Category: Family

virginia justice?

A first: today a Virginian was cleared of charges due to DNA evidence. He’s a local boy, from Hanover County. After 15 years in jail, it turns out he didn’t do it after all. There were charges of racism in the case: the judge, jury, and victim were all white, and he’s black. Was his only crime being black, and having a white girlfriend at the time? What’s wrong with my state that that’s enough to make him look guilty of such an awful crime?
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Friday fun

Fun stuff at work today. I went up to my manager and asked to be trained for a new project. His answer? “Sure thing!” Much goodness. Nothing like making yourself indispensible at the office to make you sleep better at night. I guess my manager’s not mad at me anymore for showing him up in front of his boss.

Other fun: having lunch with a fellow UVa alum, 3 years my junior. Despite our differences (she was in a sorority, while I, um, was not) we had a great time chatting about the old days, and bemoaning how far our tolerances have deteriorated since graduation. Ah, college. “The good ol’ song of Wa-hoo-wa…”
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All told, I’d rather be a lizard

My results from the Art Test thingy:

“You are Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
You are extremely popular and widely known. Although unassuming and unpretentious, your enigmatic smile has charmed millions. You are a mystery, able to be appreciated from afar, but ultimately unknowable and thus intriguing.”

Sure thing, hoss. And I gots some real estate in my back pocket for ya.

Changing the subject: has anyone else had trouble recently with Mail Boxes Etc.? They assured me that Tim’s birthday present would be delivered last Friday, but it’s still in limbo somewhere in South Boston. Irate…

Oops

Sorry for the repetitiveness, folks. Tim and I were messing with how-to details and I didn’t think the Pogo blurb had been posted yet, so I did it again. My bad. 🙂

Pogo poem

Re-reading a favorite Pogo book yesterday, I came across
this snip of verse, and thought I’d share it:

Now where we’ve gone
Through wood and field
The Sun has shone,
The Sun has shone;
The Rain did yield,
The ploughed Land sown,
Grain Blossom grown.
Can Storm attend,

Can Day be drear,
Can This be End,
Can there come End,
Because we’re Here?
Because we’re Here?

— O. V. Bristol, “Cornerstones and Corbiesteps”, 1801
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Galosh galosh

…and then there’s this one, by Walt Kelly. Love it:

“Lines to Celebrate the Loss of a Galosh”

Whither the Starling?
And whither the Crow?
And whither the Weather
When wither the Snow?

The weaver’s wet Daughter
Has dampened the clothes
With wavelets of water
Left over from Snothes!

Left over from Snothes!
Left over from Snothes!

Right over and under,
And yonder She gothes.
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Pogo poem

Re-reading a favorite Pogo book yesterday, I came across this snip of verse, and thought I’d share it:

Now where we’ve gone
Through wood and field
The Sun has shone,
The Sun has shone;
The Rain did yield,
The ploughed Land sown,
Grain Blossom grown.
Can Storm attend,

Can Day be drear,
Can This be End,
Can there come End,
Because we’re Here?
Because we’re Here?

— O. V. Bristol, “Cornerstones and Corbiesteps”, 1801
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Those Crazy Archbishops

Great quotation, courtesy of Friday’s A Word A Day: “As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life – so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.” -Matt Cartmill, anthropology professor and author (1943- )

Thought y’all’d appreciate that. 🙂 Not much else today, hence the news vs. a story. Busy busy work day. Have a good one!

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Back again, Mac again

I was tempted to call this entry “Epi-blog.” Boy, I really needed the break from blogging. My blog-puns were starting to scare even me.

Great trip to New Jersey and Lisa’s folks, great turkey, great time with family. I spent a good amount of time on my mother in law’s iMac upgrading and installing software. She’s now running 9.2.1 and Netscape 6.2, as well as proper Norton stuff. I failed in a larger area, though. I had donated my old SCSI scanner to her along with a SCSI to FireWire converter in hopes we could get it up and running. Unfortunately, somewhere in one of the moves it made between Virginia and New Jersey, the scanner stopped working. If it had been successful, I would have been able to point to my mother-in-law’s web page. We were going to hook her up with iTools and put some family photos up. Oh well, there’s always next time.

No Respect

Just got an atta-boy and a pat on the shoulder by the Vice President for my work during this crunch period. He said that I’ve been doing better than my manager, in front of my manager. That’s fine, but next time give me my props in cash money, dog. Where’s the love?

Cold Naked Guys!

More comments from Pam on the Vermonty.com link:

“Those guys were on the Today show yesterday and their site had so many hits afterwards that the site crashed several times, they are on a bigger server now. The calendar is very tasteful, and they use all the proceeds to fix up their community center. They were struggling for ways to pay for the center repairs and one guy jokingly said ‘Well, hell, I just bought a new tractor, i oughtta pose nude on it!’ Months later the calendar was made.”

Speaking in Tongues and other stuff

Update 12:15 PM: I’m a little behind in pointing to this, but I was ahead in saying it was a bad idea. When I visited Intel in January 2001, a few of us asked why Intel was in the business of making consumer MP3 players. The answer we got? “Well, we’re a really large supplier of memory chips, and this is a critical application for them.” Unsurprisingly, Intel has now announced it would phase out this product line. No “I told you so’s” from me. 🙂

Trying to be productive this morning. It’s hard. I picked up the Episode 1 DVD last night and I want nothing more than to go home and fall asleep watching it.

Some random links: Dave is the recipient of the top Wired Rave Award, the Tech Renegade Award, for his work on SOAP. I won’t argue–in terms of my blog’s hit count alone, Dave’s certainly been the most influential person around. Plus I’m working on a major project with MIT Sloan‘s Center for E-Business around the industry in web services that SOAP helped to start.

The white powder that was found in an envelope by an MIT lecturer in Foreign Languages and Literature tested negative for anthrax.

If language is a virus, is it contagious?

The Tin Man has a good comments string running from Wednesday’s post about journalism. Most of them are about his use of the word “y’all.”

Aside: I’ve been gathering unusual words and expressions from the North Carolina side of my family. I never thought much about the colorful language that they used until my undergrad years. Then I read in the excellent liner notes to the Robert Johnson boxed set that Johnson’s term friend-boy in “Cross Road Blues” was a typical Mississippi Delta expression meaning simply friend. “Gee, I thought, “my uncle says that all the time.” I came to realize that my family’s language placed them solidly in the unique linguistic history of the South.

Some other words and phrases:

pert
(pron. “peert”) for “pretty”
It was so good, my tongue like to beat my brains out.
(said about food)
He’s a good businessman. If you shake hands with him, you better
  • count your fingers.
  • Put your money in your mouth and sew your tongue up tight.
pottymule
[v. intransitive] – to do nothing constructive. Generally used as “to pottymule around.” See also “blogging.”

For those who need a laugh

In these times of crisis, it’s useful to remember that though America’s heights have not always been dangerous, an unfortunate few of our population have suffered a disproportionate number of height-related accidents. I’m talking, of course, about our cows. It was only a few years ago that the University of Virginia’s Great Cow Prank was revealed to be the work of the president of the NASDAQ.

Anyone who was an investor in tech stocks over the last few years will be unsurprised to find that the head of the NASDAQ, America’s principal high-tech stock exchange, has a warped sense of humor. However, few tech stocks tanked as dramatically as the poor cow, who according to the article at A&S Online “died from a combination of complications including shock, dehydration and an overdose of tranquilizers administered to calm it during the rescue.” Much like some venture capitalists I’ve met.

And speaking of people needing a sense of humor: the much-discussed Clear Channel list of “songs not to play” on their hundreds of radio stations nationwide has done two things for me. First, it’s given me a head start on finding songs to arrange for the Sloan “E-52s”. Second, it’s given me another opportunity to plug KEXP, the Seattle noncommercial station whose playlists are second to none. If they’ll play Gastr Del Sol for me, they’ll play anything…

On a more serious note


Keep my sister in your thoughts today. On a good note, it’s her birthday (yay!). On a bad note, her dog had to be put to sleep yesterday.