Some Pretty Good Books By a Great Author

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I was at a small private school building in Ann Arbor today. The school rents out space to a local music school in the evenings, and M was there for his sax lesson. I saw this book on the shelves there: "FORTRAN from Pascal".


Which made me wonder: why would I want to go to "FORTRAN from Pascal" when I could go "From BASIC to FORTRAN"?


And if you don't know BASIC, you could start with this book.


Last but not least, if you're looking for some good poetry, you could open one of these and relax for a while. In the immortal words of Alfred J. Bruey: "Wherever you go, there you are".

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Post-conference Musings

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What's Going on?


K serves up a winner

K has been playing tennis after a few weeks off. He played in some instructional matches over the weekend, where they don’t keep score of the games, they’re just to give the students practice. He's going to practice weekly with a group consisting of other students 14 and under.

He also got a new violin not too long ago. Shar Music allowed us to borrow some to try at home before buying, and K picked out the one he liked best. Violin cases are very, very light these days, so taking it to school doesn’t strain his muscles much more than his backpack already strains them. Whether my wallet is strained is another question.


The mysterious sport of Ultimate Frisbee is partially depicted here. Parents are not allowed to know the rules or why it's played.

M is doing more Ultimate Frisbee and scoring points and it’s all still a great secret to his parents who aren’t really welcome at his games. But that’s OK - when he’s out playing Frisbee with his friends, we’re at home going through his room to make sure he’s not hiding anything from us.


The schedule for the conference at which I spoke

I spoke at a conference on Monday, the first time I’ve done that. The conference was sponsored by my company, and I was on the committee that organized it and picked the speakers. And volunteering to do it filled in an empty space in the schedule, so the committee (including me) were clearly not employing high standards in filling the slot. But - it counts. So there.

The talk was titled “C is for Cookie: Web Development Concepts for Analysts and Managers”. Before the class began, we watched this video. The “cookie” in my talk wasn’t an edible cookie, but rather the kind of cookie that your computer might store when you’re browsing the web. The point of the class was to introduce technical concepts to non-technical members of our development staff. It went well: the audience laughed when I hoped they would, my rehearsals in front of other people paid off, and it was a fun experience for me.

Book Nook
I read the book "Divergent" which is very popular with the kids these days and is also a movie. It was a pretty decent book until the end, which was quite unsatisfying. I'm not the only one who feels that way. Divergent belongs to a genre that has been very popular: books set in dystopian societies. "The Hunger Games" and "The Giver" are two more examples. Doesn't anyone write books about talking pigs and spider webs anymore?

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Back To School

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I know that guy.

Update: K and M Edition
It's September, so that means it's back to school for the boys.

K is in seventh grade, taking eighth-grade algebra, playing violin in the orchestra, taking piano lessons, and going to try out for the soccer team. He's continuing his tennis lessons and will play some matches this fall. I guess you could say he has a few things on his plate. When I think about it all, I have to go take a nap.

M is starting ninth grade with a bang - on his second day of school, he trekked to a park near Pioneer with a lot of other students (most of whom he didn't know) for the first Ultimate Frisbee team practice. They had their first game this morning, and Mark scored a, um, well, actually, I don't know what it is called when you score in Ultimate Frisbee? Touchdown? Ultimatum? I'll have to go look that up.

After enduring what sounded like a very tough week at band camp at Interlochen last month, M is playing sax in the Varsity band. He's still taking piano lessons, and has to rest his eyes often from marathon girl-watching. Don't tell him I said that.


Not me, but I have the same racket! (It's Andy Murray)

Update on Me
As you can see from the picture at the top of this post, I am presenting a class at an upcoming conference in Ann Arbor. The conference is sponsored by my company, and I am on the committee to organize it, invite speakers, make sure the conference site is set up correctly, and so on. It's been a lot of work, but fun to go through the process.

I finished the tennis class I was taking, and am on a waiting list for taking another in the fall (I waited too long to sign up - some of the classes are really popular). I got a lot better during the class, and also bought a new tennis racket. The racket I bought is one that some pros use, and it was a bitter disappointment when I discovered that merely using it did not make me play like a pro.