Post Valentines

Reading:

William L. Shirer's Berlin Diary: This was written while Shirer was a news and radio correspondent in Berlin from 1934 to 1940, and functions as an early travel diary of the war from the perspective of an acutely tuned, professional observer. The fresh perspective of this book is the day-by-day diary as the war winds up, and there are several items of note even to those who might consider themselves well-versed in the subject: the rationing in Germany began in 1937 - by the time that major combat was taking place, the average German citizen had already gone through years of privation; the lack of natural resources - even before 1940, Germany was pulling down her iron fences and passing laws for citizens to turn in their metals. By contrast, the US only banned the holding by private citizens of gold bullion.

In terms of big surprises, the book dotes on the easiness with which the citizens of Germany consume the Reich's propaganda, and their lack of enthusiasm for the war - even in victory.

One final issue that remains in the book: he describes early Nazi bombing of civilian targets in the Polish campaign, and their bombing of civilian centers in Belgium and the UK early in the war. This conflicts somewhat with what I've often held to be one of the most propaganda-ridden aspects of the war - the RAF's indiscriminate areal bombing of civilian targets, when they were forced into less-accurate night-time bombing due to their inability to provide a fighter screen (the range of fighters was inadequate, as opposed to Germany, who could launch from coastal airfields).

Dinner:

Found a strange half-way-ground between a succotash and a salsa tonight. Fresh corn, grape tomatoes, green onion provided the fruity notes, accented by cumin. Torn basil gave it a bit of spirit, black beans some soul, and some cornmeal fried okra brought it all together. It was absolutely perfect until it went into a cast-iron pan for a couple of minutes' searing, and the notes all got muddy.

I can only think that this means that spring is near, damned be anything stewed.

Fresh, it was the perfect accompaniment to a spring chicanery, fish or fowl.

Coding

Having spent 20+ hours now with Grails, I'm a bit disappointed in what I'd hoped was a herald for the direction that java could take. Rails was, first and foremost, well thought-out, while this seems to be a promising but amateurish architecture with more gotchas than I've ever experienced. It's certainly doable, and holds much promise, but the anarchy of the bazaar seems to be ill-fitted to java. Configuration of myriad plugins is a mess, and documentation is woefully inadequate. It seems strange that java could die in this realm, but such appears to be the case. Now, all that said, I've cut down over 80% of the LOC from the existing application as I'm porting it, so there's huge promise.

Marcus

Earlier today we were looking at toddler beds, since he seems about ready to escape the crib at 20.5 months. He climbed out tonight twice - the first time was a successful escape, while the second was announced with a series of loud clunks and wailing. He was up at 7am this morning, had a two hour nap, and yet refused to go to bed at 10pm, even after reading him stories for half an hour, and holding him in the dark for ten minutes.

Finally, I put on the voice of authority and simply told him to go to sleep. He turned over and did exactly that. It's a beautiful power, and I can totally see how it gets abused all to hell.