Monday, July 24, 2006

There's no fish in the Nashua River

So, this is my 2nd summer lving in a condominium complex along the Nashua River.
I do not own a boat, or even a canoe, but I enjoy getting my line wet from any number of positions (along the river).

Though no one would ever mistake me for a fisherman, last year, I caught a number of blue gills ( good fighters) , several perch and even a couple of bass. Almost every time I cast, I got at least a nibble.

This year, virtually nothing. A couple hard nibbles, and that is it. I know the fish population in the river is way down. Last year, on a sunny day, you could see the sunfish teeming. This year, not so much.

I attribute it to the hard rains and floods we had in late spring that washed all kindsa crap into my river. I throw this out to see if others can corroborate this, not just on the Nashua River, but other rivers 'round here.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Trippin' down memory lane

So I went to a meeting at IBM Westford last Friday, to talk about 64-bit Domino stuff with Bob Bertolini and "Fast" Eddy Bell. It was a pretty good meeting, there were no surprises, but I got the opportunity to roam around my old stomping grounds for a bit (escorted, of course)!

The first big surprise was when we bopped up to the front desk to announce ourselves for the meeting. "May I see your driver's licenses?", said the young lady behind the counter queried.
"Wow! Where's the metal detector?", I replied as I dug the license out of my wallet. She did not seem amused. Heck, when I started at Iris the rule was the last one to go home was supposed to lock the glass doors in front, on the way out. Back then, unlike most software engineers (then and now) I was a bit of an early bird and was on any number of occasions, the first one in, to sail into a completely unlocked facility..

The morning was a bit surreal. The overall physical plant was very familiar, but I had trouble remembering the details. I saw plenty of familiar names on the nameplates outside the offices (often 2 to a single door!), and also plenty of unfamiliar ones. I managed to meet the father of my good buddy David Pitkin (purely by chance) and I bumped into a few old-timers and chewed the fat for a while.

All in all, it was an interesting experience. It made me reflect on the 8 years I spent working on Lotus Notes, the best gig of my career. To this day, I like many of my ex-colleagues, make my living, at least tangentally from the work we did in those years. It is gratifying to see Notes and Domino continue to make hay, and to see guys like Ed Brill continue to fight the good fight.

I left feeling strangely dislocated and with a vauge desire to write an @Formula or some LotusScript (or at least get Slappy or Damien to do it, which is in truth what I used to do...)

I guess you can't go home again, but it's kinda cool to visit

Do you know why Babe Ruth didn't take steroids?

Because they weren't available in his day. Plain and simple.

To some how put players in the "pre-steroid" era on some pedestal and to proclaim that their statistics are more legitimate is flat out ludicrous.

Heck, Babe Ruth didn't even have to compete against the best players of his time (or at least a good portion of them). He got by on his prodigious natural talents. His idea of workout was sevens (hot dogs, women, and cigars, 7 of each).

Mickey Mantle could've potentially approached Ruth's HR record, if he took halfway decent care of himself and didn't go out boozing all the time.

Steroids aside, the work ethic of guys like Bonds, Clemens, etc is something the ballplayers of yesterday could never approach. These guys are amazing athletes and deserve at least much acclaim and praise has the older guys....

I wish these sanctimonious sports writers would get off their soap boxes and realize that.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

If at first you don't succeed..

..so I abandoned my first attempt at this whole blogging thing a few months back.
But, sometimes I enjoyed it, so I'm gonna try again.
My original blog mkudla.blogspt.com got hijacked, I have no idea why, so I got a new URL too.

Not sure if anyone will find it, but I'll post my thoughts here anyways.

Party on.