bradm

I saw Luke Perry on "Law & Order: SVU" last night. He played a child-abusing rapist. Aloha, Brad

Adam West also provides the voice for another animated mayoral character: Marion Grange, mayor of Gotham on The Batman. Aloha, Brad

Not much beyond the usual; it's almost as if I'm in the midst of a string of several statutory holidays. I'm thinking about having a nice lunch downtown (ideally on a patio) tomorrow. A bit. I'm not a big in-sleeper (largely due to wanting to keep a fairly regular meal schedule), but I'm getting up later than I was when I was working. Yesterday's afternoon nap wasn't successful, so we'll see how it goes this afternoon. I feel comfortable. Aloha, Brad

Yup. My last day was last Thursday, Sept. 18. Aloha, Brad

I wonder if, by going hard after the Conservatives (harder after than I think I've seen Dion go), they're almost doing that implicitly. I also wonder how many Liberals, who may not necessarily agree with the NDP platform, would be willing to compromise on what disagreement they have to get as strong a leader as Layton is trying to appear. It's also interesting how there seems to be an imbalance between the targets of the NDP's and Conservative Party's advertising: the NDP are targetting the Conservatives, while the Conservatives aren't: they're only going after the Liberals (so far anyway). And if the Liberals (or Conservatives) decide to go after the NDP, that'll effectively split their offence. Aloha, Brad

Yeah, but it'd be easy to come up with some kind of standard way of making it all multimedia, with visuals and maybe an interactive menu system (rigged to work over the internet) synced to the music and the track list. Aloha, Brad

wanna eat me? Do you smell like hickory or maple smoke? Aloha, Brad

I was watching CBC Newsworld this morning, and their "Question of the Day" is: Should there be a law requiring Canadians to vote? I say there shouldn't be, as it takes far too limited a vision of democracy (broadly, "more people voting = better democracy"), and I don't see how requiring only that every (eligible) person show up at a certain place on a certain day and put a piece of paper in a box will make for a better society. (In fact, I don't think it will make for a better society at all, not just won't make for a society that's better enough to outweight the downsides.) Your thoughts, comments, and answers would be appreciated, but aren't required. Aloha, BRAD (Broad Ruminations About Democracy)

Happy Day, jayr! Aloha, Brad

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2008/09/17/donlon-cbc.html Aloha, Brad

Aloha, Brad

What bouche said. http://www.myspace.com/burtneilsonband Live BNB recordings can be found at: http://www.archive.org/details/BurtNeilsonBand Especially recommended is their most recent show http://www.archive.org/details/bnb2008-07-19.oktava.flac16 from The Dakota Tavern in Toronto back in July. Aloha, Brad

I might spend some time on teh internetz, too. Aloha, Brad

Aloha, Brad

I'm imagining some kind of spirit of THAT PLACE who'll be the judge of whether this or that person was or wasn't sketchy enough... Aloha, Brad

Hmmmm... Aloha, Brad

How about Rita Rudner? Her comedy may be down the mild end of the scale (e.g., no profanity, no shouting, just funny observations about her life), but I think she's won "best comedy show in Vegas" (or something similar) awards in the past few years. Aloha, Brad

Hey, I got out of bed an hour later than usual today (as if it were a weekend or holiday*). Give me some time, won't ya? Aloha, Brad * I also usually try to stay on a reasonably regular meal schedule; sleeping 'til noon, while a nice concept, messes that up severely.

See if Penn & Teller are still at the Rio. I saw them when I was in Vegas for Vegoose in 2005, and it was a blast. (And when I saw them, if you got to the theatre early enough, you could catch a piano/bass jazz duo, with Penn playing bass, and playing it pretty well. As well, both Penn and Teller stood out in the lobby after the show for a meet'n'greet.) Aloha, Brad

I'm trying to imagine what this topic would be like if you had used an 'a' instead of a 'y' in the topic's subject. Aloha, Brad

My employer was Alcatel-Lucent. I started working for Newbridge Networks in mid-1991, and Alcatel bought Newbridge in mid-2000, then merged with Lucent at the tail end of 2006. From about 2004 onwards, I was in a research group*; after Alcatel and Lucent merged, they combined Alcatel's and Lucent's research divisions under the banner of what was Lucent's research group: Bell Labs**. For at least the last year or so, I was working on a system that was intended to analyze network applications and network attacks (e.g., "My network looks like this, I want to do these things with it, and I think the bad guys are going to try to muck it up these ways. Who wins?"); the project was funded about 50% through the Defence Research & Development Canada (DRDC) program, part of the Canadian Department of National Defence. Most of the work I did was really ground-breaking: we not only didn't know how to do what we were trying to do, we didn't even know if we could do it. It was also cool to see how the assumptions we made at the start of the project were proven wrong; I had a couple of key "flashes of insight" that broke severe logjams that had arisen. In a lot of ways, it was a seriously cool job: hard-core design and coding, without all the cruft (documentation, testing, development processes and standards, customers, bug-fixing, etc.) that usually goes along with programming (esp. product development) jobs. I considered looking for a job within Alcatel-Lucent, but realized that all I'd really be able to go for was hard-core product development. I've done that, and it's hard: long hours, heavy deadlines, serious pressure. I have no problem doing that, provided there's a big enough payoff, as there was through the 1990s, and which doesn't exist (at least at A-L) now. Given that I was going to leave A-L anyway at some point, I figured it was time to get out while the gettin' was good. (And thus, yet again, I follow in my father's footsteps: he was also a programmer, also had his company move his job, and he also took early retirement.) I also figured that if I was to take a year (or a few years) off and have some fun, I'd rather do it now than, say, in 10 or 15 years. Does anyone know a Canadian band that'd be willing to have a taper come along for a tour? Aloha, Brad * Note that in most companies, "research and development" is, in fact, purely product development, with very little actual research getting done. Our group was pure research, without being tied to any product line. ** Both the transistor and the UNIX operating system came out of Bell Labs.

Can you do both? Aloha, Brad

Aloha, Brad

For the first time in my adult life, I'm unemployed. My employer* decided to close the Ottawa site of the part of the company I was in, and since the company offered me a year's salary (incl. most benefits) as severance, I figured the time was right to get the heck out. The decision came down a while (as in a couple of months) ago, so it wasn't a shock or surprise; I'm actually pretty cool with it. I have no plans, other than enjoying not having plans (and maybe enjoying the odd weekday lunch downtown). Aloha, Brad * With whom I had 17 years' seniority; the company has only been around less than two years, but I had been with companies that were bought and merged with, so the seniority carried over.

According to http://www.jambase.com/Articles/15082/Dungen-Album.Tour Dungen is playing at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto Friday, October 31. Aloha, Brad