This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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 My father’s mother’s father. Unlike the last couple of ancestors I have posted about, I actually know a decent bit about him both from memories of my Grandmother and from a published obituary.
He was born in Kentucky in 1891. His first job was driving mules in a coal mine. He later worked for a clothing store, then went to college and met his future wife Maude there. He then started up the management chain at various business colleges ending up being a principal owner and manager of Lockyears Business College in Evansville, Indiana. On retirement he was a good friend of Dale Carnegie and was significantly involved in developing and extending some of the courses and methods used by the Dale Carnegie Training courses. He was also involved in a wide variety of volunteer activities. Died in Arizona in 1962.
Basically born poor, died well off, had some adventures in between. Not too bad.
As usual, click on the picture for more.
So, I just found out that two people on my team here in Seattle, besides myself, actually lived in Plainsboro NJ at the same time as I did. One of them in the apartment complex immediately adjacent to the one I lived in. That is just odd.
 Author: Anne McCaffrey
Started: 18 Jun 2006
Finished: 21 Jun 2006
303p / 4d
76 p/d
Brandy recently read all of Anne McCaffrey’s dragon books after she ran out of books once and I pointed her at them. And so I was inspired to want to read them again for the first time in at least a decade. So, I decided to pick up the first of the bunch and read it again.
And of course, I basically couldn’t put it down. Well, of course I put it down. I went to work and stuff. I only read a couple chapters Sunday through Tuesday actually, but then early Wednesday, right around when I was supposed to be going to sleep for the night I picked up the book instead. And THEN I didn’t put it down until I was done several hours later. Leaving me quite tired during the day Wednesday after I dragged myself out of bed and to work. The 76 pages per day rate I averaged on this book is the fastest rate for anything I’ve read since I started posting books I read on this blog. Woo! Of course, in exchange, I didn’t do anything I was supposed to in the time between work and bed for a couple days (although this wasn’t the only reason) and I ended up only sleeping a couple hours one night, but hey, I wanted to read the book!
I was definitely reminded how much I like this series. And that is of course mainly because I want a dragon. I mean, who wouldn’t? I’d even settle for a fire lizard (although they were not in this book). A fire lizard would be quite fine.
I have read these much less often than I have read the Lord of the Rings, and it showed while I was reading it. There were certainly things that I remembered… but generally only a few pages before I got to them… I could not have told you the plot before I started reading it again. In fact, I would have claimed that this particular plot was actually the plot of one of the later books, not the first book, and would have been completely wrong. And even once reading it, I might remember general plot points, but not details. And that was nice. Not quite like reading something for the very first time, but still good. And like going back to an old friend. I am very tempted to just move right on to the next book in the series, but alas, there are other things ahead of it in line.
One more note… Brandy was reading many of the dragon books in the last few months of Princely’s life. A few times during those months she referred to him as “her dragon”. And that resonated while reading and added poignancy. I’ll never be able to read these books again without also thinking about Princely and shedding a tear or two. I miss him very much too.
 Author: Tom M. Mitchell
Started: 25 Mar 2006
Finished: 18 Jun 2006
414p / 87d
5 p/d
This is a textbook I got for work to give me somewhat of a background in some of the technologies being used, and other related technologies that we might someday want to use. It is normally targeted at advanced undergrad CS majors or starting CS grad students. Now, I took a couple CS classes my freshman year of college, but really haven’t done much else of the sort since then. So this was a mode of thinking I hadn’t been much used to. And to be honest, even back then it was more about listening to and understanding a professor than trying to grok it by reading a book.
The first few chapters were pretty straightforward, but it did definitely get more challenging after that. And of course I wasn’t doing it the full out way trying to actually do all the exercises and such at the end of every chapter. However I was, for the most part, doing careful reading. That is, if I read a paragraph or two and then realized I didn’t fully understand what was being said, I’d go back and read it over and over again, thinking about it, until I thought I did understand. And sometimes that took a few passes. And even then, I think what I actually ABSORBED, in that I still remember after having finished the entire book, is just the general ideas for the most part, certainly not the details. If I was asked to actually do anything with any of the techniques described, I’d have to go back and read that chapter again with an even more fine tooth comb. And certainly, the further on you go in the book, the more true that is.
But it was still a good overview. Gives some good vocabulary I can use at work. And some background that helps me understand some of what the options and tradeoffs are. So it was good to have read it.
The next non-fiction will be a book for work as well. They are sneaking ahead in line of the personally chosen non-fiction. But for now, time for some light fiction…
 Time for my father’s father’s mother. Again I don’t know all that much about her, but there is a picture. I’m pretty sure that spot on her face is just a problem with the photograph, not something that was really there. :-)
She was born in South Carolina, died in Texas. Married William Ramseur Minter and had four kids including my Grandfather. And that is about all I know unfortunately. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some more info, possibly from relatives who actually knew her (she died in 1964). But that is all I have at the moment really.
A couple weeks ago I downloaded Nethack for old times sake. I played one game then but don’t remember much. I just played a game a few minutes ago. Here is the entire transcript:
Hello Abulsme, welcome to NetHack!
You are a chaotic female orcish Wizard.
You displaced your kitten.
m – a puce potion.
The kitten falls into a pit!
The kitten hisses!
You frightened the kitten!
You fall into a pit!
You are still in a pit.
The kitten bites!
The kitten bites!
You die…
Goodbye Abulsme the Wizard…
You died in The Dungeons of Doom
on dungeon level 1 with 0 points,
and 0 pieces of gold, after 7 moves.
You were level 1 with a maximum of
11 hit points when you died.
Ah, good times.
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Today here at work it is Happy Dog Day… or somthing like that… They have a playground for the dogs with tubes and seesaws and thing to jump over. They have a schoolbus full of dog toys. They have a couple guys in dog suits. And of course dozens of employee’s dogs.
I just suddenly realized that today is Thursday, not Friday, and that just pissed me off. I am ready for it to be Friday. Damn it.
Also, even though I slept from about 3 UTC to about 7 UTC, that’s only four hours, and I should try to sleep again. It is almost 11 UTC, and my alarm will start going off at 13 UTC. I have a 16:30 UTC meeting today, but it is in a different building than my usual building, so I’ll have to get to work early to catch the shuttle over there and such. So If I’m going to try to squeeze in another couple of hours of sleep, I need to do it now.
But I’m in one of those “I feel tired and I would like to lie down, but doubt I’ll be able to sleep” modes. Contrast to 3 UTC, which was way early for me to be going to sleep, where I sat down on the floor and then woke up 4 hours later. I was just instantly out.
Oh well. I’ll try. If I can’t manage to get back to sleep by the time the alarm goes off, guess I’ll just stay up…
Well, not a personal site, so not actually hers, but my friend Kathy recently (well, OK, almost a month ago) emailed that the site she’d been working on for work was finally up:
Yippee!! The women’s health website I’ve been working on for SIX years is finally launched!! Be sure to check it often, as we create wellness spotlights for consumers throughout the year and update publications for health professionals at least monthly. Browse the site and be sure to check out “Office of Women’s Health Materials†currently under “In the Spotlight†(also under “Spotlights and Observances†and “Publications and Materials†in the left navigation bar) for some of our consumer-friendly wellness spotlights and “Topics A-Z†in our left navigation bar for consumer and health professional resources by health topic.
You can see it spotlighted at the top of the CDC homepage this week at www.cdc.gov or go directly to it anytime at www.cdc.gov/women. Enjoy!
~Kathy
P.S. We have a men’s health website that I manage, too- www.cdc.gov/men.
So, drop by and check it out.
I’ve been meaning to mention this for a long time, but I generally would always think of it once I was in bed for the night, not at the computer, so I never did. But today having fallen asleep really early, then woken up in the middle of the night, I figured I’d give it a shot.
People who read my blog know that I’ve been without a television since around the end of February. I’ve got tons of TVs in Florida and it just didn’t seem to be worth it to get a new one here, or to double up paying for cable or whatnot. Slingbox was considered, but there were a few obstacles, so it never happened.
In any case, thanks to the internet I’ve yet to miss a TV show I really wanted to watch. And more and more of it is actually available legally as television producers and distributers finally start to “get it”. They still don’t get it completely, cause they often offer lower quality versions with less flexibility than you can get by “other means” but the moves are in the right direction.
But that only gets the fix for “show” type content. It is great for watching Doctor Who, CSI, Lost… whatever. But there is a niche that doesn’t cover, which is the more timely stuff. For instance, I tried using the same methods as with the other things for something like The Daily Show. Very possible. It is all there. But I don’t do it. Why? Cause for that kind of thing I want the convienience of being able to do it directly by subscribing to a podcast in iTunes.
(I know, there are RSS/Torrent combinations that can do this, but they still have more friction.)
I’ve subscribed to about a dozen such shows that I listen to or watch regularly. For the stuff that is timely and are available this way, I’d never consider using “other means”. Just like when iTunes opened for music. Before then, I downloaded lots of music through “other means”. From the day iTunes Music Store opened, I can’t say I’ve downloaded one single thing through other means… unless it wasn’t available at iTunes. Right now TV on iTunes is lower quality than I’ll pay for… I watch on my monitor, not on an iPod… but they are now offering “subscriptions” to shows… still a little pricy, but getting there. Once they straighten the kinks on that, increase the quality, etc… I’ll be all over that. (And maybe once I buy a video iPod. :-)
Um, I’ve got distracted from what I originally wanted to talk about though. There are about 12 audio podcasts I now listen to regularly, and two video podcasts I watch regularly. A couple interesting things with that. First of all, while there are a couple “indy” ones, like TWiT and RocketBoom… most of what I listen to is actually from more “traditional media” type sources. Almost every night I watch the ABC News World News Now video podcast. I listen to stuff from NPR and the BBC almost every night. Each weekend I listen to NBC’s Meet the Press and ABC’s This Week. Could I watch all these things independantly by going to the various websites? Yup. But I never would.
I listen to some BBC stuff directly from their website, but it pisses me off every time. I want to access that stuff as a podcast. (At least the non-live stuff… live stuff is a different beast.)
The other thing that has suprised me is Front Row on the Mac. I thought I would NEVER use this thing, but I use it ALL THE TIME. Now, when I’m awake and sitting at the computer working, I’ll just fire up iTunes or whatnot, but in the evening, when I’m tired of sitting at the computer, and I want to lie down and put something on to fall asleep to, out comes the remote control and Front Row. I love that thing. Never really use it for music, but I use it to pick which podcasts I am going to listen to and such when I’m NOT actually using the computer for something else. Never thought I’d touch the thing. Now I use it most evenings.
I could definately see a day when all my TV shows are automatically downloaded and watched like this. Then it becomes very much like a Tivo, but getting rid of the middleman of the cable or satellite company… or eventually even the networks and such. And also eliminating the bottleneck of worring about conflicts and such. You just download the things you want anytime after they are made available. What time it is released becomes the start of when you can download it, not the only time you can record it.
Ah, good times. :-)
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