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Preface to an introduction

Random comments about what all this is, exactly:

  • Yes, this is a really barebones weblog right now. I like a clean design… but maybe not this clean. I’ll probably poke around with some CSS at some point, but right now I’m more interested in writing comments. (Any thematic pointers or donations are of course welcome.)

  • What am I doing commenting on C#? I’ve never even written any code in C#. Those comments were occasioned upon the release of Mono 1.0, which I downloaded to my PowerBook, poked around in briefly, and bought a couple of books. This last action engendered a couple of rants which I decided were too ranty to keep as email messages, so I posted them. Then life intervened. In the future you’re more likely to see comments about Python, C++, and C (whatever there is to say about C).

  • “A weblog, huh?” I’ve been slowly drifting towards a mid-life — well, not “crisis” exactly, but something close. The results of the 2004 general election in the United States have accelerated that process. [You might infer from the first posting in “politics” below where I stood in the election, and what my mood is like this week.] So what’s the point of having a web site if I can’t share my angst with the world at large? At the very least, I can get things off my chest, and maybe the act of writing will help set my thoughts in order. (I guarantee no cat pictures. Ever. Might get a dog someday, though.)

  • Speaking of the world at large, I expect to address some of my comments to a wider audience — those of you outside our borders who are wondering what the hell just happened. (So are 49% of us.) I may even dust off some old books and write some thoughts in Esperanto, which I studied some as a teenager but have not done much with since then.

  • Yes, I’m quite a geek. Besides Esperanto, I spent my teen years getting a ham radio license, going to science fiction conventions, and playing table-top baseball simulation games (the old-fashioned way, with dice and charts, though believe me if I’d had a computer at home back then I’d have been all over it). In adulthood, I’ve owned a variety of Macs and even two Newtons. Despite this, I’m married to a beautiful woman and have a wonderful daughter and a baby boy on the way, so there’s hope for you junior geeks.