Why Can't My Luggage Handle Itself??

Middleware is about automating things. Have we automated everything we can? I watched the ground crew unload the luggage from the plane, and wondered why the luggage did not unload itself. Why does my luggage not have RFID tags, GPS, actuators, and wheels? Why do I have to carry it to the hotel? Can't it get there by itself?

I then started thinking that I was smokingdope. There is no way we are going to have autonomous luggage. I entered the restroom and, funny enough, the toilet flushes itself and the sink turns itself on and off. They have IR sensors, embedded processors, actuators, etc. Auomating toilets would not have been my first choice.

- IBM Developerworks Blog Sept 30 2004, Don Ferguson, IBM Fellow

Pushing your buttons...

"As we say in my business,' says [SF marriage & family therapist Tracey] Gerstein, "of course your family can push your buttons. They installed them."

--CW Nevius, SF Chron, Dec 24, 2006

For writers: Three simple questions (David Mamet)

(Playwrite) David Mamet "also urges writers to ask three simple question as they compose their plots and screenplays: 'Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?'

--Wall Street Journal Book reviews, Jan 27-28 2007

"Ain't But Three Things to Gamblin'..." -- Puggy Pearson's Wisdom

"....Legg Mason's Bill Miller... was passing on the wisdom of two-time world poker Champion Puggy Pearson when it comes to gambling. 'Ain't only three things to gamblin'.' Pearson said. 'Knowing the 60/40 end of a proposition, money management, and knowing yourself.' ... Blackjack and by implication investing could be conquered... by identifying opportune moments when the odds favor the player as opposed to the dealer..."

--Investors Insight, 10/2/2006 --Bill Gross

Why you should worry more about yourself, and less about your grown kids

"...Once gone, parents worry too much about their progenies' happiness and not enough about their own. First of all, who has 60 years left to live and who has 20-30? Let's get the priorities straight -- me happy first, you happy second. But in addition, I think it's important to recognize that your grown kids' happiness is really their responsibility, not your own.....



--Investors Insight, 10/2/2006 --Bill Gross

Passing Thoughts...

* What if you start a blog and discover you have nothing to say?

* It takes almost as long to write about what's happening as it does to live through what's happening.

* If I were to pre-think my journal and write only the nub - the essence, the lessons learned, the insights -- then it would go faster. And be more productive. And isn't likely to happen....

* I have become crankier in my old age. Being ignored, which happens regularly, makes me crazy: my wife and kids tune me out. I find I am brooding about trivial slights more.

* Saw Childe Hassam at Met in NY in Sept with Vicki. Some of his work is more earnest than the best of the Impressionists. Other works are so completely over my head it depresses me all over again.

* Art advisor says must be obsessed with art, sacrifice everything else (he means, other pursuits) to artmaking, and do art all the time. He's right. It'll never happen. I am just a hobbyist, which is all right except I am not even that--hardly ever work at it. Do I really think when I retire I will become more motivated and less lazy?

* NYC has returned to the glory it was in the 1930s and 1950s when it was the greatest city in the world. The crime and awfulness of the city in the 70s and 80s has completely disappeared. People are actually nice. I'd love to live in Manhattan. Or at least be bicoastal. Told brother-in-law Eugene we'd stay in his second, unrented (?!? is he insane??) condo in Brooklyn two months a year -- spring and fall -- and pay him rent.

Which is better--working at home, or working at work?

September 2004
When I work at work, I waste a lot of time getting there (an hour of travel each way) and dithering at work. When I work at home, I feel like I waste a lot of time too. Trouble is, I can't figure out which end I net out best. Or better.

Or less bad, I suppose.

At least at work, people come by and bug me or hold impromptu meetings. While this interferes with my concentration on larger projects, it does make me feel like I'm doing at least SOMETHING because I'm responding to these instant crises!

Being interrupt-driven does have its charms, you see....