why my niece is cool

A brief email exchange between my niece and me illustrates why she’s cool. She fully understands what I’m saying not only is not annoyed by it but agrees. I’m not going to get into justifying why this issue irks me. Anyway, start at the bottom..

—- Forwarded Message —-
From: NIECE
To: Craig
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 9:41:46 AM
Subject: Re: moving

i wouldn’t have you do that… i’m almost done packing actually so no worries. i may just have little things like clothes and what not to fold in the morning. so yeah

see you tomorrow i would say be here around 10 if that’s not too early for you

Thanks again

— On Thu, 8/28/08, Craig  wrote:

From: Craig
Subject: Re: moving
To: NIECE
Date: Thursday, August 28, 2008, 8:10 PM

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BTW Saturday I am helping you move, not pack. I want to be clear about that. I expect all your stuff packed and ready to go and will happily move it to my car.

This is just a pet peeve of mine that we can perhaps avoid tickling.

Craig

netflix suggestion: purchasing single rentals

Yeah, I’m thinking about netflix again.

Sorry Kristen you made me think about it but if it makes you feel better I did the same to my buddy Jess.

Let’s say I borrow a movie from someone on netflix and I hold onto it too long. Perhaps as an apology I could “purchase” a single/one-shot rental for them. I would still have to return the DVD to netflix via the post but I wouldn’t hold back my buddy from making progress on their queue.

Hmm..this would probably hurt netflix more as it could increase the number DVDs “checked-out” and not making their way to other netflix customers. But it could expose more people to netflix and create more customers.

matlab, perl, python

I was chatting it up with coworkers today

me: “The more I learn about matlab the more I understand why python programmers complain about Perl.”

Adam: “Yes, matlab is the Perl of scientific languages.”

ha!

I may have found my new hero

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Chi?urn=oly,98718

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/speed_skating/news?slug=dw-cheekwins021306&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

I’d want my sister to date this guy.

cubical tent

I want a cubical tent, with a sunroof. What am I talking about? I like working in a cave–heck check out my apartment  (“The Mancave”).  Imagine a tent top fitted to your cube that would give you a roof. There would be flaps you could open up to talk to people, even a flap on the top to vent and let in “light” (fluorescence).  I see it in a medieval style with a big streamer off to the side.

Yes, a cubical tent.

Death can make you act weird

In the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of illness and death around–well at least in my neck of the woods. Recently at work one person had to race home because his mother was admitted to the hospital.  Yesterday the parent of a wonderful coworker of mine passed away. He was planning on flying home because the parent was in the hospital but, now…well, I can’t just leave it there…he’s still flying home but it must be tough on him. I wonder if he thinks “what if”. “What if” I went home early.

Since this is my blog I will make this a little about me. Death does make you act weird. So far I’ve only encountered death among the people I know, so I know it makes me act weird toward them. Here’s what’s going through my head: “Do I act normal around them? Do I try to talk to them about it?” I guess that’s a bit of my ego–I want to help them. But, alas, for those people with loss we might not be the person they need to work through the problem with. No, perhaps that’s someone else or merely on their own terms alone. Perhaps what they need from certain people is distraction. Fun. Some normality. Until you figure that out, or perhaps they just plain tell you, you struggle with them.

Death can make you act weird.