My wife is about five months pregnant. It’s a boy. We’re calling him Biscuit until we make a final naming decision (and probably after that). Anyway, I was pondering if there’s any particular books I’d like him (and potential future children) to read, in addition to the Bible. Here’s a few.

1. A Miracle, A Universe which is about a couple of groups of people who seek to “settle accounts with tortures” as the subtitle suggest, in Latin America after the dictatorships of the sixties and seventies or so. It’s a way to illustrate how awful humans can be, and how important it is not to assume torture is somehow okay, without them reading or seeing something (probably graphic) on torture itself.
2. The Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. Good information on how to think about money.
3. Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey. More good information on money, but from the perspective of one who wants to have comfort and security, without necessarily putting the work into wealth building.
4. Pride and Prejudice. It’s just a good book. And odds of any of our children not reading it or having it read to them is pretty low anyway.
5. The Unvanquished by William Faulkner. I don’t really know why I think this would be such a useful novel to read, but I really do. I guess because it displays very clearly the foolish things we let divide us from others.
6. The US Constitution.

Beware the…

1970-01-01...2038-01-19

…EPOCH-ELLIPSE!

My wife and I ate a Panera Bread this evening. And when I saw “my wife and I”, I don’t mean to imply that I did any of the actual eating. There was a time when soups, sandwiches and salads where what is known as the “s-group appetizers”. This is a code phrase for “you’ll have an appetite to leave and go somewhere that serves food that ain’t on that goofy health pyramid.” But, no, all the yuppies with their hybrid Hummers (but 10 mpg is better than 8) apparently like this stuff.

I should note that my wife is not a yuppie, she just eats healthy. I know this because when she eats at these places, she gets a water, not some strange ultra-caffienated concoction. And not a bottled water.

Anyway, turns out the yuppies than run these things are cheap-ass. At McDonald’s, where I ate a full (if devoid of nutritious value) meal for six dollars, I take my tray over the trash can when I’m finished and dump the paper remains in. No biggee. Hey, it’s McDonald’s. I’m not paying for service. I’m barely paying for food. So, right, my wife gets a salad at Panera Bread. It comes on a plate (New yuppie motto: “We have non-paper dishes. So we’re better than you.”), with metal fork and knife. So far, so good. So she finishes eating, and takes her plate with her.

If you’re not saying WTF? right now, I’m sorry, but you’re a yuppie. Go buy an espresso.

Yes, this cheap-ass yuppie establishment gives her a plate and whatnot, but expects their customers to bus their own table! This is not McDonald’s. You sell bagels, people! Normal people buy bagels at 7-11, then promptly throw them away. It’s like playing the lottery except without the temptation to try again after you lose. But I digress. All I’m saying is if you’re fancy-shmancy enough to sell all these fancy bagels, you can hire someone to bus the freaking tables.

Which brings me to Q’doba. They’re only half-yuppie. You see, most of what they give you is cheap plastic, easily tossed right? Yes, of course. But, then–why the heck not, they were thinking–they add a metal plate under the plastic plate. Because metal conducts heat more quickly than plastic and they want to burn fingers? I don’t know.

But was that clever enough? No, of course not. You see, since most of the wares are plastic, they have trash cans. But, oh, no, some people might throw away the unneeded metal plates too? What to do?

• Step 1: make the hole on the trash can smaller than the metal plate
• Step 2: (and here is genius at work) make the plastic plate the exact same size as the metal plate!

One of my new (admittedly transient) life goals is to get rich enough so I can buy out Q’doba, find out who thought this up, and then fire his dumb ass. And I know it’s a guy. And I’m pretty sure he was drinking Bud Light when he had the idea.

I’m playing Minesweeper a lot these days. I know, classic Windows game. The one the haven’t yet messed up with an “Internet version”. Anyway, it’s a fun game, doesn’t take too long per game, although in sum, I can wile away many hours.

Complaint: I’m a big fan of resolution increases. I can fit more stuff on the screen, and it’s increasingly clear. The problem is that things keep getting physically smaller, which is particularly noticeable with the little cheesy games which are sensitive to click location. Say, Minesweeper. Also, websites (and no, I don’t particularly care IE7’s weird resizing thing. It ends up looking fuzzy. Of course, I avoid IE anyway).

So, what about per application/window resolution? Is this technically feasible? Obviously, it could be a pain for the user–“Hey, why is the menu bar in Word so much bigger”–but it could be very nice as well. I have my mouse reactions tuned to my normal state of work–bookkeeping and programming. I want quick movement not fine interactions, which doesn’t work so well in super-mini-looking Minesweeper.

General purpose typically means multiple purpose. But resolution settings tend to hope for one-size-fits-all. Of course, there’s probably many other solutions.

Why the hallibut is the DOW down?!