Easily one of my favorite books, Cryptonomicon combines World War II cryptography with nerdy dotcom era technology in a globe spanning tale that is just as good the second (or third) time you read it, as it was the first.
Rating: One of my five all-time favorite books.
I’ve always enjoyed John Sandford’s Prey series and I especially like the Kidd books, so I was interested to see what Dead Watch, a standalone story, would be like. I wasn’t able to put it down.
Rating: The only problem with finishing this in one day is that I have nothing to read tomorrow.
Today’s kendo workout was a good one for me. I blew it off on Wednesday evening mostly because I didn’t want to go, but in part because I was tired. I ended up going to sleep about 8:30 that evening; getting almost nine hours that night. A fair trade I think.
Even though I haven’t worked out in two weeks I’m not too sore this evening. I think the conditioning in my legs will return fairly quickly. What is going to give me fits for a while are my shoulders. Much of the work in kendo involves holding your arms out in front of you, doing this continuously for a couple of hours really strains the muscles in your shoulders and upper back.
We started with the usually practice cuts, alternating men (head) strikes with kote (wrist) strikes. The hardest exercise is called hiya suburi, which involves rapid strikes and footwork. You shift backward while preparing for a men strike, and then step forward while executing the strike. Then repeat. Fifty times. Adding speed until you are basically running in place and striking as fast as you can. It’s a lot harder to do that it sounds from my meager description. It’s the only aerobic exercise in the lot, and it leaves everyone winded.
I had some reluctance about going again today, but felt good about it afterwards. The hardest part is starting over again at the beginning. When I made my decision o set aside active participation in karate-do it was the the right decision. I have not truly regretted it in the years that have passed. However, starting back in a dojo seriously is a reminder of what might have been.
Seems I’m getting a lot of that these days.
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It wasn’t really 108 here today, but that was the temperature according to the car after it had sat in the late afternoon sun (5:30 - 6:30 pm) while I had dinner at Outback Steakhouse.
One hundred and eight degrees.
Summer doesn’t start for another two weeks.
Yee-haw.
(Forgive the blurry picture, in my haste to get the picture I held the camera phone too close to the gauge.)
A year ago yesterday our phone rang at 2:30 in the morning bringing the news the Michele’s mom was in the hospital and not expected to survive the day. By 11:00 pm that evening her mom was dead and, I think, Michele’s depression had started a slide that would ultimately contribute to her own death just four scant months later.
At the time I couldn’t begin to relate to what she was feeling. Losing her mom orphaned her in a way that I am only now starting to glimpse, much less understand. Her father was already dead; having died in an automobile accident the previous October, and she was estranged from her brother, so losing her mom left her without any immediate family. Since learning in February that my own mother was terminally ill I’ve been preparing myself for her death. What I haven’t been prepared for however, is the sharp realization that my father is next. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten years, but he will eventually die and I’ll be without my parents.
I wish I could reach out to Michele and let her know that I finally understand what she was going through and feeling last summer. There were other factors involved in her decision to die; losing both her parents was only a part of the whole. I know it is pointless to wonder “what if” in the aftermath of a death; I can’t help but wonder, though, if there was more I could have done to give her a place to express herself in the weeks following her mom’s death. Were she here today she would tell me not to live in the past as there is no present in it. So I try not to dwell on what might have been.
Still, I am now faced with the same realizations she had following the death of her father and I can’t help but wonder how I’ll deal with this challenge in the days and weeks to come.
Yesterday when I got home from work there was a crew working on the apartment above me, which has been empty since April 1st. I guess the lease finally ran out and the new tenant is due to move in tomorrow (Friday). The parking area between my building and the one to the east holds eight cars. The boobs on the work crew had three vehicles and managed to use up five of the spaces: a truck packed in two, and a car parked perpendicularly to the spaces in three more. Also they had a pickup backed up to the garage door on a diagonal so that they were blocking my garage door. I guess any form of thinking, much less critical thinking skills, aren’t taught in the schools these days.
This morning when I left for work I noticed that the boob-squad from yesterday not only left the garage door open, they left the interior door to the apartment open as well; and every light in the place was brightly burning. Maybe the term “boob-squad” is being generous?
Speaking of boobs… The building where I work has three doors, however before 6:00 AM only two are available for use as the full compliment of guards hasn’t started their shift yet. On those days when I am here before 6:00 AM (Yes. I know. That’s the topic of another post.) I still park near the unmanned door and walk to one of the manned ones. There is a guy, however, who must get there around 5:20 or 5:30 as he is always in the first space by the door, who sits and waits in his car for the 6:00 AM guard to come and open the door before going into work. I cannot imagine getting to work and sitting in my car for 30 or 40 minutes just so I won’t have to walk a few hundred feet around the building to another door.
The stress and toil of the past few months has finally caught up with me. I’ve been constantly tired for weeks now and last evening I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I was planning on attending the Wednesday evening kendo-in-the-park practice, but with an outside temperature in the low 90s I decided to pass and stayed home (and cool) instead.
By 7:15 I was getting sleepy and so I went and laid on the bed and read for a while. By 8:30 I had turned my light out and was sound asleep. It was still light outside. I must have needed a good night’s sleep as I didn’t wake at all until 5:00 this morning - almost nine hours of sleep. I feel much better this morning and I am planning on turning in early again this evening.
Like Ben Franklin said, “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
The Dogs of Riga is the second in the Kurt Wallander series of mysteries by Henning Mankell. It is every bit as good as the first book. The characterizations are rich and detailed, and the plot is full of wicked twists.
Rating: You’ll be up all night trying to finish it
Earlier today I added a new calendar entry to my Google Calendar; in the location field I put just the name of the eye surgery (LasikPlus), no address. Later I went back to the calendar entry and noticed there was a ‘map’ link available. I thought to myself, “no way.”
Yes way.
Google used the default map location I have saved on their map site and performed a fuzzy search with ‘LasikPlus’ and returned a map showing my home location and the location of the nearest LasikPlus center, which happens to be where I am going. Not only is this convergence on an incredible scale, it verges on being mind-reading. I didn’t have to select any preferences or respond to any annoying dialogs, I just got a subtle map link that provides very useful information; quietly, automatically.
Google is rapidly changing the landscape of web delivered applications, and they are continually raising the bar of expectations for the rest of us producing software of any kind. I have no idea where Google, and the IT industry, will be in five or ten years, but with the catalytic effect Google is having now I can only imagine that we’ll look back at today and think, “how antiquated and arcane things were in 2006.”
Yesterday I had another follow-up visit with the doctor at LasikPlus. What I find so fascinating about this experience is the surge in declarative statements after the fact. Things that I felt should have been clearly stated prior to my procedure are only just now being said to me.
Gee, now I take back all the nasty things I’ve said about my friends who had this procedure and raved about it on day two.
Oops. For the first few weeks I could tell when my eyes were getting dry and I’d put some artificial tears in to lubricate them. Recently however I haven’t had the dry sensation, but I have been having blurred vision, particularly with my left (distance) eye. Turns out it is dry, and the dryness is causing damage. The cells on the surface of my eye are dying and causing the light entering my eye to be refracted in odds ways, resulting in blurred vision. I’m back on the drops at least 6 times a day for the next few weeks to reverse this trend. To be fair I was told to use the drops, but I didn’t realize that I would need to use them for three months. The doctor insists that eventually I won’t need them any more.
The good news is that my near eye (the right one) has healed enough so that a “touch up” procedure can be performed now. The original procedure was successful, but my eye healed far stronger than intended, so the touch up is to back the nearsightedness down to a useful level. While it is handy to be able to read 4-point text two inches from my face, it’ll be more useful to read the computer monitor at arms length.
The doctor wants me to wait two more weeks before having the second procedure performed, so it’ll be late June or early July before I can (hopefully forever) shed myself of glasses.