Dermabond, America

It is 11 PM. The kids and I are at the 59 Diner on Kirkwood. Dakota and Jason split a plate of Mac n'Cheese, and a vanilla shake. I had a Buffalo Burger -- all the way Texas style, and a black&white shake. We all split my fries.
Jason is talking to me. I can't focus on what he is saying because I am looking at the purple sparkly Dermabond that has sealed his Harry Potter scar. Earlier this evening, I had the idea to have the kids actually help me clean the house, so that they'd be tired before bed. That lasted about 3 minutes before Jason managed to lacerate his forehead on the kitchen counter like Leland Palmer possessed by evil Bob at the end of season 1 of Twin Peaks. My smallbig boy was crying and holding his forehead. When I pulled his hands away to inspect the cut, he started screaming from the blood on his hands, but I was calm. At least I was in the house. Driving through the inky blackness of 99 at night, the humidity and the darkness just feels like uncertainty. Somehow I got to thinking about past medical bills and about the mendacity of the insurance system. Nevertheless, my anguish and trepidation dissipated as I pulled up to the ER entrance.
When I was just a bit more than Jason's age, I cut my chin on the water slide at Sprain Ridge pool. They shot me a local and gave me a stitch that took several weeks to heal. I have a sweet scar; still visible. I was calm in the kitchen because using a butterfly closure to staunch the dripping from the fresh roast beef sandwich on my son's forehead brought back familiar memories. But medical technology has improved a lot in 29 years. Dermabond is essentially a skin glue with scar-preventing properties, and that's all they needed.
Jason looks at me and smiles "This shake is so yummy!" He rubs his belly through his "Woodsie the Owl" t-shirt (give a hoot don't pollute) and laughs because he is tickling himself.
Dakota is coloring in Disney princesses. When we got to the ER, she drilled the intake personnel with the facts (thisisjasonheismybrother. thatsfirstnamejasonlastnamelispelled "L-I" andhehithisheadonthekitchenisland AND I AM REALLY WORRIED!) And truly, she was trembling. Her eyes were wide like saucers; becoming moist as she fought to maintain her composure. The hospital staff seemed genuinely touched by this sincere and sincerely smart big sister. So they gave her some crayons, some pages to color, and they reassured her.

"Daddy, may I be excused to play the jukebox?"

"Knock yourself out, princess. It's free"

After selecting "the big bopper" she comes back and neatly finishes Cinderella's ball gown. The other dining patrons are diggin' the tune, too. All around us are high school kids, these are the clean cut ones who don't drink and who went to the football game. Apparently some of the high school games are also on saturday night. They are also enjoying burgers fries and shakes.
We could only be in America.
When I was young, I would watch "Happy Days" and dream about an America that cynical adults said never was and didn't exist. Here it is, though. An actualization in the present of a past that never was. And I am living it.
Its not a place without its problems. Behind Dakota's touching concern for her brother are the beginnings of the unhealthy anxieties of a divorced kid. This phenomon is now decades old here and I would have recognized even if I wasn't myself a divorced kid, but as I am, it's quite plain. And speaking of unhealthy, if the cholesterol in my food, speeds a fatal heart disease, apparently I will be part of the plurality. All of which inevitability points me to the class tensions and racial tensions lurking in the background; a legacy of ancestral evil that stubbornly refused to be extricated from heritage and thusly endures.
But these problems are also somewhat evidentiary of the conclusion that, ultimately, this really is a good place. Not because America is perfect but because of how it aspires to be all the right kinds of better. Cynics can rightly observe that many of the measures enacted to realize improvements are baby steps or two steps forward mixed with one step back, but I'll take that.
The kids see both their parents almost every day, the menu boasts "no trans-fats!", delicious moderately priced food is egalitarian, and tonight in this simulacrum of a late 1950's diner, there is mosiac of different races and ethnicities co-existing thanks to a veneer of friendliness and hospitality which forces an indifference to whatever tensions still exist today. All of this combines to make this place that never was, much better than any place that actually could have been in 1959.
As I share a meal with my family, and appreciate America, these patriotic lyrics play in my head:

These days are all, happy and free.
These days are all, share them with me.

Dermabond.

Funny article about the Turing test

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/27jeopardy.html

'For example, the sentence "I never said she stole my money" can have
seven different meanings depending on which word is stressed'

Because its early, I kept reading "monkey" rather than "money. " And
thus I got way more than seven meaning out of it, thanks to George
Michael.

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

Hey, Daily News, I am stealing your bandwidth.
So, this is the latest craze going around the Internet. Why so much hype? Here's what I think:

1. Apple users are surprised to discover that human hands made their goods. Apple has done a gone job in convincing the world that sorcerers summon these sparkling jewels of industrial design from the beyond.

2. Factory workers are clean. I've notice that especially Democrats think that all factory workers are coal miners. Am I saying that Apple users are Democrats? I am. Yes, that means you Trav. You are a Democrat. You like higher taxes. And government regulation of everything. Especially what you think. You love that.

3. Factory workers are women. Even in this enlightened age, nerds still think of themselves as a "no girls allowed" club. Am I saying that Apple users are nerds. Check. I've previously posted about the relationship between ridiculous nostalgic chauvanism and computers ("The first computers were women" canonical rant). Dave is saying, "Wait a minute... I have an iPhone and I don't think about technology as being exclusively male, in fact, I don't think about gender at all when I think about technology." Oh yes you do, you think Ada Lovelace was a guy. And Brenda Laurel too. You put testosterone in your Nalgene of Mountain Dew before you take the GUYway to Mistersoft for a day of manly man computing. Then at lunch you don a bearskin pelt and viking helment and sing "Men! Men! Men! Men"

4. People make a lot of assumptions and love to generalize. Especially without facts and against credibility. That's why I eat Frosted Flakes, it makes you chairvoyant (the power to get someplace while sitting) and telegeneticist (the power to insult your distant descendants with obsolete theories of biodiversity). I, for one, think the iPhone factory girl is a hoax, a cover-up of the extra-terrestrial controlled zombie-lab which produced part man, part alien, part machine, part undead, iPhone factory workers to make iPhones by (a) growing them from a limb, (2) severing the iPhone limb with a lighting gun. (bew bew-bew, KAPOW!!!)

Well, enjoy your 15 minutes, iPhone factory girl. You might be one-in-a-million.

Why did Nokia buy Simbian

To compete with iPhone, Windows CE, and Android (the Google platform)

Compete is probably the wrong word. Nokia is already leading in the handheld platform space and they'd like to keep it that way.

Actually, I really like the design of many symbian devices. Ironically this has nothing to do with the software platform but more with the London industrial design aesthetic. I guess there is nothing ironic about that. It's my birthday buddy Alanis Morisette confusing the concept of irony again.

For the record, "Irony" is the state of a shirt after its been ... y'know

9 years later, the auto industry is finally getting around to it

For years I've groused about how they need some sort of car to car bluetooth thingy so that I can push a touch screen, get the face of the driver from an eyeball camera on his mirror and say, "Dude! Stop tailgating me!" and then the driver can say, "Hey! I'm late for work, get out of my way" then I can call the guy in the lane over and say, "Hey, let me in because the guy tailgating me is late for work"

Apparently the FCC thought the same thing nine years ago.

I mention this because the trade magazine which I get is running an article about it. Of the various photographs, only #8 really impresses me. Everything else just looks like a cludgely mess.



Also in this issue: Engineering the electrical banana. They call it mellow yello.

For a good example of how the comm system should work (and where I got my idea from originally) play Wing Commander: Privateer

Good bye, my valiant friend

"This car doesn't owe you anything?"

After I re-busted the front quarter panel I decided to leave it. Later, a co-worker asked me about it at the time, after I told him the whole sorry story he said, "I certainly hope you treat your wife better than that." That was in 1999.

The last time I drove my Mom in this car, I spent an hour cleaning the inside. She wrinkled her nose anyway.

"How old is this car," she asked?

I replied, "1996."

"This car doesn't owe you anything."


Indeed not, but I am sad nevertheless. This is my only real possession that is all mine. Purchased with my 2nd paycheck and a promise to give a portion of 60 more. I earned Jeep from late nights fixing server problems, from "here's something for the meantime" portion of ridiculous dotcom promises, and from "just be glad you have a job in Houston after Enron."

The Jeep lasted me through law school. I drove it 70 miles almost every day. Days which lasted from 5 AM to get the kiddos to school to 10 PM or later. Days which included two and a half hours of commute through eternal construction: debris, potholes, unlit roads, and unforgiving timetables for everyone on the road.

Yeah, its not a Steinbeck novel but it was still hard work, and a dispirting (if inevitable) end. If I was a different sort of person. I would put the car in the garage and then Jason and I would fix it together. Those sorts of people actually still exist and live in Houston, (one of them was in my evening section) and if I had paid more attention to Mr. Bray, I might have been one of those people too. Once Mr. Bray tried to show me how to fix a lawnmower. I got as far as re-drilling the push handle and changing the spark plug. In any case, cars are mostly run by computer sensors now, so the whole romantic idea is somewhat infesable. If you could hook up a controller to the computer in my Jeep, I would go "up up down down" and make it dematerialize and rematerialize behind all those jerks who tailgate at night with their highbeam.

Monkeys Control a Mechanical Arm With Their Thoughts - NYTimes.com

Monkeys Control a Mechanical Arm With Their Thoughts - NYTimes.com

Big deal. I can control mechanical arms with my thoughts. Watch me do the robot!


Look! I'm a robot!

Verdict: Office 2007 is pretty good

#1 the XML file formats take up MUCH LESS SPACE. Considering the main feature of mass-market software is bloat, this is a terrific development.

#2 The Ribbon is incredibly annoying but after a few months it starts to make sense. That said, I there isn't an "expert mode" where you can go back to having your own dockable customized toolbars. You actually can get this by buying a 3rd party software but it should be native

#3 On Word, it is much easier to control paragraph features, but outline numbering still need to be tweaked carefully. You'd think that this would have been fixed but not yet.

#4 On excel, it took forever for me to get Pivot Table to work right and Solver is still extremely cludgy.

#5 Powerpoint is much better, but its still powerpoint

#6 In theory, Sharepoint and Groove are now ready to go and kill in enterprise workflow. After a full career of lotus notes, however, I've decided that this is a technology that all the wrong people want. That is to say, the people who really need it don't want it, and the people who really want it, don't need it. Unfortunately this is not a technology problem so much as a problem which I blame on either the state of our culture or on a more intractable state of human nature. But because ontology recalculates phrenology, I am sure that eventually humanity and society will evolve to be the type of person who is an ideal user of enterprise workflow

"Can Google kill PowerPoint?" Ha!

Can Google kill PowerPoint? asks By Paul Boutin of Slate Magazine

"No," he answers.

"No kidding," I reply.

But what he really should have done is retort like this.

That's a big airplane

But Boeing is still better. Is it more orders, better technology, or sheer patriotism that motivates my statement?

How silly! None of the above.

Boeing is just a pleasing name like: Scott Baio, Oasis, or Ionosphere.

Just say it over and over again, putting the emphasis on the "B"... pretty soon the "e" drops out and you are ready to follow the bouncing ball:

we got cubes, me and you and q*bert
me and you -- and q*bert

ectomy

They ought to call it "out-a-me." As in, "I had my tonsill-outame in 1977."

Cerebro purchases Chrysler

New chairperson, Bastion, promises to bring an era of peace for all mankind by introducing the Dodge Sentinel: a family size-sedan equipped with mutant tracking and destroying technology.

Dr. Henry McCoy has pledged to work with regulators to ensure that the new vehicles include everything except for the last two features. "We think that the American consumer would just prefer something like OnStar"

Ghengis Dunbar = Totally Awesome

Ghenghis

Dunbar

What were the management secrets of Genghis Khan? 1. Leadership: Mongol officers were chosen based on merit, rather than class, in contrast to most armies of the Middle Ages. Even Genghis Khan's successor was voted on by his three sons; the two oldest avoided civil war by selecting their baby brother, Ogadai, whom they served loyally. The Mongols' egalitarian management and succession style, and openness to new tools and ideas, led to long-term stability for their empire, which lasted for hundreds of years. In most areas of Asia, they were never conquered but were gradually assimilated into the local populations. 2. Lean Organization: The Mongol "horde" was anything but disorganized. ... 3. Lean Technology: The transportation and weapons of the Mongols also fostered flexibility and responsiveness to changing circumstances. ... 4. Technology Transfer: The Mongols did not have a written language, and they had little specialized technology, aside from the composite bow. But they ... valued them, and would quickly assimilate the expertise -- and experts -- of the societies they conquered, particularly China. The "Not-Invented-Here" syndrome was not a concern for the Mongols. 5. Aggressive Process as a Strategic Weapon: The combination of organizational self-discipline, flexibility and aggressiveness allowed the Mongols to defeat larger armies of that era that were rigidly organized, and whose discipline was superficial. The Mongols cultivated these efficient, collaborative qualities in their horsemen from an early age by their traditional hunt on the Mongolian steppe, where they would encircle large numbers of animals and gradually herd them together for butchering, rather than chasing them down individually. ... Interestingly, historians suggest that the Mongols were not necessarily more bloodthirsty than the societies they conquered, only more ruthlessly efficient. They did treat loyal subjects fairly and, as nature-worshipping animists, did not oppress people or societies for ideological motives -- in an era where religious wars and massacres were the norm. “Management Secrets of Genghis Khan”, by Isaac Cheifetz, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 17, 2005

Born around 975, Crinan of Dunkeld was the Thane and Seneschal of the Isles. He was the father of King Duncan I, and grandfather of Gospatric. Gospatric was given the Earldom of Northumberland in 1067 by the recently arrived William the Conqueror. In 1072 however, the Earldom was taken back from him. So Gospatric came to Scotland and was made Earl of Dunbar by King Malcolm III. The town and port of Dunbar, on the Lothian coast, has been the scene of many important events in the history of Scotland. The Dunbars were not supporters of Robert the Bruce or a Scottish crown and after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 they sheltered the fleeing, defeated Edward II at Dunbar Castle until he could leave Scotland by sea. It is believed that if Patrick of Dunbar had detained Edward then he would have had to recognise the Scottish crown and make peace with Bruce. Instead the two countries fought on for many more bloody years. In 1315, Dunbar and King Robert, who were cousins, settled their differences and when the English occupied the lands of Berwick in 1337, where Dunbar was governor, he renounced any allegiance to Edward III. Dunbar Castle was then attacked by the Earl of Salisbury. The castle was defended by Dunbar’s wife, Black Agnes, who exasperated Salisbury until, after nineteen weeks, he retired to England in failure. He wrote of her:- She kept a stir in tower and trench That brawling, boisterous Scottish wench. Came I early, came I late, I found Agnes at the gate. When the greedy and jealous James I ruled, the huge wealth and properties that the Dunbars had collected for over four hundred years was annexed to the crown. The 11th Earl, Sir George Dunbar of Kilconquhar, was the last. The Dunbar house had expanded by this time to include the Earlship of Moray, which they retained. In 1990 the present claim to the chiefship was settled only after a celebrated court case which was heard first before the Lord Lyon, King of Arms, then the Supreme Court of Edinburgh, then the House of Lords. © Copyright ScotClans. 2006

Dave's invention is for potty-mouths

Or so I infer, as the first element of the system is a "speech sewer".

will inspired me

when i left ms, i had about 6 patents filed and so you reminded me to check if any had been approved. as it turns out, while google patents finds none of them, the us patent office now lists one as being approved the week of nov 21, 2006. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7139713.PN.&OS=PN/7139713&RS=PN/7139713

i filed a few more at rougly the same time, so hopefully those will go thru soon. the last 3 or so were filed about 2 years later, so i guess it will be awhile on those.
-dave

Google Patents Found My Dad's Patent pretty much right away

I had to put in his middle initial "H"

The unintended brilliance of the Microsoft Exhange default dictionary is that house.gov is suggested as "Hoosegow." Hello, Duke Cunningham!

I am mainly posting this to try out the blogging features of Writely. Oddly the word "Blogging" needs to be added to the dictionary, as does the word "Writely.

Okay now for the features test drive:

• Added Tag
• Added Multiple Tags
• Added a snazzy table describing the prisoner's dilemma game

X	Cooperate	Defect
Cooperate	3/3	5/-1
Defect	-1/5	0/0

• Edited the underlying HTML code
• Picture - not working. Might be my rotten broadband. T1 down 300 baud up.
  
• Added comment

---

• Horizontal line
• My favorite special char: §
• Added header

Feeping Creaturism: Google Toolbar Button Gallery

Google Now has a toolbar button that brings up a web page to add tool bar buttons to your Google toolbar

Meanwhile the popular "BlogThis" button is harder to get to.

This is very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very bad.

Rather than explain why, I'll tell a story.

Once there was this great little company. It was fast and agile and run by smart hard-working people who were scrappy and put one over on the dominant computer company of its day. But those things were not enough. Then one day, it really got its act together and pulled out all of the stops to create a product that everyone agreed that, while not perfect, was waaaaaaay better than the last major release and was pretty good overall. It was relatively lightweight and clean but had smart features that were useful.

This was a golden moment. In future years, its product line headed off in a profitable but very controversial (and this author says very wrong) direction and a bad omen was that the next major release included a showcase feature that was mostly Intellectual Property infringement.

The company is as you have probably guessed but here is the surprise: the very wrong direction is GUI.

Take a deep breath and savor folks. Just as "Friends" jumped the shark when Rachel didn't get married to the dentist, I feel that this new google toolbar means that that the DOS 5.0 era is over and the DOS 6.0 fiasco phase will soon begin.

Oh Google...

Dim the lights folks, I am going to sing a sad song

Oh Google...
Well you came and had a clean GUI
Now there's junk in the way
Oh Google...

Change in tempo, let's lower the disco ball and light this place up awwww yeah...
My blogger I, can't get enough of this blog entry (oh my my my)
My blogger I, can't get enough of this...

clang clang clang goes the trolley
ding ding ding goes the bell...

big finish now, ethel mermaid style
You'll

NE

VER

WALK

A


LOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!






Good night everybody! Good night! I love you all! Thank you! You like me! you really like me! Top of the world ma! 23 skiddoo! You are beautiful! JAZZHANDS.






ok, back to studying....

BigChampagne is Watching You

Check out Eric Garland's cool picture in : Wired