WWJD-Enemies

Found on a bumper sticker:

When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” I think he probably did not mean to kill them.

Also Heading Home

Also Heading Home, originally uploaded by boringcom.

After a whole week, my repaired mbp is also heading home. jbb
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Heading Home

Heading Home, originally uploaded by boringcom.

Juls was released from the hospital today. Now the challenge is getting rest at home (w/o having to deal w/ an ex-, kids or a high-maintenance boyfriend). After I helped her into the backseat of her dad’s truck for the ride home, she kissed me & said she loved me. Wow. jbb
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Perchance to Dream…

St. Joseph Hospital - Day 2, originally uploaded by boringcom.

18:15
If my plans for tonight come true she will sleep during my entire visit tonight. This is my first Thursday night with her in ages and nothing would please me more than for her to keep sleeping. Doesn’t sound particularly exciting but this is real life: to spend the evening silently sitting with one’s beloved while she recovers from surgery. Add to that, mom and dad were here when I arrived and after a bit decided to go home, trusting their precious daughter to my care. Wow. Life is funny.

Oh yeah, the ex-husband called to check on bringing the boys by tomorrow and exasperated both Juls and her mom because he has to make a simple kid-hand-off into a global military maneuver. Personally I think he’s just trying to weasel a way to control things and stick his unwelcomed presence into this hospital room. The “he’s trying my patience” look from Juls’ mom was priceless. :-p
jbb

My Anime Self

I think I have an artist in my class. Thx JC. jbb

Life Happens

St. Joseph Hospital Lobby, originally uploaded by boringcom.

18:15
Sitting in the main waiting room/reception area at St. Joseph Hospital. If it weren’t impolite I’d have thrown off my shoes and curled on a couch for a much needed afternoon nap. Damn. Energy is low…must… not… fall … asleep… in front… of Juls’ folks. Yeah, nothing like meeting folks for the first time and then having an all day conversation with ‘em.

What was it they say about first impressions? When I got to the hospital Juls was already in radiology so I had to introduce myself to her folks. It wasn’t too hard to figure out which group was hers, so I politely approached them extended my hand asking, “Mr. and Mrs. Hackney?” They nodded as I found a seat and explained who I was. Once I was comfortable Juls’ mom gently corrected me, “We know what you meant, but we’re not the Hackneys.” Ack, of course, Hackney is her ex-husband’s name. Doh! Great beginning to the day.

One unanticipated thing that has blown me away all day is the incredible similarity between Juls and her mom. I’d seen pictures of them before but completely missed it. I mean, the mannerisms and voice and social ability are remarkable. I know I hate it when I’m told how much I act, talk, look like my older sister, but watch her mom walk, the way she holds her hands in front of her was downright amazing.

19:04
Both doctors have come by, she’s in recovery following her surgery. They’ve dealt with the cancer but there will need to be further cosmetic surgery. The after-work crowd is coming through with a continuous stream of screaming babies and infants. One little girl was pulled out the door by her father screaming, “I want my mommy!” I’m wide awake now. I probably should call the folks to let ‘em know how things went… jbb

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Going Lap Topless

Going Lap Topless, originally uploaded by boringcom.

I feel naked. Last Thursday my macbook pro started making really loud noises. The laptop had been on all day and was pretty hot to the touch but I wasn’t sure whether it was the hard drive or fans making all the noise. It was bad enough that I shut the computer down for the night (which I pretty much never do). Come Friday morning it wouldn’t wake from it’s slumber, so I powered it down, shoved it into my bag and brought it to work. It never did boot up that day. In fact at one point the grey unresponsive screen was replaced with a black command-line screen scrolling system messages about not being able to make a connection to a working network boot sector and hard disk “throttling.” Not a good sign.

A quick visit to an Apple Store on my way to Juls, I was unbelievably luck because the Apple Genius was able to get it to boot, but it was still pretty noisy. He recommended that I back everything up. So I bought another external hard drive and spent the weekend backing up the hard drive. Monday the macbook was playing “nice,” but my confidence in the computer had been broken fearing that it was going to refuse to boot again. So I dropped by the Apple Store again, and this time dropped off the little beastie for it to undergo a more thorough checkup. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve been without a laptop. I feel naked going about my daily routine lap topless. jbb

Sunrise over Newport

Beautiful sunrise over Newport on the way to participating in the Susan B. Komen Walk-for-a-Cure 5K. The beauty has a way of refocusing oneself in the midst of all the other confusions. JBB
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Bird vs. The Space Shuttle

This time I think the Space Shuttle “wins”

Bird Hit By 4 1/2 Million Pound Rocket - Watch more free videos

Why Tech Journalists Don’t Get Negraponte’s OLPC (aka the $100 Laptop)

I’m pretty used to Fox or MSNBC or CNN getting Negroponte’s OLPC (One Laptop per Child) program wrong. But it amazes me when someone like Lee Felsenstien, one of the pioneering designers at the beginning of the PC revolution, gets it wrong. Then for those like Dvorak, the OLPC is little more than the punch-line to a joke about 3rd World Porn.

Cranky Geeks, Episode 75 (7/31/07)

They don’t get it the way “Baby-boomers” don’t get Rap Music, ’cause it was never meant for them. Hell, I didn’t get it or even care much about it until a bit over a year ago when I was at Negroponte’s keynote at an ISTE convention during which he explained that he had started down this road by taking generic PC laptops to a Cambodian village and immediately discovered how dependent these little devices are on easy access to a gigantic technology service industry that’s been growing in the Developed World for the past 30 plus years. Essentially they discovered that computer hardware without inexpensive retail support is virtually worthless. We are so used to having easy access to CompUSA… er, I mean, Fry’s and Best Buy that we tend to think about technology in terms of the individual little devices instead of seeing them as only part of a much larger technological eco-system. Simply put, generic PCs grew up in an economic environment of continual change and a commodity mentality toward hardware and software. They are designed to satisfy now and then to be easily replaced every three to five years. After the experiences in Cambodia Negroponte and his team set about to design a device not meant for Culver City but meant for places without all of this consumer-oriented “buy now” infrastructure. Little wonder, then, that the techno-pundits don’t get it. They can’t see the OLPC selling, except as a novelty, at the local Apple Store or Best Buy. But it was never meant to replace your Alienware or iMac.

The next place where the pundits miss the mark is that they seem to not understand that the goal of getting one laptop into the hands of every child on the planet is not to create an army of little Microsoft Office gurus. The roots of the OLPC go back to MIT’s Media Lab and Seymour Papert, where they discovered that if you teach children how to program they learn how to communicate, how to think, and how to problem-solve. MIT figured out that one does not replace the teacher with the tool but this tool, programming, can be an incredibly powerful catalyst toward real learning.

Click on “read the rest” link for an awesome OPLC video

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