zen.org Communal Weblog

During lunch, three year-old Patrick posed a new question. “Want to hear a joke, Dad?”

“Sure!”

“Okay,” he said with obvious build-up, “why does a bee like to go into a drink?” His eyes glittered with anticipation.

“Umm, because they’re thirsty?”

“No!” he announced. “Because it turns green!!” A grin and giggling followed the punch line.

I didn’t get it, and if pressed (why you’d do this I don’t know) he probably didn’t either. But that doesn’t matter—his brain has recently processed the proper telling of a joke. Synapses continue to fire up there in a display as spectacular as fireworks over Boston on the Fourth of July.

Sometimes I wonder while I work on this cookbook..how can I be a good cook if I don’t like certain things? Like blue cheese. Hate it. Bitter herbs and veggies. Hate ’em. Most nuts…really not a nut person. But how can I be objective in creating food if I don’t like some food? And my own food allergies cause me to not be able to use some foods in the recipes. It’s an odd thing. I can create something, but I can’t taste it. Durn.

Just a brain dump :-).

Today I experienced (am still, sorta) my first migraine headache. The morning started with a splitting headache. Not enough to incapacitate, though—able to make some muffins for breakfast, make tea, that sort of thing. But after breakfast it started getting worse. The headache became stronger, and then came the nausea. (We’ve ruled out the possibility that I’m pregnant.)

I lost my breakfast and gave up on any chance I’d be able to do anything today other than stay lying down. I took some aspirin, which is supposed to help, but it didn’t make a big difference for me this morning. I dropped some Solpedine this afternoon, which perhaps only coincidentally seems to have reduced some of the throbbing.

Over about 3 hours I nibbled away some toast and drank some water; we figured there’s a chance some kind of dehydration was contibuting to this. Finally after staying in bed for more than 9 hours, it’s subsiding a little. The head still gets an axe crashing through it when I glance too fast in a different direction, or I move in any way that involves my neck muscles working very hard. Weird.

What really helped was being able to listen to a bunch of podcasts on Elana’s iBook. I could just lie on my pillow, my eyes closed and a hand at my left temple, while listening to a variety of podcasts being played by the laptop. It’s quite similar in enjoyment to listening to books on tape. I have Donna Tart’s The Secret History, a long-standing favorite book, on a bunch of tapes. If this pain continues tomorrow, or it recurs soon, maybe I’ll consider using those tapes too.

A guy I worked with many years ago (not that many, but it feels both like 2 days ago and 20 years) regularly had to stay offline from his telecommuting because of intense migraine headaches. Maybe I’ll drop him a note for advice. 🙂

Of course I’m also curious about the role of my recent ophthalmic migraine in all of this. Over the last few years, perhaps every six months or so, I get hit by this funky vision thing where I see this bunch of bring strobing/flashing lights in my peripheral vision. Until now, there’s been no physical headache with it, just the unnverving vision of lights. (Hello X-Files.) But it was at most a week ago that I last had them; now this splitting headache, eyes sensitive to light, and vomiting. Hmm. We’ll see—I’m going to have a doctor make sure the ophthalmic problems aren’t evidence of anything funky with either retina.

I hope this goes away soon! You can only hack on so much code with your eyes closed…

Boy, it’s been a long time since I wrote an entry. I’ve been too busy, and to lazy to post. Works been dull, and home is always busy. I finally have a chance today, day care called me up and told be to pick up Zoë as she has a 101.5°F fever. As 余艾蕾 and I drove in on the same car this morning, and neither was terribly busy at work, we both left. Zoë is the happiest sick baby ever, but rules are rules and she is not allowed back to dagis until she has gone twenty-four hours without a fever. As 余艾蕾 has stuff to do at work tomorrow, I’ll stay home with Zoë, and then Monday is a holiday. So I have a four and a half day weekend with a baby that has a fever but don’t act sick.

My laptop, a Fujitsu Lifebook P-2046, was recently sent in for service because it wouldn’t consistently charge its batteries. After some testing, they found my AC adapter is at fault. They can send my laptop back with a new one, if I’d like—for €150 + 21% VAT to a total of €181.50. That’s about $229.00 US. Or, I could get one from a company in the US for $49 and figure out a way to get it to me here in Ireland.

I asked them to just send it back, please. Why is everything so blatantly overpriced?

A local ATM in Ireland accepted a foreign credit card for getting some cash. The receipt included 14 of the 16 digits for the card. Why so many?

Tonight Patrick was in the livingroom with his empty cup sitting on the table. He’d finished a half a glass of sparkling water (“bubbles”), and now decided he needed more. He told his Mom as much, but she knew he shouldn’t have any more and declined the request. Patrick made a couple of further demands, resorting to begging but still no luck. Disappointed, he stopped trying.

Well, until I entered the room.

“Dad,” he said to me, his eyes wider than should be possible, “I want some more bubbles.”

I looked over at his Mom questioningly, and she said, “No, Patrick, I told you that was enough for tonight.”

As I glanced back to Patrick, his face was the image of mischief brewing at a low temperature. “Daaaaaad,” he did in his best falsetto, like a kid in a classroom trying to cheat with his buddy at the next desk, “I want more bubbles.” The whispers were almost too quiet to hear. Almost.

I shook my head. “Noooooooooo,” I whispered back. We’re both within a couple of feet of Mom, who’s sitting right next to him on the couch.

“Patrick!” his Mom exclaimed. “You know I said you couldn’t, and now I caught you trying anyway!”

He gave a foolish grin and launched his head (gently) over into her side. “Mommm…”

So this is where it all starts, playing one against the other and trying to trip us up. This is going be a kick.

Today I followed some great instructions on how to put OpenZaurus on my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. It worked like a charm! The Opie GUI is pretty slick, fast, and easy. And the initial image gives you a console window you can use to actually have a command prompt. 🙂

The plan is to try to make it take over DHCP & DNS services, at least, for our home network. Heh.

Update: So far so good. DHCP is working just fine, and maradns, the OpenZaurus choice instead of BIND, is nice and fast and slim for all DNS, including recursive lookups of random domains (i.e., Web traffic is behaving fine). Yippee! The little Zaurus is on my desk, doing most of the work of the 265MHz old box humming away in the corner. You could put hundreds of the Zaurus (Zauri?) in the space taken by the old server. And we’ll talk later about the power consumption dropping to 5 watts/2 amps, compared to the PC’s 230W power supply with spinning disks, whirring fans, and far more live motherboard circuits…

A friend of ours was selling little red heart pins as a fund-raiser for his school. He was up in the main thoroughfare of our town just south of Dublin, trying to get people to buy one. Lots of folks did, happily, knowing they were helping a good cause. Then there were the other people.

They would dash across the street up ahead of him, just so they didn’t walk past. Or they’d go by as if they didn’t see him—Oh my, look at the great shoes on sale! their expressions told him. After a little while, this façade grew old and sparked his creativity. This called for an experiment.

He moved over to a blank wall stretched between two buildings. Nothing but concrete blocks and cement, from the ground up to about six feet, nearly his own height. Having found his position and putting on his most engaging face, he called out to people to help support their local schools. After only a couple of examples, he knew his theory was true: they’re all faking it, they just want to avoid him.

The next person came by, a middle-aged man with eyes lost somewhere in the land of middle-aged thoughts. As he approached my friend standing only a few feet ahead of him, his face shot to the right about 45 degrees to focus intently on—the wall. There was no shop, no window looking in on products he might (never) buy, no other people suitable for distraction. But that didn’t matter. The wall would do. As long as he could go by without eye contact with the teenager selling stuff for his school, it was all cool. La la la.

He continued on his way, joining a frighteningly large group of people who are too bothered and too selfish to offer 50 cents or 1 Euro to contribute to an always-underfunded, forever-understaffed part of our lives. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the United States, Ireland, or Crete, the problem is the same. Don’t bother me, it’s my money and why should you get it?

But watch out, for the mirk of hell doth rise when I find you’re not spending enough to teach my kid.

Random thoughts after reading about a security test of the Toyota Prius…

I don’t know if I’m getting conservative in my old age, or if people are going overboard with the propagation of technology. Would I really want bluetooth in my car? The thought of a teenage Zoe, sitting in the backseat, surfing the future internet and texting with her friends that she’d rather be with than being on a family road trip runs through my mind. Useless, and potentially malicious, hello kitty software being sent to her by her friends. All
through a bluetooth connection link to a GPRS global network that’s integrated with the control system of the car speeding down the interstate. Yes, Zoe will think that’s the saving grace of the whole trip.