Kevin's diary is updated sporadically and includes a recurring cast of characters. If you have any comments, send mail to kdrum@home.com, but be forewarned that I probably won't answer….

Friday, January 31, 1997

Good bridge night. Rick bid and made a small slam in the second rubber, which allowed us to win on points even though we lost the rubber. Final score:

No hearts this week. The bridge game didn't finish until 10:30 and Dave had to go home. What a wimp.

Wednesday, January 29, 1997

It was a little breezy tonight, but nice and warm. Dvorman beat me 4-6, 2-6, but I aced him three times, which I'm sure is a personal record.

Netscape blew up again last night. Different symptoms this time: instead of GPFing, it just stopped dead on certain sites. It always happened at exactly the same point while it was loading the offending pages, and reinstalling didn't help. However, uninstalling and reinstalling fixed it, just like last time. I wonder what's going on? It's as if it deteriorates in some weird way over the course of a few days and needs to be refreshed. I have no idea what could be causing this, but I'm sure getting tired of re-entering all my preferences when this happens.

I got another copy of the Weekly World News today, and it didn't seem as amusing as last week's. An off week? Or is it getting stale already?

Our Ascent Reseller Conference finished up today. It came off well, and Barbara did a great job of organizing it, but it was also tiring. I'm glad it's over.

It's a bit discouraging that every time I learn something new about the Web, it turns out to be yet another ridiculous hack. HTTP is a poorly designed protocol, HTML is an absurdly rudimentary page description language, and now I've learned that CGI is little more than an embarrassingly inept way of passing data back and forth between browsers and Web servers. It's almost as if God is playing a little joke on us.

Monday, January 27, 1997

A couple of days ago I was in my car listening to Art Garfunkel's first solo album, Angel Clare, and noticed something odd. The second track is a song by Charlie Monroe called "Down in the Willow Garden," and it's a lush, instrumental ballad that for ten years I have assumed was a love song. In fact, the first two lines are:

Down in the willow garden
Where me and my love did meet

However, I had never really listened to the lyrics, and this time I thought I heard the words "murder" and "poison" and "bloody." Huh? So I played it again. And again. Then I checked the Web to see if I could find the lyrics, but the Lyric Server had been shut down due to legal pressures. So I played it again at home, and then let Marian listen to it, and here's our best reconstruction of the lyrics:

Down in the willow garden
Where me and my love did meet
As we sat there a courtin'
My love fell off to sleep

I had a bottle of burgundy wine
My love she did not know
And so I poisoned that dear little girl
On the banks below

I drew a saber through her
It was a bloody sight
I threw her in the river
Which was a dreadful sight

My father oft had told me
That money would set me free
If I would murder that dear little girl
Whose name was Rose Connelly

My father sits at his cabin door
Wiping his teared up eyes
For his only son soon shall walk
To yonder scaffold high

My face is ? from the ? sun
The scaffold waits for me
For I did murder that dear little girl
Whose name was Rose Connelly

Now that's a very weird song. Apparently it's a fairly well-known ballad, and it's been recorded a number of times, but I'll be damned if I have any idea what it's supposed to be about.

However, Angel Clare is still a good album, "Down in the Willow Garden" is a pleasant song, and Art Garfunkel is a fine singer.

Friday, January 24, 1997

I finally got Netscape working again! It stopped working mysteriously last Saturday, and I thought it was because I had installed an eval copy of NetObjects Fusion, a Web authoring tool. I was getting highly repeatable GPFs when I visited certain sites and I figured that Fusion must have installed an updated DLL somewhere that Netscape didn't like.

I used KBack to find out what had changed between Wednesday and Saturday, and then restored old versions of all changed DLLs from my backup tape, but it didn't help. I reinstalled Netscape. No luck. I changed the name of my Netscape directory to "Netscape1" and re-reinstalled it into "Netscape", but no joy. Finally, I uninstalled Netscape and then reinstalled it. This time everything went back to normal. Apparently it was some kind of corruption in the registry.

Back in the days of Windows 2.0, Microsoft told software vendors to keep all their configuration information in WIN.INI. Later, they figured out that was a bad idea and told everyone to start keeping their own private INI files. Now, under Windows 95, they have gone back to the central configuration idea. Why? The registry is mind-bogglingly stupid, possibly Microsoft's worst idea ever.

Of course, I lost all my configuration settings when I uninstalled Netscape, and simply restoring an old INI file won't help since my settings are hidden in the bowels of the registry. Although Windows 95 has a lot of nice features, I have found that keeping it working is far more tedious and annoying than it was with Windows 3.1. And most of the time, the registry is to blame.

Thursday, January 23, 1997

I read today in the National Review that, according to a poll of Midwestern adults conducted by EPIC/MRA, by the age of seven only 44% of Republicans still believed in Santa Claus compared to 59% of Democrats.

Actually, that's pretty funny. It's too bad that the general level of discourse between liberals and conservatives can't be that amusing all the time. I sometimes pick up copies of political magazines when I travel (National Review, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, etc.), and when I do I'm always freshly amazed by both the Byzantine, inbred world that they occupy and the intolerant, almost adolescent, attitude of the writing. The writers are more interested in winning debating points than in figuring out where the truth lies, and inconvenient facts and figures are either ignored or just sneered at. I prefer writing with a point of view to the sterile, "objective" prose of most daily newspapers, but there are virtually no complex social questions that don't have compelling evidence pointing in many different directions. To continually pretend otherwise is tiresome.

Tuesday, January 21, 1997

Today was Marc's first day as chairman of the CSUC management department. Only 2 years, 5 months, and 29 days to go!

Monday, January 20, 1997

At lunch today we discussed our displeasure with the Department of Agriculture replacing the four basic food groups with a "food pyramid." This struck most of us as a socialist plot of some kind. After all, if the four good groups were good enough for us, shouldn't they be good enough for our kids? Besides, as we all know, the real four food groups are:

• Salt
• Sugar
• Fat
• Chocolate

I'm on the road tomorrow, flying to Ramsey, NJ, to meet with Minolta. After that I'm shuttling up to Tyngsboro to meet with the Blizzard team for a couple of hours, and then having lunch with Keyfile. I'll be back late Thursday night. Hope the weather is OK….

Sunday, January 19, 1997

I played tennis with Dvorman today and took my usual shellacking: 3-6, 2-6. Dave and I have been playing weekly for three years, but he's leaving Kofax in a couple of weeks. I wonder if we'll keep playing?

Saturday, January 18, 1997

Marian painted the bathroom (envelope white) and the sewing room (light beige) today.

Friday, January 17, 1997

Rick pointed out today that my entry of January 13 is technically incorrect since the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks will begin play in 1998. When that happens, the biggest city in the U.S. without a major league baseball team will be San Antonio.

Bummer bridge night. I fluffed an easy game contract in the second rubber that would have been worth 700 points. Final score:

Bad luck again at hearts. Just like last week, I was close to winning but Dave went to zero and I only mustered second place. We've gotta get rid of this rule about going back to zero if you reach exactly 100 points….

Wednesday, January 15, 1997

Marc's cat Phydeoux died yesterday. He developed kidney problems and finally had to be put to sleep. He was 14.

R.I.P.

Tuesday, January 14, 1997

From the "this is more than I really needed to know" file:

Bruce Taubman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, reports this month in the journal Pediatrics that American children are being toilet trained later in life than in the past. Some of his findings from the first large-scale study of potty training in over 30 years include:

• In the 1960s, most children were trained by the age of 27 months.
• In 1962, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, the first pioneer in this field, recommended that strict toilet training methods be abandoned in favor of waiting until the child shows an interest.
• The result? Today, only 22% are trained after 27 months, and 2% are still not trained by the age of 4.
• The age at which is a child is trained is not correlated with whether the mother works or not, or with whether the child is in day care.

This kind of research apparently requires a fine ear for euphemisms. According to Taubman, one in five children develop unhealthy habits regarding their bowel movements, including "stool toileting refusal," meaning that they are willing to urinate in the toilet but not move their bowels. In about 6% of the cases, children held back so long that they developed constipation and other "more serious" types of gastrointestinal distress. Taubman opines that these problems are caused because children "pick up on the fact that feces are negative in our culture. Feces are unpleasant, embarrassing, stinky, obnoxious."

The good news is that these problems are temporary and don't seem to cause any permanent neuroses. A related report in the same issue concluded that children who were trained later than others did not develop any more behavior problems than early trainers.

Nice work if you can get it….

Monday, January 13, 1997

The biggest city in the U.S. that doesn't have a major league baseball team is Phoenix.

(However, see entry of January 17 for more info.)

Saturday, January 11, 1997

I signed up with Concentric today as my new ISP. I've been using Netcom for a couple of weeks now, but their service has been flaky (the Irvine number was either out of commission or else dog slow much of the time, forcing me to make a toll call to their Mission Viejo number) and their personal Web page service was poor.

So far Concentric seems to be pretty good (but it's only been a day so far….) The connections have been reliable, the network speed is good, and the personal Web service is great. They offer up to 5MB of space (vs. 1MB for Netcom), and all my files are kept at an FTP site, so I can upload my entire Web directory with a single drag-and-drop instead of updating them one by one. The upload capability also means that I can now include graphics on the DrumNet Web site (hooray!) and I can store files for other people to download. They even have CGI capability if I ever feel like learning how to make use of that.

There's an odd thing about Concentric though: you can't sign up online. You have to call their 800 number, and then wait for them to mail you the software. I asked if I could download the software? No. Well, I figured, all I really need is a dialer stack for Windows 95 anyway, so I called tech support. Concentric gets a big pat on the back for having a toll-free tech support number, but unfortunately nobody seemed to be there and I finally hung up after half an hour. However, it turned out that their tech support Web page was excellent, with an extensive and well-organized FAQ, and I was able to get the information I needed to configure the dialer.

My next adventure: deciding which Web authoring tool to use. Stay tuned….

Friday, January 10, 1997

Today is Marian's 41st birthday, and it was a year of flat gifts:

• Evita soundtrack (movie version)
• Preacher's Wife soundtrack
• Gift certificate for a portrait of the two of us at a local place that inserts your picture against a fake backdrop
• A roomarang, loads of fun for the workplace
• A watch that has a knife and fork for its hands

See what I mean? All of 'em flat.

Thursday, January 9, 1997

Do higher taxes reduce the incentive to work hard? According to Taxing Ourselves, an interesting survey of both the U.S. tax system and some currently fashionable proposals for reforming it:

The responsiveness of labor supply...has been studied extensively, and is a rare example of a question on which there is a broad consensus among economists. Nearly all research concludes that male participation and hours worked respond hardly at all to changes in after-tax wages.

Wednesday, January 8, 1997

Question of the day: Who were the five most important (ie., influential) scientists of all time? My votes, in order of importance:

1. Isaac Newton. Only one person gets to discover the basic workings of the universe for the first time, and Newton is it. Any one of his great discoveries (mechanics, the universal theory of gravity, and the calculus) would put him in anybody's top five, and together they arguably form the greatest body of work by a single person in history. (And don't forget his invention of the reflecting telescope and his pioneering work in optics.) What's most remarkable is that he did all this in only a few spurts of activity during his lifetime, repeatedly becoming impatient with physics and retreating to other pursuits that he found more congenial. His greatest work, Principia Mathematica, was finished only due to the constant nagging of Edmund Halley, and he wrote Halley at one point that he didn't really want to publish it because it would only encourage people to write him letters and argue about it with him, and who needs the grief? One wonders what he might have accomplished if he had actually devoted his entire life to the pursuit of physics.
   
   
2. Charles Darwin. Virtually our entire understanding of life on earth depends on Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. In a single stroke, Darwin transformed a field with a thousand different theories and nothing to make sense of them, into a single cohesive structure with the power to explain the origin and evolution of the entire panorama of life over the course of 4 billion years. His masterworks, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, are remarkable not just for the theory they propound (after all, Alfred Russel Wallace conceived the basic idea at the same time Darwin did) but for the power and completeness of the evidence they marshal. In fact, the explanatory power of Darwin's theory was so great that it was universally accepted in only a very few years, despite that fact that at the time no one, including Darwin, could propose any feasible explanation of how mutations actually take place (this had to wait until Watson and Crick unraveled the structure of DNA in 1953).
   
   
3. Sigmund Freud. Was Freud right? Do we really suffer from Oedipal complexes and penis envy? Maybe not, but even though it's possible that every single one of his theories might eventually be proven false, his basic insight about the existence of the unconscious mind stands as the only major discovery to date in the field of human psychology.
   
   
4. Louis Pasteur. The science of medicine was little more than witchcraft and wishful thinking before Pasteur's discovery of germ theory. His theories and their application revolutionized our understanding of disease in the late 19th century, and virtually all of modern medicine is now based on antibacterial and antiviral treatments that had their genesis in his laboratory. Pasteur's theories were instrumental in convincing governments of the value of proper hygiene and sanitation, and his discovery and use of vaccines for rabies, anthrax, and cholera have saved literally hundreds of millions of lives.
   
   
5. Werner Heisenberg. The discovery of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century shattered common sense notions of how the universe works, and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle represents perhaps its single most shattering contribution. It says, simply, that there are certain attributes of particles, such as momentum and position, that don't have specific values at a given moment in time. Mark this carefully: it does not say merely that these values cannot be measured, it says that they don't exist. And this is not just philosophical quibbling; our understanding of how the fundamental forces of nature are generated and mediated depends directly on the existence of Heisenberg's notion of uncertainty.

Some runners up: Albert Einstein is certainly in anybody's top ten, and most would argue that his stature is considerably greater than Heisenberg's. I agree, but despite Einstein's seminal contributions I believe that quantum mechanics is a more important discovery than relativity, and I chose Heisenberg primarily as a representative of the group of physicists who formulated quantum mechanics between 1900 and 1930. Galileo made original and powerful contributions to our understanding of the world, but no one of his discoveries seemed quite enough to push him onto my list (it's a tough crowd to break into). Archimedes almost made it, thanks to his insights into principles of mechanics, but he was perhaps more engineer than scientist.

Explanations for two more who I don't think were all that great: By nearly any definition Aristotle is the most influential thinker who has yet lived. His ideas governed most of Western thought for nearly 2000 years, but they were far more an impediment to progress than a spur. Even in areas where he should have known better (and where others of his time did know better), he canonized ridiculously imperfect notions of how the universe works. Copernicus undoubtedly revolutionized Western thought, and unlike Aristotle he was basically right, but he was right more by accident than anything else. His heliocentric ideas were motivated largely by his tendencies toward sun worship, his masterwork De revolutionibus orbium coelestium offered few compelling grounds for his theories, and it wasn't until Kepler replaced his circular orbits with ellipses (over 50 years later) that the idea of a sun-centered universe became believable. It's not enough to be right by accident, you gotta deliver the scientific goods as well.…

Monday, January 6, 1997

The first NFL championship, in 1933, was held on December 17. The first Super Bowl, in 1967, was held on January 15. This year's Super Bowl will be held on January 26. By my calculations, Super Bowl CCXVI will be held one week before training camp opens.

Sunday, January 5, 1997

David asked today, has the population of Italy been stable over the past century? I tried to find population figures on the Web but couldn't find anything relevant. The best I could do was a student site at Stetson University that said Italy's population growth rate is "very stable" at 0.21%. A retreat to the Encyclopedia Britannica provided the following figures:

• 1861: 25 million
• 1936: 43 million
• 1951: 47 million
• 1961: 50 million

My almanac filled in today's population plus projections for the future:

• 1996: 57 million
• 2026 (projected): 52 million

Saturday, January 4, 1997

Marc and Heidi got back fine, though a little later than usual. The road closure information from the Caltrans Web site was better than nothing, but not accurate enough to be really helpful.

I ran across a logical puzzle today that David and Dean were talking about a couple of weeks ago. Suppose you're on a game show with three doors, and behind one of them is a million dollars. After you choose one, the emcee opens one of the other doors and shows you that it has nothing behind it. Should you stick to your original choice or switch to the remaining door?

It seems like it should be a 50-50 chance whether or not your first door has the million dollars, but it isn't. In fact, your best strategy is always to switch doors. To see why this is so, assume door 1 contains the million dollars and then consider the following three possibilities:

1. You choose door 1, the emcee shows you either door 2 or 3. Outcome: switching doors is a losing strategy.
2. You choose door 2, the emcee shows you door 3. Outcome: switching doors is a winning strategy
3. You choose door 3, the emcee shows you door 2. Outcome: switching doors is a winning strategy.

In 2 out of 3 cases, switching doors is the right thing to do. Fascinating, no?

Friday, January 3, 1997

Marc and Heidi left today. There's lots of flooding north of Sacramento, so they're going to have a tricky time finding an open route back to Chico. It might be the Motel 6 for them tonight….

Good bridge night tonight. Final score:

Bad luck at hearts, though. Rick was at 99 and I was poised to win, but then he hit 100 and I could only muster second. Oh well.

Dave says he jogs in the bike path all the time. Why? Because the asphalt is softer than the concrete sidewalks.

Thursday, January 2, 1997

David wanted to know today if I thought it was OK to use the word mediums (as in, "TV and radio are two mediums worth advertising on"). My opinion: the word media was long ago transformed into a singular noun in common usage, so it is no longer very useful as a plural of medium. Therefore, mediums is acceptable usage when you are talking about two or more specific cases, whereas media commonly refers to the whole enchilada (as in "media conspiracy"). Just another case of language evolving.

We resolved a burning question tonight. If a traffic light is green, but the pedestrian signal says "Don't Walk," is it OK to cross the street? The California DMV page led us to the California Law site, and a search of the Vehicle Code section for "pedestrian" yielded the following:

21456.1. Whenever an official traffic control signal exhibiting an approved "Walking Person" symbol, an approved "Upraised Hand" symbol, or the words "WALK" or "WAIT" or "DON'T WALK" is shown concurrently with official traffic control signals exhibiting the words "GO" or "CAUTION" or "STOP" or exhibiting different colored lights successively, one at a time or with arrows, a pedestrian facing those traffic control signals shall obey the "Walking Person," "Upraised Hand," "WALK" or "WAIT" or "DON'T WALK" control signal as provided in Section 21456.

And as long as we were there, we resolved another nagging question: is it legal to jog in a bike path?

21966. No pedestrian shall proceed along a bicycle path or lane where there is an adjacent adequate pedestrian facility.

Apparently not, at least in California.

Wednesday, January 1, 1997

I ate too much last night. So what else is new?

All the teams I was rooting for lost today. Northwestern (Marc's alma mater) lost to Tennessee. Arizona State (Pac 10) lost to Ohio State. At least Penn State won (Karen was born in State College while Dad was teaching there for a year).

As we watched the games, we kept hearing references to the "red zone." What's that? Checked on the Web and found an article by a guy at the Roanoke Times who explained it all:

No one knows where the term originated. Not all football coaches have the same definition for it. However, there is little disagreement on the significance of the "red zone." Generally speaking, it's that area of the field inside an opponent's 20-yard line, and, if an offensive team gets there and doesn't score at least 75 percent of the time, it's in trouble.

Marc performed a weenie taste-off during the Rose Bowl: little pork wieners and little beef wieners. He and Rick like the beef variety, I preferred the pork. A good result, since it meant all the more weenies for me.

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