Donald Ferguson’s Blog

Well, my Spanish speaking friends are still messing with my head. I asked a cab driver a question about his “carro,” which should mean “car.” This resulted in a serious failure.

1. Carro means car in Latin America but horse drawn wagon in Castillian.
2. I could not twill my “rr” and pronouced it like a normal “r.” Caro (as opposed to “carrrrrro” means “expensive.”
3. But wait, there is more. Spanish supports nominalization. Él caro” would appear to mean “The expensive,” which makes no sense in a literal translation. The actual spanish translation converts the adjective into a noun resulting in “The expensive thing”

Basically, I asked the driver to come back later and pick us up in his “expensive thing,” basically implying he was gouging us.  As my daughter would say, “My dad making friends everywhere he goes.”

I am on a trip to Barcelona. My girlfriend and I were walking and decided to have gelato. My girlfriend ordered in English and got what she wanted. I have been practicing Spanish and have been doing very well. I have no trouble at all understanding people or expressing myself. I even get compliments. There is a risk to my using Spanish, however. I asked the clerk in the gelato restaurant, “Quiero una bolsa de crema de Barcelona.” I should have said, “Quiero una bola de crema de Barcelona.” Bola means a scoop. Bolsa  means a bag. I only eat bags of icecream when no one is looking.

OK. Can someone explain to me why lobster is feminine (la langosta) and crab is masculine (el cangrejo)?

And I warned you about ” ” and “.” being important. The Spanish speaking flight attendant that also speaks English failed to pronounce ” ” and “.” in the safety announcement. The attendant said “If you have any questions about the safety video please contact a flight attendant shortly after takeoff flight attendants will pass through the cabin …”

Not putting the “.” between “contact a flight attendant” and “shortly after takeoff” makes a big difference! I doubt the airline wants me to ask my safety questions after takeoff!

Someone pointed out that my discussion of precursor projects did not mention Encina and work from Transarc. I had been planning to include that information when I started writing about the formation of WebSphere 3.0. Transarc’s JetSpeed project and Raleigh’s Servlet Express project were the two threads that came together to form WebSphere 3.0. These projects coming together also formed the core leadership team that made early WebSphere happen: Graeme Dixon, Jerry Cuomo, Arnold Goldberg, Spike (the least likely guy to look like a “Spike”) Washburn, Jason McGee, Carol Jones, and Rob Will.

Spike Washburn played an especially significant role. Every time I made a zany suggestion the team would say, “I think you should talk to Spike about that.” I had not yet met Spike face to face. The prospect of trying to convince “Spike” that we needed to do things like combine the telepathic UI with the time travel subsystem kept me from making WebSphere even more complicated than I originally made it.

I am making progress but am going slowly. I can never produce my history as fast as the team that wrote the official history. Writing the history is a hobby, not a full time job.I will get this done, however.

So far, the voting is

•  The history in the book is innacurate: 4 votes
• The history is accurate: 0

I have started writing the history on one of this site’s pages. I am going to forget things and make a lot of mistakes. Please correct any errors.

Well, my adventures in speaking Spanish are off to a good start. I am arriving on Saturday. I have a few questions for the hotel and sent them an email, in both Spanish (or my version) and English. I did not get a response. It turns out it went into my spam folder.

So, I called the hotel. I said, “Buenos Dias. Estoy llamando de Los Estados Unidos. Puedo hablar Espanol asi asi, per hay alguien aqui que puede llamar Ingles que yo?” Well, there is good news and bad news.

Good news: The woman understood what I said.

Bad news: I forgot a crucial word. The woman’s response puzzled me for a moment. She responded, “You puedo hablar Ingles pero no creo que You lo hablo mejor que usted.” Her response was, “I speak English but I do not think I speak it better than you.”

After a moment, I realized that I had said, “I am calling from the United States. I can speak Spanish so-so, but is there anyone there who can speak English better than I?”

Note to self, that “puedo hablar Espanol” that follows “que Yo” is pretty important.

I have decided that I am going to write my recollections of WebSphere’s history. There are a few reasons why I have chosen to do so, which I will explain later. The most important one is my children. My girlfriend told my daughter about the eBook on WebSphere’s history. Her comment was, “IBM took my father away from me for so many trips and long hours and work at home and now they dismiss his work?” She then became teary eyed. I started working directly for IBM Software Group (SWG) on projects that would become elements of WebSphere exactly one month before her birth. My job’s demands had a profound effect on my family. My daughters will be OK. They both have the my “Father of WebSphere” picture from the cover of the 1^st issue of WebSphere Developers Journal in a picture frame in their bedroom.

I easily found the keystone in Hercules tonight. The human mind is amazing. Finding a constellation for the 1st time is surprisingly hard. Once your mind recognizes the pattern you can snap to it instantly. I also found M13 quite easily with binoculars.

Vega is prominent and relatively low in the sky, which makes finding Lyra easy. Beta and Gamma Lyrae are right above the tree line allowing me to use “I follow trees” for finding things. I could not see M57 through my high quality binoculars.

I am looking forward to a dark night (the Moon was bright tonight) and time to use the telescope. I should get good views of M13 and M57.

Conditions were OK tonight. The sky was relatively clear with scattered clouds from 10:00 — 10:30 PM. Seeing and Transparency were average (3/5). There was a bright half moon. Limiting magnitude was 4.7.

I clearly found Arcturus.  I think, but am not sure, that I found Epsilon Boötis (ε Boo / ε Boötis, also known as Izar and Pulcherrima). Sky and Telescope recommends  ε Boo as a binary binocular. I found two stars but they seemed too far apart to be a binary. I suspect that I was not able to resolve the binary in the binoculars.

Navigating the stars/constellation was hard because they are very high. I spent a fair bit of time lying on my back using the binoculars. When a constellation is high in the sky, the Sky and Telescope interactive sky chart’s horizon view changes. Slight changes in direction, e.g. South to ESE, result in Izar moving from higher elevation to nearly parallel with Arcturus.

Since I was flat on my back I figured I would look for M51. I found Eta Ursae Majoris (η UMa / η Ursae Majoris) with no trouble but still could not find M51 in the binoculars.

I then went looking for Hercules. I quickly and easily found the almost trapezoidal “keystone” core of the constellation comprised of Zeta, Eta, Pi and Epsilon Herculis. For some reason, the Wikipedia pages for Pi, Epsilon and Eta are deleted/missing. Finding Zeta was easy (in the binoculars). The tip of a tree pointed right at it. Making things easier, an airplane flew by it. Eta was a bit trickier.

I managed to find M13 after a few minutes of scanning the Zeta-Eta imaginary line with the binoculars. The cluster was quite distinct. I figured I would bring out the telescope. My girlfriend got me some knee pads, which made crawling around aiming the scope a lot easier. I was able to find Zeta but had trouble finding Eta but finally managed to do so.

I spent about ten minutes scanning the Zeta-Eta line and finally saw the faint smudge in the finder scope. The cluster was relatively disinct in the 28mm but seemed less impressive than in the binoculars, although I did not spend a lot of time using either. I am hoping that the cluster will be more disinct on a darker night.

I am pretty sure that I found Corona Borealis.

All in all, a good night: 2 new constellations and a new Messier Object.