morrowlife

Here are Readers Number One and Two on the rocks, in another of my famous Rock series.

No post yesterday. Sorry about that – I know how disappointed my Readers are when there’s nothing to read. In a very unusual turn of events, I stayed at work until about 8:15 yesterday evening and then worked for another hour or two when I got home. I don’t ever want to see that happen again! Fortunately, I got out of there just about on time today, and I’m planning to take a couple of days off tomorrow and Thursday before my long Cape trip on Monday.

We went to Mark’s barbershop practice this evening and listened to an a capella chorus from South High School. They were terrific! They were performing at that venue this evening in preparation for a competition they’re in next weekend. We all really enjoyed the music.

However, that made us late again, so I need to wrap it up here. Even though I’m home tomorrow, I’m driving to Seminary. Da zaftra!

Here’s another scene from the Trier karneval a few weeks ago. I think this guy went as Hiawatha, although I wasn’t entirely convinced by the deception. Not for too long, anyway.

Welcome to a very special Saturday edition of Morrowlife. Blog pictures are working again, as you possibly can see. I’m not sure I entirely take back the curses against Vizaweb, but at least my account seems to be fixed again. They’re really struggling to get up to the level of merely bad service.

Yesterday’s trip home was uneventful. Got my rental car up to 220 km/h again – that was the absolute downhill limit. I rode in Business class this time. I’m saving my remaining first class upgrades for the overnighter on the way out there. It’s not so important to sleep on the way home. It’s great to be home again, although it’s not going to be a long enough stay.

The amazing thing about the trip that ended yesterday was that I brought just enough clothes for the 12 days so I didn’t have to have any laundry done. I wore exactly everything I took. What excellent planning! I guess I have to take my excitement where I can find it, huh?

Time for a quick update to the book club. I finished Where Wizards Stay Up Late while I was in Europe this week. I recommend it. It goes into great detail on the creation of the predecessor to the internet, which was called the ARPANET and was funded by the Defense Department, and explains its eventual morphing into the internet. There are some general explanations of protocols and their evolution into the TCP/IP Ethernet stuff we use now. At the end, there are also a few words on how email and web browsers came to be. Check it out (from the library, of course). Actually, you can get it through Amazon for as little as 97 cents, so go ahead and buy it.

Made it a little further in How to Start a Freelance Consulting Business. I can’t really say it’s up to the usual standard of the Morrowlife Book Club, which is a really scary thought. I’m not quite sure who the target audience is – it’s presumably intended for people who are intelligent enough to be independent businesspeople, but it’s too simplistic for that audience. I’m sixty-four pages into it, and I’ve gone through a couple of detail-less case studies and a pointless quiz (“Do I like analyzing a problem and finding solutions? Do I like sharing what I know? Do I want to spend most of my time indoors or outdoors?”). Most of the material so far has tried to convince me that right now is the perfect time to start a consulting business and that there are many consulting businesses I could start. Maybe it will get better later on. Frankly, I doubt it.

The big news, however, is that I’ve added another title to the Book Club! It’s called Moths in the Machine and it’s an overview of computer programming for people considering becoming programmers. So far, it’s pretty entertaining. The author writes clearly and, so far anyway, is treating subjects you wouldn’t expect to see in this type of book. Right now, for example, I’m reading about the ethics of computer programming – its potential to harm people due to faulty programming and the fact that we really have no choice but to trust computers completely, simply because we have no way of checking the massive scope and quantity of calculations computers perform. Interesting stuff. It appears that the book is about to get into more mundane topics like the physical construction of machines and how computer languages are compiled and then interpreted by computers.

That suggests a great topic for a more thorough treatment – the ethics of computer programming. I’ll have to search a little and see if it’s been covered before.

Later – yes, it has. I should have guessed. Still, I’m not entirely sure the question of human trust of computers has really been expanded upon. I’ll have to see if any of the computer ethics books can be had from my local library – or borrowed from elsewhere – and check it out. I might be able to get an interesting article or two out of this topic.

Time to go read my book. I invite my Loyal Readers to do the same with whatever they’re reading. See you on Monday.

Here’s a public telephone I noticed here in Trier the other day. Bright colors, no? I’m not sure what that handle on the right is supposed to be for – maybe you’re supposed to think it’s really a slot machine. I doubt it pays out very well. (NOTE: Picture uploads are still dead. A million curses on Vizaweb! See my Flickr link over there on the right instead.)

Finished our meeting today, right on schedule. I was worried yesterday when we ended for the day at 5:00, but we were finished and out of there at about that same time today! We had our banquet at a fancy restaurant whose name none of us could pronounce, let alone spell, so I won’t be providing a link, for which I am truly sorry to my devoted readers who have come to depend on such things.

I’m driving back to Frankfurt tomorrow morning at a million miles an hour and then flying home (only slightly faster). Can’t wait to get there.

No blog post tomorrow, in all likelihood, due to travel. I’ll try to make up for it with a Very Special Saturday Post. I can hear my Esteemed Readers cheering from here. See you then.

This guy is just a little more inviting than yesterday’s, huh? I might actually go into this restaurant (although I haven’t been so inspired yet). Note: my web server is still having problems and I can’t currently post pictures. I’ll go back and modify these posts as soon as it’s fixed. In the meantime, please have a look at the pictures posted on Flickr (as always, the link’s over there on the right) (unless it’s also not working – sheesh). And thanks to Reader Number Two for suggesting I put them there!

Today’s meeting went pretty well, although I think we ended a little early. That’s normally a good thing, but I fear it will mean tomorrow’s session will last well into the night. And I need to get up early on Friday morning to drive to Frankfurt at 220 km/h so I can make my flight to Washington so I can make my flight to Philadelphia so I can drive home at 55 mph so I can be with my family for a few days and finally sleep in my own bed. But I can always sleep on the plane.

There’s not a lot else to report. Had dinner with Russ, Mike, and Paul at the Krokodil restaurant (warning – this is perhaps the lamest link I’ve ever included here, and that’s saying a lot). I’ve eaten there before. I had a huge platter full of meat and French fries. Most of the meat was pretty good. Definitely not the best meal I’ve ever had, but also definitely not the worst.

I’m really tired – jet lag is setting in – so I’m off to bed. ‘Night.

This guy creeps me out. And he’s supposed to make you want to go into a restaurant! If that’s what they look like in there, no thank you for that.

I’m back in Trier, and it was a beautiful and sunny day, if just a little bit cold. There’s a possibility of snow later in the week – I hope it doesn’t come on Friday, when I’m driving back to Frankfurt.

I have a BMW 118 this week, which turns out to be a nice little car. It’s about the size of a Volkswagen Golf. Does it drive like a BMW? I don’t know, but it does go and handle very well for the kind of car it is. It will do 220 km/h downhill and cruise at 200 to 205 on a level surface. I enjoyed the two-hour drive over here from the airport.

I’ve been trying to upload today’s picture to the server for quite a while now, and it doesn’t seem to be working at all. I don’t understand the problem, but if there’s no picture today, I’ll revise the site to add it as soon as I can figure it out. In the meantime, you can look at the morrowlife picture gallery. Just click the link over there on the right.

Later – Now I’m having troubles publishing anything at all. I just gets partway through and hangs. I have a trouble report in to Blogger. Can’t figure out what I could be doing wrong, so it must be in their servers (or maybe the Gardenville Software server, I guess).

Well, the computer’s just about out of juice. I’m in the hotel lobby where the wireless connection is, but there’s no power down here. So, I have to log off and go back up to my room to recharge. Have a great rest of the day. See you tomorrow.