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What Christmas means to me: * Taking time to show family and friends that you love and treasure them. * Enjoying foods, candies, music, and other cultural traditions that go back well beyond my childhood. Even, yes, the children running around dressed up like little elves. * Unpacking a growing lifetime of memories of this . . . → Read More: Merry Christmas Granted that in this postmodern moment, when we are told that only willfully naive positivists seek something called the truth, it is important to acknowledge that more than one discrepant version may be true in some important sense. But some versions, surely, must have more points of contact with external reality and actual events than . . . → Read More: Truth You know who doesn’t get the credit they deserve? Whoever it is that’s been designing cardboard packaging materials lately. I just opened up a parcel containing a small tree (an olive tree, naturally). It was neatly supported in all directions, held the pot and saucer apart from each other, and provided air holes … all . . . → Read More: Creative packaging This link takes you to the ~20 most recent pictures uploaded to LiveJournal. In every single page I’ve tried, I’ve seen (a) a stupid joke, (b) porn, (c) a teenager trying to look deep and thoughtful. It’s vaguely horrifying, yet addictive. In other news, I’ve tweaked a part of my back that I hadn’t previously . . . → Read More: Random I spent some time yesterday playing with Google Health. While it’s certainly an interesting idea, it’s very far from ready for prime time. That said, it falls in an interesting category of “technology that I’m playing with while it doesn’t work very well, but that in 10 years everyone will be using.” . . . → Read More: Personalized Medicine I find that the parts of my life outside of my job are so much more satisfying than the parts within it. Does that mean I’m doing it wrong? I mean, I got a copy process to run within measurement error of the theoretical bandwidth limits of the network devices … for more than 24 . . . → Read More: Life As I settle in for week number 2, here in Hampton, VA, here is a question that I find myself muttering from time to time: Why do rental cars tend to have the audio systems set to “unlistenable,” when I receive them? Generally the treble is cranked to the max, and the balance is faded . . . → Read More: A Traveler’s Question I guess it’s time to start these. This is the first sentence, phrase, or paragraph from the first post of each month in 2008. Yes indeedy, this is just a structured way to get me to review the year prior to embarking on a new one. . . . → Read More: Annual reviews I’m briefly home again, before flying out on Sunday night. I was the victim of my own success last week, and killed off enough of the four work items that I was supposed to do that I earned a fifth bullet on the “tasks for fdmts” section of the big boss’s whiteboard. In the interest . . . → Read More: Home again home again I went to the Hybrid Academy of martial arts in Virginia Beach today and had a positive experience. I’ve learned the drill – you call or email ahead explaining that you’re from out of town, cite your coach / teacher, and you ask if you can “work in” with them while you’re in town. Some . . . → Read More: Tough men |
