Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at February 28th, 2004

Every so often, I remember the existence of The Gutenberg Project. When I do, I typically look up the odd classic and read it for a bit. Sometimes I just browse the indexes, making mental notes to check certain books out later.

Today I decided to read Mark Twain’s “FENIMORE COOPER’S LITERARY OFFENCES.”

In that article, he writes about Fenimore Cooper’s many literary flaws. Twain is, as might be expected, savagely funny, listing a number of problems in Cooper’s stories. Here’s one:

“10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep
interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he
shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad
ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in
it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned
together.”

I particularly like the bit in which he describes Cooper’s word choices and his characters’ use of “woodcraft.”

Read it for yourself.

You might also consider reading “The Deerslayer,” but I gather Twain doesn’t exactly recommend it. Or, to let Twain say it:

“Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language, and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote.”

Posted by Jim at February 26th, 2004

Both of my computers use modern mice. In short there are no balls inside them (a laser tracks their movement), they connect to the computer by USB rather than serial, and they have little wheels between the right and left mouse button.

This is kind of cool–mostly because it means that I no longer have to dismantle a mouse, take out the ball, and use my fingernail to scratch unidentifiable crud off the little wheels.

That’s the good news.

The bad news goes like this:

Owing to the little crevice on the bottom of the mouse, one of my newer, nicer mice now has unidentifiable fuzzy stuff in place that actually blocks the little laser. As I result I had to spend some time pulling the fuzzy crud out. Had I not done so, the mouse pointer would have continued to move only jerkily across the screen.

Oddly enough, jerky mouse movements were the same problem that used to cause me to clean the earlier generation of mice.

There’s some kind of moral here, but it escapes me.

Posted by Jim at February 24th, 2004

I just thought I’d direct people to a conversation I’m having in Ed Hand’s blog.

It’s a conversation about income tax, the idea of the flat tax, and differing philosophies about the role of government.

It’s also a conversation that demonstrates that I can blather on for quite some time even when I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, it’s interesting.

At least I think it’s interesting.

Posted by Jim at February 23rd, 2004

This makes the third time within a year that our power has gone out in an inconvenient way.

The first time it was due to an ice storm. The second time a mouse (or some rodent, it was too burnt to identify) managed to cause a short at the local power station. This time either snow, squirrels or something caused my neighbors’ power line to burst into flame, casting my house (and theirs too, I assume) into darkness.

The furnace went out too. This was not good considering the snow and cold.

My wife called both 911 and the power company.

The power line’s fire burned out before they got here. The man from Consumers Energy fixed the power line withing 40 minutes of arriving.

All was well until I got home from work. The power surge turned out to have claimed another casualty–my router. So now I’ve only got one computer connected and I’ve got to send in my router.

Even more annoyingly, the gibberish that my router was spouting caused my computer to crash (the windows computer that is) and annihilated my bookmarks.

So, that’s my day.

Posted by Jim at February 21st, 2004

At the moment, if you’re willing to type “parenthood” and “flushing” into Google and search, you’ll find that this web site comes up first.

Is that good?

(It’s a result of this post.)

Posted by Jim at February 20th, 2004

At least when your kids are toddlers, the goal is not primarily to control the children in restaurants, but mostly to control the damage.

In short, it is unrealistic to expect that your kid will not do bad things while waiting for food. They have the attention span of a gnat and the intelligence of a human. You have to choose which bad things are acceptable.

Not acceptable: Allowing them to run around the restaurant, chasing each other throughout the meal. This must be stopped.

Acceptable: Allowing your child to sing a little. This is even true if your child is singing “I got a poopy and a poopy and a poopy and a poopy! Poopy, poopy, poopy all the waaaay!”

At least it’s okay if it doesn’t carry very far out of your booth.

Anyway, it’s better than screaming.

Posted by Jim at February 20th, 2004

We go to more restaurants than we ought to.

I do all the cooking, and, when I work late, eating out becomes a necessity. Tonight was one of those nights. The eggplant that I bought for a meat and eggplant curry had become slimy. Rather than waiting for me to go to the store, we went out to Miller’s.

Millers’, like Travellers’ Club & Tuba Museum in Lansing, used to be (in the late 1800’s) part of a chain of ice cream parlors. It still serves ice cream (at least 30 flavors). It also serves what I’d describe as diner food–burgers, fries, beef, mashed potatoes, and deep fried shrimp.

But wait, as they say in the Ginsu knife commercials, there’s more. They also serve breakfast all day. And… Owing to nature of the multi-cultural society we live in, the new owners are originally Lebanese. Thus, Millers’ now serves Lebanese food too.

It’s both good and cheap. We generally get out for under $20 for two adults and two kids.

Where is this wonderful place? Here.

Posted by Jim at February 19th, 2004

So everyThursday night after thinking about databases for 3 hours, I come home. Kristen is watching “The Apprentice.” It’s a show in which business people do a project, it fails or succeeds and Donald Trump fires the person most responsible for any problems.

I never get to see people do the project. I get home from class just in time to listen to people argue about whose fault it is and see someone get fired.

It’s a cheery way to end the day.

Posted by Jim at February 18th, 2004

I have a test tomorrow in my database class.

In the prof’s infinite wisdom, I also have to hand in an assignment. The good news is that the assignment helps understand material that will be covered on the test. The bad news is that while I did start the assignment on Monday, there are still a few sql problems to finish for tonight.

Thus, I am working on sql that allows me to find such useful things as which sailors have ever served on a blue ship, which a red, and which have served on both. Or neither.

I am currently finishing the last problem. It involves finding the longest ship the sailors in the database have ever served on.

Hmmn.

This could be evidence of a not unusual fixation among some men or it could be an attempt to find out if we will know to use the MAX() aggregate function.

One of the two.

Posted by Jim at February 17th, 2004

Toilets are much, much more fascinating to toddlers than you might have ever imagined.

I picked up Rebecca and Abby from daycare today. While I was grabbing assorted crayon drawings, mild injury reports, and winter clothing from their cubicles, they ran down to the end of the hall to the bathroom. This was okay since the hall is enclosed and there was no way they could get anywhere.

The spent the time in the bathroom flushing the toilet and giggling.

*flush*
*giggle*

*flush*
*giggle*

*flush-flush-flush*
*prolonged giggling*

Bearing in mind the alternative, I can’t really complain. I’ve recently had to stop Abby from deliberately sliding headfirst down the stairs. Like toilet flushing, sliding headfirst down the stairs is entertainment only a toddler can truly appreciate.

I really, really look forward to the point where she stops appreciating it.