morrowlife

Here’s a beautiful hand-painted picture of some angels. With just a single glance, I’m sure my Loyal Readers will agree that their spirits soar. A second glance might not lead to the same conclusion, however. Actually, this lovely portrait is in the caroussel in Los Gatos we visited during the Fourth of July weekend. They had a lot more (by the same artist!) just as good as this one but, strangely, I failed to take their picture. Maybe we’ll go back so I can correct this oversight.

Speaking of Great Art, I think it would be appropriate to invite my Loyal Readers to submit Quality Photographs they feel would be suitable for viewing in the Morrowlife blog. This is a limited-time offer. Operators are standing by, so act now! Really. I’d love to showcase some Loyal Reader work here. At least until I find time to take some more pictures.

The days, they keep getting shorter. I’m busy, busy, busy at work, and now taking a substantial amount of work home to avoid being there until 7:00 every night. Yikes! At least they’re now giving me substantial responsibility and a little bit of authority to make decisions. Whatever were they thinking? I’ve been either eating, working, or home eveninging since I got home. Of course, home eveninging included a substantial amount of time in the spa under the heading of “activity,” so don’t get all emotional for me.

The weekend was pretty peaceful. We went to the library on Saturday so I could augment the Loyal Reader Book Club. I got a few good ones. Some are too nerdy to mention right now, but I’m reading a really interesting one, in a nerdy sort of way. It’s called The Romance of Engines. It’s by a Japanese guy who works for a manufacturer of large trucks and, as my notably intelligent Loyal Readers have probably guessed, it’s about engines. So far, I’m still in the early history of internal combustion, but he’s already discussed some pretty amazing technology developed to try to improve the efficiency of gasoline and diesel engines. Most of the basic science was done by the 1800s, and by early in the 20th century, they had tried a lot of really advanced stuff. The fact that most of it didn’t work, and in fact made things much worse, doesn’t take anything away from the coolness and inventiveness of the ideas. The book itself is an entertaining cross between history and science textbooks. We get the stories of the people and companies who invented new things along with a fairly detailed description of the math and physics behind their ideas, with illustrations ranging from pictures of vehicles and their engines to simple block diagrams of physical principles to detailed graphs of experimental results to basic equations and their applications. I’m really enjoying it. While the book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I suspect that one or two of my Loyal Readers might find it interesting. But probably not. Anyhow, it’s going on the Book Club list.

Let’s see, what else did I get? Oh, there’s a book called Basic Electronics that includes some elementary digital circuit design. Maybe too nerdy for the Club. There’s another one called The Success of Open Source. I don’t know what it says about open-source, but I intend to read it and find out. If it’s more general interest than how-to-program (and I think it will be – it got great reviews on Amazon), I’ll tell you all about it. Then there’s Cryptography for Dummies and The Elements of User Interface Design (kind of a weak point for Embedded Systems programmers like me, hence a topic of interest). You might not hear much more about those ones either.

I also get an Evelyn Waugh novel called Decline & Fall. I know nothing about it yet, other than that it was recommended by an author who likes P.G. Wodehouse’s work, so it might be good. I’ll refrain from adding it to the Book Club list until after I’ve read a little bit and determined whether it’s up to the Morrowlife Book Club’s high standards.

It was nice to hear from LRN5 in Friday’s comments. Your high Morrowlife standing is assured – at least for the time being. We’re pretty demanding around here.

Well, it’s time to stop writing and start reading some of those books. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a patched-together water fountain dragon (link warning – lots of audio) from the Fortress of Solitude. It looks better from a distance, trust me. But not much better.

Busy, busy, busy. I’m working like a dog. Check that – dogs spend all day eating and sleeping, and I didn’t get to do much of either today. I’m loving it, though. The busier it gets there, the more I like it. I’m finally really doing the management thing. Can’t go overboard with it, though.

The family was in the pool when I got home today, so I got changed and got in too. It was really nice to relax for a few minutes before dinner. The meal was great and it’s really nice to be home for the weekend.

And I’m out of stuff to write about today. I really can’t give much detail about what goes on at the Giant Space Factory (link warning – strange French sounds), and there’s effectively nothing else in my life right now. I need to get to the library. Don’t worry, though. It’ll get much better when I start riding the train every day.

Oh, there is one thing. I’m about halfway through Programming for Embedded Systems and I’ve started believing the really negative comment on Amazon. The book is full of completely uncommented code with obscure variable and procedure names and precious little else. I’m sticking with it for a little while longer in the hope I’ll get something worthwhile out of it, but I’m not counting on much. I’ll let you know, but right now I’m not recommending it to my discerning Loyal Book Club. I need to get to the library.

Okay, that’s it for today. Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

Here are Loyal Readers One and Two on the medium-small train we rode on Monday. It really was a fun ride.

Another busy day today. It’s almost 10:30 already and I’m finally just sitting down. I got yet another responsibility at work today – we have a mysterious problem that hasn’t been solved for quite some time. We’re just about at the point of needing it to work right, and upper management is concerned. They’ve assigned three of us to get it solved, so get it solved we will. I pretty much understand the problem now, which is a great start if I do say so myself. I need to get several people together tomorrow and get some action going.

Loyal Reader Number One has started driving! He took his first behind-the-wheel training this afternoon and is now eligible to practice with us. LRN4, LRN1 and I went to Wal-Mart this evening to pick up a few things and give LRN1 a chance to get on the road. It went fine, and the fear level in the car was kept down to a minimum. So far, so good (link warning – brief unintelligible sound)!

We pretty much have LRN1 and LRN2 signed up for a pretty cool homeschool charter school for this year. They pretty much let you do what you want to do (music and other lessons, trips [link warning – sound], etc.) and they pay for it. Cool. They still need to give us the formal green light in early August, but it’s apparently a done deal.

It’s already time for bed. See you tomorrow.

I just love this sign. It’s disgusting, of course, but that’s just part of its charm. It’s in what’s come to be known around the Fortress of Solitude as The Pooping Grounds. Belle is all over that place.

Busy workday today. As I get more responsibilities, I have more to do. Strange how that works. I’m still avoiding working excessive overtime hours, of course, but it’s getting harder and harder. When I start riding the train back and forth to the Secret Undisclosed Location, there will be at least a couple extra hours a day I can devote to the job. That is, unless I need to take them up with blogging, sleeping, and listening to podcasts. The days are just packed!

Nothing much else to report. I submitted an expense report for per diem money that came to an amazingly high amount. We need every penny, of course, to buy the house. Otherwise, that would buy me a pretty nice MacBook Pro or even a good G5. Hmm . . .

But enough dreaming. Time to get some reading and/or programming done. See you tomorrow.

Here’s the little train we rode yesterday getting ready to leave the station. It was a fun ride and a pretty little park.

We had a nice Fourth today. Spent the morning at home and went over to the Santa Clara City celebration in the afternoon. We’re at home watching The Long, Long Trailer on DVD. Nicky and Tacey are just buying the trailer now. We’re planning to watch the Great America fireworks from The Privacy of Our Own Home at 9:30. We’ve seen the shows for the past few nights and they were very good. Tonight’s show ought to be great.

We were introduced to Lawn Bowling this afternoon. It looks like a lot of fun. There’s a beautiful bowling green at the Santa Clara City park and a club that plays four days a week. They tried to get us to join up. We might have done it – it looks like a lot of fun – but we’re not going to be in Santa Clara much longer. Maybe there will be Lawn Bowling in Lardville.

I used my new Palm development system to create an actual program last night. It calculates the CRC checksum of a given string. I know that’s not much, but it was good practice. I got everything working right – forms, buttons, menus, an about-box, and the application itself. It works great! Now I just need to decide what to write next.

Speaking of programming, in a minor tragedy, I appear to have deleted the source code for all my previous programs when I left my job in Newtown. I somehow failed to get them copied onto my new computer. That includes that famous classic, Tapeworm, along with some other highlights. I may have to resort to reverse engineering some things. I’m very sad. On the other hand, this is the perfect opportunity to recode and improve performance.

I finished Tales of St. Austin’s a day or two ago. Can’t really say much more than I’ve said before. It’s a bunch of unrelated short stories centering around common characters and locations – a boys’ school in England and the upper-class twits that inhabit it. It’s fun, light reading – perfect for carrying around in a gadget and reading in spare moments. Highly recommended, especially at the price.

Added my embedded system programming book to the book club list. Its one review on Amazon is pretty unflattering. The jury is still out for me on this one. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone but programming junkies in any case. I also added a fun little 19th-century book about camping. So far, it’s really interesting. Check it out.

I’m going to pay attention to the movie now. Tomorrow’s back-to-work Wednesday. See you then.