Category: Ramblings

I write software for a living. Throughout a diverse succession of software projects, I have programmed in dozens of different languages on an array of computing platforms. Outside of my work life, I read books, a variety of books, including novels, classics, history, technical and scientific works, biography, philosophy. I also read software, which is not as crazy as it might sound. Sometimes there is some helpful information contained in software that I use and, occasionally, in software that I have written. Most software, of course, does not make for as interesting of reading as does most books. On the other hand, some software is highly entertaining.

Over the years (decades, actually) something has gradually worked its way into my consciousness. I have become aware that software and fiction share many similarities. In fact, in several respects, a short story might resemble a short program more than it might resemble another work of fiction.

The first way in which software resembles fiction is setting. A story has to have some context, some setting. That setting might involve place. It might also have a time aspect to it, when the story occurs. Language might also be a part of the setting. So, too, for software. Software also happens (or executes in the parlance of the computing world) in a setting, a setting both of circumstance and of time. It, too, is written in a language, a language often (but not always) suited to the circumstance and time of its execution. Different programming languages have different nuances which suit them to different types of programming. Regardless of the language or nuance, though, each program occupies some problem space, some domain, and that domain plays a huge role in what happens in the program.

Fiction also has characters. Some of the most memorable fiction has the most memorable characters. Think of some of your favorites. Software is full of characters, too. Those characters are called different things in different programming paradigms, but they are there and each one has, well, it has character. Sometimes these characters are called variables or objects or entities or whatever, but they all have some presence. They all have a role and they all behave in certain ways, although sometimes those ways are obscure and mysterious. Each one is there for some specific purpose, if it is well written software. Sometimes, though, in some not so well written software, just as in some not so well written fiction, there are some useless supernumeraries, extras, entities that tend to obscure rather than clarify the story at hand.

Of course, what would a story be without a plot, a sequence of events that transpire. Ditto for software. Software that does nothing is not really software.

Finally, setting, characters, and plot are all directed toward a purpose, both in fiction and in software. After all, a story must have a point of some sort and not just meander about aimlessly, although some fiction seems to do just that. At the bottom of it all, the function of software and of fiction is resolution of some problem or some conflict, something that needs to be set right. What might be needed is to deliver a message nearly instantaneously or it might be the hero in a novel making sense of her life, whatever. Both have to move a narrative toward a resolution. That’s what software and fiction do.

Years ago, when I was much younger, in high school and before that, my mom had this bothersome desire to frequently rearrange the plants in our yard.  Not just bulbs and mums and small manageable plants, but bushes, hedges, and even trees.  Big ones, sometimes.  Of course, fulfillment of these wishes fell on my shoulders.  Literally.

This penchant for moving plants of all sizes continued even after I went off to college and our yard had become her yard (somehow Dad escaped having to participate in all of this and I never found out how he managed that.)  Over time, her plant movings became more ambitious.  On one trip home from college I was handed a shovel and directed to a twenty foot tall pine tree in the back yard that “would look better in front of the house.”

After Mom passed away back in January, I thought that my days of moving Mom’s plants were over.

Silly me.

Before she left us, long before she left us, about fifteen years ago, when Mary, the kids, Rusty, and I lived at 8618, Mom gave us a rose bush which we planted near a front corner of the house.  The bush flourished, to say the least, and, despite trimming by us and the new owners of 8618 after we moved, the outer edge of that rose bush pushed out pretty wide and quite high.  It had become a huge, flowering presence.

That changed, as I witnessed on my walk with Ryan last week, when we saw all the plants trimmed down to almost the ground.  A brief chat with one of the workers on the site informed me that the plants were to be removed completely in short order.  I related the history of the rose bush to him, and without me even needing to ask, he offered to save the rose bush for me.  He warned me, though, that, although he would set the bush aside with his backhoe, it would likely not remain there very long and that the day I saw it, I should take it while I could.

I agreed, happily, and a few days later, as I drove home a bit late from work, I saw the uprooted rose bush and its ball of dirt.

Later that same night, I returned to 8618 and grabbed the plant and its root ball to bring to our house.  I was glad to see that the light rain that day had kept the whole thing damp.    I held it firmly by the base and lifted.

It did not budge.  Not one bit.  I suddenly realized that it outweighed me by a considerable amount.

“She got me, again,” was all I could think.

I eventually knocked enough dirt off the roots so that I could wrestle the rest into the wheelbarrow I had brought with me and which, on the way home seemed to creak as if this would be its last trip.  The bush stub and root ball still weighed about as much as me but somehow I was able to hoist it into the wheelbarrow and deposit it in our current back yard, which will be its final home, I can assure you.

Addendum Postscript: Happened to meet the new owner of 8618, the wife in the wife and husband couple who bought the house from the people who bought the house from us. She said that they bought the house to rebuild and sell and that they would likely not keep any of what was there.

Oh, well.  Time to move on.

I had occasion today to stop by our old house at 8618, which we moved out of just over ten years ago. The occasion for stopping there was that I was out walking our golden retriever, Ryan, which I do every day, and, in fact, I pretty much walk by our old house every day, since we only moved across the street and just a few houses up the road. This occasion was different, though. While much of the inside of the house had already been surreptitiously gutted in the past week, this morning empty eye sockets stared out mournfully where only yesterday windows had remained. The azaleas and rose bush were cut off just above the ground, as were all the daffodils and whatever else had pushed up in this nascent spring. The shorn plants and the lonely sight of all those windowless gaps pulled me in for a closer inspection. Ryan followed patiently.

I would have expected the sight of the recently gutted interior of 8618 exposed in that way to have upset me but, strangely, it did not. Sadness did not prevail but instead curiosity took hold of me. I peeked inside, admiring the brick-and-block sturdiness and all the other hidden details, suddenly revealed, which made the house so rock solid. As I peered inside, I noticed that care had been taken to ensure that whatever was not to be removed was left intact and undamaged. The house is not to be torn down but redone on the inside and, perhaps, added to, as well. I felt an unanticipated sense of comfort with the less-than demolition of the house. It was not to be discarded but reborn. The fact that I was comfortable with the change made me smile.

Contrast that with the fact that, just three houses further down the road is the first house we occupied in this neighborhood, or, I should say was the first house we occupied in this neighborhood. 8612 was torn down to make way for a new, much larger house of far less character. That exchange of houses upset me as it seemed to be nothing more than an attempt to fill as much width and depth and height as the local zoning ordinances would allow. Square footage replaced a warm, welcoming home. Seeing 8612 discarded saddened me.

Now, I associate wonderful memories with each of those two homes. The first we lived in, 8612, was where we lived when Marie was born and where Liam watched through the front door as epically lousy basketball games were played for hours on end in the park across the street. The house even had a name, “The Blue House,” even though the only blue part of the house was the door.

8618 held a very special place in the hearts of the whole family. It was the home where we brought Rusty, our first golden retriever, a rescue, from a shelter down in Virginia. Over time, Rusty became so attached to 8618 that after we moved up the street he would try to sneak out of our new house and run away to go back home. It was also the place where Mary and the kids watched out the bedroom window as Dad donned a hooded sweatshirt and a Darth Vader mask to do battle with a nest of hornets and the place where youngsters awoke before dawn on Christmas morning.

And so it is sometimes with memories that they outlive the places where they happened. 8612 is gone and 8618 is about to have a fresh new life but both of them will live on in our memories.

Despite the fondness of the memories, though, it is tomorrow that really matters, our next step is more important and more interesting than the step before it.

Ryan and I had a walk to finish and that’s just what we did.

People often tout such things as “teamwork” and “sacrificing the individual for the greater good” and “overcoming adversity” as benefits of playing sports.  Like bad tasting medicine, the things that sports can teach you are often portrayed as something to be endured on the path to learning some tough lessons.

There are other, less painful things that sports (and a good coach) can teach.

The first of these is Focus.

Focus is an interesting subject.  It involves something called attentional field.  Attentional field is made up of everything on which you could focus.  Attentional field includes all those things that are subjective, inside of you, such as thoughts, emotions, and physical responses, plus those things that are objective, outside of you, including sights and sounds.  Focus is the ability to attend to internal and external cues in your attentional field (see here for details.) Focus is not just something that you have or do not have, it is something which can be taught, developed, and nurtured. Focus, or attention, can be subjective (internal) or objective (external) or a blend of both. A good coach will recognize the particular type of focus best suited to each individual athlete she or he coaches.

We have all seen coaches who, after an athlete has made a mistake, refocus that athlete on what is coming up, not allowing the athlete to be defeated by the mistake but rather to intensify their efforts towards what comes next. For other athletes, the reverse is needed. After they do something, good of bad, they need to be directed back to it to review it and to internalize the lesson which can be learned from it.

For some athletes it’s internal focus and for some it’s external focus.  A good coach can nurture either.

Whether internal focus or external focus, the focus must be tuned toward what needs to be done in any given situation.

Some time ago, I was watching on during a session at the Michael Jordan Flight School camp in which campers picked at random were given the opportunity to win a pair of Air Jordans by sinking a free throw in front of the whole crowd of campers and onlookers with the condition that if they missed the free throw they had to do some number of push-ups.  For most of the young kids, it was a daunting pressure-packed free throw.  One camper, however, displayed a bit of cockiness and upped the ante.  Make the shot and his whole team would win a pair of shoes.  Michael responded without missing a beat, “And if you miss, the whole team does push-ups.”  The camper, after first checking with his teammates, agreed.  Before shooting the free-throw, he confirmed with MJ the terms, “The whole team gets shoes.”  And MJ confirmed, “Or the whole team does push-ups.”

The young man missed the free-throw, which provided Michael the opportunity for a teaching point.  “You missed the free-throw because you were focused on the reward and the consequence.  You should have focused on your shot.”

Preparation is the second thing sports can teach us. Preparation serves as a strong aid in developing focus.

Preparation, though, is not simply creating a script to follow come game time. It is the actual process of getting ready that prepares more than any tangible plan that might come from that preparation. As Eisenhower once said “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Or, as someone once told me, “A well-prepared person expects nothing and is prepared for anything.”

As one advances to new skill levels and moves through higher and higher arenas of competition, one spends more time, proportionally, preparing than performing. This holds true as one progresses from youth sports to high school sports and on to the collegiate level. Finally, at the highest levels of competition, the amount of time spent in preparation grows to hours for each minute of game time. This is something lost on most fans. All of this preparation feeds the athlete’s ability to focus and provides the confidence needed to succeed.

Focus and preparation would be meaningless, however, without Purpose.  Purpose engenders the motivation to focus and to prepare, not just in the larger sense of purpose, on the grand scale, but also in all those day to day situations.  Life, in general and the season as a whole are not the only things that demand purpose, but each practice and each workout along the way do, too.  When asked, with all that he had accomplished in his career, what more did he still wish to accomplish, Hall of Fame bound coach Bill Belichick replied “I’d like to go out and have a good practice today. That would be at the top of the list right now.”

Which is why he is headed for the Hall of Fame.

Yesterday was my birthday. But it was not just any birthday, it was my Golden Birthday. I turned 59 years old and I was born in ’59.

I know, I know. Golden Birthdays are supposed to be when your age is the same as the day of the month of your birthday.

Those are wasted if you’re born in the first few days of the month, such as I was, on a day you do not enjoy and cannot remember.

For me, though, my Golden 59th Birthday was one I enjoyed and one I will remember. It started with a dream I had in which I was taking a nap and in my dream I awoke to find my family there and I enjoyed it so much and it felt so good just to have them around. And then, later in the day we all got together to celebrate MY birthday at dinner.

It was, literally, a dream come true.

Another good thing about my 59th birthday was that I realized so much more now than when I was three how much I have to be thankful for. My wife, my kids, my mom and dad and brother and sisters, all the people around me through the years, all the blessings and all the good fortune, most of it unearned by anything I did.

So, for this, my real Golden Birthday, I am thankful. And I’m glad it didn’t show up until I was old enough to appreciate it.

My kids, born in ’94 and ’98, have something to look forward to.

For a long time.

I’m a Roman Catholic. For Catholics and others, the Lenten season is a time of self-denial. Often Catholics give up something for Lent, with chocolate being the typical choice, it seems. This custom, like other customs, has value in it. Customs or rituals provide a framework, a familiar pattern to follow that takes us outside of our mundane every day lives and allows us to be a part of the larger community. But Lent is different in that it is personal. The idea is (or should be) for us to challenge ourselves in some way that results in us needing God’s help. The best Lent is not one in which we have persevered on our own, but one in which we have sought, and received, God’s help. That is, to pray.

So it is with fasting. A successful fast (if you can call it that) is not one of self-achievement, but one in which you seek, and are given, a helping hand.

Further, the purpose of fasting is not self-denial or self-punishment. Consider Isaiah 58:5-9.

5. “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
   only a day for people to humble themselves?
   Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
   and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
   Is that what you call a fast,
   a day acceptable to the Lord?
6. Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
   to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
   to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
7. Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
   when you see the naked, to clothe them,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8. Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing will quickly appear;
   then your righteousness will go before you,
   and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.”

Let’s take Isaiah’s words to heart this Lenten season.

P.S. This would have been Dad’s 88^th birthday. Happy Birthday Dad!

Sunday has got to be the saddest day of the week.

Why is that?

Perhaps it is because the end of Sunday marks the end of the end of the end, or at least the end of the weekend. Another week in the books, so to speak. One more week closer to the grave.

One of the saddest songs written, in my opinion, is Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” It’s a poignant look at what a man can miss when he makes the wrong choices in his life.

Well I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad
So I had one more for dessert
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day

I’d smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and the songs I’d been pickin’
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken
And Lord, it took me back to somethin’
That I’d lost somewhere, somehow along the way

On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I’m wishing Lord that I was stoned
‘Cause there’s something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’
That’s half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleepin’ city sidewalk
And Sunday mornin’ comin’ down

In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughin’ little girl that he was swingin’
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singin’
Then I headed down the street
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearin’ dreams of yesterday

Maybe it’s the look back at the week and at how life has gone up until that point and the regrets that go along with such reflection that makes Sundays so sad.

For some, perhaps it’s because the work week is about to begin and the fun times are over, I don’t know.

It brings me down just thinking about it.

What do you think?

Thinking over this whole New Year’s Resolution thing and, after talking about it with my daughter, I agreed with her that oftentimes these “resolutions” end up being too vague, too intangible, and often they either fall by the wayside or are so meaningless that they’re, well, meaningless.
What we came up with, instead, was the idea of a list, a To-Do list, if you will. It might not be original; many people, (including a friend of my daughter who suggested it to my daughter) do some variation of this, but there were a few things we liked about this idea.
First, it’s tangible. This helps so much more than the “I want to be more…” or whatever that sounds great at the outset but loses its meaning when there is no real action attached to it. Without being something you can act on, it is just an idea. An idea which gets left in the back of some closet of your memory once you have real things to deal with in your life.
Second, it’s specific. That gives you some yardstick to measure how you’re doing. It means that at the end of the year you can take an accounting of yourself and your year and either celebrate your accomplishments or dedicate yourself to doing better next time.
Third, it lets you bite off more than you can chew. A good list will include more than you can accomplish in a year. By including more than you can do, you will reach further and do more than you would do with a safe or reasonable list. Sure, you have some undone things still on your list, but the list of things youhave accomplished will be all that much longer.
After all, as I have often said, it is not who you are or what you are or where you are or where you’ve been that are important. It is what you do that is important.
So, with that, here is my list of 2018 accomplishments I am shooting for (in no particular order):

• Send a book manuscript out for publication.
• Run a half marathon (I ran a marathon once, but that was a long time ago. Basically, I’m starting out fresh.)
• Travel to Italy. (My sister and I had planned to go and I have not done anything tangible toward that. Not yet.)
• Read the Book of Isaiah.
• Resurrect the St. Raphael’s Thanksgiving dinner at St. Martin’s Parish on North Capitol Street in D.C. This was one of my family’s favorite things to do, to help out with the Thanksgiving meal at the church and to distribute dinners to those who could not get out to the church. It lapsed into inactivity because the coordinators were not able to continue and no suitable replacement leaders volunteered. They need someone to step up. I can do that.
• Learn to paint watercolors.

Ok. So that’s my list, at least for the momoent. I just now started it so there might be more things to add once I have had a chance to think about it a bit.