Category: Personal

Day-to-day life and other ramblings

The State of the Blogophere, 1997

Raise your hand if you remember what the World Wide Web was like in 1997.

Here’s what I remember, and what I can dig up with a little research. Certainly my memories may be faulty, but this is my best stab at it.

The Web itself – in the form we know it today – was only about 5 years old. (I created a Web page in graduate school, circa 1993 or early 1994. It no longer exists. My current home page dates from 1996.) Amazon.com had been launched only two years earlier! And went public in May of 1997! eBay wouldn’t go public for another year! Netscape had just released Netscape Communicator, and the “browser wars” with Internet Explorer were in full swing.

But in the large I think the Web was much as it is today, only smaller, and with people still figuring out how best to use it. HTML was basically the same, JavaScript was around but a little more primitive, people still wrote Java applets embedded in their Web pages, but pages felt less “live” than they do today with stuff like Ajax in them.

Online diaries had been around since at least 1995. By 1997 there were hundreds of diaries – but only hundreds (my guess is about three hundred), compared to the thousands – maybe millions – around today. There was a webring, Open Pages, which would list any diary that wanted to be included. The community had grown large enough for there to be space for specialized webrings, such as Often or Archipelago, but still small enough to have a community-wide mailing list.

People differed over whether they kept “diaries” or “journals”, but it wasn’t a big deal. The term “weblog” had been coined but not yet popularized, and the term “blog” was still in the future. (To my mind, although “weblog” was originally applied to sites which focused mainly on linking to other sites and commenting on them, the terms “diary”, “journal” and “blog” are interchangeable today. Trying to draw a distinction between them is splitting hairs.)

There was no blogging software. People mostly hand-coded their HTML, and often used server side includes to automate some tasks. Assuming their ISP allowed them to write such things – many did not, due to paranoia about security breaches (mostly couched in terms of protecting the users from themselves). RSS was far in the future; people notified readers of new entries via mailing lists.

(There were surely exceptions to all this, but for most journallers, this was how it was.)

Individuals mostly didn’t worry about who would read their journal, or what they might be revealing to current or future employers or family or friends, or whether what they wrote would be archived forever by someone, somewhere. Indeed, people tended to assume the web was ephemeral: A site would be up today, gone tomorrow (possibly because someone freaked out about something and decided to withdraw from everyone). You learned not to rely on the existence of a web page. This is exactly the opposite of what we know to be true today!

So this was the state of affairs in the summer of 1997 when I discovered Ceej’s journal and soon thereafter started reading a half-dozen other journals, and soon considered publishing my own.

More next time.

Ten Years!

As of today I’ve been keeping an on-line journal (which is the same as what the kids call “blogging”) for ten years!

You can still read my first entry. Heck, all my old archives are still available.

While I’ve had periods or greater and lesser prolificacy, I’ve never actually gone on hiatus (planned or unplanned); I’ve been posting away at least a few times a month for that whole time. (I think my low-water marks were September 2003 and April 2006, each with only 3 entries, hardly enough to qualify for the Often Webring.)

I’ve been blogging since before the term “Weblog” was coined!

Over the next week or two I’ll be posting reminiscences about the whole journalling experience. I hope you’ll find them of interest.

I don’t plan to close up shop anytime soon, and I hope you’ll keep reading. As much as I say I keep journalling because it’s something I want to do, it doesn’t mean as much without readers, and I appreciate everyone who checks in to see what I’ve got to say.

Thanks for reading!

Minigolf Outing

Saturday we went on a long-planned “fun day out” excursion with Subrata, Susan, Chad and Camille. Our original plan was to play minigolf at the Putting Edge indoor glow-in-the-dark course at the Great Mall, but when we got there it turned out that the course has gone out of business! The web page for this location still exists, but I suspect it’s an oversight that they haven’t removed it; the location was locked up and seemed to be empty when we arrived mid-afternoon.

Remembering that we’ve driven past a golf course off the freeway over there that I’ve never played at, we retargeted ourselves at Golfland in Milpitas, which turned out to be a fine choice: The course is fairly challenging and interesting to play, and was in good repair overall. The only downside is that it was quite hot out and we all got a little bit dehydrated by the end. We had a good round of golf, with several holes in one (Debbi and I both got ones on the same hole). Competitive fellow that I am, I worked to catch up to Subrata, but he beat me by one point. Sigh!

Afterwards we drove back to the Great Mall for drinks and games at Dave and Buster’s. Debbi had some cards for the games which still had a significant number of credits, so we played a bunch of games, won a bunch of credit tickets, and we were all able to end up with some prize toys to take home.

We wrapped up the day with dinner at a Mexican restaurant near home, which was yummy and filling as usual.

It was nice to relax with friends and just have a good time with no worries (especially since I ended up going in to work today to try to finish up a project), and to play some games that are completely different from my usual strategy-oriented games (like Magic, poker, and board games). We ought to do this more often.

An Unusual Day Off

I’m home today on a sick day – even though I’m not sick. No, I’m not abusing the system: Debbi had oral surgery this morning, the second of three she’s having this year. The first was to remove her wisdom teeth and a baby tooth that never came out, the second is a bone graft to build up the jaw under the removed baby tooth, and the third will add an implant to replace the removed baby tooth.

Since she’s being put under for these surgeries, she can’t drive herself to and from the surgeon, so I drive here there and back, and then I stick around for the afternoon to make things easier for her during her first day back, when she’s in the most pain and probably the most exhausted as her body gets over the shock. And taking care of a family member is a legitimate reason to take a sick day.

Debbi really hates going to the dentist, but we have a terrific dentist (who came highly recommended, and to whom we’ve sent many of our friends), and her oral surgeon – she says – is just as good. So she’s been very brave going through all of this. I think the experience has not been as bad as she’s feared; it’s not pleasant, but she’s able to take care of herself after the first day. She’s taking most (maybe all) of the week off anyway. She’ll certainly be out through Thursday, based on how the first surgery went. It’s just a lot to recover from. Plus she has to stick to liquid and then soft foods for several weeks, which might be the worst part of the whole thing. Over the weekend we stocked up on yogurt and fruits to make smoothies.

It’s sometimes hard to believe that those tiny things in our mouths can require so much care and be so expensive to care for, and yet we certainly want to keep them in good working order.

Anyway, Debbi’s on the couch listening to a book-on-CD through the stereo (she’s finishing up the Sue Grafton mysteries). She’ll probably be zonked until the evening. I’ve been puttering around and keeping the cats more-or-less entertained (they’d probably tell you “less”, but they are unreliable witnesses and are not to be trusted).

Couldn’t ask for a nicer day to take it easy, though: It’s sunny and about 70 out right now, with an occasional breeze. I might go read up on the porch this afternoon.

Cucumber Sandwiches

The garden’s going well this year: We’ve harvested our first two dozen tomatoes this weekend, and we picked our second cucumber.

My favorite thing to do with cucumbers is to make cucumber sandwiches, as follows:

  1. Remove crusts from white bread and cut into squares. I’ve been using Orowheat County White bread, which I cut with a large bread knife.
  2. Spread little dollops of mayonnaise on one side of each slice and place the slices on a serving tray.
  3. Peel the cucumber and cut into slices. Put each slice on a piece of bread.
  4. Shake salt and pepper on top of the finished sandwiches.
  5. If making more than one layer, put wax paper between the layers.
  6. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
  7. Consume greedily.

They’re not true “sandwiches” since they have only one square of bread each. But who cares? Also: Eat them the same day you make them, because the bread gets soggy if you leave them overnight. Ick.

But meanwhile, yummmmmm:

Cucumber_Sandwiches.jpg

Workin’ Vacation

Last year we took a long weekend trip to Portland and returned the night of the Fourth of July. This year I suggested we turn it around, flying up on the Fourth so we could catch the fireworks in the evening, and then have a vacation in Portland with our friend Karen.

We flew in Wednesday afternoon. Karen threw a barbecue party in the late afternoon, with us, her mother, sister, and some friends coming by. I was elected grillmaster, and did my best with Karen’s charcoal grill. Well, okay, it wasn’t the grill’s fault, it was fine; I just have a gas grill at home, so when I do use charcoal I always have to remember just how it all works. This time around, I should have left the grill uncovered so the coals could breathe and heat up. Instead they just sort of smouldered for a while. I was actually able to get everything cooked through, it just took about twice as long as it should have. Go me!

But seriously, we all had a good time, and the food was good. Can’t ask any fairer than that.

Thursday we had a quiet day: Karen went to work for a bit, since she had an appointment, and Debbi and I hung around at home. When Karen came back, we worked to get her wi-fi set up.

So here’s the thing: I have this habit of visiting Karen shortly after she moves. I think this is the fourth time in seven years. Go figure. No, I don’t help her unpack, but I do help her with some projects around the house. It’s fun, really: I feel like I get some things done, and leave her house in better shape than when I arrived.

Back to her wi-fi: Last time I set it up she had DSL. This time she has Comcast cable. I figured: It’s a modem, it probably works just the same. And it almost does, except for one thing: The modem apparently records the MAC address (nothing to do with Apple, it’s the built-in identifier for the ethernet card) of the device it’s plugged into, and in order to plug it into a different device you have to power-cycle the modem. Which would be fine (if stupid) if Comcast actually told us this, but in fact it came with no documentation, and their help line wasn’t much help, either. So a 5-minute project turned into a 40-minute project. Sheesh.

Anyway, we did get the wi-fi set up, and I didn’t even have to reset the base station. Woo-hoo!

Friday we hit a couple of my favorite places in Portland: Fat Albert’s breakfast cafe (home of awesome biscuits and gravy), and of course Powell’s books.

In the evening we went to a baseball game, the Portland Beavers hosting the Tacoma Rainiers. Ah, minor league baseball, even of the AAA variety. The Beavers – the Padres’ affiliate – is a pretty weak team these days, staffed with some borderline prospects and some decent backup or former Major Leaguers. The Rainiers features some guys who look like real prospects, like Jeff Clement and this guy, Adam Jones:

Adam_Jones.jpg
(click to view full-sized)

The game was a laffer from early on and the Rainiers won 10-4. We did get to see some nuns watching the game from some good seats, but I’m sure you’re more interested in seeing us enjoying the game:

At_The_Park.jpg

When I say this was a “working vacation”, I mean the projects I undertook around the house, and mostly those were Saturday and Sunday. We picked up some shelves which I installed in the bathroom:

Shelves.jpg

And some flowers which I planted in pots on the front porch:

Front_Porch.jpg

And tomato plants and herbs which went in the back yard:

Garden.jpg

The owner of the house had planted some heirloom tomatoes, some of which self-seeded, so Karen’s got some mystery tomato plants lurking around, and who knows what those will produce! But I caged several of them, so she’ll get a chance to find out.

In between it all I was able to make a run to Excalibur Comics, and Saturday evening we met my friend J.D. and his wife Kris for dinner and dessert. We had a great time, like we did last year. I got to ask J.D. what the size of a medium box is. Less flippantly, we talked comics (I’m scandalized that J.D. is going digital with his comics reading), Magic (he used to play, too – in fact, his period of playing almost exactly covers my time away from the game), and various other things. A nice, relaxing evening.

I even surprised everyone by eating a clam!

I think the vacation was about a day too short, as I would have enjoyed one day of just lying around or going to see some sights. But Sunday afternoon we headed to the airport (okay, after one more trip to Fat Albert’s) and came home. The cats were very happy to see us, although Roulette expressed her unhappiness by avoiding me all evening.

But she forgave me eventually!

Conference’s End

Another WWDC is in the books. I spent three days working hours in the Mac OS X lab, answering a variety of Xcode questions. I went to see one presentation, and saw a few friends in the developer community whom I don’t otherwise see. I took CalTrain to and from the conference, which is fun, and gave me a bunch of bonus exercise. It did get me to wake up a little earlier than usual, which isn’t such a bad thing.

After I wrapped up the conference today I went shopping. I stopped at Borderlands Books where I bought a couple of things and spent some quality time with Ripley, who very cleverly enticed me back to the couch where I could sit down so she could sit in my lap. No dumb cat, that.

I also went by Comix Experience and Gamescape, where I was less successful, although I did help recommend Fables to another customer at the former.

Now I’m ready for a nice quiet weekend. My legs are tired from all the walking.

Insanity Week

The latest semi-irregular round-up of my life since I haven’t been posting regularly lately.

For most of my co-workers, this is insanity week.1 For me, last week was insanity week, and it had nothing to do with work, which has actually been quite reasonable for me lately (read: I’m not actually presenting anything at WWDC).

Last week was nuts for a lot of little reasons, and most of it revolved around gaming:

Last weekend I had wanted to host a Magic booster draft, but I wasn’t able to get enough interest, so it didn’t happen. That bummed me out. So I made plans to host again this past Saturday, since Debbi was going to be busy from late morning to mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, a couple of people couldn’t make it until mid-afternoon, which made the whole thing questionable.

Meanwhile, my new(ish) friend Lee wanted to host poker on Thursday, which I was also into, but for quite a while it looked like we might not have enough for that either. I eventually recruited my friend James for poker, and we jointly twisted my co-worker Daniel’s arm, so we had 7 people on Thursday, which was nice. We played a mini-tournament and I finished 4th (i.e. “just out of the money, again”), mainly because I took a couple of bad beats when I was the big stack which crippled me. (When I call an all-in bet with my A-9 and my short-stacked opponent turns over A-9 too, and then makes a flush on the river, I think that’s a bad beat.) But I mostly think I played very well, never going all-in until my final hand when I was forced to, and playing with the big stack for quite a while, which was fun. I certainly made some mistakes, but I managed to get away from them. No doubt a close assessment of my play would still make me appear as a newbie, but I was pretty happy.

And then on Saturday we played Magic, specifically the Mirrodin block, which is artifact-based, and which was new to all of us. Again, we had 7 people, and it was a lot of fun. A very interesting block to play. I ended up with a better-than-average deck, I think, with a couple of bombs, but a few weaknesses, too. I got very lucky a couple of times while playing, but then, that’s part of what makes it fun!

Unfortunately, Lee ended up getting sick and wasn’t able to make it, so he still hasn’t been over to see my house and meet the kitties. But we might get together with him and his wife sometime outside of gaming time to make that happen.

So all the gaming turned out well, but it took a lot of time and energy to organize it than it seemed like it ought to have taken. I guess that’s life sometimes. It reminds me why I’m less willing to take on ongoing organizational tasks like the fantasy baseball league these days, though.

Meanwhile, the first weekend we ended up going to a little party thrown by my friend Lucy, whom I haven’t seen in quite a while. It was a party with a Tiki theme and revolving around her writerly friends, but Debbi and I had a great time anyway (by which you can infer that my writing has not been going so well lately). I drank more alcohol at it than I have in quite a while, and was glad Debbi was willing to drive home when we packed it in late in the evening.

And then I had to read the book for last night’s book discussion, Karl Schroeder’s Lady of Mazes, which I kept putting off and then had to frantically finish up Sunday afternoon. Review forthcoming. Okay, this hole I dug myself. But still.

My weekend wrapped up with the discussion itself – which ran about 30 minutes long – and then packing up some stuff I sold on eBay so I could mail it today. And then, whew! My crazy week was over. Fun (mostly), but very tiring.

So anyway, yeah. Now it’s WWDC. I’ll be working in the labs a few days this week, answering questions for folks. Not as easy as it sounds: The questions can be difficult, and there’s a lot of working in-depth with folks to figure out how to do what they need to do. So it’s mentally pretty tiring. But it’s nice to see people out there using the code I’ve written. If you happen to be at the conference, feel free to stop by and say “hi”! (Which would be an interesting change of pace, since I’ve never experienced WWDC as a social event, as I know some people do. I’ve always assumed this is because Mac programming is my vocation, not my hobby, but I don’t really know why. Of course, it takes some effort for me to experience science fiction conventions as social events rather than geeking-out-in-my-own-headspace events, so it’s probably just me.)

(1 It’s not really insanity week, it’s just a very busy week, and many of them enjoy it very much. But it is a very different week from the other 51 weeks in the year.)

The Lingering Yuckness

I’ve had this low-grade illness or something for a few weeks now. When it started I had a sore throat and clearly had some sort of illness because I would get wiped out by mid-afternoon and have to go crash. It lasted for about three days and then went away.

Except that it left me with this peculiar post-nasal-drip type of symptom: I constantly feel like I have a little bit of phlegm in the back of my throat, and like I have to swallow a lot. I’m not congested, though. Sometimes it’s better, sometimes it’s worse, but it hasn’t been going away. Drinking tea helps, but only temporarily.

It would just be a little frustration except that I think it’s been causing me to snore a lot when I’m asleep, and needless to say this doesn’t work so well for Debbi.

So I’m at something of a loss. I’ve been rather stressed out lately, and I wonder if I just haven’t been resting enough to knock the last of some bug out of my system. Or if I got through one thing and am now coming down with something else. Or if I need to just go see a doctor.

Blick.

Garden Progress

Some pictures of my garden this spring.

Here’s what my garden looked like a month ago:

Garden_Apr30.jpg
(click for larger image)

And here’s what it looks like now:

Garden_May30.jpg

The snapdragons have finished their first blooms and a couple are getting ready for their second go-round. The marigolds are in full bloom. The three tomato plants are doing great (and two are fruiting already), and the cucumber plant (middle cage) is starting to take off. Only the pepper plant (far left cage) is taking its sweet time.

All the herbs in the pots are doing well, too. The rosemary and thyme are held over from last year, but we picked up some new Italian parsley and sweet basil.

Here’s what my yard around the patio looked like a month ago, too:

Yard.jpg

The stream, incidentally, starts in the little pool on the right, runs behind the red cowbells, and falls into the pond whose edge is on the left. The plants surrounding the head pool on the right got clobbered by our cold winter weather, but they’ve completely recovered by now – rather to my surprise, because they didn’t look good.

I need to clean up the patio, and then we can start having weekend breakfast out there, and I might start doing some writing outside in the evening when it gets a little warmer.