Category: Personal

The classic philosophical distinctions between form, substance, and accident are essential to computer application development, much more than any particular knowledge of a command or process. You can apply them to databases (schema, data, datatype), text documents (structure, words, character formatting), and a hundred other things. It seems to me that a survey course on ancient and medieval philosophy, beginning with the pre-Socratics and ending with Aquinas, would be much more valuable for a computer-science student than learning any specific programming language or networking protocol.
And don’t get me started with how useful teleology is!

Last weekend, I had what I like to call a Good Parenting Moment. I was allowing Christopher, the toddler, to wander around me as I was building a pair of bookshelves in the driveway. Normally, I keep all harmful objects above chest level, so no children try to play with them (there are always swarms of kids playing on our end of the street whenever the temperature is above 40 degrees).
Clamping a saw guide onto a piece of plywood, I looked up. With an expression of pure joy on his face, Christopher was squirting long streams of Spectracide, a weed and grass killer, from a bottle he found. Luckily, the nozzle was pointing away from his face and the Spectracide was landing on the driveway. I lunged over to him and grabbed the bottle away from him. I’m still not sure where he got it — the bottle was left over from the previous owners, and all chemicals are five feet off the ground.
I would like to hear other people’s Good Parenting Moments. It will make all of us feel better about ourselves.

Teresa’s father passed away this morning at the age of 94. He had 93 healthy, happy years and was recently suffering from pneumonia. Teresa and her sister Rose were at his bedside when he died.
Fritz came to this country from Germany in the 1920’s. His family settled in Waynesboro, VA and continued the family business of making custom cabinets. Fritz maintained a workshop until he was in his 80’s.
Fritz married Bernice Jacobs and had four children: Fred, William, Rose and Teresa. Fritz spent some time in the Navy during WWII (stationed in the Pacific since he was originally from Germany) and worked for DuPont as an engineer for over three decades.
Fritz was active at St. John the Evangelist in Waynesboro, and helped make arrangements for the parish to acquire a crucifix from Oberammergau, Germany. The crucifix is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.
Please pray for him and all the souls of the faithful departed.

Fritz with his kids on his 93rd birthday.

At one point on Valentine’s Day, Pete Vere and I were walking side-by-side, with him holding a rose. But it was okay — Canada had not yet passed its gay marriage bill.
I was only in Ottawa for two nights, and Pete was kind enough to show me to the Heart and Crown pub so I could get some food after my run-in with Canadian immigration. The next night, we went back with frequent Catholic Light commenter Tim Ferguson, the Latin professor from Pete’s university, as well as Pete’s lovely wife and his two cute, impish daughters. After the ladies went home to bed, we met up with two other friends of Pete and went to something called “Tim Horton’s,” or I think that’s what it was called. They sell good doughnuts there, whatever the name is.
I don’t want to post the names of the other people, because I haven’t asked their permission, but I did enjoy meeting everyone. If I get back to Ottawa, I look forward to seeing you guys again. And if anyone’s ever in the D.C. area, let me know and maybe we can meet up at some point.

I’ll write again about going out with Pete, but first, a quick account of how I actually got into Canada. It wasn’t smooth. When I got to the customs desk at Ottawa’s airport, I had forgotten to fill out my declaration card. Maybe that’s an indication of criminal behavior, because a few minutes later they sent me to the immigration desk, where I was made to produce:
• My official government passport;
• Both of my identification badges from the Nameless Entity;
• My driver’s license (to verify my SSN);
• The official message from the Entity authorizing me to travel abroad on behalf of the U.S. government; and
• My business card. (I’m still puzzing through that one — anybody can fake a business card.)
So they knew I was there on official business of the United States, yet they made me give all this documentation and then interrogated me for 10-15 minutes (“Where are you staying? What are the names of your contacts? What are you going to be doing here? What office do you work for?”) I was very close to asking them to contact the U.S. embassy so they could intervene, but suddenly the immigration guy let me go. It was all rather shocking.