Whimsy Speaks Again

They're right.  This is just too funny.  He bench-presses Asian women.  His blood smells like cologne.  I want to be a cool old guy too.  Someone who "lives vicariously through himself".  With a beard.  Oh, wait, forget the beard.  I've got too much Norwegian blood.

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Been working on insinuating the ACELP decoder into our next product.  ACELP is a very compressed format that is used on VOIP and cellular communication.  It's only good for speech, but does a decent job, while compressing the data about 50-to-1 over a similar WAV file.  In the coming weeks, we have a variety of video codecs to evaluate.  Mainly, these are video formats to deliver good quality on a handheld device and decent output to a TV (NTSC output).

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King James had a hell of a game last night, but I didn't stay up to watch the finish.  After blowing a 22 point lead, I figured my retiring to read the latest Lee Child thriller would remove my particular negative mojo, which in fact, it did.  Tonight, the Nuggets have a tough game in L.A, which if they win, will put Game 7 back in Denver.  This is one killerbee NBA playoff season.

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I read an article in the WSJ that said one French agricultural faction got snails put on the pest list, to the dismay of escargot suppliers.  Apparently, a century ago, escargot were so wildly popular that the French ate hundreds of tons of them every year.  I like them well enough, but what's not too like about something smothered in garlic and butter.

The last time I had escargot in France was in Nantes, I think.  I hopped on a short flight from Brussels to meet a client of my small software company.  I was actually the director of technology for a large copper firm, but this was on a weekend, so I could double-dip.  I checked into a French version of Sofitel and slept well and got up for breakfast, which consisted of the usual wonderful-but-light array of croissants, cheese, fresh fruit and coffee.  I managed to make it through check-in and breakfast using Je voudrais followed by every French noun I knew, but I was stumped because there were these big pots of glorious French-pressed coffee but no cups.  Eventually, the breakfast guy kenned what the problem was and picked up a bowl and poured coffee in it and drank it with a satisfying slurping noise.  Apparently in Nantes they realize that you can't dip a croissant in a coffee cup, so why not use a bowl to begin with.

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Sweet Junie made it back to Eau Claire without incident, in case you were wondering.  I keep wondering what we'll do for our honeymoon next year, if this year we're going to Paris.  It would have to be on the same scale, I'm thinking, like Roma-Firenze-Sienna-Venezia, and yes, I've written at least two poems that had Venice in them, and no, I won't subject you to them, even via links.

The last time I was in Venice was to meet up with my parents and sister and BIL and I can't remember who else.  I landed at the airport on the mainland, as it were, and took a water taxi over to Piazza San Marco.  I was sick as a dog and dragging this hellacious heavy suitcase.  That's actually all I remember about that time in Venice, except I think that's the first time I saw a gondolier using a cell-phone, which I found hliarious, but it could have been the fever.

More tomorrow, even if it's all reminiscing.
 

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Sweet Junie and I wandered off with Ally and John on our annual Memorial Day do-something-together day.  One year, we all got together and poet-buddy Wem drove all the way from South Carolina so we could all sit on my back deck, drink wine, and argue (well, the guys argued, the women did sensible things).  This year, J&J&J&A wound up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  We arrived at a nice lake, found an open camping spot in the trees, and set up an elaborate picnic. Naturally, it began raining like one of the 7 plagues shortly thereafter.  I hate drinking wine that is diluted with rainwater, so we huddled in the back of the station wagon, until I got the bright idea to drive up and get some firewood at the small store next to the dam.  WIth enough wood, newspaper and lighter fluid, I did get it blazing pretty good, but then it would only last 5 minutes before becoming overcome with raindrops, and then I would have to give it another lighter fluid squirt.  Ultimately, we just packed up and played Trivial Pursuits in the campground restaurant.

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I'm not an NBA fan, but how can you not watch the current playoffs?  Last night, the Nuggets and Lakers were tied at the end of the first, second and third quarter.  After getting behind in game 3, the Nuggets blew out the Lakers in Denver and Birdman was fabulous.  Meanwhile, King James made a last-second 3-pointer in Cleveland to win.  I've got a bottle of Mondavi Cab ready and I'm making Salad Niçoise:  fresh mixed greens with steamed green beans (can't find haricot vert), asparagus spears, capers, Kalamata olives, baby Brussels sprouts (OK, not traditional), steamed baby red potatoes, and Bumble Bee Solid White Albacore in Water.  Also, one sliced hard-boiled Cyd's Organic, Free Range, Cage-Free egg.  Dressing is fresh lemon and olive oil, a little salt and pepper, mixed together with 3 crushed anchovies.

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Because I'm on a French theme.  Junie got an alert from OpenSkies, the business-class only airline to Paris, and we reserved seats on the flight to Paris at the end of September.  The cost was about $1,300 apiece, which isn't that much more than Der paid to go to Europe last summer.  And for $33 apiece, Junie and I could (and did) purchase the optional "carbon footprint offset", whatever that actually ends up meaning.

For the next four months, we'll be reviewing guide books, repeating after French study DVDs, and generally getting excited.  I'm particularly jazzed, because I've been to Paris a number of times, but Junie hasn't, so I get to see everything all over again through newly entranced eyes.

Omigod, I just read that La Tour D'Argent just lost one Michelin star.  Now, where are we going to eat?

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I was absolutely convinced just after my colonoscopy on Tuesday, that I'd been awake the whole time.  It was like one of those murder mysteries where reasonable alibis break down when the protagonist starts asking hard questions.  Like, "OK, what actually do you remember?".  Hmm.  Well, I remember waiting for the doc to show up while I looked at the screen with my heartrate and BP and practiced deep breathing and Boulderesque Oms to see if I could bring both down, which I could.

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I seem to be specializing in codecs, the software thingies that take MP3's and AVI's and such and turn them into what you're listening to or watching on your Windows Media Player.  It is kind of fun, when everything is working, and I've got pitch-invariant speedup and slowdown to mess with, to boot.  Meanwhile, Ky is working on an Android app and Dima is doing his zillionth Linux port to new hardware.  Speaking of whom, Dima dragged himself into work today, after picking up his daughter-in-law and grandchildren fresh off the plane from Russia.  They arrived at midnight and he didn't get to bed before 2 AM, but like the trouper he is, he was at work at 7 AM to get some code off to a client who is screaming something about having a Chinese manufacturing deadline next Monday.

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Der has been Skyping me from Spain, his current country of wander.  He was in Madrid for a couple of days and then headed to Sevilla to hang out with Tyler, a musician buddy who is studying abroad there.  Der wended his way down to Malaga, where my buddy Alejandro took over, showing the sites of Malaga/Marbella, and I'm sure, stuffing him with tapas and local beer.  Next stop is Granada.  Did you know that pomegranate means roughly "apple of Granada"?

~~~

More in a day or two, most likely.

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I decided to take a break from beating my head against the wall on this project (1 step forward, 2 steps back) and invest in a device that is nearly identical to that which we will be doing software work for soon:  the T-Mobile Android-based G1.

I knew that it would have only a couple of features that the iPhone doesn't, but that's not the point.  I don't even text, so this would be a new thing for me.  I ran over to the T-Mobile store that they conveniently built a mile from my house.  I met a fellow about my age upon entering and found that we were both looking at the G1, in fact, he was browsing with a unit that was chained to a display.  "I wonder if it does Flash", he said, and recited a litany of complaints he had about his iPhone. 

I walked up the really helpful sales guy (he had a G1, too, for his own personal phone, and could have selected any one he wanted as an employee) and told him that I was a software developer and wanted to buy a G1 outright and sign up for the month-to-month plan.  I'd probably end up giving the G1 to one of my sons anyway, and I've got an expensive Verizon family plan now, so the last thing I needed was a real second phone. 

As I was going to mess around with it, the sales guy suggested screen protectors and a leather holster.  That way, when Ky and Der finish arm-wrestling over it, they can peel off the screen protector and it should be good as new. 

I took my purchase over to Brewing Market and started (gasp) reading the manual, which was surprisingly short and informative.  Like a small boy with a hammer, everything seemed like it needed to be hit.  First off, I tried browsing, which worked just fine to my surprise.  Turns out that you get unlimited 3G connectivity, which means you have moderate-speed web access just about anywhere that isn't exotic.  I clicked on Google Maps and asked the G1 to display a map of where I was.  After a few seconds, it showed me a map of Longmont with me in the middle of it (actually sitting outside the Brewing Market having coffee and an Everything Bagel, which I ordered by telling Steve, my favorite barista, the old joke "what did Zen Buddhist  say to the hot dog vendor?  Make me one with everything").  OK, very cool.  Next I hit the Home key and selected Settings and went to Connectivity or something and found that I could hook up to a Bluetooth device or discover a local WiFi (among other things).  I chose the latter and connected to the Brewing Market WiFi.  The speed was much better for surfing, which was nice. 

Next up was email, and I had two choices:  Gmail and Email.   I started with Gmail and signed in with my account/password.  That worked fine.  Next, I selected Email and was asked to provide the usual:  POP3 IP addresses, login, password, and details about the security interface.  That was easy, too, and all of a sudden I had email access to my primary email account (which runs on an MDaemon email server in my office) without paying Crackberry charges.

I sent an email to Sweet Junie and Ky, and made a quick phone call.  That all worked great and Junie said the voice quality was better than my usual Verizon-plus-Juke. 

I found that texting was a lot slower for me than my usual 80-100 words per minute typing.  First off, I have fat thumbs.  Secondly, I am a touch typist, but there's something about using two digits to search for keys and my innate knowledge of where they are when I'm typing seems to get turned off. 

How did the G1 know where I was, so as to provide the handy Longmont map, you ask?  Well, you probably didn't ask if you have an iPhone, but the G1 has a GPS receiver.  This means it can place you within a yard or two of where you really are.   I thought this had dubious value until I started reading about some of the Android (and many more iPhone) applications.  There's an application called Locale, for example, that works with the phone subsystem.  If you are in a conference room and want all your phone calls to go to voicemail, you just fire it up, tell it that you want phone calls routed, and it does it forever unless you undo the command.  Since it always knows where you are, it knows when you're in the conference room. 

Another use for the GPS (and internal position sensor) is a subset of Google Maps.  You can pan and zoom with one hand with the G1, and if you want to see a building or restaurant up close, you can switch to Street View and "see a panorama from street level."  Compass mode lets you look at the panorama by moving the phone up, down, and around.  There's also a nice integration of Maps and Contacts which makes it easy to remember establishments that you've found by panorama-ing.

The Android Market (like the iPhone App Store) has many fewer choices, but that is sure to change.  As an open-source set of software, based upon Linux, Android has a lot of advantages (like no royalty) and many vendors of phones and netbooks are coming out with Android products in the next 6 months.  The app shown here is Kidd GBC, which plays your favorite Gameboy games.

So, starting next week, Dima and I (and maybe Ilya and Ky) will be working on our clients version of this.  Should be fun.

BTW, speaking of Ilyas, I was trying to watch House and ended up watching an episode of NCIS, which isn't bad, especially because of the cute and wacky forenisc scientist Goth chick.  Anyway, there was pathologist character who struck me as familiar.  Turns out he's a very old version of Ilya Kuryakin from the ancient spy show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., also known as David McCallum.

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I was thinking about a Mother's Day gift for Junie, who loves our president.  Here were some of the finalists:

Obama O's

Obama Family Bottled Water

The Amazing Obama-Man Comic Book

Obama Keds

Talking, Animated Action Figure

Barack-in-the-Box

I will spare you the Ojamas.

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Some selections from Harper's Index from the latest issue:  70% of this year's college seniors will graduate without a job;  29% of all U.S. corporations will end or reduce 401(k) matching this year; 42% of unemployed Americans are not eligible for unemployment benefits; Total wealth decline for U.S. households was $11.2 trillion last year; 52% of all charities report reduced giving; 55% of all U.S. millionaires said they are unable to maintain their lifestyle; in January of this year, the Chinese bought more cars than Americans for the first time;  90% of all guns recovered from Mexican crime scenes can be traced to U.S. gun shops; of the 70% of Tennesseans who said they had heard a racist joke about Obama, 16% said that they thought it was funny and 15% told the joke;  ABBA did a concert for Putin in January for $27,500 ; Texas is 3d highest in the nation for teen pregnancy and 94% of all Texas schools teach abstinence-only sex education; The World Bank reports that 1.4 million children will die in the next 7 years because of the recent financial crisis.

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I watched the Denver Nuggets do a number on Dallas last night.  It was a great show and I love watching people do something that they so amazingly good at.  Even though it's one of the sports that I didn't play in high school or college, I always loved playing basketball more than anything else.  I would rush through my chores as a teen and drive over for the many pickup games at high school.  When I got older, I would drive to Ft. Belvoir, where my dad was stationed and play for 6 hours in a big metal quonset hut with local pickup teams.  I was never more than 6 feet, so I was destined to be a guard and my shooting and ball-handling were never quite good enough.  Still, I loved the sport and watching somebody like Carmelo Anthony is a joy.  Particularly, because . . . well . . . he just doesn't look that athletic.  It doesn't seem to hurt his shooting, though.  I liked Dirk Nowitzki of Dallas, too.  Obviously very talented with good moves for big man and the discipline to make free throws like clockwork.

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I'm still struggling with The Big Project with the Serious But OK We'll Push It Out Farther deadline.  Most of the problems aren't my fault.  I'm not sure I could even have anticipated them.  Stuff that is supposed to work out of the box, directly from Our Chip Vendor just doesn't.  The only relief to my 12+ hour days is imagining that I'm House, writing the symptoms on the blackboard, giving sh*t to Cuddy, goading the troops to come up with a better diagnosis.
 

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The Boulder news varies as usual between bizarre and hilarious.  Here's a random sample:

A Red Robin employee who was cleaning the windows was accosted by a would-be robber with a knife who wanted money.  He successfully defended himself with the squeegee.

Boulder police pulled over a man who had been tail-gaiting a car for 10 miles down Canyon Drive from Nederland.  The man honked continuously for 10 minutes, which apparently got somebody's attention.  The officer said he smelled of marijuana and, upon asking to search the car, found that the driver graciously handed over what appeared to be an hallucinogenic mushroom.  The officer found eight more bags of them in the trunk.

17,000 Safeway, Albertson and King Soopers (I know, it's a weird name) workers in the Denver area delayed their strike owing to a last minute negotiations.  Each chain has agreed to lock out employees if they strike at another of the chain's supermarkets.  The last thing I read said that checkers make eight bucks an hour and have issues with management.

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The Obamas will host the first only poetry slam at the White House.  How cool be that?

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Apparently it IS possible to get bitten on the penis from a toilet snake.

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Fascinating article in The Atlantic on what makes a good life, following a decades' long study.  Too late for me, mostly, but not for you.  Not that I would have changed much.

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Yesterday, a Boeing 747 sucked into its jet engine an entire baggage container.  Luckily, they were still on the ground.

 

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When both children and Junie ALL email me wondering why Whimsy has gone dark, I suppose it's time to do something about it.  I was on a pretty good roll for months, but got caught up in work, and then took a mini-vacation with Sweet Junie.  Said mini-vacation included dinner in The Dells with her family and a night in the famous Ho-Chunk Casino, with a little of the requisite gambling.  A lot of driving was in the mix, which was wonderful as Wisconsin spring is kicking in, all green and animal-y, which is a nice change from the high deserts of Colorado.

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Wow.  Josh won the Dorset Prize.  Congratulations!

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Reb has quit cackling.  I know how she feels.  The good news is that a new blog is in the offing.

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A top economics prize goes to a researcher who noticed that income and wealth inequality has been growing for decades. (thanks to Ms. Dark). 

I particularly liked Joshua's observation:  "But still: huh? What puzzles us here at sugarhigh! is the how Saez's findings are revelations, or even news. This information — that there is an increasing inequality of wealth distribution in the U.S. — is common knowledge. Not an "intuition" which has finally been verified; it's been part of a statistically based and structurally sound series of accounts in a dozen books from the last decade. . . . . The whole news event of this prize, then, is on par with granting the latest Fields medal for long division.

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I think I have only met in person 4 or 5 of the 588 friends I have on Facebook.  I suppose that's not that unusual.  The friends include lots of poets and writers, even people who have shown up on my blog (like Franz Wright) and those whom I will probably only meet at a book signing (like Rick Moody).  I read recently about a guy who had 200,000 Facebook friends until The Powers That Be reset his account, and then imposed a limit of 5,000 friends.  Facebook has an estimated value of $3 to $5 billion.  Even given that there are 200 million Facebook users, how do you make enough money to justify that valuation?  I guess at some point, advertising will be inevitable.

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Some years ago, Junie, Ally, John and I saw this painting in an art gallery in Santa Fe.  I just saw it again, on the wall behind Imus while he was doing his radio (and TV on RFD channel) show.

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Arielle's Kiss and other use of cartoon characters in famous works of art.

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It appears that most people can't tell the difference between pâté and dog food.

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