When Is One Old Enough To Conjugate (a Verb)?

As far as I can tell, my kids' "Spanish" lessons at school don't really teach how to speak or understand Spanish. I think they meet weekly, so I can't expect much, I know. But if all you're learning are colours or parts of the face, what is the point? I suppose I should appreciate what they get, but as far as I can tell, they have no idea how to construct a sentence. My son recently told me that his teacher asked the class to come prepared with questions about Spanish, so I suggested that he ask her how to conjugate a verb. He actually asked her that, and he said that she said they wouldn't learn how to do that until high school. Wow. Maybe my expectations are too high, but if you can't tell your hablo from your hablas and your hablamos, what's the point?

I'm not asking for giving the youngsters a formal study of comparative grammars. But practice with something like the following might be nice:

• Voy a la oficina.
• Vas a la oficina.
• Él/Ella va a la oficina.

Are there any teachers in the audience? What do you think?

Not Another Th@nk$giving from H3||

Not wanting to have a repeat of last year (and the text and photo do not do it justice) my wife and I made plans. Not only would we not travel for the holidays if anyone was sick; as soon as there was one bit of vomit, we would immediately head for home. This way, should we again end up with everyone doing the technicolor yawn, we hoped to at least have it be in the comfort of our own home, where we're better able to deal with such things.

So, on Thursday, when we had been at the second grandmother's house of the day for about 90 minutes, the puke had barely hit the floor before I found myself saying, "Load 'em up! Move 'em out!" I don't think we've ever gotten everything and everyone loaded so quickly before; and we hit the road. The drive home was a bit dicey at times (and I don't think I've driven through that much fog). But as the driver, I'm exempt from having to deal with the messiest situations.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick

This book is probably misnamed. While it is named after the ship that carried the Separatist Pilgrims to America in 1620, the book is really a history of the Plymouth colony, from the initial voyage to King Philip's War. Perhaps the publishers thought that naming the book Plymouth wouldn't sell as well, invoking memories of the car.

You may or may not remember the story of the Pilgrims from school. But it's interesting to read of their story in a history aimed at adults. One factor they don't teach 9-year olds is the political situation on the ground in New England when they landed. The immediate vicinity of Plymouth was recently depopulated by a plague, and so there were no nearby neighbours to speak of. The next somewhat powerful group, over in the New Hope, RI area (who became the Wampanoags) wanted English help against the more powerful Naragansetts (on the other side of the bay) and so dealt with the Pilgrims. The early days of the colony were something of a political tightrope, and things might have gone differently had the political situation been different.

The last major section of the book is about King Philip's War. Do you know anything about it? I had heard of it, but knew little. Basically, the peace that had endured between the English and the natives erupted in 1675 into all-out war. The results were devastating, and you can guess who had it worse. If I have my numbers right, according to the author,

• In the 45 months the US was active in World War II, it lost about 1% of its adult male population.
• In the US Civil War, this figure was between 4 and 5%.
• In King Philip's War, Plymouth lost about 8%, which in percentage terms is more devastating than any other US war.

But the Indians had it worse, of course. According to Philbrick, during King Philip's War, the natives,

• Had 10% of their population killed in battle,
• Lost 15% through sickness or starvation,
• Had 5% of their population enslaved,
• And 10% of their population fled.

He also claims that the natives lost from 60-80% of their regional population, so these numbers don't add up.

Reading it, I wonder, (and give my opinions)

• Could the Pilgrims have failed? Yes, definitely.
• Would this have prevented English settlement of New England? Probably not, if the English wanted to settle there.
  
• Could King Philip's War have been avoided? Yes
  
• Could the Indians have won? Possible, with Mohawk and French help.
  
• Is it likely that New England history would have developed without major war or deportations of the native population? Probably not

Overall, I recommend the book to anyone interested in North American history, but don't really recommend it to people not interested in the subject. 3.5 stars out of 5.

One complaint I have is that it doesn't really have a map of Plymouth Colony with its borders in relation to the other colonies (Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Haven), so here is one:

The Movie the World Has Been Waiting For

Two Words:

Rocky 6

Mere Christianity By C. S. Lewis

The first audio book that I downloaded from the library web site and listened to was Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. As far as I can tell, only a subset of books are available for download, usually "Classics" (i.e., those out of copyright) and those by authors I'm not familiar with. Either that, or I haven't figured out how to browse their web site correctly. Anyway, Mere was a book I wanted to read, and Lewis was an author I'm familiar with, and so I selected it.

Let me start by saying that this book is a classic. As such, it should be easy to find more authoritative commentary on it than I can provide here. So take what I say with a grain of salt, find other web sites, or better yet, read the book on your own.

The book is apparently a collection of essays originally meant for wireless (and not that wired junk!) radio broadcast, collected in book form. The first part is an explanation or "defence" of Christianity, designed to explain that belief in Christianity isn't unreasonable. It may not convince many non-believers, and I don't think that is the point. It does, however, present the author's beliefs in a clear way that should be understandable to others who may or may not agree with them. One interesting point he raises is looking at human instincts. He points out that if you see a man in trouble, you'll probably feel two conflicting feelings to a lesser or greater degree. One would be to help the man in need, and the other will be to stay out of it and get yourself to safety. According to Lewis, the thought that you should help the man in need can be explained as a naturalistic instinct, but he wonders if the "little voice" telling us that we really should choose the "instinct" to help the man in need is something beyond the instinct itself. It's interesting and he presents it far better than I am here. Go ahead and read it.

The second part of the book has more to do with Christian living and what, in his opinion, should be the Christian outlook on things. It is also interesting, but the switch between the two sections seemed abrupt to me. This might just have been my missing the transition while concentrating on traffic or something. Here are a few points that struck me as different from what I might hear from today's Evangelicals. This doesn't make them his most important points (not by a long shot!), only that they were interesting to me.

• Lewis is more in favour of consumption of alcohol than is the fashion (in some circles) today. He mentions that one valid reason not to drink would if you're the type of man who can't handle it, and another reason would be because you've decided to give the money to the poor. But he doesn't think that people who are against drink should spoil the fun of those that do.
• Lewis is not in favour of Christians using the political process to do things like making divorce more difficult. He claims that leading a Christian life is hard (especially for non-Christians) and he wouldn't want to make divorce more difficult for non-Christians just like he wouldn't want the "Mohammedans" telling him that he can't have a glass of wine with dinner.
• Towards the end, his views seemed to be sounding a little "Mormonish" to my ears, though I should research this more before making any claims.

This is a rather deep book. Listening to it was difficult because I felt as if the reader was going too fast at times. Perhaps it would be better read slowly.

I won't give this one a "star" rating, though it is recommended for further study and discussion.

And I was planning on a short review. Sheesh!

98 Stairs Up

As I mentioned, my office is officially on the third floor, but it seems to be a lot further up than you'd expect. In fact, though I exercise regularly, I was still a little winded after walking up to my office. (Maybe I'm really in miserable shape after all.) I counted the number of stairs up. If my count is correct, it's 98 stairs up from the parking lot, or 78 stairs up from the cafeteria. This is probably more than you'd expect in a flight or two!

First Week on the New Job Recap

Since some of my lurkers or readers may have an interest, here are a few thoughts regarding the new job:

• It's interesting that some of the problems and solutions seem very similar to my previous position. For example, some work I recently did on High Availability seems relevant, as does the general approach to solving a problem by breaking it up into tasks that can be done in parallel.
• While some pieces (hopefully a growing amount) are in Java and C++, most of the existing code is in C, along special macros in a special macro language -- so it looks like I'll be doing a good deal of working with that. A first thought might be to rewrite some stuff in C++, using a good Object-Oriented design, but what is there 1) Works; 2) Works well; 3) Has worked well for a long time; 4) Is very complicated; and 5) Runs very fast. They're not likely to want to make major changes to a system to improve its maintainability if it will likely result in slower, buggier code in the short- (and even medium-) term.
• I do a lot of walking up stairs. I'm on the 3rd floor, but with the way things are laid out, it's probably the equivalent of going up 5 flights of stairs in the morning, after lunch, and whenever else I need to go downstairs. I thought I was in good shape, but running shape and staircase shape are apparently different. (And elevators are no fun!)
• The people there look a lot more like the community (or the professionals in the community) than did my previous position, which had much more of an international flair. This means that the pot-lucks won't be anywhere near as good!
• At the previous place, I'd bicycle to work in the summer, and saw another bike there once or twice in all the days I biked. At the new place, a fairly large number of people (including at least two from my group) regularly bicycle thoughout larger parts of the year, including this week. Alas, I doubt I'll be one of the bikers as the large distance will not be conducive to my biking to work.
• People seem to be fairly strict about working only 8 hours per day. (Unpaid) Overtime still occurs, I'm sure. But it seems that working 8 hours per day is the normal standard which is unusual to exceed, and not some rare exception.
• I really don't like the commute. Maybe it will grow on me, but it has taken me about 45 minutes to drive the 30 km/19 miles to work each day. Coming home is usually a little quicker. I'm sure this will seem like no big deal to some readers, but it really bugs me. I've been listening to an audio book (A Tale of Two Cities), but I feel I'm too impatient to do this daily. One distasteful alternative I may try is to hit the road at 6:30 am and see what traffic is like at that hour. Another alternative, if the job works out, might be to move closer to its location. Or, I may get used to the drive, I don't know.
• The company is a non-profit organization, but it still has to make money to pay for itself, worry about competition, and things like that. So while the company may be more stable, it still has its risks.
• It's strange to be back in an area that I was in years ago, and didn't imagine that I would regularly return to.
• I think the job will work out. It had better. It's not like I can go back to the old one if this one doesn't.

Sharing Similar Interests

Quick Photograph

One of Karl's hobbies is photography. This contrasts with my taking an occasional snapshot now and again. (He'll humbly admit that this doesn't mean that his pictures are any better than anyone else's.) Lately, he has been taking black-and-white photographs of people, perhaps at parades or community festivals. It wasn't a community festival or a parade, but here's a photograph that he took recently:

BQ, What's Your E-Mail Address?

I mean, I have some old ones that always seem to bounce. You keep changing it!

By the way, after uploading the photos from lunch, I did run some test cases in the afternoon and felt useful. One failed too, and it looked like a process got into a "runaway" state. It might have been user error. Or not. Either way, not my problem.

Last Day At the Old Job

I probably shouldn't admit it to the world, but I'm here on the last day at my current job, and I'm bored. All my assignments have been completed, and we're not very good at dishing out work in small increments. I remember that my last day at the 'Graph was much more interactive and busy. Part of it was that back then there was a new employee to whom I was handing off some of my work, and I spent some of the time working with her. But, we don't have any new employees here, and there is no one person who will be taking over my work. So, there is nobody to train.

Actually, some of my work may be going to China or some other "Low-Cost Centre", but that would happen regardless of my staying or going.

On my last day at the 'Graph, I got to eat lunch at the great Greenbrier Restaurant. A lunch is planned today, but it will be at a chain Italian place (not O.G.). I wanted to suggest a place that's close, and it was the best I could come up with on short notice. I should have went with the Middle-Eastern place that's a bit further away.

ILCF 2006 Results

So close! Here are the final 2006 results for the Internet League of Canadian Football, the oldest known continually-running CFL-based fantasy football league, which has just completed its 12th season.

Internet Cup (@ Nepean):

Nepean Killer Bunnies    21
Columbus Roaring 40's    20

Playoffs:

(@ Nepean)
Nepean Killer Bunnies    29
Surrey Stampeders        14

(@ Newfoundland)
Columbus Roaring 40's    33
Newfoundland Brigade     25

Final Regular Season Standings:

                       GP   W   L  T  Pts  PF   PA  DIFF
Newfoundland Brigade   18  14   4  0   28  633  453  180
Nepean Killer Bunnies  18  13   5  0   26  635  519  116
Surrey Stampeders      18  12   6  0   24  571  470  101
Columbus Roaring 40's  18  11   6  1   23  560  504   56
Yellowknife Ice Worms  18   8  10  0   16  535  558  -23
Steel City Stench      18   6  12  0   12  499  577  -78
Edmonton Maurauders    18   4  14  0    8  409  572 -163
Le Bloc de Gatineau    18   3  14  1    7  346  535 -189