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It’s mother’s day, and coincidentally, I cleaned out my camera yesterday and had a picture of flowers growing in my yard. This was before I mowed the grass last week, but about half of them were short enough to survive. Anyway, it’s like buying flowers for mom, right?
Anyway, I’m continuing to try and get healthy from the cold. I think I’m past the contagious stage and should be safe to go buy mom dinner and not infect her with it. If you’re one of the people I sneezed on earlier in the week, I’m sorry. This one hasn’t been much fun.
Here’s the shocker for the day. After my last haircut in 1982, I’d decided I’d had enough. My hair went uncut for over twenty years, with mom periodically asking when I was going to get it cut. Well, yesterday I got it chopped off, and took off the facial hair, too. I’m still not sure who the face in the mirror is, but hopefully it’ll make mom happy. And for me, it makes the world feel about five degrees cooler (at least for now), and doesn’t slap me in the face when I drive with the window open.
(Yes, I know it’s not the most flattering picture, but I suck at taking pictures of myself. It should give you some idea of the reaction I’m still going through, though. I expect quite a few confused looks over the next few weeks as people see me in person for the first time. Maybe posting it here will make it easier for some of you to adjust.)
- There’s a group of scientists who think they have an idea of how Alzheimer’s kills off cells, but other scientists fight a narrow view of Alzheimer’s cause, saying that the problem may not be the amyloid plaques after all. There’s also an article in the May SciAm that talks about another alternative cause. Why the interest? Well, mom’s has been having problems with her memory, and been going through a number of tests, and they’ve just about eliminate everything but Alzheimer’s as the cause. That’s about the best they can do, as the only 100% certain way to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease is by way of an autopsy, which seems a little premature at this point, especially since her memory seems to be pretty good some days. I’ve been trying to learn more about the disease, but right now is a particularly frustrating time, as all the research coming out seems to contradict older work.
- The Pioneer Press is Scanning this season’s roster of baseball books and reviewing them. Some nice summertime reading in there, perhaps. It seems to me they might put links on the books to make them easier to buy, though. [press-patch]
- Looking for some sunday reading? Heavy Little Objects is a guy making a list of stuff he cleans out of his junk drawers. He’s up to 89 entries as of today, and has something interesting to say about most of them. [boing boing]
- Over on USS Clueless, sdb writes about Forests and Trees, and it got me thinking about how I do forest vs. trees thinking. Much of my writing here is writing about trees, but that’s not because I don’t think of forests, but more because I don’t have time to write about them. It takes me a long time to turn my picture-thinking into linear words, and while thinking about the big picture is a useful skill when programming, when I try to write about a forest here, I get the same sort of nit-picking emails sdb does saying that I’ve glossed over a detail or two that didn’t really matter anyhow (they’re usually from complete strangers). Blegh. Who wants that? Not me. If you’re interested in having me write more of the bigger
think
pieces, send me feedback on them. Or use that buy me goodies link over there on the right and tell me what you liked so much that you clicked over there. [sdb]