1. Koop broccoli as jy weet daar is reeds meer as genoeg in die yskas.
2. Go for a run. Cool off. Take off clean pillow case and replace with T-shirt. Cover with clean pillow case.
3. Wanneer jy bestuur, vra of ons moet op die verkeerde manier gaan 'n eenrigting-straat af.
4. Vir 15 jaar, every Sunday that you wife suggests going to a museum, express surprise that museums are open on Sunday’s.
5. Vir 15 jaar, occasionally suggest going to the local book store on Sunday. Express surprise that they are not open on Sunday’s (thanks a lot Blue Laws!).
6. Gebruik 20 points to do a 3 point turn.
7. On a cool early Fall afternoon, walk into the room and turn on the A/C. Complain that it’s cold. When wife says, "then why did you turn that on, silly" and gets up to turn it off, grab the warm spot she had on the couch. Bonus points if she does not realize you did it until much later.
8. Open up a can of delicious white albacore tuna and eat it straight from the can, in bed, at night.
9. Go into the kitchen while wife is eating dinner, open up the cutlery drawer and push utensils around until wife screams, "what are you looking for!"
10. On receipt of new business cards, secretly place them all around the house: Under the bed, in pillow cases, inside coffee cups, in her purse, in coat pockets, car glove compartments, the pantry — anywhere you can think of.
11. Write blog entries about your wife.
12. Wake up.
13. When walking the streets of New York City, be on the alert for "crusty" objects on the ground. Keeping in mind your wife’s special fears, reach down as if to pick one up up and ask, "hmm, I wonder what that is?" (Be prepared for wife to body slam you as if she’s a secret service agent protecting the President from a sniper or you’ll find yourself laying on your back on the sidewalk).
14. Drive twice around a parking lot looking for space. You know you’ve really hit pay dirt when your son in the back seat yells, "Oh no! He’s doing it weer!"
15. Write "top 10" lists that don’t have 10 items.

===

Bonus wife joke:

Two male co-workers go out to lunch. One of them tells the other, "I let loose an embarrassing Freudian slip the other night."

"A Freudian slip? What’s that?"

"Well, when we finished eating, the waitress came by and asked how we liked our meals. I meant say, ‘I loved the chicken breast’ but instead I said ‘I loved your breasts’. I was so embarrassed."

"Ah," his co-worker replied. "I had the same thing happen to me this weekend with my wife. We were eating breakfast I meant to ask her to pass the butter, but instead I screamed at her, ‘You ruined my life!""

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Sowat ses jaar gelede, my vier-jarige seun en ek is bo kyk na 'n Discovery-kanaal "shark attacks" spesiale (moontlik hierdie een). He was very young at the point and I was always worried what he might see on a show like this and how he might take it. I didn’t want him to develop, byvoorbeeld, 'n spesiale vrese van die water of klappen iets onvanpas aan sy vriende en moontlik veroorsaak dat sy baba vriend netwerk te kom gekraak.

Discovery handles these kinds of subjects very well. It’s not about creating a vrees van iets, but rather to show how unusual it is for sharks to attack humans.

So, we’re watching it and there is this one particularly scary attack involving a small girl. As Discovery is building the drama of the attack, my klank (wat nog altyd baie senuweeagtig in elk geval), is getting very excited. I make some noises about how unusual it is for sharks to attack people, and how bad the poor girl must feel. I’m trying to explain that people recover from these events and become stronger for it. Egter, I had misinterpreted his excitement. He was not worried about the girl at all. In plaas daarvan, terwyl klap sy hande, Hy sê vir my, "The sharks love it! It’s terrific. It’s wonderful. Its a DREAM COME TRUE!"

Ek het gedink dit was hilarious, but also very disturbing. Aan die een kant, Ek was bly — selfs 'n bietjie trots — dat hy het 'n sterk empatiese gevoelens, cross-species though they may be. As humans, we need to develop our "empathic muscles" so praat, of jy sal uiteindelik soos hierdie man 🙂 On the other hand, he was feeling cross-species empathy toward a species who was exhibiting behavior inimical to his own. I was really struggling with this when the narrator used the word "paradigm". My son picked up on that and asked me what that meant.

That’s not such an easy word to describe to a four year old, but I gave it a try. When I think of the word "paradigm", Thomas Kuhn is never far from my thoughts. Ek lees The Structure of Scientific Revolutions back at Lafayette and for better or for worse, the word "paradigm" is pregnant with extra meaning for me. (Sort of like the word "contact" after hearing a Movie Phone voice tell me where I could see that movie [I thought the book was better]; I always say to myself, "CONTACT!" whenever I see or hear someone say "contact").

In elk geval, Ek probeer om te verduidelik aan hom 'n Kuhniaanse definisie, that it’s "a historical movement of thought" and that it’s a "way of thinking with a number of built-in assumptions that are hard to escape for people living at that time." Natuurlik, jy kan nie praat soos met 'n vier-jaar oud, so I’m trying to successively define it to smaller pieces and feeling rather proud of myself as I do so. (Ek het net geweet dat iemand buite van die kollege sal sorg dat ek Kuhn het gelees!).

I’m just warming to the task when he interrupts me. Waving his hand in my algemene rigting en nooit om sy oë uit 'n ander wrede haai-aanval, Hy sê net, "Yeah, ja, ja. Blah, blah, blah.".

So much for that 🙂

Op daardie stadium, I decided to run away, rhetorically speaking, sit back, and enjoy watching sharks attack humans with my son.

</einde>

Terug naby 1999, Ek het spandeer baie weke in Santa Barbara, CA, werk vir 'n kliënt, leaving my poor wife back here in New Jersey alone. I dearly love my wife. I love her just as much today as I did when she foolishly married me 1,000 years or so ago. Iewers langs die lyn, Ek geskep om 'n frase, "special fear", as in "Samantha has special fears." She as a special fear of "bugs", wat aan haar is nie vlieë of ladybugs, but rather microbes. She’s afraid of this or that virus or unusual bacteria afflicting our son, of my, but never really herself. (Sy is ook spesiaal bang vampiere, miniatuur bose poppe (veral narre) en ondersese ongelukke; Sy het uit-gegroei haar spesiale vrees vir mense geklee in Santa Claus uitrustings).

Een dag, my co-worker and I decided to drive up into the nearby mountains near Ohai. At one point, we got out of the car to take in the scene. When we got back into the car, I noticed that a tick was on my shoulder. I flicked out the window and that was it.

Daardie aand, I told her about our drive and mentioned the tick. The conversation went something like this:

S: "Oooo! Those are bad. They carry diseases."

P: "Well, Ek gewip dit by die venster uit."

S: "They are really bad though. They can get under your skin and suck blood and transfer bugs. You better check your hair and make sure there aren’t any in your head!"

P: In 'n groot stem: "My God! CAN THEY TAKE OVER YOUR MIND???"

S: Letterlik my gerus te stel: "No, hulle is nie so sleg nie."

</einde>

Wat ons gekoop het ons eerste (en slegs) "Luukse" car back when hurricane Floyd nailed the east coast of the U.S. We got a LOT of rain here in New Jersey and n paar dae geslaag before life returned to normal. Just before Floyd struck, ons het 'n aanbod vir 'n gebruikte Volvo 850 GL en na Floyd getref, gery het dit in die huis.

It was our first car with a CD player. Like most new car owners, ons het 'n bietjie CD crazy, revived our dormant CD collection and went on long drives just to listen to CD’s in the car. Like all fads, this passed for us and we ended listening to the same CD over and over again. In ons geval, dit was Jesus Christ Superstar.

Een van die (baie) briljante stukke in daardie rock opera gesing deur die vestiging godsdienstige tipes, gelei deur Kajafas, the "High Priest". They sing their way into deciding how to handle the "Jesus problem" and Caiaphas directs them to the conclusion that "Jesus must die". The refrain on the song is "Just must die, Moet sterf, Moet sterf, this Jesus must die". You hear that refrain a lot in that piece.

Op die oomblik, my son was about three years old. You can probably see where this is going.

I came home from work one day and my son is in the living room playing with toys and humming to himself. I’m taking off my jacket, soek deur die pos en al my gewone loop-in-die-deur goed en het ek skielik besef dat hy net sê, nie regtig sing: "Jesus moet sterf, Moet sterf, must die." I was mortified. I could just see him doing that while on one of his baby play dates at a friend’s house — waarskynlik die laaste toneelstuk datum met wat baba vriend.

We pulled that CD out of the Volvo after that 🙂

</einde>

So, vanoggend, my seun is vasbeslote om 'n ouderdom dertien beperkte Halo te sien 3 video op Game Spot. I’m outside shoveling snow, so I’m not there to help or hinder. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that … he has a eureka! moment. He realizes that even though Gamespot wants him to enter his werklike geboortedatum, hy kan eintlik ' 'n birth date he wants. Once he realized that, Hy het self oud genoeg is om die video te sien.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this 🙂

Op my eerste werk uit van die kollege in 1991, Ek was gelukkig om te werk vir 'n produksie met 13 plekke, not including its corporate HQ in New Jersey. I joined just when the company was rolling out a new ERP system. We were a small IT department of about ten people altogether, two of whom Did Not Travel. Part of the project involved replacing IBM System 36 boxes with HP hardware and HPUX. Everyone used green tubes to access the system.

Die projek rol saam en ek gestuur met 'n nuwe mede-werker af te Baltimore, Jeff. Our job was to power up the Unix box, maak seker dat die O / S hardloop, die installering van die ERP-stelsel, instel van die ERP, train people on the ERP and do custom work for folks on the spot. (Dit was 'n droom werk, veral kom reguit uit die kollege). Before we could really get off the ground, ons nodig het om al die groen buise te pak, put them on desks and wire them. And the best part was that we had to put the RJ11 connectors on ourselves.

Vir een of ander rede dat ek nooit verstaan ​​nie en eintlik nooit gedink om te vra oor die tyd, het ons het 'n paar kontrakterende maatskappy kom saam en hardloop kabel deur die plant, but we didn’t have them put on the connectors. So, daar was 'n "pleister boks" met die dekades van ongelabelde kabels in die "rekenaar kamer" en hierdie kolle om die gebou op verskeie plekke in die gebou.

Ons het ons deur dit in die loop van 'n naweek, die toets van elke draad, om op 'n stuk (om seker te maak dit was reguit vs. gekruis), verseker die bietjie instellings op die groen buise en drukkers was korrek, labeling wires, om seker te maak dat "Getty" was running correctly for each port and probably a thousand other things that I’ve suppressed since then. It all came together quite nicely.

Maar, there was one important cable that we couldn’t figure out. The plant in Baltimore had a relationship with a warehousing location in New Jersey. Some orders placed in Baltimore shipped out of that location. There were two wires that we had to connect to the HPUX box: a green tube and a printer. The green tube was easy, maar die drukker het in 'n drie-week nagmerrie.

As jy weet dit nie, of onderdruk, die hantering van groen buise en drukkers op hierdie manier, there are various options that you deal with by setting various pins. 8-bietjie, 7-bietjie, pariteit (selfs / vreemde / geen), probably others. If you get one of those settings wrong, die buis of printer toon steeds dinge, maar dit sal die totale brabbeltaal wees, or it will be gibberish with a lot of recognizable stuff in between. Natuurlik, these pins are hard to see and have to be set by using a small flat-edge screw driver. And they are never standard.

Ons het die eerste van baie vinnige oproepe met die NJ man ('n bont rekenaar vyand wat ons waarskynlik vloeke aan hierdie dag). We got the green tube working pretty quickly, but we couldn’t get the printer to work. It kept "printing garbage". We would create a new RJ11 connector, switching between crossed and straight. We would delete the port and re-created in Unix. We went through the arduous task of having him explain to us the pin configuration on the printer, nooit regtig seker of hy besig was om dit korrek.

Dit is tyd om te gaan woon, alles in Baltimore is neurie, maar ons kan nie die vervloekte drukker in NJ om te werk! We’ve exhausted all possibilities except for driving back up to NJ to work on the printer in person. To avoid all that driving, ons uiteindelik hom vra om ons te faks wat hy kry wanneer dit "gemors", hoop dat miskien is daar 'n leidraad in daardie gemors wat sal sê ons wat ons verkeerd doen.

Toe ons die faks, we immediately knew what was wrong. Sien, ons metode van toets of ons 'n drukker korrek ingestel het was 'n "LP uit te reik" opdrag soos:

LP / etc / passwd

Basies, we printed out the unix password file. It’s always present and out of the box, always just one page. You standard Unix password file looks something like this:

Smith:*:100:100:8A-74(kantoor):/home / Smith:/usr / bin / sh
:*:200:0::/huis / gastehuis:/usr/bin/sh  

We had been printing out the password file over and over again for several weeks and it was printing correctly. Egter, aan die einde gebruiker, dit is "druk gemors".

</einde>