http://albatross.org/ ]]> en-us 2008-06-19T22:38:36-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001918.html Our neighbor's son was murdered yesterday. He died a few miles away, in a quiet neighborhood wedged in between the freeway and a couple of colleges, while riding his moped home from giving a dance performance. Joe Sodd III was minding his own business when someone, for reasons unknown, decided to stab him to death. I didn't know Joe Sodd III terribly well (grandson of the Minnesota PGA Hall of Fame player). When he worked as a waiter at a local restaurant, he had served my wife and I dinner. But as the Star Tribune points out, he was a... Obituary Albatross 2008-06-19T22:38:36-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001901.html Apparently I was too quick to post, yesterday. It took til this morning, but KSTP has posted the article along with the video of the crazy St. Francis councilman which caught my attention while flipping channels. So now you can watch and judge for yourself, although as I mentioned in a discussion with my friend Tim, you CAN count on the media to edit the interview in order to get 100% pure uncut China White craziness. Still, it doesn't appear that it took a lot of editing. Also, rebounding from my crushing defeat on a technicality in Bruce Schneier's Third... Quick Albatross 2008-06-10T08:42:01-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001900.html St. Francis is my alma mater, I graduated from St. Francis high school, back in 19-mumble-mumble. At the time, St. Francis was a desolate little farm town, which thought nothing of investing in extra athletic facilities, but skimped on the educational funds. Call me biased, but when I grew up there, I thought I was surrounded by thugs and hicks and knuckle-draggers. I expressed this opinion in response to a story on the Star Tribune website, garnering a response from a friend of mine who has lived up there for the last couple of decades, assuring me that things have... Quick Albatross 2008-06-09T22:22:18-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001894.html Hey y'all. I wanted to blog this yesterday, but I was too busy partying? Why? Because yesterday was "Alberti Day"! Yes, it's carved in stone somewhere, so it MUST be true. Alberti Day was named on behalf of the first Italian settler on Long Island. To put things in perspective, when this guy stepped off the boat, Columbus' discovery of America was not as old as the Civil War is to us now. Along those lines, my friend Giovanna has clued me into the fact that if you can trace your ancestry back to Italy, you can become an Italian... Personal Albatross 2008-06-03T15:50:17-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001877.html Hey y'all. I know and understand that you've stopped checking for updates here. I get it. Haven't updated in forever for two reasons. First, I started writing a big entry about online cameras, and it has stood in the way of subsequent posts. I'll finish it eventually, but I have to stop letting it clog up my other posts. Second reason is that I'm in the middle of my third consecutive 60 hour work-week. Things at work have gotten totally crazy, so I simply haven't had time to post (or to bathe, for that matter - I'm pretty ripe!) HOWEVER....... Personal Albatross 2008-05-08T09:44:50-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001841.html I gave up being a programmer over fifteen years ago. After about fifteen years spent programming, I realized that programmers are the 21st-century bricklayers, and that they will always be underfunded, overscheduled, and uncredited. Rather than building houses, I'd rather be the architect designing them. Plus I just couldn't wrap my head around object-oriented programming. Or if it was possible, I was by then so finished with programming that I couldn't get up the energy or interest to do it. But that doesn't mean I don't ever code. It just means I don't code very much.... Work Albatross 2008-04-08T11:33:40-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001840.html Well, this is my first weekend off in a while. It's rather nice not having to work seven days a week for a change, although who knows how long it will last. At the beginning of March my boss asked me to put in more time at work. We had one of these conversations over electronic chat (meaning that I captured it for posterity): "how many hours are you burning per week?" "Well, I'm burning about 45." "is there anything preventing going up a little more? I am averaging 60" So I took the hint and started putting in more... Quick Albatross 2008-04-06T11:20:18-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001818.html For the first time in a month I did not work over the weekend. Oh, I worked, but I didn't work on work-work, billing work. I just didn't have time. Friday night we went bowling with our friend Terry and his two sons, and one son's charming and outgoing girlfriend. It was my delight to bowl a 134 on the second game (after not having bowled for a zillion years). This was using a nicked up house bowling ball, so it was quite an accomplishment for me. At first I ran around in an annoying fashion trying to give my... Family Albatross 2008-03-24T16:38:16-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001808.html Gosh and begorah, 'tis St. Patty's Day, and I without a stitch o' th' green t'wear... Greetings everyone, I'm back from a busy three or so weeks of soul-crushing depression interspersed with actual fun. I'm happy to report that the Writing Retreat was a fabulous success. Tam arrived on Thursday night and slept on our couch since her brother was out of town. We stopped at Tobies on our way to the cabin, where both Tam and Mary agreed that their caramel rolls are way too big. Then we headed off into northern Wisconsin, finding the cabin without too much... Quick Albatross 2008-03-17T14:56:35-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001788.html Garrison Keillor turned me on to the diary of Samuel Pepys. Actually, let me take that back. The first five words of this blog should never be written or uttered anywhere in any context, and I apologize. Anyway I subscribed to the MPR "Writer's Almanac" podcast in the hopes that I would be inspired to remember my writing on a more regular basis (and lookit, I'm blogging!) And earlier this week he reported on the birthday of Samuel Pepys (pronounced "peeps" for some reason). It turns out that Pepys was a blogger! Granted, his blog was written on paper in... Quick Albatross 2008-02-27T12:58:05-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001786.html I was reading an article entitled Earth's Final Sunset Predicted when I stumbled across this sentence... "like all previous hominids and more than 99 percent of all species that have lived on Earth, humans will probably go extinct, and it will likely happen sooner than a billion years" This sentence really jumped out at me, making as it did a billion-year long-jump off of a couple of extremely shaky assumptions. So, of course, being an opinionated bastard, I promptly wrote to the article's author...... Funny Albatross 2008-02-26T21:33:22-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001785.html I'm 'way overloaded. My job usually calls for ten-hour days or more, then there are household chores, obligations, etc. It does make the time pass quickly, but it's exhausting. A couple of weeks ago I left for work on Tuesday morning, and didn't get a break in my schedule until Friday morning - every hour in-between was me doing something somewhere... This weekend was no different. My Biology course called for two lengthy lab exercises to be carried out - lab exercises that required days of preparation beforehand, and days of execution thereafter (one of the labs is a... Quick Albatross 2008-02-25T10:29:15-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001778.html Oh yeah, I wanted to mention this when I was talking about my recent cold... It's Saturday, and I'm lying in bed in the afternoon feeling miserable. My spouse is off at a writing class. My chest feels like I'm gargling hot glass, and my head feels like a kernel of popcorn about to pop. I make the mistake of breathing, and erupt in phlegmy hacking. When I can hear again, The Boy calls up from the steps up to the attic bedroom.... Quick Albatross 2008-02-19T14:04:35-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001775.html I was at the O'Hare airport when I noticed a very weird thing. It was a set of outdated brochures for my own company, in a display on a counter in one of the stores. Since they were outdated I thought I'd better collect them up, all the while wondering how they had managed to remain on display all this time. And also that they had, as far as I knew, generated absolutely no business. Well I carried them back to the seat where I had left my computer bag, and discovered my bag was missing. This was a disaster.... Quick Albatross 2008-02-18T10:30:25-06:00 http://albatross.org/journal/archives/001745.html Well we're halfway through! One more month to go and the world returns to life. My spouse said to me last night, "Okay, I'm tired of the cold now." She's a romantic, she can find charm in anything. We could be pinned down in a ditch by gunfire, and she'd say "This is JUST like a book I read..." But just like the gunfire, the cold eventually wore through even her patience.... Personal Albatross 2008-01-31T10:01:30-06:00