april

Waitin’
Watchin’ the clock
It’s four o’clock
It’s got to stop

Tell him
Take no more
She practices her speech

As he opens the door
She rolls over
Pretends to sleep
As he looks her over

She lies and says
She’s in love with him
Can’t find a better man

She dreams in color
She dreams in red
Can’t find a better man

Talking
To herself
There’s no one else
Who needs to know
She tells herself

~ Better Man, by Pearl Jam (a favorite song of the last week)

Today’s song of the day is, Can You Read My Mind, from the 1978 Superman movie.

The name Homer on The OA reminded me that my uncle was named Elmer, but we knew him as Uncle Mousey. He was a famous jazz drummer, and he called everyone Cat or Cool Cat. When he visited, my dad made him smoke his special, hand-rolled cigarettes outside (and often joined him). Here’s a short video of him on the drums with some other cool cats. :)

(Men in the Alexander clan don’t live long. He passed away at 66, my dad died younger than that, and their other brother — who was a favorite cool cat — died in his 40s. I assume complications related to mast cell disease was involved in there.)

Famed programmer Joe Armstrong passed away this weekend. He created the Erlang programming language, based on the actor model, and without using Google, I’m pretty darned sure that Erlang had an impact on Akka, the very cool actor library for Scala. Here’s an article Mr. Armstrong wrote some years ago, titled, Why OO Sucks (OO as in OOP).

I edited Chapter 6 of my new book whilst listening to Moon Baby by Godsmack. I’m not sure I can be held responsible for whatever ended up in that chapter. :)

A couple of things happened recently that make me feel like a piece of meat in the organ grinder of life. First, I was in talks with a publisher about publishing a book with them, and their contract began, “You grant to Us ... the exclusive right to ... sell and otherwise commercially exploit your Work.” I thought, “Well, I guess that’s what work is about, organizations exploiting your work for their commercial profit,” but their writing felt dirty and sleazy, like it was totally controlled by a scumbag lawyer or CEO.

Next, I live in the Terracina apartments in Broomfield, Colorado, and they were recently bought by a new company. With the old company everything here felt like a family, but when the new company bought the place they fired the previous staff, and with most of the new staff it feels like I’m just a number. When I walk in the office the reception feels like, “Number 232 ... you always complain that your kitchen range is vibrating because your downstair’s music is so loud, what do you want? We’re trying to make a lot of money here and you’re a troublemaker.” Twice the office manager has barely looked away from her computer monitor while talking to me.

Both situations remind me of the Bon Seger song, Feel Like a Number.

AskAMathematician.com has a good answer to, Why was it so hard to take a picture of a black hole?