Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Scouting out Habari
May 06, 2008

I found a list of events that Abby’s going to participate in with her Girl Scout’s Brownie troop over the next couple of months. Apparently, Berta gets emails from their scout leader every so often with a list of updated events and notices. I think this is an effective way to keep in touch with the troupe, but I think there’s room for improvement technologically.

It might be nice to have a published calendar of events, along with a feed that parents could consume in Outlook, Google Calendar, or in my case, Lightning. I’ve discovered that meetup.com provides iCal feeds that make it easy to subscribe to events. Of course, there are my usual misgivings with meetup.com, particularly that it’s a paid service and that they retain control of the data so that you can’t move it elsewhere when you decide you can’t pay them anymore. So I think there should be a better, open solution.

Kindle Arrived
April 23, 2008

My Kindle arrived today while I was watching Riley drive his electric Jeep around the cul-de-sac island. Since he refused to park his Jeep to go inside, I tore open the box right there in the driveway, and carried its contents up to the circle to get acquainted.

The Kindle is an electronic book. It has a paperback-sized screen with a small keyboard below, and large buttons on the sides. When the device is on, it reads just like any paperback book except that when you want to turn the page, you just press the button.

I am Evil
April 21, 2008

I don’t know if I had mentioned this before. I say it frequently enough, so you might have heard me talking about it. The bottom line is this: I’m evil.

I used to think I was marginally “good”, but you know what? It’s hard work and doesn’t really pay off. So I’ve just given up on the idea altogether. What does this mean for you?

Well, evil isn’t always as rotten as it might seem. I mean, evil inspires self-interest. So for example, if I was walking behind you and you passed out - for lack of any good premise - I might still provide assistance, but not for your sake. Instead, any aid would be motivated by wanting to remain innocent of charges that I caused the incident.

I bring all of this up because I was being evil to the kids tonight at dinner.

Mowing Clinton Kindle
April 21, 2008

Excuse me if this doesn’t make any sense, I’m a bit endorphin high. I just got finished mowing the front lawn – with an electric push-mower.

The lawn has been a battle. We discontinued last year’s lawn service because they were doing things that we asked them not to do, resulting in large dirt patches in our lawn. So this year, with no service, our lawn has been growing uncontrolled, much to the chagrin of our mower-loving neighbors.

The riding mower that came with our house has a dead battery from the kids leaving the headlights on (why does the mower have these?) so I tried for a good bit this afternoon to get that working again, to no avail. And in the end, I bought a new corded electric push-mower from Home Depot. It’s corded, because the battery on the last one went kaput. Speaking of going crazy while mowing the lawn, Bill Clinton called me today. Don’t believe me?

Bill!

Yes, One Good Day
April 18, 2008

Ah, I’ve finally made it out of the house. I’ve been cooped up there all week for one reason or another. Until yesterday, I hadn’t even been outside of the house other than to get packages of of the covered porch - a crime, considering the weather. But today, today is a good day.

Clients seem appeased, and work - although steady and challenging - is not frantic and stress-inducing like it often has the capacity to be. Also, we’ve got new projects and new people coming in, which is exciting. I’m particularly pleased with a little side project I’ve been coding for use at work - a Drupal module that replaces and vastly improves on Campfire’s chat capabilities.