Archive for 2004

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Dec
16
2004

Picture this

Last night, as Paula was frantically trying to put the finishing touches on a school project, I was playing Little Dutch Boy–handling all the things that had slipped while I was away in New York for two days. Among those things was Jonah's fifth-grade social studies project for the month: creating a “Rosetta Stone” of his own and a poster with a message written with the heiroglyphics from said “stone”.

Considering that they weren't even talking about ancient Egypt in the class–the teacher cribbed all of the projects from the woman she replaced, and hasn't modified any of them to match the current curriulum–this was a pretty stupid, makework project. So I had Jonah draw all of the heiroglyphs for the message he wanted to use (the first verse of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”), and then scanned them into Adobe Photoshop to lay them out with their meanings. Then I printed off his code onto a piece of red construction paper, as the directions called for, and printed larger versions of the heiroglyphs themselves. He cut, pasted and colored the large heiroglyphs onto a poster board.

Time to complete this logistical challenge: two and a half hours.

Today, after dropping Jonah off at school, I came home and drew my own heiroglyph to show what I thought of his teacher:


Then I uploaded it to Cafe Press and made a T-shirt out of it. Maybe I'll wear it to the next parent-teacher conference.

Posted in Baltimore, General Chaos, dot-communism | Comments Off

Dec
11
2004

The Mooch

We've become regular hosts to a cat that has apparently been living in our neighborhood for several years. Paula started feeding him, and now we're a regular stop on his route. If we didn't have two cats already dwelling in our house, we'd take him on–but I'm sure it would be a temporary arrangement.

I've considered taking him to the SPCA. But considering that he had a flea collar on when we met, and he appears on very close examination (while willingly sitting in my lap) to be in very good health, he may very well have a house that he calls “home” — or at least did recently. The flea collar was old, so it could be that he's a runaway. But he's getting along pretty well, and considering the rat population in our neighborhood I think we could use a few outdoor cats around here.

He's a tom tabby with lynx-like ears, and he's pretty well socialized; he's been known to climb up on laps and administer a hug (one paw on each shoulder, head rubbing against recipient's chin). Our neighbors across the way say they fed him until he bit one of their kids–knowing their kids, I suspect some rough handling was involved, and no blood was drawn.

We're apparently not his only current regular meal ticket. Our next-door neighbor keeps a bag of cat food at the ready for him, and he seems to have a well-established territory. We might not see him for a couple of days, and then he'll show up on our doorstep, awaiting his breakfast.

Anyway, he owns us now–he's got us calling him by name. It all started a few weeks ago when I stepped out the back door and was greeted by his plaintive meowing. “Good morning, moochy cat,” I said. And it apparently stuck. He is now Moochy Cat, or Mooch, or (on occasion) Steady Customer.

And we've made an investment in him, beyond the food. Two weeks ago, my daughter made me buy Moochy a new flea collar. He let me take off his old one and put on the new one–but bolted before I could fully adjust it.

But clearly, we don't own him. The next time I saw him, his new collar had been adjusted and trimmed.

Who can really own a cat, anyway?

Posted in Baltimore | 1 Comment »

Dec
01
2004

Something Came Up

So, last Wednesday (just before Thanksgiving), I came home from a pre-school Thanksgiving soup lunch…

Maybe I should stop right there. I mean, you can guess what would happen when you let pre-schoolers get involved in food prep. Those places are virtual disease clearing houses.

Anyway, I got the stomach flu *that night*. I was virtually chained to the toilet for the whole night, and well into Thanksgiving morning. By the time of the obligatory holiday meal (with my ex, her boyfriend and father on hand, no less), I managed to take on a nouvelle serving.

Next day, it marched right through my oldest son. Then on Sunday, my younger son was at an ice cream parlor for a birthday party…

Yeah, you get the picture.

So, we’ve only fully emerged from this little exercise in epidemiology today, and now there’s this postnasal drip cough thing running through the tribe…I think I caught it from a kid at the nursury school.

Posted in Administrivia | No Comments »

Nov
18
2004

Hatefests all around

So much to say, so little time to say it.

I've been ranting about topics only software development geeks could love over at my blog-for-food gig, root access. The politics of open-source software are closing in on Arab-Israeli relations in terms of complexity and nastiness these days, particularly in the world of open-source Java projects. And as usual, the fighting is rooted in the root of all evil: money.

Meanwhile, here in Baltimore, we've got a hate-fest of our own going on over the firing of one police commissioner and the hiring of another. Let's just say that Mayor Martin O'Malley does not have a future in the executive search business–or as a management consultant. Ed Norris–hired, quits with a big severance package, gets indicted. Kevin Clark gets canned for…well, being Kevin Clark. And the latest bullet on the hit parade, Leonard Hamm, apparently was a little fast and loose with a bankruptcy filing (though considering how little he was getting paid as chief of the school police, people should cut him some slack).

All I can say is that politics is a bitch, no matter what kind it is.

Posted in Administrivia, Flames | Comments Off

Nov
16
2004

Fallujah

Shooting the wounded
in the head with a rifle
isn't good PR.

Posted in Headline Haiku | Comments Off

Nov
15
2004

Sun-day on Monday

It looks like today's a big Sun Microsystems news day, what with the announcement of the rollout of Solaris 10. But hold it–Solaris isn't shipping until January? They're not announcing open-source Solaris today? What the heck are they announcing that's news?

They're going to make Solaris for X86 Solaris for X86 free. I guess that's the news.

Posted in buzzword compliance | Comments Off

Nov
04
2004

Screw Healing

The United States is bitterly divided. John Kerry and George Bush both paid lip service to healing that divide, and bringing America together.

Well, screw that. It's time to rip that sucker wide open, and create a few more while we're at it.

The Democratic Party is a huge failure. It's deteriorated into a regional party of the two coasts, and its platform is almost purely defensive–defend the Great Society programs, Social Security, and so on from Republican cuts; defend against encroachment on abortion and other keystone issues, and sometimes–when they get agressive–they start thinking, “Oooh, maybe we can come up with some byzantine public-private health care system.”

You can just smell the despair in the platform. Jefferson is spinning in his grave. It's time to get back to Jeffersonian roots (aside from that little slavery problem) and civil liberties–and ditch the rest of the baggage. Either that, or someone has to start a new party.

There's a new party lurking within the GOP. Just below the surface,there are divisions between the hard-right and the old center of the party that are just waiting to be exploited. And the same goes for the “Red” states themselves–there are plenty of divisions in NASCAR America; they just need to be found and exploited.

This country has reached the point where we need to tear down the political status quo before we can move forward again. And there's nothing like a little bile to help with demolition. So screw “healing.” Let it bleed.

Posted in Flames | Comments Off

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