Pycon

I'm going to Pycon 2008! Hooray! Chicago here I come!

More as things develop.

Memorial Mass for my Uncle

Yesterday I went with my father to a memorial mass at Georgetown University in order to pick up my Uncle Alex's ashes (he'll be interned in Arlington Cemetary in June in a funeral done in the traditional Jewish manner). My uncle had his body used in anatomy classes for medical students. My uncle was very much a teacher and wanted to keep teaching even when his life ended.

I barely knew my uncle. By the time I could understand what he did for a living, I was the black sheep of the family. By the time I repaired my family relationships, I was getting married and had a kid. I'm still not good at doing the whole family (or friend) thing, so I never talked with him or spent much time with him until he died.

So today I asked my Dad a bunch of questions about my Uncle Alex. He was appointed the Delaware US Attorney by JFK. He worked for the New York Times as a libel attorney and checked their sources. He worked for US News and World Report as the same job. He taught law at Duke and Columbia and UMCP. He also consulted to authors for non-fiction books to protect them from possible litigation.

During my uncle's tenure at both news sources, neither paper was in trouble for slander or libel issues. Considering the issues caused by the Jayson Blair scandal of 2003 and the recent questionable and near sourceless article about John McCain, my guess is that the NYT could use a principled resource like my Uncle Alex right about now. When even McCain's opposition camp (Barack's team) calls foul, you wonder where the NYT has gone. Maybe to the same level as the Enquirer?

In any case, I realized I share a few traits with my late Uncle Alex. When I do a white paper or any kind of research I am fanatical about correct sourcing and dead-on accuracy. I wish I was like that in the rest of my life, this insistence on truth, but I'll take whatever positive attribute I can find.

Insomnia again

These days I've got insomnia every day I don't work out for several hours.

Ack.

I hate being this strung out.

Work things

I got asked to send out a request to go to Pycon in Chicago next month. Later on I found the reason why. Lets just say they want me there for a long time. ;)

Pycon is the big Python conference that is held every year. Google and Microsoft are big commercial sponsors. There are chances to learn awesome stuff and do tons of good networking.

The weekend

• Got into some bitter fights over the weekend with the wife and son. I made it clear after his last report card that he had to bring positive evidence from all his classes or each weekend he would be grounded. Also, he needed his chores done. Finally, she needs to stop buying him stuff when they go out, since his report card doesn't deserve it and he's old enough to get/keep a job. I didn't handle things well but we do need to have a solid front, and his grades, while not failing, can certainly improve.

• Our water heater didn't seem to be working well this morning. I checked with the kid about the shower he took last night and he said, "Yeah, it wasn't working so I didn't take one." Sigh. He ought to have told me. Then I could have checked to see if it was a fuse or something easy. Alas, I doubt that is the case, and I bet this will be yet another expense.

• It was a three day weekend so I worked my consulting gig all day on sunday. Then monday I worked some on that, some on the normal job, and did some cycling. It got rainy so I headed home.

• Watched Flags of our Fathers last night. A really awesome film about what war does to people and why symbols are so important. There are some horrifying bits during the war scenes on Iwo Jima. This one goes beyond political preferences, so every voting adult is safe to watch this film.

• Worked with the kid on learning Python, specifically using pygame. The book on it is really good, and he likes it a heck of a lot more than the Visual Basic and MoldFusion he's been exposed to before. Who can blame him?

Me being snarky

I got this in my email bin today:

My name is xyz xyz and I'm with xyz, a National IT consulting firm. At some point you submitted your resume to xyz or I ran across your information on a job board and I was wondering if you could help me out. I am working very hard at finding a Windows System support positions in Newington VA. I see that you did or do have this experience within one of the organizations you've worked for. It seems most professionals usually are working and not reading the job boards for new positions so the only way possible I'll be able to find someone is through good old fashioned networking (well maybe the internet isn't old fashioned but you know what I mean). Could you possibly point me in the right direction by giving me a name of someone who might do this within your organization or someone who is outside of your organization? If you prefer I will keep your referral completely confidential. It would just greatly help me out if I could start talking to some people within the Windows Support Community and see who knows who. If you are currently available and interested, please update the following information for me and let me know the soonest we can talk. If you are not available or interested, let me know and I will update your records in our database - thanks!

My response:

I do python programming on Mac OS X and Linux. I know less about Window now than my 70 year old father. Also, I no longer know anyone who does Windows support. We've all moved over to the *nix world.