A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

A smart person of whom I think highly just posted a fatalistic message to a mailing list discussion about palindromic timestamps, doubting that humanity will survive to experience 2112. This attitude, epsecially in such a person, I find deepy disappointing.

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Sitting in the 1369 now, in the rear corner, very comfortable.

How are the books doing? I'm supposed to be drafting up changes I want to make to the current P&X draft while it's moving through copyedit. I have maybe ten days before Linda starts sending mush-mush email at me, so I'm taking it easy. Maybe too easy. But, yes, I am feeling quite done enough with that book. The only changes I know it needs are code tweaks. (For instance, super-reviewer Mike Stok pointed out to me how nearly all my example programs that take filenames as arguments would choke with files named "0", since they check the command line values for truth, instead of for definition. I'd say something sarcastic about how I must accomodate readers who'd knowingly name a file "0", but I block myself by imagining a half-dozen murky situations where this might happen to a sane person. So be it.)

Meanwhile, Chuck has my revised outline, which I mailed on Saturday. Or so I think. I haven't heard from him since we last met Friday, which is unusual.

It's interesting to compare Linda and Chuck. So far they both seem really laid-back, but Linda prefers to take a hands-off approach with her writers, always available for communication but rarely starting it herself, while Chuck has so far been a lot more proactive with me, forwarding lots of thoughts and ideas my way and scheduling meetings, at least for the first couple of weeks after he first popped the question to me. He has said that he's been increasingly busy very lately, and that's probably the whole reason for his sudden lack of response. It won't hurt to pong a ping his way, though. I really want to get started! (And get a check.)

I've decided to next try wrapping my head around AppleScript Studio, Apple's new suite for developing Cocoa applications in humble AppleScript. I think this would serve as a fine introduction to Cocoa and Aqua programming in general. Mastering this would get me familiar with all of Next/Apple's magic IDE tools and hooks a lot faster than I would coming at it from a purely Objective C angle; AppleScript is a much simpler language, and an interpreted one, meaning less groveling over syntax while I learn. Nice.

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While here at the cafe, I opened a packet brother Ricky mailed me, and which I happened to have in my backpack. It conatined some extraordinary things: a short letter from Ricky, a Philip K Dick fanzine from 1989, containing an outline to an unpublished PKD novel, and two cute-yet-austere black-and-white photographs I have never before seen of Baby Prog playing peek-a-boo, one with blanket on head, one with blanket not on head. Ricky has never sent me interesting things before. How random! Belated happy Chaoflux, brother.

I have been in Waterville a week now. Insert pointed drumming of fingers, just once, here. Near as I can tell, there has been no motion on the Cambridgeport front. I have been tentatively sniffing at other opportunities, just in case. Several phone calls to make today. I wonder how much more line I should let out for Chez Charla... while I really want to live there, my confidence will be seriously eroded if I find out today that we're right where we were two weeks ago. The clock is ticking on the prime immediate backup location, just to make things more interesting.

Interesting, yes, ah yes indeedy.

I'm sorry I am so grumpy. Here, look at pictures of a bunny with a succession of leaves on its head.

Other stuff from a letter to a friend:

I have been kept sane during my stay by hanging out all day at the offices of Arcus Digital. They have a wirless network, and I have a laptop. And they have couches and lots of snacks and soda. (And a tip jar.) Mmmm. It's a pretty good environment, but for that it's in the cultural wasteland of central Maine, and that it's all-male. Then again, there are none of the loutish males that appeared increasingly during MINT's decline, so that's nice, but working in a crossgendered environment is still preferable, to me. Then again again, it's not like I'm actually working here. Or even plan on staying too much longer.

I will, however, be doing some work. This evening Andy talked to me about my first piece of contract work Arcus'd like me to do... an easy task, good teeth-cutting, not just with here but with the whole freelance thing. Naturally, Jim & co is all about telecommuting, so I'm very much not tying myself to this geographic spot by accepting the offer (though I do expect to visit semi-oftenly).

At least undef is back in business, more or less... the machine has a fresh new copy of Debian Linux on it, installed under the supervision of Arcus people, who didn't let me set up any security holes this time, and had me install software to help keep the thing hardened. To which I say: good. I'd say that this will absolutely positively be the last Bad Move this box has had to make, but with three such events in 2001 alone, I really wouldn't trust myself with such statements anymore. Then again, the situation is totally different... it used to be an insecure junkpile running either on my apartment floor or in a company machine room, and now it's a very secure box maintained by paid professionals in a dedicated hosting facility. We'll see what happens.

That letter was writ two days ago. Since then, my domain has become fully world-visible once again, though I've yet to properly crawl through the whole site and see what's broken and fix it all, again. It's worth it. I say to the l33t h4><0rs: Come on in. And burn! Yesh.

The cafe upstairs, Jorgenson's, is for sale. Everyone at Arcus will be very very sad if it turns into something other than a cafe, because, mm boy, good coffee right upstairs, available through the afternoon? Friend, that's half the reason I took the job at O'Reilly last year, with the promise that it'd be moving to Davis Square and its three late-nite coffee shops. (Ed note: I took the job, and it didn't move. And then I got laid off anyway.) According to this news story, the owners are selling all their inventory and equipment along with the space, so that's a hopeful sign.

A photographer came in to shoot John and myself playing Lost Cities at lunch yesterday for that story, but they used a photo of a college student instead. Foo! Doesn't two hairy guys taunting each other over a bizarre-looking card game have far more visual appeal than some waifish bookworm? Bah.

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The shower in my parents' house is from the seventh and a half floor. I have to kneel in order to wash my face.

Strange fact: three people in the last three days, two of them friends who are not prone to make such random outbursts, have independently exclaimed how very tall I suddenly seem lately. MaryMary and my Mom offer no hypothoses why this is so. Andy thinks that I used to slouch by default, and have stopped. I am totally unaware of any of this.

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I've started writing again, pretending that I'm settled. Ellie has been sketching rough drafts of book covers. First there was a neat cover featuring two Arabian birds, kites, which editor Linda thought was wicked cool, except that they seemed to be about to kill each other. After Linda asked if she could tone it down, Ellie made one with some sort of fru-fru bird, which Linda labeled "milquetoast". Sadly, Ellie snuck me the URL to it, and just seeing a possible book cover with my name on it made me fall in love with the thing. Since I just finished Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, I emailed the URL to a friend: "Want to see my daemon?"

Ellie has since moved away from birds and now favors monkeys. Green monkeys. Monkeys reflect both the subject matter and the projected sales figures, she notes. ???