Author Archives: gmcdavid

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About gmcdavid

Retired IT professional with a wide range of interests. Married. Three sons, two with autistic-spectrum disorders and the third being transgender with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. From Chicago but now living in the Twin Cities metro, Minnesota. Episcopalian. Carleton College (BA 1972, physics) and Stanford University (MS 1974, Applied Physics; MS 1976 Statistics).

Irish Note

In Irish class last night we saw a video about Irish Television. It is interesting to see how new Irish words are formed to deal with 21st century life. In modern Irish the term for “soap opera” is sobalchlár, literally “foam program”.

No good deed goes unpunished

I just spent two hours on my employer’s computer, fighting network troubles and antivirus “improvements”. Not a good time, and a bad way to finish an otherwise quite good weekend.

mia_mcdavid and I got up a little after 8. After breakfast she did some spinning, while I did some woodworking in the shop. Very satisfying. Afterward we went to church in Minneapolis again. Something had been bothering us there from the service two weeks ago, and I had a chance to ask the Rector about it. Her explanation was entirely satisfactory, or, as Helmuth, Speaker for Boskone, would put it, “complete and conclusive”. I don’t get that nearly as often as I would like.

Afterwards we visited Tom, taking him for a visit to Como Zoo. By and large this was OK, although we were forcibly reminded of a couple things that do not work well with him. It is a a little frustrating that he did not seem to really notice the animals much, although that may be partly because a lot of them were doing the sensible thing and napping in the middle of the warm day. Perhaps those of us who are getting on in years could notice and appreciate that more than he did.