I'm looking for some recommendations for reading material. I read a lot. I get depressed and anxious when I don't have reading material available. I'm looking to build up a good list of books that I can order from the inter-library loan to keep myself supplied.

I generally read science fiction and fantasy. I also read non-fiction, but not as much. In non-fiction, I tend towards science and technology as well. I read plenty of programming manuals, but here I'm really looking for more pleasurable suggestions. Technical non-fiction with a good story line would work (I'm thinking of "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll). Popular science books like GEB or "A Brief History of Time" are good, too. I occasionally branch out to military fiction, mostly when it's got a technological side to it as well.

Recently, I've been looking to read some of the older sci-fi classics. I'm reading a Phillip K. Dick novel right now. Luckily, when I was growing up, the local libraries were not well stocked with science fiction. I exhausted their supply (which is not much recovered, even now), but I did not exhaust all of the old masters. I'm also interested in new stuff, of course.

So... What have you read that you liked, and what would you suggest?

I should know better, but I tried to have a discussion on another site today, and got accused of poor basic math skills. Being generally thick skinned, I shot right back, but the other person insisted on being wrong. Can someone answer a question for me?

So imagine that each person has three kids on average.

Given this, would anyone care to tell me how many siblings an average child has? Assume for the moment all children survive.

• Being alone does not mean being lonely.
  But sometimes it does.
• Being with other people does not mean not being lonely.
  But sometimes it does.
• Being a parent does not mean you won't be treated like a child.
• Loving someone does not mean you are loved.
• Life is pain. When the pain stops, you better check your pulse.

Apologies for the depressive mood. Sometimes I think I'm an optomist in a pessimist's world. Other times, I'm not an optomist.

Wow... Two journals in two days. That's unusual for me. FYI, Memtest confirmed that I've got bad memory sticks, and of course... I'm just outside the 30-day return window. So, $70 down the drain, and I've got to scrape it up again to get a stable machine. It'll be a few weeks.

Anyway... POTS. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. This is apparently a new diagnosis out there amoung cardiogists. Those who've read my journals far enough back will know that my wife has been sick for almost 12 years. During that time, she's been variously diagnosed with a ton of problems, both mental and physical. None of the treatments for said problems have ever provided her any relief. Looking at various web sites describing POTS, many of the symptoms match what my wife has been complaining about this entire time.

We brought some printouts to her cardiologist, to see if this was quackery, or an actual possibility. After several weeks, my wife was getting very upset that perhaps it was quackery, but her doctor called her last night. He spent a lot of time researching POTS, because the existing literature is pretty scarce. On the other hand, it's not quackery, in his opinion, which is encouraging. At this point, there's no really effective known treatment, but even a provable diagnosis is a step forward.

I've noticed before that some of the zoo have health problems with symptoms in common with my wife. If that includes irregular heartbeats, I encourage you to take a look at some of the POTS information, and talk to your cardiologist, if it sounds likely.

Google Search for POTS

OK, so fate and finances have determined that I won't be building myself a new PC anytime soon. What I did do is get myself some new memory, replacing my 2 256M PC2100 chips with 2 512M PC2100 chips. I would have gone higher, but my current motherboard tops out at 1G. Now for the weirdness:
 

I leave my PC on for hours and even days at a time. My habit is to turn it off while I'm at work, but it stays on all night, and sometimes is left on during the day for Azureus to do its thing (Azureus is a Bittorrent client). A week ago, I came home one night to find that Azureus had crashed. Everything else worked, but trying to restart the Azureus failed, so I rebooted the PC.

Or tried to, anyway. It failed to reboot. Before reaching the pretty blue Windows XP screen, it would flash a blue screen error message, and immediately reboot, so I couldn't read the error. Safe mode, in all its various flavors, did the same. I tried booting from my XP CD, hoping that I could get Recovery console to work. I'd get the Windows Setup screen, and it would load for a while, and then give me a page fault error.

Looking on the internet, I suspected some hardware failure. I disconnected everything except my primary harddrive, CPU, and memory, but no change. I removed one of my new memory chips, and it booted, ran an automatic chkdsk, and worked. After replacing everything except my modem and floppy drive, neither of which I use, it still worked.

Last night I was awoken by the sound of my PC repeatedly re-booting. It had apparently shut down, and could not get back into Windows. Symptoms the same as before. This time, I removed my secondary IDE cable and second memory stick only. Reboot, chkdsk, and everything seems fine again. I was getting ready for work though, so I haven't really tested it yet.

Opinions? I suspect my new memory may be bad, but I thought memory problems were either always bad, or very erratic. I don't understand why I couldn't even boot from a CD, unless the memory is totally worthless. But... if the memory is that bad, why does it work fine after the chkdsk has completed, at least for a while? Maybe it's a hard drive that's likely to die soon, but why would removing one stick of memory and a couple optical drives fix that enough that it can get to chkdsk, when nothing else does? I'm stumped, but I really need to figure out what the problem is so that I don't lose this PC.

[Edit] - Looks like RAM issues is the consensus. I've got a Memtest CD around somewhere, so I'll run that tonight. Thank You, everyone.

I'm hoping to put together a new PC. I'm hoping to build it myself, mostly because I want to have an upgrade path available, and I hate trying to fit my big hands into those tiny little cases you get from Dell and HP. I'm am, however, more interested in power than upgradability, so if I get a big increase in power for my cash, I could conceivably go with a pre-built system.
 

What I'd really like to find is a good website that can help me plan the system. I don't follow this stuff closely enough to know all the ins and outs of compatibility. I know I need a motherboard that matches my chosen CPU. I know I need to match my video card and memory to my motherboard. I need a case that will fit all that, and either has a power supply beefy enough to run it all, or get myself a seperate power supply.

My big problem is that every time I try this, I'll pick a CPU, then find that motherboards to match it are too expensive, so I'll pick a motherboard, and then not be able to find a CPU. I need help mapping it all out. Even a good guide on how to pick what I want without getting lost in circular dependencies would help out.

So. Any suggestions: Web site, systems, or just general hardware? I prefer AMD to Intel, but mostly because of price/performance ratios. I've got a 250GB IDE HD I'll be moving over, but nothing else that won't be new. I want to be able to experiment with Linux without losing my ability to surf the web, but that's way down on my list of priorities, and WinXP will be the primary OS.

This will not be a political rant. We've got a good showing of political journals in the zoo, and I'm not one of them. But I did find this article interesting, and while not terribly surprising, it does make you think. Gives more support to my personal conviction that what we really need is a Constitutional Convention.

David Brin's American Democracy: More Fragile Than We Think

As I've mentioned twice in comments now, I participated in the 2-question quiz. Unfortunately, it did me no good. While I actually answered "BZ", I was pretty much flipping a coin between B and C, and again between X and Z.

I think I know why, though. And it's not just because a 2 question test is so uselessly general as to be no more than a game. In fact, it has a lot to do with who I am, as opposed to who I think I am.

My self-image is of a very shy man. The guy who doesn't talk much in groups, and never joins in the office gossip. He has few, if any, friends; and doesn't make new ones easily. He spends more time reading than talking to people. He loves his wife, and can't imagine living without her, even though she doesn't love him.

And most of that was true, as recently as 5 years ago. Maybe even 3 years ago. But that guy wouldn't be writing a journal on slashdot. He'd be pretty unlikely to even post a comment that wasn't anonymous. I'm not that guy anymore. There are a lot of old pieces of him still in here. And the biggest piece that is still hanging around is that image. I don't have a lot of friends, but I'm a lot closer to even my acquaintances than that guy ever was. And I've been living seperate from my wife that I can now accept it, even if I can't want it. And I'm happy not being that guy any more. I was happy being him, but I'm glad I'm not him now. I think it's good for me. In fact, I'm pretty sure that guy could have never gotten the job I've got, and it's the best job I've ever had.

So... Who are you? More to the point, who do you think of yourself as, and how is that different than who you really are every day? Are you happy about the difference? Do you want to be more like your self-image, or less?

I saw this on SciScoop today. Didn't see any mention of it on the /. front page. I know there are at least a few people in the zoo dealing with MS, so I thought I'd share.

I've been under a lot of stress lately. Mostly work related. And a good deal of it is my fault. I feel like writing about it. It's long.

I've been working on a large project for several months now. We had almost gotten to where we were ready to test, and it got rolled into an even larger project.

I was having trouble getting a good list of billing codes for the project from my team. It was late '05, and a lot of people were on PTO, so I came up with a brilliant idea (aka first mistake). I had the programmer base his code on two files that I built in the system. I created the files with the codes I knew of, and figured I could add additional codes when I got more information. At least the programer could start working.

I just deleted several paragraphs of specifics. Not germane, and likely to get me in trouble at work...

Anyway, I took on a lot more responsibilty in the project than I "should" have, and we had some big issues with the project. These are not necessarily directly related, but I feel bad about it anyway. My job is essentially to document the project, and set up meetings. Testing is someone else's job. Creating the list of files should have been the customer's responsibilty. I did a lot of both. And then some. I tend to do this a lot. If I can get something done, even if it's not really my responsibility. In addition, I've got dome skills that make such things easier for me than for the people actually responsible. In this case, it got us in trouble. Mostly because once I had done what I could, the actual responsible parties didn't do due diligence in verifying it. I still feel guilty about it, because if I had kept out, it would have gotten more attention from them. Maybe.

For the past 3 weeks, we've been scrambling to get everything fixed. Several late nights getting things back together before bills went out. Unfortunately, while I was focusing on the bill corrections, our reporting was getting further out of whack. I was left out of those discussions, but I feel responsible there, too.

In the meantime, while all this is going on, I'm being pressed for other projects to be rushed, both projects I was already working on, and others that are new. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

The good news is that my annual review went well. Hopefully that translates into a raise come next month. I could certainly use it.

OT: The journal preview page has a link at the top titled "Enable Comments." Don't use that. It could completely erase what you're working on. Live and learn, I guess.

My oldest son is having trouble with his grades. He's having numerous problems, but the end result is that he's failing one class, and his grades went down this quarter in every class. Letters to/from school and a parent/teacher conference tells me that he's having trouble getting projects completed. Testing is always good. Daily homework seems to be good, though he has some failings there. Anything that requires work over an extended time period, or more than average effort, doesn't get done. If it gets turned in at all, it is late, and/or incomplete.

I told you all that so I could say this. Why are we limited, in this so called "information" age, to a single letter grade on the report card for each class? If a teacher grades on several different aspects of the class, why can't I, as a parent, see how my child is doing in each area. Sitting in the teacher's conference was enlightening, in that every teacher showed me his/her gradebook for Joshua, and in every case, he had high test scores, average to high homework scores, and abysmal project scores. Why did I have to take a special trip to the school to find this out? Each teacher weighted the different pieces in different ways, but the trend was immediately clear. Why can't they give me this informatino on a regular basis. I am now left to wonder how my other boys are doing in each of these areas.

It's not a matter of requiring more work from the teachers. They're already recording this information in their gradebooks. I understand to some extent the attraction of a simple layout on the report card, but more information is better. Why can't the parents have access to the whole view, without having to wait until it all falls apart, and then having to jump through hoops to get it?

There is a lot of technology out there today. It should be easy for a system to provide deeper levels of information to parents. With the constant outcry about the poor level of education in our public schools, it should be a no-brainer to add more information to help parents do their part in the process.

This JE brought to you by the Whiney-Dad Department of Education.

Looking Back...
and Forward.

Listening
Watching
Hearing
Listening
Hiding in a corner

Looking for the faces in the crowd
Calling out in silence
Begging for compassion,
and a face to call my own.

Talking to the shadows
Peering in the windows
Walking through the door
and being there.

Talking
Listening
Shouting
Laughing
Starting to fit in.

Starting to see people,
if not as friends, not strangers,
sharing common goals.
Learning to be seen

But still,
in all these people,
all these faces,
now with names,
is there one for me?

...

Where?

This is likely to ramble, but so be it.

I don't believe in God, and I don't particularly believe in an afterlife. Yet I find myself with a curious desire to believe in Karma. I think this is mostly just wishful thinking, since I consider myself a good person, and hope that I will be someday rewarded for that. Of course, if I did believe in Karma, I'd have to assume that I was a serious ass to a lot of people some time in the past, because my luck sucks.

Last night, I broke my parents' snowblower. Also, their $40 extension cord, which I ran over with the snowblower. Now, I freely admit that this was not mere luck. The cord was in an area that I would normally have shovelled by hand, so I should have found it. Of course, I tried to take a shortcut last night, and found it in a spectacularly damaging fashion instead. So, I can accept full blame for this.

But...(you knew there was a but coming, didn't you?) I specifically stated to my mother that the driveway did not need to be blown, since we got less than 4 inches, and aren't expecting any more. In addition, when the cord was originally placed where it is, I expressed the desire that it be placed somewhere else, for personal reasons, but not invalid ones. So, I think it safe to say that at least part of the responsibility for this rests on others, as well. Or I'm just real good at justifying my (non-existant) innocence.

The point is, I feel the need to explain this kind of thing, not just to shift blame from myself, though that may be part of it. I feel a desire to understand why so many things in my life end up this way. Decisions that I make, which would be perfectly reasonable in some situations, often turn out poorly. Sometimes, like yesterday, I should have been able to know better before hand, but other times, even, most of the time, the causes are unknown to me until after the fact. It seems, however, if there is any chance involved, that circumstances will always favor the worst outcome for me.

That sounds pessimistic, and I'm not. I look forward to every day (most of the time). I have a generally postive outlook, even on some of the things in my life that most people would react negatively too (and rightly so). But as an observer, and attempting to be objective, I still think that the majority of time, my optimism is unfounded. Given the chance, my luck will be bad. I just wish I knew why.

Which, of course, is its own falacy. The whole point of luck is that there is no why. And so I return to Karma. But if I don't believe in Karma, that doesn't help, and if I do, I think that I deserve better Karma than I get. Am I just a horrible person, and don't know it?

Apparently I am bored enough to do this today. I'm not sure why, I've got plenty of work to do.

A - Accent: None.

B - Breakfast: Thyroid Replacement pills.

C - Chore you hate: Cleaning/Organising. Clutter is my friend.

D - Dad's Name: Lee (mine too.)

E - Essential everyday item: A book.

F - Flavour ice cream: Cookie Dough

G - Gold or Silver?: Silver

H - Hometown: Johnstown, NY

I - Insomnia: Never.

J - Job Title: Business Requirements Analyst

K - Kids: 4 boys. 13 (next Saturday), 11, 10, and 6.

L - Living arrangements: Yes, I live with my parents. Child support and old debt don't leave me enough to get my own place.

M - Mom's birthplace: Camp Lejeune, NC

N - Number of significant others you've ever had: 1.

O - Overnight hospital stays: 3 of my own. I've also spent numerous nights sleeping in hospitals where my wife or son were patients.

P - Phobia: None.

Q - Queer?: Strange, yes.

R - Religious Affiliation: Nope

S - Siblings: 1 Older sister.

T - Time you wake up: Anywhere between 5:30 and 7:00 depending on what time my ride to work will show up.

U - Unnatural hair colours you've worn: None.

V - Vegetable you refuse to eat: Brussel Sprouts.

W - Worst habit: Procrastinating.

X - X-rays you've had: Everywhere.

Y - Yummy: Lasangna

Z - Zodiac sign: Sagitarius.

I don't read the front page much anymore. I only seem to find the time to read my messages, 90% of which are notices of journals written by someone on my friends list. And at that, I don't choose people on my friends list for agreeing with me. So I don't really have much need to fear that I'm listening to my own private echo chamber, but sometimes I do. So, in an attempt to broaden my horizons, I decided to take a look at some of the people I don't hear from much here on /..

Take a look at this link: http://slashdot.org/my/friends/foes/

That link will bring you a nice list (whitch may be exceptionally long) of anyone that your friends have listed as a foe. My preferences are set to give these people a slight negative modifier, and I browse at +2, so I miss a lot of their posts.

So, I took a look through the list, and read every journal posted in the month of November (including some written in November of last year.) Anyone who was remotely interesting got friended. I did al this yesterday, and I've already read two interesting journals that I would have never found otherwise.

So... opinions? Wild attacks? Try it for yourself.

P.S. http://slashdot.org/my/friends/friends/ works too, which will give you a list of people that you might find likable, but haven't friended yet. And for your stalking amusement, http://slashdot.org/~username/friends/friends (substitute any username after the ~) can be fun, too. Warning, though, all of these lists can be very large.