This morning, I witnessed an amazing display of fluid dynamics that could probably not be repeated if I tried.
As I was pouring milk on my cornflakes, the milk landed in a bowl-shaped flake, and reversed the flow of the milk up, out of the bowl, and all over the counter and floor, in such a spectacular cascade that none was making it into the bowl.
Yeah, that’s the whole story. Sorry if you were expecting more.
I’ve started reading (actualy, listening on tape) to A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket. I find his writing to be pretentious, a word which here means “uses large words, and then defines them, in order to make the readers’ parents believe that the books are educational” However, I also find them amusing, a word which here means “causing me to giggle inanely while driving.” The books are fairly addictive, a word which here means “after you’ve read one, you’ll probably want to buy the other 76 books in the series.” The books are read on tape by Mr Snicket himself, whose voice is very cacaphonic, a word which here means “ok, so hopefully by now you’ve got my point, so I don’t actually have to come over there and kill you.”
Last night I wanted to get a movie. And, darn it, it was rent one, get one free night. I hate it when that happens. So I watched Fight Club, and A Beautiful Mind.
Fight Club was one of the odder movies I’ve seen in a while. Probably the strangest since Being John Malkovitch. One of that that I know I missed stuff the first time through.
A Beautiful Mind was beautiful, and heartbreaking, as well as being a fascinating movie. John Nash is truly a fascinating man. More about him here, in his own words.
I sent a response to the “Please do my homework” note, sarcastically asking if he was asking me to do his homework. Apparently the sarcasm didn’t communicate, as he sent me a grateful response, his work so far, and a request to tell him how to do the rest of it.
For those who missed the connection, I have written Perl modules for the calculation of the day of the week based on the “doomsday” algorithm. It was primarily an academic exercise, as there are more efficient ways to do this calculation. I was just interested in the algorithm.
But the code was in Perl. My experience with assembler is mostly restricted to knowing how to spell it. I did spell it right, didn’t I?
I’ve had people send me “please do my homework” email before, but never have I had anyone be quite so unabashed about it. Check this out:
Next Friday, according to the calendar Sarah brought home from school, is School Record’s Day.
While I understand that, for most people, the use of an apostrophe means “Look out, here come’s an s!” I expect a little more than that from a school. I’ve been seeing an alarming number of glaring gramatical errors in documents sent home from school.
Either Wednesday evening, or Thursday morning, I did something unpleasant to my back. I first noticed this while trying to get into Rocinante on Thursday morning. Climbing into a Jeep requires a bit of gymnastics on a good day. Trying to pull my left leg up into the Jeep, my back started screaming.
When I got out at the school bus stop, I almost couldn’t get back in, and it took me about a minute to take the handbrake off. When I got to work, I was pretty sure I would not be able to get out at all. But, being the loyal workaholic I am, I got out, almost collapsing in the process.
Sensible people would have gone home by this point, but I figured I’d at least check the schedule to see who I’d be ignoring by going home. And, of course, I was promptly sent to a customer site.
So, it was mostly getting down into a chair, and standing back up again, that were the problem. Once I was standing, I was mostly OK. So I tried to do desktop and server maintenance without ever actually sitting down. But after about an hour of that, I gave up and went to the doctor.
Seems I have a spinal bifida. It’s not clear that this is the source of the problem, but it’s just something the noticed in the xray. A spinal bifida means that there’s a bit missing from one of my vertebrae. This is often congenital, although it can be caused by trauma. But, I can’t seem to come up with anything I did that would have caused this, other than just generally being out of shape.
I feel a lot better today, but I’m still not particularly comfortable. Perhaps I’ll take this afternoon off and rest. I don’t want this to get any worse. Plus, I’m on 3 different drugs, and am feeling rather loopy.
This week I’ve been listening to “Sacred Love”, Sting’s new album. While most times, new work by familiar artists takes me some time to grow into, this almum immediately has struck my fancy. It has a lot of stuff on it that is very recognizably Sting, along with some interesting new experimentation.
My favorite track, hands down, is “Stolen Car (Take me dancing)”. In this short song, he paints a picture of three people – well, four, I suppose, but one (the owner of the car) of them doesn’t really count – tied together by a stolen car. Each of them says the same words, but we get very different picture of each. It’s the kind of short story I like – one that is economic in words, and leaves you to fill in a lot of the details yourself.
Another track that is very appealing is “Inside”, the opening track. Unfortunately, the ending feels very contrived. He does the “rhyming words that end in ‘ate’ trick” for the last 20 seconds of this song for no particular reason. This has been done, even with the same words, in a number of other songs, and this kinda ruins the track for me.
I’ve looked at several other reviews, and most of them don’t seem to care much for the album as a cohesive unit, and I think I agree with that somewhat. There’s no unity. There are some great tracks. And, indeed, I find myself playing tracks 1 (Inside) and 6 (Stolen Car) repeatedly, while ignoring a lot of the rest of the album.
So, did I contradict myself there? Maybe a little. For you Sting fans, it’s worth picking up.
Berry wine has the potential to be really remarkably awful. It tends to be over-sweet, cloying, and just downright unpleasant.
But, given the skill with which Chrisman Mill makes mead, another wine that can be spectacularly terrible, I figured there was nothing to be too worried about. And I was right.
The Chrisman blackberry wine is now available, and it is fantastic. I should have picked up an extra lable, so that I could scan it in and put it here. I’ll try to soak one off after the bottle is empty. It features a wolf from the Wolf Run wolf sanctuary, and looks pretty cool.
The wine is, of course, sweet, but not unpleasantly sweet. Just perfect. And it is a serious wine, not just berry juice + alcohol. It has the sweetness, and pucker/tangyness/wildness of a fresh-picked blackberry. A nice balance of sweet and acidity that promises that it will develop interestingly over time. As always, I should have bought more.
Also, I got a moose, which I have been eyeing on the last several visits out to the winery. I’ll post better pictures once I find some batteries for my camera.
Aye, thou art welcome, heaven’s delicions breath!
When woods begin to weear the crimson leaf,
And the suns grow meek, and the meeks suns gro brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, ‘mid bowers and brooks,
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.
William Cullen Bryant (1794 — 1878)