Archive: November 2, 2008

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the big Five-O

Sunday,  11/02/08  10:07 PM

If you're a regular reader you know I'm about to turn fifty.  I've been thinking about it a lot, and I figured I'd maybe do a few posts on the subject.  So this might be Five-O #1 of several. My wife Shirley turned fifty a few days ago, and I'm turning fifty in early December, so we're having a "Golden Celebration" with 50 of our friends on November 15, midway between.  That should be fun, and hopefully free of all the "old" jokes everyone thinks are so funny (yeah riight). The big deal with turning 50 isn't physical age, it's how you feel about yourself.  I'm worried that I'm going to start thinking of myself as old, and that will trigger mental rot, and pretty soon I'll really be old.  I think this is why men react as they do in a "midlife crisis"; they date young women and dress young and act young, all in an effort to convince themselves they really are still young.  Does it work?  I have no idea...  perhaps I should try dating young women as an experiment :)  Most likely in the effort to pretend you're young, you emphasize all the ways in which you're not young, and the whole effort backfires.  I must tell you I don't feel old, in fact, I'm sort of amazed to find myself turning fifty, because I think of myself as thirty something, or something.  I went through the same thing when I turned forty, I didn't feel that old then, either.  Hopefully I'll still feel the same way at sixty! There is one undeniable aspect of turning fifty, you have to think of it as a halfway point; not many people live to a hundred.  I've had a pretty good life, a full life, and I guess if the second half is as good and full as the first, I'll be pleased, but still, there will not be a third half, this is it.  You start thinking that each day is pretty valuable, because there are less and less of them left.  Well so be it, thinking about it won't change it.  Even blogging about it won't change it.  Or will it? (By the way, to make the picture above I started with the Hawaii Five-O opening, how great was that?  Hadn't seen it for years, and loved it all over again.  The bouncing zoom into the balcony just as Jack Lord turns around is a classic.  And of course the theme song rocks :)

 

Sunday,  11/02/08  10:38 PM

Sunday, Sunday, a nice quiet Sunday...  puttering around the house, working a little (finally compiled all my notes from the conference last week, whew), watching football (thank you Tivo + Slingbox, I can do it while working :), getting rid of the pumpkin lanterns (boo...), and [for the first time since being sick] doing my hardest local ride which I call Malibu CC, a 30 miler featuring two long climbs and two short ones (1:56:15).  And of course, blogging! My biggest problem just now is figuring out what wine to buy for our big Five-O celebration.  I'm leaning toward Torremoron Ribera del Duero, but I can't decide. Art Marks thinks we should fire Congress.  "My solution to fixing the financial crisis is to start by firing Congress. All of them. They have failed to lead when it is necessary. They have failed to lead in the financial crisis. They have failed to lead to a solution in the energy crisis, they have failed to come up with an effective immigration policy. They have failed to address the long term entitlement bankruptcy facing the country."  Not a bad idea.  Especially the part where we elect people like us to replace them :)  [ via Brad Feld ]  The NYTimes notes to survive, net start-ups slow their metabolism.  "Silicon Valley has always been a land of big, bold dreams.  In the first Internet boom its start-ups either grew fast or died trying, sometimes spectacularly.  In this downturn, say investors and entrepreneurs, start-ups are adopting a strategy that they hope will let them hang on instead of flame out.  To preserve cash, many tech start-ups are rushing to lay off employees and cut expenses.  They are shelving their dreams of Google-size riches and getting small, humble and thrifty, all with the more modest goal of surviving the coming economic winter."  That seems like an apt analogy.  It definitely feels like everyone gets it, and is doing what they can to stay alive until the conditions change.  This is cool: HD TV in 3D!  And no glasses.  "A sheet of tiny lenticules is fixed onto a high-resolution LCD display in such a way that each eye sees a slightly different view of each image pixel. The effect is akin to those 3-D plastic postcards that look a bit like a hologram if you view them at the correct angle. The underlying design for this was first conjured up by Sir Charles Wheatstone, a Victorian inventor, way back in 1840."  One thing the article correctly notes is that as 3D technology becomes broadly available, content creators are going to have to learn how to use it.  Right now they go crazy showing off their ability to use 3D, and it interferes with the telling of the story instead of enhancing it.  Slashsdot reports Windows 7 to be 256-core aware.  Cool!  The more cores the better.  And y'all better start brushing up on your Erlang :)

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