Whimsy Speaks Again

I have finally dug out from under the pile of mail, postponed work, mountain of unanswered emails, and domestic obligations (fertilizing Annie the Avocado Tree).  All due to my extended away time in Paris with Sweet Junie, and worth every minute of it.

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Increasingly, over the past 6 months, I've spotted our neighborhood fox.  The first time was in the early summer, as I sat in the garage reading the paper at 5 AM, in the full morning light of June.  The fox trotted down the sidewalk, confidently, as if it knew where it was going and was in a hurry to get there.  I only call it a fox because we live across from Fox Hill.  Fox Hill, judging from my many walks through the community, is somewhat more up-scale than Rider Ridge (my development).   I would guess also more conservative (considering the size and extent of Republican election signs), and older (many of the houses look like 1970's house plans).  Some of the nicer homes are adjacent to Fox Hill Country Club.  The only truly annoying thing about the development is their Fox Hill logo, a cute cartoonish fox that is affixed (in the form of black sheet metal) to walls along the community's various entrances.  Also on the occasional mailbox, and even displayed on brick chimneys.  The foxes must have preceded us all in this part of Longmont, because the local shopping center is Fox Creek and "Fox" makes its way into the names of various newer adjacent communities.  And yet, this is the only fox I've seen in the 14 years I've been in my home. 

The problem is that it doesn't really look like a fox to me.  It seems a little too big for a fox, and too well-groomed for a coyote (also a bit too small).  I've seen quite a few coyotes in my time (even in L.A.), and this just doesn't match up with the scraggly gray creature with its tail between its legs.  It's too big to be a swift or kit fox and too leggy to be a red fox. 

I spotted it in the parking lot of the elementary school two weeks ago, as it was walking across the blanket of snow we (uncharacteristically) piled up in late October.  It was traveling at a good clip, as usual appearing to know just what it was doing.  I ran for the camera, but the battery was dead.  A few days ago at dusk, I looked out my office window to see our canine/vulpine itinerant pacing itself down the middle of the street.  As usual, I searched the house to make sure that Miss Emily was lounging somewhere safe.

When I picked Junie up from the airport yesterday, she handed me a Peterson Field Guide to Mammals.  It's as bad as reading the Britannica, as one thing leads to another and, all of a sudden, you know which squirrels are considered edible, and that pocket gophers can burrow through packed snow, and that Eskimos like lemming fur.

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I recently found out that a buddy of mine (who shall remain nameless until I'm aware of the NDA complications)  did the engineering work on the Nook, the new eBook Reader from Barnes and Noble.  I'm interested because Junie really wanted a Kindle for Christmas, and now there's a possible competitor for her eDesire.  Kindle has a big head start, but there were a few advantages cited by Gizmodo:  color miniscreen for book cover browsing, WiFi connectivity, micro SD expansion slot to vastly increase the number of books you can hold.  Maybe the biggest competitive advantage, though, is that, very soon now, you can satisfy your impulse by purchasing one at a B&N brick-and-mortar store, instead of waiting for Amazon to ship you your Kindle.  BTW, the Nook is powered by Android.

Of course, everyone expects for Apple to enter the fray, and that is bound to be interesting.

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We've been porting Android lately, and it's a bit more daunting than we first imagined.  First, you have to get all your device drivers working under Linux, which is the host operating system for Android.  That's something we do a lot of, so no big deal.  Second, you have to connect Android to said devices:  LCD, touch screen, buttons, WiFi, audio controller, real-time clock, GPS and accelerometer if you have one.  Our particular device is more like a small netbook and has neither a 3G network controller or wireless phone connectivity.  You would expect, given Google's association with open source, that things would go smoothly.  Well, they do, up to a point.  The various Software Development Kits (which are named after pastry items, the latest, Rev 2.0, is Eclair) are pretty well organized, if marginally documented.  The biggest problem is that Google has held back some critical applications in the main distribution, and only make them available to licensees (all of whom, like T1 Mobile and Verizon, are much larger than our small firm).  The most critical hold-back is Android Market, the application that lets you download and install Android apps.  Also, Android apps aren't stored on the removable SD card, so you can't, say, download an app on your G1 (like the one I have), move them to an SD card, and pop it into another Android mini-machine.  That makes sense for purchased applications, but many of the Android apps are free, so what's with the DRM?  You can download applications from third-party Android app distributors (using the Android browser), but you still have to install them, and that requires one of the application installer apps, both of which are only currently available at Android Market, which you have to have on your device, which we don't.  So, you see the somewhat circular problem.

Oh, well.  We'll figure out something.  There's a large hacker (and I mean that in old noble sense) community among the Androiders, and we can't be the only ones with this problem.

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AWP will be in Denver in early April, and I have to figure out how to attend for at least a day or two.  Outside of Chicago, how often does AWP show up in your own backyard?  No air fare.  No hotel costs.  Limited restaurant bills.  Sounds like a plan, just have to figure out if Junie will be out here then.

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I only have time to type all of this because I just got a quick job to clean up a Windows CE application.  As we have a Microsoft Developer Network subscription, I can download the tools, which happened last night.  Upon firing up the WinCE 6.0 R2 installation, I found that I needed the WinCE 6.0 base installation (there goes another 3 hours, yes, 3 hours, it's 4 GB), which I installed up to the point that it complained that I didn't have Visual Studio 2005 Vista Service Pack installed, which I downloaded and installed to the point where it complained that I didn't have Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 installed, which I'm now download.  On any good Linux distribution, it would have figured out everything I needed and just gone and got it.  Sheesh.

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We've had something like the computer equivalent of H1N1 running through the office.  Not a computer virus, just an unprecedented run of bad luck.  First, my main workstation's system drive went south, and I spent 6 hours loading Vista and installing the zillions of apps that I use everyday (e.g., Office, Visio, Project, Photoshop, Lview, Adobe Reader, VS 6.0/2003/2005/2008, Source Insight, FireFox, Skype, Sony Sound Forge, . . .).  Then, the Velociraptor that I had replaced it with started hiccupping 2 weeks later, necessitating another complete reload.  God, you'd think after 20 years of Microsoft products, they could have figured out some way to move your apps and registry in a way that their rights were protected.  Then, my relatively new Toshiba laptop refused to turn on.  Just refused.  You hit the power button and it lights up the "I'm On" light for a few seconds, and then goes out.  No BIOS, no screen activity at all.  Then, a newish Vista machine dedicated to one clients development died.  Then, Dima's laptop.  Yesterday, Dima's main projects' drive disappeared briefly from the drive list (I made him stop everything and backup/replace it immediately).  LCD displays have died, our mail server expired, and my WD TV multimedia player started sending all audio out one channel.

Time to call in Ghostbusters, I figure.

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All that Parisian cuisine (plus my intermittent reading of Julia Child's My Life in France) got me into the mood to get back to the kitchen.  I had Kyle and Eileen over for Supremes de Volaille aux Champignons from Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Was it good?  It had free-range chicken breasts, a medley of fresh mushrooms, cream, port, brandy, and 5 tablespoons of butter.  What do you think?

Tonight, Junie and I are having Cath and Kyle over (Eileen can't make it because of work obligation) for French Dinner II.  I quickly read a chapter out of My Life in France, and found that Julia was serving appetizers, oysters, main dish, and dessert with four separate wines.  Junie and I decided to cut back a little.  The meal is shaping up to be Butternut Squash Soup with Roasted Red Pepper Pureé, Coq au Vin, mixed salad, and macadamia nut cake.  I'm still wavering over the wine to use in the coq au vin, maybe a nice Châteauneuf du Pape.

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The oven just picked an inopportune time to break.  Looks like the virus has migrated upstairs.
 

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