Next Business Trip

This trip to JavaOne has had me reconsider what I need to make business trips a little easier. I hope these items are not bulky; we shall see.

A small power cord with at least two outlets.
Let's face it, you're always out of power. Carrying an extra laptop battery can be bulky. What I'd really like is a grounded cable that has no more than a six inch cord. It doesn't need any more than two outlets, but three would be nice.

With a diggie such as that, it's easy to get someone let me plug in to an outlet they are already using, or even better, make friends by letting them share my outlet! And if there is nobody to make friends with, I can always charge my phone at the same time as I charge my laptop.

A quick search found this ultra retractable power cord. It only has one outlet, but that's easy to fix with an add-on. Here's a four-in-one splitter that's a little too bulky for my taste. Actually, they've got much more; I'm sure I'll find something I like.

A small wireless hub
I'd love a small wireless hub with one additional network port. This gives me mobility where this is none, or share a network cable already in use (that's what the additional port is for). The only problem is weight. Even if the hub is small and light, it'll almost certainly need a bulky transformer. (Because this is for travel, I have a very low threshold for bulk.)

Throw in an extra, 12" RJ45 cable while we're at it.

Disposable earplugs
I had these for JavaOne, and they turned into a lifesaver -- since all the hotels were booked, there was little flexibility in my choice of rooms, so I was given a room next to the elevator mechanics. Throw two dozen of these puppies into a zip-loc bag and you're a happy sleeper.

In fact, I'm going to buy these in bulk (a hundred, say) and have them pre-packaged for my next several trips.

Of course, these babies are great for flights. Note that noise canceling headphones are not on this list - I have yet to find one I like, and I have yet to find one that doesn't survive my rugged use.

Another item not on this list, but I would recommend is a nice eye mask.

Small headphones
You know, the iPod variety. Not bulky. Functional. But most important, cheap. Ones that I won't feel about if they break, because the lifetime of any set of headphones I own varies independently from the amount of money I spend on them.

Travel size toothpaste
It's not just because of the DHS regulations that I want to bring travel-size toothpaste. They're more compact, and their use tends to be exhausted at the conclusion of my trip. I find that travel size toothpaste tubes last about four days, five if I am conservative. It makes sense to bring two tubes per trip, just to prevent a trip to the pharmacy.

Plastic envelopes
I'm going to purchase three of them, each sized to hold 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheets, each of a different color. I'll keep one reserved for expense receipts, and the other two for anything else I can think of. I want plastic envelopes rather than paper ones because they'll last longer.

Zip-lock bags
These are great for collecting whatever additional material you find: collected business cards, bottles of fancy shampoo (for the wife, I swear!) - I'm sure there's more.

Carabeaner
Wow, I finally found a use for conference swag. Sometimes you get extra crap that you just don't want to carry, like Yet Another Brand New Knapsack. Adding a carabeaner to your collection means hooking one to another.

Packing Plan

• Create a small set of multiple travel packages with two tubes of toothpaste, zip-lock bags, 24 earplugs, q-tips, and whatever else I need.
• Print out a list of singleton items that I need to include on every trip -- include things like the carabeaner, headphones, hub and power cords./network cable, you name it.
  

Thoughts on Quick Access

The new Quick Access feature for Eclipse 3.3M7 (aka CMD-3) is pretty slick. But I think it's not quite right.

There are two changes I would make:

• Content Assist command completion If I type "comme" and the only commands left are matching on the first part of the phrase "comment", I should be able to complete the rest of the phrase. I guess I'm not exactly looking for the CMD-space type of completion, but the Emacs-style TAB completion.
  
• Command parameterization: I'd like to be able to supply parameters to my commands. For instance, I'd like to have a command for "Show View", which would require you to follow with a parameter specifying the view name, either by its extension's name or id. I realize that Eclipse doesn't expose the ids to the users, and this becomes a sort of power-user feature. I'd say this is also a bit like Emacs.

You can see this is a short distance from scripting (a la, as you would guess, Emacs), which is what I really want.

Man I need to review Eclipse Monkey.

Cribbage is awesome again

I really enjoy Cribbage. I've done a little bit of reading about strategy and so on, but basically I just like to throw the cards down and make lots of noise. My particular favorite is a variant four-player Cribbage invented by Patrick Bunch.

Rules for Traditional Four-Player Cribbage
I'm going to assume you know how to play two-player Cribbage, but you don't know how to play four-player Cribbage. Unless otherwise specified, the rules are just like two-player cribbage.

There are two teams of two players each. Teammates sit across from each other. As with traditional Cribbage, one player is the dealer. The dealer shuffles, and the cards are cut by the player to the dealer's right. The dealer deals five cards (instead of six) to each player. Each player discards one card (instead of two) to the crib. This results in four cards for each player, and four cards for the crib.

The player to the dealer's left leads the first card, and play proceeds to the left. Play proceeds like traditional Cribbage.

Cards are then scored in this order: Left Pone, Dealer's Partner, Right Pone, Dealer, Crib.

Deal moves to the left. Play proceeds.

Four-Player Cribbage, PBunch Style
Patrick introduced this variant that we'd no longer play without: In the space after the deal and before the discard to the crib, each player takes a card from his hand, and passes it across the table to his partner. A player may not pick up the passed card until he has passed a card himself. After both teammates have passed cards to each other, they can look at what they got, and discard accordingly.

So take a moment and consider some of the benefits:

1. Every player is given an extra opportunity to make his hand work.
2. If your hand is weak, but you have a 5, 6, 7 or 8, you can give it to your partner. In fact, we've observed that a tendency to break apart pairs in a mediocre hand can more often result in an overall benefit.
3. Partners who pass the same card to each other can pause to see who will dump their passed card to the crib, preventing a free pair to the opponent, or ensuring an easy pair (or fifteen) for themselves.
   
4. You can learn a little bit of information about your partner's hand by what he passes you.
• Mind you, this isn't Bridge, so there's only so much you can learn.
5. Scores tend to be a little higher than traditional four-player Cribbage, so games go a little faster.
   

Zach's Double Cribbage
This is a variant of the PBunch rules. Each player gets six cards. They pass two to their partner. Now, instead of dumping a card to a crib, players dump one card into one crib, and another card into a second crib, owned by the pones! This eliminates most of the advantage for being the dealing team, and you can save good cards for yourself.

The order of scoring is Left Pone, Dealer's Partner, Right Pone, Dealer, Pone's Crib, Dealer's Crib.

I haven't played this variant, so I can't really tell you if it's any good, but it seems a little too crazy for me. My one thought is that this tends in slightly lower-scoring cribs, but there are more of them. We shall see.

Surprising news: I'm a Republican

Today I would like to write, briefly, about politics. Tonight, the Santa Monica Public Library hosted a talk with John Dean. As he put it, "For those of you under 45 years of age", John Dean was counsel to President Richard Nixon.

Mr. Dean, if nothing else, was a brilliant speaker, and full of interesting comparisons between today's political climate and that of 1973. He continued to be terribly critical of the current conservative Republicans, and has written some interesting articles which you can read on findlaw.com. At some point during the presentation he mentioned the notion of 'Goldwater Republicans', referring to the political leanings of Senator Barry Goldwater, as Mr. Dean claims to be very close friends with Senator Goldwater's son. He also claims that the title of his recent book, which I will give below, is something that Senator Goldwater coined. 'Goldwater Republican' is something I had heard about before, and wondered what it meant, and I wrote it down to research later. Finally, we purchased a copy of his book "Conservatives Without Conscience" which I intend to move to the top of my list.

My wife absolutely loved the talk. When she was young, she spent the summer of 1973 stuck in front of the television watching the televised presentation of the Watergate congressional testimony. When she had Mr. Dean autograph a book to her mother, she told him that watching him on TV helped her become a legal services attorney; that his honesty and public accountability made a long-lasting impression on her.

After the talk, Beth and I walked to get something to eat, and I asked her: "What's a Goldwater Republican?"

"Well, it's sort of like Schwarzenegger. You know, socially liberal, big on privacy. Kind of like you You're a prototypical Goldwater Republican".

Clearly my wife was both complimenting me and answering my question at the same time. Fascinating. I've only done minimal research on Barry Goldwater, including only briefly perusing his entry in wikipedia. Being labeled like that is a little disconcerting, for sure, but something I can label myself will help me believe there's a political stance I can take, even if it's one that has had no power since 1980. The following is obvious: I've no objection to the notion of Republican politics, I just can't stand what it's become. Being too young to understand Republican politics pre-Reagan, I merely understood there was an alternative, I just never knew what it was.

I don't know what this is going to do to my political leanings at all, but this talk did exactly what it should; I've walked away with very important questions, as well as a couple of answers.

In addition Mr. Dean also confided in me that he loves Google Desktop Search and tells his friends so. According to his bio in findlaw.com, he works in Beverly Hills. I hope to bring him to the Santa Monica office sometime soon.

Finally, thanks to the folks at the Santa Monica Public Library for the great work they are doing providing a great service by educating the public, and particular thanks to Robert Graves, whom I understand did all the work making this event happen.

Why You Should Pay Your Bills

So this story starts with a shameful admission. I've become bad at paying bills. I used to be great at it, now not so much. I think it's related, in part, to moving in with Beth, who likes to keep things neat whereas I like to keep all my papers in piles, everywhere. No matter, it would be unfair to accuse her of being responsible for my inability to pay bills.

Usually this doesn't amount to much, but on Thursday, my wife came home to find out that our gas had been turned off. OK, no big deal. So Friday morning, I walk over to the gas company office, (which, conveniently, is directly across the street from my office) and paid the bill. A subsequent phone call to the office was all I needed to arrange to have the gas turned back on, but nobody would come by until Monday. So I showered that morning in the office (which is not as bad an experience as you might expect) and figured I'd get by for the rest of the weekend. Beth was happy with this, it meant we had no reason to eat at home. All our meals would be out. She was unhappy with not having hot water for tea. We couldn't figure out how to get past that. See, we don't own a microwave. I suggested to Beth that maybe it would be OK if we put a mug of water in the toaster oven, but that was met with a ridiculous look.

The problem, though, was that we had a house guest that night. So I called her and told her, "Hey, you can stay over, but uh ... see ... we have no hot water. So no shower." Our guest was unfazed: "No problem! I'll still visit and shower when I go home on Saturday." OK, that worked. Saturday morning, we actually went swimming, and there was a shower at the pool. So OK so far. However, last minute, we had a young man stay with us Saturday and Sunday night.

We checked the faucets. There was still some hot water. Great, the tank hadn't emptied, and fortunately remained warm. We told our second guest, "you use the shower, but not too much, make sure there's some water left for Sunday." We rinsed dishes in cold water and piled them up in the sink for a proper washing on Monday.

Our guest had enough hot water for a shower Saturday night and even for Sunday morning!

Monday morning, I stayed home to wait for the gas company engineer to turn on the gas and relight the pilots. It's an understatement to say that I was ready for a shower. Around 10:30, he shows up and asks me which appliances he needs to address. "The stove, the dryer, the hot water heater ..." and so on. He wanders around the house a bit to start on the appliances, comes back and says, "You do realize your hot water heater runs on electricity, right?"

Our Anniversary

In May I attended my first JavaOne conference. It was a wonderful experience and I feel more educated for it. In general I've not attended technical conferences and I am beginning to see them as perfect for where I am in my career.

The nice thing about JavaOne, which I'm sure applies to many other conferences, is that they keep you busy, pretty much all day, from 8AM to Midnight. After a couple of days I was totally exhausted, and I eventually got sick. But this story has nothing to do with that.

The point is, I got to see my good friend Amy. She didn't attend JavaOne, but she lives in San Francisco and there was no way I was going to miss visiting her. But I was so tired, so utterly exhausted from the conference that it was hard to find time for her.

Finally, I called her one afternoon. "I'm free this evening. I'd love to meet you somewhere, but if you came to the hotel -- I hear they have a nice restaurant."

Amy was more than willing to travel, and we wound up having a great time.

I asked her how she was. "Great," she said. "Kim and I are celebrating our five-year anniversary."

"No," I said. "You haven't been with Kim for five years, you've been with her for six."

Amy disagreed. "No. It's been five years."

I persisted. "No. It's six. Right? Cause you got together with Kim just shortly after I started dating Beth, and that was six years ago. In fact, today is the anniversary of our first date."

Amy said, "No... wait. Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. It's six years. Beth and I are six years, so you and Kim are six years."

"Wow," said Amy.

"Right. Because Beth and I met in 2000, and ... so that's ... no ... wait ... we met in 2001 ... it's not six ... OH NO!"

Amy said, "What?"

I covered my face with my hands, "Oh, man!"

"What?" said Amy.

So I told Amy, "Oh, man, I can't believe it. See, OK. A couple of weeks ago, Beth was lying on the bed, and I told her, I said 'Beth, you know what I just realized? You're going to be in Montreal during the anniversary of our first date, and I'm going to be in San Francisco, so we're going to miss it.'"

'Aww...' said Beth.

'Yeah,' I said. Then I paused to lay my trap. 'Can you believe we've been together for four years?'

Beth said, 'Wow. I can't believe it was that long.'

Now I had her trapped, so I said, triumphantly, 'You big dummy! I can't believe you don't remember! It hasn't been four years, it's SIX!'"