Random Thoughts

I am tired of opinion pieces. This morning, I read the news in search of facts. Out of 12 articles, I found only 2 that stated facts about the world that seemed relevant and important.  I extract those facts here. The other articles contained facts and opinion about things that "may" and "might" happen.  When I ask myself if the result of that item happening or not happening would matter, I decided that it would not, and I tossed the article as a source of rumors only. For example, one lengthy article states that specific Democratic party members might be campaigning already for 2020, and several facts are presented to support the claim that politicians may be campaigning --- who cares! Politicians are always campaigning, so whether the rumors are true or false, it makes no difference to the state of the world. Here are, "Just the Facts": Article 1: Government Funding Congress approves a new spending agreement, and the agreement provides operationa

I must make it from scratch .  This thought has been influencing my decisions over my entire career. Maybe it was my peers, who told me as a young programmer that if you cannot program in Assembly then you really don't have any control over your application.  Maybe it was my grandmother, who told me that when you make a cake from scratch, you know exactly how much of every ingredient has been put into your recipe, and you can control that.  Someone gave me the idea, and it stuck with me. As I developed my skills, programming languages became more abstract from the low-level commands that Assembly offered, and with each abstraction, I have become more hesitant.  Are we loosing control of our software? If you program for iOS or Android, you no longer have to think much about memory management. The framework handles that for you. You no longer have to think much about signal detection and connection maintenance over network communications. The framework does that also.  Every year

Dear Men and Woman who have brought us Pandora.com: You all have been on my mind today. I am a lover of music and the lost art of the mixed tape. I have been making mixed "tapes" for my wife since we started dating, and each tape is just a little better than the last, but inevitably, there is something missing that could make it better. Your company has what I need, and I bet people would be willing to pay for it. IDEA: "Would she/he like it?" Here's the idea. I submit my mix to you along with my wife's email address, and for a small fee, you return a score letting me know if the mix would be a HIT or a MISS based on her music profiles, then, if users buy the music through Pandora, Pandora delivers the mix to our intended as a custom playlist. You already know what we love.  CD players are being removed from cars, and you have a solution that helps keep mixes alive. Boost song sales. Improve mix tapes. Help spread love and romance through t