Re: Happy 2009 Winter Solstice!

["Simon D. Levy" <http://www.wlu.edu/~levys>]

Robert wrote:
>
> At my work, some groups have adopted Scrum.  I guess part of that involves
> stand-up-only meetings.  I frequently seem them in the corner in front of
> a white board.  It's sorta strange.  Whatever works, I suppose.
>   
Apparently people who use Scrum call themselves Pigs.  I was going to 
suggest "Scrumbags".

As I like to tell my students, technology never solves a problem without 
creating new problems.  We hope that the new problems are smaller than 
the old, but sometimes (as with text messaging) they're much greater.
> (With my last one-on-one meeting with my boss, he was worried that people
> were getting bored in the meetings.  So, he ended up changing the format
> of each one and often just making them short.  I asked him if anyone
> complained about them being boring and no one had.  I suggested that he
> was just projecting our boredom.  I liked the format of the some of it
> because I'd learn what everyone else was doing (which is always difficult
> for me -- I guess I'm too stand-off-ish).)
>   
Well, the lip ring does make for a complicated first impression.  Then 
again, it probably serves as a bozo filter.  Looking at your recent 
flickr pictures though, you seem to have removed it.
> Interesting.  One of the responses to my solstice message was someone
> suggesting that I get an iPhone.  I like my Internet Tablet just fine.
> What's more, I could always install Android on it if I wanted.  Maybe I
> will if I get fed up with the Maemo stuff installed on it.  At least, with
> Android, I've be moving from one Debian-based OS to another.  And I can
> keep my Debian-centric technologies...
>   
I'll probably get an iPod touch for the GPS, as I manage to get lost 
faster than anyone I know.
>
> That's exciting.  Noelle and I have to renew our passports next year, but
> we haven't thought of anywhere particular to go to...
>   
That's a beautiful sentiment.  It reminds of the scene from Oliver 
Stone's "The Doors" where Andy Warhol gives Jim Morrison a golden 
telephone that is supposed to let you talk to G-d.  Warhol confesses 
that he really couldn't think of anything to say.  (Morrison later gives 
the phone to a wino in an alley.)
>
> Ha!  My father-in-law and step-mother-in-law are always travelling and I
> ask them about their jet-set ways and climate change, and, 'though they
> are interested in preventing global climate catastrophe, they have no
> intention of changing their ways, despite it costing them a whole lot and
> eating into their retirement money.
>   
"I'm interested, but ..." means "I'm not interested".
>
> It's hard.  Noelle and I have talked about staying with boats and trains.
>   
I think it was Gov. Schwarzenegger who pointed out that the trains we're 
running in this country are no better than they were 100 years ago.

- Simon