I was filing my nails while driving along Highway 10 and was reminded of yet another law we don’t need on the books: 27-51-1504. Use of a handheld wireless telephone when driving.

Now, I think it’s a really bad idea to try and send or receive messages while driving. That’s not the point. The point is that the legislation is a) too specific, and b) unnecessary.

This law prevents text messaging or email, but does not prevent web-surfing or, for instance, writing blog entries. It also only addresses one behavior, and not others, such as putting on makeup or, say, filing one’s nails.

The reason it’s unnecessary is that we already have “27-51-104. Careless and prohibited driving.” on the books. If a person is doing anything which pulls their attention away from the road, they are already in violation of that law. Was there really a need to add another one?

I realize that legislators are not nearly as concerned about safety as they are about the appearance of “doing something”, but must we have more pointless laws?

This rant has been brought to you by the letters G and N and by the number 17.

I spent yesterday evening at the Rep watching “Follie Holidays”. This is their annual presentation by the young people that they have in their summer program. It was quite entertaining. It’s wonderful to see kids learning song and dance and performing. It gives me hope for the arts in Arkansas. They did a wonderful rendition of “I Sing the Body Electric” that actually brought goose bumps to my arms.

It was a very enjoyable evening. The next Rep show is “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”. I have a ticket for December 25th. Anyone want to join me?

Today, for the first time in a couple of months, my Wii told me I was “overweight” rather than “obese”. That is progress, even if only in a small way. I have put myself on a diet of ~1,000 calories per day. Seriously cutting back on my intake is the only I’ve ever successfully lost weight in the past, and it seems to be working again. Now if I can only keep it up for another fifteen pounds or so…

I have now spent more on dentistry care in the past month than in the previous several years. I was having pains in an upper left molar when I went in for my most recent checkup. The dentist examined it and determined I needed a crown. In attempting this simple procedure, it was found that I needed a root canal first. So, off to the endodontist for that procedure. (A small aside, my previous dentist did root canals himself. Having now had one done by a skilled endodontist, I will never let another general dentist attempt one on me, Dr. Penney was *excellent*). Once the root canal had been performed (and paid for), it was back to the dentist for the crown. I now have a temporary and an appointment in two weeks for the permanent crown. Dental insurance is good, but I’m still out of pocket over $1,000 for all this.

Just another expense that I really don’t need at the moment.

I’m one of those people who read nutrition labels. Okay, that’s not quite true. I *scan* nutrition labels to find out the calorie count. It rarely keeps me from eating something, but at least I know why I’m not losing weight.

Today for lunch I fixed a California Pizza Kitchens pizza. The nutrition label said that one serving was 1/5 of a pizza. One-fifth? Come on now, let’s use something reasonable. I don’t know anyone who slices a pizza into 5 sections (or any multiple thereof). Make it a sixth or a fourth and I’ll at least agree that it’s a reasonable division. Of course, I consider one-half to be a single serving. Back to that whole not-losing-weight thing again.

I’ve actually had things to do for a few days. Thursday night was, of course, choir rehearsal. Last night I had dinner and saw a movie with Lesley since I hadn’t seen her in forever and I owed her sushi. Tonight I’m going to a birthday party for someone I’ve never met, but invited me because I’m in Suzi’s book. Tomorrow is kickball, so I’m going to exhaust myself there, and Monday night I’ll be setting up to record the kickcast. Oh yes, Tuesday I have a dentist appointment and Wednesday night I have a ticket to the Rep. Wow, an entire week with *something* going on every day. That’s not been my norm lately.

Now if I only had a job that I needed to fit things in around.

Sometimes I’m on the leading edge of technology, other times I’m well behind. I decided today that I wanted to start looking for benchmarks and geocaches again. I go through spurts where I’m in the mood to go find things. :)

It was only as I was considering this that I realized that my iPhone was an excellent geocaching device. And, of course, geocaching.com had already written a very nice application for just that purpose. I downloaded it and headed out for a late-afternoon drive. While the phone is certainly not the best GPS receiver out there, it’s not bad, and the convenience of having the web browser and GPSr together in one device mostly makes up for the lack of accuracy. I found four of the six caches I visited today. It was fun to get out of the house and go wandering around looking for things again.

So I haven’t been good about posting my reading list. It’s been over a year now (May 2008) since I updated. So, here is what I’ve read since that time:

I want to write something. I’m not sure what to write, or even if I *should* be writing, but I want to write.

I’m still alive, still healthy, still looking for a job, and going slightly further into debt every month. I’m playing kickball again this fall, and trying to have a good time on Sundays. I’m spending much of my time at home, and actually relaxing a bit. This is the longest unstructured period I’ve had since I started kindergarten at the age of five.

I’m reading an incredible number of books, and watching more television than I have in years (recorded, not on-air). I have not managed to lose any weight, but I haven’t gained either so that’s good.

There’s not much exciting happening in the world of Dale, but I need to start writing more just because I can.

Mark is in Las Vegas at DefCon at the moment. He called me to say that they have a display of older systems made by Digital. One of the systems had a front panel, and he asked me why one would use such a thing. I explained about writing and debugging programs by depositing and examining memory locations, single-stepping through a program and examining registers, etc. I mentioned that front-panel programming was a lost art. He disagreed with me and said that it had passed into the realm of “lore”, in that people only know of the existence of front panels by hearsay, and many people, even in the computer industry, don’t even have that level of knowledge.

I realized that he was right. I’m actually among the youngest of the people who used front-panels professionally. Most of the serious users are retired and/or dead by now.

When I started programming as a student, it was on punched cards. By my first employment, all programming was done on CRT terminals. Cards persisted for several more years as a data-entry medium, but generally not for programming. I have also watched magnetic tapes change from a data-storage medium into a backup medium, and may be around to see them phased out altogether in favor of big, cheap disks.

So what else in computers has passed completely into lore? Using drum storage as main memory comes to mind. It was before my time, and I’ve never even seen a machine that used it. Plugboard programming is another. I have seen machines that used plugboards, but I never had a chance to work with one. My first home computer could punch and read paper tape to store programs. Again, I am among the youngest to be able to say that. Of course, there was the entire generation of computers prior to the stored-program model, Eniac for instance, that had passed into lore before I ever punched my first card.

It makes me wonder what is cutting-edge today that will not merely be considered quaint in fifty years, but will be completely forgotten.

The new phone books are here!


Today’s mail contained the Downey edition of my local telephone directory. The Windstream version is smaller and covers fewer communities.

I found it interesting that the Downey book has a numerical cross-reference, so if I have a number I can look up the name! It’s also amusing that for a directory that covers most of two counties, that cross reference is only 13 pages.

For those who don’t know, I tend to acquire Trivial Pursuit sets, though I don’t get to play as often as I would like. Having just been given a new one, I now have:

Standard form factor sets:

Genus
Genus III
Genus IV
Genus 5
25th Anniversary
Best of Genus
All American
The 1960’s
The Vintage Years (1920’s – 1950’s)
Disney – Animated Picture

Full sets, other form factors:

20th Anniversary
90’s

Supplemental card sets:

Genus II
All-Star Sports
Baby Boomer
RPM
Know-It-All
Way and Victory
Welcome to America
1980’s
Family (Disney)

Deluxe playing piece set

Anyone want to come over for a game?

Sometime last year I changed the prescription on my glasses. On the recommendation of my son, I stopped in at Success Vision on Financial Center Parkway to have new glasses made. I was quite pleased with both their service and their prices. About 3 months ago, I managed to crush my glasses, seriously bending the frames but not damaging the lenses. I carried in the pieces and they fixed them free of charge. On Thursday I carried them in again because one of the screws they had put in hadn’t held. I was told that the frames were not repairable, and the no longer carried that frame. I was then told to pick out another set of frames and the glasses would be replaced free of charge! I was flabbergasted. I have progressive lenses which aren’t cheap. If I hadn’t already been recommending their services to my friends, I certainly would now.

So, if you live in central Arkansas and wear glasses, you owe it to yourself to try Success Vision when you next need glasses.

Oh, and it’s also one-hour service.

I went to the Rep this evening to see Tommy. It was a thoroughly enjoyable performance. I had forgotten just how much I like some of the music in that show. I came home and headed for my albums to drop the soundtrack on the turntable. I was quite displeased to not be able to find it. That probably explains why I haven’t listened to it in years. I will be replacing it (sadly not on vinyl) very soon.

Back to the performance — I thought it was very nicely done. The staging was innovative and kept things moving along nicely. The costumes were fun, and the dance numbers were quite enjoyable. The closest I have to a complaint is that I would have preferred a bit more vocal on some of the numbers. I think that may be an oddity of my hearing, though. For some reason I tend to hear instruments better than voices, and it’s rather annoying.

I just had an encounter with a profession I thought was extinct — door-to-door-salesmen. Two men in a truck with a freezer in the back just drove up to my house to try and sell me frozen meat. They had a nicely printed brochure for “The Cattle Exchange” listing meat prices and contact information. After telling them that I wasn’t going to buy any today, I was told I could order from their website or call. The man then asked me for the brochure back. As I came back into the house I wondered how he thought I was going to order if I didn’t have information. I *think* I remembered the URL correctly, but there is no site there. A bit of research seems to indicate that they are a rather shady business. There can’t be much legitimate profit doing door-to-door meat sales in rural Arkansas during the day.

If anyone is interested in the early life of Dale, there is now an amazing amount of trivia available on Flickr.

It’s rare that good news comes via certified mail. It’s almost always something you don’t want to see. Yesterday, however, that was not the case. I received a letter from UALR that stated that I was able to maintain health coverage as a retiree. I was somewhat worried about the possibility of contract jobs, as they don’t have insurance, and COBRA only lasts 18 months. This gives me the ability to maintain insurance at reasonable rates indefinitely. Of course, it’s really only useful if I’m living in Arkansas, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Now I’m wondering if they will consider me a retiree for other functions…

I’ve taken on a new personal project — a self-portrait every day for a year. I’ve seen others do it, and it has the potential to be interesting. I’m sometimes bad at keeping up with projects requiring constant input, so we shall see what happens.

I thought about starting out with something interesting, arty, and provocative, but decided that if my first photo was excellent, I would be discouraged on those days I didn’t feel like producing a masterpiece. Thus, my first picture is rather bland and uninspired. I have nowhere to go but up.

Yesterday evening and this morning I was excited about going to the opening night of Movies in the Park. Early this afternoon when the rain rolled in and I started getting a headache I pretty much decided I was going to stay home. Around 4:00 when the sun came out and my headace went away at almost exactly the same time I decided it was a sign. I took a shower, got dressed, and headed into downtown. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, so I parked and started walking around. While I was looking for the amphitheatre, Mark called. He volunteered to look up a map for me and discovered that the opening night show had been canceled due to weather. Ah well, I stopped by Home Depot on the way back home to pick up a few items on my “next time I’m in town” list, so the trip wasn’t a total waste. That will teach me to not check my Facebook mail before leaving the house.

I wanted to do something simple. I wanted to easily watch shows from Hulu.com on my HDTV. I have three ways to get a signal to the set: a Roku player, my Playstation 3, and the laptop, all via HDMI. The Roku is, of course, not an option since it only supports Netflix and Amazon. The PS3 sort of works. I can start playing, but if I pause the program for more than a few seconds it locks up, requiring a reboot. The laptop plays video beautifully, but if I’m driving the television fullscreen, I can’t do anything else. Any attempt to switch to another program drops the video back into a window.

So, I thought I would try another alternative — install Linux on the PS3 and use that. I followed all the steps for installation last night, but then was sidetracked. I discovered that I could load a Super Nintendo emulator and convince the SixAxis controller to act like a Nintendo controller. It wasn’t long before I was merrily playing Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Cookie on my PS3. Life was good.

Finally this morning I got back around to loading up Hulu in the browser. I was then told that I needed to load a flash player and was directed to the Adobe site. There I learned that their player isn’t compiled for PPC, only X86. So, I now have another way to *not* watch videos on my television.