we got a long way 2 go

I work on a government project. There are a few different agencies within our federal system, apparently. When our users fire off a job to print bills, they would like the external system run by a different agency to notify them through our custom Event Notification system if a problem occurs. This is akin to expecting the Post Office to contact you and let you know they lost one of the letters you sent.

The Business Analyst valiantly tried to explain why this wasn't going to happen. I provided her with additional technical reasons (e.g. "The first step in the process is to convince the external partner that they are subordinate to your department.") Hopefully they'll give up on this particular request.

On a more intersting note (to me anyway), two of our new Application Architects have heard of and actually used Zope, and one of them uses Plone. I may actually get around to making PABlog work with Plone now. I wonder if Jack will ever get around to using the blog I set up for him...

Lunch with Anger and Cybr @ Route 66. Mmmmm fish and chips. And MUSICOLOGY. Based on Anger's experience and that of co-workers and others who also went, I would say that's probably the best way to see a concert that is an arena tour.

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Baby, let's creep, I had enough of this action

Tonight Prince kicks off the Musicology tour. The show will be satellite broadcast to theatres across the country. I am a bit of a Prince fan. Just a little. Anger very kindly offered me his spare ticket, but given Mae's state I declined. The show doesn't even start until 10pm. Sigh. As it turns out I only got about four hours of sleep last night, so I'm in no shape to be going to a show anyway.

As slight compensation for not going to the show, I am listening to 96 tracks of non stop soul. All unreleased tracks or alternate takes.

To add insult to injury, the album is available for download to music club members (along with several other unreleased albums) for $7.77, but it's in DRM'd WMA format. Which means it can only be played on Windows computers using Windows Media Player 9. The site is noncommital about the Mac, stating only that Mac users may experience difficulty with the files.

Shame really. I wish he'd opted to go the iTunes route instead of using a closed solution that locks out a lot of fans. I will check if I can play the files on the Mac tonight, but if I can't then I guess I won't be getting the new album or the other unreleased albums.

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You fall on all your plans

A little light reading for a dreary friday.

Narnia has been sleeping longer and longer stretches at night, so I'm able to get as much as seven hours (not in a row, but you can't have everything. Where would you put it?). My very good friend Danielle (who is very unwired) sent us a book on signing with your baby, which is interesting timing as we are planning on going to a class on that topic next month. Serendipitous.

The eternal optimist, I plan on getting some work done in the garage this weekend. My hope is to frame out the fireplace surround and finish the facing for the long delayed final piece of the Tux entertainment center. And run CAT5 from the office to the utility room and move the MP3 server to a place where the noise is less of a problem. Macs are SO much quieter. And install Debian on the test box. And finish the WebPlayer MP3 client.

Yes, the above linked blog is Noam Chomsky. Yes, that's my idea of light reading.

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You can read it in the Sunday Papers

Richard Simmons cited for assault. Man, that's the kind of headline newspeople dream of...

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Please not the whole damn album, nobody has that much time

Walmart is now one of the leading vendors for desktop linux. They offer machines with SuSE, Lindows, and Sun Java Desktop. I've checked out SJD, it's definitely a solid business user desktop. Sun has added some very nice administrative tools, and Star Office 7 is a tremendous improvement over 6 (and up until I saw 7 in action I was quite pleased with 6).

Kuro5hin has a great piece on Zope, as well.

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She blinded me with science

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We're the last in line

Put up a quick little recipe on ZopeLabs. It's the code for the last five comments feature over on the left there.

This morning Narnia wasn't interested in going back to sleep after the 5.15 feeding. So we walked around the house and opened blinds and discussed the activities of the morning out there. A little early for students to be traipsing up the alley, so this was largely restricted to watching squirrels. We then approached the task of learning to lift our head when we are on our belly. This is a task I've mostly mastered, Narnia is not quite there yet. She is getting better every day, however, and will likely soon surpass me.

I also did a set of pushups and crunches. And some hand weights. I need to do this more frequently. Or maybe talk to a-go-go...

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A little bit of history repeating itself

I meant to write add this note last night, but I was pretty groggy...

I find it interesting that an artist with no record contract, no label, no distributor, and no coverage on the "music" channels is able to launch an arena tour that is selling out. And doing it all on his own terms. That's how music should be. Artists making the real money from their live performances and merch sales.

Keep in mind that musicians pretty much only made money from their live performances from the dawn of time up until the middle of the last century. The record industry is an aberration of history and is in the process of being obviated. As digital delivery takes the place of physical delivery, recorded music will serve largely as promotional material for the concerts.

I think that's a good thing.

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To whomever it may concern, you must come to your senses

The first time I heard Prince was when 1999 came out. I was just getting into music and was largely just buying whatever was on top 40 radio. I'd buy an album, like two or three songs, and feel let down that the rest of them weren't as good. As a teenager who was still mostly ignorant of the world, and not seeing beyond the importance of my own existence, filler songs were devastating to me. 1999 amazed me because here was an album with no filler at all. As I learned to discriminate in my purchases more Prince was one of those few artists that I never worried about whether the next purchase would be as good as those that I already loved.

Twenty years later I have yet to feel that let down with a Prince album.

For those who are fans, his Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame performance was fairly standard. Tight band, tight choreography, impeccable timing, virtuoso musicians, effortless performance. It's just Prince. You just expect that. I realized while watching it that young music fans today are not likely to see this level of effort and attention to detail in most of their favorite artists, so if anyone under the age of 20 was watching VH-1 they might have been shocked.

I know way, way, way too much about the musical life of Prince. Back in the day I was huge into the tape trading scene, and still have hundreds of live shows rotting away on cassettes. The hits medley that some critics complained about because "they want to hear the whole song, just how it is on the album" has been a staple of his shows since the Parade tour. And the segues were as tight as I've ever heard them. The most brilliant moment, however, was his outro solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I've long felt the Prince is second only to Jimi in his ability to truly become one with his instrument. After all I've seen and heard him do, this performance still made my jaw drop.

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Things that make you go hmmm.

As Keith and I discussed the weekend and plans of finishing off some tasks around the house, I commented that it's good to have dreams. Price commented over the cube wall "It's important to have something that can be crushed."


griz: why would spam be asking me if I wish I were 20 again? of course not - wouldn't at least 21 be a better age to suggest returning to? at least that way I could still get in to bars...

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Learn to sleep through misery, Never gonna wake feeling free

Some days, you wake up knowing it's going to be a crap day. Not a horrible, traumatic day. Just a tedious crappy bunch of little pointless irritating things going wrong. These days happen. C'est la vie.

It is relieved a bit by things like this, however.

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Mommy always said to me

Mom was in town for the weekend, and so she finally got to meet Narnia. With 6 kids and 30+ years teaching montessori school, Mom is a natural. And it was very reassuring to hear that from her experience everything Narnia is doing is completely normal for her age.



Mom and I went to Meriwether's for brunch on Sunday (I highly recommend it, it's delicious) and talked at great length about everything under the sun.

As an Angry Young Man (tm) in my teens I had this idea that my parents were ultra conservative authoritarians and so I was busy rebelling against whatever you've got. To be fair, my basis for comparison was my best friend Brian's truly hippie parents. Compared to them everyone is conservative. Now that I'm older and more mature (not mature, just more mature) I've come to realize that my attitudes and opinions are very directly informed by those of my parents. And I have many of the same behavioral patterns and problem resolution strategies as well. My parents raised me very well, and more and more I realize how important and valuable their influence has been.

Of course I now have to wonder how did ANYONE (my family in particular) put up with me in high school? I was an idiot!

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[silence]

Quote of the week:

The flaw in your argument is that you think you're right

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All I know is I'm not gonna stop

Resource contention is a fact of life. Be it vying for meetings with critical persons or the unending stream of tasks around the house. Sometimes you just need to stop giving up resources and recover. Everyone has their own way. Meditation, excercise, reading, any sort of space that helps you to recuperate. I've always found that solace in playing guitar, but the opportunities to do so are quite limited of late.

I had lunch with anger yesterday, and we talked at great length about fatherhood. It's nice to really be able to talk about what I'm experiencing with someone who not only understands, but isn't bored with it. He has that same passion for his kids as I do, and they're at the similar stages of development, so I feel like he is in the same mental place I am. We talked about how at the end of a crappy day at work, the best therapy of all is to just sit down and hang out with your kid(s).

And if you're lucky you can play guitar for them as well.

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Smile like you've got nothing to prove

This whole parenting thing does take it's toll. The exhaustion, sleep deprivation, aches and pains and late nights failing to soothe a colicy baby. Very very draining. And then she smiles and you realize how worthwhile it all is.

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I can hope the stormy weather - it passes on

One of the biggest challenges you will face early on as a parent: what bottles to use? Even if you are strictly breastfeeding bottles can be used with stored milk so that mom can sleep a little. We tried a few different ones (Gerber, Playtex, Avent) but the winner and all time champ is Dr. Brown. Thank you, Misty. I got almost 5 hours of sleep last night.

We had lunch yesterday at Brandts in U City with FP, MC, and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Good food, great company, decent atmosphere, and cliche live music that was too loud.

Unrelated: I managed to kill three machines on Friday. This is some sort of record for me. I put a new power supply in my workstation. And in the process neglected to reconnect the CPU fan. They really do melt. Broke X on the server, so while it still works it's ineffective as a backup when my workstation is down. Put a 'new' HD in the test box and realized that I don't have the pin diagram anymore and no idea where to connect the power leads. Sigh. Using Mae's eMac just makes me want a PowerBook even more. So if you want to buy me one, feel free.

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What we think is chic, unique and quite adorable

My wife is a very now sort of person. She embraces modern technology and modern culture. Last night she was getting ready to go to bed and was explaining to me how Narnia is now moving around a lot more in her crib. She said "She gets all cattywampus". It struck me as hilarious for someone like her to use an anachronism like that. It's like a 20 year old with Tucker Carlson's penchant for bow-ties. I responded with "Well twenty three skidoo!", which wasn't technically the right term but seemed linguistically appropriate. The sad thing is this is the sort of thing that entertains me even when I'm not sleep deprived.

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How'd this guy get in the White House?

If you read this book, you will never vote for George W. Bush ... I think this guy is a religious fanatic and a Jesus freak, and he is just hell bent on getting some sort of bizzaro agenda through. - Howard Stern, on Al Franken's book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

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When the lie gets so big, as in Robertson's case

If you live in Missouri, please lobby your state Rep to vote against HB911. This is a bill that would require the teaching of creationism in public schools and would require all new textbooks to give equal coverage to creationism as they do to actual science.

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They called me chicken legs, they called me four-eyes

It's national no name calling week. I am not making this up. This is actually a tough one. I am prone to casting epithets at the drop of a hat. I can refrain from personal name calling for a week, but do I have to give up focusing generalized disdain on a class of people? Can I still refer to users as morons?

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Libraries gave us power

The image on my desktop includes the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei". I find deep meaning in that lately.

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