What was your role in all this? The bass player?

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So how much perfume does someone wear to leave residual traces in the elevator after using it? I got to work this morning, and I swear, the elevator smelled like a perfume counter. I mean, how many gallons of the stuff do you need?!

To follow along with TenaciousG‘s post last week of the current books I’m reading, click below (the images are a bit large)…

This evening, I stopped by the supermarket on the way home. There was a family there–mother, father, and little girl of about 7 years. They decided to have lobster–and not just the chilled lobsters sitting in the cold case. I am referring to the lobster they have in the fish tanks. You point to one of the live little critters swimming around and say “I want to eat that crustacean. They fish it out with a little net, put rubber-bands around its claws, and put it in a bag for you.

Well, this little girl got to hold the plastic bag. I am just watching the scene with horror. Daddy is holding a bag with a lobster. Kid is holding a bag with a smaller lobster. She comes bouncing down the aisle with daddy. “Mommy! Look, we got lobsters.” Meanwhile I am mentally picturing the girl poking at the lobster in the bag. Their claws are shut tight with giant rubber bands, but I was a kid once, and rubber bands were no match for me! It was just gut wrenching to work out the math: a lobster claw has, say 80 PSI of pressure. That is 80 pounds on a square inch of surface–a lobster claw of course being much less than 1″ x 1″, so we can estimate an effective pressure of about 240 pounds clamping down on the curious fingers of a small child, assuming the claw is one inch by 1/4 inch (it is actually thinner and has pointy jagged bits, so the effective pressure ends up being much higher). You see, mom and dad, a lobster does not clamp down on your nose and hang there like the cartoons. It can crimp down to the bone. Ouch. “Mommy! Look! We got lobsters!”

This American Life, a National Public Radio show that plays on the weekends is really good. The only thing is: sometimes they play, as background music during segments, some music from Requiem for a Dream (track 13 on the soundtrack, if I remember correctly). This ALWAYS pulls me out of the fun experience of the radio show and into a weird mood that tends to freak me out. Still, though–Clint Mansell needs to make more music. He was okay with Pop Will Eat Itself, but really kicks ass with soundtracks like Pi and Requiem for a Dream. He definitely needs to make more music!

The best X-Files quote: “Are you gonna take off these cuffs, or do I have to do this
with my tongue?”

So here are the books I am reading. I generally try to have a fun fiction book and a serious technical manual. That way, I will have a book ready for both serious and fun moods.

The Callahan Chronicals is a nifty fun book. It is kind of like a science fiction version of Cheers–like Cheers meets Doctor Who, or maybe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is chock full o’ puns!

The other book probably does not sound as fun or interesting to most of you. It describes how to interface Java progams with C++ software, or how to embed Java sandboxes into your C++ applications: Java Native Interface: Programmer’s Guide and Specification

Posted in: Books Dear Diary

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