As I crossed the threshold from the bustle and controlled chaos of the hallway, and my right foot touched the carpet of my Analytical Geometry classroom, a sharp sensation shot up my spine and nestled into my neck and shoulders. It was a familiar feeling. I knew exactly what it meant. I was about to remember something important about this class.

I was supposed to do page 156, odd numbered problems 1-19. It was another assignment for which I would receive half-credit or nothing -- more likely nothing. There was little chance I would remember to do the makeup work once I left the room. I had a D in Analytical Geometry, not because the subject was difficult (nothing could be further from the truth), but because I was missing grades for most of my assignments.

Chances are, similar triggers would occur with each class I entered that day. Assignment notebooks were useless. I'd fill the pages out and forget to look at my notes later. As soon as I walked out of school, most things that happened that day simply disappeared from my mind. The next day, memories would flood back of various tasks and assignments I forgot to complete.

In school, Student Resource Time (SRT), became my salvation once we switched to block scheduling. As long as nothing interfered with my SRT time, I could remember to check on my schoolwork there. Slowly, i was able to broaden the context of my memory to include the entire school building ­ not just the specific classrooms in which the assignment originated. College was less difficult because there was enough downtime on campus for me to work on my work in a school setting. As long as I was on campus, I could remember to do my work.

I was accused of being lazy, of only remembering what I wanted. How could I consistently remember the specifications of the Enterprise NC1701-D or the order in which Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote his musicals, but I couldn't remember something simple like homework? The question baffled me. Truth be told, it still does. I'm always walking into work and feeling that old, familiar sensation of an important memory itching to suddenly resurface.

Contextual memory and the retrieval thereof is a challenge of autism with which I still contend. One solution I've found is to email myself things I need to accomplish. At home, I'll inevitably spend some time on the computer, at which time I'll see a message from myself about something I need to finish for work the next day. Also, I do a great deal of work-related stuff on my personal computer (a late-2006 MacBook Pro), thereby giving the machine a dual context.

Regardless, I find the workings of my memory a challenge that I haven't quite figured out yet. I'll let you know when I do.

Tags: asd, memoirs

Macworld: 25 Years of the Mac

The Macintosh computer turns 25 on Saturday, January 24. Macworld celebrates this anniversary with an entire week of articles looking at the Mac’s past and speculating about its future. I’m particularly fond of John Gruber’s piece on lessons OS X could learn from the Classic Mac OS.



Ars Technica: Paradigms lost: The Windows 7 Taskbar versus the OS X Dock

I’ve seen some complaints from Mac users that the new Windows 7 Taskbar seems eerily similar to Mac OS X’s Dock. Ars’ writer Peter Bright does a nice job in this article deconstructing the separate design philosophies and functionalities between these two interface elements and comes to the conclusion that they are more different than alike. Good stuff.



CNET: Obama Wants to Know: Why Open Source?

President Barack Obama is a smart guy. Where others zig, he zags. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that he's been asking around about the benefits of open source, according to Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, who has been asked by President Obama to author a white paper on the benefits the U.S. government can derive from open source.

Despite my love for Macs, I’ve found myself quite the advocate for open source software in government. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

Tags: apple inc, macintosh, politics, microsoft

I was able to get out of the house for an extended period of time for the first time in a week. Bronchitis has been keeping me down, but I was able to make it into work today. It was exhausting, but the kids’ smiles make it all worthwhile. Both the wife and I are back on our feet, and I’m very thankful for that simple fact.

In other news, this happened too.


Today is a new day. I hope it brings new beginnings as well.

Update: Boston.com has a collection of some amazing pictures of the event.

CNN: US House Votes To Expand And Enlarge SCHIP Through Fiscal Year 2013

SCHIP needs to be expanded. Period. Child healthcare can cripple families – even those who reside well above the determined poverty line. In my line of work, I see too many kids live with untreated ailments, some tragically serious, because there’s no money to pay for treatment. These are the families that don’t qualify for Medicare, who are deemed middle class by some outdated and irrelevant metric, and who simply cannot make ends meet.

Our President-Elect has this to say:

In this moment of crisis, ensuring that every child in America has access to affordable health care is not just good economic policy, but a moral obligation we hold as parents and citizens. That is why I’m so pleased that Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives came together to provide health insurance to over ten million children whose families have been hurt most by this downturn. This coverage is critical, it is fully paid for, and I hope that the Senate acts with the same sense of urgency so that it can be one of the first measures I sign into law when I am President.

This is the kind of change I can believe in. I know those who will call this wasteful spending, who will oppose it as a form of socialism. I see it as an act of badly needed mercy. Don’t let us down Senate.

For a breakdown of votes, including how your representative voted, click here. To write your senator before he or she votes on this bill, click here.



Apple: Steve Jobs Takes Medical Leave of Absence

Full text:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Mr. Jobs strikes me as a fairly private person, and I bet it wasn’t easy for him to send this email out. I’m sure rampant speculation will continue among pundits in technology circles, but I like what John Gruber says in his write-up:

I “demand” to know nothing further. If this is all Jobs chooses to share regarding the specific details of what ails him, that is up to him.

Tags: politics, apple inc

As far as I’m concerned, this can’t happen fast enough.

The New York Times:

President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order on his first full day in office directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, people briefed by Obama transition officials said Monday.

…Obama transition officials have consulted with a variety of authorities on legal and human rights and with military experts. Several of those experts said the officials had expressed great interest in alternatives to the military commission system, like trying detainees in federal courts, and appeared to have grown hostile to proposals like an indefinite detention law.

Politico.com:

Feingold said he thinks Obama is likely to issue executive orders rapidly reversing Bush policies, and others have indicated that those will likely cover the interrogation and detention of terror suspects, and keeping the records of past president’s secrets.

The Associated Press reported Monday that transition advisers said Obama could sign an executive order in his first week ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay, although shuttering the prison and transferring the prisoners somewhere else would take time.

As something of a Bible student, I find it confounding that the GOP – that party of Pharisees so concerned with invoking God amid their rhetoric, even if done so irreverently, so vocal about preserving marriage sanctity, so bold in their assertions that we should mold our national laws around God’s laws – has the temerity and shamelessness to actually defend torture.

When did Christ order his apostles to waterboard those who plotted against His life in the name of security? When did Paul torture Roman guards or Jewish zealots to learn of the next attempt on his life? Not a single New Testament writer advocates a get them before they get us mindset.

Oh, wait. I take that back. Paul did … before he was converted.

Hypocritical posturing on topics like this should send signals that the Republican Party is in no way the godlier choice. They say the right things on a couple of emotionally charged issues, but that is the extent of it. They hold others to standards they themselves are unwilling to meet. They show more concern for ideology and fiscal philosophies than they do for the people their policies impact. The party of Lincoln has fallen a long way with no sign of recovery.

I am not blinded to Obama’s flaws, but I do have hope that his presidency will be more concerned about serving his citizenry more than his agenda, that human lives will mean more to him than blanket statistics and veiled threats, that his government will be more concerned about the weightier matters – mercy, justice, and faithfulness to those whose lives depend on him. Closing Guantanamo is a start.

Perhaps I’ll end up disappointed in four years, but I doubt he could disappoint me any more than the last president I helped vote into office.

Tags: politics, opinion

I keep promising myself to finish my self-proclaimed trilogy of posts regarding creativity, but I’m just having a hard time summing things up. I’m also promising myself not to pull a Douglas Adams and create a five-part trilogy! I’m just going to make a quick note right now.

A Lesson In Creative Problem Solving

I recently set down to solve a problem I had with my custom themes in the newest version of Apple’s Keynote presentation software, and that problem is simply that they look bad in the theme chooser. I hammered at this issue much of the night, opening theme files, examining package contents, and scouring plist files for a hint at how Apple’s themes worked in the theme chooser.

The solution I discovered was simple and elegant. You can read about it right here. It was so easy, it became difficult.

Sometimes you have to be able to release yourself from analytical left-brain thinking to find a solution to a problem. In the case of these Keynote themes, I found my answer on a lark. It was a simple moment of, “What if I try this?” Unexpectedly, it worked.

Part of being creative is opening ourselves up to those unexpected solutions. It’s listening to that little voice that says, “This might just work.” That voice is nothing more than your creative spark trying to nudge you down a path you might have otherwise left unconsidered, and who knows? That little voice might just be right.

Tags: creativity

Unfortunately, the appendix in question was not part of a book so much as it was part of the wife. In short, Friday brought the wife severe abdominal pain to her right side, though I was known to mistakenly refer to it as "abominable" pain. I think both descriptors are correct.

Saturday brought her an interminably long visit to the ER with no occurrences of a natural disaster, a hostage situation, a quarantine, or any other jumping-the-shark plot points.

Eight nurses, something like eighteen failed IV attempts, and a CT scan later, a swollen and "angry" (surgeon's words, not mine) appendix was successfully removed from her body and sent to whatever fate is reserved for good appendices gone bad.

Sunday brought home and rest. I hope the rest of the week brings her recovery. Please remember her in your thoughts and prayers right now.

Update January 11: Thanks for all the kind notes, emails, and calls. She’s doing very well, and she hopes to be back to work by Wednesday.

Tags: family