Notes From a Dragon Mom: The truth about our children, about ourselves: none of it is forever.
October 2011
The Problem with Drinking
That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen. — Charles Bukowski Read more →
Bye-Bye, Bevatron
If you drive up the hill to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one thing you can’t help noticing is the large (approx. 125,000 sq.ft.) circular pit where the Bevatron is in its final stages of demolition. The Bevatron, as its name suggests, was used to make beverages. For example, the Bevatron could take enormous quantities of tequila, triple sec and lime juice, smash them together at the speed of light, and produce an excellent batch of margaritas. Wait, what? I’m now being informed that the Bevatron was in fact a particle accelerator put into operation in 1954 and used in the work of multiple Nobel Prize-winning physicists. Bye-bye, Bevatron. Read more →
Dennis Ritchie, 1941-2011
Dennis Ritchie was the inventor of the C programming language and a major contributor to the UNIX operating system. He died last week at the age of 70. His brilliantly clear tutorial on C, written with Brian Kernighan, was affectionately known as “K & R” by those of us for whom it was an integral part of learning to be programmers. R.I.P. Dennis Ritchie. Read more →
Get What You Want
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Occupy Wall Street is on the move … uptown. Why uptown? Because that’s where the rich folks live! — CNNMoney I’d have more respect for these rubes if they marched to the homes and looted them. That’s what they want, right? Forced redistribution of assets? Break into the homes, beat people over the head and take their stuff. Fuck their wives, drink their scotch, smoke their cigars, put your feet on their desks. Liberté, égalité, fraternité! Don’t just stand there waving signs like a bunch of losers. What problem is that intended to solve? Read more →
The Most Interesting Man in the World?
UPLAND, Pa. (AP) — Two pregnant women were allegedly involved in a fight in which one slashed two other people inside a Philadelphia-area hospital room. Upland police say the pregnant women, ages 21 and 22, were fighting with a woman and a teenage girl inside a room at Crozer-Chester Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon. Upland police Chief John Easton says the women were all visiting a male patient who is recovering from a gunshot wound. — Police: Pregnant Woman Slashes 2 Inside Crozer-Chester Medical Center « CBS Philly Read more →
3 Laws of Usability
Don’t make me think! It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice. Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. — Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think Read more →
Mother, Toddler, Oncoming Train
Mother dies pushing her two-year-old daughter away from an oncoming train. She lost my Mother of the Year vote when I found out she put the girl in front of the train in the first place. Read more →
5 Questions for Improvement
What is your target condition here? What is the actual condition now? What obstacles are now preventing you from reaching the target condition? Which one are you addressing now? What is your next step? (start of the next PDCA cycle) When can we go and see what we have learned from taking that step? — Mike Rother, Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results Read more →
Aside
Tiny Buddha: Today I commit to doing what I can—being there for those who need me, standing up for what I believe in, and choosing not to ignore my instincts when I feel that something isn’t right.
Brown Vetoes SB 185
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a controversial, affirmative action-like bill Saturday that would have allowed public colleges and universities in California to consider demographic factors in admissions processes. — Brown vetoes affirmative action-like SB 185 – The Daily Californian Like! I hate to sound selfish but whatever “demographic factors” they were planning to consider, I’m 110 percent sure they’d serve to penalize my kid, nieces, nephews, grandkids — everyone in my family now and forever — and for what? Racial inequities of the past that they had nothing to do with? Not interested in taking the hit for that, sorry. We’re good people. We stopped inviting the slaveholders to the family reunions because they’ve all been dead for about 100 years . . . Read more →
Aside
Agile Training: The Four Levels of Agile Requirements
Why In-Page Navigation Links Matter More Than Menus
Before you spend hours debating with your colleagues and clients on how your menus should look, there’s something you should know. Users spend more time with in-page navigation links than they do with menus. In fact, some users don’t even look at menus. What users look at is page content. And that’s where they often go to navigate. — UX Movement One firm has experienced this many times with users in their eyetracking research. Read more →
You Are Not Alone
Many people need desperately to receive this message: “I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don’t care about them. You are not alone.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake Read more →
An Old Man
At the noisy end of the café, head bent over the table, an old man sits alone, a newspaper in front of him. And in the miserable banality of old age he thinks how little he enjoyed the years when he had strength, eloquence, and looks. He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it. Yet it seems he was young just yesterday. So brief an interval, so very brief. And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him, how he always believed—what madness— that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.” He remembers impulses bridled, the joy he sacrificed. Every chance he lost now mocks his senseless caution. But so much thinking, so much remembering makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep, his head resting on the café table. — C.P. Cavafy, “An Old Man” Read more →
Aimilianos Monai, Alexandrian, A.D. 628-655
Out of talk, appearance, and manners I will make an excellent suit of armor; and in this way I will face malicious people without feeling the slightest fear or weakness. They will try to injure me. But of those who come near me none will know where to find my wounds, my vulnerable places, under the deceptions that will cover me. So boasted Aimilianos Monai. One wonders if he ever made that suit of armor. In any case, he did not wear it long. At the age of twenty-seven, he died in Sicily. — C.P. Cavafy, “Aimilianos Monai, Alexandrian, A.D. 628-655” Read more →
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
In real life, as in Grand Opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse. — Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect. — Mark Twain
Liberals and Conservatives
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a liberal. If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a conservative. What could be simpler? — Kurt Vonnegut Read more →