The Knacks: August 2004 Archives

One of my Dad's former colleagues is from Mexico, and the two have stayed in touch over the years and become pretty good friends. Rick was fortunate to get to spend about two weeks with Guillermo's family a couple of years ago, and now Samantha (Sammy), Guillermo's 18-year-old daughter, is spending her senior year of high school here with my folks in the US.

Sammy's first couple of weeks here turned out to be pretty hectic. Besides celebrating her 18^th birthday away from home, she's had to contend with a return visit from my friends Tony and Beverly, registering for school, traveling up to Virginia and back at least once, a visit from Mom's (maternal) Uncle Woody for her (paternal) Uncle Earl's memorial service, and Dad being gone and/or on the road most of the time for his new job.

We're trying to show her a good time, though. She hung out with a pile of Rick's friends at his birthday party last week, she went out Salsa dancing last night with Joy and Joy's former high school classmate Shanika, and even at this moment she's probably just now arriving in Washington, D.C. with my folks for the Virginia Tech game [pdf]. The biggest challenge with that trip may be encountering still more of my extended family. :-)

Here are some pictures from her birthday party back on the 15^th:

There are more pictures if you click the "Continue reading..." link below.

Posted 08/28/2004 15:26 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Major Catchup

Whew!

I've had some problems getting my camera to talk to my PC, but Dad has a reader for my memory card. Time to catch up. I have now posted (and back-dated the entries for) pictures from Mike's Birthday, Johnathan's Birthday, Christmas 2003, the poodles playing on my Radford U. chair, the snow we had back in February, the band Spring trip Rick and I went on in April, Ed's first concert in May, and Joy's and Emma's birthdays.

Posted 08/28/2004 14:46 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Images

I think I've found something that will make my life a lot easier once I really figure out how to use it. ImageMagick has some pretty nifty command line features for resizing images, etc. My favorite viewer, Irfanview is supposed to be able to do most of this stuff, but for whatever reason it was not working on my PC. Open source to the rescue once again.

Time to catch up on some pictures.

Posted 08/28/2004 13:04 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Cobbler's Kid

I've been meaning to fix up this site—change the color scheme, make it a little sharper, update the links, etc.—but I just haven't been able to motivate myself to do so. I just updated the links page a little bit, and I think I know what's holding me back: The code is simply awful—too much HTML, not enough use of CSS, PHP, etc. There is nothing to "maintain"; it just all has to be redone. Someday.

On the bright side, I've evidently learned a lot over the last couple of years. I'm still not the code monkey I'd like to be, but the stuff I'm doing today is considerably less embarassing. And just wait'll I get that database app going. I will have finally entered the 20th Century with a little bit of OOP.

Posted 08/28/2004 10:26 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

If Books Were Sold as Software

Culled from today's issue of NewsScan. Emphasis and the embedded link are mine.

If Books Were Sold as Software (By Jef Raskin)

If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:

The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.

Posted 08/18/2004 14:42 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack