Thursday, July 22, 2004
Hi Mashta Bubbles and Family!
Hey kids,
Dad--when will you be home? You seem to be enjoying yourself out there...but I'm sure my coffee-makin' skills will bring ya back home before long :).
Anyway, just wanted everyone to know that I just booked our honeymoon cruise on Royal Caribbean for June 10-19th. It's a 10-day cruise to the Caribbean: oops, the link won't work.
Haha...suckas! lol...jk, any cheap liquor orders anyone?? hehe...
I don't know if it's excitement or pain I'm feeling for paying such a huge deposit...lol...I'm sure it'll be worth it:).
Anyway--ttys. p.s. Kooshie rules.
Dad--when will you be home? You seem to be enjoying yourself out there...but I'm sure my coffee-makin' skills will bring ya back home before long :).
Anyway, just wanted everyone to know that I just booked our honeymoon cruise on Royal Caribbean for June 10-19th. It's a 10-day cruise to the Caribbean: oops, the link won't work.
Haha...suckas! lol...jk, any cheap liquor orders anyone?? hehe...
I don't know if it's excitement or pain I'm feeling for paying such a huge deposit...lol...I'm sure it'll be worth it:).
Anyway--ttys. p.s. Kooshie rules.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Greetings from Portland
It's very pretty out here. Monday we went on a tour of the Bonneville Dam, about 30 or 40 miles upriver (the Columbia River) from here. The scenery there and along the way is vedy, vedy, nice. Mountains, rivers, trees, clouds ... what more could you want?
Edgefield is on the eastern edge of the Portland area. Just east of here starts the Columbia River Gorge, a national scenic area. Apparently that means very little development is permitted there, so it all looks very parklike and natural. There are only a few houses on the mountain sides, and few of them can be seen from the river.
Portland itself has only about a million people in the entire metro area, which I think is less than Fairfax County by itself. And they are much more spread out. So at least on the far east side where I am right now, it doesn't feel at all crowded. Unlike the areas of California and Washington State I've been to, it doesn't appear to require a huge income to live here and enjoy the nice environment.
Not only is the scenery great, there don't seem to be any mosquitos! The room I sleep in does not have air conditioning, but the nights so far have been reasonably cool, and I sleep with the unscreened window open and have not seen a bug fly in yet.
The Smalltalk project I've been working on is not, unfortunately, going so well. I'm trying to modify SmallWiki, a package that runs a user-editable web site. SmallWiki operates by keeping the entire web site in memory all the time, and the way you save it is to dump the Smalltalk image to disk. Ralph Johnson wants to use SmallWiki for his web sites at the University of Illinois, but he worries that if the system goes down for some reason, any work on it done since the last image dump will be lost. So he asked a couple of us to find a way to incrementally save site edits and additions as they happen so that they can be restored in the event of a system crash. This sounded like a reasonable idea a couple of days ago, but now that we're into it, it turns out that the design of SmallWiki makes this difficult, if not impossible. I'm beginning to think it's the latter, but there is one more approach we want to try before we give up.
Still, it's been fun hanging out and working with a bunch of fellow Smalltalk bigots.
I have no access to a TV here, and the Oregonian newspaper is a joke. Our only Internet connection is a single 56K modem being shared by about 15 of us. Fortunately not all at once. I have read that Travis Hafner hit 5 homers in two game for my beloved Indians.
It appears Andrea has gone Koosh-Krazy again. Oh well.
Later.
Edgefield is on the eastern edge of the Portland area. Just east of here starts the Columbia River Gorge, a national scenic area. Apparently that means very little development is permitted there, so it all looks very parklike and natural. There are only a few houses on the mountain sides, and few of them can be seen from the river.
Portland itself has only about a million people in the entire metro area, which I think is less than Fairfax County by itself. And they are much more spread out. So at least on the far east side where I am right now, it doesn't feel at all crowded. Unlike the areas of California and Washington State I've been to, it doesn't appear to require a huge income to live here and enjoy the nice environment.
Not only is the scenery great, there don't seem to be any mosquitos! The room I sleep in does not have air conditioning, but the nights so far have been reasonably cool, and I sleep with the unscreened window open and have not seen a bug fly in yet.
The Smalltalk project I've been working on is not, unfortunately, going so well. I'm trying to modify SmallWiki, a package that runs a user-editable web site. SmallWiki operates by keeping the entire web site in memory all the time, and the way you save it is to dump the Smalltalk image to disk. Ralph Johnson wants to use SmallWiki for his web sites at the University of Illinois, but he worries that if the system goes down for some reason, any work on it done since the last image dump will be lost. So he asked a couple of us to find a way to incrementally save site edits and additions as they happen so that they can be restored in the event of a system crash. This sounded like a reasonable idea a couple of days ago, but now that we're into it, it turns out that the design of SmallWiki makes this difficult, if not impossible. I'm beginning to think it's the latter, but there is one more approach we want to try before we give up.
Still, it's been fun hanging out and working with a bunch of fellow Smalltalk bigots.
I have no access to a TV here, and the Oregonian newspaper is a joke. Our only Internet connection is a single 56K modem being shared by about 15 of us. Fortunately not all at once. I have read that Travis Hafner hit 5 homers in two game for my beloved Indians.
It appears Andrea has gone Koosh-Krazy again. Oh well.
Later.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Kooshie my boy!!
This is my obsessive posting of pictures of Kooshie my boy:).
Friday, July 16, 2004
Sunday Dinner?
Thursday, July 15, 2004
More Invites!
I just sent invitations out to Pat and Frank. Now all the Family Dorks have been invited. God help us all....
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Hi
Just thought I'd write and say HI. The only problem for me is that I don't have a computer to use during the day at work which is funny cause I am around them all the time- water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. So...I'll always get the comments way after you folks write them and it will probably be old news by then. But I must say I do quite enjoy this website-- very cool.
Hmmmmmmmmmm
Looks pretty neat, if we want a powerful toolset we should snag some of Franks web space and have him make us a PHP board. PHP will allow email notification and the posting of pictures. It looks like you can link photos here, but I can't seem to find an option for email notification. Anyway, hello!
Edit: Where is the Spellcheck!?!?!?!
Edit: Where is the Spellcheck!?!?!?!
My 1st Post!
Andrea and I are still trying to figure this out. We agree that if it doesn't allow us to upload photos that we should seek another venue. However, this is an amusing way to learn more about Dad. I wonder, do you have to check this blog for new posts or can it send an email to alert you of new posts?
Monday, July 12, 2004
Wasting several people's time at once, without a meeting!
I've just finished a project developed in VisualWorks, a Smalltalk environment sold by Cincom Systems, Inc. A few months ago, they asked if they could do a User Story on me and my project for use in their promotional literature and website. I agreed, and last month spent about an hour with them doing a telephone interview. They wrote it up, and sent me a draft to check. At this point (this morning) it occurred to me that maybe I should check this out with my management. I really should have thought of that before.
It turns out the User Story can't be used. My employer (the Federal Reserve Board) has a policy that it can never be seen as endorsing any product, ever. Why? I haven't been officially told yet, but I can surmise why. The Fed makes a fine target for publicity-hungry politicians who want to see their names in the paper. Criticizing the Fed always seems to get you good notices, whether your criticism is valid or not. Since most of the public has no idea whether your criticisms are valid or not, it's a win-win proposition for the pol.
I can easily imagine a competitor of Cincom complaining to their congressman that the Fed pressures banks subject to it's regulatory authority to use Cincom's software. That would, of course, be ridiculous, but that's never been a hindrance to such complaints that I'm aware of.
So, like I said, I should have thought of this earlier. Sorry to have wasted Cincom's (and my own) time. And yours too, reading this!
It turns out the User Story can't be used. My employer (the Federal Reserve Board) has a policy that it can never be seen as endorsing any product, ever. Why? I haven't been officially told yet, but I can surmise why. The Fed makes a fine target for publicity-hungry politicians who want to see their names in the paper. Criticizing the Fed always seems to get you good notices, whether your criticism is valid or not. Since most of the public has no idea whether your criticisms are valid or not, it's a win-win proposition for the pol.
I can easily imagine a competitor of Cincom complaining to their congressman that the Fed pressures banks subject to it's regulatory authority to use Cincom's software. That would, of course, be ridiculous, but that's never been a hindrance to such complaints that I'm aware of.
So, like I said, I should have thought of this earlier. Sorry to have wasted Cincom's (and my own) time. And yours too, reading this!
Saturday, July 10, 2004
AAAAAAYYYY!!
Hi der...this is interesting, don't know the ins and outs quite yet but wanted to let you know that I've joined.
Pops--who did you invite to join this blog? And how do i create a profile?
a
Pops--who did you invite to join this blog? And how do i create a profile?
a
Sunday, July 04, 2004
First Post
