Unconscious Inertia

Scheme, for those of you who don’t know, is a programming language. For the past, oh, fifteen years, I’ve been meaning to learn one—even briefly signed up for a C++ class in college (dropped after the professor provided essentially no explanation other than “This is equivalent to x in Pascal” for every language feature). The other day, however, on my lunch break, I began to read How to Design Programs which is not really about Scheme, but uses Scheme to show you its examples. Here, finally, is a language that actually makes sense to me—largely, I think because the programs read like math.

So, for example, if you want to check whether some number solves a particular equation, all you have to do is

(define (equation x)
  (+ (sqr x) (* 4 x) -3))

and then call, say, (equation 3), which is either equal to 0 or not.

I find this enormously wonderful. I’m not incredibly good at math intuitively, but give me long enough, and it makes sense to me.

In the course of my work, I access a mainframe system pretty much daily—kind of old school, but it gets the job done. (Though because we’re running a heavily customized application, I haven’t learned anything about how things “normally” go on mainframes—though I did get slightly interested in Rexx.) Like lots of official systems, this one has an Announcements screen when you first log in. Since the end of last month, though, it’s been only this:

THIS SCREEN LAST MODIFIED:    SEPTEMBER 30, 2009        RR
   ************************************************************************    

   ******************************HAVE A NICE DAY********************

For some reason this makes me laugh every time.

At the request of my lovely wife, I have finally gotten around to getting the wireless router working at the Chittom household. It's only taken me a year and a half or so. Maybe two years, I'm not sure. For whatever reason, the Linksys firmware didn't like to play nice with our DSL modem, so after wrestling with it a while, I flashed the router with DD-WRT—and now I have the geeky pleasure of one more Linux-based device in the house (the other being our Roku Netflix Player).

Now if I can only get my netbook working again, I'll be set.

I’ve never been quite sure about "Jack and the Beanstalk," where the boy trades a cow for a handful of beans and eventually makes a fortune off the deal. I suspect that this tale is best interpreted as implying that risky enterprises can occasionally pay off, but taking on such outcome volatility also creates a nontrivial chance of being eaten by a giant.

From a NY Times blog post about economics in fairy tales. (via MR)

The New York Times is running an article entitled "Low-Wage Workers Are Often Cheated, Study Says." One of the study's authors, a sociology professor, says "We were all surprised by the high prevalence rate." Really?

I've been watching Dollhouse. As with most Whedon shows, good dialogue. But, as a big Firefly fan, the best part is that more than once have Topher's lines—"This feeling?—it is not unlike pride." springs to mind—echoed faintly in my ears in the dulcet tones of Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

Of course, given that apparently one of Whedon's directions during the filming of Serenity was "Say something Mal would say," maybe the Dollhouse crew should get Fillion on board. Given that rumor is that Summer Glau and two (more) of the Battlestar Galactica will guest star in season 2, adding Fillion would make at least a few more thousand geeks' heads explode.

Reading a bit this morning about domestic staff, my curiousity piqued by watching Jeeves and Wooster last night—the world of people who need household staff is not one I'm likely to enter, so I have no real frame of reference. Found the Butler Bureau, which despite its poor site design and sometimes unprofessional lack of editing, seems to have a fair amount of information on it. I found this (emphasis original) in their Etiquette Advice Center:

[E]tiquette can be looked upon as an antiquated set of obtuse rules and requirements (stemming from the old 'court' culture of Royal familiies [sic] past and present) having little relevance to 99.99% of the world's population.

How often are any of us in a position in which we have to request an Archbishop, a Prince of the realm, and a country’s President sit down for a meal and therefore need to know who comes first when we announce to them that dinner is served? (i.e. Precedence)

Who needs to know how to write a letter, with correct forms of address to a Benedictine Abbot, as opposed to a retired Archdeacon?

There are various bodies and groups of people to whom isolated elements of etiquette and form are absolutely important and a select handful too who have to know every aspect by rote (the Private Secretary to the Queen for example).

For the rest of us, by and large, it’s just knowing not to lick our knife when dining in company!

There are now 312 movies in my Netflix queue. At optimal viewing rates, this will last me at least a year, assuming the postal service doesn't slip up.

Apparently, eBay and GM have a partnership. This can't end well.

Today is payday—and sorely needed around my household. I decided to look at my pay stub and run some numbers. It turns out that since I started my new job in late January, 41.28% of my salary has been immediately going to various things other than our bank account.

• 0.35% for employer-provided life insurance
• 3.35% for employer-provided dental insurance
• 21.98% for employer-provided health insurance
• 0.00% for federal income taxes—I got more exemptions than you can shake a stick at
• 4.61% for Social Security taxes
• 1.08% for Medicare taxes
• 0.85% for state income taxes
• 7.25% for mandatory retirement contributions
• 1.82% for the kids' 529 plans
• Yes, all those numbers add up to 41.29% on account of rounding.

None of that is stuff that I want to or can (in the case of taxes and retirement) eliminate. And right now, while we're certainly not burdened with an overabundance of wealth, to say the least, we are keeping our heads above water. Chalk it up to the cost of living these days, I guess.