Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/01/2001/
Yayoi and I finished watching _2001_ last night.
“So he was kidnapped by black pillar.”
That’s as good an explanation of that movie as any other I have heard.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/30/memorial-day/
Every holiday
Punctuates the paragraphs
Of life’s narrative
Memorial Day,
Indentation, for summer’s
Long hot sentences.
Pause, and gather breath,
Reverence for those stories
Concluded early.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/27/heat/
NoCal has different summer heat than the Midwest. Here, we have a limp, dry heat. It’s just heat. No drama, just hot. (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/09/baseball-bicycle-bastards/
On Saturday we went to see the San Francisco Giants play at SBC Park. The Muni disrupted itself so we walked from the BART Embarcadero station. I am not a baseball fan, you could say, so I brought some books along. But we had some suprisingly nice seats where you could actually see what was going on, and when we got there, in the third inning, the score was 0-0 and the Nationals were walking Giants to fill the bases. Then J.T. Snow and Moises ALOU, whom I know primarily as a popular filler in crossword puzzles, went and scored a bunch of runs. (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/25/hello-samurai/
On Sunday, Yayoi and I made it to the Cherry Blossom Festival, which was fun. Yayoi had some takoyaki, but it was made with ground beef! (Tako means octopus, and she was impressed that she could get such inexpensive takoyaki, until the awful truth dawned upon her …)
Well, we took a lot of pictures. My favorite is of this older guy dressed up as a samurai, giving me a friendly wave.
Feedback Welcome
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?
Feedback Welcome
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…)
1 Comment
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.
2 Comments
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.
2 Comments
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…)
2 Comments
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/2005/01/31/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/2004/03/03/photograph-winters-thaw/
[800×600] [Full Size]
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.
Feedback Welcome
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!”
Feedback Welcome
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.
Feedback Welcome
« Newer Stuff . . . Older Stuff »
Site Archive
