Hello

hot dog stand

Well, I guess it's been a while but I am still alive. 

This headline from the LA times got my attention.  "Two-Michelin-starred chef Josiah Citrin opens another hot dog stand at Staples Center".  I'm always alert to spin reporting of normal things but this set me off.  Does Michelin really rate hot dog stands?  I guess if there's money in it then any rating/awards organization will do pretty much anything.  There is no class anymore.

Speaking of spin, SpaceX, an Elon Musk company declared a disastrous explosion on landing of their rocket as an almost success.  Great to hear the spinners make a positive out of such a firework.  And the barge that was simply placed in position by regular old tugboats was declared a "drone ship".  I'd rather not take that vehicle on my space fun ride, thank you.  You can look up the money that NASA has contracted with these guys for taking loads up to the Space Station.   

Shirley Temple died this week, and maybe a lot of us didn't notice.  But I did.  After her movie career and who knows what else, she became U.S. ambassador to Ghana.  That's where I was at the time.  In particular on July 4th, 1975.  I had gotten my Honda 125 at that time and took the long drive along to coast to Accra for the big shindig.  She had hotdogs and some American beer flown in for the occasion and setup a great party.  A softball game erupted much to the enjoyment of us and the locals. (maybe except for the ones who were used to using the field for soccer).  I remember her as a gracious and personable lady who enjoyed the day with us.  Thanks for all, Shirley.

Suppose I wanted to know the outside temperature, like to decide if I should go on a bike ride or just take a walk.  I'm not inclined or equipped for cold weather biking but I do like to get out and do something.  Just at the cusp of internet weather taking off, I got an outside thermometer with an inside readout as a gift.  It still sits in the kitchen junk drawer awaiting deployment, like never.  The pool system has a pretty accurate measurement and there's always dozens of different internet displays, mostly from the same sources so there's no difference anyway.  Right now it's 53F (internet) and although other parts of the country will smirk at us as real wimps, I did have a very nice walk and thank you very much.  Maybe I'll even get out later to pickup the mail.

Last night mailboxes all along our street were opened and contents removed (stolen).  I do live in a place that is rural enough to have mailboxes out at the end of the driveway next to the street.  When we moved here, the locals advised and we got a locking mailbox, matching too, didn't want to stir things up. 

So this morning as I drove along there were many boxes open and little piles of mail on the ground.  Very sad since it's been raining and the little lumps of wet mail were just there sitting.  Being a good citizen, I called the PD to let them know.  After a brief argument about the location of the city limits the dispatcher assured me that some officer type person would drive by and check out the situation.  Also, she assured me that "if it's not ours" (meaning outside of the city limits) then they will notify the appropriate authorities.  Well, thank goodness for that.  I didn't mention to her that in fact I see the Sheriff's patrolling a lot more than the city cops but just let that lay.

My locking mailbox still contained all the junk mail that I normally receive and thank goodness for that!  I wonder if those scratches near the lock mean anything?  It should mean that I pick up the mail everyday which is now difficult since the delivery guy/gal only puts is in the box after I've gone to bed, but anyway I'll do my best to avoid the pictures with the circles and arrows on the back and enjoy suburban life, ask Alice!  

Hour of code, completed

My 10 year old grandson had grabbed me the other day to help with this "hour of code" thing.  He was pretty far along but was confused about the repeat block.  I didn't really get it either but in proper Grandpa mode just fooled around a bit until he figured it out himself.

So I tried it myself just now, I figured with more than 30 years of coding under my belt, I could probably learn something too.  Despite the annoying image of that Zuckerberg clown and information about how many billionaires donated to this project I dove in.  The idea is to put together by drag and drop some "blocks" to get the angry bird to his target through a short maze like path.  More annoyance was the declaration that JavaScript is the worlds most popular programming language.  And so what if it is?  It still sucks in so many ways.

I got the "move forward" block and then advanced to the "do until done" directive and then the "if path to left" conditional and graduated to the if/else logic.  It reminded me of the Logo language created in 1967.  I never could get my kids interested in that.  I think they were more involved in fighting over what to wear to school.  But is was nice to see Grandboy getting interested.

But it's a tough sell when compared to building forts and staging battles in "Clash of Clans".  That's much more exciting than "move forward" and crashing into walls if the number of steps is wrong.

The one thing that really bothered me about this hour of code programming was that after each exercise it reported something like "that's correct but you could have done it in fewer steps".  A program can always be done in less steps, but is that the only criteria?  NO.  It's probably the least important thing.  I learned long ago from Fred Carter (thanks, Fred) that the compiler optimizer is going to rearrange everything anyway so just write it clean and easy to understand then let the machine do it's job.  As I write this I get more angry about this attitude.  It's just a little boy "I can do it better" thing that doesn't belong in a production setting.  But that's why we have so many stupid bugs today isn't it?  That recent DNS problem was caused by a programmer clown thinking he understood the default path in some if/then/else code instead of writing it all out so it would be clear and correct. 

Enough for now, regards.

Why is it so hard to post anymore?  Sure it's been a year, but hey that might be more or less depending on the 20 something kids down in Googlevile.  I login and don't find the post icons that I guess you call them but that's your language and not mine.  Let's see how this works.