Tom Edelson

I understand that the film did fairly well at the box office. But not
well enough to guarantee that there will be a sequel.

Ah, Melancholia.  How sweet the sound.

An alternate title for this film could be 'Existentialism 101.'  I'm not saying that that would have made a better title, only that it would be a true one.

To me, this feels like the indispensable movie.  I'm glad I've lived long enough to see it.

That's what it cost me to "upgrade" to the paid version of the ElJay client ... which I am using to create this post.

And why do I put quotation marks around "upgrade"? Because the only claimed difference, so far as I can tell, is the absence of ads. And I wasn't seeing ads with the free version, either. Maybe that's because I have a paid account on LiveJournal itself, and thus don't see ads on the website, anyway.

You know what? I don't care. Consider it a donation.

Just got myself an Asus Android tablet. I am posting this using that device, with the ElJay client program. I am sure that it would be possible to create an LJ client app with a more complete LiveJournal experience ... but it would take a long time. Well, maybe I shouldn't be so sure it's possible. You can't do it in a client if the API doesn't provide for it.

Eastern (coastal) parts of North Carolina suffered some damage from Hurricane Irene, but where I live, in the mountainous western part of the same state, wasn't even touched by it.

But then, a week or so later, the newspaper starts telling us that we could get heavy rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee.  Flooding is possible in places.

Yesterday, right on schedule, rain starts up, heavy at times.  After that's gone on for a while, my phone rings.  I pick it up, and this portentous voice says (or, at least, this is what it sounds like):

"Noah has issued a flood warning for your area."

(Please note that, up to this point, I am not making any of this up.)

So I'm thinking, "He has a pretty impressive track record at predicting floods; maybe I better pay attention.  But wait a minute: they can't fool me!  He's been dead for thousands of years!"  So I say into the phone:

"Who is this, really?"

But the voice goes right on:

"Press '1' if you agree to grab your shotgun, gather up your dogs ... oh yes, and your wife and children ... and get your ass to higher ground."

"Press '2' if you think that this is your cousin Lester playing a trick on you, or if, for any reason, you are not taking this warning seriously."

I figure I'm already on to them, so of course I press '2'.  And then the same voice says, in even more solemn tones:

"How long can you tread water?"

(After this point, I am, once again, not making any of this up.)

I checked online, and there really was a flood warning for Marshall.  But it was referring to the actual town, which is right on the banks of the French Broad River, and has flooded many times before.  In order for flood waters to reach my house, on the side of a mountain outside town, you really would need rains that haven't been seen since Noah's time.

Now, about twenty-four hours later, we know that the actual amount of rain was only about three inches, not the ten that were forecast, and so there wasn't any flooding down by the river, either.

But they sure had me going for a while there.  And yes, credit is due to Bill Cosby for help with the parts I made up.

I did what again, exactly? I released another new version of jGnash, a cross-platform, free personal finance program. This new one is Release 1.13.0, and it's actually been available for download since Monday, January 17.

This is only the second formal software release that I've done as an independent developer, not as someone's employee; that is, the second one since I "retired" from my last salaried position. The first one was the previous version of jGnash, 1.12.0, and its release date was nearly two years ago: February 27, 2009. I announced that one on LiveJournal, too (among other places): see the entry titled Software bird flies the nest.

I've gotten other pieces of software working in the interval since then, and one of them is even in use by people I haven't met; it's just that none has technically been "released".

Still, this release, considered by itself, does represent months of work. I'm not waxing as emotional about it as I did about the other one, but it does feel good to have completed the process. The main difference in feeling tone between the previous time and this time, I think, is that this time I was in a better place, emotionally speaking, to begin with: there isn't the same feeling of emerging from a slough of despond. More like business as usual, I guess.

What's new in this release? There's one kind-of cool enhancement ... but it's directed at people who want to write "scripts" (mini-programs) to work with jGnash, not at regular users. Aside from that, there are various bug fixes, aimed at making the program [even] more reliable and accurate. For a list of some of these, see the page on the jGnash Wiki titled JGnash 1.x Series Release Information.

If you'd like to try the software, the place to go is the download page for this release. That is, you guessed it, the place where you can actually download the program; additionally, that page displays a "release notes" document which can serve as an overall orientation to it.

Still another link: if you'd like an overview of all the major programming projects I've worked on since my "retirement", you can find that at a page titled My Software Projects, which is part of my personal web site, or "home page", at The Well.

Or, if you're curious about any of this, just contact me (for example, by leaving a comment) to get more information, direct from the source.

Yesterday I received final resolution of some medical uncertainties which have made my life more complicated over the last month or so.  In retrospect, it's more funny than anything else, so I'll give you the [relatively] quick version of the story.

But I will put even that behind a cut.  Here's the really quick version: it went from thinking I was facing one of life's mid-level aggravations ... to hearing that I might have a deadly disease ... to learning that there was no [identifiable] problem at all.  Other than, that is, the aftermath of having expended a good deal of time, energy, worry, and, yes, money.

( Read more .... )

... the words of my previous post proved prophetic.  If you read between the lines, that is.

In other words, Bogey is no longer my dog.  I did end up returning him to the place where I got him, namely, the Madison County Animal Shelter.

They were very nice about it.  I am very sad about it.  Mostly, I manage to avoid tipping over from sadness into guilt ... but just barely.

As far as I can tell, Bogey seems to be one of those dogs who is bound and determined not to acknowledge anyone else as pack leader.  I believe I understood what the issue was: I had training advice from a number of sources, including two books.  The one thing I didn't do was take him to a professional trainer; a really good one can sometimes turn around even a "hard case" like him.

I ended up acknowledging to myself that I really hadn't known what I was getting into.  Now that I knew, I decided that I wasn't willing to keep on pouring so much time, energy, and money into the effort.  (The money, so far, had been mostly for replacement of damaged household goods.)  I just needed my life back.

If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't adopt him in the first place.  I wouldn't put him, or myself, through the pain of bonding, then separating.

I am, quite simply, sorry.  On the other hand, if you think that my giving him up makes me a bad person, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Bogey is my dog. He's a Plott Hound mix. He's about six months old.

I adopted him in late July, from the Madison County Animal Shelter. I had him at home in a "foster" status, for about two weeks before that.

The picture was taken in July, by my very good friend gadwall.

Did I know what I was getting into? Uh, no, not really. I have had a few dogs in my day (most recently Toofus, who died a little less than two years ago). But I hadn't "owned" a puppy, nor lived with one, since I was in elementary school myself.

Well, let me tell you, folks: caring for a puppy is a lot different from caring for a senior dog like Toofus. Okay, I sort of already knew that; but I didn't fully understand it, at a gut level. It's one of those experiences you can "know about" intellectually, but can not really appreciate until you've done it. I have little doubt that this applies to you, as well.

The biggest difference: a puppy will grab things from any surface he (or she) can reach, chew on them, and, in so doing, damage or destroy them. (Toofus did that, sometimes, but with nothing like the consistency and energy with which Bogey does it.) Chances are good that, in the first few months one has a puppy, the cost of property damage will be the largest component of the cost of having him.

Again, knowing this intellectually cannot fully prepare you for it ... at least not unless you are a whole lot better at adapting to new situations than I am. This is certainly possible, but are you sure?

For example, take that phrase above: he will grab things from "any surface he can reach." Are you able to anticipate how fast that list of surfaces will grow, as the puppy grows, not only in size but in strength and agility?

So what am I saying here: that you shouldn't get a puppy? No; but I am saying that you'd be wise to think very carefully about whether the disadvantages of a puppy, as compared to an older dog, outweigh the advantages, for you.

If you do adopt a puppy, the chances are high that you will, more than once, think that you made a mistake, even that you're going to have to give up and return him to where you got him from. If you don't have fairly recent experience with puppies, I suggest that you don't ask yourself whether you're the exceptional person to whom this will not happen. Ask yourself, instead, whether you're prepared to deal with it when it does happen.

Can you refrain from giving up the puppy impulsively, even if you acquired him that way? Can you think carefully about ways of preventing and dealing with the problems? And then think carefully again, when the ways you thought of the last time don't (or at least don't always) work?

In short, do you have the determination, the stubbornness, the plain ol' grit to raise a puppy? Only if you do can I venture even to hope that you will eventually be the happy companion of a happy dog.

It was noon in a small town in the Southern mountains.  In the local cafe, a tourist couple were eating lunch.  At another table, two hillbillies discussed the fine points of their respective moonshine operations.

Suddenly, the tourist lady got a piece of meat stuck in her throat. One of the hillbillies noticed immediately that something was wrong. He walked over.

"Kin ya swaller?" he asked her.  She shook her head: no.  "Kin ya breathe?"  Again, she shook her head, more weakly, and her face was already turning a little blue.

The hillbilly hero wasted no more time.  He pulled her to her feet. He pulled up her skirt.  He pulled down her drawers.  He planted a big, wet stroke with his tongue on her right buttock.

The lady was so shocked that she had a spasm, which propelled the stuck piece of meat right out of her throat.  The emergency was over.

Her rescuer returned to his own table.  "Ya know," his lunch partner said, "ah heard tell of that there Hind Lick Maneuver, but I ain't never actually seed it done."

Note:

Other forms of this joke can be found in various places around the Web.  One of them is at http://www.funnyhub.com/jokes/pages/hindlick-maneuver.html.