At least two people have complained recently that I had comments turned off. I turned them off because even when I’ve got moderation set, I have to go in periodically and manage a few hundred spam comments (each of which sends me a moderation request email), and that bothers me. And as I ever got only a few comments a week that were relevant, I figured it was no big loss. Well, I figure that two readers makes up darned near a majority of my regular readership, and I won’t let it be said that when the masses speak, I don’t listen. So I took a few minutes today and installed a captcha thingy for comment posting. I had this installed in the past (before an upgrade wiped it out), and it seemed to work pretty well. Here’s hoping it works pretty well, at least, or the masses will be silenced again.

Near the end of a release cycle, you’ll often hear software developers talking a lot about dogfood. That’s been a major topic of conversation
among my coworkers for the last week or two. No, we’re not pet lovers. (Well, some of us are, but that’s not what’s relevant.) We’re just
shortening the phrase “eating your own dogfood,” which basically means using your own product before release to make sure it’s fit for release.

We have a public beta coming up in the pretty near future, and the release routine this time around is going as follows:

• Work and work and work to get a dogfoodable build.
• Have the whole crew dogfood (dogfeed?) while continuing development.
• Very shortly after the dogfood build, make what’s called a
  release candidate. This is an install of the software that you hope is
  good enough to release officially. It’s probably not good enough. If
  not, fix more bugs.
• Do another release candidate (these are traditionally named RC1, RC2, etc.)
• Finally, you have a build that’s good enough at least for a public beta, and you turn it loose.

So that’s what my company’s doing now. And I’m writing about it because I’m dogfeeding our browser to test features and see whether they’re
actually working. I’ve found two pretty major problems during the composition of this post, but by and large, the thing feels pretty good, and I’m getting excited about putting more polish on the product before our release.

So I put these updates off with the intention of weaving a nice tapestry describing all the things she’s done. I always want to make these posts tributes to my little daughter, who’s more like a real little person every day. But I never quite manage it, and by the time I figure out that this round of updates won’t be the prose masterwork fitting for Lennie, too much has accumulated for me to do any of it any justice in the time I have. So once again, here’s a quick run-through of the last month or two’s worth of neat new things. This is mostly ripped straight out of an email Mleeka sent me reminding me of some of the things Lennie does.

There’s a parrot in the house. She said “sit” one night recently when I said “shit.” She mimics us more and more, trying to repeat pretty much anything we indicate we’re trying to get her to pronounce.

She is following simple directions.

• Give Mommy a kiss.
• Hold my hand.
• Sit down.
• On your booty
• Have a seat
• Bring it here.

When we say one, she says two. She also mimics the ABC song. She tries to keep up with the motions to “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” She loves “Wheels on the Bus,” and sometimes when she hears music, she tries to sing along (with nonsense syllables, but roughly mimicing the rhythm).

She kisses and hugs.

She smells flowers.

Words she says (there are no doubt dozens more):

• up, down, no, dat un (that one), der(there)
• water, cheese, apple, (ba)nana, peach
• bird, kitty, doggy, duck, mama(monkey), horse, pink piggy, fish, turtle, camel
• baby
• moon, tree, book, flower, thank you, bye bye, hi,
• Mama, Daddy, Ella, Zac, Abbey, Ash(le)y, Bo-Bo, Deda, Moby (the dog)
• nose, eye, belly button, booby
• ball (and the question “Where’s your ball” directed at the dog)
• shoes, hat
• bite, sip

Words she knows (among many others that don’t spring immediately to mind):

• hand, foot, chin, cheek, mouth, tongue, ears, head
• star, breeze

Animal sounds she knows:

• cow– moo
• pig– snort snort (she actually sort of clicks her tongue because she can’t do the sound, but she knows it’s something going on in the back of your mouth sort of near your nasal passages)
• bird–t(w)eet t(w)eet
• chicken– bock bock bock
• doggy– woof woof
• mama (monkey)– who who who
• snake– sssss
• donkey– hee haw
• horse– neigh (sounds like a laugh when she does it.)
• sheep– (b)aaaaa
• bear, lion–roar
• elephant — holds her arm out vaguely like a trunk and vibrates her lips while making a high pitched sound; I don’t know what this sound is called; it’s sort of like a raspberry but without the tongue

She’s recently started feeding herself with forks and spoons, and she’s pretty good about asking for what she wants. She’ll point to apples and say “apples,” for example, or she’ll point to something else she doesn’t have a word for and say “bite.” Occasionally, she’ll bust out and sign “more” for something.

She can climb into the chairs at her little table and onto the couch and my chair. Yesterday, she climbed into her car seat unassisted for the first time, though when she got there, she wanted to celebrate by turning around and looking out the back window and was not at all pleased when I started trying to strap her in.

Karen gave her her first real haircut this weekend (Mleeka did a little trim a few months ago), and it makes her look so much more like a little girl than like a wispy-banged little baby. She and Ella played really well this weekend for what seems to me like the first time. Usually they’re aware of each other and interact a little (often hugging and kissing), but there was a real connection this weekend. They were running up and down the hallway chasing one another and giggling.

Lennie is very strong-willed, and it worries us a little. She’ll insist on pushing buggies when we’re at a store, for example, or she’ll have a melt-down if we don’t let her walk. We’ve started trying to work around this sort of thing by adding closure. This doesn’t work for things like the walking (which is inconvenient if you’re in a hurry), but for example, we can say “bye bye buggy” as she clings to a buggy for her life, and if we get her to start waving bye bye to it and to realize that we’re moving along without just ripping her away from it, she handles it pretty well.

Guess that’s it until next month, when I’ll no doubt have another disjointed progress post.

So I’ve finally switched over to using tags to categorize my blog entries, with the help of this plugin. This is largely transparent to my three readers, but one neat little advantage is that at any given time, you can see what the blog’s mostly about by checking out the tag cloud at the top of the navigation column. The bigger a word is, the more posts I’ve written on that topic over time. Welcome to Web 2.0.

I got an email today from a random person who’s on to my atheism. Since I’m trying to be a little more public about my atheism lately (not with the intention of converting anybody but with the intention of just letting the few who read me in on the fact that atheists aren’t necessarily evil and sad), I’m posting the email and my reply here.

The email:

I feel truely sorry for you. Someday I hope you will see the light of Jesus Christ. I just wonder, according to your athiest beileves, What is the point of your existence? Do you have one? According to athiest beileves it is just to simply pass on your genetic material and die is it not? Think about it.

Now also think, that doesnt sound like a very good reason to be alive does it? What are you helping, what are you doing to help humanity, what exists after death? according to you, nothing. That beileve is truely foolish because that would mean as soon as you have children, your point of existence is over, and you have no reason to live anymore. Now truely think about this, doesnt being athiest sound stupid? oh well why even bother, when you die you’ll see who was right. hopefully atleast you lived your life rightously and saw god just before you died and will atleast goto purgatory.

My reply:

Hi, <name omitted>. Please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m a happy man with a loving family and a full life. And to top it all off, I’m unemcumbered by the guilt that religion inspires in many.

As a humanist, I believe the value of human life trumps any fictional gods. Accordingly, I do plenty of things to help humanity. For example, I’ve recently been volunteering to help people displaced by Hurricane Katrina who have been sent to my city. I also donated a substantial sum of money to my local Red Cross to help with the effort. I did all of this not because I was trying to be a sycophant to a god whom I’m told I should fear but because I value human life and dignity and wish to help others in trouble.

Sure, I believe there’s nothing after I die, and I’m fine with that. It’ll stink for those who love me when I die, but I’ll be dead and won’t miss a thing. I’m also not hung up on there being a point to life. Now that I’ve got a child, a large part of my purpose is to enjoy watching her grow up. It’s a very fulfilling purpose, and it’s one I’ve discovered on my own rather than one I feel I have to live up to or else face an eternity of pain designed by a god I’m supposed to believe is benevolent. If you ask me, being religious sounds much more stupid than atheism when you boil it down to contradictions like that.

Of course, I’m happy to acknowledge that religion means something to many people, and so I wouldn’t for the world interfere with anyone’s inclination to be religious. Religion I suspect is as fulfilling to many as my family and my accomplishments are to me, and I’m happy those people have found something that brings them comfort and happiness. What they’ve found just isn’t my bag. And as long as they don’t try to force their views on me (and I certainly don’t try to force mine on others), I’m pleased as punch to stick to a “live and let live” philosophy.

I’m not interested in any sort of debate. Please don’t expect me to engage further. I did want to assure you that atheists don’t sit around and gnash their teeth and wail in pain all day. We’re as happy and fulfilled on average as the religious population is on average. Best wishes to you,

So today I went to the gym. My plan for now is to cycle my way into the outer regions of fitness and then perhaps to add other things designed specifically to trim pudge here and there. The main focus is to get cardiovascular exercise, and if I can eventually get some muscle-tone, that’ll be an added benefit. So I got to the gym, checked in, and went to the cycling machines, which recommended that a person my age get his heartrate up to 154 and (as far as I could tell) sustain it for about an hour. So I ramped up and kept my heartrate up above 165 for most of the time, but I only cycled for about 25 minutes. I didn’t want to go into cardiac arrest on my first day, after all. I think it’s important to ease into this a little. I stopped way before I felt tired enough that it was imperative that I stop, and I think it was a good limit. I’ll do this for a week or so and then look at increasing to a tougher routine.

Lenny Kravitz’ album 5, it turns out, makes for great cycling music.

Once I had gone for about 25 minutes at a good rate, I slowed down for a couple of minutes to cool down, then wiped up my sweat puddle and headed down to the locker room. They had a scale, of course, and I weighed myself at 229. So I’m apparently down 18 pounds from two weeks ago, though I need to qualify that heavily by acknowledging that the weights were measured on different scales. I was dressed about the same on both days and my weight was measured at about the same time both days, so those variables aren’t a major factor. It’s not really about the pounds so much, though, as I’ve always been much heavier than I’ve looked. It’s gratifying to see progress, though, and I look forward to being able to measure progress (from one angle at least) on a regular basis rather than just every couple of months at the doctor’s office. I suppose I could break down and buy a bathroom scale.

On Tuesday, I go in to have my liver ultrasounded. My last two sets of bloodwork have turned up a high liver enzyme. This could mean anything, including things like Wilson’s disease, fatty tissue invading my liver (a likely candidate, I’d say), hepatitis (but not, as I tested negative for that), and cirrhosis (which isn’t always caused by drinking and which, when it is caused by drinking, takes really heavy long-term drinking but which, given some of my drinking history, is scary nevertheless; I don’t exhibit some of the usual symptons of cirrhosis, though, so I imagine I’m ok). We’ll see how it goes.

From “Gates on Google: What, me Worry?” at news.com via Anil Dash:

Q: So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point?

Gates: Well, we don’t know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.

Google’s slogan is “Don’t be evil.”

Update courtesy of Mike, who sent me the following eye-opening email:

You don’t allow comments so I can post my flame bait +5 post on your
gates/google blog =p.

Right above that quote gates said:

“In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world’s information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world’s information.”

You could always switch it out with the memory quote, lol.

Thanks, Mike! That’s what I get for delighting in the humor of the quote without having full context.

I hate the word “diet” as applied to what I’m doing. I’m not going on any sort of crash diet; I’m modifying my lifestyle by changing my eating habits. One thing that has really made this a good process for me has been my finding a great cookbook, entitled Betty Crocker’s Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Cooking Today. When I say that the recipes are good, I don’t mean that they’re good in the sort of begrudging way one might say that a flavored rice cake is better than a plain rice cake. I mean that many of the recipes I’ve cooked in the last couple of weeks are excellent, as in I would be happy to have ordered them at a restaurant.

Among my favorites so far are a seared jerk chicken, a seared sirloin au jus, seared pork tenderloin medallions sprinkled with salt and paprika, and sort of a baked breaded chicken nuggets dish. In short, everything’s been a huge hit around here except for the two fish dishes I’ve cooked, and those weren’t exactly bad; they just weren’t up to the standards these other entrees set. The dinners I’ve been cooking have on average 5 - 10 grams of fat apiece (compare to probably 20 or 30 minimum for meals I was previously cooking, 30ish being the recommended allotment of fat for the whole day). For lunch I’ve had scrambled fake eggs (which are actually pretty decent, in spite of my expectations) with toast spread with apricot preserves. Other times I’ve had turkey sandwiches (6 slices of turkey have about a gram of fat). For snacks, I’ll make a thing of pudding or eat some fat-free yogurt (again, not bad at all, especially to me, as I’ve never been a yogurt eater and so don’t have a taste for regular yogurt to compare against). Occasionally I’ll munch on a few baked Ruffles chips (3 have a gram of fat, so I keep these to a minimum), and I’ve been enjoying Fig Newtons (no fat) this week as well. I’ve also become more of a fruit and veggie eater. I’ll slice up a cucumber or a peach now in a heartbeat. These weren’t things I normally would have eaten, but now that I’ve started, I find the freshness very appealing, and in the case of the peach, well, there’s not much of anything that’s naturally sweeter and juicier than a fresh peach.

So this lifestyle change has exposed me to a lot of foods that I used to shun more out of habit than anything, and I’m finding the diet to be not a burden to bear but an opportunity to try new things. The dinner variety has been especially welcome.

And the effects are already beginning to become obvious. I think my face is thinning a little, and the pants I’m accustomed to wearing around the house occasionally just fall off. They were a little loose anyway, but they’ve become more so. There’s been no dramatic change yet or anything, but I think this change of diet is starting to peel away some of the superficial fat.

This morning, I’m calling the gym Mleeka’s a member of to sign on as a member myself. I debated doing this in January when she signed up, but I doubted my motivation and so opted not to blow the money. Now I feel motivated. I hurt my foot jogging a couple of weeks ago and so want a good opportunity to do some low-impact stuff (spin, for example, which why don’t they just call it exercise biking as they did in the 80s?) and not to be affected by the weather. Of course, this isn’t all about thinning down (though that’ll be nice) but is more about getting my heart pumping so that my doctor doesn’t raise his eyebrows at my blood pressure.

This has all been very positive so far, and I’m enjoying the change.

Chris pointed me to this nifty video showcasing some of the features in the latest version of Firefox. There’s some pretty nice stuff in there; most useful to me will be the ability to reorder tabs without having to load an extension to do so.

I’ve figured out over the last year or two that my self-imposed workload follows sort of a sine wave. I load myself up with obligations for a while until there’s just no way for me to take on more, and then I pretty rapidly shed myself of all that I can and enjoy the lull for a while before I find myself taking on more commitments again.

In the six months or so before Lennie was born, I took on several volunteer development projects that I ultimately either finished or wriggled out of sooner than planned because I felt a very great need to keep my last few fatherless months as open as possible. A few months after she was born, I took on the Spread Firefox project, which was a major time sink. And again, I had to let it go after a while, in large part because I felt like I needed to reserve more time for myself.

I’m definitely on the upswing again. I do a fair amount of work for RET. In the last two months, I’ve put up a couple of other little Web sites, and I feel a sudden desire to build a new Web site for RET. Recently, I’ve been doing this whole hurricane volunteer thing. I’m trying to fit in some jogging to help with the weight thing. All of this while working to release software, which, as insiders know, is a pretty time-intensive undertaking, especially here at the end.

Won’t be too long before I crash and become a lump again. But at least I’ll be a lump that eats healthy. I’ve cooked three new low-fat meals this week, all from an excellent cookbook. The meals have included a breaded baked catfish deal with a broccoli and corn salsa-y dish; sliced sirloin au jus with roasted onions, zucchini, and peppers; and tonight an excellent seared jerk chicken dish with rice and a salad of spinach and green onions wilted in a vinegar/sugar sauce with (believe it or not) bits of bacon in it. With the exception of tonight, the meal portions are on the small side, but I can rectify that by serving two sides (as I did tonight) rather than just one. I think I’m beginning to feel less hungry between meals (so maybe my stomach’s shrinking already), and when I do get hungry, if need be, I’ll just eat a carrot or some cucumber or some saltless, butterless popcorn (I like it that way anyway) to tide me over. I’m feeling very good about all of this, though the cooking’s more time-consuming than is ideal, given all the other things I’m trying to pile on.