Daniel E Wolf
We begin and end today’s All Fun Sunday with selections from The Far Side. Why? Just because I love Gary Larson. And in between? A little bit of sports, the advantages of having 3 kids, enduring wisdom from Will Rogers, a message to Tom from Giselle, and some crucial advice for your voting in the upcoming midterms. Enjoy. Especially The Far Side.
From total earthly annihilation to unlimited fishing….
What more could you ask for on an All Fun Sunday?
Today’s Word of the Day (WOTD) comes from my friend Lisa, whose email to me this morning contained only the Merriam Webster link for the word’s definition, here, along with the laconic comment, “Early adopters, we.” In case you didn’t know it, Lisa and I share an Anglican heritage, hence the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) reference. And too, we are both big bibliophiles. As to whether we are – to use the 1534 BCP locution – “notorious synners?” Well… I guess you’ll have to make that call.
I thought it interesting that the Merriam Webster write-up made use of reference to famed rapper Notorious B.I.G. (AKA Biggie Smalls) in trying to make the case that the word is not always colored pejoratively. Really? I mean, c’mon:
All of that being said, I am still a notorious lover of literature. (Please note the non-pejorative usage here – ahem). That’s why I was delighted to find the following rundown, here, of “Best Books of 2022 So Far” in the New Yorker this week. My own preference is for fiction – especially crime fiction – over non-fiction. But maybe you feel differently? What have you been reading lately? Do any of these from the NYer list appeal?
American Midnight by Adam Hochschild (Mariner) – Nonfiction
Kiki Man Ray by Mark Braude (Norton) – Nonfiction
Haven by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown) – Fiction
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer (Scribner) – Fiction
The Joy of Quitting by Keiler Roberts (Drawn & Quarterly) – Nonfiction
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) – Fiction
The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones (Beacon) – Fiction
I Love(ish) New York City by Ali Solomon (Chronicle) – Nonfiction
I just finished the legendary James Lee Burke’s latest, from 2021: “Another Kind of Eden.” It’s set in Trinidad – meaning the town in Southern Colorado, not the island in the Caribbean – so it made me feel right at home. At least it’s not NYC, which I don’t love, not even “-ish.”
Big business news – and quote of the day – from Elon Musk, whose much-anticipated $44 billion deal to buy Twitter finally went through yesterday. His first action from the catbird seat was to fire all of the company’s top executives, which always wins MY approval – ahem. Oh, and the quote? Ah, yes, here it is, excerpted from the full story, here.
“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hell-scape where anything can be said with no consequences,” Musk tweeted Thursday. Later he tweeted, “The bird is freed,” calling himself “The Chief Twit.”
Musk has often said he’d re-instate the account of banned former POTUS Donald Trump once the Twitter deal was consummated. But 45 was apparently having none of it, saying that while he was happy with the change in ownership, he’d be declining Musk’s offer. In so doing, Trump effectively gave “The Chief Twit” The Big Bird by saying he’d prefer to stay exclusively on his own inaptly named “Truth Social.”
So, I guess that answers the burning question, “How Much Love Does $44 Billion Buy?” The answer, of course, is “Not Nearly Enough.” And if you doubt that, just ask those fired Twitter execs now contributing to the nation’s unemployment numbers.
Next up on the hot seat, embattled Bronco’s HC Nathaniel Hackett as his under-performing (2-5) Denver team prepares for their upcoming American football battle in London’s Wembley Stadium. But that’s another story for another day.
Speaking of shocking stories from the sports world, this just in:
See the latest on the Brady-Bündchen bust-up, here.
And you can say you heard it here first, folks.
You’ve probably heard the old adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Today’s post is proof positive that’s true. It’s also a little trip down memory lane. Truth to tell, it contains a bit more than the usual amount of tech talk. And maybe it has more acronyms per square inch than most people are accustomed to. If any of that’s not your cup of tea, I invite you to sign off ASAP. As for everyone else? Read on, if you dare.
Back when I was a neophyte programmer, bright-eyed and fresh out of EDS’s Phase II training program, I was assigned to the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) account in Sacramento. Our mission – should we choose to accept it – was to take a 3rd party financial software package and implement it as a Student Loan system before it was really ready for prime time. The 3rd party made their money marketing relatively cheap off-the-shelf solutions that – they said – easily could be customized to meet any need. EDS made their money sending neophyte (read: cheap) programmers marching through walls to make Mission Impossible happen. Irresistible Force? Meet Immovable Object.
Job One was to whittle down the daily batch process to a manageable size that would fit inside the overnight (13-hour) window, thus allowing users to do their normal daily work while the sun was shining. Good luck with that, because frequent abends (abnormal program terminations) meant that without considerable night time vigilance and intervention by us on-call stiffs, that system was not coming back up by 8AM the next day: No way. No how.
My buddy during those CSAC days was Bill. Like me he was a cheap young programmer. But unlike me, Bill was a REXX programming genius. In addition to building a REXX-based system to transfer Production data to the Test area on a key-record basis (this saved our DBAs tons of time and and space, and it saved our account manager tons of money) he also came up with a little REXX-routine to help us on-call folk on our frequent overnight shifts. When an alert came in from the batch monitors that told us one of our jobs was down, the routine would activate an alarm that roused us from intermittent moments of much-needed sleep so we could fix and restart the offending job, pronto. When every minute counts, this was a life-saver.
Fast forward 20 years. By this time I was working on a Personnel and Payroll system developed by the U.S. Department of Interior for use by other Federal agencies needing a reliable means to pay their folks and keep track of time off. My job at Interior – should I choose to accept it – was to help convert these other agencies’ data into formats our system could handle. And my first client? SCOTUS. Yeah, that’s right, you heard me: RBG and Clarence Thomas and all the rest.
Many things had changed for me over the course of 2 decades. For one thing, I was now an independent consultant rather than an impressionable newbie. For another, our system was robust and battle-tested rather than limping along held together with chewing gum and baling wire. No more overnight shifts on call. No more groggy 3AM soirees with batch support trying to get broken jobs back up and running. And yet, still there were challenges… The more things change? You betcha.
If you’ve ever used Teams or Zoom or any kind of group chat, you know there is a little indicator light up in the corner of the screen that goes from green when you are online and active, to yellow when you are “away” or inactive, to something else when you are offline altogether. I’m not saying anyone uses this function as anything other than purely as a means of communication – as, say, a way to monitor who’s working and who’s goofing off? – but, um… yeah.
On our account there was an enterprising young woman named Petra. She introduced me to a product called Caffeine. Basically it’s freeware you load onto your laptop to prevent activation of the screen-saver. At the same time it prevents that chat light going from green to yellow to whatever. With Caffeine, you’re always active. Always wide awake. Never goofing off. Well, at least as far as your chat group knows. So, the more things change? Thanks, Petra!
Nowadays, post-pandemic, I work from home for an international entertainment conglomerate based in London and LA. Also, there’s a programmer team in India taking care of on-call, so everybody gets a good night’s sleep. I wouldn’t exactly call our system “robust,” but it has served artists and music consumers pretty well for over 35 years. That’s about as long as I’ve been programming. There’s a “new” system with lots of bells and whistles that’s scheduled to come online sometime next year. Until then, I do whatever needs doing on the “old” system. Some days, I’m pretty busy. Other days, less so. And when this gig ends, I’ll probably retire. You been warned.
One thing that has changed since I learned about Caffeine is that corporate security is now a much bigger deal. For good security reasons SCOTUS may have needed their own separate database for just 9 justices, but I’m talking about individual laptop level security. Any software that gets loaded onto my machine has to be loaded by an authorized person (i.e. not me). As such – well, let’s just say that the only caffeine for me these days comes from my coffee. BUT, where there’s a will there’s a way. Right?
Caffeine works by sending a PF10 command – basically, this does nothing except it tells the network you’re not asleep – every 30 seconds or so. Other versions of the software do the same thing by simulating a mouse movement on the same schedule. What I’ve found – and it’s taken me 35 years of intensive research to find this, folks – is that if you have a mouse pad on your your laptop keyboard, and if you place it upside down on your belly, there’s enough friction produced by regular rhythmic breathing…
Let it never be said we here at dewconsulting.net don’t give you all the news you can use.
Today’s WOTD (word of the day) is “disambiguate.”
From Instagram, hilariously, here.
From Merriam Webster:
Earlier this year my friend Anil got married. It was a traditional wedding for his part of the world. The thing that struck me most was the vivid color. Well, that and his cool hat, I guess.
Even taking into account advances in photography over the past 40 or 80 years, our weddings are lackluster by comparison. Also, my mom may have had a cool hat – with a feather! – but I did not. It would not be much later before wearing a hat would become a necessity for me. But that’s another story for another day.
In any case, congrats to Anil and Jyo, who now live in Atlanta and work for … Merrill Lynch? Bear Stearns? Goldman Sachs? Morgan Stanley? One of those. Any way you slice it, we’ve come a long way since the carefree KDCF days of 2016.
As I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for signs. (See the post, here.) But when you combine a sign with a place to sit while you’re on a hike? Well, that’s even better. At least for those of us who are self-centered.
Which of these two do you prefer? I’m leaning toward the first one. But maybe that’s just ME? I mean, “stylish” is all well and good. But “not dead yet?” That’s gotta be the gold standard.
Have you ever heard the phrase “slippery slope?” Well, as diets go, this is it. As many of you know, I post recipes here in these pages from time to time. Usually it’s something virtuous and healthy from Moosewood or some such. But today, it’s gonna be something short and sweet.
Happy Friday, folks!
Today is what used to be known in this country as “Columbus Day.” Maybe it still is if you live in a place called Little Italy – or Columbus, OH? A few years back, the bogeymen (the bogey-persons?) of political correctness re-christened it “Indigenous People’s Day.” And if you live somewhere on the Rez – or have an unusually large surfeit of PC-ness – you’re welcome to call it that. But the powers-that-be at UMG (where I now work) I guess just couldn’t abide either of those older appellations. So they’ve coined a brand-new term for today: “Personal Wellness Day.”
The idea is, you still get the day off regardless. But the UMG folks want you to spend your day doing something to make yourself better, or stronger, or – ummm – “weller?” My guess is, they have in mind us doing yoga, or meditating, or some such elevated pursuit. But me? Hey, you know me: Ever the rebel.
I started off today by dropping off my wife at school so I could have her car. “Whatcha gonna do with your day off?” she asked me. “Oh, I dunno,” I replied. “Sky’s the limit.” So off she went to teach impressionable youth, flashing me a sardonic grin: She knows me so well.
Next stop was the Honda dealership where I intended to take a test drive of a new Honda Insight. Remember I said I dropped my wife off because I needed her car? Well, that’s because my 22-year-old Chrysler 300 finally bit the dust.
Unfortunately it turns out the Honda place is closed on Mondays. Live and learn. And in any case… taking that picture at Lucile’s, I reached behind me into my waist pack to pull out my i-phone; but unbeknownst to me, my wallet fell to the pavement. I realized this must have been the case after I got to the Honda place and started searching, searching… No way in hell were they gonna let me test drive a new car without a driver’s license. So, back to Lucile’s.
Luckily some Good Samaritan had turned it in. I was back in business. After heading home, I got cooking, ’cause it was almost lunch time. Nothing like hot soup on a crisp fall day to augment one’s sense of Personal Wellness: This recipe comes from Molly Katzen’s incomparable Moosewood Cookbook.
Early afternoon was spent on the back porch, rockin’ and readin’.
Just finished Ian McEwan’s latest, titled, “Lessons.” Highly recommend.
Having frittered away most of my day with wholly non-productive pursuits, I now pronounce myself “Personally Well.” And, as I prepare to head back over to school to pick up my hard-working wife… I assume she has held up the economy, the society – indeed, the very Universe – in my absence. Thanks, dear. Thank you too, UMG, for the day off. Also thank you, Indigenous People, where ever you are. Last but not least: Thank you, intrepid Christoforo Columbo: You had a thankless job. But I’m thankful you didn’t get lost on your way to the East Indies. Um, well…. yeah. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
What would Personal Wellness Day be without the latest medical news?
“In gold-standard trial, colonoscopy fails to reduce rate of cancer deaths….” See all the gory details here. And rest easy if you – like me – waited 13 years past the recommended date for your initial screening. Turns out it wasn’t nearly as critical as they thought at first. Go figure.