morrowlife

Here’s another version of the Cocoa Beach at Night picture from the other day. I think I like this one better.

No Tuesday post. My laptop didn’t show up until today, so it was impossible, of course. I’m glad to finally have it back and gratified to report that it’s working perfectly and it only took me one day to catch up on all the things I should have been doing yesterday and Monday. Hooray.

Things here in Florida are going quite well – at least on our side of the fence. The launch vehicle people aren’t having quite as much luck as we are, but I’m pretty confident they’ll overcome their issues and stay on track.

I worked a short day yesterday. I had no computer and found myself really unable to accomplish much of anything, so I took the afternoon off. With the computer here today, I spent a lot of hours to catch back up, so it’s all evening out. One of my colleagues mentioned today that we are basically unable to communicate these days without a computer. I think he’s onto something there. I made a few phone calls yesterday but really couldn’t do much of anything. How pathetic! All we ever really do with all that computing power is send mail to each other.

Went directly from work to the new Thai/Japanese restaurant. Roy and I had tried eating there yesterday and the day before, but it was too crowded to get a table immediately and we were unwilling to wait. They have a very small dining room, so it doesn’t take a huge crowd to fill the place up. Anyway, we didn’t get there until about 8:00 this evening, so we pretty much got right in. The food was great, especially the sushi, which was probably the best I’ve had around here.

I haven’t been home all that long, but it’s already 10:30, so it’s time for bed. I think it will be another long day tomorrow, but it looks like we might have the weekend off! I have to start thinking of things to do.

See you tomorrow.

As suggested by today’s title, here’s a pink house. It was one of those historic buildings we saw in Staunton over last year’s Christmas holiday.

Welcome to a Very Special Sunday Edition of morrowlife. Short post tonight. As previously advertised, I’m leaving for Florida tomorrow morning. Sadly, I didn’t exactly manage to get my laptop home from San Francisco on Friday, so there will be no post tomorrow. I’m hoping to have it overnighted to me sometime on Monday, with the happy possibility of a Tuesday post (and every weekday thereafter).

The San Francisco trip went well, as far as I could tell. My meeting lasted almost exactly one hour (for a trip that took just about 48 hours to complete!) and I felt good about it afterwards. We’ll see what comes of it.

I don’t want to go to Florida tomorrow and be away from home for such a long time. However, it feels much better to be going only a couple hours’ flight away from home as opposed to the two (very long) day trip it takes to get home from Baikonur. Not that I expect an emergency, but it’s just nice knowing I’m not too far away.

Time for bed already. Look for more on Tuesday!

Those are a lot of wheels on that Antonov. And a lot of bald tires too.

No post yesterday – my apologies to my devoted Readers. I just got busy and forgot about it. How pathetic is that?

Greetings from Sunnyvale, California. I’m just here overnight. The weather is nice and I have another convertible again, so I can’t complain. I flew first class, so I really can’t complain. The flight back home will probably be in coach, though, and it’s a red-eye, so I’ll complain on Saturday morning. Trust me.

Probably no post tomorrow – I’ll be traveling home without an internet connection, so there won’t be an opportunity. Sounds like another occasion for a Very Special Saturday Post. Watch for it.

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.