David Gudmundson

1920-2005

Husband. Father of four. Afi of four more.

This was the best picture I could find over the weekend, but I’ll have something better later.

Just to update everyone on the local geekyness:

Yes, I bought a slide rule (off eBay). A solid aluminum Pickett N-500-ES.
It’s hott, in a very unsexy, engineering-in-the-1960s kind of way.

Did anyone notice that at the end of the Hip’s set yesterday, Gord sang a few lines from The Weakerthans’ Aside?

And I’m leaning on a broken fence between past and present tense. And I’m losing all these stupid games that I swore I’d never play. And it almost feels okay.

You guys are awesome.

Dr. Ruth offered this benediction to the graduating class of Engineering tonight:

“May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young.”
— Robert Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan)

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
Then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
‘Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

— SRW: Sadly I cannot take credit for this wonderful work of poetry. It’s floating around the internet.

My “birthday party orchestration committee” has made a plan for ringing in this new year of my existence. It is as follows:

Thursday, March 24

1. Go for dinner somewhere on the Osborne strip
2. Enjoy all your company
3. Go to Die Machine for 70s/80s night (period-appropriate dress highly recommended)

I’m not typically the type of person to go to this kind of thing (the ‘thing’ being Die Machine), but it’s a surprisingly good time. Dance good or bad (the shopping cart, sprinkler or even the running man) dances to the 80s hits you almost grew up to. It shall be a good time — please join us and invite your friends.

ETA: The emphasis of this evening is a fun night out with friends… NOT my b-day. Also, please give drop me a line for more info if you’re interested…