Hot. Hungry.

Hot.

Hot hot hot.

Hungry. Queasy.

Every morning I think "aw who cares, I'll eat after I run." By the end of even three miles I begin to understand why some distance runners puke. It's insidious, though: I wake up the next morning and think "Sure, it was icky for a while there, but who cares -- I'll eat after I run."

Same thing with going early in the morning. I'm lounging in bed or reading e-mail thinking "aw, a half hour later won't make much difference" and then by the time I'm done it's in the nineties.

I know a few tricks to get my misbehaving mind to straighten out and fly right. Looks like it's time to dust them off.

garage sale

I now have a cute little propane grill. I do not in any way need to OWN this item, but I bet it's cheaper than renting one somehow. It was also cheaper than buying even one dinner out, and considering I have four buffalo-burgers in the freezer waiting for me, I think I did all right. It may go to Goodwill when I'm done with the burgers.

Man, it's hot out. I keep calling San Jose's ATIS to get a current temperature, but San Jose must be in the shade: they say it's 29C (84F) and there is no way it's that cool in this corner of Sunnyvale. Walking outside is like getting wrapped in a burning newspaper.

Software meringue

Ever see some software feature that's sort of like meringue, or cotton candy? It takes up space but provides nothing? It took a long time to implement and maybe it hurts performance, but its useful content is little or nothing?

I just found another one. I could go on for paragraphs about how annoying it is in its sheer uselessness, and exactly how its very existence is a waste of my resources, but I don't need to pick on anyone in particular. Lots of this is around in lots of places. I'm sure many readers here can think of an example.

It's meringue.

Lots of this seems to show up in UIs. Sometimes I want to stop all user interface implementation until we figure out what UI design is really good for. Each bit of fluff in every software package out there means some smart person somewhere spent a lot of time on that when he could have been doing something useful like improving performance or doing his laundry or even going to an All-Hands meeting.

I wonder if the engineers who implement this sort of thing usually also dislike it. Goodness knows I've had to do a lot of software meringue in my life. It's never very satisfying.