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There are many things that I am passionate about:medicine, music, reading, cooking, etc… but the three that are at the top of my list are flying, sailing and horses.
I grew up around all three, so I guess one might say that they’re in my blood.
Unfortunately, my only real sailing voyages as an adult have been short trips up and down the Left Coast from San Francisco, between Florida and Barbados, and once from San Francisco to Hawaii and return.
Others, like my dear friend Sue Meckley,on her boat, the USSV Dharma have been seeing the world under sail.
I’ve been following her voyage avaristically via e-mail and her web-site.
Fair sea’s Sue … wish I were sailing with you.
The following comes from Robert X. Cringley, one of my favourite tech-now-low-gee-wiz columnists at Infoworld.com … regarding one of last weeks Internet S.N.A.F.U.(s)
This security report has been brought to you by Sesame Street: The DoD’s DNS got DDoS’ed last week, but it remains A-OK.
The attack also affected the F, G, I, L, and M root servers, but damage was minimal, thanks to network geeks who followed security procedures to (ahem) the letter.
It never fails to surprise me the way our ordinary lives can be interrupted or disrupted by the oddest of things.
… Like the dog who rarely ever barks who suddenly begins baying at the full moon.
Stepping out into the darkened yard, intent on seeing why the dog is howling, you
find yourself momentarily captured by the sight of your own shadow reflected in
the shimmer of dew on the lawn, illuminated by the light of the very full moon as if
the lawn had magically become a lake…
… and find yourself dancing with the stars and shadows… and the dog… in the
moonlight.
The nightly ritual of writing 5 pages that suddenly goes wonky and you’re aware that it’s 5 am and you were simply unable to stop writing until the chapter was done.
… or …
To wake at the sound of the alarm clock, and discover that you really did only write 10 pages, yet you’ve dreamt an entire lifetime of places and people in the six or seven hours you’ve been asleep…
… and how wonderful that world was, and the people who lived in it.
That is, until you try to put it down on paper.
All those wonderful characters suddenly become so very complex… so very human when exposed to the light of the real world. They develop very human frailties, and
unlike your dream their personalities expand and change in ways you never envisioned until they become people you only vaguely recognise.
… a bit like going to a class reunion for the first time in 30 years.
The beautifully coloured cityscape and the quaint villages begin to show their frailties.
The baseboards that no longer quite evenly meet the floor, a sign of the foundation
beginning to settle or the result of earth tremors.
The paint where it is beginning to peel and chip, cracked and pitted varnish on the banisters that seem, from a distance to shine, and the dust motes that cover the clean shiny world with their greying dinginess.
The cracked, broken and missing cobbles in the roadway that cause a horse to throw a shoe or the unseen pothole that twist a ladies ankle at the most inopportune
moment.
The perfect trees show their broken and bug-infested limbs, and the perfect flower garden that is overcome by insects that eat the pedals and infest the buds.
… and like the author, the characters sometimes stop, look around and scratch their heads as if to say “what was I going to say?” or to wonder where they were going and why.
They sometimes look up at the writer from off the page as if they were searching for the guiding light… though often more likely to say;
“What kind of dialogue is that?”
… or …
“Do you really think tripe and drivel like that would ever be uttered from my lips?”
… but most often…
“Get a grip!”
Who’da thunk-it! Yes, another post that has nothing to do with books or medicine, but this one is deserved. Women are not recgonised nearly enough for our achievements, much less our competency.
Needless say I was very pleased to read the following in yesterdays news.
IBM veteran becomes first woman to win the Turing Award
By Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service
February 21, 2007
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has awarded the A.M. Turing Award to Frances Allen, a computer scientist at IBM and the first woman to receive the prestigious prize.
Allen, a fellow emerita at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, was given the award for her contributions in the area of program optimization, a way of modifying a program to run more efficiently and improve performance. The award is named after the British mathematician A.M. Turing and includes a $100,000 prize.
In particular, ACM cited Allen’s work in automatic program parallelization, which allows programs to use multiple processors to improve speed. The group said her efforts “contributed to advances in the use of high performance computers for solving problems such as weather forecasting, DNA matching, and national security functions.”
The group will present the award to Allen at a ceremony in June.
… Way to go, Francis!
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the Kings Horses and All the Kings men… had scrambled eggs.
==
Well, here’s wishing you an almost belated Happy…
(… let’s cram ‘em all into one day and get it over with holiday)
(… another excuse for a three day weekend)
(… another day off for government employees)
(… another reason not to deliver the already overpriced mail)
(… since you’re not working why don’t you come shop at our store ’sale’)
(… another excuse to ‘pardee-hardee’)
(… invent and insert your own reason here)
… Presidents Day.
For most people it’s just another day at the office.
… but three day weekends actually increase the workload for some of us.
Far too many people decide to go dashing off somewhere in their automobile
or RV, and then, having somewhere along the way tossed common sense out
the window… turn about at the last possible moment and drive like a loon to
get home while ignoring speed limits, drinking while driving, and/or forgetting
that bad weather usually means unsafe road conditions.
… and then it’s up to police and EMT’s to try to pick up the pieces, and
emergency department doctors and trauma surgeons to try and put them
back together again.
Let’s be careful out there.
As a practicing medical professional, I know that the question of ending a life is an uneasy one. Many have had their say on the subject of life and death, but this NHS doctor has had the guts to say it like it is…
It’s nice to be able to laugh at the problems that new technologies sometimes presents to society.
