Truer Words - A Journal

Happy New Year, One and All

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 15:22:11 GMT

2006 was a good year for me and mine, in many ways.

To all of my family near and far, to my ecclesia here and worldwide, to all of my friends new and old, close or distant:

Happy
New Year!

Hoping 2007 will be even better, for all of us...

Happy Birthday, Clark!

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 17:09:43 GMT

And congratulations, too.

Saturday in Lancaster

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:34:15 GMT

Breakfast with Larry

Saturday morning I was up at 6:30 so I'd be ready (and fully conscious) by the time Larry Fox picked me up for breakfast.

Who's Larry? A voice from my past, that's who.

Background...

For three-and-a-half years I was a consultant to RR Donnelley, primarily to the facility in Old Saybrook, CT. When I started working with them, they received film from their customers, stripped it up, and created printing plates. I helped them migrate from that traditional workflow to Computer-to-Plate (CTP). By "help" I mean that I was in charge of training the employees, designing the workflow, reviewing and recommending purchases, meeting with their clients, making sure the jobs were finished on time (which was very hard to do in the beginning), solving problems, meeting with the vendors (especially Creo, now part of Kodak) and supporting the sales people.

Larry was part of the core team that was retrained in the digital workflow. I worked very closely with him and just a few others, and eventually that core group was split up across the three shifts and were able to handle most of the work that came through the department.

In early 1996, I accepted an offer to work at RRD as a 'technical supervisor'. It was a huge cut in pay (but still not a bad paycheck), but I really wanted to see the project through to the end. To accept this job I had to turn down an offer for my dream job at Creo in British Columbia. It wasn't an easy decision to make, but for one thing: Corinne was out here, and I didn't want to be 3,000 miles away. Plus, I wanted to see the project at RRD through to the end. (I sometimes wonder how I'm doing in that parallel universe where I chose the other path.) Absolutely no regrets, though: I'm happy with those parts of my life that are under my illusion of control.

In early 1997, I quit RRD. It was almost exactly a year from when I took the job. My boss (the manager of the print side of the facility, second in command in the entire building) didn't like a report I wrote and asked me to change the numbers to make them look better. He wouldn't take no for an answer, so I walked.

I haven't seen Larry, Bill, Dick, or even Art C. since then.

Larry picked me up in front of the hotel, and we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. I had a great time! Larry looks good, and he seems to be enjoying his new IT job at a local college campus. He misses New England's weather, but says he's managed a lot more cycling down here than he did in CT.

I guess we ate and talked for 90 minutes (+/-), then he drove me over to the (small) campus where he works. It's brand new, and is right behind the gargantuan RRD Lancaster East plant.

Larry had three generalizations about Lancaster. I definitely agree with two of them, but I don't really know about the third (maybe, maybe not).

The corn in Lancaster County is unbelievably good. It's really funny that this was his first point, as Corinne always says the same thing.
There are "mountains of good food" in Lancaster, so there are a lot of fat people.
There are a lot more smokers in Lancaster than in CT. That seems like it might be true, I've certainly seen quite a few, but that's anecdotal so I'm not sure.

Lunch with Clark

After he dropped me off, I worked while waiting for Clark to show up. He was driving down from Hershey so we could have lunch at 11:30.

We went to the Taj Mahal and sat in the parking lot for a little while because they open at noon. No problem, there was plenty to talk about (Clark is always interested in what and how Macrobyte is doing).

Lunch was delicious: they had a buffet! This my second or third time at this restaurant, and I'm pretty convinced that they have the best Indian food outside of India.

After lunch we (accidentally) drove around for thirty minutes before finding MacHeads just one exit up from the restaurant. I'm happy to say that their advice for Clark regarding a couple of old, dead iBooks was the same as my own: sell them for parts on eBay.

Back at the hotel, I wheeled out my bike so he could have a look, and realized one thing immediately: it's very badly in need of a bath. :-( It's only been a little over 100 miles, honest!

Oh, one other thing: Clark has an excellent car. Vroom! Like, I could feel it pushing me back into the seat like only a real sports car can. (Jed, if you read this: I said the same thing about his car that you've said about your truck a few times!)

Riding Solo

After Clark dropped me off I worked for a couple hours and then went for another ride at 4:00. The weather was fantastic again: 65° and sunny. Clouds were starting to come in from the west, but the rain wasn't supposed to start for a few hours.

I tried to go off in a different direction than yesterday, but somehow ended up on 772 again, headed east. Two years ago when we were hear in the Summer, staying at a different hotel in a different part of town, I found myself on 772 every day except when I rode up to meet Corinne at the cat show. This road really is a 'collector'!

There were two riders about 1/4 mile behind me. I kept trying to 'shake' 772 and ending up back on it again, and eventually I saw them up ahead of me. I caught up with them and chatted for a little while. When I asked about any big hills in the area to help with my workout, they both exclaimed at the same time, "You're on it!" Yeah, it figures. This is flatland!

My intent was to ride forty miles, but the clouds seemed to be coming in and I didn't want to be caught out in the middle of farm country (where I really am the tallest structure around!) during a thunderstorm. Ended up with 32.64 miles at 18.2 mph.

Dinner with Corinne

For dinner, Corinne and I had wings from Lancaster Brewing Company (takeout) and tenderloin tips subs from Villa Nova (takeout, again). Those subs are pricey, but they're really good. (Corinne has perfected their recipe, though, so I don't really feel like it was worth the price.)

Great day, and thanks again to Larry and Clark for the meals and conversation!

Happy Birthday, Clark!

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 12:29:31 GMT

It's Clark's birthday today, but he isn't very happy about it.

Cheer up, man! It's just another trip around the sun.

We all spend our lives going in circles.

Trackback on Waking Up Costs

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 11:46:13 GMT

I've just helped Clark set up trackback on Waking Up Costs.

This feature needs better documentation, because the RDF (used for autodiscovery) confuses people.

Clark Hosts Grand Rounds

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 09:08:55 GMT

Medical webloggers have established themselves as a professional online community (or at least, they've made a good start). It's been fun to watch it happen, initially through my friend Doctor Clark Venable, then a post by Jon Udell which pointed out Medlogs.com (which aggregates the weblogs of medical professionals), and most recently the creation of the Grand Rounds.

The Grand Rounds theme this week is medical errors, and Clark is hosting it at Waking Up Costs.

Clark's version of the rounds has been given a lot of praise (look around at the other sites which link to it) for including XML iconic links to the RSS feeds of each medical blog to which he linked.

Clark gets three extra Nifty Points for using my "super duper outlining javascript" (his words) to organize the post. (My outliner scripts were first written for the long What is Conversant outline. They're not exactly earth shattering in their originality, but they do work in all the modernish browsers, and are intended to make it really easy to scan a long document.)

Clark Explains How It All Works (At Least, His Web Sites)

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 21:18:15 GMT

Clark Venable is the proud papa of (at least) two web sites, and he seems to have found the magic combination of tools to make them grow. This evening, he posted a story about the tools he's using to manage them both, and how he knows the authors of the tools and the artist behind the graphics.

"It's a small small world." That was my first reaction. My second was, "man, we're a good combination!" (You can figure out who the 'we' is by reading his story.)

I wish more folks would give the MarsEdit and Conversant combination a spin, it really is almost effortless. ('Almost' because you still have to write the posts.)

(Look at how much Clark has posted since he found this combination! I can barely keep up with the new site.)

Thursday: Clark Venable and Derryl Perry

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 11:52:24 GMT

Thursday, Corinne and I drove to Hershey, PA, to pick up a new cat. Hershey's pretty close to Lancaster, and we hadn't been back to Corinne's hometown area in over a year, so she was very excited. I'm happy to report that she wasn't disappointed as the day went very, very well.

For the first time since we met, she did all the driving so I could work. There were no traffic problems at all, and no wrong turns, so (other than a few stops) we drove straight to the Holiday Inn and made pretty good time. With everything in the room (but not unpacked) by 5:45, I called Clark and he agreed to come to the hotel to meet us for dinner at 7:00. One of the restaurants in the hotel had a live country band that night, so we agreed to eat there.

The music was LOUD. Yeah, I know, that's no surprise, but Clark and I had a lot we wanted to talk about and that's almost impossible with music-like-jet-engines blasting all around you. Personally, I think that's a mistake: there's no reason to have the music so loud in a small restaurant like that. What's the point? They could have turned the volume half way down and it still would have been extremely loud, but at least we'd all still have solid bones and teeth!

Corinne has always loved her live music, though, and she was revelling in it. She also loved watching the people taking two-step lessons on the dance floor, and the little guy who was never going to "get it" no matter how long he was out there. And... the band was really good.

After we finished our dinner (MMmmm... steak), Clark and I went to the other restaurant for dessert so we could talk more comfortably, and Corinne stayed to listen to the band. Unfortunately, I was pretty tired (and had a headache) by this point, so I babbled a little. As most of my friends and family know, I'm fairly useless after 9:00 on most nights, so Clark probably went home thinking that "Seth is not at all who I thought he was." We'll be back at least one more time this year, hopefully we can get together again... for lunch!

Clark left at about 9:45, and I went back to the other restaurant to get Corinne... but she didn't want to leave yet.

The band -- Derryl Perry -- took a break just as I got there, so we were able to talk a little. She said that they had just gotten a record deal with Music City, and thought they were good enough to "make it." I went down to buy one of the CD's they had on sale (a 5 song demo disc), and Derryl didn't just autograph it but came up to our table and chatted with us for awhile! He thinks their new album will be released mid-Summer.

They really were very good, Corinne and I wished him and the band the best of luck.

After he left, Corinne asked me to take their picture so I went back to the room for my camera and snapped two of them after they were back on stage. One came out terribly, the other (shown here) is ok but everybody's eyes caught the flash and the drummer is hidden behind Derryl. (I'll fix the eyes when I get home and have access to the GIMP again, but I can't do anything about the missing drummer!)

She wanted a picture of Alan Jackson too, but I didn't feel like bothering him. (This guy we could see sitting at the bar looked a lot like him, and he knew it. He dressed like him, and his hair was the same, too.)

Clark's Stock Watcher

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 15:43:42 GMT

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, a client and friend wanted a stock-tracking application and was willing to trade his TiBook/800 for my work on it. He was spending a lot of time looking up the same data, repetitively, from the same two web sites, and didn't have a good system for tracking rating-changes to stocks over time.

Now Clark has his app, and I have my powerbook, and we're both very happy.

I don't actually think the two-and-a-half days I spent on his app really justify the powerbook, so I've promised some moderate enhancements when he's ready for them.

Amusing aside: while I was helping him, via IM, to set up the new app, he said that perl was complaining about DBD::mysql not being installed. Yet, it failed to install through CPAN (because of a bug in its Makefile.pl). My solution? Easy! Follow the instructions I wrote up two months earlier for installing DBD::mysql on Mac OS X 10.3. (For a moment he thought I had posted those instructions just for him.)

Yesterday's Batch of Software Updates from Apple

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:18:00 GMT

Last night Clark told me (via IM) that when he installed the latest security update from Apple he was unable to get into this File Vault, and then when he deleted the Finder's preferences it started re-launching. Repeatedly.

I don't use File Vault, so I wasn't worried about it. Oops.

Until just a minute ago, I wasn't able to get into my wireless network. My WAP is an SMC 7004VWBR. I assumed that the Airport Update had caused a problem, as the signal meter was reading "empty".

Turned out that the only "problem" the update caused was that it deselected the SMC network as my default. One menu selection (Airport Menu -> SMC) and I was all set. (In fact, I figured this out while writing this note. Originally it included a plea for help...)

Conversant's WYSIWYG Message Editor

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 08 Aug 2003 16:35:38 GMT

The WYSIWYG message editor that I mentioned awhile ago, originally sponsored by Clark Venable, was finally released yesterday and announced on Conversant's support site.

Who'd have thought I could accomplish anything while feeling this sick!? ;-)

Acceptable Blood Loss

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:19:29 GMT

Clark asked me to write some javascript (DHTML) to calculate Acceptable Blood Loss during surgery.

I'm happy with how it came out, it's pretty slick. (Note that I didn't say it's pretty.) In particular, I like the way the validations and calculations are performed "on the fly." No form submission necessary, and it works equally well in Gecko-based and IE-based browsers.

You can also check out my less-than-serious reference version, which is where I put the originals so he can go back to them whenever necessary.

Medical Blogs

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 07 Feb 2003 09:23:19 GMT

SIT posted a link to Technology and Medicine's list of medical weblogs (bottom of the page).

Clark should find that interesting, if he hasn't already seen it. Another story on that site, Achieving Clinician Buy-In to Technolgoy (requires free membership), might also interest him. Actually, what he really needs (or needed) was a guide to achieving charimanship-buyin to technology (right Clark?).

Truer Words - A Journal

Happy New Year, One and All

Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday, Clark!

Saturday in Lancaster

Breakfast with Larry

Background...

Lunch with Clark

Riding Solo

Dinner with Corinne

Happy Birthday, Clark!

Trackback on Waking Up Costs

Clark Hosts Grand Rounds

Clark Explains How It All Works (At Least, His Web Sites)

Thursday: Clark Venable and Derryl Perry

Clark's Stock Watcher

Yesterday's Batch of Software Updates from Apple

Conversant's WYSIWYG Message Editor

Acceptable Blood Loss

Medical Blogs

Happy
New Year!