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Pretty, sunny autumn days. The great gingkos are changing color patchily. The liquidambars seem to be very dark red this year. One of the houses across the street from us, where they built a nice big porch a few years ago, has its front lawn covered with colorful fallen leaves, unusual around here.
A massive delivery had come in at work while I was on my weekend, coinciding with the weekday janitor being out sick. Then he returned to work but absent-mindedly took the keys home.
November 5th (Guy Fawkes' Day) was my dad's birthday. He died in 1984, just shy of 56 (I think; he was a mathematician but numbers defeat me, especially remembering them). He had taken a class with Turing at Manchester (it was impossible to know what time he would turn up, and he was almost incomprehensible; they took to having someone photograph the blackboard afterwards so they could collectively puzzle over the chicken-scratchings). And he'd told me about the old computer there that filled a couple of rooms. And he was an avid science-fiction reader. He was also thrilled to be able to work for a few years in Washington, DC, and once saw Henry K dash out of a hotel. The way I once saw Leslie Crowther come out of his house on the way to work, but my dad didn't reflexively say "hello" to Henry K.
I often wonder what he would have made of the internet. I worked on my dissertation using first custom word-processing software developed by Cal-San Diego, and later the Displaywriter, but I only started using Applewrite at my first job, and didn't go online for another decade, but a Cornell friend's dad was going online at home through Syracuse. My dad may have been aware of it, may even have used it, but I don't think we ever talked about it. I wonder what he would have made of Wikipedia; he would probably have laughed in horror at my being a sysop there. (Which was pretty much my reaction.)
I wonder what he would have thought of the fashion in the US for cars that look like assault vehicles. While the new Volkswagens don't. I am rather glad he missed 9-11, and what the US has become. And the surveillance state in the UK; he was extremely private, but privacy was very important in England when I was growing up. Now every time a kid wanders away from home there are surveillance pictures from 20 cameras on each block. He would probably have been creeped out by Google Street View; but it's let me show my friends the houses I grew up in, and where we used to go on walkies with the dogs before the housemate's dog became too old for more than a short stroll out and back. Come to think of it, almost all my friends have been on-line people for some years now.
I often wonder what he would have made of the internet. I worked on my dissertation using first custom word-processing software developed by Cal-San Diego, and later the Displaywriter, but I only started using Applewrite at my first job, and didn't go online for another decade, but a Cornell friend's dad was going online at home through Syracuse. My dad may have been aware of it, may even have used it, but I don't think we ever talked about it. I wonder what he would have made of Wikipedia; he would probably have laughed in horror at my being a sysop there. (Which was pretty much my reaction.)
I wonder what he would have thought of the fashion in the US for cars that look like assault vehicles. While the new Volkswagens don't. I am rather glad he missed 9-11, and what the US has become. And the surveillance state in the UK; he was extremely private, but privacy was very important in England when I was growing up. Now every time a kid wanders away from home there are surveillance pictures from 20 cameras on each block. He would probably have been creeped out by Google Street View; but it's let me show my friends the houses I grew up in, and where we used to go on walkies with the dogs before the housemate's dog became too old for more than a short stroll out and back. Come to think of it, almost all my friends have been on-line people for some years now.
It was full light when I left work this morning. And the weather gizmo in the kitchen had auto-updated to standard time (but for some reason the extension in my room hasn't. I'll leave it a day and see whether the nightly syncing fixes it.) I have changed my alarm clocks, all three of them. The housemate, who no longer owns a timepiece that has to be manually adjusted, says it was disorienting waking up to the new time.
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