Adorable v. Creepy

 From The Sound of Music when the Baroness tells Maria:

There's nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who's in love with him.

Sounds Romantic and Adorable.

But invert sexes where one (laments?):

   

    There's nothing more irresistible to a woman than a man who's in love with her.

 

Starts to enter the Creepy Zone. 

 

OK ... Now:  does it matter the sex of the Opiner matter in cute / awkward distinction? in either case?

 

sub-post:  yes, auto-correct, "opiner" is a correctly spelt word.

sub-post:  yes, sex; not "gender." words have gender. people have biological sex.

Bash Scripting

lately, nearly every script i write turns out to be Compleat Example of nearly every Bash / POSIX shell feature.  arguments.  loops.  functions.

it has to have some debug statements while i'm writing it.

and some mechanism to not actually DO the <end / final command> while testing*.

wait - these all should be flags in a getopts setup. add a help page.

usual Bash features used in the average script:

    read a file, line at a time
    step thru command line arguments (after getopts is done with "flags")
    rearrange "columns" of input files
    run all sorts of UNIX commands from the script
    how is it, again?  how do you test for string existence? equivalence?
    how do you test for numerical equivalence? greater than or equal?
    sed | grep | cut | awk ... wouldn't this be simpler in Perl?

all that just to do ... now - what was it i was trying to do?

* "I don't always test my code but when I do, I do it in production."

There are ...

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not.

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

There are two types of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data sets.

1984 Was NOT a How-To

Hard to Believe it's happening in Texas!

i wanted to purchase an Erlenmeyer flask.  actually, since i wanted a heavy-duty one, it's technically a filter flask.  i wanted a 1 litre flask to use as a wine decanter.  to go with the 250 ml beakers i already have to use for juice / wine glasses. 

in fact someone has already commercialised my idea as Periodic Tableware.

easy enough to order from lots of places ... Van Waters & Rogers, Amazon, etc.

but it turns out that here in my seemingly draconian law-free residence of Texas, they have a weird bone in their head that everyone who buys (or wants to buy) any laboratory equipment must necessarily be some kind of Breaking Bad methamphetamine producer.  they have a "DPS Precursor Chemical Laboratory Apparatus (PCLA) Program" set up that requires a potential purchaser of such equipment to obtain a permit from TxDPS.

i could just order one from Amazon or eBay.  but what the heck ... let's see how difficult it is to buy just one, one-litre flask the "right way" (i said to myself).

so i filled out the (not particularly onerous) 3-page form and submitted it.

included in the process was having someone from TxDPS come and "inspect my facility" to determine if my facility (home) is sufficiently secure to maintain such equipment.  in fact, they sent 2 people to my apartment to inspect!  and pretty much every item on their checklist for inspection was "not applicable". 

My Tax Dollars At Work.

Happy Memories - But a Sad One, Too

Glenn Stuart, lead trumpeter for Don Ellis and Stan Kenton.

Happy memories:

• Glenn (Uncle Glenn) in SMHS Band, taking whole periods to rail to us about the School Board's plans.
• Band Parties at Glenn's house in Arcadia.  Swimming in his pool that (the story went) Bill Cosby had once fallen in and had "signed" the bottom.  Once for Glenn's birthday the band bought him a pogo stick.  He took it out on the driveway to try out.  Hopped on it ("Po").  and it stayed down.  the springs weren't strong enough to pop ("Go") it back up at all.
• Learning Glenn's recipe for clam dip. 
  
  
• 

• Another fun memory:  in Band class, Glenn once did his impersonations of various trumpet players:  Herb Alpert, Doc Severinsen, and Al Hirt.
  
•  I contacted Glenn via email in (around?) 2000 or 2001 to 1) say hi, and 2) inquire about digital copies of some Don Ellis pieces, specifically Glenn's signature piece, "Child of Ecstasy".  The album "Autumn" had been released in the US on vinyl only in 1968.  Glenn said that it had been distributed on CD in Europe and he burned me a copy along with some of his Stan Kenton work.
  

• I was glad to have made contact to tell him how he had positively affected my life.

Sadly, in 2002, Glenn took his own life.

 

 

The church is near, but the way is icy, The tavern is far, but I will walk carefully.
-- Ukranian proverb.

2018 Winter Olympics inspired Men With Brooms (TV series) Quote:

Matt: You know, Gary, sometimes I wish life was more like curling.

Gary: How so, Matt?

Matt: Well, curling's simple.  You're either in the house or you're not.  You don't cross the hog line.  You don't take out the other team's rocks till 3 rocks are in play ...

Gary: Four rocks.

Matt: Huh?

Gary: Till four rocks are in play.  It's called the Four Rock Rule.

Matt: Right.

Gary: And it's not called a curling team, it's called a rink.

Matt: I know.  But it's confusing.  We're playing on a rink.

Gary: We're playing on a sheet.

Matt: But we're in a curling rink.

Gary: It's a curling club.

Matt: Yeah .... You know life's pretty simple.  I wish curling were simpler.

Gary: I hear ya.

House of Cards

If we never did anything we shouldn't do, we'd never feel good about the things we should.

Men With Brooms

You have no idea just how dumb I think you are. Even if you're smarter than how dumb I think you are, you're still dumber than you think I think you are.