From kragen@pobox.com Thu Nov 21 06:57:42 2002 From: kragen@pobox.com (Kragen Sitaker) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 01:57:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: meteors, fs KnowNow, birthday, Message-ID: <20021121065742.5DFCB3F533@panacea.canonical.org> We didn't have much free time this weekend; on Saturday, I caught up on my sleep after getting four to six hours per night for most of the week, while Beatrice went to WiWoWo; that night, we watched "Bullshot Crummond", a play in Walnut Creek; our ex-roommate Angela Goodsell acted in it, so we saw many old friends we hadn't seen in a while. Then we went to a party with a bunch of Bab5 people, with photos at http://pics.nikita.ca/parties/2002-11-16/ We left that party a bit before noon on Sunday after some tasty chocolate-chip pancakes. Sunday night, Beatrice went over to a friend's house to play computer games. I stayed home and rested. Beatrice and I went out to watch the meteors on my birthday, which was Monday, along with a bunch of friends. We enjoyed the meteors very much, despite the bright moon and the cold; the hot chocolate with cinnamon and the wonderful brownies helped. Many people called me on my birthday. I enjoyed that, too. One of the calls had special significance. My father, who works for Guidant, told me that pacemakers had just been approved as a treatment for congestive heart failure. http://www.guidant.com/condition/heartfailure/icwpa.shtml My grandmother is very sick of congestive heart failure (NYHA class II/III); not only does she tire quickly, she can't think very clearly, most likely due either to hypoxia or drug side effects. This new treatment could help her get much better very quickly. I could get my grandma LaVelle back. That would make a wonderful birthday present. The meteor trip began around midnight, and though I'd planned to get some sleep beforehand, I didn't. We returned home around 4:30, and then I got up at 6:30 Tuesday to go to work; instead, I went back to bed and slept for another hour, then went to work. So, on Tuesday, I drank six cans of Red Bull at work to keep me awake and functioning. I didn't know Red Bull contained caffeine. That's 480 mg of caffeine, or about three to five cups of coffee, about 10% of the lethal dose. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I felt a little jangly that day. Tuesday night, I went to Toastmasters, where I gave my second speech of the Toastmasters basic speech training program, almost impromptu. (I rehearsed for about half an hour beforehand.) I spoke about the evils of patents, focusing especially on pharmaceutical patents. In preparation for this speech --- and to calm my caffeine withdrawal symptoms --- I drank a can of Coca-Cola, my first since January. The speech itself went pretty well, despite my lack of sleep and preparation; my audience definitely noticed some disorganization and choppiness, but enjoyed the speech anyway. Today I worked from 7:00 to about 18:30 in preparation for a major software release by my employer, AirWave. I plan to get up a little later tomorrow. Tonight I heard that KnowNow has released most of the stuff I worked on when I was there as open source under an Apache-style license! Now, at long last, the public can benefit from all the work I did during those dizzy days, and KnowNow's customers will benefit from all kinds of things growing KnowNow-compatibility features. I told my co-worker Darrell about KnowNow stuff on the way home today (we often carpool); I had forgotten how cool it seemed. The old excitement started coming back. From my mailbox, it looks like I'm not the only one who feels that way. http://sf.net/projects/mod-pubsub http://cvs.developer.knownow.com/index.cgi/mod_pubsub/ All in all, many good things have happened in the last week. On the downside, the new Homeland Security Act passed, which frightens me. -- Kragen Sitaker Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died in August of 2002. The world has lost a great man. See http://advogato.org/person/raph/diary.html?start=252 and http://www.kode-fu.com/geek/2002_08_04_archive.shtml for details. From kragen@pobox.com Fri Nov 29 07:05:25 2002 From: kragen@pobox.com (Kragen Sitaker) Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 02:05:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: trip to see the family for Thanksgiving Message-ID: <20021129070525.5C8F33F53B@panacea.canonical.org> Development and business proceed apace at AirWave; we all went out for Chinese on Wednesday. I enjoy working there more over time. Beatrice and I took a hike up through the Presidio and back home this last weekend. I felt quite out of shape. Tuesday, I'd planned to speak at Toastmasters, but the club officers cancelled the meeting due to lack of attendance. I guess a lot of people had no time this week. We have begun a trip to Portales, New Mexico, where my grandparents live. Wednesday, I left work at 15:00, I picked Beatrice up at 16:30, and we just managed to catch our flight to Albuquerque at 18:40. The traffic moved slowly. I slept on the plane; in my dream, I was a network management system for Cisco Wi-Fi access points. We met my mother and sister in Albuquerque when we deplaned; they lent us a Subaru SUV, which Beatrice drove to Santa Rosa, where we met my aunt Susan, her husband, their daughter, Susan's father, and his girlfriend, most of whom had remained awake to welcome us to their adobe house there. We slept on a fold-out couch under an electric blanket, between a bookshelf containing monthly magazines from the 1890s (among other things) and a sculpture of a train engine sitting on top of a cardboard canister that had once held dry cement. We slept from 0:30 to 7:30. We'd hoped to leave at 8:00, but Susan wanted to make breakfast, and hadn't actually made any yet at that point. We breakfasted on whole-wheat waffles, topped with canned apricots from next door, roasted green chile, raspberry jam, hot syrup, butter, and other things. We actually left around 9:30. I drove east to Tucumcari, then south to Clovis. I rarely let the speedometer dip below 80; it usually indicated 105 or so, although I would slow to 85 whenever a car came the other way. Not surprisingly, we ran low on gas by the time we reached Grady. Beatrice slept in the back seat during much of this drive, and she continued to sleep as I got gas. Grady has few people and fewer businesses, but it does have a gas station --- no cash, no cashier, only a credit-card machine. I got out. Deep silence enveloped me. The scratches in the gas station's paint proclaimed: "GRADY SUX." And: "I LOVE KARA ELWAY." One pump sold high-sulfur red-dyed diesel. "FOR FARM USE ONLY," warned the sign on the pump. "SEVERE PENALTIES FOR HIGHWAY USE." I filled up on unleaded, washed the windshield, and drove on. Tracy Chapman and engine noise obliterated the silence I'd heard at Grady. We reached Portales around 11:30. My grandparents welcomed us; my grandmother can't remember much anymore, and so our visit surprised her, but my grandfather knew. We caught up. My grandmother showed me a photo of their 50th-wedding-anniversary celebration, which I attended in 1999. I think she has shown it to me six times today so far; she keeps forgetting that she has already shown it to me, and also that it depicts me, among other people. My uncle Darwin --- John Wayne looks a lot like him --- brought food for Thanksgiving dinner, which commenced around 12:30, as usual. We chatted about politics and family matters; my brother Jay starts school soon, my cousin Karrie just moved back to Arizona. I sat on the couch and read a Chinese newspaper I'd picked up yesterday, but I kept dozing off. We met my grandparents' new cats, but they kept their distance from us. My mother, her husband Dick, and my sister Serafina showed up later. We had more family time. Dick has a cat allergy, so he couldn't stay in the house of his parents-in-law for long. Beatrice and I took a long walk with him out past the cattle factory farm. I picked a yucca seed stalk to bring back. Carolyn gave me a wonderful photo album of photos from my childhood. Beatrice laughed at every page. We chatted about future plans. Serafina and Beatrice have gone out to watch a movie. I thought I'd take the opportunity to lie in bed and write a bit more email. Today, we Americans customarily give thanks for our blessings. I have a lot to give thanks for. Beatrice and I plan to marry next year. I give thanks that such a marvelous person finds me worthy of her love, that I have the capacity to love her truly, and that we can celebrate our love in this way. I have many friends and family members who love me and have not died yet; I give thanks for their unstinting love, which I have often not deserved. I have enough to eat. For this I give thanks. Unlike some people I meet every day in San Francisco, I still have a house, or part of one, anyway. For this I give thanks. While I know my capacity for dishonesty, hypocrisy, and self-interest, I have not exercised it much. For this I give thanks. I have no addictions to drugs or anything else inherently harmful. For this I give thanks. I have a job, unlike many people I know in Silicon Valley. It even pays me enough to meet my physical needs and save some for the future. For this I give thanks. My job interests me, I like my co-workers, and our customers really like our product. I have never had such good fortune before, and for this I give thanks. I have no television. For this I give thanks. I have access to the Internet. For this I give thanks. Although its limits constantly frustrate me, I give thanks for my capacity for thought, especially after spending the day with my grandmother, whose poor memory puts much worse limits on her capacity for thought. My country has not yet gone to war against Iraq. For this I give thanks. I still have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and free software, although they look pretty wobbly in the US now. For these I give thanks. For a trillion things I take for granted but couldn't live without, I give thanks. -- Kragen Sitaker Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died in August of 2002. The world has lost a great man. See http://advogato.org/person/raph/diary.html?start=252 and http://www.kode-fu.com/geek/2002_08_04_archive.shtml for details.