Ok, working on that backlog of vacation pictures. For your amusement, here are a few of me out in the lake on the day we had some bigger wave action.

Here is me practicing my Chadrick Mahaffey pose in the water.

For explanation, see the smallish photo in the leftbar on Chad's writing journal One Byte at a Time. Now, no disparagement meant on Chad's photo or its clever tie-in with his blog image theme. I approve of all of this. I just find it amusing to emulate the Chadrick Mahaffey pose. I suppose it could be named something as well... like the Chadrick Mahaffey Big Wide World pose or some such thing.

Anyway, after posing a few too many times, I got doused. Here is me practicing the Chadrick Mahaffey Big Wide World pose slightly submerged.

In retrospect, I'm facing the wrong way, and my arms are too YMCA, but I did manage to hold form, and I am underwater, so I think that's an interesting twist.

Good times.

WARNING: This is one of those posts you'll read and realize you can never get that time back.

What I did while I was not working yesterday:

1. Made peanut butter krispies with the kids. They're still not quite WMU-cafeteria-like. I wonder if they'd give me their recipe.
2. Laundry
3. Took the kids to the library (now reading Spook Country by Gibson)
4. Dishes
5. Bought oil and fizzy gogurt at Walmart
6. Helped the kids draw a (slightly) "dark and cold garden forest"
7. Busted another Diet Coke in the freezer*

That right edge isn't a shadow. It's the inside of the can where it split.

*Doh!

Ok, bad pun.

I have to give the

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read this if you're going to read The Road.

I just had a discussion with Rob earlier today about whether The Road ends with hope or not. My feeling is not. I found this last paragraph quoted somewhere, not sure it's exactly correct, but I don't have the book in front of me to compare.

Once there were brook trout in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in their hand. Polished muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

On one hand, it's very clear that this paragraph is about what once was, not what is. It is of the past. Yet, obviously it's here, at the end, and that carries great significance. Is it here because it's speaking of things greater and older than man that will live beyond him? Is it here as one last regret for what we destroyed?

The bit that goes "Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again." is pretty damning. The very last line about the humming of mystery is about the only thing that could feed into something we don't understand, can't explain, that could continue life.

Maybe that's what McCarthy intended. I personally think it reads like a eulogy. The only hope of life I saw were the morels the man found in the forest and shared with the boy--the only growing thing.

Perhaps life will go on in the world of The Road, but it's clear it cannot be put back the way it was.

Yesterday I sent the Coke rewards people this e-mail:

Hi. I redeemed 400 points for the DSC-T30 yesterday, and I was wondering if that was a planned occurrence. Meaning, will you be offering nice stuff like that at low point costs from time to time? That was a great reward! Thanks!

Soon after, I received this (presumably) automated reply:

Thank you for your interest. We are currently investigating your request and will get back to you shortly.
Sincerely,
The Coca-Cola Company

I haven't heard anything since.

From time to time yesterday I pinged SonyStyle to see if the camera had shipped and kept an eye on my e-mail. But, it kept saying the camera would ship on the 9th, estimated arrival on the 16th.

So, this morning I checked SonyStyle again upon arrival to my Office Space-like place of employment. Sure enough, the camera shipped.

I showed co-worker #1 the "shipped" status. "Well," he said, "that's pretty sweet."

All day today it has not shown up on the FedEx tracking site, which has been irritating. I so wish you could GPS track packages online through google maps or something... but that would probably be some kind of terrorist threat.

Of course, I just checked the FedEx site (again) before starting this post, and the tracking number now registers and apparently my camera is in La Grange, IL, and the new estimated arrival date is...tomorrow! I love fast ground shipping. That's basically next day delivery for ground prices. Certainly not guaranteed, but the results are the same. Go FedEx!

Hrm--sudden thought. I will most certainly need to purchase some memory for the DSC-T30. I wonder what kind it takes. Commence browsing!

while ( !hungry && !tired && object != null )
{
  RollOver();
  Grab(object);
  Chew(object);
}


One of the most interesting things to me in digital logic was DeMorgan's theorem (this link doesn't look as though it has the shelf-life of wikipedia, but I like the brief description better click here), which basically says if you negate an entire conditional and change the operators (which I, for some reason, always thought of as negation of the operators) then you can find the logical equivalent of your conditional.

In other words,
while ( !hungry && !tired && object != null )
is the same as
while ( !(hungry || tired || object == null) )

How's that for geeky?