Journal of a Sabbatical

February 5, 1999

blue skies

I have absolutely nothing to say today. I spent most of the day fiddling with large popular e-mail provider and large popular on-line service on Zsolt's behalf. Normally I love problem solving, but today was sunny and warm (though windy) and I felt guilty for being indoors.

Maybe it's something about Feb. 5 in general. Thoreau's journal entries for Feb. 5 are not nearly as interesting - in any year - as the days before and after. The idea of Thoreau listening to an organ and being put in mind of a muskrat gnawing its leg off to get out of a trap just doesn't do it for me as literature or inspiration.

Five years ago today I met Nancy for the first time. Now that's something to write about. We met for lunch. It lasted 8 hours. We talked about everything from comparing Rilke translations to Goose Gossage. I don't think it was on our first date that she told me I look like Goose Gossage, but his name definitely came up.

Today's rare bird alert reports the lark sparrow near the green-colored house where I saw it. That ought to bring a lot of traffic to that street. I wonder if the people whose feeder it's at mind all these strange people cruising by with binoculars.

And to think I felt privileged to see one Iceland gull at the beach that day - apparently there were 37 of them. Or at least there are 37 of them now. But heck, in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan "If you've seen one bird, you've seen them all." or something like that.

On the way over to Zsolt's house to detangle his e-mail, I was listening to The Connection on the car radio. The second hour of the show was about the controversy over a new technology for the genetic altering of seeds that will reportedly make their plants sterile so the farmers would have to buy the seeds from them every year - sort of built in "intellectual property protection" for the plant varieties they develop. Callers on both sides of the issue were in general well-informed and articulate.

I've been on the verge of falling asleep ever since I got up this morning. I can't blame it on weather 'cause we're not having any. Wish I knew w...

I fell asleep at the keyboard writing this. I have no idea what I was about to write when I dropped off. I haven't fallen asleep at the computer since the early 1970's. I remember that incident vividly. I was debugging the run time support code for the BASIC-PLUS-2 input statement (man talk about bizarre I/O formats) and I'd been at it since 9:00 AM the previous day. I'd forgotten to move my car up the hill at 11:00 PM - they locked the main lobby door then and the only ingress and egress was through the manufacturing floor's door which was three floors up - the building was built into the side of the hill - and manned 24/7 by a guard. So I figured I'd just work all night. About 3:00 AM the guard was making rounds. He woke me from a sound sleep. My head was actually on the keyboard of my VT05 terminal. I have no idea how long I'd been asleep. I walked the quarter mile down the hill to the lower parking lot in the rain. Rivulets were running down the hill faster than I could walk. Earthworms were everywhere. I got soaked. I slept 'til noon and fixed the bug that afternoon. And what good did all that experience implementing I/O on an ancient mainframe do me? A few moderately good stories?