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Category: Personal

Hello, Cologne

August 14, 2011
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It’s the sweet taste of jet lag! I had plans to sleep as soon as I got on the evening plane out of Dulles, but with a lean-all-the-way-back traveler in front of me, that became untenable. So I watched Thor instead, which wasn’t half as bad as I expected it to be. Not a super-bright movie, but man, it’s got science fantasy vision in spades.

Schiphol Airport was huge. This is not an original observation, I know. But it’s worse than O’Hare! So that was interesting and new, even though the half an hour walk between gates was lengthy. But if you gotta do it, might as well do it at 4 AM body time, right?

In a fit of thriftiness I took the S 13 from the Cologne/Bonn Airport to Cologne proper, since my hotel’s right off the Hauptbanhof. The cathedral bells were ringing as the train pulled in, and they’re ringing right now. It’s a tremendous chunk of architecture.

Now I’m kind of killing time till 1 or so, at which point I’m going to wander out to a touristy biergarden and get some sausages, and then go pick up my conference badge. Then I’m going to try and stay awake more. There’s a sauna in the hotel but that sounds like a really bad idea in my current state.

Walking for Prevention

September 14, 2009
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This post may trigger.

On September 28th, 2008, my life changed. That was the day Wyatt killed himself; that was the evening Susan and I found Wyatt’s body on the third floor of our communal house. A year later, the grief has abated somewhat, although there are sharp moments of pain. The anger’s still pretty strong. So is the determination.

In 2006, 33,000 people killed themselves in the United States. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for adults between the ages of 18 and 65 years in this country. (15 to 24 year olds? Third leading.) Last year the rate of military suicides increased for the fourth year running. More than half of all violent deaths are suicides.

Two hotlines, if you are concerned about yourself or others:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Samaritans Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-877-870-HOPE (4673) (and in Boston: 617-247-0220)

On October 10th, we will be walking to raise money for suicide prevention. I expect to be working for this cause for the rest of my life. I barely saw Wyatt’s body; he’d fallen between his bed and the wall. I still won’t ever forget it.

I’m asking for donations. AFSP is a good, solid organization that does a huge amount of work to raise awareness. Anything you can give is wonderful. Little-known fact: my mother spent a lot of time in the 80s as a fundraiser for hunger causes, so I’ve seen how much difference the small donations make first hand. It adds up!

Also, if you’re moved to spread the word on this, or if you want to walk with us, that’d be completely wonderful.

Thank you.

100 Best Films You’ve Never Heard Of — Done!

February 8, 2009
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Finished entering the 100 best films you’ve never heard of etc. Man, for a site with a cool concept, the interface for adding things to lists is painful. Well, no, more correctly, the search interface is atrocious. You can literally search on a full title, find nothing, then search on the first two words of the title and get the movie you want.

It could also use some data normalization. They key on Amazon entries, which is wise, since the revenue stream is Amazon affiliate links. However, there’s no linkage, so if you note that you’ve consumed a movie in one format there’s no record of it being consumed in any other.

… OK, that’s nitpicking. I know it’d be a huge amount of work. I’d love to see a way for users to do the work, though.

Job Hunt Progress

February 7, 2009
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The job hunt is going quite well. I had a face to face interview Thursday, which I feel optimistic about; I also had a good phone interview today, and will be hearing back from them on Monday. Plus a couple more phone interviews next week. Plus maybe an interview in California. So I couldn’t feel too much better about my progress so far, although there’s obviously a ways to go.