J.T. Kalnay's Blog, page 26
August 11, 2012
Operation eBook Drop
http://operationebookdrop.com/
Dear Authors,
Please consider participating in this fantastic program.
You’ll feel great when you get an email from a deployed soldier, sailor, airman, or marine thanking you for your book.
Thanks to Ed Patterson and Mark Coker for setting this up and for keeping it going.
And thanks to all our service people, I hope each and every one of you comes home soon, and comes home safe.
JT Kalnay
August 9, 2012
Urban Meyer At Ohio State
This is one of the best written sports articles I’ve ever read. I hope you enjoy it.
Life In Cleveland
Knee surgery for first round draft pick before the season. Some things just never change in Cleveland…
August 7, 2012
Stop Counting Olympic Medals, Start Counting Patents
Ever since the 2012 Olympics started I’ve been seeing and hearing “medal counts”. People seem very concerned about whether the US will “win” the Olympics by having more medals than China. While this is an interesting diversion, perhaps some people need to stop counting medals and start counting patents. Here’s an EXTREMELY interesting piece of news that you may have missed last December, China filed more patents than the United States and China… What does this mean to the U.S. economy?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/china-patents-idUSL3E7NL0B720111221
Why Software Patents Go Wrong (b/c they aren’t written by computer scientists)
I found this interesting article today. It comments on how few computer scientists are patent attorneys. It then comments on how people who aren’t computer scientists write software patents even though they are somewhat to totally disconnected from computer science. With our society’s increasing reliance on computers, computer programs, and everything high tech, it’s somewhat surprising that the registration process makes it so difficult for computer geeks to be patent attorneys. It’s also somewhat surprising how software companies and others rely on people who aren’t computer scientists to write their software patents.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1626348
National Lighthouse Day
http://www.weather.com/travel/favorite-us-lighthouses-20120731
I wanted to release The Point today, because it is set at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse. But it’ll have to wait until Labor Day. Have you ever tried to imagine coastal navigation, in the fog, and wind, and rain, before GPS???
August 5, 2012
Preview of The Point
Here’s a little preview of The Point. Look for the rest of the story on Labor Day!
The Beginning
The crumbling brown cliffs rise straight up out of the inky green black water. Kelp streamers are pulled in towards the shore and then are sucked back out into the Pacific as tens of thousands of gallons of water are forced through the passages between the boulders at the base of the cliffs. Anyone in the water would be hurled against these rocks, battered senseless, and returned insentient to the depths of the ocean.
Charles stands alone atop the cliff, he is freezing. While shivering nearly uncontrollably he looks down at the ocean from the base of the lighthouse. High above, safe and warm behind the thick glass that guards the lens and light, Sierra follows his gaze down into the depths of the unbearably cold water. The thought of the currents and cold makes her shiver along with Charles.
Charles presses himself back against the lighthouse, afraid that he will be blown over the cliff and crushed on the rocks below. He is thankful to be alive after the desperate, frantic scramble up the cliff.
The gathering wind scatters thousands of tiny ripples against the faces of the ever larger waves. The water swirls around or over every point of rock, leaving no safe place below.
Seagulls scream in the distance, their incessant calls carried unnatural distances by the wind that pours up the coast. Charles cannot imagine a warm sunny day in this place, but he can feel, much too clearly, the grip and grasp of the swirling darkness below.
The wind flaps his wet pants against his legs, and for a moment drowns out the voices he hears calling to him. Voices from the past, from the ocean, from the wrecks, from the lighthouse. He blows on his hands to warm them, but it only helps for the briefest moment. He knows he has to find shelter, and has to get dry.
Far out to sea there is a light. A red blinking light. From a freighter? he wonders. Or from someone like me, in over his head, and lucky to have escaped.
The froth and spray and blackness hides what lies beneath. Charles turns away from the ocean. He looks up at the brilliant white lighthouse that is perched on the edge of the cliff at the very end of the slender finger of rock that reaches so far out into the Pacific. His sodden shoes slosh as he walks around the building, looking for a way in, hoping to be warmed by the light he sees glowing in the windows.
Chapter One
“I’m going to take my dad’s boat from Santa Cruz up to San Francisco to see Eve,” Charles Ginetti said.
“You’re going to do what?” his older and wiser friend John Reynolds said.
Charles stood up from behind his small glass desk, made sure he had his smart phone, wallet, keys, and map, and took the few steps across his office to stand beside the Vice President of his high-tech company.
“I’m going to drive over the mountain to Santa Cruz, get on my dad’s boat, sail it up the coast to San Francisco, go under the Golden Gate into the Bay, and then see Eve,” Charles said. He spoke slowly, carefully listing the itinerary the way he did when he felt John was being intentionally obtuse.
“Charles, we’ve been together a long time right?” John said.
“Yes,” Charles said. “At least thirty years.”
“And in all that time, all those years that you built this company, all the things you’ve been through, personal, professional, business, have I ever steered you wrong?” John said.
“Not intentionally,” Charles said.
John frowned and looked over his glasses at Charles, the way he responded to Charles quibbling when he knew John was right.
Charles relented under the gaze.
“No John, you never have. You’re one of the only people on the face of the planet that I trust implicitly. So what’s on your mind?”
“There are at least three things wrong with your plan,” John said. He knew that short lists appealed to his engineer friend. “First, you’ve never been on any boat, let alone your dad’s boat. So it’s not very realistic to think you can magically develop skills sufficient to go sailing out on the Pacific and up a coastline where there are fogs and currents and whales and tankers and container ships. Even if you somehow miraculously make it to Golden Gate, even the most experienced boaters have troubles going through the narrows,” John said. “The tides up there are some of the trickiest and most powerful in the world.”
“You forgot mermaids,” Charles said.
“Mermaids?”
“Yeah. You listed fog, current, whales, and other stuff, but you forgot mermaids.”
“Charles, I’m serious,” John said.
Charles nodded his head. “I have a GPS, I can’t get lost. And when I said ‘sail’, I meant take his sailboat. I don’t intend on putting up a sail because, as you so subtly pointed out, I don’t know how. I do know how to turn on an engine and check a gas tank. I’m just going to head out a half a mile or so, and then follow along the coastline. How hard can it be? With the GPS, and with a fairly good idea of what the Golden Gate Bridge looks like, I ought to be able to find San Francisco.”
“Second,” John continued. “You’re in no state to be doing anything related to your dad. In the past ten years you two didn’t get together very much. He was always trying to get you to go out on his boat with him. You kept saying no. He probably asked five times this last year alone. So for what it’s worth, heading out on his boat the day after his funeral is bad karma.”
John winced at the word funeral. His gaze drifted over to the picture on the wall, a picture of him and his father on a rare warm sunny day at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. He looked back to John.
“Bad karma?” Charles said. “Maybe you’re right. But I’ve been thinking a lot since he passed away. Thinking about all those times he asked me to go out with him. It’s all he ever asked from me. I don’t know why I kept saying no. If somebody asks me something ten times I usually give in. At first it was because I was too busy building up the company, or too busy with my ex, or too busy the way sons are always too busy to do something with their father. Then it became a habit. Those are all excuses, I know. And I don’t know why he left me his log books. Why would someone who never went sailing want fifty years of log books about sailing? I can’t figure it out. You heard what he wrote in his will. That he wanted me to go on his boat and read the logs. Not just go on his boat and read the logs, but go ‘out on the Undine’ and read the logs. After saying no all those times, it’s the least I can do,” Charles said.
John patted his younger friend’s shoulder, nodded his head, and then softened his voice.
“Third. And this one’s going to hurt,” John said.
Charles motioned for him to go on.
“You don’t actually know where Eve is,” John said. “Therefore it’s going to be practically impossible to see her.”
Charles said nothing, pursed his lips to stop himself from saying anything. John noted the pause, saw the little flash behind Charles’ eyes.
“Or do you? Did you hear something? Do you know where she is?”
“No, and no. But I have an idea of my own. It was something my ex said at the funeral.”
John’s eyes narrowed at the very thought of Charles’ ex.
“She had a lot of nerve coming to the funeral,” John said.
“Yes she did. Someone as status conscious as she is has to know how inappropriate it was for her to show up,” Charles said. “She got half of everything, and for what? For tricking me into thinking she loved me? I have no idea why she came. She didn’t care anything about my dad. She hated everything he stood for. I was shocked to see her. But then again, I wasn’t. Actually, nothing she does shocks me anymore. She is completely without a soul. I should have listened to you all those years ago when you told me she was just after my money.”
Now it was John’s turn to say nothing. They hadn’t talked about Charles’ ex in a long time. The turmoil of their marriage and the carnage from their divorce had nearly broken Charles, and the company he had founded and built from the ground up.
“She knows where Eve is,” Charles said.
“Of course she does. She’s her mother and she got sole custody.”
“She never should have,” Charles said. He said it in rote, the same way he had a hundred times.
“You know that, and I know that, everyone except the judge knows that,” John said.
“It was an accident,” Charles said.
“Yes it was.”
Charles and John both paused while they thought back to Eve’s accident.
“My ex was so cruel back then,” Charles said.
“She’s as cruel to you now as she ever was,” John said.
“It’s my fault,” Charles said.
“No it’s not. No-one deserves what she did to you, what she does to you. I think she planned it all along. I think she plans everything. You’re a good man. I’ve known you nearly your entire life, from when you were a completely naïve kid with a brilliant idea all the way until now when you’re a somewhat less naïve CEO who spends as much time volunteering as he does running his business. You did nothing to deserve your ex or what she did. You did nothing to bring this on yourself. She’s a bad woman and she tricked you. This last thing with Eve is just too much,” John said. “I’m going to make some calls.”
“No. Don’t. Maybe that’s what she wants. To stir me up, find some new way to hurt me,” Charles said.
He paused, looked out the windows from his office. From this perch, far above San Jose, he could see for miles up and down Silicon Valley. He saw the green hills that grew into the low coastal mountains that separated the valley from the Pacific. He saw the brown hills that grew into the higher mountains that separated the valley from everything to the east. His eyes travelled north, to the north end of the valley, to where San Francisco was hidden in the perpetual fog.
“Anyway. I think I know where she has Eve. It’ll be easy to check out once I get to San Francisco.”
“You’re not going to stalk your ex are you?” John said.
“No.”
John stared down his friend, knowing how transparent he was when he tried to lie. He decided that Charles was telling the truth.
“Can I at least call down to Santa Cruz and hire you a guide for the boat? Someone who knows what he’s doing, and who knows the coast?” John said.
“It wouldn’t be quite the same would it?” Charles said.
“No. It’d be a thousand percent safer,” John said. “And you might actually get to San Francisco. The shareholders would appreciate that.”
“I’ll be fine John,” Charles said. “If at any point I think I can’t handle it, I’ll just turn around and go back to Santa Cruz, or put in at the first harbor I see. You know I’m a careful guy. And the shareholders would love another Charles Ginetti epic story anyway.”
“Okay Charles. Why don’t you take one of our new units, one with an integrated satellite phone? If something comes up that you can’t handle, just chuck the anchor overboard, call the Coast Guard, and hang on. You’re the son of the recently passed Coast Guard Master Chief Ginetti. The Coasties will take good care of you.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Charles said.
“And check in when you get to San Francisco okay?”
“Okay mom,” Charles said.
“And Charles,” John said.
He put his hand back on his friend’s shoulder. His voice softened, and he looked directly into his tired eyes.
“I know you didn’t have a lot of time for your dad these last years, but I know you loved him, and I know he loved you. I know he respected what you’d done with the company, and with the technology. I know he respected what you’d done for the area too. He was very proud of you. I’m sad to see him go, and I’m sad for you too.”
Charles nodded his head, took John’s hand and shook it.
John looked his oldest and dearest friend straight in the eyes.
“I don’t know why he wanted you to go out there either. So I hope you find something out there. Something in those logs,” John said. “He gave them to you for a reason.”
“Thanks,” Charles said.
August 4, 2012
Proud to be helping out
I’m so happy that people are getting some help with C++ from this book. A lot of programmers put a lot of effort into these programs, and a lot of students sat through a lot of lectures and exercises before we got these dialed in.
It’s #8 most downloaded computer and internet book on Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/90/downloads/0/any/any
and still the #1 most downloaded computer/internet/programming book on Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/655/downloads/0/any/any/
Thanks for the feedback!
CrossFitting For MS, 672 Burpees!!
Here’s the first cut of a short video of Carl Dei knocking out 672 burpees while raising money for MS.
August 3, 2012
Triangle Radio, August 2nd, 2012 Interview
In case you missed it…
Here’s a link to last night’s interview on Triangle Radio.
