breakfast first

Spitfire

This fellow is something of an alpha-cat in the neighborhood, but inside he's a real softie and often comes to visit us.

It's not that I'm into big government, but --

I wouldn't object to legislation requiring products that come in a box to contain instructions on how to fit the product back into the box.

Street cats, Seattle

An entry for my dog-loving readers

New on the scene: CityDog, The Urban Lifestyle Magazine for Northwest Dogs and Their People.

Also, since this came up at dinner the other night: Doggles, protective eyewear for dogs. Excellent for those sidecar-riding dogs.

True, and well-packaged

Great soundbyte from Thomas Friedman from his Wired interview:

When I was growing up, my parents told me, "Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving." I tell my daughters, "Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job."

I Left My Inner Ear in San Francisco

I noticed something strange last weekend. While at a bookstore, I stopped at a small display table, picked up a book, and started thumbing through it. My leg must have slightly brushed up against the table, which wasn't that sturdy, causing the display to rock just a tiny bit. I caught this out of the corner of my eye, and my mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that we were having an earthquake.

Living in California for several years, and experiencing a few earthquakes firsthand, you start to develop a sensitivity to rocking and shifting motions when you're not expecting them. Your immediate reaction is to find the nearest person and ask "Are we having an earthquake? I think we're having an earthquake." Sharing like that is big in California. Step two is to visit the USGS earthquake map and check out the data.

Anyway, it's just funny how these things stick with you.

Compare and Contrast

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has named Seattle the most livable large city (population greater than 100,000) for 2005. Which sounds impressive until you learn that Trenton, NJ was named the most livable city with population fewer than 100,000. Ahem.

Washington Place Names

While I was getting my hair cut a couple of weeks ago, I glanced at the stylist's license from the State of Washington and suddenly started wondering how Washington state got its name. I found a great history of the name in this article. It turns out that the original proposal was to name the state Columbia (after the river that separates Oregon and Washington), but a representative from Kentucky stuck his nose in the statehood proceedings and wanted to honor George Washington by naming a state after him. Despite objections, the House of Representatives substituted "Washington" for "Columbia" in the bill and passed it.

While searching for this info, I also ran across the very interesting Washington Place Name database, put together by the former managing librarian of the Tacoma public library. It contains short summaries about the origin and history of local place names. The database setup is nasty (why do people still insist on exposing "DB sessions" to end users?) so you can't link to entries directly, but it's worth checking out.

Formulaic

I'm sure you know what's coming: an apology for the lack of posts, a line about how busy I am, and a laundry list of things that's kept me from posting. I won't bore you with the details; I'll just say this is one of the busiest times of my life. It's all great stuff, but it's all happening at once. (Well, almost all great stuff. I've been having a ton of computer problems lately, so I haven't at all kept up with email and blogs.)

But I can't let you go empty handed, so I'll leave you (well, at least you software nerds) with a link to an interesting interview with Kent Beck (of XP fame), Cynthia Andres, and Tom DeMarco (of Peopleware/Slack fame). I like Beck's opening shot:

It's not all about programming. It's not all about programmers. Programmers aren't somehow special and to be protected and coddled. I used to say often that programmers were children. They liked not to be yelled at and to have more toys, and I think that was kind of my attitude for quite a while and I saw myself as one of those people. And that's not the way I view the world now. I think programmers are, or at least can be, adults and can and should, for the good of development and themselves, act that way.

I can't believe the interviewer didn't dig into that statement more. What a lost opportunity!