I’m a little bit envious of, and extremely happy for, DCM, who’s in Little Rock as we speak working on the Clark presidential campaign. This is always an exciting time in politics, fresh with passion and promise. But when I became a journalist a lifetime ago I signed away my rights to get personally involved in campaigns. It’s a good bargain – I pretty much always get to write about the campaigns, and the journalist’s ringside seat is a great one. But it’s a tradeoff for sure.
My Love
Here’s how Lissa is great.
Too much stress in the week over this, big opus that had me wound tight. I woke up this morning with a bad headache, stumbled into the kitchen, and there was no coffee. I stood and stared at the empty filter in our mister coffee, dumbstruck, unable to move.
Lissa: “Are you OK?”
Me: “We’re out of coffee.”
Lissa: “I’ll go get you some.” And she dressed in a flash and was out the door to Einsteins, and back with two cups of coffee.
I sat in the comfy chair reading a magazine. I couldn’t bear to crack open the morning paper on the step stool by my feet. Lissa grasped what I needed and picked up the paper, going straight to my story. She read it, and pronounced it a success. I felt quite loved.
Please Send Mail
This is sweet, Thomas:
For every mail you send with Evolution, God gives Ettore an extra rice grain in his pudding. So never stop sending mail.
Picture Postcard
Stop and smell the roses, and all.
I almost missed it this morning, but when I took the mental pause and realized what lay before me it was a picture postcard moment.
Sharp cold, a thick white layer of frost and day-old snow on the pastures along the river, three colorful hot air balloons between me and the early morning sun. If it was a postcard it would have been a cliche, but cliches are what they are for a reason.
Sadly, no camera.
DogBlog
My dog, Sadie, amuses me as follows:
She spends a great deal of her energy looking out the front window. To enable this, we’ve put a stool by the window for her to sit on. When the curtain’s closed, she’ll stick her nose under and push it up. It drapes over her head, and from the front yard she looks like a Nun. We call her Nun Dog when she does it.
She seems to like this. Now when the curtain is pushed to one side, she’ll still slip her nose under it so it’s draped over her head. And lately, as in the snap above, she’ll slip her nose under it, then turn and look into the house toward us, Nun Dog in reverse. This amuses me.
3763.4
I saw this from a distance a few weeks ago, but I didn’t want to stare directly at it.
It’s the possibility of riding 4,000 miles this year. I log every ride, and thanks to the beauty of software I can tell you that as of today, Dec. 8, I’ve ridden 3,763.4 miles in 2003. (Don’t be fooled by those last couple of significant digits, there’s undoubtedly an error bar on that number, but it’s a reasonable approximation and it’s the best number I’ve got.)
So after glancing sidelong at the number, then staring when I was pretty sure it wasn’t looking, I’ve walked up and poked it with a stick. I’m going for it. It’s doable if I don’t get the flu.
Htdig
Got Htdig set up last evening to manage a bunch of my writings. (I’d had it set up once before, but lost it during a reinstall.) Fine tool. I recommend it highly. I’d been playing with Zope, to do the same job, but it’s way more than I need. Htdig with a little xslt/python/perl glue to hold stuff together is quite sufficient.
I”m also playing with Jonathan and Zana’s Bookworm, but while fun it’s turning out to be orthogonal to what I need.
Dyin’
Had to go to work for a while on a Saturday, listening to Zappa on the drive in as recompense, I noticed Bobby Martin’s odd turn on the final lyric of Gregg Allman’s “Whipping Post“:
You know sometimes I try to believe
That there ain’t no such thing
As dyin’
Ya know, Bobby’s wrong ’bout that, but that works in so many diffent ways anyway.
libxml at the office
In another of those rare but entertaining convergences between two of my lives, I spent a while yesterday afternoon with Steve the Systems Guy at the office explaining how he could use libxml’s python bindings to solve a problem on which he’s working. This was not a hard sell. He already had python and xml in mind, and he’s completely committed to switching to free software wherever possible. He’s a smart guy. He just needed to bounce questions off of someone familiar with the technologies.
Technological Innovation
A century later, it still looks pretty much like this.
That’s what is apparently the only remaining Van Cleve in existence, the bicycles built by Wilbur and Orville Wright before they famously went on to other things. What’s amazing is that the bicycle I’ll hop on this morning for the ride to work is basically the same. Lots of minor technical innovations, but the basic shape of the thing hasn’t changed.
(I like it that the reverse threading so the pedal won’t unscrew while you’re riding was a Wright Bros. invention. I’ll be riding a Wright Bros. technology today.)