In other words, “If we had ham we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.”

That little joke describes so many projects perfectly. I haven’t been able to find a reliable attribution, so it may be a well-known linguistic torture device like “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

I spent a bit of time today digging through the FreeRADIUS source code and stumbled across the following new-to-me C idiom:

switch(n) {
case FOO:
    if (condition) {
         /* stuff */
    } else {
case BAR:
        /* more stuff */
    }
}

The switch statement in C is notoriously powerful and prone to such abuse — see Duff’s device for a particularly infamous example — and I almost filed this in that category.

On further thought, though, this is actually painfully elegant. The effect of the statement is roughly “if case FOO and condition, do stuff, otherwise handle just like case BAR”, but it doesn’t require you to repeat the code for BAR like:

switch(n) {
case FOO:
    if (condition) {
        /* stuff */
    } else {
        /* more stuff */
    }
    break;
case BAR:
    /* more stuff, again */
}

or cheekily fallthrough as in:

switch(n) {
case FOO:
    if (condition) {
        /* stuff */
        break;
    }
case BAR:
    /* more stuff */
}

The interleaved statements are weird enough to convey what’s going on in a way that a simple /* FALLTHROUGH */ comment does not.

Duff said of his eponymous device “This code forms some sort of argument in [the fallthrough] debate, but I’m not sure whether it’s for or against.” Duff’s device was good for only a performance improvement, but this one improves clarity, almost. I think that’s a “for”. I’m going to have to use this one.

Well, the host of this documentary did have a British accent, and I had watched this excellent BBC-broadcast science documentary on Google video, so I checked there to see if it was available.

Sure enough:

Atom, Part 1

Atom, Part 2

Atom, Part 3

Good stuff, probably some of the best popular science programming I’ve seen in a while.

I thought I was recovering pretty quickly, and went back to work on Tuesday, complete with a couple gently-devoured bagels in the morning. Perhaps that was a bit premature. Today, I had a nice not-so-gently-devoured Gyro for a late lunch and wound up losing quite a bit of it in a hole that shouldn’t be there. Fsck. Dry socket?
So I’ve been worrying about that crap all day, instead of looking forward to a nice kid-free weekend with Jess.

At least the serious pain hasn’t set in. It’s mostly the fear of what may come if I can’t get back to the oral surgeon in time, and how much longer it’ll be until I can eat proper solid food without worry (there goes the idea of a nice dinner out ).

To distract myself from this, and keep me away from the painkillers for a little while longer, I did a little bit of bike stuff. I had bought a nice “just for fun” bike (a Kona Humuhumunukunukua’pua’a deluxe) I off craigslist last week, and dropped it off Monday at County Cycles for a little work (bar swap, chain tension, brake tuneup). We picked it up this morning, along with some new mountain-y tires for the Humu, and some less mountain-y tires and a rack for Jess’s mountain bike. So, I changed tires all this evening rather than freaking about dentistry (yipe!). It was good.

I’m pretty excited about the Humu. It’s a scaled up version of a beach cruiser, but with a very MTB-like frame and components. I swapped out the BMX-y riser bar for a more traditional riser, and the flame-patterned cruiser tires with similar-sized Continental Mountain Kings (earworm alert!). So, now it’s a respectable single speed mountain bike. After all the mountain bikes I’ve owned (ok, two) and turned into utilitarian commuters, I’ve told myself that this one will actually see some dirt sometime.

Or failing that, some snow, as a winter commuter. It’ll be good for that.

Now for some painkillers and the fitful, itchy sleep they bring…. Yay!

It was also a chance to see Roberto Chiappa in action. 42 mph, yikes!

These races were intended to re-invigorate track cycling in Minnesota. They definitely have a good start at doing that. A lot of the people I talked to or overheard in the audience were, like us, first-time attendees and enjoying what they see. It was even exciting enough to hold the kids’ interest for a few events, although they quickly decided to run their own running and “roll down the hill” races behind the bleachers.

We got a new kitten today, and of course a few cuter pictures than the above. She still doesn’t have a name. We’re kind of trying to get Grace to name her, but she’s not interested. Kitten looks a little like our cat Max, and the math geek in me wants to name her Minimax (or Minnie for short). The computer geek thinks max should have a corresponding Min. The part of me who shut out exactly the wrong parts of the 80s also contributed “Number 5“… (That part of me has resigned to spend more time with its family and pursue other humor opportunities in the future.)

Need more input…. <bang> <bang> urrrgghhhle… <thud>

IMDB has rumors of a remake. God help us all, and damn the perpetrators…

Ah, she awakes! Freedom is at hand!

Oh, false alarm…

• re-dishing the rear wheel for perfect chainline (this gets the job done, though it’s about 5mm off)
• putting on a track cog to give fixed gear riding a shot
• getting me in good enough shape to ride single speed.

Now I want to take it on my commute tomorrow.

I’ve only taken the bike to work once so far. That’s frustrating, especially since I haven’t been taking advantage of the beautiful biking weather we’ve had the last couple days (30s, 40s? Toss on a sweater, keep pedaling, and it’s quite pleasant). I did manage a nice mid-20s 20 mile recreational ride on Saturday, though. That was nice. I need to do more rides that don’t begin or end with work :-/

In other news, I think I’m losing my mind:

Exhibit A: It took me almost an hour to send out an already-written word document as an attachment to some people I work with. About 15 minutes to draft a quick two sentence commentary, then 45 minutes of scouring the document, making sure it was the right version, that the previous version had been expunged from change tracking, that no included versions contained disparaging comments, profanity, or said “I made a doody“, and that the word document had not been magically replaced by a pornographic image between the last time I checked it and when I hit “attach”.

I’m seriously in the wrong line of work to be this fscking nervous around computers.

Exhibit B: I’ve been having odd dreams about being dead. Not disturbing, scary, or even really profound dreams, but actually amusing dreams about death. I’m basically going about my day, with everything normal until I eventually figure out that I’m a ghost. I try to pick things up. I think I succeed — the thing is in my hands, but not on the table — but eventually it evaporates from my hand and slowly fades back in at its original location. Aha!, I think, this explains the “ghost paradox” (the effect where ghosts in movies can walk through walls but never fall through the floor).

My brain never tells me how this explains it. I wake up before that part is revealed.

My Grandpa died almost 25 years ago, and left some nice wristwatches for me and my cousin. I was a kid then, and my cousin was less than a year old, so it’s probably for the best that they took this long to get to us. Mine’s easily the nicest watch I’ve owned, and probably ever will own. I usually go for the sturdy yet disposable inexpensive digital watches, but this is a beautiful mechanical wristwatch made in Switzerland by one of the older Swiss watchmakers. I’ve been wearing it since this morning, listening to its rapid ticking, marveling at the fine mechanisms strapped to my wrist, and thinking of Grandpa.

…

I brewed yesterday, but nothing as odd as I thought I’d need to do. I had the hops to make a decent American IPA, and picked up a few more ingredients to complete the recipe. My last few beers have wound up underhopped, but I don’t think I made that mistake this time — my hops stash is gone now

I also finally got my bike out of the car, assembled, and installed fenders. The weather forecast calls for sub-10°F temps tomorrow, which knocked me out of my bike commuting routine last time. This time around, though, I have a fleece balaclava and a better base layer for the rest of me. I could wait for the higher temps later this week, but I’m itching to get back on the bike…

Which is to say, it was running constantly today.

Grace has been requiring two things to go to sleep lately: me, and music. The music for the last … month? … has been Pete Seeger, Children’s Concert at Town Hall, IIRC. Good, classic stuff all around, but what sticks in my head is:

Now that’s the end of him and her
Ding dang dong, go the wedding bells
There’ll be no little tadpoles, covered with fur
Ding dang dong, go the wedding bells

[chorus]
Here’s to Cheshire, here’s to cheese
Here’s to the pear and the apple trees
and here’s to the lovely strawberries
Ding dang dong, go the wedding bells

It’s the last verse of one of the tracks, and the only one I can make out over the fidgeting and chattering of a 4 year old trying to avoid sleep. The furry tadpoles probably have something to do with that.

So, of course I googled for snippets of the song trying to fill in the blanks. The rest of the song doesn’t make much sense either. It’s one of many variants of “Froggy went a’ courting”, an English folk song dating back to 1611 with references as early as the 1580s. In other words, this one’s been running through the collective heads of a decent portion of western civilization for over 400 years. Neat.

It’s also interesting that its a nominally kid-friendly song [Theory: every English-language song over 200 years old has either been forgotten, turned into a hymn, or mellowed into a children's song (if secular)] ending in the deaths of the main characters. It makes me not feel as bad about wanting to have all three little pigs be eaten, because the “smartest” one only had his labor-intensive brick house half-finished before The Big Bad Wolf’s fateful visit.

(Think “Three Little Pigs” as a parable of engineering tradeoffs. No, I don’t tell it that way, although in my version the wolf sometimes heads into town for a ham sandwich after giving up on the fresher pork…)