Archive for March, 2010
Not an anecdote, just a memory: Peter almost always had a little jar of pickled cocktail onions in the fridge. Not for cocktails; he would just take one out and eat it as a mini-snack every now and then. I don’t know whether that was a lifelong thing or not. I associate it with him […]
My birthday seems like an appropriate time to reflect on one of the most valuable life-lessons-by-example that Peter imparted to me: At around age 50, he left his career in the computer industry to go back to school. He ended up getting two master’s degrees, one in math and one in education; then he became […]
Here’s part 4 (and last) of Peter’s “neat words” list. (See earlier entries: part 1, part 2, part 3.) These are the words starting with R through Z. radar raffis rara-avis ratite recuse riant riant rococo rodomontade romanesco rondo ronyon rumper rumply runcible-spoon rupicolous sackbut satrap schwa scrawny scrim scrimshaw scrod scrofulous scruff scruffy scrum […]
Another of the files rescued from Peter’s hard drive was a letter containing stories and anecdotes about Peter’s father and about Peter’s childhood. A lot of them were pretty bitter and unpleasant, and I won’t post those; and most of them aren’t directly about Peter anyway. But here’s one bit that I thought was interesting […]
Here’s part 3 of Peter’s “neat words” list. (See earlier entries: part 1, part 2.) These are the words starting with J through Q. jabberwocky jactitation jape jejune jocularity jodhpurs kerf kith klinker kludge krait kwashiorkor lambent lethargy ligature liminal lissome lowboy lubricious lucubration Luddite lugubrious luminous-flux lumpenproletariat lumper lustrum macron maelstrom malfeasance manque meander […]
This is a letter that was on Peter’s computer’s hard drive. I assume that he actually mailed it; it would not have been out of character. I’ve tried to reproduce the formatting of the original, which was mostly ordinary, with a couple of exceptions. January 12, 2004 To Whom It May Concern: Today at 10:51, […]
Here’s part 2 of Peter’s “neat words” list. (See earlier entry for part 1 and background.) These are the words starting with F through I. There are quite a lot of F words, for some reason. fandango fanfaronade fantoccini fantod faradism farfel fasces fatuity filch flaccid flang flange flapdoodle fleer flense fletch flibbertigibbet flimsy flinch […]
Some of the first email I ever sent was to Peter, back in college, back in the days when you had to specify the full path from one computer to another of how to reach a recipient. But I don’t think he was ever all that into email. I think there were periods of years […]
Kam rescued a bunch of files from the hard drive from Peter’s computer. Most of them are either mundane (mostly syllabi for the classes he taught) or not suitable for public display (private letters). But two of the files are titled “peters neat words” and “peters neat words 2”; they consist entirely of lists of […]
Yo, Jed~ Your detailed sign-in instructions are perfect. They remind me, however, that my kids have often observed that I take “logical sequential” to an anal-retentive extreme. A couple of years ago I tired of the charge and wrote them an eleven-page memo refuting it, including bullet-points, footnotes, and an index. But back to the […]