A Fine Day...

Debbie and I had a wonderful day yesterday.  First we worked ourselves into a stupor, cutting and burning brush in our front yard.  I estimate that we cut, carried, and burned between a ton and a ton-and-a-half of pine limbs.  The fire was awesomely hot, to the point where it was painful to get within 6 feet or so of it.  We started around 7 am, and by the time we wrapped it up at around 3 pm we had almost completely cleared the yard; just a few logs remain.  All this to trim up just the first third or so of our pine trees!

After we got done working, we showered and headed for Descanso Junction Restaurant.  There we met up with my cousin Mike D. and his significant other Diane.  They're from Colorado, and they're taking a grand driving tour of the west.  We caught them as they were headed to San Diego for a couple days of sight-seeing.  Though we've corresponded quite a bit in recent years, I haven't seen Mike since I was a kid, close to 50 years ago.  He's 11 years older than I am, so his memories of that event are better than mine.  We had a grand old time, swapping stories and feasting. 

Mike and I both chose the same dish: meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans, preceded by a seafood chowder.  Debbie got one of her all-time favorites, the fried chicken.  Diane, the light eater amongst us, got a club sandwich – the look of dismay on her face when she saw the (monster) size of it was priceless.  Mike, on the other hand, nearly jumped for joy when he saw the gigantic slab of meatloaf that didn't quite fit on his plate!  He finished his entire plate off, then eyeballed Diane's remaining half-sandwich.  I suspect that sandwich didn't make it to the refrigerator last night...

We took our separate paths upon leaving the restaurant, but not before we made plans for Mike and Diane to join us for a day of four-wheeling when we're out in Ouray next month.  We're going to take them to Yankee Boy Basin for some wildflowers...

Rain!

We had 0.16" (3mm) of rain last night.  That's not much in the grand scheme of things, but considering that it's mid-May in the high desert it's pretty remarkable.  This year's weather continues to be far off the norms of the past 8 or 9 years.  Let's hope the summer continues to be cool – and wet!

Stallman on SaaS...

Richard Stallman (EFF) is a great example of a very smart person who is blinded by their own prejudices.  Here he's slamming Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for one issue, while completely ignoring (indeed, not even mentioning!) it's many benefits.

No solution to any problem is 100% perfect.  Every choice is an exercise in balancing out the pros and cons.  Every time I buy a new vehicle I'm reminded of this – there are a bewildering variety of choices available, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Imagine how arbitrarily limited your choices would be if (for example) you refused to consider vehicles that came with floor mats as standard equipment.  That's roughly what Stallman is advocating here.

SaaS is just one way to buy software.  It's got a suite of advantages that I (and many others) think are compelling, and a few disadvantages, many of which can be mitigated or minimized.  Refusing to consider SaaS for the reasons suggested by Stallman is just silly...

Autocorrecting Phones...

Suddenly my simple ancient cell phone has much more appeal...

Chicken Pasta Soup...

It's a chilly morning out here in the sticks; mid-60s in the house and I'm sitting at the computer working.  Yesterday I stopped by the Bravo Cafe near Jamul and picked up a quart of Manolli's lemony chicken pasta soup.  Just now I reheated it and slurped it down.  It's a lovely soup, with a light, slightly creamy broth that's quite lemony.  Plenty of chicken and tiny rice-like pasta, and some vegetables.  Just one of the many reasons why we love the food at Bravo!

But aside from the great (and plentiful!) food, the people there are what really makes the place.  Yesterday Milton and Esmeralda (two of Manolli and Rosio's kids) made up my order of soup and iced mocha (for Debbie), while Manolli churned out sandwiches and other goodies.  This family is a fixture in the Jamul area – hard-working immigrant Americans full of good cheer and good will.  Jamul would be a different – and lesser – place without them.

It just occurred to me to look them up on Yelp, and I'm delighted to see that every review up there is a solid five stars!

Note From My Mom...

I received this note from my mom a few days ago.  Before you read it, you should know that I am her oldest child (of four).

If you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child?

Now ... how exactly should I interpret that?

Food!

If you're a dog lover, you're going to laugh until your sides hurt.  If you're not a dog lover, why are you reading my blog?

Animations...

This page has a collection of the coolest animated GIFs I've ever seen...

No Adults in the Room...

As I was saying the other day, there don't appear to be any adults in the room, up in our California legislature.  Consider this, from SB 432:

6714. (a) The standards board shall, no later than September 1, 2012, adopt an occupational safety and health standard for lodging establishment housekeeping. The standard shall apply to all hotels, motels, and other lodging establishments in California. The standard shall require all of the following:
(1) The use of a fitted sheet, instead of a flat sheet, as the bottom sheet on all beds within the lodging establishment. For the purpose of this section, a "fitted sheet" means a bed sheet containing elastic or similar material sewn into each of the four corners that allows the sheet to stay in place over the mattress.

Yup, you read it right. Let's mandate fitted sheets in hotel rooms, instead of something important, like, say, getting spending under control.

    Rope.
    Tree.
    Legislators.
    Some assembly required.

Hummers...

Like you've never seen them:

Morning Walk...

It was a gorgeous high desert morning this morning: 55°F, a light breeze, very dry, and desert scents filling the air.  The dogs all did their usual thing.  I walked on this moonless night with no flashlight – the stars and a bright Milky Way made just enough light for me to avoid any obstacles.  I could just barely make out Race as he zoomed around, happy, with his pine cone.  The three field spaniels were moving inkspots; couldn't see any details, but I could tell where they were.

Overhead, the sky was just glorious.  No moon, no planets – just stars.  The Milky Way arced high overhead, from just east of north to the southeast.  It was clear and bright enough that even with just a few minutes of accommodation I could see structure in it.  Beautiful, just plain beautiful...

As I walked and soaked in the night, I was thinking about the potential indirect consequences of Osama bin Laden's killing.  It occurred to me that if bin Laden had been living in that compound for years, there were probably interesting records there, and possibly even computers.  After coming back in and reading the news, I see that the Seals indeed captured a large amount of potential intelligence sources, including computers.  The consequences for al Qaeda may extend far beyond the death of their leader.  Let's hope that's so!

 

Euler's Identity...

For the geeks, a decoded crop circle:

After transcribing the binary digits, I translated each byte (8 bits) into its corresponding ASCII character with this handy online converter, starting from the direction of the windmill, and working clockwise around the circle and out from the centre. (If you're having trouble following this, see the animation linked at the bottom of the article).

The result was this:

e^(hi)pi)1=0

It looked like some kind of equation, and when I looked it up, Google asked if I meant: e^(i)pi)1=0, for which the top result was Euler's identity: eiπ+1=0. This has been called "the most beautiful theorem in mathematics". No surprise that it should turn up in a crop circle then!

Jupiter's Great Red Spot...

As you've never seen it before, in this photomosaic made of images from Voyager I.  From APOD, of course.

Supernova Remnant...

Man alive – I sure wouldn't want to be in the neighborhood when that thing exploded!  From APOD, of course.

The Best Case...

...for the Obama Presidency is a Jimmy Carter rerun.  Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) makes a persuasive, if depressing, case for the way we'll view Obama's presidency after he's gone...

Children in Sacremento...

I'm speaking of our legislators, of course.  The Democrats, petulant that they can't get the Republicans to vote for increased taxes, threaten to cut expenses: in the Repulican's districts!

Are there any adults in the room up there?

Wartime Golf Rules...

For a golf course in Richmond, England.  This down is just east of London, and it happens to be where my company has its London offices.  These rules were instituted during World War II, while England was regularly being attacked by German planes and missiles...

It's very hard to imagine this happening today, isn't it?

Flight Data Recorder Found...

Air France Flight 447 went down off the coast of Brazil almost two years ago.  Yesterday robotic submersibles found and recovered the memory unit from its flight data recorder.  Investigators are very hopeful that with this data they will be able to reconstruct exactly what caused the accident.  To date there is one main suspect (iced over pitot tubes) and several other possibilities.  We wish them good fortune in their search...

They Got Him!

Osama bin Laden is dead.  Killed by U.S. Navy Seals at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (look for the “A” on the map) – which is over 100 km from the Afghanistan border, and even further from the mountainous border area where he was rumored to be staying.

I'm sure more details will emerge about the operation.  Several helicopters and a couple dozen U.S. personnel were involved.  No U.S. personnel were injured or killed.  Our forces “took custody” of bin Laden's body, then buried it at sea (apparently to stay within the Islamic custom of burying a body within 24 hours of death).

Here's the only thing that really matters: the mastermind of 9/11 is dead.  Woot!

Top 6 of Top 10 Lists (for Programmers)...

Nice.