When my sister was in the early grades of elementary school, her class received the recipe for : “E”asy Cheezy Pretzels”. One might ask why the “E” is quoted, that’s because “E” was the letter they were learning at the time.
In any case, the recipe for “E”asy Cheezy Pretzels was often consulted during the long, sweltering summer days that she and I were indoors hiding from the fearsome Texas sun.
For you, the Internet, I would like to share the recipe, in the extended entry
I applied and was accepted to attend YCombinator! ‘s “Startup School” at the Kresge auditorium on the Stanford campus today. I’ll have some more information about the events at the end of the day.
Today I finished my training class in INTRO. I really learned a lot ( by the fourth day your brain is mushy goo running out your ears ) and am very pleased now with my ability to do funny tricks with binary numbers to understand networks and their configuration.
I had some great ideas for possible Cocoa programs based on the tasks and content of the course. I’m going to take this weekend off and then undertake a program of study such that I can attempt to pass the course either before I go to Austin or shortly after my arrival.
I’m no Tarot mystic, seer of the I Ching, or alchemist, but some synchronistic or cyclical happenings in this world are mysterious to, and resonate with, me.
When I left Texas in winter 2000, a certain collection of short stories appeared in The New Yorker and one caught my interest. The piece is entitled “The Smoker” by David Schnickler. The story tells the tale of a working-class teacher from Allentown, PA who finds himself teaching the exceedingly well-to-do girls of St. Agnes’ school in their senior year as they prepare to head to Harvard, Princeton, and universities of prestige that litter New England. The teacher’s days, filled with bright young ladies, is complemented by interminable nights alone that are filled by athletics and attending movies alone.
A strange energy is established early on between Douglas and his student Nicole. After writing a recommendation to Princeton for the young lady, she is accepted and she and her parents invite Douglas to dinner for gnocchi and the opportunity to meet Nicole’s cat: John Stapeleton. Who, in addition to possessing a rather strange nom du chat, is toilet trained.
Their discussion is lively and surreal. It’s a bit like a Gilmore Girls dialog with something very real and explosive underneath.
I’ve never forgotten this story. I don’t know why it, like Stephen King’s “Survivor Type” simply will not leave my memory. Unlike “Surivvor Type” this tale is far less grisly. It has the writing style of young Fitzgerald (“Diamond as Big as the Ritz”) and the whimsy of Wonder Boys or Gilmore Girls.
In any case, this story was important to me the year I left Texas. Now, as I was packing the name “John Stapelton” came back to me. I found that the text of this story has since been published to the internet. The tale of Douglas, Nicole, and John Stapleton can be found here.
When I first got back from Australia a few years ago, I was staying at a crappy motel on North First Street in San Jose and I discovered a too called “SketchUp”.
SketchUp was sold at a pretty penny ($500!?) and I wasn’t sure I had the artistic talent to use it. I just sorta let it slide away.
I had missed the news that Google had purchased SketchUp, so when I saw that they had released a free, “lite” version to the public recently, I was overjoyed! A mac version is also in the works! Check out the tool at the Google SketchUp site.
“The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” — Edward Gibbon
I know a bit more about internetworking than I did a day ago.
I’m pretty tired, I couldn’t sleep very well last night.
I decided to re-christen the Flash Card application “Memory Bank” and I got a cool icon for it done like HAL’s Eye from 2001. I got the idea because the instructor was talking about pluggable modules for large-scale network switches. These are essentially memory or task plug ins. This got me thinking about that scene where Bowman goes into HAL’s brain room and starts unplugging his memory banks. They were holographic cubes that looked like three-dimensional note-cards.
Note cards! I wrote aprogram with notecards! He was in HAL’s memory banks. My app helps you bank things you need to know in note cards, it’s an ectopic memory bank….yes, it should be called memory bank.
So I renamed the tool (which was made much easier by an externally programmed tool called RenameXCodeProject : why Apple doesn’t include this in XCode I have no idea.
I have some more studying to do before tomorrow.
It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks leading up to the big move. This week was the only day I’m going to go to work as I will be spending the rest of the week in INTRO training. INTRO is a class that teaches the basics of networking.
It’s a bit funny that I work for a major provider of networking gear, yet I don’t really know much about networking theory. I took a class on it in college, but that knowledge has not persisted. I’m going to try to learn a lot and take the exam associated with the content this month before I leave.
Talk about pressure. Although, If i could get an RHCE after 4 days of class this should be possible too.
Today I spoke with my boss and she, very graciously, consented to allow me to work remotely from our Austin, Texas office. Actually in a bit of a sign of the times moment, working remotely means working 2 time zones closer to her. Isn’t that the internet age?
I love Austin and I can’t wait to get back. LL Cool J can go back to Cali, but my ears long for KGSR, my mouth for Tex-Mex and Mexican Martinis, and my eyes for SXSW.
I’m going back to where I’m from and I’m taking my lady with me.
I’ll miss the South Bay and its mild climate, its dispassionate precipitation. I’ll not miss the ennui, the cubicle mentality, the dearth of community, and the cost of living.
In any case, myself and Elle will be packing up and headed direction east in early-mid June.
See ya’ll Californians at WWDC and SXSW.
This post is sticky
Said Dedman on August 3, 2004:
HARMS REVAMPS SITE - CITY FLEES: Steven G. Harms, the doctrinaire San Francisco hipster, has completely revamped the design of his blog. It now conforms a bit more to the traditional blog layout. Be certain to read his requiem for Francis Crick, although it appears that there is some difficulty in linking directly to the post. As I post this, the Crick post is the third entry on the site, so scroll down to find it.
While I have yet to see the denizens of Sunnyvale running like mad lemmings from the Fry’s in an insane fit of fear to plunge themselves in the murky mire of the Bay, I do hope that a more uniform, readable, and, dare I say, snazzy effect has been reached.
I’m exceedingly happy with the WordPress blog software. It’s really been a lot of fun to be able to look at the PHP code underneath and revamp things as I saw fit. I don’t know why I never did that with MovableType, could it be the case that WordPress is simply more hacker-friendly?