Downloaded the latest weather data from sputnik just now - and discovered that the last three or four hours of data are missing. Apparently I've reached some kind of size limit on the download file. Oops.
And the (about-to-expire) Windows Live OneCare virus scanner popped up a warning this evening about HTML/IframeRef.gen, some kind of nastyware apparently picked up from a web site. OneCare says it's cleaned up the mess.
Finished reading Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life by Michael Paxton. (I know, I said I wouldn't read any more Ayn Rand books for a while. I lied.)
It was a fast read, being fairly short (190 pages) and mostly pictures.
This morning, an old woman sat down near me on the bus. Conversation followed:
"What street do you live on?"
"What?"
"What street do you live on?"
"It's pretty far from here."
"No, what street is it?"
"Why, are you going to write me a letter?"
"I want to write someone a letter."
"You don't have to write me a letter."
...at which point I resumed reading my magazine and did my best to pretend she wasn't there.
The November 11, 1961 issue of The Saturday Evening Post included an article by John Kobler, titled The Curious Cult of Ayn Rand.
Three months earlier (August 4, 1961), Ayn Rand wrote a scorching letter to the editor of the Post, complaining that Mr. Kobler was a Very Bad Man who had written a Very Bad Article and threatening legal action if the article were published.
I wonder if any libraries in town have back issues of the Post on microfilm. Any article that made steam come out of Ayn Rand's ears has got to be a worthwhile read.
Finally - after six weeks' effort (albeit interrupted by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and By Reason of Insanity) - finished reading Letters of Ayn Rand, edited by Michael S. Berliner (who's probably heard every joke there is about Kennedy's Berlin speech).
It's not a very flattering book. Ayn Rand comes across as humorless and argumentative.
I have other books by/about Ayn Rand that I've never read:
(That last one is the companion book to a movie about Ayn Rand that was released back in 1997.)
I think they all need to age a few years more before they'll be good to read.
Windsor & Galen, 8:33am. The bus was at 8:28am. Oops.
Drove out to Allerton Park this afternoon, for a picnic & a stroll through the gardens.
There are pictures over on Flickr.
Robert Allerton moved to Hawaii in 1946, and I don't think the roads of his Illinois estate - i.e., Allerton Park - have been resurfaced (or even repaired) since then. They're in terrible shape. Large sections of the road to the Sunsinger have completely disintegrated. Mr. Explorer's aged and somewhat dodgy shocks were not happy.
My close, personal friend Arnold at Virgin Mobile - I wouldn't have thought Arnold to be a very common name in Mumbai - replied to my surcharge question:
The amount you're charged for tax today may not be the same amount you're charged in the future due to changes in tax laws, etc. Moreover, that's a government thing; it's not under Virgin Mobile's control.
Well, yes, I understand that. But surely Arnold could have told me what the surcharges are right now.
I checked our landline bill; the same surcharges (plus a few extra bonus surcharges - thank you, AT&T!) appear on it:
e911, Champaign County - $1.50
Federal USF - 50¢
Illinois USF - 3¢
So the question now is whether switching to the new plan will save enough money per month to cover the new fees. The new plan is 7¢/minute cheaper than the old, so if I use 30 minutes of airtime per month, it does.
Hm...
I've been studying cell-phone plans, trying to find one that won't drain the bank account if I post too many text messages to Twitter, or too many picture messages to Flickr. (I'm also trying to find a new phone that takes better pictures but doesn't cost $300. No luck yet on that front.)
Option 1: The T-Mobile Sidekick Data Plan. The good news: unlimited web browsing, email and text messaging. The bad news: Sidekicks cost $400, and the data plan is $30/month. Both numbers are pretty much deal breakers for me. (Unless the right numbers come up in tonight's Lotto drawing, I suppose.)
Option 2: The Virgin Mobile Messaging Pack. The good news: 50 text and/or pictures messages per month, only $2. (Under my current plan, 50 picture messages would cost $12.50, so that's quite a savings.) The bad news: the phone I have takes crummy pictures. I could buy a new phone (the Cyclops looks promising), but Virgin Mobile has discontinued our plan: buy a new phone, choose a new plan.
Virgin Mobile's new plans sound reasonable enough (the 18¢/minute plan sounds best for me), but the fine print says that the new plans come with three surcharges: the e911 surcharge, and the Federal & State Universal Service Fund surcharges. How much are these surcharges? How often will I have to pay them? Alas, Virgin Mobile won't say.
Research continues.
Jake invited a couple of his friends over this afternoon, for a play date.
The three boys - Sam spent the afternoon napping and/or watching Teletubbies in the bedroom - dragged out just about every toy that Jake has (and left them all over the floor of his room). Lots of shouting, even the occasional sulk. The last hour was spent playing legos in the kitchen: on the floor, which was a little strange.
Jake was a little grumpy about picking up his legos afterward. But Mama & Papa didn't want to step on any of them, nor did we want Sam to eat any. So back in the bin they went.
Update: Jake's post-play-date cleanup missed a few legos. How did I discover this? By stepping on them.
CNN says:
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- PepsiCo Inc. will spell out that its Aquafina bottled water is made with tap water, a concession to the growing environmental and political opposition to the bottled water industry. According to Corporate Accountability International, a U.S. watchdog group, the world's No. 2 beverage company will include the words "Public Water Source" on Aquafina labels.
Do you suppose it will hurt sales if the customers find out that they're paying $1/bottle for tap water?
The IGA down the street from Wolfram Research World HQ is undergoing major renovations: in the last few months, they've replaced all their freezer and refrigerator cases with spiffy new models and rebuilt their salad bar; this week they resurfaced their parking lot (with actual new pavement, not just that foul-smelling sealant that cheapskates - such as the Trade Center building management - like to use); today, they're installing new lot lighting. The new light poles are massive metal things, quite substantial compared to the spindly concrete sticks that used to be there (two of which were knocked down in recent years by inept motorists).
I wonder what prompted this sudden makeover. Most of the other grocery stores in town have been doing likewise. Perhaps grocery store remodeling happens in waves every 17 years, like locust swarms.
Update: I was wrong about the new lights: they're putting up a billboard, because the world needs more advertisements!
I created an account for myself on Facebook the other day. (Scoble has been talking up Facebook quite a bit lately, and I'm a hopeless toady about anything Scoble talks up. Perhaps I have a secret desire to be Scoble, and trade my mundane existence for a life of schmoozing with celebrity geeks and playing with bleeding-edge geek toys.)
Unlike Twitter, which turns out to be (mildly) amusing & (somewhat) useful even though I'm the only one I know with a Twitter account, Facebook seems completely useless in isolation.
I thought that I might join the Facebook network for Buffalo Grove High School, and maybe find a few old friends; but it seems you can't join a high school network unless you're an actual high school student. I would have joined the Facebook network for Wolfram Research, but there isn't one.
That's when I deactivated my account. (Apparently accounts, once created, linger forever. They can't be deleted, they can only be deactivated.) I imagine the Facebook people won't even notice that I've vanished.
Hazy this morning, very humid. Feels like it might rain any minute (but nothing as yet on the radar).
I've been thinking again about the county sign project: only ten more, and I'll be done. The probem is that nine of them are in the far northwest corner of the state, so getting there & back will be an all-day project. It's hard to carve out an entire day for something so unimportant. Maybe sometime in August.
(The last county is Morgan County, just west of Springfield. I've been there two or three times already, and I just can't find any signs. It's quite frustrating.)
Last night the Audit Committee of the Champaign County Genealogical Society met in the Archives of the Urbana Free Library, to make sure that the outgoing treasurer (i.e., me) hasn't been cooking the books.
The ledger was examined carefully, and determined to be mostly correct. (I did flub the balance calculation after one deposit last May, so now I have two months of ledger corrections to make. Oops.)
I've been asked to produce an annual report: all income, expenses, etc., etc., for the year June 1, 2006 to May 31, 2006. I can do that.
I had hoped to hand over the treasurer's satchel yesterday evening (no periwig, though; that's purely imaginary). Alas, no.
Apparently there was a power failure in San Francisco this afternoon. The Chronicle says:
SAN FRANCISCO -- Between 30,000 and 50,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers in San Francisco and the northern Peninsula lost power for several hours this afternoon after what witnesses described as an explosion under a manhole cover on Mission Street, the utility said.
Also affected: the 365 Main data center, which houses - among other things - the TypePad servers.
(By a curious coincidence, just today the folks at 365 Main issued a press release celebrating two years of continuous uptime for one of their clients. That press release is now mysteriously absent....)
http://www.walkscore.com/ reports that the walk score of Stately Rice Manor is a pathetic 12 out of 100: there's just about nothing within walking distance.
IMDB says there's a movie version in the works of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, due for release in 2008.
Supposedly Angelina Jolie is to star as Dagny Taggart, which makes me rather glad IMDB also says the project is 'indefinitely delayed'.
(Way back in 1980 or so, there was talk of a television miniseries based on Atlas Shrugged, with screenplay by Rand herself. That never happened, either.)
What a horrible book this is.
A properly-done collection of personal correspondence is almost a rough-draft autobiography; but the emphasis here is all philosophy, all the time. Here's a chapter of Ayn Rand arguing philosophy with Isabel Paterson; here's another of Ayn Rand arguing philosophy with John Hospers, long letters that read like her non-fiction essays (only not as well organized).
The whole untidy business with Nathanial Branden is conspicuously absent.
Having slogged through 575 pages of this (more or less), I'll most likely stick with it until the end (another 100 pages or so), then drop it in the drive-through book-return at the library (even though I didn't check it out from the library), and do my best to forget all about it.
Jake and I went on a museum run this morning: up to Rantoul, to visit the Korean War National Museum and the Chanute Air Museum (which are conveniently placed next door to each other).
The Korean War National Museum web site says it's open 9:00am - noon, Monday through Friday; but when Jake & I arrived, the place was deserted. A sign on the door said to get in we should call what looked like somebody's cell phone, so that's what we did. Fifteen minutes later, a cheerful woman arrived and opened up the place for us.
They have quite a collection of artifacts & memorabilia. (They even have a jeep, which Jake found particularly interesting.) Lots of historical information, but I didn't get to read very much of it. ("Let's go look at the jeep again, Papa!")
The museum's hours might be 10:00am - 5:00pm (there was a sign on the door saying so), but I'm not convinced that they keep to any regular schedule.
Over at the air musem, they've moved all the planes around again, and you still can't go inside any of them. We wandered around a bit, took a few pictures, then left to get some lunch.
I hope Jake had a good time.
The credit card people, upset that I haven't paid them any interest in the last two years, punished me by upgrading my credit card: now I have to track down all the automatic charges against the old one and switch them over.
Perhaps they're hoping I'll miss a few, and they can hit me with some service charges or something.
To activate the new card, I had to call a toll-free number, enter my new card number, etc., etc., blah blah blah. When all that was done, a person came on the line to try to sign me up for as many expensive and unnecessary 'cardholder services' as possible.
Except I'm not entirely convinced it was a human being. The voice had a bit of an accent - Indian, I thought - but the cadence was off, and there was a bit of fuzziness to it that made me think of Stephen Hawking's speech synthesizer. Very strange.
Finished reading (just now) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: a ripping yarn, a good finish to the series.
Yes, characters die. (Lots of them, in fact.) No, I won't tell who.
(I've heard this book described as the Potterdammerung, which made me laugh.)
Stayed up rather late last night (1:00am), but still didn't manage to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I'm on page 502, though. Should finish today.
Looking east from State Street & Fox Drive. (This section of Fox Drive used to be called St. Mary's Road, back when I worked at CTC. The rest of Fox Drive was a cornfield.)
Jennifer called just now: "I have The Book," she said.
I get first read this time. (I'm not sure why.) I suppose I might have something to say afterward. Or not.
(I think Snape's a good guy, but I also think he's going to die proving it. As for the other 'major character' who's going to snuff it in Deathly Hallows, I have no idea. Except that it won't be Harry, Ron or Hermione.)
MSNBC says:
WASHINGTON - President Bush will have a colonoscopy Saturday and temporarily hand presidential powers to Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House said.
My best effort: The doctors are looking for his head.
I took a picture with my phone this afternoon, and mailed it to Flickr; two hours later, it has yet to appear.
I wonder where it's gone...perhaps I should try again....
Update: The missing picture suddenly appeared, Sunday morning, after I had manually uploaded another copy. (I have since removed the duplicate.)
Dear Applied Research Associates employees:
Before tearing into that left turn from (northbound) State to (westbound) Kirby like you're on the last lap of the Indianapolis 500, please make sure there are no pedestrians in the crosswalk.
Thank you.
This morning's commute:
Before today, I'd been taking the 9B bus from Crescent & Sangamon all the way to Fox & State (just south of WRI), but that turns out to take nearly half an hour longer.
Too bad I only figured this out on the last day of Jake's swim classes. Oops.
Jacob recently posted a sign on the back door:
WLKM-TOOTHE
RT-ROOM
...which is Welcome to the Art Room in Jake's personal orthography.
If it sounds like I'm mocking him, I'm not. I'm actually quite impressed that he's learned letter sounds so well that he can work out recognizable spellings for words he's heard but never seen. Clever lad, is our Jacob.
(The back door leads to the back porch, where we keep Jacob's easel. He paints there, and draws, and does various crafty things. So it's the Art Room.)
Bus drivers are...
Today was my last genealogy society board meeting: I'm giving up the title Lord High Treasurer, and turning in my treasurer's satchel and periwig.
I had thought to hand off to the new treasurer tonight, but everybody decided that I should stay on for one more week: just long enough to finish cleaning up the mess from the (cancelled) 2007 conference. (Coincidence? You make the call!)
Once upon a time, I wondered where Lac St. Victor was; Neil Peart used to live there. (I think he's living in California these days.)
I guessed it was at 45° 46′ 11″ N, 74° 25′ 22″, but Google Earth tells me that's Lac Louisa. Lac St. Victor is a few miles north, at 45° 51′ 31.79″ N, 74° 23′ 43.15″ W.
It's still a very exclusive - i.e., expensive - place to live.
The second line of thunderstorms has arrived. Very dark outside, much thunder & lightning, and even a bit of pea-sized hail (very noisy here in my sixth-floor office...like being inside a pachinko machine).
I am so glad I didn't take the bus today....
Thunderstorms last night, starting sometime around 3:00am. I was still hearing thunder at 7:00am, but it stopped shortly afterward.
Radar shows a second line of storms - with the bow-shaped leading edge that usually means nastier than usual storms - heading this way. It's moving pretty quickly, too.
I really ought to take the bus to work today, but I probably won't. (Either way, you can be sure I'll have my umbrella.)
Sam is really bulking up his vocabulary. His latest word is 'milk'. He'll hold up (or point to) his cup, and announce with a big smile, "MILK!"
The other day Jake & I were talking about milk. "Milk comes from cows," Jake said.
"That's right," I said. "Farmers have big cow-squeezing machines to get the milk out."
Poked around in the TypePad documentation this evening, and discovered that TypePad does support post-by-mail. (Amazing, the things you can learn when you RTFM. I should do it more often.)
Alas, it uses the subject of the incoming message to set the post title - and messages sent from a Virgin Mobile phone don't have subjects. I can post from my phone, but the posts are untitled.
I might as well stick with Twitter.
(I know, I know: nobody cares. I'm not even sure that I care. But post-by-mail seems like it might be useful, someday. Best to work out the bugs now, before I really need it.)
Two weeks ago, I created a Twitter account for myself; last week, I deleted it. I just couldn't see the point.
But it turns out I can post to Twitter from my phone, and have a Twitter sidebar on TypePad. So I resurrected my Twitter account (fortunately, the name was still available), and set everything up with my phone and TypePad. Now I can blather (in 140 character chunks) from anywhere I can get a signal, and have it show up on the daybook. That's pretty cool.
I don't suppose TypePad has a post-by-mail function. That would be pretty useful, too.
I started my 401(k) account at WRI way back in January of 1994; I kept all the statements, through the end of 2005 (at which point they were improved so much that they no longer contained any useful information - number of shares, share prices, employer matching, that sort of thing).
I had the notion to enter all of it into Quicken, so I'd have the complete history of my 401(k) online. (One of my weirder hobbies is creating databases, then generating charts & graphs from them. It's the perfect pastime: it's fun, it doesn't cost anything, and there's nothing to clean up afterward.) First I needed to normalize the data: turn the gibberish on the statements into per-quarter figures for shares purchased, price paid, share price at end-of-quarter, employer contributions, etc., etc. That took a good chunk of the afternoon (Sam was napping). Tomorrow I can get started feeding the results to Quicken.
(I don't suppose an accountant would be very impressed with my data. It won't be a complete list of all the transactions that have occurred - things like reinvested dividends aren't on the statements, and there's no way to reconstruct them from the data provided - but it will be good enough for me.)
One interesting statistic: 55% of my balance (as of December 31, 2005) is from my own contributions; 16% is from employer matching; the remaining 29% is from rising share prices of the funds in which I'm invested. For every dollar I've put in, I now have $1.81. Figuring out the actual rate of return seems to require differential equations, a branch of mathematics I - alas - never learned. (All my friends took the diff-eq class in college; I saw their suffering and found some other way to meet the math requirements for a CS degree.)
Or not:
Does that mean I'm getting a 5% return? I suppose it would, if I had made my contributions in one lump sum on January 1, 1994; but I didn't.
Gah. Too much math, too late at night. Think more about this later, when I'm awake.
Let's see now:
So why is Jerry always bragging that he was the first blogger?
(Jerry also complains quite often that keeping his web site up to date takes too much time & effort. That's because you're still using FrontPage, sir.)
There are four burned-out light bulbs in the house just now: two are difficult to reach, and all four are quite expensive to replace (about $5 each).
Our project for the day: replace them all.
Are there any French nobility left, or were they all...er...shortened in the 18th century?
Some countries keep track of their royal families long after abolishing the monarchy. There's some fella in Europe who's the rightful Czar of Russia, but nobody - least of all him - cares very much, ninety years after the revolution.
I used to joke that I was last in line to the British throne, but I'm wondering now: who really is last in line? How far has the line of succession been calculated? Is there some yobbo in England who's the ninth cousin of a ninth cousin of the Queen, hence eligible - however tenuously - to ascend the throne?
Our story so far:
Doctor #4's first avilable appointment isn't until August. I expect she will say, "You have mild to moderate CTS in your left hand. You need surgery. How about October?"
The procedure is apparently quite simple: open up the wrist, snip a tendon, sew everything up again. "It only takes fifteen minutes," said doctor #3. The procedure might be fifteen minutes, but the preliminaries take six months. Egad.
(And I get to do it all over again with the other hand, too. It'll be years before I'm done.)
Michael Gorsuch asks, Does anyone build web sites by hand any more?
One comment -
Oh, and it kind of just pisses you off when doing it, because valid XHTML is retardedly unforgiving.
- reminded me of one of my handy rules-o'-thumb for writing code:
There are no picky compilers, only sloppy programmers.
(And it's not all that hard to hand-code valid XHTML: first, make sure your code is valid XML. Then use lowercase for tags & attributes. Avoid any nasty old 1996 HTML kludgery. That's about all there is to it. I have no idea why so many people think it's impossible.)
Tried to send mail just now; one of the addresses turned out to be no good. The bounce message said:
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
Very cute....
Sad news in yesterday's paper:
UTICA, N.Y. - Debra Z. Fisher, 52, of Utica, N.Y. died Wednesday (July 4, 2007) at St. Elizabeth Medical Center, Utica, N.Y. Funeral arrangements were incomplete at Heath and Vaughn Funeral Home, 201 N. Elm St., C.
Fourteen years ago, Deb played matchmaker for Jennifer & me. Sigh.
Sam woke up around 11:15pm last night, noisily unhappy about something. After a while, he settled down and let me put him back in the crib.
We never did find out what the problem was. Bad dream?
CNN says:
BEND, Oregon (AP) -- Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks -- and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.
Destination: Idaho.
With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast -- he could turn a spigot, release water and rise -- Couch headed into the Oregon sky.
Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.
I suppose if I ever tried a stunt like that, I'd drift out over Lake Michigan and never be seen again.
NOAA reports the current temperature is 86°, with a dewpoint of 73°.
(Last night, the humidity was so bad that it confused the NOAA radar: it showed tiny red specks all over Illinois, even though it wasn't actually raining anywhere.)
Jacob: was briefly sick last Thursday; got over it quickly.
Jennifer: Much better, though not quite 100% yet.
Samuel: Hasn't thrown up since Friday night. We're easing dairy back into his diet: yogurt yesterday, milk today. So far, nothing messy has happened.
Me: The list of injuries, infirmities and illnesses is entirely too long to include here. My sole victory so far has been immunological: I am quite recovered from last weekend's mystery illness.
Summer is here, which means the 2008 editions of Quicken are coming soon. Or they should be - I can't find any mention of Quicken 2008 on the Quicken web site, or in Amazon.com.
I suspect that Quicken 2008 still won't run natively on Intel Macs, and won't have any compelling new features. But it will cost more, of course.
(Money 2008 is apparently behind schedule: they're still in beta, as of early July.)
A week or two ago, I created a Twitter account for myself. Maybe it will be useful, I thought.
Alas, no.
So I deleted it.
Finished reading (last night) By Reason of Insanity, by (the pseudonymous) John Balt.
Way back in 1963, successful Los Angeles TV writer (not really named) Balt gets himself wrapped way too tight, tries psychoanalysis, tries every medication in the book (all at the same time, it seems), ends up psychotic, kills his wife. After a year or so in Atascadero, he's all better, so they let him go.
I was hoping for some kind of insight into mental illness, or analysis; or even a tour of the California legal system as it was forty-four years ago. Alas, all I got was a rather embarrassing confessional.
Mr. (not) Balt would be somewhere near 80 by now, if he's still alive. His children would be about my age. I thought briefly about trying to figure out his real name - California death records from 1963 are available online, after all; I wouldn't even have to leave the house - but lost interest. If he were somebody I'd recognize, doubtless the whole psychotic-wife-murdering story would already be public knowledge.
Poor Sam, he's not quite back to normal.
During the day, he's his usual rowdy self. He's even been quite hungry lately. (He loves biscuits.) He takes big naps in the afternoons, and wakes up happy.
But at night, he barfs. Only at night, never at naptime. Poor little man.
(Jake remains unaffected. His daycare-hardened immune system has apparently protected him.)
Sam's a big fan of the Teletubbies. (Adults, beware: watching too many episodes of Teletubbies will turn your brain into tubby custard, which will then run out your ears and make a mess on the floor.)
I had the notion to find the (outdoor) set where the show was filmed, and see what it really looks like. Alas, the show ceased production in 2o01, and the set has been torn down. All that's left is a suspiciously round pond.
Fortunately, Google Maps still has an image of Teletubbyland in all its glory:
Rain this afternoon: radar shows a spatter of small storms across the middle of the state. They're all moving southward, so perhaps tonight's fireworks will go off as planned. Due to the Memorial Stadium reconstruction - they just did that, ten years ago; I don't know why they're doing it again so soon - the launching site has been moved to Dodds Park, not so far from here.
We'll be able to sit in our own driveway and watch the show. How convenient.
Sam seems to be improving. He was ravenous at lunchtime, and now he's just waking up from a long nap. I hear rustling on the monitor, and the occasional bit of Sam chatter. (Who's he talking to?)
The local libraries have no record of Isabel Paterson and her book, The God of the Machine; nor of James Valliant and his book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics.
(Correction: apparently the Education Library at the University of Illinois has a copy of The God of the Machine, call number 320.15 P27G1993. I'll have to find out whether alumni are allowed to check out books. [Yes, they can.])
To create my Flickr account, I had to first create a Yahoo ID. Along with it, I got an email address, which Flickr set as my primary mailbox. That's where notifications are sent whenever people comment on my Flickr photos.
A few weeks ago, a few comments were posted on my photos; I didn't notice until today. Maybe I should check my Yahoo mail, thought I.
Yahoo mail doesn't support IMAP; it supports POP, but only for paid accounts. So my only option is to use the Yahoo mail web interface, which is nasty: it's busy, flashy and stuffed with advertisements. (When I'm trying to read mail, it's rather distracting to have a big chunk of the screen devoted to a series of Find the right woman for you! online dating service ads. I found the right woman for me fourteen years ago, thanks.) The percentage of screen space devoted to the actual display of email is way under 50%.
Half the account-management links are trojans: instead of letting you configure your account, they take you to a page advertising some Exciting! New!! (i.e., completely useless) feature, available for a small monthly fee. Of the management links that do work, there's none that will turn off the ads.
And after all this garbage, there were no messages waiting for me. (Perhaps the Yahoo spam filter ate them, or perhaps it automatically deletes unread messages after three weeks.)
Since our Pair account includes 400 mailboxes, I created a new one, just for Flickr. Yahoo mail can go away & die, for all I care.
Poor Sam, he suffered a rather messy relapse last night. Today, the messiness has - so far - been confined to the diapered end of him, for which we are grateful.
Jennifer isn't feeling very well, either.
(Jake remains unaffected by the digestive tumult surrounding him. Lucky boy.)
This is interesting: http://www.icontrol.com/, a startup selling wireless home-control & security gizmos: motion sensors, cameras, thermostats, door sensors, etc.
The web site says:
Monitor your property - See live video and pictures, get an email or text message to your cell phone when a door is opened or a room in entered, and more.
Control your home - Turn lights and appliances on or off from any web browser or cell phone
Stay connected with your family - Know your kids are home from school, the pet sitter arrived and more
Interesting, but a bit expensive: basic kit, $100; advanced kit, $250.
Somewhere, some yutz is already porting Linux to the iPhone.
This afternoon, the mouse driver on nessus popped up a low-battery warning.
Just now, the mouse driver on mork popped up its own low-battery warning.
Egad.
Dear Sam:
The garbage can is not a toy. Neither is the toilet.
Love,
Mama & Papa
To me, Ayn Rand is just an author, dead since March 6, 1982. (Philip K. Dick died four days earlier. Coincidence? I think not!) Her books are dusty things that sit on the shelf and haven't been read in decades (except when Sam pulls them down to play with them). Her ideas are interesting, but reasonable people can disagree with her.
There are other people - rather disturbing people, at that - who study Ayn Rand's books, quote them as if they were holy scripture ("Roark says on page 388 that..."), and get themselves into vicious arguments over her. The Amazon.com reader comments on James Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics is a stream of really nasty arguing between readers, Valliant and the publisher:
You are a strident partisan!
No, you are a strident partisan!
No, I'm not! You are!
Am not!
Are too!
...and so on, ad nauseam.
Just because two people are arguing doesn't mean that one of them is right. And anyone who willingly jumps into the Ayn Rand swamp is a fool.
(Does this entry make me a fool? [If I weren't one already, I suppose.] I doubt it. The entire readership of the daybook would fit in a minivan, and I'd be very surprised if any of them gave a damn about Ayn Rand. I'm just blathering here for my own amusement.)
Another book that might be worth reading: The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, by James Valliant. One of the customer reviews on Amazon begins:
With The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics James Valliant scores what may turn out to be Objectivism's biggest own-goal yet. An unprecedented combination of wiggy conspiracy theorizing and bug-eyed idolatry, the book has not only succeeded in dividing the struggling Objectivist movement for the nth time, but has the potential to scupper what's left of Rand's reputation for good.
I wonder if the library has a copy....
Still slogging through Letters of Ayn Rand (at home, where no one can see me reading it); last night I finished chapter five, Letters to Isabel Paterson.
(This was the first I'd heard of Isabel Paterson. Her books are still in print; I might have to pick up a few sometime. Or check them out from the library: save money, avoid cluttering the living room any further, etc.)
Rand's letters got longer and more argumentative toward the end of the chapter. One of her more contentious efforts was followed by a note:
The Estate of Isabel Paterson has requested that the following excerpt from Paterson's reply to this letter be included here....
(or words to that effect; the book's in the other room, and I'm too lazy to fetch it). The excerpt was a collection of I never said, That's not what I meant, etc. etc.
Ayn Rand died twenty-five years ago; Isabel Paterson died forty-six years ago; the letters in this chapter were written sixty years ago; but the argument is still going strong.
Sam and I drove up to Forrest this morning, to meet Jake and the grandparents for a picnic. (There's a nice little park in Forrest. I must have driven past it a hundred times over the last ten years, and never noticed it.)
Sam didn't have much lunch. Poor little guy, maybe he's not quite recovered from the Friday barf-o-rama. (I'm not so sure that I'm recovered, either.)
We're all home now.
Sam was supposed to be taking a nap, but it sounds like he's bouncing in the crib. I'd best go get him....
Spam today, advertising some kind of Colon Cleanser.
Don't need one, not after this weekend....
I'm feeling better this morning. (I might even throw caution to the wind and eat some breakfast.)
Jennifer, alas, is not. Poor Jennifer.
Whatever Sam had on Friday, I have today.
Pity me, pity me.
