Twitter for Week of 26 October 2008
These are my annotated tweets for the week of 26 October 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
Vote by Mail
2008-10-28: I spent the weekend in Oregon, where they vote by mail. Everyone I talked to has already voted. The election is over, except for counting.
Apparently, many people around the country are voting early by absentee ballot or other early voting mechanisms. Vote by mail has been a huge success in Oregon, which is a state that does not tolerate corruption and fraud. I’d like to see voting by mail in Massachusetts.
Twitter Is Improving
2008-10-28: I spent the last four days without Internet access. I discovered today that Twitter now gives you 40 pages of tweets. I have twitter-glut.
When I visit my parents, I don’t have good access to the Internet. After a four-day visit, I’m pretty behind on Twitter, and it used to be that Twitter would provide access only to the ten most recent pages of tweets (which for me is about one day’s worth). Now Twitter provides at least forty pages of recent tweets, a huge improvement. Their efforts at stabilizing their service are paying off. (Now if they can only figure out how to make money off the service.)
The Beet Queen, by Louise Erdrich
2008-10-28: On the plane to Portland on Friday, I finally read The Beet Queen, by Louise Erdrich. That is a great book, but all the characters are crazy.
I have had this book on my bookshelf for nearly twenty years. It is beautifully written, with believable and truly human characters. But because the characters are human, they are all nut cases; I would not want to know any of these people.
Sarah Palin and John McCain
2008-10-28: Here’s a photo, from the Washington Post, in which Sarah Palin and John McCain are flashing gang signs.
My wife found this photo and pointed it out to me, making the comment about gang signs.
Dell Incompatible With Dell
2008-10-29: My stupid Dell laptop, running Windows XP SP2, has forgotten again how to set the correct resolution on my 1680 x 1050 Dell monitor.
This is an on-going battle between my Dell Latitude 610 laptop and my Dell 22-inch monitor. My Apple MacBook Pro never has a problem with this monitor.
The Silent War, by Ben Bova
2008-10-29: Yesterday, I read The Silent War, Book 3 of the Asteroid Wars, by Ben Bova. I like it that Bova doesn’t fall in love with his characters.
These books are not compelling or great literature, but they are intelligent and entertaining. Bova allows things to happen to his characters; some change because of events or stress, and sometimes a main character dies. Many threads in his books are left unresolved and are not picked up in the sequels.
I read somewhere (but I can’t find the reference now) that Bova uses ancient Greek tragedies as a guide to writing his books. I think that sometimes he reaches a point where he has to decide whether a character lives or dies, and he flips a coin.
Learning SQL
2008-10-30: I find SQL hard and counterintuitive. I’m attempting to improve my SQL skills by reading SQL Cookbook and SQL Hacks, two O’Reilly books.
Hallowe’en
2008-11-01: We spent Hallowe’en in New York City at a combined wedding reception and costume party. We went as Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man).
2008-11-01: Did anyone dress as an avout last night, wearing a bolt and chord and carrying a sphere?
The first tweet is a reference to The Thin Man series of movies, which star William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. The movies are based on The Thin Man, written by Dashiell Hammett. The “thin man” is actually one of the characters in the book and the first movie who is missing and is suspected of murder. Nick Charles wears a pencil-thin mustache, so I let my mustache grow for two months. Since it was grey, I dyed it and then shaved it down to a pencil-thin mustache for the party. As soon as we got back to our hotel room, I shaved the damn thing off, because it made me look old.
The second tweet is a reference to Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. One comment I received was that I am the only one who has actually finished this book. A common complaint has been that you have to read 250 pages before you can really get into the book. I had the same experience, but having read many very long books, I have learned to persist. My experience reading Anathem was the same as reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Both books were slow going at first, both books were extremely long, but the effort was worth it to reach the end.
November 02 2008 12:37 pm | Microblog
