff is sitting in boxes in her new place. For my part, I’m sore with righteous labor.
Chava managed to delight me when she changed her mind halfway through a word, starting with “slice” and ending with “hunk.” What came out of her mouth was “slunk.” A slunk of cake.
I have good memories of Easter from my childhood, but they don’t involve church. There would be eggs, and candy, of course, but for me the treat was the beach. We’d get up early, stop for breakfast, and drive out to Galveston for a day on the ocean. There was something innately right about choosing that day to reconnect with the water.
Over the past years I’ve made it a habit to do some sort of ritualized Easter penance by eating a vast number of Peeps in one sitting. This brings to mind some rather unpleasant connotations to resurrexit, but we’ll leave that where it is.
We were out taking photos today, and a fellow walking by said to V, “You wanna take a picture of me?”
So she did.
Products were launched, beer was drunk. There’s a few things to mop up tomorrow, but I’m calling it a success. Time for some well-deserved decompression. I’ve been wound up like a spring this week; not stressed, but poised. It’s still draining.
After launch and before beer, I put on my composer hat as Orlando came over tonight and played bizarre sounds on his flute. As he played a sound that caught my fancy, I asked him how it would be notated — there’s an entire dialect of notation devoted to extended flute techniques, which I’m more than a little rusty on. Many sounds have more than one method of notation already, and Orlando more than once reminded me that if I thought of a better way to notate it, I was welcome to.
I now have a Rosetta Stone in the form of a sheet of staff paper and the recording I made of the session, which I will decipher into the source of what will eventually be the new piece.
I’m in the process of changing banks. It’s turning out out to be a longer process than I expected; with the advent of electronic bill pay and direct withdrawals there are no less than eight companies I have to change information for.
Still, it’s a good thing. My current bank has been quietly ratcheting up its processing costs. Using my debit card costs 35 cents; taking money from a non-company ATM costs $2 on top of what the other bank charges. Tack on the monthly service change, and, well, it adds up.
My Oblique Strategies card for today is “Don’t be afraid of things because they’re easy to do.” Today’s code is being written to the celtic/folk/eclectic stylings of The Duhks, to whom I am once again in debt to Chava the Eternal Researcher for the reference.
I’m contemplating a more comprehensive backup solution for my personal and business documents. When one’s entire output is digital, paranoia sets in. My current system, which is “keep about a zillion copies in five or six places,” is working just fine, but it’s creating some questions about definitive versions and whatnot, and I think I can do better. Dispossesed Hrothgar in this new plan gets a new lease on life; instead of selling him on eBay to the gypsies, he gets to stay as a backup server.
Today Chava pointed me to the Chocolate Deities site, which appropriately sells deities made out of chocolate. Buddha, Loki, Ganesh, even the Venus of Willendorf. Religious and delicious! Missing from the scrumptious yet incomplete pantheon are the Judeo-Christians: Jesus, Mary, Jahweh and the gang (they do have a Celtic Cross, which would work in a pinch). I was put in mind of Tom Wait’s song “Chocolate Jesus.”
It does beg the question why we don’t sell and eat Chocolate Jesuses (Jesii? Jesotes?) for Easter. Well, not really, but the idea of the candy aisle in an alternate universe in which we did is an entertaining one.
Spring Cleaning seems to be happening today of it’s own accord. One of the most fantastic elements of working on one’s own schedule manifests itself today; I can work a little, clean a little, then work some more. I find this works rather well when I’ve got a long list of tasks that I’ve already thought about, so the work aspect is a chore in itself — sit down, code, test, lather, rinse.
On the chore note, it’s time to give props to Sciral Consistency, a wacky little program. It does one thing, which is display events that fall into the “do this every x to y days” rubric. This works very well for chores, exercise, and communications with people that require a ‘ping’ every once and in a while.
After the gruel disaster of last week, I’m happy to announce that we’ve found the magic formula for Zojirushi oatmeal. For the greater good of humanity I post it here: 1 part oatmeal, 2 parts water, porridge setting.
Useless Trivia: my high school class song was “Forever Young” by Rod Stewart. I heard it yesterday on the radio and was instantly transported back. I also was a bit befuddled as I heard it on the “classic rock” station. Time marches on; when I’m 60, they’ll be playing the hits of the 90’s, 00’s, and 10’s.
Happy Spring/Vernal Equinox/Ostara!
Once again there’s a deadline in software development land, so I’m spending a few hours today ensuring that I’m not going to get swamped in the next few days. We had one of our once-in-a-blue-moon face to face meetings on Friday, so I’m confident that everything is going to go well when the launch happens. Coupons are not involved, so spirits are high.
Our festive penguin window ornament has melted, and dramatically. A herald of Spring?
This year my Irish Festivity Sense seems to be finely attuned to the presence of corned beef.
Over a year ago, I purchased a license to a really nifty piece of creative writing software called Ulysses. I didn’t end up using it much (mostly because I wasn’t doing much creative writing), but Varia loved it and used it for much of her November novel writing adventure.
If you bothered on clicking on the Ulysses link above, chances are it doesn’t work. As of writing this, it hasn’t worked in over a month. The website is down, forums are down, and email support down likewise. Also down is the authentication server, which is required to activate an installation; like protected iTunes files, the software can be used on a few machines at once. Once the machine has been authorized, that is, which is impossible because the site is down. (UPDATE 3/16/05: Apparently the site is up; my ISP, however, seems to be blocking all connections. Mea culpa, and thanks to Vlad Spears for pointing it out.. Perhaps I need a “jump to conclusions” mat!)
Since both V and I upgraded our machines recently, we’re out of luck. No Ulysses for us.
This experience has made me very hesitant to purchase anything from a small (or large, for that matter) outfit that requires online authentication. How am I to be sure that a year down the road, I’m going to be stuck with something that I can’t install? I understand that online authentication is very useful in the ongoing dialectic between developers and pirates, but when it goes wrong, it only hurts legitimate users who want to get work done.
