Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/20/yayoi-warning/
I woke up Sunday morning from a dream in which Yayoi had just warned me, “if I were made redundant, I would become one thousand times an alcoholic.”
As my conscious brain began to mull this over, I noticed several problems with this vignette:
- Yayoi is not currently employed.
- Yayoi does not speak in British euphemisms.
- Yayoi does not speak melodramatically.
- Yayoi can not hold her liqour.
Otherwise, I totally feel her pain at being layed off . . . what was my subconscious mind doing?
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/19/flickr-schwag/
[
Flickr]
A color-enhanced view of Mount Diablo from the foothills above Walnut Creek. The rain has made things green and a quick trip to the GIMP only emphasizes this.
So, I recently bit the bullet and bought a Pro account on Flickr. They’ll store my images for me in high-resolution, with a pretty nifty, pretty zippy interface to manage them. The community-building features have been a pleasant ego surprise — one photo I uploaded from when I was flying in to London on September 11, 2002 was found by a guy who could see his house in the photograph. (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/06/kwiruto/
I recently caught myself typing the word “quilt” when I meant to refer to a “kilt” because Yayoi’s pronunciation merges the two together. They say that married couples eventually start to look like each other, but it is a bit different to have your language start morphing on you.
Which brings up a different anecdote. When I was young I overheard some British people refer to the process of “repatriation.” I later learned that this is because they were “ex-patriots.” It seemed kind of harsh that these people should be treated as ex-patriots simply for spending some time in a foreign country. (In America, “patriot” means Paul Revere, and anyone who becomes an ex, in need of re, is not someone you would respect.) I wondered if repatriation involved classes on the Monarchy and Parliament and other stuff to get the Americanness out of their systems, and if this was common for people returning to their countries — If I ever left, would I have to attend classes and re-take the Constitution test before I could be trusted to behave as an American again?
With time and an improved understanding of Latin word roots, I figured that they had been referring to the process of repatriating expatriates. There is no English word “patriate” but in Spanish and French the patria is the country-side, derived from Latin pater, for father . . . so, the land of your father. (The derivation of “patriot” is similiar.)
English is a twisted, gnarly language, even for native speakers, so if I should mistake a “kilt” for a “quilt” because my wife can’t wrap her tongue around the kw- sound, it is only fair.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/04/yay-groupthink/
Mom and Grandma came to town last week. They did dig the scenery, the thrift stores and Walnut Creek’s quilting shop. We didn’t make it to Napa, or drive along the coast, but it is good to have things to do for next time. We did make it out to Alameda to see Joyce and Harlyn, and we parked behind a bumper sticker that read “IMPEACHMENT HELL GET A ROPE” which Mom got a good chuckle from. She recounted this to Joyce, who is working now for theological scholars, and she answered that one thing she likes about her job is that even though she is a non-believer among serious religious folks, they feel the same about President George, whereas if one were to express themselves at the bank where she worked previously, that might cause some discord.
And, while I like to have intelligent people I can argue with, it is nice to come to work and rap with our office manager, an intelligent person who offers that Monday has been magnified by the shift to Summer Time, and I demure “oh, don’t get me started on my rant about Daylight Savings Time,” and she goes “oh, I hate it too.” So, I got to rant a bit, “if you think waking up earlier is a good idea, then wake up earlier! Don’t screw up the clocks!” It felt good.
The rant was augmented by some research I did on a lazy Sunday after dropping the folks at the airport. Because of this, it may at some point be composed in to an essay which I may post here, or at kuro5hin.org. And yes, I know it is called “Daylight Saving Time” without the s.
Oh, by the way, you WordPress users might want to go in to the Options menu to manually decrement your UTC, as WordPress doesn’t have a proper notion of timezones.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/29/unfortunate-commuter/
I left my camera with Yayoi this week. And the Sidekick has no zoom, but maybe just maybe we can make out that this lady is using her Blackberry while driving down the third lane of I-680 southbound, somewhere North of Danville.
Riding the bus, you get a good view of certain tragedies that you do not personally know, such as the woman who needs to be able to check her Blackberry during her commute, but also has to drive while doing so. Poor, unfortunate lady; Us privileged souls on the bus get away with taking pictures of you and posting them to the Internet while the CCCTA chauffers us to work, while you must risk your life to sneak glances at your communiques. (more…)
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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.
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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!”
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2004/03/03/photograph-winters-thaw/
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Geese and ducks on the ice at Indian Boundary Park, February 29, 2004. The ice is melting, but the water fowl are still on “solid ground”. Note that many of the ducks are standing on one foot, because the ice is cold. A few others are huddled with their heads tucked closely against their bodies.
Many of the fish — carp — were dead, or moving very sluggishly where the ice had melted. Some seemed dead but were in fact still moving very slowly, their metabolisms drastically reduced to survive the winter. The weather’s been very nice in Chicago lately, after what has qualified as a genuine winter, with oppressive cold, and snow on the ground for months at a time.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/30/microserf/
I went down to the patio and listened to some Australians and Kiwis talk about bungee jumping. I bought some yogurt and a pain au chocolat from the convenience store, and I was joined by Yiling and two friends she had made in the women’s dorm: Andrea, a Dutch after-school art teacher, and Tran, a brash, butch, Korean-American Microsoft contractor. We walked back in to town together so Andrea and Yiling could have some food.
Tran interested me, as her boisterous external personality reminded me of a part of my own personality that needs refinement; At first she struck me as uncomfortably, stereotypically American, until I dug the common connection that was rooted in the lonely world of being different as a kid, and subsequently embracing weirdness as a strength. If you are then recruited away from the normal social realm into Microsoft or the Silicon Valley, you work long hours with similarly freaky people, and it takes that much longer to notice that you haven’t made that many friends, since you still haven’t had much call for trying to relate to other people on a more basic human level.
Or was that the theme in _Microserfs_, which I finished reading just before Italy? Either way, I think this adventure has done me some good in that regard. I’m pretty sure this is one reason why Mary told me “Just Go!”
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1999/08/23/chillin-dannyman/
Saturday I just chilled out. Relaxed around the house and made a run to Clarke’s as I’ve had a habit of doing on Saturday’s lately – GOOD, if expensive, burgers. I caught a movie called “Kiss the Girls” on HBO and had a nice quiet night to myself.
Sunday we went up to Lorah and Joe’s in Frisco for some home-made ice cream Lorah had made. Fun Illinois Alumni sausage party, conversation drifting from electrocution, to dreams, to IMAP implementations, to flying and on and on, it was cozy and Lorah had strategically served enough sweets to leave us all feeling happily sluggish.
Damned good ice cream.
And when I got home at midnight, I immediately got a call from Tammie …. could she get a big favor …. did I have jumper cables for her new motorcycle?
Yeah sure. What’s a big favor in her book I explained was a learning experience in mine. After puzzling the contraption over, finding the battery, and consulting with Doyle over the cell phone, we judged that she might very well have a 6 volt system which we’d rather not fry with my 12 volt charger.
So we took Joe’s advice and got it a push start. Now, this was kind of fun. “Oh, you mean I have to have the ignition on?” “Wait, am I supposed to let off the clutch?”
Tammie normally drives stick, but I guess it’s a new experience if you’ve actually been driving reliable cars. When I get Lucy running again maybe I can give informal lessons to those of my friends who are uninitiated in the black art of starting a car without using the starter motor.
But yes, for the record, after a few tries, the bike was purring like a happy, noisy kitten.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1999/08/17/quake-moms-birthday-dmv/
Today we had an earthquake. It was a magnitude 5 and at this time there’s two reported aftershocks.
Of course, I’m far away from the epicenter so all I felt was my chair wobble a bit as I shook my leg. Angus remarked that we’d just been through an earthquake and Jim and Patrick seemed to think he was putting them on.
Many of us at Tellme are very recent transplants to the area.
Today is mom’s birthday. While I missed Grandma’s and Uncle John’s birthday, because I can’t remember so many things so well, I think it appropriate to be able to remember my mom’s birthday.
So I gave her a call, but hopefully she was out partying. Good.
Today I picked up a patch kit for my bicycle, which has a flat tire. I didn’t, however, get to the DMV. I’ve got two things to do there – register my car because it’s expired, and get me a California license. As a third I’m thinking to try and score me a motorcycle permit. Possibility of fun there, see?
You see, the other day I was driving along and I wanted to switch lanes so I turn on my signal and wait for the guy at my rear to pass.
He doesn’t.
I go slower and slower and realize he’s stopped.
Now, I’ve run into this thing where CA drivers will slow down and let you pass ahead of them if they see you have a turn signal going, but this was just moronic, so I cut over in front of him and went a lane extra to the left turn I’d been wanting, all the while thinking ill of the fucknut who stopped in the middle of the street because I had my turn signal going.
Then I noticed he was a cop.
And as I turned his lights came up.
So I got pulled over and did everything right and well, turns out it’s really illegal for me to drive right now:
- Expired registration.
- No valid California license.
- My insurance is registered for the wrong car in the wrong state.
But he just gave me a “fix it” ticket for the license plate stickers. Okay. Well, I’ll fix everything else this week too.
Anyone got suggestions for a young guy in California driving a beater vis-a-vis auto insurance?
Damn.
So, I guess the reason he stopped is he figured I noticed him behind me and so was slowing down to change lanes behind him but wait-a-minute, are those expired tags? Is that why he’s aiming to slow and pass behind me and make this turn?
And then nailing me for insurance … I guess that and the license are something that might be hard to prove in court if I put up a fight. You’re supposed to get a license within ten days of moving here, but does the state really want to go through the trouble of calling around and proving your residency just so they can fine you?
And same with the insurance, but I gotta get that fixed, for sure. If I plow in to somebody’s beemer I’d bet the insurance company would be more than happy to prove my fraudulence.
Makes sense in retrospect. I guess the moral is you never know when a fucknut is going to be a cop.
Ah well, let’s go tackle that tire …
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1999/08/13/penguins/
So, this week Jesse was in town, as part of his grand whirlwind tour of his civilian friends from across our great nation. This morning I dropped him off to the Airport, and North he rode to Portland, I think. Ultimately, he’ll be back on Okinawa. Back to the Marines for the balance of his enlistment.
But it was nice to see an old friend.
This week we went to the LinuxWorld Expo in San Jose. We attended the “Get Sloshed with Slashdot” party – free beer, and last night we went to a VA Research party, where you had to pay for your alcohol.
At one point, I was standing behind Eric Raymond, which was cool enough in itself, and noted he was talking to some guy about a message they’d exchanged the other day. The guy turned to leave, and I caught his profile and a little penguin icon popped up in my brain and I asked myself, “Is that Linus Torvalds?”
It was Linus Torvalds. I talked with Jesse and Dave and they’d both had similar experiences as I had of seeing this dude and realizing that it was Linus – this hero of computer geeks ’round the world. Not like we all think Linus is a God, but it felt like I’d been hanging out in the Silicon Valley, and here I am at this party and I see this guy who’s a great big celebrity, and I likened it in my brain to people who move to Hollywood and have similar experiences at parties where they turn and realize this movie star is a foot or two away from them.
(Thanks to Randy Loux for the photo.)
I thought it was really neat, anyway. Hollywood for geeks!
Anyway, as we were leaving, so too was Linus, to a cheering crowd as he entered a white limousine. Celebrity chiq, neh? Well, it blocked my way out for a minute or two and I bade a last parting glance at this attractive woman who after eyeing each other on the dance floor told me about one of VA’s new wonderful rack-mount servers. I think she said it was 2U with five bays, which I have to admit, impressed me. Well, if I get a call from her I’ll have to admit that Linux boxen were not the first thing on my mind when she caught my eye. I’m hoping the sales pitch was more a reflex action after a few days of conference, to some chatty party dude.
Not like any sane person goes to a geek party expecting to meet women.
Things are just weird out here.
As I was checking out the conference, a few different things went in to my head. The first was that it was interesting to see all these companies gathered with the intention of making money off a Freeware OS. Corel’s demonstration of their pre-beta distribution was the most poignant, for me. They had four graphical dialogs and after a point-click-click Linux was installed on a computer in four minutes, requiring no thought as to partitioning.
It booted in to a somewhat polished KDE desktop. It struck me as a rather hard sell aimed at users like my mom. I could give mom that Corel Linux CD and she could have Linux up and running as easily as any other program.
Of course, its a whole OS, so you have to boot it separately, but hey.
Another thing that struck me was that all those years spent as a geek child were somehow paying off. I was entering a conference of people with interests very similar to mine, along with living in a part of the world where computers is the thing – everywhere you look. It felt like I’d graduated some weird alien test and was entering the temple of the promised land.
But I don’t actually like computers that much. I wasn’t going nuts or anything, I just thought it was all kind of cool.
Revenge of the Nerds.
But what struck me as most interesting, in my mind, was how Linus must feel, strolling between the booths. A fun little project to write a useful OS back when he was a grad student has blossomed in to something huge, with growing momentum behind it. It must boggle his mind. He seems to keep it all in stride too, at least from what I can tell from an interview I recently read. I think without his attitude, Linus would have become a world-class dork by now. You know, like Bill.
One interesting thing about the attendees, was that most folks were young. Sure, there were the occasional scruffy-lookin’, old-school, Unix types, (Erm, you like that? I stole it from Sven’s site.) But most of the people there were twenty-somethings. Some were business types, and many were just geeks. there was definitely some undercurrent of revolutionary fervor. I proudly wore my FreeBSD tee-shirt, to show what flavor of geek I was. The FreeBSD people I ran in to tended to be older, and more scruffy-flavored.
Kickin’ it oldschool BSD at the Linux con.
Does this make sense to anyone? Only a select few, I’m guessing.
Heh.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1999/07/29/i-should-probably-go-home/
The other day it was the weekend and so I rode CalTrain in to San Francisco. On the way back I sat closer to this group of Japanese Stanford students who sounded like they were forcing themselves to speak in English. The effect was slow speech with very distinct words and a different tone pattern. It sounded like a sing-song text to speech engine.
That I should think a group of girls sounded like TTS sounded like I spend a lot of time at Tellme.
Apparently, Silicon Valley startups, or at least Tellme and Dave’s employer, Confinity, provide food for their employees. This is something of a fringe benefit or an incentive for working long hours. The result is that neither one of us ever eats at home – it’s either company food or a restaurant. The affect of this is that someday we’ll clean our kitchen nice, but neither of us is really eager to enter it without any motive that is greater than my own fear of what I might find.
You see, I speak for me.
I should probably go home. It’s 0041h on a now Thursday morning.
Maybe I’ll bitch about something later.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1999/07/20/movies-i-seen-lately/
The Adam Sandler movie where he adopts a kid is really funny. Wild Wild West I enjoyed because I knew darn well to ignore the plot, and there were scantily-clad ladies, though not too much of it. The acting was great, but the movie was dumb. Uhmmm, oh South Park is a total blast – go see it! And I saw Eyes Wide Shut.
Well, it’s Stanley Kubrick’s last film, and I’m not sure he finished it before he left us. I found it interesting, but rather long and seeming to lack a point. Maybe its the sort of thing like 2001 where it’ll be more appreciable down the road after I’ve had a long time to digest it and have read the book. There’s some interesting stuff in there about eroticism and sex and relationships between men and women and sex and sex and so forth. Probably a good late-night getting-to-sleep-dozing-off-on-the-couch sort of affair.
What other movies have I seen lately?
Run Lola Run kicks complete butt. It’s this German film where the red-haired protagonist spends most of the plot running desperately to get 100,000 marks to save her boyfriend from buying the big one inside of twenty minutes. It’s very fun and the techno/industrial soundtrack sounds really good, and I’m not even in to that sort of thing.
It’s the kind of movie Goth Dan and Brijeet would really enjoy together.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1999/07/20/pictures/
So, I checked out Tellme’s web site yesterday in the morning and what did I
see when I clicked on Join Us
?
Well, it made my ego swell ’til I realized that my picture was selected at random from a bunch of pictures. Cool,
said I.
And well, we take some stuff from Tellme, we take some stuff from Beth:
And now we quiet down those of you who complain that I aint got enough
pictures around the place.
So uhmmm …
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