Comments on: VD

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:49:17 +0000

A great pun, Duffy, and congratulations. Stella and I met in our mid-30s and re-met in our late 40s; at that point, given the typically short lifespans of both of our families, probably neither of us had 46 years left in him/her. Time will tell.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:34:22 +0000

“… beneath all that snappy and snarling he was a pussy cat!” – Duffy

Almost, but not quite, right, Duffy. The three ladies are pussycats, two of them actual felines and the other a real sweetie, the love of my life for 14 years. Eat your heart out!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:58:38 +0000

Yeah, Steve, the “good old days” seldom live up to their press clippings.

Mr. Duff, he lives with three ladies, two of them feline, so he celebrates everyday.

Well, there is that benefit, Jill, but you have to know your chocolate, because a lot of what is sold is designed for desperate men, and is generally inedible.

OT: It has never ceased to amaze me Steve how little attention is paid to the user interface in most IT programs. We both know that the UI is where most of a programmer’s time is actually spent. No matter how bad it is, it can’t possibly be as bad as what I deal with from Centurylink, my DSL provider and phone company. I have to turn off all kinds of filters to work with their site because of all of the pop-ups they use.

I have never “joined” their cult, I just use it because it gives commenters a link, and I see people following the links, so there is some traffic generated.

By: cookiejill

cookiejill — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:39:30 +0000

I’m looking forward to all the sales on unsold chocolate tomorrow. 😉

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:00:41 +0000

OT, Bryan, I just went through a five-email, five-web-page procedure attempting to sign up for CommentLuv to a degree sufficient to be able to select my recent post to be shown. After a nightmare on FeedBlitz Street, after providing everything they asked, when I was done, it didn’t work. No, don’t tell me how to do it… I am now attempting to rip it out root and branch. But I just wanted to say that that was the single most obtuse and obstructive UI I have EVER encountered, anywhere. Just how bad can s/w be, and still have a market?

Duffy, stop panting; your envy is showing…

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:49:25 +0000

I did visit such an armory, the Landeszeughaus in Graz, Austria, where I taught one summer. And indeed the suits of armor were made for much smaller men even than I am, and I'm only 5'9". Somewhere I have a poster, somewhere among dozens of cardboard tubes. Failing that, here are some good photos from that armory. I recall reading about a Stone Age burial site at which the most elaborate grave was that of a man about 40 years old. The archaeologist's conjecture was that he was one of the society's older, wiser leaders; hence the elaborate grave. When I think of how "wise" I was at 40...

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:31:31 +0000

If you had visited a museum in Europe that featured armor, you would have observed that it was designed for people between 5′ and 5′ 6″ going back to Roman armor. While there were always a few tall people, like Peter the Great of Russia, people were a lot shorter, and the average life expectancy did exceed 40 until the 20th century.

The reality is hidden because the history books are all about the rich and famous who ate regularly, and had moderately varied diets.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:39:18 +0000

“They lived at a time when life and men were short and brutal…”

I thought Napoleon came much later.