I just spent the better part of an hour trying to print on a #10 envelope with OpenOffice.org. I don't think the rest of the world should have to suffer through the same ordeal, so here's something that might help if you need to do the same.

When I first arrived in California, I was a little uncomfortable because everyone seemed so insane. Unfortunately, this insanity may be somewhat contagious.

Nina and Lola,

Whenever I'm away from you and I spend a lot of time writing computer code, I think about the pretty patterns that your names make in binary code. Your names, Nina and Lola, are wonderful in so many ways that I could never describe them all. Here's one of those ways.

If you use the following Common Lisp expression, you can find the graphical binary representation of your names in binary code.

  (defun binary-name (name zero one)
    (map 'string (lambda (c) (case c (#\1 one) (#\0 zero) (t c)))

Yesterday, I went to Lake Tahoe, for the first time. It was a one-day trip that saw me leave Belmont around 7am and return around 10pm. On my way to the Lake, I picked up Felix, a coworker who lives about 3 hours away from me and who drove the rest of the way to the lake. What we did, in essence, was to drive around the lake once, stopping frequently to take pictures, eat, or get a coffee or a hot chocolate. We talked to some people along the way and we had a great time.

I read an article about how some people want to investigate President Obama's birthplace. Wow.

I wish for the smallest government possible and the most distributed possible system of regulations. Therefore, I'm against Obama and most other politicians currently in office (Democrats and Republicans). I would like Obama and everyone else out of office and a successful small-business-type, serial-enterpreneur person leading government. Someone concerned with efficiency. I would like most of what politicians do today to be completely automated.

I'm not a revision control guru, but I've been using Git a lot more than Subversion in the last couple of years. Recently I found myself having to deal with a Subversion repository again. Stubbornly, I began to think about how to use the Subversion respository with Git. I had seen git-svn here and there (for example, I think apt recommends it when you install git-core), and I thought it might have the functionality that I was looking for. It turns out I was right; I now fail to understand why it took me so long to start using this most excellent tool.

Nina's multi-day birthday bash is progressing fabulously, thanks to all of Tracy's planning. Yesterday, there was plenty of play, then bowling and pizza with all of the neighbors at the Rock 'n Bowl, then ice cream at the Creole Creamery, then more play. Today's highlights included the amusement park, a spectacular gondola ride through the waterways of City Park, swimming, opening presents, cake, a show of pictures, a movie, and a sleep over. Here are some pictures taken in the amusement park and of the gondola.

I was recently talking on the phone with a person who lives at least 2,200 miles away and whom I'd never met or spoken to before. This is a surprisingly common occurrence in this day and age. I was explaining some of the things that I like about Perl. When I got to the part about how I love writing 4 or 5 lines of code where programmers of other languages have to write 20 or 30, my new friend hinted that he thought I was talking about completely unreadable Perl code.

Everyone has experienced the feeling of familiarizing oneself with a technology over a period of a few weeks or months and arriving at the "How did I ever live without this?" moment (hereto forth HDIELWT). I have often pondered that question quite seriously, trying to remember hard how I managed before tool X came along. It has happened to me with many a tool, including Emacs, Common Lisp, Delicious, Reddit, and several Google products, such as Gmail, Reader, Calendar, and Voice.

Tracy, Margo, Karen, Jeff, David, and Connie:

Today was one of the best days of my life. I'm not exactly sure why.

I worked late last night, then slept in until 10:30am or so. I spent some time with Tracy and the girls at home, later went out on some errands (all together), and then spent most of the afternoon watching kids (Della, Eli, Nina, and Lola) play in the pool and play with the fish in the pond.