I grew up in a town that would be the cultural equivalent of Wonder Bread so one of the things I like about my job is that is that I get to know people from all over the world. I was talking to one of my Chinese friends today and mentioned something about her recent marriage ( something she said made me think she was recently married ). She corrected me saying that she had a college age daughter (which I already knew) and that I should infer from this that she had been married many years. I responded that the daughter could have been from a previous marriage. She replied she was old fashioned. Then she said ‘When you marry a dog you become a dog. When you marry a pig you become a pig’. I’m really not sure what sort of ancient Chinese wisdom she was trying to pass on but it does exemplify what I enjoy about interacting with people from other places. Every so often I’m surprised by some idiom or custom like celebrating Maslenitsa or learning how to really insult someone in Tamil.
I hate Linux.
I hate Free BSD more than I hate Linux.
I hate Mac OSX more than I hate Free BSD.
I hate Solaris more than I hate Mac OSX.
I hate Windows more than I hate Solaris.
I hate AIX most of all.
I got a new guitar as a gift, a very nice Fender DG-24. A long time ago before I got married I used to play quite a bit and I’d been thinking about picking up the habit again. It’s kind of funny my fingers remember what to do but my hands aren’t strong enough to pull it off and no callouses. I played, or tried to play until I got little bloody lines on the end of the fingers of my left hand. It was kind of weird playing because it seemed like it sort of shook loose a bunch of old memories. It’s like I suddenly had access to all of these old sensations smells and feelings that I associated with playing years ago. I have to travel to New Jersey next week so my fingers will have a chance to heal up. If I keep traveling I’ll have to get a travel guitar. Or else stop traveling.
I went to a party at a CSA farm last weekend. I knew about one person there so I was uncomfortable as hell. The premise of the party was fairly interesting, everybody brought food and helped dig sweet potatoes.
Here are some of the potatoes.
Here are some of the diggers eating.
Here’s part of the farm.
I basically get paid to think about stuff. Here’s an article from Ars Technica that cites a study that indicates that heavy mental effort leads to much bigger meals. So now I have an excuse.
Yep. No more long hair. Chopped it all off. No reason. Quit bugging me about it.
I got together for supper with my niece Kate, and her husband Archie. Kate and Archie are great adventurers who I am totally in awe of. Last year they canoed down the Mississippi river from the Twin Cities and then after they did that, turned around and walked a pilgrimage route from Spain to France. The cool thing is that they did these things with a minimum of money. They just went and did it. Anyway, I met them for supper on W. 52nd street in Manhattan for supper at the Bombay Palace. I thought since Kate is a vegetarian that an Indian restaurant would be the best bet. The food and service were great and the price was right too, appetizers, naan, two entrees and drinks for eighty five bucks. Not bad for New York.
I’m very interested in the concept of free will and the implications that stem from the degree to which free will exists. I’m of the opinion that free will is largely an illusion. We think that we make decisions with our conscious minds largely free of the influence of instinct or similarly programmed responses when in fact the opposite is true. This Scientific American article asks “If people come to believe that they don’t have free will, what will the consequences be for moral responsibility?”
I’ve been traveling a lot lately. Really. In a way I suppose that’s good because the Hotels DJ puts me up in are typically nicer than my current living situation. At least one of my situations. Its nice to have someone clean up after you and have all your cooking, laundry etc taken care of for you. Right now I’m sitting in Philly on standby trying to get out of town before the forecast thunderstorms start to back up flights. I’m turning around and flying back out early Monday morning and the last thing I want to do is to get stuck spending the night here because my flight got canceled. Spending Saturday flying back, and then turning around and flying out again is not a pleasant prospect.
Last Saturday I went up to Manhattan and saw Spamalot. I wasn’t really expecting much, I’m not really a theatre kind of guy, but I had the good fortune to get a couple of center second row seats so I decided what the hell and went. Sometimes it good to get away from the computer after all. I saw Cats along time ago and I was underwhelmed so I wasn’t really expecting much. But a show based on The Holy Grail, well, how bad could it be. It turns out that I had a great time, the show was fabulous. I laughed continuously through the whole show.
