A Curious Instrument

[Update: I do have a facebook account now, but that is only to advertise blog posts and such to the world.  I rarely look at what others post there.  Like me and be my friend knowing that I probably am not reading your stuff.] I have just been regaled by the utterly thoughtless postings of several of my talkative extended family members on a "service" called "facebook".  My oldest daughter is an on-and-off member of this chronic exhibitionist collective, which is how I know anything about such things at all.  At the ripe age of 44, I am one of those "old farts" that avoids "texting", much less its more evolved cousins like twitter and a procession of social yammering spots.  I just never got interested. The larger problem is that I decided long before this technology existed that it was far smarter and safer to keep your thoughts to yourself.  I can't say that I do a marvelous job of this, but I seemingly do far, far better than the typic...

A bit of the Canadian Escarpment nearby As a hiker, I am excited about another public wilderness opening up very near where I live! If I cannot afford to move closer to hike-able places, it is just as good to have hike-able places move closer to me! Of course, it is all very new and there is no access to the wilderness for now (might never be). I suppose you have to get airlifted in and out (or perhaps use an ultralight aircraft - there's an idea!) Public Lands Information Center - Sabinoso Wilderness : Press Release about the Sabinoso Wilderness

I was "teaching" at a high school in the spring on 2002 when I stumbled upon this webpage with an essay by Jim Sinclair that was just absolutely stunning. I think I was beginning to realize that I was autistic, just not at the same level as my son Matt, who was diagnosed just before his third birthday. It seems I am on an autism jag today. Don't expect this to become an autism blog however. I got very tired of talking about it a while back, so I tend to hope I have moved on, but it is still there of course, that odd side of you that you can never escape. I wish Lisa and I would have had this insight many years earlier, I think we would have done better as the parents of younger Matt. If your young child has autism, please read it and take it to heart. The Essay: Don't Mourn For Us

I travel in north-eastern New Mexico a lot, as it is the territory of my job doing computer support for the New Mexico Cooperative Extension Service.  If you go to a website on New Mexico, it probably isn't really talking about this part of the state, as it is very lightly populated, and has no recreation areas or mountains (compared with Santa Fe and Taos).  It is a land of huge ranches and wide-open spaces, sandwiched between that fertile mid-western farmland, the scenic mountains, and the bleak "Great Southwest Desert" that early explorers warned travelers to avoid at all costs.  Apparently, most sane people listened to that advice! North-east New Mexico was mostly the range-land of buffalo in the distant past.  Apache and Comanche tribes hunted here, but never made anything approaching settlements.  Water is scarce and seasonal at best and the tribes had sense enough to keep their families in more hospitable places.  The first settlers were Span...

I have a list of the "perfect" movies, which you can see in the Quasi-Indefatigable Xenolith Store, but this is not one of them.  Don't get me wrong, The Family Man is a wonderful movie and I cry a lot when watching it (actually I would cry in the middle of a horror movie if I actually watched horror movies, so this is not as big a thing as you might think).  In a previous post, I talked about being a lot like George Bailey from It's A Wonderful Life , which I think is true, but I am not Jack Campbell, the protagonist of this movie.   I'm George, not Jack.  Remember that. Jack Campbell is coping with the life he could have had. If nothing else, The Family Man is an opposite of It's a Wonderful Life .  Where George Bailey had to almost lose his life to understand how to be grateful for what he had, Jack Campbell had to see what kind of life he could have had so that he could see that there was more to life than what he already had.  The first is a...

I added a whole new section to my Amazon store just for Terry Gilliam films that I really like . Someday, I want to go to a place or live in a neighborhood where everyone understands Gilliam.  I think I might be happy in a place like that!

A while back, I talked about my George Bailey circumstances .  Of course, some people will get confused and say that I am some sort of altruistic credit union sort, which I can be on the odd Thursday. Archibald (Harry) Tuttle I am more like Archibald (Harry) Tuttle, the rogue heating engineer in the Terry Gilliam movie "Brazil" . Harry Tuttle : Listen, this old system of yours could be on fire and I couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6... Bloody paperwork. Sam Lowry : I suppose one has to expect a certain amount. Harry Tuttle : Why? I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form. Like me, he tends to be competent, efficient, quietly conspiratorial, and appropriately paranoid.  Harry understands how his world really works and has found his own ways to cop...

I love Jon Postel because of his Robustness Principle and how it can be applied far and wide from the confines of computer science. All great truth finds wide application! Also he had a flowing beard and wore sandals and was the ultimate editor of technology. Yes, I am weird and read RFCs for fun. Jon's RFCs were the best - pure poetry! The Internet works because Jon Postel wouldn't let it do anything less. He was a model for the benevolent dictator and knew what a good God should be about! Postel Center: About Jon Postel

I poked around the Forth programming language in the 1980's and really enjoyed it. It really seems to work better with my brain, which strangely acts more like a computer than I suppose other brains do. That was when I first ran into Chuck Moore, who created Forth. It is simple, it is efficient, it is very, very different, and it is (perhaps above all) esoteric . These are all descriptors of me! I am Forth! I think Chuck is one of the most unique minds around, which I like immensely. His brain is just wired differently and I feel a kinship there. He has also been accused of being clinically insane, which I probably have been as well. Chuck Moore's Weblog

I was a kid in Clovis, New Mexico and one of the things that my family did occasionally, as a treat, was visit the local Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Shop.  They had all those flavors (31 varieties was advertised at the time) and I could get a scoop of anything I wanted, although I was very, very shy and always went conservative with "Rocky Road" or some such.  It was a nice memory and good ice cream! I don't know when I noticed it, but I finally figured out the concept of "taste spoons".  I suppose I was watching other kids and they would buzz around the counter like flies and constantly ask for a stream of free tastes of ice cream.  It didn't take me long to decide that these little devils were working some kind of pre-adolescent scam, abusing the marketing generosity of the shop just to "score" some free ice cream with no intention of ever really legitimately buying anything. The shop in Clovis is now closed and I can only think it was because ...

I don't even like to talk about how many sleeping bags I have. For years, in my camping and hiking adventures, pathetic though they may seem, I have always struggled with the problem of sleeping bags.  I am too tall apparently, and only relatively short people are supposed to do such things.  Of course, I am an anomaly in a lot of ways from other camper/hikers (besides all the other anomalies I have generally with humans), as I prefer my equipment ultra-cheap and relatively light, in that order.  If I pay more than $50 for a piece of equipment, I must really, really think it is going to save the world or some such. Over time, I have collected an assortment of bags, each with features I had hoped that I would like, hoping one day to stumble upon that "holy grail" of fit, comfort, and utility.  Lightning hasn't struck yet, but even so far as yesterday, I keep trying. Of course, when it comes to sleeping bags, cheap and light rarely come togeth...

It is with great sadness that I learned in the creation of this post that Bob died just a few weeks ago in an accident while driving his beloved VW Bug. I am very sad that I will no longer partake of any new "Pease Porridge". My list of "people I honor" continues to be more of a list of folks I will have to meet in the hereafter... Bob Pease is a brilliant analog engineer who enjoyed a rich set of avocations (hiking, biking, deep thinking), which is a sign of greatness to me. I enjoyed how he thought and wrote and respected most of all his unpretentious yet still scientific methods. I also once saw a picture of his office, which looked like a cave with walls made of technical documents, much like mine at home. Bob Pease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have a wall of pictures of people I really, really like. They have different attributes that I value and they are very, very smart. You likely have never heard of any of them, unless you are heavily into electronics, computers, philosophy, libertarianism, or Mormonism, which says a lot about what fields of endeavor I pursue! Here is one that is actually still living and is still incredibly productive (which is the attribute I treasure in him along with his staggering common sense) - DON LANCASTER! This is a link to his "What's New" page, which looks suspiciously like a blog. He doesn't mind passing out his ideas and experience for free, which is also something I admire. Guru's Lair: What's New? for 2011

My fathers of old were Jewish.  Of course, because those Jewish fathers ended up marrying women who were not Jews, I suppose that means that I am not a Jew in the traditional way.  I certainly have a Jewish heritage and I have been told it comes out to play occasionally.  One can feel all one wants about parents and grandparents as far as honor and gratitude, but that heritage will always be there, buried somewhere in the genes, ready to pop out at an often inconvenient time. As a Latter-Day Saint by choice , I have made covenants with God.  In my studies, the covenants are the same as the ones that Abraham, Issac, and Jacob made, so though any number of Jews would point out my loss of Jewishness some generations ago, I and my family continue to be children of Abraham (can't take away your genealogy) and continue to make covenants with God just like our fathers of old. That is why the offer of my Christian friends seems like a bi...

Well, I pulled a stunt with NHS Shetland and my job application and found out that I didn't even make the short-list for consideration.  Ah, well. So, now I have a perfectly good passport and no where to go with it!  Perhaps something will come up that will still need it. I guess my days as another modern-day George Bailey will continue for a while longer! Yes, I have about the same outlook at George Bailey, knowing I could do bigger things than this but trying (often unsuccessfully) to deal with other constraints that both keep me down and help to ground me in a more honorable life.  I just love the dichotomies of life!

I was just looking at other people's blogs and all the interesting comments that get attached to each post.  I suppose "interesting" is a bad word to use as I find many of them inane and just pointless. When I started this blog a few days ago, I decided against entertaining comments.  I have seen too many creative people eaten alive by trying to interface a bit too much with their readers.  I once read the blog of a writer that I enjoy (the writer, not the blog) and it seemed like he was having such a time in the give-and-take of corresponding that he didn't have time to actually write books anymore.  He was busy answering endless questions about what his favorite food was and describing his writing process over and over again.  All this chatter just seemed to be hero worship and buzzing static, which I could never personally manage to work with or even alongside. I long for the experience of writers from a hundred years ago.  You write a book.  It...

I got up this morning and I was depressed. I recently applied for a job in Shetland and I have jerked myself back and forth ever since about whether I should take the job or not.  Of course, I haven't heard back yet from the HR folks, but it is a bit early for that, along with being a bit early to be making all these interesting plans as if I have already been offered the job! So, the roller coaster ride begins.  I get happy and excited about a new challenge.  I get down because it might not happen.  I get happy and excited that it has every chance of happening!  I get down because it seems like the problem might be with the UK Border Office and I don't want to mess with that.  I get happy because stupider people than me do this everyday and they get through the Border Office gauntlet successfully.  I get down because my research tells me that my son Matt is too old and I see no way that they will let him in the country.  O...

[No one should let me do anything intended to be humourously informative.  I am atrociously bad at it.] My name is Jason Nemrow and this is not my place. Where I am standing right now is a place where I don't feel like I fit. Frankly, there are only a handful of places that I feel relatively good in and those good feelings happen because there aren't a lot of people around. I feel better in the wilderness. I feel better in open grasslands with nobody in sight. My mother calls it being "asocial", which is to say that some people don't seem to need other people as much as expected. Not that you aren't the most wonderful people in the universe, but I can live quite happily not enjoying the pleasure of your company. There is another word for this "out-of-place" asocial feeling, sort of. I don't want to offend autistic people, but this is one of the diagnostic criteria for the autism disorder. One of my sons was diagnosed with autism in 1...

After I got rid of offense from the vocabulary of children in a previous post (vaguely Orwellian, I know), I recall how I excised the word fair from the household some years ago.  I made the kids stand up at the dinner table if they used it (which is not effective for hyperish kids like our twins), typically in phrases like "That's not fair" .  The kids just used riaf  (yes, fair spelled backward) as a substitute for "not fair", but it put the point across that one should not be expecting equal treatment, no matter what society promises. Of course, this bothers lots of people, but my point is that you should not be expecting something that you are never going to get, as it just breeds a long stream of disappointments that tear the happiness from life.  Also, it may prevent the universal sin that many people have of being demanding , especially in matters that make other people's lives miserable.  The only thing worse than being...

Everyone always focuses on a person who is being offended , their tender feelings, and moving mountains in defending that tender heart. I think it is high time we spend a bit more time on those who offend , what makes them so offensive, and either helping them or, more often, ourselves to change. Now, I am certainly not advocating for some "anything goes" attitude about something as important as how people live.  There are such things as community standards and these need to be honored when we are out in public.  It is sad to see some glorified "do-good-er" from a far-away, culturally-denuded place come to an area and immediately begin working diligently (as only "community activists" can) to remove aspects of life that, here it comes, they find offensive . As an eleven-year-old, I attended a tiny country school in a village called Grady in the arid grasslands of eastern New Mexico.  I was not a hunter, nor were my parents or grandparents, bu...

Well, I have finally decided to enter the blogging world, after many years doing websites.  We will see how this format works for me (and perhaps you).  I will be gradually adding things as I figure out how I want to do this.  I will definitely be changing the format of this blog, you can be sure! For the interim, you can look at my website .  Also, if you have some ability for it, you can check out my far more dangerous gopher site . Until next time...