"Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root.
Because there stands, one story out of the bum city,
That frozen wife whose juices drift like a fixed sea
Secretly in statuary,
Shall I, struck on the hot and rocking street,
Not spin to stare at an old year
Toppling and burning in the muddle of towers and galleries
Like the mauled pictures of boys?
The salt person and blasted place
I furnish with the meat of a fable.
If the dead starve, their stomachs turn to tumble
An upright man in the antipodes
Or spray-based and rock-chested sea:
Over the past table I repeat this present grace."
— Dylan Thomas, January 1939

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2012.01.10
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

— "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

Reminder: Wilde Roast has moved. They are now in Riverplace (St. Anthony Main) in Picasa’s old space, a couple doors East of Kikugawa. Most places validate parking if you use the ramp immediately to the North (2nd and Bank). I figure we’ll try the new location once to see how it goes and wing it from there. I was down the road at the Aster Cafe Saturday Night and validated parking only cost me $1.

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2011.12.13
• Wilde Roast (Map)

See you on the 11th!

P.S.: (Yes, I used the same poem last year, it’s one of my favorites.)

One nit to pick. At the 2:44 mark, the comment from Ola Ahlvarsson is “A lot of companies saw what was gonna happen in the future”. That’s wrong. Companies saw nothing, companies have no such capacity. People saw possibilities. People took chances. People formed companies to provide structure and boundaries. People were right and wrong and close and adaptive and some caught the wave and some missed it and some were in a better position when the next wave came by.

The future, of which the Networked Society is only a part, is about us and the world in which we live. It is not about “corporate vision”.

“No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds–
November!”
— Thomas Hood

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2011.11.08
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.

See you Tuesday!

Do what now?

The airlines charge a hefty fee for the privilege of checking a bag ahead of time.  If you don’t check your bag and it doesn’t fit on the plane the airline has to gate-check the bag, which is free.  So the airline is providing an incentive for bringing big roller bags as carrion. (That’s how they pronounce it: “carrion baggage”).

Thing is, gate-checking takes more time and is more work for the gate and ground crews.  The goal, apparently, is to punish employees and annoy passengers, or to fine passengers $25 for not playing along. This is how airlines make money in the 21st century.

Either that, or it’s how the airline executives create entertainment for themselves.

The computer that synchronizes the timing of about 85% of the traffic lights in Minneapolis is almost 20 years old, and it got shut down by a freak power surge.  My guess is that it wasn’t the power surge that had it down for a week, it’s the fact that the system is too dang reliable.  I have only anecdotal evidence to go by, but chances are good that the boot drive had failed a while ago and no one noticed because they never reboot the thing.  It just keeps running.

Credit where it’s due:
Traffic light management is high on the list of liability risks should something go very wrong.

• Running an ancient system that works is sound policy.
• Having a backup plan that keeps the lights working safely when the computer is down is sound policy.
• Carefully planning for a replacement is also sound policy.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Reminder: Wilde Roast has moved. They are now in Riverplace (St. Anthony Main) in Picasa’s old space, a couple doors East of Kikugawa. Most places validate parking if you use the ramp immediately to the North (2nd and Bank). I figure we’ll try the new location once to see how it goes and wing it from there. I was down the road at the Aster Cafe Saturday Night and validated parking only cost me $1.

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2011.10.11
• Wilde Roast (Map)

See you on the 11th!

“The morrow was a bright September morn;
The earth was beautiful as if newborn;
There was nameless splendor everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air,
Which makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2011.09.13
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.

See you Tuesday!

Summertime
And the living is easy
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high

Oh, your daddy’s rich
And your mama’s good lookin’
So hush little baby now
don’t you cry

One of these mornin’s
You’re gonna rise up singin’
Then you’ll spread your wings
And take to the sky

But til that mornin’
Ain’t nothin’ can harm you
With your daddy
And your mammy
standin’ by.”
— George Gershwin and Dubose Heyward, Porgy and Bess

Reminder: Wilde Roast has moved. They are now in Riverplace (St. Anthony Main) in Picasa’s old space, a couple doors East of Kikugawa. Most places validate parking if you use the ramp immediately to the North (2nd and Bank). I figure we’ll try the new location once to see how it goes and wing it from there. I was down the road at the Aster Cafe Saturday Night and validated parking only cost me $1.

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2011.08.09
• Wilde Roast (Map)

See you on the 9th!

Mosquito is out,
it’s the end of the day;
she’s humming and hunting
her evening away.
Who knows why such hunger
arrives on such wings
at sundown? I guess
it’s the nature of things.
— N. M. Boedecker, Midsummer Night Itch

• Geek Gather
• 6:30pm
• Tuesday 2011.07.12
• Chatterbox Cafe, Saint Paul, MN

Directions are here Google Maps if anyone needs them.

See you Tuesday!