I'm silly too

Driving home from church on Sunday, I snickered when someone cut off another car. Golly, that rudeness got him a whopping 20 feet -- almost 7 yards -- ahead of where he'd be if he'd just waited for that one car to pass first. "Probably that guy was in his blind spot," I decided. There was no honking, and I want to say I repented of my contemptuous attitude.

Because maybe five minutes later, I was trying to move left on the freeway when I heard a honking horn. Gaaa! Where did she come from?

Oh, she was in my blind spot. D'oh!

I guess that's mercy in action--or discipline which by the way mostly means "instruction." I apparently needed instruction, a mild reproof, for my bad attitude toward that first guy who had cut off another car.

A good reminder that we are but dust. Dusty between the ears sometimes.

Taming the tongue? It's not about calories...

My buddy Jan is working at the "Desiring God" conference; I looked at their blog and saw this intense list, which bears reading.

I'm 40!

Yes, I am 40 -- your guess whether that's octal (tout à fait, Collin!) or duodecimal or hex or something else. A few reflections:

• Last night I wrote up a "parent statement" for the younger teen. It began like this:

  Let me begin by outlining her weaknesses; this section will be quite short. She can't do multiple integrals in her head and doesn't intuitively understand why log a / log b = log_b a. She doesn't always put things away, and occasionally makes a wrong turn while driving. She manages her time no better than her 50-something dad does; consequently she sometimes finds herself pressed for time as a deadline approaches. I would not use her as a packhorse on a backpacking trip. And she has an inflated estimate of my practical and intellectual capabilities. (I have no such illusions about hers.)

• My mom and sister both sent me birthday greetings!
• The younger teen gave me "the first" of my presents: a forest green (a little lighter than that actually) T-shirt with a line drawing of a bicycle on the front with EPA mileage information -- infinite miles per gallon.
• No cars were illegally parked in the alley last night or this morning, so we had an easy time getting in and out of the garage.
• I had an easy time getting to the train -- made the left-turn traffic light!
• a free Chronicle on the news-rack
• the promise of finding the bagel of desire in the break room, and food and beer on the patio this afternoon
• lunch with a "gang of four" brothers

Well, I'm almost at work now. Hopefully there won't be any fires and I can actually make progress on that proposal to improve our code-base.

A Dismal Time

Economics has been called the dismal science, but that title might better fit the challenge of personal time management. Our pastor has mentioned more than once that there aren't enough hours in a day to do what "they" say you should.

Here's how it (doesn't) work:

• Poll health care professionals for an idea of how much sleep you need. Not how much would be ideal, but just the amount of sleep that a human being should get regularly over the period of a month (say).
• Get information from experts on how much time you should spend on work-related things: time on the job itself, work-related reading, in-service training or seminars. Not what it takes to turbo-charge your career, but what it takes just to stay current.
• How much time should you spend on physical exercise--not "to prepare for the Olympics" -- just to stay in shape? Poll personal trainers or whoever the right set of experts is.
• How about on your marriage and friendships? Again, we're not talking about being the best spouse in the world or the most excellent girl/boyfriend, but just maintaining.
• If you attend a church, synagogue, mosque, temple (etc), they probably have an idea of how much time you should be spending on their prescribed activities: prayer, meditation, Bible study, etc. -- not to become a "religious professional," but just to maintain your current spiritual/religious state.
• Of course you occasionally need to buy stuff or take it to be serviced (or fix it yourself), etc.

Add those up and it comes to something like 35 or 40 hours... a day. Over a period of months.

So you're going to shortchange something or other -- at least as defined by the experts. What'll it be?

In an ideal world, we could figure out limits on various activities, and stop when we hit that limit. These days we might track that stuff on a Palm Pilot® or iPhone™ or CrackBerry device.

But most of us aren't that organized; I know I'm not. What I do instead is kinda dumb, but it is sustainable (i.e., it's easy). Basically, I have habits. It's important to me to worship God weekly with others, so I have a habit of doing that. But I also have an idea that about 4 hours (wall-clock time out of the house) is my limit for that, based on the load it puts on me to have to be "up": friendly, sociable, etc. Meeting new people is OK, but I can only do so much of it if I'm going to have a pleasant day.

We have home improvement mini-projects that I could spend time doing, but I've found out that on weekends I need some time reading and writing, or I get grumpy. For a similar reason, I want no more than one weekend a month with church-related "special" events.

What about crafting a schedule from scratch?

All that's fine once you've figured your limits out, but suppose the school year has just started. Then I think what I'd do is write out what I think I did last week and say, basically, "How many hours did I spend on activities X, Y, and Z?"

Then tweak it. "Not enough sleep -- wanted 10 hours more spread from M-Th; spent 4 hours shopping, 9 hours in club activities, 4 hours in church, 5 hours at the movies..." and some non-negotiable time going to and from class, personal hygiene, eating....

What if you cut shopping to 2 hours every other week, cut club activities to 4 hrs/week, and for the movies, do one the week you go shopping and two when you don't? That gets you about 10 hours a week on paper, but if you're distracted with the reduced recreational schedule that might make your studying less effective; on the other hand, getting more sleep might make you more effective at studying. Basically I think you just have to try it.

And adjust as needed.

Most likely adjustments will be needed over time, because there really aren't enough hours in the week.

But the good news is...

... you have enough time today for all the things God wants you to do today.

Can I prove it? I think this is indicative, if not an iron-clad proof:

For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.

2 Corinthians 8:12 (NIV)

And as it says in the psalms: "he knows our frame; he remembers that we are but dust"

a beautiful day

Got up this morning rather early, a little after 5:30, and decided to take advantage of it by going for a swim. Left an email for the younger teen: "went for a swim; back about 6:45," but not before noting that my daily Bible reading from 1 Timothy 2 began with a command to pray for the government.

Drove to the "Y" in the dark, heard an interview with some senator or another where he questioned the wisdom of bailing out people who got into trouble largely because of their own actions (he was talking about investment bankers, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders). You can be sure I prayed for our lawmakers.

At the "Y", two other guys were already in the shower, waiting for the pool door to open. I was #3 into the pool. It felt good. Pretty soon I had to share my lane; I did about 600 yards and levered myself out of the pool -- last April I couldn't do that. After showering and getting dressed, I called the younger teen on the cell. Should I buy milk?

Yes! 1½ gallons please! OK, off to Safeway. I had picked up The Anti-Alzheimers Prescription the other day, and he said to drink purple grape juice, so I bought some concentrate. Three for $6 so I fell for it.

She took Sophie (our '96 Toyota) but I decided to do a little later schedule. I prepared some oatmeal and made a cup of coffee, took my medicines, then processed some work email and reviewed somebody's code. Thank goodness for DSL!

Got on my bicycle about 8:10 or so, and took a leisurely ride over to the Redwood City train. The train showed up; it was fairly crowded. I took a seat opposite a young woman in a bright blue dress, quite short (the dress I mean). I tried not to look. But it made me acutely aware that I've been sleeping alone -- three nights in a row now, since the lovely Carol left Sunday evening for a writing workshop.

...which reminds me of a story I heard the other night on As It Happens (NPR); apparently men are less intelligent when they sleep with a partner than they are when sleeping alone. Same men -- the study took childless heterosexual couples and had them sleep together 10 nights, then sleep apart 10 nights (or was it the other way round? Maybe the sequence was mixed?). In the mornings, they took tests designed to assess cognitive impairment, and apparently the men were smarter after sleeping alone, even though they claimed they didn't feel any dumber. (Apparently the women were only slightly dumber after sleeping with their men.) I don't know quite what to make of this; I sure don't feel smarter today than last week.

We got to Mountain View, where I got onto the VTA light rail. Blue went elsewhere, to my mixed disappointment and relief.

Work was unremarkable, except that I executed three code reviews and answered a bunch of questions. So maybe I was more effective. To heck with that, though; I'd rather sleep with my hand on the lovely Carol's body. She called a few times today with requests for computer help, and it sounded like she was having a good time.

Oh, I attended my last meeting of this review board at work. This is a one-year kind of deal, and last month I had sent Audrey (who runs it) this email:

I'm not unhappy, and it's not that I don't love you, and really it's not about you, but... how long is the term for this review board? 12 months?

So this month my successor came with me to the meeting for a quick transition. Afterward Audrey emailed me, copying my boss, thanking me for being helpful and industrious and all kinds of other good stuff my boss can put in my next review (to be written next summer).

I appreciated the acknowledgment, I told Audrey, but "I notice you didn't forward the 'It's not that I don't love you' or the 'Don't leave me!!' emails." Yeah, trying to be like professional or something.

After work, I called the younger teen as I walked to the train. What should we do about dinner? Pick up at the Hawaiian Drive Inn! Not J&J, she said. She would start some rice for us.

The VTA vehicle came in a few minutes, and I typed away at another posting (which I might get up tonight, I'm not sure). Pretty soon we were at Mountain View, and a petite young lady asked me if this was the last stop. I noticed her NetApp badge. Where was she going?

Caltrain. It was her first time. Which way was she headed? South, so I walked 10-15 yards with her and pointed across to the San Jose platform.

It was warm! Now that it's officially fall (as of Monday), the temperature has risen. Train came pretty soon, and two stops later, I was off. I made it across the tracks to my bike before the gates activated, and I got across Broadway with the train's help. In a few minutes I was pulling my bike through the door at the Hawaiian place.

Most of the items on the menu came with rice, but here was a "braised noodle plate" -- the winner! Everything is made to order (unlike the steam tables at J&J) and I filled in a few more squares on this morning's New York Times crossword, which was focused on "jack" -- a male donkey, a lifting tool, a playing card.

There is something about doing a crossword puzzle rather than a sudoku -- the latter can be solved by a computer program (here, here, and here) but how would a program figure that "place for a fall" should be "EDEN"? Dinner was ready pretty soon, and I rode home fairly slowly, holding dinner in one hand.

Came through the door and popped open a cold one. Boy did it taste good! Rice on plate, some barbecue stuff. Mmmm. I sliced up a cucumber, took a few lettuce leaves, and drizzled a little salad dressing over all.

The younger teen pulled an ice cream carton out of the freezer. It had thawed and re-frozen in a freezer accident (don't ask). She thought it was yuck, but I sliced up a banana (are you detecting a theme here?), dumped it over some ice cream, and drizzled some Kahlua® over all. Definitely detecting a theme here. Mmmm... Hey, I rode 4 miles and swam 600 yards today.

Could we go to the library and pick up some books? Sure we could. Sophie was nearly outta gas, so we stopped and filled her up first. The elder teen called as we were pulling out.

"The answer is yes," I heard. Ah, they're talking about a birthday present (for me!). We talked briefly about what spirit/soul/body means (1 Thessalonians 5.23-24 for example) but didn't come to any conclusions.

We then headed over to the library with a full tank. I pulled a couple of quarters out of the car to feed the meter... but our money was no good -- free parking tonight!

I went to the card-less catalog and found that Diamond's Collapse might be here -- right here in Redwood City! Collapse with a capital "C" and that rhymes with "D" and that stands for ... well, nevermind.

What's the diff? “it’s” & “its”

When should one write "it's" vs "its"? I memorized the rule some years ago, but today I noticed for the first time a parallel that should help: its::his=it's::he's

So if you can remember when to use "his" vs "he's" then you're all set:

• He's a wise dog : he scratches his own fleas.
  
• It's a wise dog that scratches its own fleas.
  
• Note that the underlined green text (he's, it's) mean "he is" or "it is".
  
• The yellow italic text (his, its) mean "belonging to (him or it)"

Not many things in American English are this consistent, so it's nice to know that the use of each word is consistent with that of its partner.

Good morning!

Checked the email and found a daily reading -- these only come M-F, so it's been a few days. My eyes landed on this:

Because of the Master, we have great confidence in you. We know you're doing everything we told you and will continue doing it. May the Master take you by the hand and lead you along the path of God's love and Christ's endurance.

That's from 2 Thessalonians 3, from THE MESSAGE.

Isn't that good news? May the Master take us by the hand and lead us indeed.