Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/16/happy-kyoto-day/
Well, although my nation isn’t participating in the Kyoto protocol, I still take the bus to work, which is really nice because in bad traffic I get more time to read.
The Japanese national I live with observed that we were somewhat lacking in hot water last night. We are still lacking this morning. One might think the hot water heater is busted and the building people will repair it soon, but in the mean time, today is a good day to skip the hot water and pretend, for just a moment, that we are a bit greener.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/15/dialogue/
“Can I ask a silly question?”
“Yes, I think you just have.”
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/13/thomas-jefferson-religious-freedom/
Almighty God hath created the mind free . . . All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion . . . No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.
Inscription on the Jefferson Memorial
Taken from A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1777.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/13/choosing-morality/
It was the vision of the founding fathers to have a nation of independent, land-owning farmers. Each farm run by a man who was the equal of his peers in freedom and opportunity. Wealth may be inherited but much of it was to be determined by personal enterprise, not to mention the ambitions of the creator …
It is a common belief that a complex entity derives much of its character from the characteristics of its component parts. In a remote colony aspiring for independence, the nation, as a republic, was to be formed in turn by independent states, composed of democratically-run communities, comprised of independent, self-determined farmers, each man his own lord over his private fiefdom. E pluribus unum — from many, one. The strength of independent men makes the strength of the communities makes the strength of the states makes the strength of the Republic, the sum of our national strength, to stand in defiance of the awesome might of the British Empire.
The conservative philosophy is that the moral failings of our government and power structures are the result of moral failures among the constituents that represent society as a whole. Their solution is too often a reaction — we will impose morality. Abortion will be illegal, as will self-serving homosexual relationships. We will seek to weave the notion of Godliness through the public discourse, for it is only through Jesus Christ, our savior, that redemption, and thus morality, is to be found.
But morality is not something you can get from the law, or from uttering some profession of faith. Morality comes from honest dialog with the self and those around the self. Morality comes from looking at the other as a different version of the self, and accepting that as a point from which to work with others. In short, morality comes from personal initiative, and requires independence and responsibility. Morality comes from the need to choose morality. (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/11/halfway-through-friday/
So, as you can tell from the lack of activity here, it has been a somewhat hectic week at work, so as I return from lunch, I point out to our office manager that I’m half-way through Friday!
And I got the weekend ahead of me.
And, a friend calls, totally bummed out about work. I share my philosophy about how you can work your 9-5, and then forget about whatever you don’t like about work, and go home, and revel in the beauty, or the problems, I guess, of your home life.
Enough upbeat energy and positive thoughts and my friend seemed a lot more cheerful.
Which makes me happy too.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/seatguru/
Dave is flying to China for two weeks for business.
Another Dave suggested SeatGuru.com for advice on selecting seats for his sixteen-hour flight.
I will have to remember this, for I will have to fly to Japan in May.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/my-sister-kicks-butt/
Well, it started as a gigantic screw-up. Getting pregnant, right? Well, these things happen, even to responsible people.
And, there are a number of ways to handle such a screw up. My sister has come a long way, I think, nine months is one way to put it, but I think she has come farther than that.
Though she is not prepared to be a Mom, she decided to have the baby anyway, and place it with an adoption agency. Well, on February 2, with the help of our Mom and my sister’s awesome boyfriend, (who is not the father,) my sister gave birth to Evan.
Being pregnant, and giving birth, and then giving the baby away . . . of all the tough things you can do in life, that is up there on the list. I’m proud of my sister, and I am very happy that things seem to be working out great.
(And I’m a little frustrated that I can’t be around, but this is nothing new.)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/referer-zeitgeist/
So, take a look at backlinks. It is kind of a mess, culled from my web server’s Apache log, but gratifying to browse. Apparently, I am the top hit on Google for such things as:
I owe such “fame,” I think, in large part, to WordPress’ clever habit of putting title keywords in to the URLs of my posts. Google seems to lend a bit more credibility to URLs that match keywords as opposed to goofy URLs. “What’s in a name? Would a Rose, by any other name …”
Anyway, another thing you’ll see in there is some spam referers that companies will wrap in to HTTP requests with the expressed intent of appearing on a public “backlinks” page to boost their own Google ranking!
I have been thinking to hack up a little log-file parser that pulls the referers out, and checks on them to make sure they actually link to the pages they say, and if the referer is a search engine, to check the results on that search engine and report the ranking. It is nice to:
- Know what keywords are bringing you traffic.
- Filter out the referer spammers.
And, thinking 1.1, it would be neat to track this data by week, or month, and see gaining keyword hits, and declining keyword hits. A personal site “zeitgeist” if you will.
Has anyone ideas on implementation, or if it has already been implemented, or other features that would be nice, or how best to arrange the results? Drop me a line or comment here. Thanks!
-danny
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/02/04/friday-sun-god/
I am having such a Friday. I have been really productive lately, which heightens the sensation of coming in one day, and sitting at one’s desk, and really not doing anything. Not even slacking off, just sort of in suspended animation.
So, let us slack off for a bit. It is important to do. I’ll tell you that this morning, as I was walking across the foggy parking lot to get to work, I looked up in to the sky and saw a sphere. The moon, so late in the morning? But it was pure white, and a bit larger. What an interesting moon. Unless … it is … the sun! I was staring at the sun!
Normally, staring at the sun is a bad thing that will make you go blind. Don’t stare at the sun! But today, the sun was weakened by fog … it was stripped of its wrathful power, and was just an orb in the sky. I thought to take a picture of this, because it was eerie and alien, but when I pulled my camera out a moment later, the sun was gone. It had become invisible in the fog.
Talk about eerie.
As I finished my trip across the parking lot, I thought about how the sun is totally manifest each and every day, even when you can not see it. It is so powerful that usually you can not look at it directly or it would destroy your eyes, but you can feel it shining warm on your body, touching you and everything from up high. No wonder the early people revere the sun as a God. But then, the fact that you can not look at the original Sun God, and you can experience the sun even when you can not see it, well, that opens up people to the idea that you can experience other Gods, even when you can not observe them directly.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/31/right-of-way/
8:12AM, Ygnacio Valley Road at California
So, what just happened was that I took a look out for cars while crossing the right-hand turnout to the main crossing. An older lady in a red sports car came whizzing up to the turnout, took a look at me, and kept going. As I stepped in to the turnout, I smacked her red spoiler and continued on my way. I heard a honking behind me, as a few pedestrians already waiting at the main crossing looked around. After a moment, I turned my head too, to see the red sports car drifting lonely down the street.
I figure that if you fail to yield to a pedestrian, then the wholesome smack of flesh on plastic is a healthy reminder that plastic smacking flesh is highly undesirable. A healthy way of saying, “Good morning, and thank you for flirting with vehicular manslaughter.”
5:02PM, Bishop Ranch Bus Stop
I got downstairs late for the 4:54 bus. A co-rider suggested that we missed it. Then the bus pulled up, and we got on board. I did some reading up on web performance tuning, trying to think of more ways to debug the causes of trouble for one of our European clients. The bus roared along, and my studying was cut short, because by 5:20, the bus was already at Walnut Creek! It took another three minutes before the traffic light allowed the bus to cross Ygnacio Valley Road and drop us off at the BART station. As we waited, I noticed, out the window next to me, a guy in a blue Volkswagen shuffling papers in his lap, twitching with his transmission, and chatting on the cell phone, pulling a foot or two forward every few seconds, waiting eagerly for the light.
I figure that if you want to get work done on the ride home, you can take the bus. It works for me. “Can you believe that guy,” I said to the passenger in front of me. “And I have to walk home through that!”
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/24/freebsd-howto-gmirror-system/
A new feature of FreeBSD 5.3 is the ability to set up a software mirror of your system disk. This allows you to boot off either of a pair of hard disks, which will then function as a RAID1, which will ensure system uptime in the face of a single disk failure. (more…)
41 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/20/women-provide-condoms/
From a recent conversation on IRC: (more…)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/19/orpheus/
“Nature is not seperate from me; she is mine alike with my body; and in moments of true life, I feel my identity with her; I breathe, pulsate, feel, think, will, through her members, and know of no duality of being.”
Bronson Alcott
Orphic Sayings, No 35
via The New Yorker, January 10, 2005
_Orpheus at the Plough_
Put me in mind a bit of Speed:
“Life is a matter of a miracle, that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others’ presence . . . The world is an exam, to see if we can rise into the direct experiences . . . Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories.”
Time now, to drift off, and enjoy a dream or three, before returning to the plough tomorrow, and tilling, once again, before the dancing exuberence.
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/18/ripple/
A tune in my head of late:
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?
It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they’re better left unsung.
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.
Translation?
While we all wish that creative expression could transmit our thoughts and emotions from artist to audience, that doesn’t matter so much. If you enjoy creating, or you appreciate what is created, than that is good enough.
Others have analyzed this song a lot more.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/18/year-29/
I am a year away from thirty. Twenty eight has gone well. I have married, and I have moved from a good job to a better job. I spent a fair amout of twenty eight with a looking-over-the-shoulder paranoia, or skepticism, or lack of confidence, left over from the tumultuous work experiences of previous years. I can kind of feel that slipping away now. I have started thinking the big thoughts again about what is possible, and what the opportunities are. My brain is starting to roll back in to that optimism about what grand things are afoot, and what I can do as part of the perpetual technological revolution, whether it be creating some Next Big Thing, supporting a company, merely sitting back and observing the bustle up close, or simply collecting a few bucks while making preparations to retreat to some Shangri La that would be a good place to raise kids.
This is how I used to think, back around the first time Bush had become president. And I think that if these things are to happen then I am in a better position to engage them . . . a little more patience, a lot more experience, and with Yayoi, I hope, more inclined toward stability. Here’s to the next round!
Feedback Welcome
« Newer Stuff . . . Older Stuff »
Site Archive
