Back at Cubespace

I'm geeking out around town again, hoping to snarf five PHP books before sundown, praise Allah for O'Reilly's Safari.

These have been heady days. I phoned the office of a heart surgeon, talked with the secretary, hoping for permission to use his name as a reference, having collaborated on that application for the operating room years ago.

Too boring for ER or Gray's Anatomy: Kirby in scrubs, 2 AM, plugging away in Microsoft FoxPro at the observation station, all darkness and empty theaters, nothing going, reams of xBase reflecting in my glasses, pre-iPod (CD players in the theaters though).

By day, I'd be out of their way, except those few times when perfusionists called me in for a font change or something, a way of keeping alert during a sometimes long procedure, for which they are highly trained.

Open heart surgery is a little like open source programming: many eyeballs praying for easy fixes for complications (aka "shallow bugs"). Surgeons have a cool bag of tricks, more every day, plus sometimes an angioplasty is sufficient (like with a stent or balloon).

I'm still debating about OSCON, whether I should give a talk this year in San Jose (Silicon Valley). Would anyone be interested? Do I have a budget?

Attracting Grunchies to cosponsor my Oregon Curriculum Network has been like pulling teeth (mine). No one thinks there's any commercial potential in tetrahedra I guess, aside from Lipton, or at least not 4D ones -- 3D is OK, as long as squares get to go first and qyoobs get all the respect they deserve.

Hooray for qyoobs, I love Big Brother, V-sign etc. (flag waving -- not white though).

I accepted an invite to join another book review team, another "animal book" maybe, University of Michigan connection.