Music is an indirect force for change, because it provides an anchor against human tragedy. In this sense, it works towards a reconciled world. It can also be the direct experience of change. At certain points during some shows, the reconciled world is already here, at least in that second, at that place. Operation Ivy was very lucky to have experienced this. Those seconds reveal that the momentum that drives a subculture is more important than any particular band. The momentum is made of all the people who stay interested and keep their sense of urgency and hope.

- J.

I always liked that little quote. I liked it when I was 14 reading it for the first time and I still like it @ 36.

Friday - Day 1 of PyCon and I was already a little worn out. I was the session chair for the first three talks in the “testing” track by Michael Foord (Mock), Gary Bernhardt (Units Need Testing Too) and Kumar McMillan (Tox). I figured since I would be attending all three talks anyway plus all three guys are friends that session chairing would be easy. As expected, each of them gave great talks (all under time!) and had a question and answer session. I ended up hallway tracking it most of the remainder of the day.

Saturday - Day 2 of PyCon. I got to see Jason Huggins’ talk on Selenium 2 and Jcon Kaplan-Moss’ talk on writing great documentation. I caught the tail end of Alex Martelli’s talk on API Design Anti-Patterns. Mike Pirnat’s talk entitled “An Exhibition in Atrocity” was really my favorite talk of the day with Zed Shaw’s talk on ZeroMQ a very close second. I was also able to catch part’s of C. Titus Brown, Ned Batchelder and Augie Fackler talks.

TiP BoF - As the organizer “shit gets real” for me about 3:00 PM on Saturday. Given some of the issues that happened with the Chef and Scotch BoF’s the previous night, I officially declared this “alcohol free” (notice the quotes). Paul Hildebrandt and Disney provided the pizza, Titus Brown and Doug Hellmann did a soda run and here’s the list of lightning talks that we did.

Feihong Hsu - Stretching
Terry Peppers - Opening Remarks
Terry Peppers - Nagaconda
Alfredo Deza - Konira: A Testing Framework DSL
Augie Fackler - Mecurial’s Unified Test Suite
Marty Alchin - Lab Coat Test Framework … Thingy
Roman Lisagor - Freshen Your Code
Kumar McMillan - Fudging It With Mock Objects
Anthony Scopatz - Scientific Testing in Python, A Hell Of A Workflow!
Feihong Hsu - How My Comic Book Obsession Birthed a New Functional Testing Tool
Michael Foord - Shiny New Stuff in Mock 0.7.0
Alex Gaynor - Writing 5 Lines of Codes, 16 Tests And Speeding Stuff Up
Jason Huggins - How to Test Canvas Based Web Applications
Gary Bernhardt - Isolating Isn’t Magic
Armin Ronacher — Modern Approach to Monitoring
Brett Cannon - How to Pronounce PyPi: The Python Package Index
Mike Pirnat - Mock: It’s Not Just For Testing Any More
Brett Cannon - Why You Don’t Want to Get a Ph.D. in Comp Sci
Steve Holden - Ask the Chairman of the PSF
Jesse Noller - Ask a Board Member of the PSF
Tavvi Burns - Keeping Your Expected Files in Sync
Gary Bernhardt - Python Mock Library Comparison
Doug Napoleone - In Defense of Golden File Testing

A couple of more observations on TiP BoF. I think 2011 was clearly bigger than 2010. I also think having the additional space was a solid idea. All in all, everyone looks forward to the TiP BoF and it was rather amazing to see how many people were attending for the first time. I’m glad everyone turned out and made it a great open space. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep doing this year after year! I know people are working through photos, but there is a Flickr pool where you can post them (Testing in Python).

Sunday - Final day of PyCon never seems long enough. Chris McAvoy’s keynote about Threadless was great, and it was even better to see Luke Opperman mentioned as “the vanguard.” Peter Portante’s talk on Co-Routines really kind of blew my mind in a good way. I was able to catch Mark Ramm’s talk on scaling Python which was also good.

#1. Focal marrow edema in my ankle

#2. Chronic tears of anterior talofibular ligament (ATF)

The current writeup is that a prior injury has wiped out the ATF in my left foot. This is the most commonly sprained ankle ligament and while I still have one, it isn’t attached to one another which basically means that lateral movements are tougher for me to make - think Tennis. Since I don’t have this ligament, it’s making my Achilles work extra hard to stabilize my foot and somehow this has caused a bone edema.

I think this makes the most sense. An x-ray a month ago ruled out bone spurs, the location of the pain is too low to be achilles tendonitis. So really that leaves achilles bursitis or this focal marrow edema.

The good news is that this is mainly biomechanical in nature. I was casted for a pair of carbon-fiber orthotics a couple of weeks ago, and my doc thinks that once I have these I’ll be in better alignment and have better support - so eventually the pain will subside. The more good news is that I don’t need a walking boot or a cast.

The bad news is time. It’s going to take awhile to heal and really the only thing I can do is ice water therapy. The Flector patches and NSAIDS aren’t going to really reduce the swelling, they may help on extra bad days but long term usage isn’t going to help.

At least I can walk and continue to work out. That’s the important thing, I’ll just need to deal with the pain.

The Twilight Singers - On The Corner by subpop

Yeah, it isn’t Gentlemen but really what is?

Season 1

Time Enough At Last
The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
A Stop at Willoughby
The After Hours

Season 2

A Thing About Machines
The Eye of the Beholder
Long Distance Call
The Silence
The Obsolete Man

Season 3

Five Characters In Search of An Exit
To Serve Man
The Dummy
I Sing the Body Electric

Season 5

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Living Doll
The Old Man in the Cave
The Masks

1. Four Tet - There Is Love In You
2. Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts
3. Jonsi - Go
4. Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks
5. The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt

Albums of the Year Honorable Mentions

* Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
* The Black Keys - Brothers
* The Sword - Warp Riders
* The Tallest Man on Earth - Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird (EP)
* Gauge - Mints (EP)

Top 5 Albums from Long Ago

1. Hoover - The Lurid Transversal of Route 7
2. Rush - Power Windows / Signals / Permanent Waves / 2112 / Hemispheres
3. The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I
4. Girls Against Boys - Venus Luxure No. 1
5. Rocket From the Crypt - Circa Now

Top 5 Films of the Year - The Kid Version

1. Toy Story 3
2. How To Train Your Dragon
3. Tangled
4. Shrek: Forever After
5. Anything That Will Keep Ian Still for 90 Minutes

Top 5 Family Memories

1. Seeing Ian jump into a pool all by himself
2. Potty training completed
3. Disney World
4. Flying kites on the beach with the Barrons
5. The tough ass day of surgery for Ian

Best Books I’ve Read This Year

* A Song of Ice and Fire Vol. 1 - 4 - George R.R. Martin
* The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
* The Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb
* The Walking Dead - Robert Kirkman

Top 5 Things I’m Thankful For

1. A wonderful wife and an incredible son
2. The roof over our head, as small as it is
3. My steady as a rock family
4. The job I get to do every day
5. The team I get to work with

Top 5 Things for 2011

1. Keep the weight down and keep on working out
2. SERENTIY NOW! SERENTIY NOW! SERENTIY NOW!
3. Program more often
4. Read more
5. Figure out a tasty pizza dough recipe

Well, an x-ray and an exam later leaves me with dreaded Achilles Tendonitis. The plan for the next month:

* Cold Water Therapy - This is the brutal “submerse your entire foot and part of your ankle into a bucket of ice water.” Those screams you hear in the North? Those are me. 15 minutes in … 20 minutes out … 15 minutes in.

* Night Splint - It keeps my foot @ a < 90 degree angle so the tension on my Achilles is engage throughout the night. And yes, in answer to your question, it sucks sleeping in it. I end up taking it off somewhere in the middle of the night.

* Flector Patches - This is really the coolest thing that I got. Basically these are transdermal NSAID patches that I can apply to the area to help reduce the swelling. What I think is neat is that I don’t have to take a pill, but rather I can put a patch on the exact spot that is killing me and the meds get there.

4 more weeks of this.

* Game of Thrones
* Clash of Kings
* Storm of Swords
* Feast for Crows
* The Name of the Wind
* Dragonbone Chair
* The Stone of Farewell
* To Green Angel Tower vol. 1
* To Green Angel Tower vol. 2
* The Blade Itself

Much of this, I attribute to finally getting into George RR Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” series. The other part is that I think I was really down on Fantasy as a genre. Also, some of it I attribute to L. getting me a Kindle 3 for my birthday. I know the iPad people will want to know why I don’t have an iPad. The answer is simple, I have a laptop for that. If I want to read, I read. And to be honest the Kindle 3 is easy on my eyes, which I like.

I got to thinking about my 5th birthday in 1979. We were living in Downers Grove at the time. My mom was still working nights, so my dad had night duty watching my brother and I. My dad was driving a maroon Monte Carlo (I loved that car). He came home that night and handed me and Mike the keys to his car and said, “Ter, your birthday present is in my trunk. Mike, help your brother get it!”

When we opened the trunk, a gigantic box was sitting in there all wrapped. It turned out to be the Star Wars Death Star Playset*. And, I think it still holds as the single greatest birthday present that I’ve ever gotten.

Thanks Dad.

* As an aside, $17.87 in 1978 is the equivalent of $50.00 in 2010. That was a lot of coin for my dad to drop then, considering he had boys aged 8,5 and a new born Tommy Peppers … as well as a bigger house in Downers Grove.

Kenny Lofton
Jim Thome
Manny Ramirez
Omar Vizquel
Roberto Alomar
Bartolo Colon
Albert Belle
Sandy Alomar
Herbert Perry (The Milkman)
Julio Franco

Players who played in Cleveland Indians teams and have also played on the White Sox.

With Kenny Williams’ latest move of acquiring Manny Ramirez, I’m thinking it’s too little too late. Losing that series to the Twins last week hurt. And then losing this weekend series to the Yankees hurt. BUT losing all those games to the Orioles, I think, hurt the most. There’s 32 games left. The White Sox have 70 wins. This means that they need to win somehwere between 86 and 90 wins which means that they’d need to @ least play somewhere over .500 ball - but likely higher with the way that the Twins are playing. With the bullpen in disarray, I don’t know if that’s possible.

The sad thing about all of this if that the Bears look awful. I have nothing to look forward too.