Wimbledon: Women's Final

Saturday, I watched the women's final. Venus Williams vs. Marion Bartoli. Venus Williams has been hyped since she was like 12. Bartoli I hadn't heard of until, oh, Saturday.

Since the Williams sisters have been around for so long, all the animosity that they faced when they first came out seems to have disappeared. If you read what the Williams sisters said, you thought they were arrogant.

Well, I wrote this a while back (July 8 at 10:48 PM, it seems) and never got around to finishing it. I'll try to recall what I was thinking.

First, I remembered way back when, when the Williams sisters were criticized for their bravado. Some people didn't like uppity African American women strutting their sexuality, having confidence in their ability to win. I used to read a newsgroup in tennis where people made scathing remarks about Venus and Serena.

And yet, I felt there were many positive things. They valued education. They wanted to do other things besides tennis. Indeed, they talked about making clothes, leaving the tour, and so forth.

Venus was the star first, being the older sister, then Serena looked poised to be the better of the two sisters. Nowadays, both seem to suffer from injury and occasionally, boredom.

Venus loves Wimbledon, and even when she comes into it less than her best, as she did this year, she has some chance to win it all. Playing solid tennis to knock off former Wimbledon champ, Maria Sharapova, she came into the final a prohibitive favorite. She looked to be playing pretty good tennis.

Even so, it was Bartoli, Bartoli, Bartoli. How she swooned when she heard Pierce Brosnan, aka former 007, in the audience. How her father had weird, possibly abusive techniques to train her. How she had candies given to her when she did things right. How was this girl's stamina?

Personally, I had never seen her before. She seemed a full-figured gal, cut of a similar mold as Jennifer Capriati, but possibly the heft of Lindsay Davenport of old. In Mary Carillo's words, she's big babe tennis. Hits hard, move so-so. Her two-handed shots recall Monica Seles.

For the first 2 games or so, Bartoli looked like she could get toe-to-toe with Venus. She certainly hit hard, and Venus had a hard time keeping up. But at this stage, a lot of tennis can be mental. Given two players of seemingly equal skills, the one that stays in it mentally, hits good shots at important points, is the one that tends to win it. Occasionally, you have superior talent beating inferior talent as Graf did with many of her opponents.

Venus struggled a bit towards the end, as both she and Bartoli took a medical break, which smacked a bit of gamesmanship, though both colluded. Bartoli had blisters on her feet, but the thinking was she was tired, and needed the rest, and it was at that point, Venus looked like her hip was bothering her.

Even so, she moved around just well enough, and it was a matter of just hanging in there, just hanging in there.

And then she won Wimbledon. What was it? Her fifth? Somehow people rack up titles at Wimbledon, and the rest of the world doesn't notice anywhere near as much as when Borg won his fifth, or when Martina went for her ninth.

Now we head into the US Open, and see where the women take us.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

And on the seventh day...well, you know what happens on Sunday. It's a day of rest for Christians, except stores continue to be open on Sundays. You'd think, given that most people have their weekends free, that they would open late on Sundays. But, no...it closes early on Sundays.

Suppose you have birthday plans for Sunday, as I did a few weeks ago. Where can you go on a Sunday evening? Most places like to close by 9 PM or even earlier. Restaurants, alas, don't like catering to the late night crowd.

There are a few exceptions, of course. McDonald's and other late-night fast food places. There's diners that open up really late too. But other than that? Some Korean restaurants like to open up late too.

If grocery stores can do it, restaurants can too! The funny thing is coffee and doughnut places open up real early. They want to cater to the 6 AM crowd. It's assumed, perhaps accurately, that early folks are positive folks, and those prone to stay up til midnight or later are delinquents.

With the way jobs work, it may be so.

It's too bad, because it would be nice to get food of all sorts at whenever.

Cover Up

The creative folks that design movie posters and the creative folks that design DVD covers are somehow worlds apart.

Movie posters are imaginative, often leaving the subject of the movie as mysterious. DVD covers, by contrast, are often boring. A typical DVD cover always, always, always has head shots of the actors. The point, once you see it, is that when you wander the movie aisles in a Blockbuster, you pick movies based on actors. It's the lowest, common denominator.

This practicality vs. aesthetic can be pretty annoying. I'd love to say I observed this first, but I didn't, so all I do is point it out to you.

Next time you roam DVD covers, whether it be at Target or at Blockbuster, and next time you guy by your megaplex of movies, compare the two, and you'll find which one is the more artistically bankrupt.

Thrilla in Manila

(I'm patting myself on the back for this blog entry's title.)

Years from now, when more famous Michael Jackson videos have faded, from Billie Jean to Bad, the one left standing might be one whose concept seems so bizarre that its long lasting appeal is inconceivable.

John Landis directed Michael Jackson in a werewolf like transformation from mild mannered Michael to freaky dancing Michael. There's something about not being human, whether it be a robot, or some monster, or some animal, that touches us in some way, allows us to become, well, not heroes really, certainly not superheroes, but simply different.

I've seen a Bollywood (really Tollywood) version of this, as well as participants in a wedding. If there's one video and dance people seem to like, it's Thriller.

And that a Filipino prison, complete with man dressed as victimized woman, could organize their homage to Michael, it adds lustre to this very strange history of a song called Thriller.

Pottery

In fifteen minutes, at least on the east coast of the US, millions(?) will eagerly begin their quest to read what has becomes perhaps the most successful fantasy novel ever. Harry Potter feels very much like an outcast in the world of genre, who went on to become far more successful than the niche genre made famous by one J.R.R. Tolkien.

Harry Potter doesn't even follow the usual genre tropes that Tolkien created in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. There is no (as far as I know) quest, no journeying to and fro. I suppose Voldemort counts as evil. No ancient maps. No foreign tongues.

J. K. Rowling has come from a woman on the dole, to one of the wealthiest writers in the world. Her books have sold millions, and have lead a worldwide fervor of fans eagerly awaiting their copy of the book so they may sit hour after hour reading the book. Indeed, a couple, getting ready for their honeymoon, plan to pick up two books and read it during their marital bliss, which is to say, they intend to read the book, instead of engaging in marital bliss.

I'm not one of those who wonders why this phenomena has occurred. I don't scoff at those who choose to indulge. Indeed, it amuses me that so many love this series which owes very little to Christianity, and more to our fanciful desires to live our lives in special ways, to go beyond the petty views of the "muggles" who are narrow minded, boorish, and unenlightened.

If there's an appeal to Harry Potter, it may be that he starts his life unloved and lacking in a bit of self-esteem, and turns it around to become a wizard. My brother has said the key lies in who is who. Is Snape good or not? Is Hagred good or not? Are the people we meet really who they are? Clearly Rowling doesn't believe in that Blink moment. First impressions can be misleading.

I had taken a few minutes to observe the crowd, in downtown Silver Spring, near Border's and the restaurants that surround it, as the familiar maroon and gold scarves and witches hats and wands and lines of people waiting for their copies, as a band played Britpop, while onlookers listened, and milled about.

I've learned, having now been in a few crowds, the appeal of a common desire, the need for community, to bridge folks together through some event, some shared sentiment, in this case, the last book of Harry Potter, and to be swept up in something that feels bigger than any one person.

It's a few minutes to midnight. A few parents have decided to let their kids dress up, as they wait eagerly for their copy. Harry Potter has become this generation's Star Wars. George Lucas has given up his movie mantle to a new literary queen, and her name is J. K. Rowling.

And his name is Harry Potter.

Walk the Walk, Guys

Tony Kornheiser did something pretty clever during his run as a columnist. He attached his name to Michael Wilbon. He'd refer to Wilbon by name, and Wilbon would occasionally refer to Tony. Eventually, someone came to the bright idea, what if we put these two on a sports show together. Thus was begotten Pardon the Interruption, or PTI, for short. Despite its awful name, that apparently invokes gentility in a field of conversation better known for its religious fervor. It's Charles Barkley, being a gentleman.

Despite a gig at ESPN doing Monday Night Football, and a radio show which Tony leaves when he does the ESPN gig, the Washington Post still likes to claim these two as their own, even if Tony writes little columnettes, his talents better suited to the radio format, where his exasperation and story telling find solid footing.

Even so, WP created this You-Tube like video format where, for 6-9 minutes, Tony and Michael do a mini-version of PTI, with Cindy Boren, a sports editor, as moderator. Some days Michael is by himself. Others days, Tony. Sometimes both show up.

While this is a fun distraction, there is an issue.

Brightcove, which handles the video distribution for the Post, is simply not up to the task. I was at a hotel with pathetic Internet. But YouTube knew how to buffer the result so I could finally watch the thing. Brightcove wheezed and coughed and froze the video. You couldn't control how it played. You couldn't tell if it was buffering. And of course, you're forced to watch insipid commercials before being show the main course.

You would think, in a day and age, where knock-off competitors to YouTube can do a credible job of handling the bandwidth demands of viewers, that Brightcove could manage as well. But quite often, it is simply painful to use it, as it whines "please, your bandwidth is too low", as if some lolcat, mewing "halp!" and "oh noes!".

Find another alternative Washington Post. We like Wilbon and Kornheiser, but don't make us have to have high-speed Internet to allow us this entertainment.

With Interest

Bricks and mortar banks have one problem. They require people. Which means, they require heat, electricity, A/C, salaries, and so forth. It's expensive to run a physical bank. This means, when you save at a bricks and mortar bank, you get little interest.

With the trend to more Internet banks, banks like ETrade, ING (Orange Savings), and to a lesser extent Citibank (which has physical banks) have begun a competition to offer high interest savings/checkings/money market.

Where you might expect 1% or so with a bricks and mortar bank, these Internet banks can dangle nearly 5% interest in your face. Compare that to CDs in a bank, and you realize that 5% in savings that you can access whenever you want, vs. 3% in a CD you can only access once in a few months, and it doesn't take a complexity theorist to tell you that the convenience of Internet bank pays off.

One of the highest interest accounts I've seen is Etrade, which has accounts over 5%. They've been advertising it a reasonable amount. ING and Citibank are about 4.5 and 4.25 respectively. Citibank decided to up the ante, and offer two new accounts: Ultimate Savings Account and Ultimate Money Account.

The second account has more interest, but here's the catch. You have to spend money. They require two payments for bill pay (a month) before you can reap the high interest. That doesn't sound so good to me, so I went with the Ultimate Savings Account which only has a minimum combined balance.

Given my druthers, I'd rather just leave it in one bank that I like, and not worry about it. But if banks want to compete for my money, I should pay attention.

Doggin It

Leave it to NPR to try to investigate this issue.

Sports shows on radio, almost nowhere ten years ago, have blossomed, giving patient rush hour drivers something to listen to when they trudge along, wondering if turtles can move faster than they.

And the topic of the day? Feds are likely to go after Michael Vick for dogfighting. Dogs are set to attack one another, presumably, like gladiators of yore, until one remains victorious, and the other remains, well, dead.

As one sports pundit after another claims disgust, they show why they are merely pundits, filled with opinion, and not journalists.

People do many things that can be considered disgusting, and others pass judgment, figuring no amount of reasoning could ever justify this disgust. This is, in effect, demonizing, making demons of others, and closing ears to any sensible argument.

Has anyone ever asked themselves why would Michael Vick, or his friends at the very least, like dogfighting? What thrills them about it? Has anyone ever investigated it? Do they fear, once they attend, they will be consumed with the excitement of dogs fighting to the death, much like fans of boxing can enjoy two guys pummeling each other?

Even those who purport to make news, like ESPN, avoid the topic. How many sent reporters to find out what's going on? To do a modest amount of digging?

But it's the kind of thing NPR will do, to find out who are these people. It wasn't so long ago that people wondered what the thrill of auto racing was. Or who had once thought of gambling as evil, but find themselves engaged in Texas Hold'Em poker, once respectable people were doing it too.

I don't claim to understand why dogfighting is popular among some niche of public, but it's worth finding out why people enjoy it so much, before condemning Michael Vick. Otherwise, we pass judgment with little information, assuming our quick assessment, our "blink" moment is sufficient to decide what is right, and what is wrong.

Why Good Programmers Are Rare

There are a few jobs out there where you learn skills over time, and then you're set. I'm over-simplifying, I'm sure. There's the folks at the McDonald's selling you food. The postman (or woman) delivering mail. The inspirational speaker cheering you on to success.

How many people would think that college teachers you everything? If you think of college as teaching you a set of skills, rather than a set of meta-skills, you might still get a job as a programmer, but would you be any good?

For example, you may learn how to set up a database in MySQL, but could you transfer those skills to Postgres? You may have learned Java, but can you handle C#? For some, these differences are trivial. It's easy to pick up one, or another. You don't need a class to teach you this stuff.

Which begs the question, why not? It's assumed that, having learned one thing, you will have the ability to learn something else. And yet, if you pay attention to the classes, they almost never teach you these skills about learning. Indeed, a programming class in Java covers Java.

True, many programming skills you pick up aren't particularly Java specific. Loops, recursion, object-oriented programming. But there are plenty that are, such as JARs, classpaths, WARs, and so forth. These hardly translate to other languages. Indeed, many programming courses like to skip the things about a language that make it specifically that language, feeling it won't carry over, and thus depriving the student of what they need to know, which is the ability to learn something new, something specific to whatever they are learning.

If you learned UNIX, you may complain that you know nothing about Windows. And indeed, there's nothing very specific you can do. No one book covers the useful things you need to know in Windows. You pick it up over time. To be fair, I think UNIX is better, and that the stuff you learn, provided you get past the usual ls, cd, and so forth of UNIX, and hit some of the advanced topics (environment variables, shell programming, tty, sockets), there are books on the topic.

Of course, the web has now become the preferred way to pick this information up. Java was nice because java.sun.com was a nice resource. But teachers who taught programming weren't used to thinking of the web as a resource, and indeed, I think many books on Java don't even discuss the web as a resource to find information.

The way to find out how good programmers are good is by following them in their footsteps for some time and asking questions, and alas, knowing what those answers mean.

The rare skill is finding information and knowing where to look, and then trying it out, and seeing if that works, and seeing if something else works. Indeed, much of this is like playing a video game, which is why, I suspect, good programmers and video game playing co-exist. It's not to say that a person who hates video games can't be a genius in coding, but that video game playing has those skills (in a very general way) you need, such as persistence, just trying stuff out, that you need to solve problems.

In the end, some level of brute force is needed.

And this bothers some people. They wonder why this information isn't simply taught. Why is brute force needed? And it's not pure brute force either. You need to know where to look, or several places to look, then to interpret the results, and then use that to guide you to new things.

And then it helps to remember the answer you found. Otherwise, you retrace back and figure it out again.

I know, there's the simple part of being "smart", to understand deep concepts such as concurrency, or algorithmic analysis, or some such. But there's also simply diving deep.

Hard as that may be to believe.

Anyone Can Cook...Indian?

I'm taking the plunge and moving closer to work. I'm hoping the reduced commute time will mean I have time to learn how to cook. And I'm hoping to learn a cuisine that is distinctly different from the one I grew up with. I want to learn to cook Indian cuisine.

To be fair, Indian cuisine is as varied as it comes, much like Chinese cuisine. There's the difference of north vs. south, with chapatis and breads of the north, and rice and coconut of the south. There's vegetarian cooking favored by many a Hindu, and there is meats, the staple of Muslim cooking.

I had a Muslim Indian friend who would invite me over for dinner. This would often by 8:30 PM or later, and he said he'd prepare dinner, and I could help. I had no idea, initially, that it would take so long. His primary dish was a beef dish, made with ginger, onions, and various spices, and start to end, it would take an hour and a half.

Refrigeration has meant many a thing. Perhaps the most important is that meat doesn't go bad so easily. Remember all the fuss that was made by Europeans going to India? It was to get spices, presumably to cover the taste of rotting meat that they could do little to prevent. Once you could stop rotting (or slow it down), you didn't need so much spices to hide the taste.

Even so, people soon began to appreciate the taste of spices in their food, and Muslim Indians, in particular, discovered they wanted to get rid of the natural taste of meat, and have the flavor of spices infused into meat.

I've had several Indian cookbooks, but many have been far too daunting to follow. An authentic book might have a recipe containing a dozen spices.

But somehow, recently, I stumbled on a book whose title seems like a gimmick. It's called 5 spices, 50 dishes. It limits Indian cooking to only 5 spices, which may seem ridiculous given the number of spices that go into Indian cooking. Just off the top of my head: turmeric, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, mustard seeds, fenugreek, cilantro, ginger, chilis. OK, OK, some of these aren't technically spices.

The book is written by Ruta Kahate. No idea who that is. I assume it's a "she". In case, you're curious, the five spices are: coriander seeds, cumin, mustard seeds, cayenne pepper, and turmeric.

I've long known that what the Brits (and Americans) refer to as curry is not a spice at all, but an amalgamation of several spices, which Indians refer to as masalas. And to that extent, masalas often do not taste anything like what we call curry. Indeed, the Vietnamese come closer to using that kind of curry in their cooking than Indians. (There are curry plants and curry leaves, but this isn't the kind of curry that typifies Indian cooking).

I have no idea how the recipes will turn out. I tried Indian cooking once, many, many years ago. However, back then, I hadn't really eaten as much Indian food as I have now, so I wasn't sure what things were supposed to taste like. I suspect that's still true even now, though I figure if I'm happy, then it should be OK. (I recall making dal, which is lentils, and really having no idea how dal was supposed to turn out. At least I've had some since then.)

I do have a Chinese cookbook, which I'll also try (indeed, I own 100 cooking books, many of which I've never tried a single recipe). We'll see if this works out. I hope it does, because I'd like to cook a lot better than I do now.

Code Critique

Many years ago, I went to college with a friend who was/is Jewish. I suppose, like many people, we have the need to classify folks: African American, tall, short, fat, ugly, German, and so forth.

In this case, the religion is worth pointing out because he would, on occasion, read a book written in Hebrew. It wasn't just a religious text, but it was also a commentary on that religious text, by various Talmudic scholars over the centuries.

Recently, I was reading this, as well as the followup commentary at the bottom of the page.

Here's what I find interesting. One of the reviewers noted that critiquing code worked well for seasoned developers, and not so well for those students coming out of college.

I understand that the "real-world" is supposed to teach you something. I also understand that college doesn't always teach you real-world stuff. It's theory and all.

But computer science is a little weird. As a discipline, it is still figuring out how to do what most people do, which is program. Oddly enough, many of the older academics seem to think of programming as a throwaway thing, a mean to an end, and believe other topics to be of more fundamental interest.

It's hard to compare this to, say, learning English. You could say learning a language is more fundamental than learning a programming language. Two things most people need to master is a spoken language and mathematics (and reasoning).

Many academics feel that math and English are good enough, and don't particularly care for the programming aspects.

So imagine what they must think when the beliefs of how one should program are changing over time. The ideas that people espoused in the 80s aren't the same as the ones they mention now. For example, the Rails guys (most notably Dave Thomas) like the acronym "DRY" which means "don't repeat yourself". When people were teaching Pascal in the 80s, they probably didn't think of this, and would wonder why it's worth teaching at all.

My point (finally!) is this. If code critique is important to get hired, then why isn't it important enough to teach? Why aren't there books on the topic critiquing code? Understandably, code critique is a matter of opinion, and people disagree. That's fine. I think folks need to understand why people disagree, so they can begin to form their own opinions.

I think as the critique grows, we begin to understand the limitations of a programming language, why we do things a certain way to overcome those limitations.

If you think about it, programming languages evolve far faster than human languages. Human languages give a great deal of power to the speaker, but demands much of the listener to interpret shades of meaning. Even though programming languages are far more precise, they still don't seem to capture what we mean to say.

So I challenge those who say we need to learn to critique to start critiquing code and give their opinions. Let a thousand flowers bloom (I know, that's terribly Maoist, especially since he backed off on that opinion).

It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World

I was driving on the Beltway, recently, looking at the back of someone's car.

Mostly, people put their own ads on the car. The occasional person, having gone to the dealer, might have a dealer name on a license plate holder, letting other people know where you got your car, say, at a local Sport Honda.

It got me to thinking.

We've got ads on television. What if companies paid people to have ads on their cars? Would people do it? Given the amount of traffic, and the amount of time it takes to get to work, would people put ads on their car?

Right now, we think of our car as an extension of who we are. Are we willing to put ourselves out to the highest bidder.

Of course, it would increase the eyesore on the road. Already, people spend a lot of money on a car that they want to be proud of. Would they shamefully put ads on it?

Remember, you heard it here first.

Is it Hot or Not?

I was listening to NPR where some German was extolling the virtues of riesling, which, I believe is a sweet German dessert wine. Someone had asked why it works so well with Asian foods, and the guy replied that riesling had less alcohol and therefore, doesn't cause spicy foods to feel even fierier. If there is such a word.

Normally, I wouldn't have a good opportunity to test a theory, but it came upon me by accident. I had eaten something spicy, can't even quite recall what it was. Then, I was home, the spiciness still with me, when I rinsed my mouth with Listerine, which seems like it has a fair bit of alcohol.

Man, that burned!

So, I conclude that, at least with high enough alcohol, that burning on your tongue can feel even hotter!

Futon You!

There's a store on Route 1, very close to where I live, that used to sell futons. I recently looked at it, and the sign is gone. And I wonder if the same can be said of futons.

Futons were the bed (I mean, mattress) alternative of the 80s and 90s. Goodbye old-fashioned box springs and mattresses. Hello to transformer style bed or sofas, which is it?

You'd sleep closer to the floor. It was square in shape. It looked (kinda) cool, and for those lacking in space, it could convert to a couch.

But futons, in order to transform to the couch shaped, were not filled with springs, that long-time staple of mattresses. Some people simply could not adjust to spring-less mattresses, and found futons to lack in comfort. They couldn't bounce up and down as they did when they were a kid. And they said it hurt their back.

So, many folks, who tried the futons abandoned it, returning back to a familiar friend. Perhaps it says something that mattress companies never seemed to embrace the futon market, and played a patient game, outwaiting those who used futons.

It's usually tough to track a trend that's starting. By the time it's around, you were probably too late. For example, when did people stop wearing oversized shirts, and decided to move back to small shirts, form-fitting, possibly even suggestive? When did silver become popular as a car color? When did goatees make a comeback?

It's a little harder to know when a trend is falling out of favor, and fewer people seem to care. Classic "what's hot, what's not" trend.

So, futons, happy to know you. Sorry to see you go!

Buh-bye!

You're So Vain

Today I saw something I don't see every day.

Vanity plates.

And not just any kind of vanity plates. The first one said "Vijay", presumably, the owner was a pleasant, though possibly vain Hindu.

The second was "Rani", which, I admit, is more obscure, but stands for "queen" in Hindi. Thus, two cars, two vanity plates, and likely, two Indians.

In India, I noticed that most license plates were hand-made (or perhaps store-made), but did not allow the user to pick their own vanity plates.

Does this sign of individualism ring more for Indian Americans than other citizens from other countries, or am I more sensitized to this than most, or was it mere coincidence?

I wonder.

Rivera Unleashed

Words don't do adequate justice to how frightfully bizarre this is.

Coffee Confidential

I was at Starbuck's today, the Microsoft of coffee, the evil empire. But I give it credit for getting people to go to coffeehouses, a concept that might have been suitably obscured otherwise. And when you're desperate, there's a Starbuck's everywhere.

Now, many a place hire folks that just don't drink coffee, and so little things like "Is this decaffeinated or not?", a huge deal for customers, seem silly to these folks. Coffee's coffee, isn't it? Ridiculous!

Imagine a game company where the employees didn't actually play video games for fun. This almost never happens. Yet, there are plenty of professions, especially in the food industry, where you get non-experts trying to do an "expert" job, when they simply don't care.

You'd think Starbuck's wouldn't have this problem. But, they do. Starbuck's had bold and regular coffee. But plenty of times, I see the server just grab one coffee or the other, as if it didn't matter. In reality, it doesn't matter much, but it certainly shows a lack of care, when they decide to have two coffees, and don't care which one they get.

So I'm allegedly drinking Italian Roast, instead of the house blend, which is fine. A little strong. Perhaps I should have ordered it the first time.

But perhaps I should be the one figuring that out.

Textbooks?

I was reading an article about how Richard Feynman, famous physicist and bongo drum player, where he explained why textbooks were so awful. He had been on a committee to help select textbooks for a state, and discovered many of his colleagues barely read the books and made decisions that had little to do with the quality of the books.

I suspect we still have textbooks, but it feels like we should be able to use the Internet, and use virtual books. For one, it should cost a lot less. You don't have to make physical books. You have virtual ones instead. To be fair, web pages typically make lousy books, because far less care is taken, and because most web pages weren't designed to be high quality. HTML doesn't give you high precision for laying out content. It merely describes content.

Is there a reason why we should use textbooks, at least, in pre-college? I wonder.

Hana-bi

I've read that hana-bi is the Japanese word/phrase for fireworks, though apparently, the literal translation is fire-flower, which evokes both beauty and danger.

Fireworks are most closely associated with the fourth of July, which is Independence Day in the United States. I don't feel a particular need to go see them, but they have served as a kind of temporal touchstone in my life. There were several times that I was at the A.V. Williams Building, staring in the stairwells out through the windows to catch a glimpse of the College Park fireworks. Usually, I was trying to get some work done on the holiday.

Today I was at work again, trying to get a few things done for some other folks depending on my stuff, and stared out at the distance, the fireworks a mere flower in the night landscape, fiery entrails, squirming in sperm-like glee upwards, before exploding, then fading back to Earth. I'm sure this wasn't the DC fireworks--we're a bit too north for that, but they seemed to have spent enough money on it.

A few summers ago, I was in Seattle, near the water, where my cousin, his then-girlfriend, and my uncle and aunt, sat watching fireworks. It was crowded, I recall. We struggled to find a place to sit, and had to wait til it got dark. I remember we went to someone's house, a friend of my cousin, who was out of town, and he was looking after the place, in exchange for using the place from time to time. He grilled some tuna, which, I suppose, is the cool thing to do.

I've been in DC twice for fireworks. It's crowded to go, so I don't generally like going to see them there, though it's nice to say you've done it. Of course, it's a reminder of how time passes. As you get older, the years go by faster. Remember when you were a kid, and a year was forever? You couldn't imagine that you'd spend four years in high school. Then, four more go by like that in college. Then, ten years, then twenty.

Even though the fireworks last maybe half an hour, I get mildly nostalgic. You'd think they'd have fireworks for New Year's except it's usually darn cold outside. So, the summer is as good as anytime.

Wimbledon usually happens during the fourth. I watched Maria Sharapova get woman-handled by Venus Williams. Once upon a time, women didn't really grunt as they struck the ball. Not exactly lady-like, you know. But Seles had her two beat grunt. Venus occasionally does it too.

But Maria Sharapova--she's the queen of loud noises. She's replaced Anna Kournikova as the dream-babe of sportscasters and sports males who don't watch tennis much, but like ultra short skirts, and blond Russian women. And Sharapova wins too! But I'm sure the thoughts wander away from the courts, as they hear Sharapova yelp, making some men weak in the knees for an athletic, moody Russian girl. Sharapova's in charge, and she's liking it!

She generates fireworks of a different sort for her fans, who may not quite know that she even plays tennis.

And so, July 4 eventually becomes July 5, and the heat that eventually comes back reminds you once again, that it's summer.

Bed Head

Occasionally, you encounter some ideas, some concepts, so different, so surprising, that it rocks the view you had irrevocably.

And so it was with "beds".

For a long time, perhaps nearly all my life, I equated beds with mattresses. After all, when I want to go to bed, I mean the mattress. I suppose the bed could be technically thought of as the supports, what prevents it from sitting on the ground itself.

When you're cheap, like my parents, the metal framework that supports the box springs is what keeps it off the ground. I remember these things being tall enough for a kid to hide under.

I'm thinking of this because I'd like to purchase a bed, which means, in this case, both a mattress and supports.

The last time I tried to do this was horrendous. I went to a local Mattress Discounters, and it was like going to a car dealer. They wanted me to get a bed that day. I couldn't get out of there soon enough. Pressure tactics from a bed salesman.

I'm not even sure what to get for a bed/mattress. I want it to be queen sized, since I've been using the same twin/full size bed for years. It's fine, just a bit small. I remember spending about 60-70 bucks on a mattress, having it tied to my roof, and using that for a few years. The mattress simply sat on the floor.

Bed advertisers like to tell you that you spend 1/3 of your life in bed, so it's worth spending lots of money on a really good bed. Having said that, if a "cheap" bed feels pretty good to you, why spend more?

I don't know what I'll get, but for now, as long as it's not too pricey, and it feels all right, then I think it will be fine.

Review: Ratatouille

It's been said that Pixar, for all its computer generated wizardry, invested its money where it really counts: the storytellers.

Based on the reviews, it seemed Ratatouille would be about a rat that loves to eat. But instead, it becomes a story about a rat that wants to be a great cook, inspired by a cookbook "Anyone Can Cook".

Like many of its Disney cartoon predecessors, it's about a child rebelling against his upbringing. I wonder where this theme is uniquely American. Many cultures place a premium on parental authority and parental love. The kids do what the parents say (in principle) because parents know best. In such societies, elders are held with a good deal of respect.

Once upon a time, before Pixar took over, Disney cartoons often featured a female protagonist, typically wide-eyed and dreamy, but tough and independent, with a disapproving father who eventually realizes the daughter can do whatever she wants, and that's not such a bad thing after all.

Pixar has had a very tough time with that idea. When guys dominate an industry, despite being married, despite having daughters, they invariably write stories with male protagonists, mostly because they observe themselves well, but not women so well, and thus, presumably, they'd write a story that lacked truth or at the very least some verisimilitude of authenticity.

Thus, Toy Story, two male leads. The Incredibles, a male lead and a male enemy. A Bug's Life, male lead. Finding Nemo, two males, and one female. The female is, unusually enough, a kind of comic relief.

Pixar films generally succeed on two fronts. First, they are fabulous to look at. They look realer than real. Even if you aren't engaged in the story, it's fantastic to watch. Second, the stories are fun, because they often appeal to childlike fears and hopes.

Given how most of these films seem to suggest that child knows best, parents love it, perhaps because they can relate to it like a child.

Ratatouille covers a bunch of themes. There's the big one: anyone can cook, even a rat, which is more generally, you can do anything you set your mind to, or more properly, genius can come from anywhere. Second idea is: be good to your friends, no matter who they are. Thus, Linguini, the hapless kid, who can't cook a lick, eventually gives credit where credit is due. Third idea is: family matters, even if they don't understand what's going on. Finally, you're going to suffer setbacks, but persevere.

Oh yes, then there's art, and there's art! Art is meant to be surprising and a revelation, and true to theme number one, anyone can do it (meaning, of course, anyone that's a genius can do it).

Beyond the themes, there's the need for a romance, though romance has never been a Pixar strong suit. Cars is the closest to being a romance, but really, it's about a hotshot kid that learns how to respect elders, and the female lead seems much older. That would be, nonetheless, an intriguing suggestion (young guys liking older women), but usually, the romance is a side story to the goals of the male lead. Indeed, the male's often have a purpose with their lives, and romance ain't it.

In Ratatouille, the only female falls for the gawky male. But really, this is mostly because we need someone who roots for the gawky male, besides Remy, the rat. You see, if it really were a romance, Colette might decide she and Linguini don't have that much in common. Linguini really can't cook, and it was a rat the whole time! But given that premise is so off-the-wall, it wouldn't fit in a normal romantic comedy plot.

Ultimately, what makes Pixar films work is they are so darn clever and thought out. When you work on a movie for years, you can figure out details that a quick movie, written in a few months, filmed in a month, often misses. From early scenes that lay the groundwork for later scenes, to the scenes of rats scampering up and down, to using the gauze effect of the chef's hat, to hair, rat fur, and so forth. There's a lot crammed into a film, and yet, if you're not paying attention, you can simply bathe in a fun story.

The one criticism I've read that's interesting is a comment about accents. Indeed, despite being in Paris, only the real cooks sound French, and fake French at that. Remy, Linguini, the rats, all have American accents. Even so, the critic is British (voiced by Peter O'Toole).

Ratatouille is a dense film, filled with lots of stuff, even if perhaps it's not a particularly deep film. Indeed, most of the characters, other than Remy himself, are basically caricatures. That's where animation can generally be lazy: characterization. Of course, it's for the kids! We're not about to do a Lone Star, John Sayles, multi-character, fare.

This is a idea driven story, and although the characters are likable, they aren't particularly deep, not like, say, Finding Nemo.

Even so, the newness of it all, the desire, like Anton, the critic, to be dazzled, often leaves senses aglow, making you think this was the best one yet, when indeed, it was just a passing fancy, lovely to behold, but fading as time passes.

Juice

Ah, Gabe, how did you get stuck doing this interview?

I suppose it's already over a year old. I think I like the hair better in this interview than other ones.

Mailing It In

When you work in the software industry, you think that anything can be fixed quickly with code. This is often true. A dedicated programmer can change the behavior of a program dramatically, adding features that were not there, provided he or she can get access to the code.

But many other disciplines seem pretty content with the status quo. They figure, stuff works pretty well, why bother? One advantage with the status quo is that once you figured it out, that's it. It's not changing much.

Most apartment complexes have these very tiny mailboxes. The idea is for the postman to open 6 mailboxes simultaneously, and shove the mail into the tiny compartment. Of course, anything larger than a Pringles can would not fit in, so any large package you might hope to receive has to come to you a different way.

Heaven forbid that the apartment complex actually has someone that maintains a mail area 24 hours a day. We can have groceries 24 hours a day because, well, because people are going to buy something. There's no gain for an apartment complex to have this incredibly useful service for you.

But even that wouldn't be necessary if mailboxes were actually a suitable size. Enough to hold, say, a big breadbox. Houses have it a little better. The mailboxes for most houses are bigger. Even so, it's still not that huge.

And yet, despite the proliferation of larger packages being sent by Amazon and other overnight delivery companies, what has been done about handling these packages?

Nothing.

The closest thing you get is paying a place like Mailboxes, etc. to get large packages for you.

In software, this wouldn't happen. Someone would have come up with a solution (which doesn't mean that every solution has been figured out--note that despite UNIX being older than Windows and Windows having been around for years and years, it does not support soft links, using something far inferior--the shortcut).

Oh, you know how it is. It would be so expensive for apartment complexes around the country to actually fix this up. They want to put their big cost down up front, and then never spend a penny again if they can get away with it.

Someone told me about toilets getting backed up. How about that? It's similar to this automatic coffee maker at work. It dispenses a fixed amount of hot water, as having a sensor to know when it gets full is way too complex. So, if the water that's dispensed is wrong, it just flows over. Surely, if we have a bunch of engineers, they can think of a better toilet? But has the design changed much?

The biggest change that I'm aware of is the low-flow toilet, which was meant to conserve water. In, what? Fifty years of toilets? How much has really changed?

To be fair, the nice thing about simple designs is that they are simple. Once you start writing programs to run this or that, then someone has to maintain it, and so forth.

We're in the midst of a computer revolution, that's affected how we get our information, and yet, many things in our lives are still the way it's been since forever. Ultimately, it's money. Software, being easily copied, is often much more malleable than any physical structure.

And speaking of some forms of mail? Why bother? Maybe these companies should merely send PDFs. I could dispose of them more easily, and I wouldn't lose the material if I didn't want to. It's amazing we still use as much paper as we do, because people still can't use computers.

Next time you look at what's advanced, think about all the things that haven't changed in a while, and ask if they're really as good as they could be.

Breakin'

Oldies, but goodies.

Eminem Set to Ragtime

Who knew?

Name of the Rose

There's a Star Trek (TOS) episode titled By Any Other Name, which is a reference to Shakespeare's quote "A rose, by any other name, would smell just as sweet".

Most of us, in the US, take for granted that we have a surname, passed from the father's side down to children. It's so ingrained that it takes a moment to realize that this wasn't always the case. People's surnames, say from England, were often picked from their profession. Thus, Baker, Shoemaker, Taylor, Smith, and so forth.

Scandinavians followed a different tradition, often naming a person by his father's first name. Thus, you might be Jonas Andersson, which would mean, Jonas, son of Anders (or Ander's son). Indeed, the prevalence of names like Anderson came from Swedes that immigrated to the US (and why they're apparently far more common in the US than in, say, England).

The tradition of naming a person after their father is still common in India. Indeed, there are two ways that people pick up a "surname", which I put in quotes, because surnames are not always passed father to son (at least, not in the way you're familiar with). Another common naming tradition is to pick the town or village that the person was born in. I suppose there are names that are based primarily on religion. Many a Sikh has a surname of Singh. I believe those that are Jains (an offshoot of Hinduism) often have a surname of Jain.

Clearly my knowledge of surnames in India is lacking, but the point I want to make is this. Since surnames don't necessarily last more than a generation, there's a premium on the given (first) name. This may be why Indians, who have immigrated to the US, don't adopt Western names. Chinese and Koreans often name their kids with American names (some would say Christian, but Koreans are Christian, but do not name their children Mark or Paul). The Japanese, intriguingly, often do stick with Japanese names (thus, few Bob Watanabes).

Furthermore, where a typical American chooses to abbreviate their first name, as in, B. Smith for Bob Smith, Indians, by contrast, prefer to write Bob S. After all, the last name is the father's name (not sure what women do), so why would you emphasize that? On the other hand, if you are passing a surname generation after generation, you may wish to emphasize your heritage.

If you ever get email from someone Indian, you may notice that it's the surname that's abbreviated, thus, Rajeev Motwani might be abbreviated Rajeev M. Of course, if the person has lived in the US, they may adopt American traditions (but why?) and say R. Motwani.

Ali and Vieux Farka Toure

Mike Birbiglia is a funny comedian. In one of his routines, he says that rappers like to invoke their names. In particular, he says he like Busta Rhymes, who'll invoke his pseudonym ("The cat in the hat, and that is that. Busta Rhymes!"). He wants to do that in jokes: "If Folger's is the best part of waking up, I don't think I want to wake up! Mike Birbiglia!".

This narcissism has made the swim to Africa. Vieux Farka Toure, son of the late Ali Farka Toure, the Mali bluesman, has combined the new and the old to produce, well, songs that sound just like his dad, even as his dad, allegedly, wanted him to be a soldier, rather than follow in his immense footsteps and be a musician.

In one of the songs, Vieux says "Ali Farka Toure, Ali Farka Toure" intoning his father's name as if it were Busta Rhymes.

Lest you think that Vieux, or his father, sang in English. They do not. Mali has dozens of spoken languages, and Ali spoke at least four. Bambara is most widely spoken. Occasionally, especially on his last album, Ali would sing in French, an official language of Mali.

As I've said before, I prefer listening to these songs without really understanding the words, the rhythm of African languages serving as its own instrument. I'm listening to a duet with Toumani Diabate, who Vieux's father also collaborated with. He plays the kora, a harplike instrument, of which Diabate is an acknowledged master. In the Heart of the Moon was a collaborative effort between Ali and Toumani, arranged by Ry Cooder, who "discovered" Ali for the west with Ali's album, Niafunke, which isn't a Malian form of music made famous by George Clinton, but is, instead, a city/town where Ali Farka Toure resided.

Usually, I have to be in the right mood to listen to Toure, usually relaxed and quiet, and that's usually when I appreciate it most.

Maybe Vieux didn't steal the idea from rappers. Maybe it's his form of homage to his father. I don't know. But I think of that joke from Mike Birbiglia when I hear Vieux say his father's name.

Ali Farka Toure. Ali Farka Toure!

Restaurant Review: Bombay

One question I like to ask to folks from India is to tell me the difference between biryani and pullao. These are two common rice dishes in India. Typically, biryani has meat and is a more substantive dish, while pullao is vegetarian, and somewhat lighter.

Some places are known for their biryani. Hyderabad, a city in Andhra Pradesh, in the mid-south of India, is known for its biryani.

I've been working my way through restaurants in this year's Cheap Eats, which is the Washingtonian's special issue on the best "cheap" restaurants. To be fair, these are hardly cheap restaurants. Prices at restaurants, in the US, typically don't vary by orders of magnitude.

You might get a Happy Meal for several dollars, but to get food that's better than McDonald's typically requires you to spend about 7-8 dollars a person, on the main dish. Thus, Cheap Eats focuses on places where the main entree is about twenty dollars or less. Twenty dollars is quite expensive, for most tastes, and really, most restaurants charge 7-14 dollars.

Again, this is simply the entree.

Bombay is a restaurant in White Oak, which is on New Hampshire Avenue. White Oak a strip mall, and not exactly a trendy place. Even so, it appears to have a mix of restaurants, to accompany a Giant food store, and a Sears, a place I used to drop by to make my Discover card payments, back before you could handle it on the Web.

Bombay doesn't look like much on the inside nor the outside. When I went in, the clientele was mostly white. Several people dropped by for take-outs. It just seemed just one step above the Chinese restaurants who, while having places to sit down, do primarily take-out business.

Nevertheless, Cheap Eats liked the place, and makes their picks not always on the decor, but on the food itself (though I'm sure decor doesn't hurt). They suggested biryani, and having had it before, I thought I'd give it a try.

The prices were a bit steep for a restaurant in a run-down strip mall. Dishes were in the low teens, though this is not uncommon for an Indian place. Soups were around three dollars, as were the breads. Lassis and beers around four dollars. I've become more wary of places serving beer at four dollars and more, though it's terribly common.

The rule of thumb for many restaurants appears to be: beers at 3.50 to 4.50 unless you get a large size, wines at 5-6 dollars. Mixed drinks, if there are any, at 7 dollars or more. It's not that any of these drinks should be that expensive. Indeed, there's no particular reason mixed drinks should be that pricey. The alcohol should be cheap because it's used in small quantities. The rest of it is paying for a supply of juices, ginger ale, limes, etc. I suppose you're buying labor and knowledge with mixed drinks.

I decided not to get the alcohol, as that's practically like ordering another small meal or appetizer.

The biryani came out in a karahi, the Indian equivalent of a wok, except, unlike a wok, it tends to be made of copper, and it has rings for handles on the outside, and it's smaller than a wok. Quite frankly, after having some Indian meals where the quantity is somewhat small (though deceptively so, because often after you eat it, you're quite full), the biryani was huge, which offset the fact that it cost about 14 dollars. Indeed, you could eat for two with biryani.

It was a bit wetter than I expected. Perhaps that's because the biryani I've had lately have been at buffets where there's a heat lamp drying stuff out. But, even compared to the biryani I had at a hotel in India, it was wet. Even so, it was pretty tasty, and had lots of chicken.

I had also ordered naan. That was OK, nothing special. It came out a bit after biryani. I suppose ordering naan and biryani together isn't so common, as naan seems like something you use to sop up curries, and biryanis hold up well on their own. But something about ordering naans at Indian restaurants compelled me to get some.

My feeling is that I'd come here to pick up biryani to go in the future, and it would be enough food for two meals.

So my opinion? The chicken biryani was pretty tasty, if a bit wet, and priced a bit high (alas, somewhat typical though). There was plenty of biryani, however, which compensated for the price.

Ben There, Done That

I used to read Joel on Software religiously. (I recently saw a film with Ed Norton and Naomi Watts where he plays a doctor who goes out to China where there's an outbreak of cholera. Anyway, Naomi Watts, who plays the wife, was trying to use the phrase "religiously" in the same way I'm trying to, but of course, she's trying to say it to a nun, and wants to use a different phrase instead. But, I digress).

I'm sure reddit had as much to do with my distractions, and that I've started to peruse sports, and even Gabe's Techmeme.

If I were cool, I'd have an RSS feed, but I find it clutters up way too much, and most of the articles I see seem like crap. I just don't bother. Thus, Joel, who these days writes rather infrequently, is someone that's generally fallen off my radar.

Recently, as in today, he reviewed two books on management. It's intriguing that management always has time to read books about management, but the commonfolk developers rarely find time to read about development. You can read into that as much as you want, as there's certainly many ways to read it.

One of the books he's reading is by a fellow named Ben Casnocha, who had a startup by the time he was 19. I've only met a small handful of people that have been that driven, that young, and still, many of them don't try a startup.

You'd think I'd say something intelligent about his book, or what it must be like to be that young and come up with ideas.

No.

I fixated on something far more inconsequential.

And believe me, it is inconsequential.

It's Ben's name.

A little over a year ago, I met with three of the guys working at Fog Creek. One of the three is named Ben. Ben Kamens graduated from Duke, did an internship, and now works full-time. He's also pretty tall. That's incidental. He's now one of two Ben's at the company, the other one apparently writing a Smalltalk book (I had sent an email to Ben K. and he said no, no, it wasn't that Ben, but the other one. And that one's from Duke too).

Now, Joel's company, is what, maybe 15 people? I had thought he ran 30-40 people, but you need a fair bit of cash influx for that kind of business. Instead, Joel is more frugal, thus requires no VC money. He tries to pick his developers carefully. (One consequence tends to be that you have few to no women). Given that Ben is already an uncommon name, and then having two of them, then to say the phrase "Ben, Ben, Ben" as if he were Jan Brady complaining about the adoration of her older sister, makes you think, does Joel utter this phrase often?

I'm sure he can divide his mental faculties between making a comment about the Ben he's talking about, rather than his employees. And c'mon, the venture-some Ben, who he says is good looking and smart (two qualities that tend to work well together, unless they become insufferable in the process), has a webpage that seems like worship to Ben. Really. Check it out. Looks a little like Tom Brady. Great orthodontics, eh? People who smile too much seem a bit weasly to me.

For some reason, I've taken a perfectly legitimate article of a potentially wunderkind entrepreneur, and blogged about the guy's name. And that it coincidentally is the name of two of Joel's employees. Heck, I bet that other Ben is good looking too!

Of course, it gave me a great excuse for the punny title of this blog entry.

And I feel, as this is the end of the month, I want to catch up to the number of blog entries from May. Got one more day to do it too!

Pumped Up

I was watching, for a few minutes, Wimbledon. Fortunately, even without cable, I can catch a few minutes on the weekends. As usual, along with tea and biscuits, rain was the order of the day at Wimbledon.

The match was between Venus Williams and Akiko Morigami. Japanese women have always fared pretty well, even as they have yet to crack the upper echelon of women players. The last "great" player was Kimiko Date. She could hit her flat shots towards corners, and make slow players look sluggish. But she could also toss dozens of unforced errors. She always struggled against top players like Steffi and Monica, though she managed to eke out a win, here and there. She was a top 10 player, but usually lacked the mental toughness to play in a final.

Date resembles the typical Japanese woman. Reserved with emotions, out there to play. Perhaps the modern players now see how emotional Western players play, and so they imitate, hoping for similar success.

Thus, Morigami appeared to have her hopes dashed when she went for a winning shot, only for it to fail to clear the net.

Only in women's tennis (and figure skating) are tiny skirts still the norm. Morigami had a daintly outfit, contrasted with Venus's garish combination, which included hip-hugging short shorts, and a shirt that exposed her sports bra (apparently tastefully covering her body, without a hint of titillation). It's the kind of urban look tempered for Wimbledon that the William sisters bring.

Despite the dainty frills at the bottom of her skirt, Morigami appears more than capable of hitting hard shots, and indeed, despite losing the first set 6-2, has come back 4-1 (could simply be one break) in the second.

I briefly saw Amelie Mauresmo complete her match, with her broad shoulders.

Unlike the men, the women seem to have backslid some. The power in the game doesn't seem like the chancy strikes of the days of Seles and Graf. What has come in its place though, are the journeymen women (journeywomen?) who now have more oomph in their shots. It wasn't so long ago that you'd see women play like Chris Evert or Tracy Austin, where steadiness and flat shots, not power and spin, were the order of the day.

But that oomph isn't the dazzling displays of a decade ago, when the rest of the field tried desperately to catch up, to learn to hit at a pace that would keep them even with Venus and Serena, with Jennifer and Mary Pierce. The big babe days of Lindsay Davenport seem to have passed. The players of today are more mobile, and hit somewhat less hard.

Has tennis faded compared to 15 years ago? Or is that an American view where the top players aren't American?

Perhaps it says something that I only watched twenty minutes of Wimbledon, so far.

I, Phone

Yesterday, the IPhone came out. I suppose I should have known that throngs of fans would line up at Apple Stores and AT&T shops around the country, camping out as if it were a Wii or tickets to the latest, hottest band.

Given the 600 dollar price tag for the 8G model (seems anyone willing to spend the money won't stoop for the 4G model), a price tag comparable to the PS3, and some initial negative publicity (offset by more positive publicity as time drew near yesterday's release), it was surprising that there were lines. But Apple knows how to hype its own stuff (other than AppleTv) better than any company.

Would Apple deliberately undersupply like the Wii? The Wii was notoriously rare in March, with stores having no new stocks for over a month. Apple's not known for holding out, and such a strategy might wear thin on people wanting to buy it as soon as possible. Certainly, a Star Wars like strategy of getting a certificate for a product months after Christmas was something Apple wanted to avoid.

While the local AT&T stores ran out of the 8G models quickly, the Apple stores seemed to have plenty on hand. The stores closed for a few hours while the prepped up, and lots of extra employees were on hand.

Did Sony ever have such a release? Doubtful.

It's too bad Apple had to tie its hands by offering the phone with a service. I'm sure it had little choice on the matter. We'd all be worshiping Apple if it would free us from these megaliths of phone power, offering some truly innovative way to make phone calls.

For now, I'll stick with my Samsung, the budget version. I may get woo'ed by something better, but sometimes it's nice to simply have a phone that's just a phone.

(I know. The future is something like the IPhone. A computer that's a phone, MP3 player, camera, and Internet connection. But I'll wait until that eventuality happens).

Obsession and Pizza

Pizza. We think of it as Italian, but it feels quintessentially American.

If you're not in a major city, then pizza is what a place like Pizza Hut makes, or Papa John's. These are pizza for the masses. It's the McDonald's of pizza. Tasty. Convenient.

Completely lacking in passion.

There, I did it. Used the word passion.

But here, I mean an obsession with making something different, raising it to a level of art, though I think of this much like gingerbread houses being raised to a level of art. At some point, no matter how beautiful, no matter how ingenious, there is something a bit fundamentally amateurish about gingerbread houses. I feel the same way about pizza. It's like elevating beer. It can be done. It has been done. But somehow, it doesn't feel like wine.

To that end, a fellow named Jeff devoted a webpage to his six year adventure to reproduce the pizza made at his favorite NY pizzeria, Patsy's. Clearly, getting hired to work there would be the easiest way to figure it out. But he did it the hard way. Through years of trial and error.

And the result?

It is hard! The easy pizza you see the folks making at the corner pizzeria doesn't even come close to how hard it is to make top level pizza.

And to reiterate. If you ate the best pizza, you might think, so what? Is it slightly burnt? Eh, it's just odd pizza. I recall a friend who claimed he liked Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese. The original. Not any of the fancy successors. Presumably not even the real thing (though he would have been enough of a foodie that he could appreciate the real thing). He grew up with this glop, but that's what he remembers and loves. I imagine pizza is very much like that.

I'm reminded of this article (which is hard to get, so look it up in the Google cache based on the guy's URL) because I went to Mia's Pizza in Bethesda. This is one of the few DC pizza places that strives to make pizza at the next level, unlike, say, California Pizza Kitchen, which reimagines pizza as something else, replete with unusual toppings.

I'm also reminded of it because Justin recently went to NYC with his SO and they sampled some of these pizzas, which he claims is so far removed from what we normally call pizza that it shouldn't even be called that (OK, he didn't exactly say that, but he is prone to this kind of exaggeration, so I feel justified, or should I say, justinified, to say it).

I have no idea if I'd ever attempt to make such a pizza (answer is no), but it stands as a testament to human obsession to create something exemplary, and to do so in a way that pays homage to science and engineers everywhere. Observation and trial and error, and a lot of devotion to making the perfect pie.

Marat the Wild

Roger Federer is doing his part to win Wimbledon again. Not so long ago, we were proclaiming Sampras as the best ever, even as his attempts at the French were not even worth mentioning. No one expected Federer to take the mantle of possibly-the-greatest-ever from Sampras so soon after Sampras.

In the next round, he's slated to meet with Marat Safin. It wasn't so long ago that people thought Safin might be the Chosen One. He had crushed Sampras in the US Open final, making Sampras look slow and ineffective. Safin could serve, and he could his groundies.

But like many unpredictable types, most notably, Goran Ivanisevic, Marat is up and down. He possesses the kind of power to win, but can lose to anyone. His concentration isn't always there. One could argue, with reason, that Federer is more talented, that even a guy like Marat Safin, at his best, couldn't beat Federer on an average day.

After all, it's been a while since Safin was at his best. Last year, he suffered injuries and was trying to come back. But I suppose, if anyone who gets really hot one day and has an outside shot of upsetting Federer, it would be Safin. I haven't seen him play, but he has made it through a few rounds, so that suggests Safin's game is not too bad.

Let's see how it fares.

O'Reilly Oddness

I shouldn't have been so harsh on Michael Fitzgerald and his book. I forgot O'Reilly has some editorial ideas that make their books tough to read. The biggest one is "Chapter 2 should summarize the language in one chapter", which should really go into an appendix. Someone who has a pretty good idea of programming could easily read that.

It's bad for beginners to have such a chapter at the beginning because it's completely intimidating, and scares readers off.

In my mind, "quick tours" are a bad idea.

Book Review: Learning Ruby

O'Reilly books vary a lot in quality. Often, they try to find some qualified authors, but I think sometimes they find a cool author (I recall they had this teenage dude write a book). You'd think, with all these books, they'd have some quality control. The one thing about O'Reilly is that they hit some of the more obscure parts of the language that most authors, frankly, know nothing about, so they don't write about it.

I'm reading parts of Michael Fitzgerald's book Learning Ruby. Here's typical crap.

Earlier I referred to x as a local variable. What does that mean? It means that the local variable has a local scope (context). For example, when a local variable is defined inside of a method or a loop, its scope is within the method or loop where it was defined. It doesn't have a useful life beyond that.

There are so many things wrong with this--believe me, I see this all the time.

There's a weird habit where a teacher wants to explain something simple, and ends up referring to something more complex to explain something simple.

Here are a few words, Fitzgerald fails to define: scope, context, loop, method. Finally, he says "doesn't have a useful life beyond that" anthropomorphizing the heck out of local variables.

Does he give an example of a local variable? Does he explain why anyone would want local variables? Does he say what a context is?

He falls into a common trap for programming writers. He explains what is. He doesn't explain why it is. Indeed, I imagine Fitzgerald whining to his editors "Why do I have to explain something so easy?" and then doing a half-ass job.

Technically, there's nothing wrong with his statement (except the horribly vague "doesn't have a useful life after that"), but it's awful nonetheless.

If a reasonable programmer were given the list: local variable, scope, context, loop, method, and asked which was the easiest to explain, I suppose they might pick "local variable". So why on earth would you explain it in terms of the other terms?

And then he refers to duck typing which again is awful. Everyone in Ruby uses the phrase, so he has to stick it in. Did he even define what a type was?

If he assumes we know Java, then he should say "Local variables in Ruby work pretty much like they do in Java". If he assumes that the reader is a programming newbie, this is total dreck.

How did this ever pass an editorial review?

Review: Domku

When you go to certain parts of DC, you start to see a greater prevalence of metal fences, for lack of a better word, that people use to block windows and doors from vandals that might break in. Such neighborhoods see more than their share of crime.

Domku is situated in such a neighborhood, but at least, it's not the kind of warzone that some cities (East St. Louis, I'm told) have become. The buildings seem bright. Domku is located in neighborhoods with churches, Carribean food, an Ethiopian place. Indeed, it appears wedged between a liquor store on one side, and some religious building on another. Just beside that is someone's residence.

It seems rather out of place in this neighborhood. From its modern font design, to its coffeehouse-like interiors, with branches decorating the walls, conveying almost a shrine of nature worship. You see a strange melange of architectural ideas. Chandeliers with several bulbs out. Long couches that seem second or third hand.

It reminds me of College Perk, but with a bit more space, a bit more class.

The place serves Scandinavian/East European food. Since I was there around lunch time, and since they have brunch on the weekends, and since I like breakfast food, I had two of their offerings. One was a thin pancake, with onions and some kind of sausage. The other was a dish made with grits, cheese, and an egg--some kind of a bake.

What I liked about Domku is the portions aren't too large. I had the equivalent of two dishes, and still, I wasn't that full. I wasn't stuffed, which I'm starting to believe is the key to eating. I also had a Pom Fizz, which is pomegranate juice, champagne and something else. Not too bad. A variation on the mimosa. (Friday, I had a Chambord margarita. I discovered that, from my mimosa making adventure, that Chambord is a make of raspberry liquer, so at least I knew what a "Chambord" magarita was).

I've read that Domku is owned by an Asian American, its cook, African American, and its food, Scandinavian. I believe I saw the owner, a woman wearing pig tails, with mostly unaccented English. The patrons seemed sparse. The prices are a touch high, so I wonder if this artsy restaurant might not exactly be "right" for its neighborhood, though I'm sure the prices of renting are far cheaper. I had overheard someone who had wanted to give the place a try for a while, and arrived there.

The patrons, what few were there, was a good mix. One group was African American. One group appeared to be Latino. The other one was white.

As I entered, a little girl, sitting at the bar asked one of the waiters if they knew who I was (clearly not, since I had never been there before, though with low probability, I could have known them in some other context). The waiter, who found the question amusing (surely, he knows almost none of his guests) said she was right, he did not know who I was.

It's worth giving this place a try. It's a bit different, and I didn't try the gravlax, which is cured salmon, often used in appetizers, but presumably worth trying at a Scandinavian place. They also had Swedish meatballs. I also didn't try that.

The waiters seemed nice enough. I learned that it's really wDomku which means "a little house" in some language, the "w" being pronounced something like an "f". They had been open a little over two years.

It's pleasant place to try out, even if it's a touch of a hike to get to.

Horn of Plenty

It seems nearly every culture has a tradition of food, and despite the fact that most Americans, at the very least, has plenty to eat, a family is judged by how much they can stuff their guests. I remember, years ago, when I would eat at some (Indian) friend's place, and they would always say "Eat up, eat up!", an exclamation, no doubt, heard by other cultures. The grand irony was that there wasn't a great deal of food, so you had to be a bit frugal, otherwise the food would be gone.

In cultures that egg on people to eat food, which is basically every culture, the notion that you'd get fat from eating too much is not a concern. Indeed, it suggests that pigging out is good, and as a good host, you should encourage such behavior. To be fair, India, for example, seems to lack the super-obese with any number, so feeding people more food doesn't seem to cause adversity.

I noticed, last night, when I was invited to an Indian couples house that we were encouraged to eat the food. Indeed, even as we finished, they insisted on serving more food, even to the point of scooping food even as we politely declined.

There's etiquette on both sides. When people serve food, the guests have to proclaim how tasty the food is (fortunately, the food was tasty) and they have to complete their plate. In such cultures, presumably to say you were on a diet and couldn't eat that much would be considered an insult. On the other hand, pigging yourself out would, I imagine, be considered insulting as a guest.

I'm reminded of a scene in The Nutty Professor where the Klumpps (or whatever) have a family dinner, and everyone takes huge, huge portions. I would assume, in most culture, taking huge portions might be considered a bit scary. The assumption is the guests will be modest, because they don't want to be seen as too needy, and the hosts have to insist on the guests to overcome this false modesty.

I recall a (Chinese) friend who decided to take Chinese classes to get easy A's. In this class, the teacher explained that Chinese etiquette requires a host to offer a gift or food several times, and the guest to politely refuse three times before finally accepting. Believe me, this tradition is still quite true. Both sides must show they are put off, one side insisting on the gift, and the other side being distressed at having to accept before finally taking it, because they don't with to offend the host, even if they wanted it in the first place.

My friend thought this was folly. If you want it, say yes. None of this beating around the bush until you finally get what you want. I must admit I believe this too. When other people insist on paying (even if it should be my treat), I end up letting them pay.

Occasionally, I'm surprised, pleasantly I'll tell you, when I go to a restaurant that doesn't try to give you absurd amounts of food. I just went to Domku, and they give you food, and it's not too tiny, but it's certainly not so filling that you can't even move.

I doubt society will change to this notion of just serving enough. Traditions tell people how they ought to behave, but sometimes being generous isn't the best thing after all.

Riotous Bill Bailey

Trust me, unless you've ever heard of Bill Bailey (and I haven't), you haven't seen anything like this. Bill Bailey re-invents the British national anthem (he's British) as one of those moody, angst-ridden, pop-indie pieces. Humor's always been about putting disparate ideas in a mix, and realizing the humor in it. In the process, Bailey pokes fun at anthems, and the kind of self-important, "woe is me" artists that produce not only this kind of music, the the video backdrop that you see (I recall watching "Doves" from Britain do something like this).

Take a gander.

Gnarls and the Theramin

The funny part, beyond the uncanny imitation of a voice via a theramin (this is an instrument used in the old Frankenstein movies, that creates other-worldly sounds, and had a few top practitioners) is the Google search at the end. Instead of simply typing "theramin", they type it in the Jeopardy-like "What is a theramin?".

Dramatic Rodent

Is dramatic rodent the new lolcat?

Gabe It My All

Here's another "Gabe" interview.

I wonder if Gabe ever thinks "Why doesn't someone ask me anything else besides 'How the hell does Techmeme' work?". Perhaps he'd like to be asked about dwarf tossing. Or maybe whether he's hotter than David Heinemeier Hansson? Geek hotness, now there's a market Gabe could corner. Somehow people are always kissing him. Doesn't this deserve a booty call? Use that Ph.D!

Oh yeah, he's never referred to as "Dr" Rivera. No one asks him what his Ph.D. was all about. No one asks him about grand Chau-Wen-ges. Or about Joshua Burdick. Or Clyde Kruskal. Or how it was like pumping gas for the first time in Maryland.

Instead poor Gabe is subjected to the usual humdrum of questions. I think this should motivate him to create a completely different site. Perhaps it can be finding good restaurants. That still needs lots of work. The real problem is there's no good audience to go there. But the great news is that Gabe already has an audience that is technically literate. Maybe he could get them to do stuff.

Does anyone ask him why he has no middle name? Or how he loves making chocolate cake? Or why he likes Frank Black?

No, it's always "What algorithm do you use?". Even Sergey Brin seems to get spared these kinds of questions. (What algorithm does Google use for search?).

How about "Gabe, can you say 'WeSmirch' three times without cracking a smile?'. I think not.

Get Out of My Dreams

Ah, Billy Ocean, what on Earth did your song even mean?

I was listening to the radio as I do most every day I come to work. They've been playing this commercial. A deep-voiced African-American sounding fellow comes on, with music typical of Barry White, talking about the misery that was the gas lines of the 70s. During the time, gas prices were rising to a dollar a gallon compelling the government to control gas prices. Somehow, this also lead to gas shortages, which, in hindsight, didn't make much sense.

The commercial suggests the government may institute similar consequences and that common citizens should protest any such moves. Of course, car manufacturers are against the idea and this was the commercial produced.

There's almost a hint of racism, suggesting this music and this period was awful. Disco, bad hair, bad clothing, and high gas prices. Why, we wouldn't want to go back to those times, would we? It's not explained (of course) why such lines were there to begin with. Maybe, just maybe, the gas companies caused the shortages to protest the price controls? That would almost make sense. Get the public upset, and then the government would have to relent.

In any case, the music is soothing, it almost makes you think, were the 70s that bad?

Silence of the Lambs (Spoilerless review: Killer of Sheep)

All the more remarkable given that it's both a student film and shot in the 70s. It doesn't have to feel like it evokes the period because it was made in the period. Feels much older than its thirty year age, probably because it was shot in black and white, and probably because the 70s seem so long ago.

Rather than push a narrative plot, the camera is content to observe, and yet, as naturalistic as some shots are, there are unusual scenes that tell you a film is being shot. The timeless quality may say much about how certain things haven't changed, including attitudes between the genders in African American culture.

Doesn't really try to explain why this family is poor, or why they struggle just to get by. Like the sheeps, Stan and his family don't realize the direness of their situation. Early on, he's asked why he doesn't kill himself, one nod the film has to explain what keeps people moving on.

Though life doesn't seem to get better, people seem content. Kids figure prominently, even as they aren't major characters. Their play shows self-destructive tendencies, and that being tough is often a mere bluff.

Music plays a crucial role in this film, with classical music, ironic songs about what it means to be an American, and a song about "this bitter Earth" which is played twice.

Though the film drags, it is nonetheless fascinating, as the message is so subtle that you are left piecing together what you've seen.

And the sheep. So lyrical, so mindless, and eventually, so unaware what is lying ahead of it. Much like the people that fill this film.

Beet It

Is Gabe really 34 already? I guess I'm a few years older so it shouldn't be so surprising.

When I knew Gabe, I wouldn't have thought he'd be so interested to be in the public limelight as he is now. Gabe used to be far more hesitant with his speech as if he were thinking about what he was saying and saying it at the same time, with his brain occasionally reining in his speech, so that the result was half-stumbled, half-said. If you hear him in early interviews, you get that sense.

You can see, even in the interview above, that Gabe is often on the verge of cracking up, as if there's some inside joke that he's in on, or perhaps he finds the tie the person is wearing oddly amusing, before he goes back and tries to answer the question. You can tell, of course, that Gabe is pretty guarded about how he does Techmeme and related sites. That makes sense, I suppose, since it is how he's currently making a living. Would someone, hearing just snippets of what he does be able to piece together something comparable?

I'm sure Gabe would think "no", but even so, he's not going to spill the beans on how it's done.

Techmeme, in case I haven't mentioned it, is news headline aggregator. As Gabe points out, it's a bit like Google News because it's automated, but where Google applies some other algorithm, Gabe uses blogs to determine what is newsworthy.

For some reason, every interview he has seems obsessed with finding out how he does it. Perhaps it's because there's not that much to ask? If you check out Flickr, you'll see that Gabe apparently gets kissed a lot. Lipstick and Gabe's cheeks seem a perfect match.

It's surprising to me, given his interest in photography, that he hasn't posted more to his Flickr account.

In any case, Gabe seems to be improving his interview skills. I doubt he'll ever get to that super polished stage (the guy who is interviewing him is almost slimy smooth, not like, say Steve Jobs who somehow surpasses that, and doesn't seem quite as slimy).

Next time you meet up with him, ask him about dwarf tossing. He probably won't get it entirely, but it's a bit of an in-joke.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

I vaguely recall this show from the 70s starring Robert Conrad. It was set, if memory serves, during WW2.

But that's not what this is about.

It's a review of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (I call it KOS from now on).
In KOS, Charles Burnett, the director, chronicles the life of Stan and his family. To give you a sense of the history, this was a student film running about an hour and a half. This was filmed in 1977, when a little film called Star Wars came out.

The film has a timeless quality. Because it's in black and white, it feels, at times, much like it's the 1950s or the 1940s instead of the mid-70s.

There is no plot, per se. It shows snippets of the life of Stan, a hardworking man, whose trying to do well for his family, but in the end, struggles in poverty. After some time, you see that he works in a slaughterhouse where he slaughters sheep. Among the few white characters (with no speaking parts) are the other folks in the slaughterhouse.

These scenes occupy very little screentime, but have a lyrical quality, as the sheep don't realize they are being slaughtered. I suspect, with Stan working there, that Charles Burnett lays some blame of the plight of African Americans (effectively, the sheep) on African Americans themselves.

Burnett is not at all overtly political. It doesn't give a particular reason why these folks are struggling, merely that they are. The characters don't ascribe much blame, not to the white folks, for their situations. Indeed, by spending most of its time in black communities, you see kids that seem on the verge of destroying themselves, though mostly in the name of play.

Early on, kids are tossing stones at signs, at railcars, at one another. We're not even to the point where they imagine they'll be NBA stars. All the while, they lack the means to get ahead. The choices seem to be: stealing, killing someone, gambling, and working hard. Working hard, while given some credibility, is contrasted with its general ineffectiveness. To be fair, the other ways (gambling and stealing) don't appear to work well except people seem to be dressed "better" (at least, in a 1970s urban sort of way).

Most of the times, we observe. Kids are pretty anonymous, but may indicate the cycle of doing nothing. The parents do nothing. The kids do nothing. In one scene, the kids are playing, two older girls are doing disco, hips colliding, when a kid rolls in on his bike and insults the girls. They knock him off his bike, and he begins to cry and runs off, the front tire of his bike having also fallen off. The girl yells at him to get his "raggedy bike".

Another scene has a kid sitting underneath a train, as other kids attempt (unsuccessfully) to push the train so it rolls over the kid. The kid seems to think it's all in fun. Another scene has kids throwing stones at one another, like a scene from 300, with improvised shields.

Kids play in abandoned buildings as if it were a war zone. And yet, the tone isn't very bleak. Other than the taunting, the kids seem to be having fun. They may represent the innocent sheep that are being sent to the slaughter.

Many of the observations made then seem to hold true now, the grumblings of trying to make it in the world, the isolated view of the outside world, women who yell at their men, men who yell at their women, worrying about being presentable (scenes of men picking their afro, women trying to put makeup on).

Burnett overlays music from pieces of the 70s, to older pieces, including a song about "What America Means To Me", which seems ironic (the usual virtues of America, overlaid with the empty lives people are leading), as well as some classical music.

If anything, the sheep represents an innocence that is perhaps mythical, innocence being destroyed.

Burnett has a delicate touch. He lingers on many scenes letting us watch the struggle (one scene where two guys bring a heavy engine down the stairs to a truck, until, due to injury, they don't push the engine far enough in, and it falls and cracks, making the entire effort futile--it's done with such a light touch, you don't think it's symbolic, even though it is).

Burnett also creates bizarre scenes that jar the otherwise naturalistic feel. The daughter that wears a dog mask. Kids coming out of a hole from a house. Long shots of kids running, throwing stones, standing on roofs.

You feel, at times, that the film is going to burst out into violence. Someone's going to get killed. In one scene, kids jump across rooftops, and you think that yeah, this is how urban kids might play, but no one gets killed, no violence. It's all the more amazing as many a director falls to the temptation of violence because they can get great impact (Scorsese, Tarantino). Much harder to make a film that seems to suggest there will be violence, but doesn't have much of it.

I suppose one could point out things that don't appear. Remember when Spike Lee made a film without drugs and was criticized. There isn't really much drug use in the film, nor, as mentioned earlier, criticism of white America.

Even so, it portrays a society that tries to make do, but in the end, is living without much hope, and yet, somehow, it's not relentlessly downbeat. As much as their lives are bleak, they go on living. Indeed, it's suggested early on "why don't you kill yourself", and yet, they don't. The pain of living is not so great. But perhaps, like the sheep, they have no idea they are being slaughtered.

He Works Hard For the Money

You know, when Donna Summers came out with the song She Works Hard for the Money, it came out with a picture (did she have a video too?) of a waitress being exhausted. Years later, I heard this was really a song about prostitutes (I'm told a slang expression for this in Hindi is "randy" or "rundy" or somewhere in between). I think the waitress idea works better.

But that's beside the point.

A while back, a guy from India said, over dinner, that he believed hard work could overcome talent. He claimed Einstein was not so brilliant, that hard work could overcome all. Several of us argued against that point.

I've come to the conclusion, much later on, that even if we could quantify what being smart or brilliant or talented meant (something that's quite difficult, I'd say), the argument assumes that hard work trumps all. You work hard, and you will figure out things that the brilliant folks figure out. Slow and steady wins the race.

But here's the kicker. Not everyone is willing to put in hard work. Hard work, by its very name, is hard.

To be more specific, we had him do some stuff with databases. Now, he hadn't done anything with databases in a while--since college really. No need, I suppose. And he had either forgotten a great deal, or never properly learned it the first time around.

Now, it's hard to become really good at anything. It helps if you already know someone bright. Even if you try to teach yourself (some people are great at this), you don't know what you should be learning. I was watching a person practice serves. It looked all wrong (from my view), and all the practice in the world wasn't necessarily going to tell that person they had to fundamentally change the way they were doing things.

Even if he had gotten a book on SQL and read it cover to cover (money became an issue there, so he wouldn't even consider that idea), he'd not know how best to, say, make the queries run fast.

Here was a guy who claimed hard work would pay off, but it's not like he goes home and learns how to do this the best he can. He doesn't read source code of implementations. He probably doesn't know that some SQL implementations allow you to inspect how the queries are executed. Indeed, lacking the money for his own computer or an Internet connection, he would have a hard time, I imagine, trying to explore this on his own.

It's not to say you can't learn this stuff without a computer or without the Internet, but the Internet is now becoming the way to conveniently learn, provided you know where to look (which is tough too).

The point is that this didn't interest him. He wasn't willing to spend a great deal of time to become an SQL master, and probably didn't even know how to get to that point. It would be so much easier, don't you know, if someone simply told him. This is how many people (including myself) would like to learn. Why bother actually finding the information? Let someone else do the hard work.

But this is not what Einstein and other hard-working guys did. They spent a great deal of time thinking, really thinking, about the problem at hand. When they got stuck, they learned how to get around it. Perhaps they studied something else for a while, realizing that would help them get better.

Indeed, one might argue that talent and hard work are linked. To have talent is to be able to work hard. Each can be a limiting factor. Working hard can push talent further. But you can't be amazingly talented with no work at all. You have to devote some time to it.

So you might ask, why are talented people more likely to succeed? One reason is that it comes easier. Let's say, within a day's worth of work, you can figure out the basics of some complex math theory, that would take someone else a week. It's a lower threshold to cross. What would cause the person to want to spend a week?

Part of wanting to spend this effort is interest. If you're not interested, then why bother? Look at Google's main page. It is considered the model of economy. But it has to do with laziness. Sergey Brin didn't want to learn HTML like an expert. He thought it was a useless thing to learn.

To tie the example back to this guy, what causes a person to work late? He might argue that if he spent far more time, he'd catch up. OK, I could buy that. But would he spend that many more hours at work to keep up? Probably not. Again, money, transportation, fatigue, all work against him. But finally, it's interest. Suppose you had a brilliant person who could get all his work done in four hours a day. Suppose a less brilliant but harder working person would require 14 hours a day to accomplish the same.

Would they spend the 14 hours a day? Or would they stretch that time out. That extra time costs money. You'd have to stay longer at work. You wouldn't be able to enjoy life. And frankly, you might be miserable. Those who work exceedingly hard give up a lot to spend this kind of time.

But I have to give credit to this guy for making me think about it. After all, it's given me a lot to blog about :).