Moved old Y!360° Blog to Here

Yahoo! 360° is closing. Frankly, that’s not a terribly big deal to me, since I left that service quite some time ago. However, I do still have content there, especially my earlier blog.

Fortunately, Yahoo! has a method to move your blog posts from Y!360° to another location. And even more fortunately for me, one of those locations is WordPress.

So, if you’d like to relive the story of how I met my wife or our trip to Paris, you can now do it all from here.

Unfortunately, the cross links to other posts within the blog do not work. They still point to the Yahoo! 360° blog posts… I guess I still have some work to do.

POCO C++ Libraries, FTW

POCO (i.e., Portable Components) C++ Libraries are a free, cross-platform, and open-source toolbox of utilities. Easy to incorporate into your own code, either statically or dynamically. Solid and plays well with the Standard Template Library.

This little gem has saved my tons of time and I’ve only used a few parts of it.

The least I could do is vote for them.

Run, Rio. Run.

Legs pump in cadence

Panting to the finish line

Rio’s dream racing

The 40 MPH Couch Potato

Just on the off chance that you read this blog (or landed here by the will of the Internet) and you didn’t know, Lydia has started a blog about our retired racing greyhound, Rio (a.k.a. Smokin Motor.)

It’s called, “The 40 MPH Couch Potato“.

Whatever you do, don’t go and take a look.

(see what I did there?)

On Value

I began following Joel Spolsky’s blog a while back. I like the way he thinks. I like the “just be the best, dammit” attitude (my words) that comes across in his blog. It’s a sentiment that resonates with me, a self-admitted perfectionist.

Joel’s company, Fog Creek Software, recently moved into new digs and he wrote about them.

I’m drooling. Read the specs:

• Desks designed for programming include a motorized height-adjustable work surface so you can stand up for part of the day if you want.
• A floor to ceiling marble… shower. Yes, shower. Why? So you can bike to work or work out during the day.
• There’s an espresso machine, a big fridge full of beverages, a bottomless supply of snacks, and delicious catered lunch brought in every day.
• A library with two reclining leather chairs, perfect for an after-lunch nap. (Though it seems like they might need more than two napping chairs.)

However, it’s not the amenities—as sweet as they are—that have got my mouth juices flowing. It is the thinking behind them. It is the enlightened thoroughly sensible thinking that lead to the luscious layout. Joel explains:

Building great office space for software developers serves two purposes: increased productivity, and increased recruiting pull. Private offices with doors that close prevent programmers from interruptions allowing them to concentrate on code without being forced to stop and listen to every interesting conversation in the room.

Regarding recruitment, Joel wrote elsewhere:

All else being equal, developers are going to prefer an organization that treats them like stars. If your CEO is a grouchy ex-sales person who doesn’t understand why these prima donna developers keep demanding things like wrist pads and big monitors and comfortable chairs, who do they think they are?, your company probably needs an attitude adjustment.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not an egoist. I don’t need to be treated like a star. But, if we’re honest, do we not all want to feel like others rate our efforts highly? In other words, do we not all want to be valued? A company that makes software should show that it values the minds (and people) that create that software.

I have seen so much “penny wise, pound foolish” thinking and behavior in my career, that Joel’s attitude is as refreshing as a sweet spring breeze. I would have said that non-technical managers should take note, but I just don’t think they would be able to get it.

Now, if only I felt that I had the chops to put in my resume…

Take on me, literally.

This made me laugh… and do we not all need those?

Laughs.

Anyway, if you remember Ah-Ha’s very cool video for “Take On Me” from the 80’s, you might be similarly amused.

Source: Wil Weaton

Confession

The album, Rio, by Duran Duran was my guilty pleasure in the mid 80’s.

(Embedding may not work. If not, then try this link.)

I had the cassette (remember walkmans?) and had to keep it secret from my friends. At least, I felt that I had to. We were also into classic and contemporary Rock (Zeppelin, Rush, The Police, Def Leopard, etc.)

My musical tastes are quite varied, now. Well, more varied, anyway.

Adoption Day for Smokin Motor

Looking Good,
originally uploaded by glindsay65.

I’d like to introduce the newest member of the family, Smokin Motor, also known as Rio. He is a sweet-tempered, lovable, seven-year-old, retired racing greyhound.

Today was adoption day.

Rio came up for adoption a second time, after four years, when his first family was no longer able to take care of him, due to a change in schedule.

Here he is doing what greyhounds do best, flaking out. Everything about Rio’s temperament, as we’ve seen so far, seems like it will fit in perfectly with our family.

We are very excited about our new family member.

Travelers’ Laptops May Be Detained At Border

I thought this was a joke:

Travelers’ Laptops May Be Detained At Border

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

“They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”

But, it’s not.

I guess that, if you live in the U.S., you should never leave and, if you live outside the U.S., you should stay out.

Nice.

News like this makes me long for the perfect government that God has set up under the just rulership of His son. (Daniel 2:44)

Peaches from a twig

In 2002, I think it was, my wife, Lydia, bought me a dwarf peach tree. I like peaches, but have no experience growing trees. Fortunately, the trees have most of that covered and the rest is available on the Internet. After I had it in the ground, I wondered, Did I just plant a twig? It sure looked like it. So, I named our new garden resident, “Peach Twig.”

For the first couple years, Peach Twig grew, but only produced leaves. Still it was heartening to know that I had planted more than a twig. The name, however, stuck.

Then, a few years back, he (or is it she) grew buds that turned into flowers and then into peaches. However, being totally new at the whole nurturing peaches to maturity thing, she (or is it he) dropped them fairly early. Sad, but still exciting to see progress.

This year, though, was different. Peach Twig was huge and leafy and full of blossoms. With a q-tip, I acted the bee and snuggled the flowers, hoping for pollination. (I did see a few real bees, too, showing her some bee love.)

Many of the blossoms turned into tiny peaches. The tiny peaches hung on the tree and got bigger. The bigger peaches ripened. Yesterday, I noticed some of the peaches had fallen, but they seemed reasonably “done.” I took a decent looking fallen peach inside, cleaned it, sliced it open, and tried some its flesh.

It was fantastic.

I went back out to the tree and looked for more “done-looking” ones that were ready to release from the tree (ones that would come off in my hand with the gentlest of tugs.) Of that batch, one or two were not so ready after all, but a couple of others were and they were very peachy. Today I plucked another.

Finally, a peach harvest. How exciting!