Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

post 4
June 16, 2009

Duke Littleton invited a select number of guests - only 40 couples or so - to attend a cocktail party on the night prior to the public opening of his new exhibit at the Rocks. His scavenged collection had created quite a stir in the media, and Roberta and I were among the couples lucky enough to score one of the coveted invitations.

Our fortune likely had less to do with our rung on the social ladder that the fact that Duke and I were the sole survivors of our ill-fated camping trip to the Adirondacks during our graduate years at university. I won’t relive the experience now by its retelling, but please suffice with the explanation that we’ve had a deep bond ever since. Where Duke’s typical Littleton family aloofness inspires him to recognize this bond by issuing invitations for me and my wife to the occasional social function, I fear my recognition of the same is merely in accepting them.

A Palm Pre Review by a Real Palm Pre User
June 09, 2009

I’ve been reading a lot about the Palm Pre for the past few months. Let me say that a different way: I’ve been reading a lot about the Palm Pre for the past few months. As last week wound to a close, I started dreaming about the Pre, waking up in a sweat because my dreams had me stepping to the counter at the Sprint store after waiting in line for days only to find that they had just run out of stock. It was a terrible bit of business, but that’s all over now.

What’s been bugging me about all of the reviews I’ve read lately is that they have a particular character that I find suspect. There are several types, but most of the reviews I’ve read have a large subset of a particular set of traits.

And... It's June
June 01, 2009

<a href=“http://www.flickr.com/photos/94632485@N00/3584666692"class="right">A quick update on the weekend’s shenanigans – Berta and Abby went camping with the Girl Scouts over Friday night, so Riley and I had a boy’s night out.

I picked up Riley from school early, and we headed to the movie theater to see Up. It was good. The movie is about a guy named Carl who meets a girl, falls in love and makes a promise, and the promise becomes an adventure; one that drags along an unsuspecting Wilderness Explorer named Russel. It’s a good movie, in the traditional Pixar style. Much better than Wall-E. The beginning of the movie is very sad.

Principle #6 - Zero Is Bad
May 28, 2009

I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s “Work Should Feel Wrong” entry, one of a series on my personal principles, that today’s principle is the hardest of the bunch to describe.

Roll the clock back to my college years (hey, it's not that far...) and visit one of my Calculus study sessions with Brian. For whatever reason, Brian always went to class and needed help with the homework, and I never went to class and helped him with his homework. Be that as it may, it was during one of these sessions that we discovered this principle - more of an axiom - about the number zero and it's strange properties.

Principle #5 - Work Should Feel Wrong
May 27, 2009

By now you should know that I've been posting a list of personal principles for the past few days. Yesterday's was about moving forward every day. Today's is about getting the most out of work.

I remember growing up always being encouraged by my parents to reach for the stars. There wasn't anything they discouraged me from when thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

It started at an early age, when I wanted to be an astronaut. Now before you laugh, I put some actual planning into this. I had a kind of path to my goal sorted out -- I would enter the Air Force Academy to be an aeronautical engineer, become a pilot, and eventually fly the space shuttle. All of this came to a crashing halt when, in preparation for my future years of touring the stars, I took a drafting class in high school and found myself in a remedial math class on fractions for the vo-tech crowd.

There's nothing wrong with vo-tech, and nothing wrong with remedial math, but when I was taking Advanced Placement Honors Calculus at the time, remedial fractions broke my delusions of getting ahead in aeronautics in high school. Nonetheless, my parents were still encouraging.