Dinosaurs, Car trouble, Programming

Stardate 58090.5 (09-05-2004)

I went with Thomas on a field trip to Eccles Dinosaur Park on Friday. One of the good things about 4 ten hour days is that I can become a little more involved with my kids school activities. Rachel is unfortunately beyond the field trip age, and most of the class parties for Halloween and such. Patrick is still having some activities. Anyway, despite the rain, the park was fun. Thomas has been looking forward to it for the entire week. He found a friend by the name of Riley. He and Thomas have much the same personalities. After a talk by one of the park employees, who showed everyone some interesting fossils. He did very well with the kids, but I think he talked a little long. By the time he was done, it was 11 am and we were left with about 20 minutes to explore the park and eat lunch. Not much time with a couple of 4 year olds. We walked around, and passed the two Pre-K teachers. Riley wanted to follow them, and I agreed. In retrospect, that was a mistake. They were with a boy named Alex. He's the hands on, tactile type, which is the opposite of Thomas. I had given him the Batman raincoat, which was a magnet to Alex. By the end of the bus ride back to school, Thomas was in tears because Alex would not leave him alone. This was the subject on the ride to get Patrick, and the ride home. As I have mentioned before, you can see your worst personality traits reflected in your kids. Thomas has my habit of concentrating on the negative.

This is the week for car problems, apparently. We've been struggling to get the van to pass safety inspection. The station in Kaysville won't pass it because they say the lights are wired wrong. I countered that we have had the car since 1997, so why is this a problem now. We have since taken it to an independent shop, who did a repair on a ball joint and passed it. Thursday the Altima quit idling. It would run fine so long as you pushed on the gas pedal. The mass air sensor failed is what we were told. It was also suggested that the spark plugs and fuel filter be replaced. I noted that they did not suggest replacing the oil, oil filter, or air filter. That would have been bad, because I just replaced them last week. I have had repair shops tell me the oil needed to be replaced within 100 miles of the last oil change. So two somewhat expensive repairs ate up the money for the deck railing. April pointed out that this is the first repair the Altima has had in the last twelve months, and it has been running fine. 

We watched a friends kids Saturday and Sunday while the parents went to a company function in Park City. The mother was thanking us left and right, which kind of puzzles April and I. She picked up Rachel and Patrick and kept them for a couple of hours every Friday last year before soccer practice, so we felt we owed her. Coupled with the fact April was working and the van was being fixed, I wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't an imposition. Her eight year old daughter is best friends with Rachel, and her six year old daughter is  good friends with Patrick. The big concern was the three year old, whom I've always seen attached to her mother. She turned out to be a little angel. The best part of the time they were here was while watching 'Ella, Enchanted" Saturday evening. The three year old walked up to me, and asked in a quiet voice if it was ok to sit next to me. (Even Thomas smiled at that) She curled up next to me, and within five minutes she was asleep. 

Kathleen Dollard wrote an article for Visual Studio six months ago called "Save the Hobbyist Programmer". It generated a lot of comment, including a heavily commented post by Rory Blyth. Rogers Cadenhead fanned the fire again last week, generating a new post by Rory Blyth. Lots of opinions on this, and I added some of my own.  A sentence that got my attention was "Most jobs in IT aren't about human progress, they're about making humans obsolete and allowing fewer to control more." I disagree. Progress, whether in IT or elsewhere, is about making things better, cheaper, and faster. This process has been going on for the last 150 years or more. Making humans obsolete is the side effect. My dad points this out to me every once in a while. He retired from the optical business in the early 80's. He tells me that when he was working, it took five people to make a pair of glasses. He went back to the office for a visit a few years ago. He says now it takes one person, and they just enter the correction and frame selection into a computer. Automation does the rest. So that's four people displaced. I have to think, however, that without progress I would not be writing this, and I would not be employed doing what I do. I don't know if anyone has an idea of all the effects such changes have. I certainly don't have any answers. 

Some good freeware suggestions here from someone trying to put a system together from them. He missed SysInternal's Process Explorer. SC-Diskinfo looks good. No matter how big the disk space, I always manage to fill it. It does annoy me that half of the space is Windows. Microsoft announced last week that they were splitting the release of the next version of the OS. Advanced features (such as WinFS and Avalon) that may not be compatible with existing software will be removed and released in 2006. A study was quoted which shows after three years, XP only has 50% of the installed base of Windows systems. 
I have heard rumors, but here is the first I have seen where someone was fired for the contents of a blog.  I guess I need to watch what I put here.

I have done a couple of late night sessions with AOE II. Nothing online yet, still against the computer. Easy wins all. I had a scenario with just two players in a forest, each with a fortress that the computer kept kicking my butt. I must have erased it, because I can't find it. I'll have to try and recreate it. There was an online scenario called Agincourt, which would be fun to play. Unlike a lot of battles, there are a few good resources on the net for this. Most of the time, I can't find more that when a battle took place and between who on the net or at the local library. Growing up, I seem to remember better books on at least a few of them.
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