March 2007 Archives

Andrew turns 21 on Tuesday. I called him a couple of days ago to see if he wanted to go out for dinner to commemorate his birthday. During the course of the conversation I asked him if he and his friends were doing anything to celebrate. Not a fraction of a second elapsed - not one - before he answered:

"We're going to the bars."

*blink*

"I'm sorry. Did you say you're going to the bars?"
"Yeah."
"Bars? You're going to the bars? Barzz-ZZZ!?! Plural?!?"

You know that weird, kind of wobbling sound you hear when Daffy Duck shakes his head to clear out the stars and cobwebs right after he got conked with an anvil? My head literally made that noise as I shook it.

I suppose I knew this day was coming. When my child, my first born, the fruit of my loins, the thing that would puke down my back whenever I picked him up, told me he was going out drinking. But I guess I was expecting some sort of embarrassed pause, a sheepish grin, some muted mumbling, when I received word. Not this high-toned, almost in-your-face pronouncement. I wanted to ask him the obvious question: "Well, how do you know you even like alcohol?"

At least he didn't ask me to pick up the tab.
K-

I am home alone - by myself - for four days. Everyone in my house is either away at school or in Myrtle Beach until Sunday on a band trip. Now I can do all those things guys like to do when they find themselves unfettered by the burdens of responsibility and free to disregard the conventions of polite society.

For the next four days, dinner will be nothing more than a sink, a bottle of salad dressing, and a head of lettuce. Who needs utensils? No, wait, I already do that. Well... I can leave beer bottles under the couch. Dang, I already do that, too. Ah, I have it! I can belch and fart without any regard to who's in the room. No... I already do that as well. I've got it! I don't have to answer the phone when it rings! Nope, no good. No one ever calls me so it probably won't ring anyway. Well, I'm sure there's something wild and crazy I could be doing. I just have to think of it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make the beds.
K-

Inside the Civic Center of Port Maria.
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The Maryland General Assembly meets for 90 days beginning in January. It's a whirlwind of activity only occasionally capturing my undivided attention. This year's legislative session promised to be just a bit more entertaining because last November Republican governor Robert Ehrlich and his monstrous arrogance were voted out of office. Democratic mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley, was voted in. No one was sure how well O'Malley and the legislature would play together.

This year, one issue I've been paying more than passing attention to is the statewide smoking ban now being debated in Annapolis. Howard County enacted a countywide ban last year and Baltimore City enacted one very early this year. A few other Maryland counties had already gone that way. Seeing the writing on the wall, both the Maryland House of Delegates and State Senate have passed measures banning smoking in bars and restaurants statewide. A conference committee will be required to iron out the differences. Whether to regulate smoking in private clubs and who decides hardship cases separate the two measures. O'Malley has stated he would sign a statewide ban if a bill reached his desk.

I didn't need one parent who died as a result of smoking and another who died from the effects of secondhand smoke to support a smoking ban, but it helps. For me, this is purely a worker health and safety issue. Let's try and think of another business or industry where known carcinogens are intentionally pumped directly into the workplace atmosphere shall we? Thought of any? Nope, me neither. In no other situation would a local jurisdiction permit such a palpably unsafe work environment to exist. It's only a matter of time before smoking bans in bars and restaurants become the norm everywhere.

As for the smokers? Well, the hell with them. Smokers fly cross-country in airplanes, they fly to Europe and Hawaii, they go to movies and concerts and shows, they sit in classrooms, all no smoking situations of duration longer than your average restaurant meal and gotten used to it. They can get used to this, and at the same time, feel good about not poisoning thousands of bar and restaurant workers. Quite frankly, I see this as a win-win situation.

I'll keep you posted.
K-

Menu guidance for when I'm at your house for dinner:

1. Eggs
2. Macaroni and cheese
3. Lucky Charms, Trix, or Froot Loops
4. Internal organs
5. Twizzlers

Advance planning is everything. No need for a faux pas.
K-

Woodstock bluebirds have been observed checking out future digs.
K-

The developer of Fortran died Tuesday.

Back in the 1950s, John Backus was a young IBM computer scientist when his team developed one of the first high-level computer programming languages. Fortran was certainly the first programming language used by engineers and scientists for their work.

And Fortran was the first computer language I ever learned. In 1972, every freshman engineer at Michigan had to take a semester of Fortran. It was one of my favorite classes. One where I learned the specialized syntax of do-loops, arithmetic if-statements, computed go-tos, functions, and subroutines. I've used Fortran much of my career. It is an important skill that helped me earn my living. For me, hearing John Backus has died is a lot like a carpenter hearing that the guy who invented the hammer has died.

Programmers today sniff and scoff at Fortran, like it somehow isn't important. But for many scientific and engineering applications, Fortran still - after 50 years - generates the most efficient executable code using a simple, easy syntax. I've mostly given up Fortran coding. My tools are now built in Matlab. But if I had to write a quick and dirty engineering program in native code, I'd still choose Fortran.

program main
implicit none
integer i
do 100 i=1,10
write (*,*) 'Hello, world!'
100 continue
write (*,*) 'Thanks, John.'
end program main

K-

On October 19, 2005, I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail on my DVD player. For reasons that escape me now, I noted that fact on a pad of paper I have here in my office. Since then, I've been keeping a record of the movies I've seen and whether I saw them on Netflix, Turner Classic Movies, or in a theater. I rated each one according to the Netflix hate-really dislike-like-really like-love scale. Yesterday I watched my 100th movie: A Streetcar Named Desire.

It took me exactly 17 months to watch 100 movies, about 4 movies every 3 weeks. Seventy-three were from Netflix at an average cost of $2.87 per movie. I wish I could tell you which were my favorites but there were a bunch. Seven I didn't like: After the Sunset, Caddyshack, The Client, Hard Candy, Office Space, Rebel Without a Cause, and Rumor Has It. Obviously I didn't hate any of them.

Sometimes my nerdiness is breathtaking.
K-

I've had it with these pre-packaged Perdue chicken breasts that look like they came from some sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger devil-bird. They're enormous. I can't believe chickens come this way without unseemly avian steroid-pumping down on the farm. They're weird; they're not natural. They take forever to cook, they don't fit in the skillet neatly, and when you get right down to it, they don't really taste all that good. How can I be expected to cook with these things?

If you had dinner at my house last night you know what all the fuss is about.
K-

Monster cyclone dumps nearly two inches of frozen precipitation. Baltimore at a standstill. National Guard mobilized to shoot looters. Governor declares state of emergency. "Pray for us," says O'Malley from State House steps.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.
K-

There's a new Spartan in the White House.

No, no one from Sparta is visiting. (Those guys cleared out a month ago.) And, no, no one around the house has become more self-disciplined or self-restrained. (My end of the White gene pool is a particularly well-known producer of profligate wastrels.)

My younger son, Danny, has announced he will matriculate at York College of Pennsylvania next year... home of the Spartans! I dropped the registration check in the mail today. (That and a housing application with his clearly stated preference for a tidy roommate. He said that way his room will only be half a wreck rather than a total wreck.)

I am very pleased he is going there. York College is a good fit for Danny. He'll be about an hour away from the house, it's big but not too big, and it has a really snazzy student center.

Most importantly, peppermint patties are everywhere.
K-

Danny has been rehearsing all week with his high school "show band". That's the band that plays in the pit during performances of his high school musical production. Danny is third trumpet, which means he occasionally plays "toot" and "tootly-toot-toot" during the songs. Third trumpets don't see a whole lot of sustained musical action.

His high school's production this year is Annie Get Your Gun. I've never seen it but I know Ethel Merman starred in it when I was a kid. Ethel had a loud voice. I told Danny that's pretty much all I know about Annie and Ethel.

He's cool with that.
K-

Yesterday was tax day. I dropped off all the paperwork at my accountant's house so he could prepare the tax returns for my mother's living trust and my personal income. He told me he would have the forms ready to sign in a couple of weeks. It'll be $750 well spent as far as I'm concerned.

The older I get, the more things I'm willing to pay someone to do for me. I used to do my own tax preparation. Now I have an accountant. I used to change my own oil. Now it's JiffyLube. I used to cut my own hair. Now I have a guy do it for me. I still do my own painting and wallpapering, my own lawn mowing and snow shoveling, my own plumbing and electric. But I can see the writing on the wall. Things are changing. It won't be too long before the cashier at the Safeway gets a different answer to the question: "Mr. White, would you like someone to help you carry your bags to the car?"

"You're goddam right, sonny! And make it snappy! See that you don't break my eggs."
K-

I went back to Jamaica on a medical mission last month. It was much the same as last year.

One big difference is that I made friends with this guy. His name is Rollin, "like rolling without the 'g'" as he put it. We met in a small municipal park in Port Maria while I was taking photographs of a monument to Tacky. Tacky led a slave rebellion on Easter Sunday 1760. Rollin filled me in with all the details of the rebellion. To the Jamaicans, Tacky is a folk hero. Tacky was hanged not too far from Port Maria.

During the week, Rollin and I had many encounters nearly all of an entrepreneurial nature. Rollin sold me water coconuts, which contain a clear, sweet fluid; small, stubby Jamaican bananas; and a bill of goods about Rasta men. I suspect he could have provided me with Jamaican produce of a more illicit nature had I been so inclined. I enjoyed his company and he seemed to know his Jamaican history.

I'm working on the hair.
K-

Sign observed on the back of a semi-trailer while driving down I-95 this morning:

Caution: Use dummy gladhands disconnecting airlines.

Little help?
K-

Last night I had a little difficultly sleeping. It was one of those nights where I woke up after a few hours, then couldn't go back to sleep right away. I tossed, I turned, I mulled things over.

That's when I heard it.

There's a railroad crossing about a mile from me as the crow flies. It's where Woodstock Road crosses the Patapsco River. The bridge is in a low valley with long, steep hills on either side. In the still of the night, I can hear the trains whistle as they pass through the crossing. If my windows are open, I can hear the rumble of the engines.

I love that sound, the whistle of a train in the middle of the night. It's so evocative, so compelling. "Where's that train going?" I always wonder as I lie there in the dark. Who's at the controls? What must that man be thinking, driving the train slowly westward in the wee dark hours.

In my mind, trains in the night always travel west. That's where all the unanswered questions are. West.

From my bed, the whistle grabbed me and pulled me along, excited, for I knew an answer to one of those questions would be revealed. But which one? There are so many.

I was asleep before the whistle's final, sonorous call.
K-

Hello? Hello? Does this thing still work?
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