I'm sure most of you know the drunken sailor song ("What do you do with a drunken sailor . . . early in the morning?" "Shave his belly with a rusty razor."). Now, I'm not saying I drink and code, but this has to have happened, where a bevy of college hackers program until they drop. Or at least, until one drops and the herd descends on him (or her) like the white cells in Fantastic Voyage.

So, you should find a link to the original song somewhere, then submit your lyrics to me as comments. Here are a couple verses to get you started.

"Make him code in C but compile in Assembler"
"Set his keyboard layout to Dvorak style."
"Give him decaf cola in a rusty old Jolt can."

A few months ago I had a brief email conversation with Bruce Tognazzini about number 6 in his 10 Most Wanted Design Bugs. I was pleased that he published my suggestion, but I really didn't think any more about it. That is, not until I started reading about Jef Raskin, who died recently. You see, I thought Tog was just some online blogger who'd developed a following. I didn't know he was one of the people hired by Raskin to design and develop the Macintosh.

Andy Warhol said that, in the future, everyone would get fifteen minutes of fame. I now occupy several bytes of space on a famous person's web site. Is there a correlation to the number of fame minutes? Percentage-wise, I'm not taking up much space in the Byte-o-Sphere. But over time, I'll probably be read for more than fifteen minutes.

On the other hand, does being read really constitute "fame", even if it's in the company of a famous person?

While you ponder that (what? finished already?), read this news article about a lucky cat.. Here's what caught my attention and fascination. The owner didn't notice the cat while she was filling her car with gasoline!

From two of my sisters in law came these questions:

• What are the symbols on the back of a dime?
• What's the origin of the word "book", as in "We've been here too long. Let's book."
• Who's Chad Everett?

According to the U. S. Mint:

What can you tell me about the symbols on the back of the Roosevelt Dime?
The center torch signifies liberty. To the right of the torch is an oak branch signifying strength and independence. To the left of the torch is an olive branch signifying peace.

Maybe in a future post I'll comment on these values, but for now I take you back to the seventies (and, apparently, the sixties) when we were all "booking".

The closest I found to reasonable origins for "book" were at these sites:
Near the bottom
More ideas

I hadn't considered that "book" would come from "boogie". Doesn't that beg the question: what's the origin of "boogie" as in "to dance"?

Finally, the current crop of medical shows echo a run of prime time physician-assisted escapism in the sixties and seventies, including Dr. Kildaire (the wonderful Richard Chamberlain, Marcus Welby, M.D., and Medical Center staring Chad Everett. Mr. Everett is still making films (I'll leave it to you to check the IMDB). Here are a few photos showing off his star appeal (as in "ruggedly good looks.")
Hurrell Photo
Young and Old(er)
Blue-eyed from Medical Center