Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Oh, right, like I’m the only one who sometimes tries to enumerate the Four Musketeers from memory and suddenly lapse into Greek Fates.

D’Artagnan, Aramis, Porthos, Clotho….oh, blast!

Back in the late 1990s, I volunteered with a local theatre company whose productions were in a Methodist church in the city of St. Louis. The church itself was a sprawling, multi-story castle that had a kitchen, a couple of chapels, a gymnasium, offices, strangely spaced bathrooms, and vast storage spaces. There were often a couple of different groups having functions there, so it was not uncommon to run into strangers in the kitchen washing dishes or something. And the minister mentioned that he’d had a problem with homeless people unlocking doors while the front door was open so they could come in and sleep there.

So I got to thinking about a novel about a young man in the mid-twenties crisis who meets a man who has, unknown the the church, moved into just such a church and lives on the premises gratis through some trickery and even receives some mail under the name John Methodis. I was going to title it The Gospel of John Methodis and study how this older fellow went off the grid and why that appealed to the boy in transition from the immediate post-collegescence to growing up–or not.

I didn’t get too far into writing that because it seems a bit thin of a plot to hang a whole novel on and the incidents within the book never materialized or connected themselves. Also, I’m lazy and have managed only two novels out of a couple dozen novel ideas.

Somewhere I must have read the story of Chheng Guan Lim, who for several years in the 1950s did just that.

The world is far crazier than my imagination.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

So I pulled into the car wash to get the road treatment rinsed from my vehicle (this winter in Springfield has been about 2″ of snow and 6″ of road treatments to melt the snow before the sun did, which it failed to do).

And as I’m rolling and before the door behind me closes completely, I see a bird fly in. And they perch on the equipment:

He did not give my vehicle any extra polish, but that would be a very ill omen indeed.

Now that I’ve got steady freelance work again, we’re officially Dual Income, Two Kids, Animals.

Oh, no.

We’re DITKAs.

I wish to update the world and the Internet regarding the statements made in this post:

I now carry a picture of my beautiful wife in my wallet.

Actually, it’s her senior picture from high school, which is some years before I knew her.

But it had floated atop a box full of her old cassettes for years, and one day when I was looking for old cassettes to play for our children, I finally copped it and stuck it into my (bifold) wallet.

This just in: She is more beautiful now than she was then. Unless, of course, such a statement would get me into trouble with her now. In which case, I, uh….

Dynamic pricing is all the rage on the Internet these days, as online sellers like Amazon inject algorithms designed to extract as much money from each customer as that customer might be willing to pay. Instead of a grocery store, with a fixed price on an item, Internet Web sales sites are now more like car lots, where you won’t get the best deal unless you’re willing to walk out, virtually speaking, without what you want.

For example, Amazon is very happy to offer you a price on an item, but if you leave without checking out, you’ll find the next time you come back that it’s unexpectedly cheaper.

Amazon will even call you back like a car salesman does on a slow day. Well, it will email you to let you know that it’s got a better price for you.

I’m just waiting until Amazon tells you it wants to ask its manager if it’s possible to get you into that DVD for $4.99. Then, maybe, I’ll splurge on a trio of films that I won’t end up watching until I find a functional secondhand DVD player in 2033.

I’m just an old man, but the whole dynamic pricing thing just seems like another way for companies to try to take advantage of their existing and loyal customers. And it does not build good brand equity or give me the urge to buy a bunch more.

Gimlet linked to an article on Ars Technica entitled "First encounter: COMPUTE! magazine and its glorious, tedious type-in code" that talks about getting a start with type-in programs back in the old days:

My first computer was an Atari 600XL, a 16KB model with a cartridge slot and no disk drive which my parents suffered through a high-pressure time share sales pitch to obtain for me. And I loved it, not so much for playing the cartridge version of Star Raiders (though I did that, too) but because the machine opened the door to BASIC code and to writing one’s own programs. It was like a LEGO kit for the mind: if you could think it—and squeeze it into 16KB—you could build it.

But how to save these masterpieces? I quickly acquired a finicky, used tape drive to store my programs on standard cassette tapes, picked up some books from the library, and I was off, coding versions of “Hunt the Wumpus” and other early Unix delights that had been ported to BASIC for the new breed of home computer user. Then, as I was browsing the magazine rack at our public library one day in the mid-1980s, I came across a wondrous magazine called COMPUTE!. It contained cutting-edge programs—including plenty of games—with decent graphics. And the code was all free. I quickly grabbed every back issue the library would let me take and headed home.

Brother, those days are now:

What do we have here?

• Compute’s Gazette, which was Compute! Commodore 64 magazine.
   
• Run magazine.
   
• Commodore Power/Play and Commodore Microcomputers, two titles that alternated months and focus between serious computing and games and eventually merged into the single Commodore title.
   
• A bunch of sundry other titles from back in the day, either part of a subscription or picked up later at garage sales or book fairs for the nostalgia value.

Strangely, I don’t appear to have saved any Ahoy! magazines, which I also got or picked up on occasion. I don’t remember which it was.

The first three titles have type-in programs, many of which I typed in. But I don’t have to type them in again. I still own the 5 1/4″ floppies that I saved them on 30 years ago. It’s been a couple years since I fired the old Commodores up, but the disks were still readable then. I have faith they still are now.

But that’s not entirely what I mean by the past is still with me.

When I want to learn a new programming language from scratch, I’m still prone to buying a Teach Yourself [language] programming books that have a sample program that you can type in over the course of the book. Of course, they don’t really teach you much about developing in that language except how to develop that program, but I still type along with the chapters. When I’m trying to pick it up from scratch.

When I’m on the clock, I’m all about getting something done quickly, so its Internet forums and reference books (in Ruby these days).

But I still pick up the books and type along when I don’t have to do it right now, and I type along. And then I abandon it when the checksum fails and I can’t find the typo. Just like the olden days.

Restaurant chains that come to mind that are named after a pepper:

• Chili’s
• Chipotle
• Culpepper’s

What others am I missing?

And does any other vegetable get that kind of love?