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that class of conspiracy
Sunday, March 13 2016
Gretchen and Dina left early this morning for Albany, so I took the dogs on a moderately-big loop through the forest, cutting to the Stick Trail from the Farm Road significantly south of the Chamomile Headwaters Trail and passing Funky Pond (which contained water) along the way. I'd brought my small battery-powered GreenWorks chainsaw, and gathered a little firewood along the way, though it only came to 48.25 pounds. Back at the house when I went to split one of the pieces, I discovered it must've been something like elm instead of oak, as its twisted fibers resisted separation far more than they would've in the kinds of wood I normally gather.
My mentee came this afternoon for the first session since my recent illness. My voice is still froggy, but even so, I managed to give a two hour lecture on AJAX programming techniques as I built out some code that sent updates of sprite positions to a MySQL database and began the process of taking those positions and using them to tell Javascript where to position sprites not being directly controlled by a user. I made a lot more progress this way than I would have had I told my mentor to figure things out on his own. If we're going to build anything at all by late May (or whenever our project is due), it's looking like I'm going to have to do a lot of the work. He might surprise me, but from what I've seen, I don't think my mentee has the persistence and focused attention necessary to be a programmer. While shyness and poor social skills are common among programmers, if he also lacks techniques for learning on his own, how is he going to absord the necessary information?
Gretchen returned early this evening after her morning trip to Albany followed by a shift at the Woodstock bookstore. She was feeling socially and physically exhausted, and, though she wanted to go to a dinner party Ray and Nancy would be hosting, she wanted to watch some teevee first, go late, and leave early. So drove went to that party in separate cars.
Ray had made a meal of soupy polenta with a spicy carrot, onion, and tomato sauce. In attendance were Sarah the Vegan, her new boyfriend Jerome, and David but not Susan (she's still recovering from the same illness I recently had). Gretchen arrived just as Ray was bringing food out to the table.
I'm still getting to know Jerome, and there are things I like about him (such as willingness to drink booze, his interest in gardening, and his better-than-usual knowledge of nature), though this evening he said some conspiratorial things to David about the assassination of John F. Kennedy that seemed to call into question his critical thinking skills (though that class of conspiracy isn't as outlandish as the many believed by our friend Mark).
After the meal, Ray brought out some Maker's Mark bourbon and Amara, a booze made from blood oranges, and he kept pouring tiny amounts into the shot glasses he'd set in front us. Later he brought out that super-peaty scotch that for some reasons has a fragrance reminding me of an hard-to-place part of my childhood. Eventually I had to stop in order to be sober enough to drive back up Dug Hill Road.
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