A Curious Instrument

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