Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 06 Dec 2005 23:35:00 GMT | no comments
Does anyone else think that it is a little strange that at this time of year we go out in the woods, hunt down a perfect specimen, chop it in two, drag it home, stake it upright in a corner, force feed it fluids, leave it around for a few weeks, and then throw it out into the street when it gets too rotten? No? Okay, then I guess it is just me. :-)
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 05 Dec 2005 18:26:00 GMT | 3 comments
Our church (PBCC), has been doing a series on the 10 commandments. Several weeks ago, Brian Morgan talked about keeping the Sabbath a day of rest. This point really struck home for me because I tend to work all the time and especially since I have been retired, there is not much difference between the week and the weekend.
So I decided to give it a try and set my first goal to not turn on the computer on the weekends. And since most of the work that I do is on the computer, and I tend to get sucked into one thing after another when I am on the computer, not turning on the computer forces me to do other things, like relax.
I have done this for 3 weeks now, and I have to say it hasn’t been easy not to even check my emails on Sunday, but it has made my Sundays much more relaxing.
So I apologize if I don’t answer my emails or seem responsive on Sundays, but I am probably taking a nap on the couch, reading a book, or playing with my kids.
Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 03 Dec 2005 19:32:00 GMT | no comments
I have been working on a web site for my son’s baseball club, Tri-Cities Baseball, with my wife Suzanne and our friend Steve Cousins, and it has been a lot of fun.
Suzanne has been doing the graphical design and static pages, and Steve and I have been working on the registration part using Ruby on Rails (RoR).
RoR is a fantastic environment that makes it easy to develop, deploy and maintain web applications, particularly for doing data-base backed web sites.
Ruby by itself is a great object oriented language, that provides all the benefits of object orientation, without the downfalls of pure(object(languages(like(lisp)))). (That was a Lisp joke. ;-)
Rails is a framework that uses a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture and a Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) philosophy so your code is cleaner and easier to maintain. It also includes a object-relation mapping so that it is easy to store and retrieve stuff without having to write a bunch of low level SQL. It also handles sessions and uses a lot of conventions over configuration, which lets you get down to work rather than spending a lot of time setting stuff up.
It is always hard to learn a new language AND a new framework, but it is amazing how much we were able to accomplish in a short time starting at zero.
Another indication of how easy it is to develop applications in RoR is that even though it has only been around for about a year and a half, there are already an incredible amount of applications available using it, including blogs, wikis, bug tracking, project tracking, accounting, forums, picture galleries, and more. For comparison, Java has been around for over 10 years, and it still doesn’t have some of the applications available in RoR!
Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:11:00 GMT | 3 comments
People sometimes ask if it is relaxing being retired. Interestingly, it isn’t.
Some days I work harder now than I did when I had a traditional job. Whether it is re-doing the plumbing in our bathroom, setting up a Linux email server, helping a friend start a business, or developing a registration form for our son’s baseball league using Ruby on Rails, I have been incredibly busy.
What is different is that now I have more control over what I do and when. For instance, if I want to take a nap or bike ride in the middle of the day, I do it. Or if I want to spend time researching open source software, well, I can do that too.
So while being retired hasn’t really been all that relaxing, the big difference is that it has been a lot less stressful.
Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 02 Dec 2005 17:50:00 GMT | no comments
It is interesting that sometimes incredible portions of conversations are dominated by talking about other people. For instance, some dinner conversations consist entirely of lines like: “Did you know that so-and-so said that?” and “Can you believe that so-and-so did that?” Often these are not even people that we all know, but just “my daughter’s classmate’s mother” or “this guy I know at work.”
Now gossip is commonly thought of as talking negatively about other people, but it seems to me that this idle chatter about remote people qualifies as gossip too.
The biggest problem with this type of conversation is that it crowds out the possibility of really meaningful discussions. It is certainly easier to talk about other people’s problems and struggles rather than our own.
Not all discussions about other people fall into this category. For instance, if someone is having problems with a boss, teacher or acquaintance, it is often helpful to describe the situation in order to get advice. Likewise, if a friend is having a problem that is similar to one that has been dealt with successfully by someone else, it is helpful to describe what the other person did to overcome the situation.
But when the conversation turns to other people in an idle way, maybe we should pull it back to the people present and ask how the other person is doing and what challenges they are facing, or share our own fears, successes, shortcomings and challenges, in order to make our conversations truly meaningful.
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 01 Dec 2005 17:56:00 GMT | 1 comment
This Typo blog is setup to use Markdown, and here are some basic formatting rules.
Input:Output
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1. Ordered List 1 2. Ordered List 2
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 01 Dec 2005 17:23:00 GMT | no comments
I accidently ate some wheat at Thanksgiving a week ago, and my body is still under attack from it.
It was really dumb – I looked at the ingredients of the Honey Nut Cheerios and saw just oats so I thought it would be okay so I ate two bowls. Within about an hour, I started feeling bad, like I was getting a cold, just kind of achy. I then read the ingredients list more carefully and saw that “wheat flour” was listed down below. Shoot.
All that day, I continued to feel like I was coming down with something. Just tired and achy. And driving from Salinas up to Healdsburg, my back hurt.
Then, more stupidity. My sister made some Mexican rice, which I assumed would be okay so I ate a lot of it. Then as I was finishing up, I looked more closely and say short, round strands of something. Inquiring about them, I found out it was pasta. Doh!
Interestingly, my hands didn’t hurt like they did the last time I ate wheat. This time it was mainly my back. Also, the gland under my right chin became very tender. And my other system was just feeling achy and bad, but I never had a fever, sore throat, running nose, or any other system that would suggest it was really a viral illness.
So I think this is further proof that I am at least slightly celiac, and when my body encounters wheat, it has an auto-immune response that floods my body with something that lodges in my muscles and joints and causes them to be sore and me to feel achy all over.
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:01:00 GMT | no comments
Welcome to the blog of Max Dunn. I am going to record some random thoughts and comments here. Feel free to add comments or let me know your thoughts on anything I write here.