It makes me that much stronger

Both of .Next's neonatologists described her as a 'real fighter'. They are impressed with her progress. All the staff also are pretty impressed with her. They have to up her food already because she's eating so much. Things are going well at the moment. That could change drastically with no notice, but for now it's good.

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This was unexpected, what do I do now?

.Next is doing just fine. She is breathing room air and hopefully will be able to maintain body temp soon. Mom is recovering as well. I can't actually focus on the screen at this point so I will now stop typing.

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My family is two time zones away

Many friends and family members have been apprehensive about Christmas at our house. There was much concern that I would refuse to celebrate the holidays and thus make our daughter suffer because of ideology. I did little disabuse anyone of that notion, mostly because it was entertaining watching people get worked into a tizzy over something that's really none of their business. I have been accused of child abuse for not celebrating Christmas (including the claim that we are also abusing her by not raising her as a Christian). As the girls get older I will explain to them the Byzantine winter solstice festivals, Saturnalia, the northern European Yule festivals, and the history of winter holidays. Christmas is for kids, and I want them to enjoy it. And I enjoy some aspects of the holidays. Particularly the lights, the decorations, the food, and sometimes the social events. I like spending time with friends and family. I like good holiday music. Emphasis on good. It's entirely subjective, of course, but I have a fairly large collection of what I consider to be good holiday music. Note the holiday playlist from a few days ago, that's a fairly representative sampling. Plus Vince Guaraldi, Christopher Parkening, and the Anonymous Four.

The materialism is annoying, but the stress and pressure everyone puts on themselves and each other and the scheduling nightmares because we HAVE TO DO A NORMAN ROCKWELL PAINTING FAMILY DINNER really is what I hate most about the holidays. The arguments over everything related to get togethers and the insanity of shopping with the elevated levels of road rage are what make me hate the season. The holidays make a lot of people act like real jerks, and pretty much ruin the whole thing. While trying to coordinate the family get together this year and being unable to get across the message that Mae is on bedrest and literally cannot walk up a flight of stairs without putting the baby's life in danger I was put squarely back in the headspace of despising the holidays. Because changing the location to someplace that was feasible for her would 'ruin' the celebration for certain people who had a vision of the event that was set in stone. I'd like to start a new holiday tradition. Mae, myself, and the girls will go to Jamaica from Dec 20th to the 27th.

And now to presents.

It's the thought that counts. Really? OK. So the gift is a symbol of you thinking about me. Gee, that's touching. And the 49'ers t-shirt* just says "I have no idea what your interests are and can't be bothered to find out. So I just got you the first thing I saw in the men's section for under ten bucks. Merry Christmas." Nothing says Christmas like some worthless piece of crap I'm going to throw in the donate to Goodwill pile the next day. I don't need things I don't want cluttering up my house. Not ...

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House is not my home but it rocks though

The hardest working man in show business. Mr please please please, Soul Brother Number One, Mr more more more, the Godfather of Soul.
James Brown is Dead.

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Imagine if you will

Another killer holiday track: Deck the Stills by Barenaked Ladies. Imagine Deck the Halls with all the words including the fa's and la's replaced with the words 'Crosby', 'Stills', 'Nash', 'and', and 'Young' in various orders.

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Hurry down the chimney

Couple fun holiday things I've been listening to:

The complete Beatles Christmas EP's. Very funny stuff, mostly just the
guys talking and occasionally breaking into a carol or two. It sounds
like a podcast from the late 60's. Happy Krimble.

Richard Cheese: Silent Nightclub. This is a must have.

Bits and pieces from the various KROQ and Kevin and Bean Christmas
albums from over the years.

Merry Axemas 1 & 2. Satch and Vai. Nuff said.

Barenaked Ladies - Barenaked for the Holidays Live 2005.

Holly Cole - Baby, It's Cold Outside.

My Xmas playlist is over 8 hours, which will get me through all of
Friday, but I won't post the whole thing here. Some of my favorites,
however, are:

Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland - Grandaddy
When I Get Home For Christmas - Snow Patrol
Sometimes You Have to Work On Christmas - Harvey Danger
Christmas Time Is Here Again - Beatles
Little Drummer Boy - Dandy Warhols
Hava Nagila - Me First & The Gimme Gimmes
Holiday in Cambodia - Richard Cheese
Jesus Gonna Be Here - Tom Waits
The Grinch - Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa
Silent Night - Joe Satriani
Christmas Time - Christina Aguilera
Christmas in Space - Tori Amos
There Ain't No Sanity Clause - The Damned
Merry Christmas - The Ramones
Father Christmas - OK Go
Last Christmas - Manic Street Preachers
Blue Christmas - Miles Davis
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Barenaked Ladies
In the Bleak Mid-Winter - Sarah McLachlan
So This Is Christmas - John Lennon
Christmas Medley - Chrisopher Parkening and Kathleen Battle
Santa Baby - Everclear

I did hear the Marilyn Monroe version of Santa Baby for the first time. Wow. Makes the Madonna version positively pathetic. I have no words to describe how bad the Pussycat Dolls version is...

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Flowers competing for the sun

Reminded by skywind that it is indeed Happy Solstice today! The REAL reason for the season. The celebrations of the winter solstice around the world predate Christianity and possibly Judaism. All of the Christian traditions of late December stem from coopting the regional celebrations and claiming them as Christian holidays in order to more easily assimilate the conquered.

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I believe I can fly

I was going to post my christmas playlist today but came across something far more interesting. An aspect of discussions with religious/spiritual types is the phrase 'I believe'. This is a phrase that is often misused particularly in the context of theology and that fact causes me much consternation. Words mean things, and the misuse of words impedes communication. The discussion that brought this back to my attention was on a thread about The Blasphemy Project. An innocuous bit of fun that some people (on both sides) are taking far too seriously.

People often say "I don't believe in" or "I believe in" when what they actually mean is "I'm opposed to" or "I support". The example being people who say "I don't believe in pre-marital sex". They don't mean that they don't believe it happens. At least I hope that's not what they mean, because I generally respect their convictions in choosing not to do it and I'd hate to think that they are truly idiots. This is tangential to the discussion of the Blasphemy Challenge, as in that challenge people really are stating that they "believe/don't believe in the concept of a Holy Spirit." But I found the tangent to be more interesting than the primary discussion. Parsing language will always trump pointless dogmatic ping pong in my view.

Where the "I do/don't believe in" is most particularly abused in a way that directly affects me and ultimately why I care is in discussions of evolution. I've had people look at me askance and say "You believe in evolution?" I generally manage to suppress the desire to find the nearest dictionary and beat them about the head and shoulders with it, rather I simply reply "Of course." and move on. I don't "believe" in evolution any more or less than I "believe" in gravity or Avogadro's constant. Belief isn't necessary or advisable. While there are plenty of unknowns about evolution and plenty of strong disagreements about specifics within the scientific community there is no question that evolution has occurred and continues to do so. Of course the IDiots would disagree. And these are the same sort of people who sincerely believe that if you are not a Christian you shouldn't have any rights at all. That is not an exaggeration. They believe that if you are not a Christian then you should quite literally have no rights at all. How American.

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Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin

I was reading the Richard Scarry version of Three Little Pigs to Boo last night. And I couldn't help myself, and did something that will undoubtedly result in years of therapy bills for her. I read the wolf's lines and the pig's lines in the style of Green Jelly. And did the guitar riff too. I had no idea that two of the guys from Tool were in Green Jelly.

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Take this job and shove it

griz: This year, I have to do employee reviews, raises, etc. So I've gotten the full treatment from HR - the timeline, the rules, how I must adhere strictly to the timeline, how under no circumstances will raises
be made retroactive (as they have in the past) to the first of the year if reviews aren't done, etc. According to them I must turn in the final review, including salary adjustment, signed by the employee by Dec 22 at
the latest. When I asked them how I could do this, since they were supposed to tell me $$ available for raises by the 1st of Dec (they haven't) and I have 2 of my 3 out for 2 weeks vacation (ie until next year) I was told "don't worry - we'll extend to the 1st of Jan. No problem."
griz: When I pointed out that this was a Sunday, and the 2nd was a company holiday I got a blank look.

rev: HR seems to specialize in those. I wonder if there's a whole
semester class on that?

griz: I'm told by the other managers that this happens every year and the only thing that actually counts is turning in the spreadsheet, and I will have as much as 5 days to do that if I'm lucky, but 2 or 3 is normal.
griz: But right now I'm enjoying tweaking HR. I suggested that if they failed to get me salary budget in time, they could be the ones to explain to my employees why they aren't getting their raises in their first paycheck for the new year.
griz: As for the blank look, I think it is part of the interview process
- if you can't give a really good blank look you don't get the job.

rev: Heh. I like your solution of holding them responsible for their own deadlines. Let me know how that works out.
rev: And I can only imagine how much joy you are deriving from your newfound ability to torment HR. That's a bonus of being a manager I'd not thought of.

griz: based on my track record so far, not at all. Kind of a phyrric victory
griz: got it in one
griz: I mentioned to my boss I was planning on doing this, just to make sure he wasn't going to take heat for it. He told me (1) it wouldn't matter and (2) they wont care but (3) he could see how I'd enjoy it, so have fun.

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I'm working out

"I refuse to believe that the state, which has already reneged on paying the school district millions of court-ordered funds, will be any better for city schools than the stakeholders who live here." - Sylvester Brown Jr.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Furthermore I can't take seriously any criticism of the system by the Slay contingent, as they are direcetly responsible for the condition the system was in when Bourislaw took over.

Also note that pubdef has dropped the St Louis Schools Watch blog due to lack of time and support in favor of a message board. Check out St Louis Schools Watch.

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Gone, gone, gone

So the sidequotes are back. I finally found five minutes to delve into the issue at hand, turns out whrandom was deprecated back in python 2.1. When I did the app server upgrade I jumped about a dozen Zope releases and a half dozen python releases and of course didn't read the release notes for each increment. I figured I'd do the upgrade and go back and figure out what was broken after the fact. Kind of like we do at work.

So replacing

wRandom modules/whrandom;

with the much more elegant and correct

random python:modules['random']

makes it all happy again. Because I know you care.

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Posted on December 17, 2006 | 1 comment so far.