Categories
Personal Poems

Mourning is a doorway back into daylight

Following is a song I wrote about 15 years ago. I thought I knew what it meant when I first wrote it, then I discovered a new meaning about seven years ago. I’ve discovered a more profound meaning, and it probably had this meaning all along. Before I explain, here are the words.

How Long Must You Cry

How long must you cry before you wonder why your life’s filled with pain? How long must you cry?

How long must you weep, crying yourself to sleep? Tear-stained memory. How long must you weep?

I know why you cry. I know why you cry. It’s for me. It’s for me. It’s for me. You cry for me.

How deep must you age before you turn the page? Gone is yesterday. How deep must you age?

How wise must you grow before you will know. I’m beyond your reach. How wise must you grow?

I know why you cry. I know why you cry. It’s for me. It’s for me. It’s for me. You cry for me.

When I first wrote this, this was kind of a bitter warning to someone who foolishly spurned my offer of friendship. I didn’t take the song very seriously and thought of it as “you don’t know what you’re missing”. The language is kind of extreme for the actual situation, but it’s stylized.

Years later, I discovered that instead of it being me speaking to someone else, it was someone I’d lost speaking to me. I imagined my father asking me how long I was going to feel sad about him dying. I took it as a statement to myself to suck it up, to repress the bad feelings.

Today, I started thinking of this song as an ideal version of myself, a version of myself who I dreamed I’d be as a child, speaking to myself as I really am. And I’m curious: when will I give up comparing myself to that unattainable ideal? When will I cease entertaining the idea of having a chance to replay the past?

So in this sense, I’m not attacking myself for feeling sad. There’s a version of me that could have been. There were decisions I made that got me where I am, and there were circumstances beyond my control that probably had a greater influence. It’s legitimate to mourn the loss of what could have been. The mourning is a doorway back into daylight. So, I’m pleased to find the song is not a bitter rant, nor a vigorous self-attack. It’s simply a question about when the truth will be accepted.

Categories
Programming

FreeTime 3

Thanks to the extra time provided by the holiday, I’ve finally put together a release of FreeTime 3, a pet project of mine for more than 10 years. This newest release is based on work I did on the software at Clear Ink from 2006 through 2009. Thanks to David Burk and Steven Nelson for sponsoring writing the code in the first place as their employee and more recently agreeing to donate the code back to the open source project. Their support is most generous!

FreeTime is a Web application written in PHP for MySQL that allows you to keep track of projects. It tracks comments, files and timesheet entries for projects divided up by clients and their divisions. Recently added features, not appearing in previous versions, include tasks, estimates and more reports. There’s also code that allows clients to log in to review work as if it’s a mini-site, but it hasn’t been tested in production. The most well-developed aspects of the application are related to timesheets, both gathering them from staff and then reporting on them.

I’m curious whether anyone will find the code useful, whether for educational or practical purposes. Its purpose was as a highly customized solution for Clear Ink, and it may have no utility outside the same type of consultancy. On the other hand, it could prove useful after some hacking. I would use it for myself if I do more consulting again.

You can download the source code from the FreeTime project page on SourceForge.

Categories
News

Canon MP620 on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

Earlier this year I got a cheap Canon MP620 all-in-one printer, which works great with Windows and works fine for Ubuntu. Canon released drivers as .deb files for the MP610 which work with cups. I remember sweating it out a bit because the printer does not work unless you track down a few pieces that aren’t in the Ubuntu repositories. Next time, I’ll check LinuxPrinting.org before buying a printer.

Anyway, I installed Karmic from scratch and found that I couldn’t install the Canon drivers because they want libcupsys2. Ubuntu renamed this package. I tried a few tricks to work around this, but the one works is to install the libcupsys2 dummy package from Jaunty. You can get it here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/all/libcupsys2/download.

So, the new procedure is get the libcupsys2 .deb file and install it first. Then follow the instructions for Januty, such as Luca Gibelli’s Canon PIXMA MP620 Linux printing and scanning via wireless network on Ubuntu post from last April.

Update: check out Kevin Carter’s script for automating the process of adding support for the MP620.

Categories
Politics

He Isn’t Atlas, But He Does Need Help

Last March, I noticed a cynical political cartoon depicting President Obama as Atlas. I would have rather seen the producers of the world carefully stepping through a field of booby traps set by Obama.Daily Fitz March 4, 2009

Today, I noticed a new take on this upsidedown theme. This time, Patrick Corrigan shows Obama as pleading for help from the U.N. as the weight of the world bears down on him.Corrigan September 24, 2009

Truthfully, the weight of the nihilistic policies of the people who imagined the U.N. are crushing the wealth-producers of the world. Portraying Obama as Atlas is doublethink. Because it’s the same image Rand used for her famous novel, the misuse of this metaphor is particularly galling.

Categories
Marketing

Tender Victuals

tender-victualsRemember Tender Vittles brand cat food? It was a revolutionary feat of marketing…cat food that bridged the gap between wet, canned food and dry, bagged food. I didn’t think about it until now, but vittles (properly spelled victuals) means “food fit for human consumption”. Was the real purpose of the product to deliver low-cost, low-quality food to humans? It seems crazy. On the other hand, the product was discontinued in 2007 because it contained levels of sugar too unhealthy for cats. That’s what I read in wikipedia, anyway.

The following item description seems to disagree.

Tender Vittles® contains no added artificial colors or flavors, additives your cat doesn’t need. Plus, it has the great taste your cat loves. So you’ll love knowing that your cat is getting only the essential nutrients he needs, and he’ll love every delicious bite.

When it comes to convenience, you can’t beat our easy-serve pouch. It’s a cinch to open and pour and it keeps those delicious, soft morsels moist and tasty so your cat will enjoy every yummy bite from the first to the last.

With Tender Vittles, you simply tear open our easy-serve pouch and pour the tender morsels right in the bowl. It’s fast and easy for you and moist and delicious for your cat.

With regret we must announce that Tender Vittles have been discontinued by Nestle-Purina. Once our stock is gone we will no longer have them available for sale.

Even when I was a kid, I was suspicious of the Purina brand because it made both pet food and breakfast cereal.