Brownian Motion

Just yesterday, I had to run off to a meeting. While away, Windows decided to update itself and reboot my machine, all the while my work was sitting open.

Had I been doing my work online, say in Google Docs, I wouldn't have lost an hour or so worth of work. I was steamed. Now, I'll use Google Docs more than than I had been.

I had taken today and tomorrow off, originally to go with the family to Chicago to visit museums and to do fun stuff. Well, after a total disappearance of brakes on my wife's car, the huge repair bill led us to change our minds. So, when a program I'm writing just wasn't working right, it was bugging me and I came into work anyway.

While thinking the problem through I started listening to an outstanding reading on podcast of The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde and read by B.J. Harrison of the The Classic Tales podcast. This was an absolute treat. Like Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, this was an extremely fun and funny treat. I highly recommend it.

I guess I should be glad. The Wall Street Journal has just saved me from myself. I was entering a comment on an article about video game developers increasing the amount of family friendly and kid-friendly games, as opposed to violent and sex oriented fare that dominates sales.

I was glad about the news. Here is a link to the article: Game Makers Push 'Family' Fare: Companies Hope Less Violent Videogames Bring New Users, but Sales Are Uncertain.

My comment included mentioning that we in my family had decided to not get Guitar Hero for the Wii we're giving to the kids for Christmas. We've all played it and we're all bothered by the content. The kids more than even I or my wife. I made reference, in my response to the article, to "Whores" in describing how the women are dressed in the game and about the pervasive sense of drug culture in the video portrayals. My girls also object to the lyrics, saying that they made them uncomfortable.

Apparently the use of the word "whores" in my response got me the auto-censor - fair enough.

Robots are everywhere. Even in Literature. The first place the word "robot" was used was in a play called R.U.R., written in Czechoslovakia early in the last century by Karel Capek. R.U.R stands for Rossum's Universal Robots. Its a fascinating tale of robots gone wild.

I'm learning to make Lego Robots with my kids. We're talking about it over here at Senor Parrot's blog. We've done a lot of preparatory reading.

Here's what we've looked at: Robots for Kids - books to get started.

• Robots for Kids - books to get started pt. 1
• Robots for Kids - books to get started pt. 2

They all came from the library. Surprisingly, there's not a lot in the big bookstores like Borders or Barnes and Noble.

My department at the community college where I work sends out a lot of surveys. Seems that someone has gotten a hold of our preprinted business envelopes and is typing over them to use them for themselves. Problem is, they're still getting back to us along with survey responses. It will be interesting to find out who it is. Won't they be surprised. The Postal Inspector has been contacted.