Panthera perspecta virginiana

The food is a good reason to go to the pub for a late lunch, or at least it was when I taught at VCU. I still go there for an even-later lunch, although not as often. The prix fixe menu is usually what I want, and only a couple of times have they run out of the daily offering. Ash does take a day off now and then. Eating at the bar and drinking at the tables is the common state of affairs. It is not like I have looked diligently for the kitchen, and it is not like I have even been to every square foot of the pub, but I remain a little unsure after twenty years of exactly how the kitchen works as well as where it is. ...

An inch of rain will fill Reedy Creek. For a few hours afterwards, it can bill itself as a tributary of the James River. Most of the time it is quiet, with the water moving just fast enough to prevent the the mosquitoes from setting up their rookeries. This photo was taken on a cool day late in May. It had begun to rain lightly, and the often perfectly reflective water had enough ripples on it to blur the reflection. ...

I cannot say that I have forgotten about the pandemic, and I spend only a little time thinking about. Six years have pushed the strangeness of the experience into the background and I have come to accept the artifacts it left behind. Example artifact number one is the ubiquity of little cylinders containing water that we take everywhere we go. We augment them with stickers because there are fewer brands and colors than there are people, and it is human nature to be a part of the team and stand out, all at once. ...

Background The first half of 2026 is reaching its end, and like everyone else in technology or on its periphery, I have been listening to the predictions of the end times for human programming. Although I made a living as a programmer for over half of the previous fifty years, I had done very little programming after the introduction of ChatGPT. Predictions of the end of occupations often reflect the apocryphal story of the demise of buggy whip makers when the automobile replaced the horse as a way of getting around. There are more counterexamples than there are stories supporting extinction of one technology by another. The first one that jumps to mind is media: radio did not end the newspaper, television did not end radio, the Internet did not end television. The delivery vehicles of media have intermarried if not fully merged. Photography did not end painting and drawing. The iPhone did not end cameras. Even AI slop has not ended photography. ...

The chemistry department at the university where I worked decided to save money by building their own Linux workstations for research. It was a good decision; you can build one for half the price of the pre-assembled unit even now. Assembly was an adventure in tiny parts. Although the final product is a desk hog sporting a room heater disguised as a GPU card, the parts inside are tiny and delicate. ...

Visits to the pub are unsettling. Everyone agrees. No matter how pleasant, each visit is a little disorienting, and it makes no difference whether you are perched on a bar stool or sitting at one of the renamed tables. By its nature, human conversation is spontaneous. You may have your script worked out before you say the first word, but like battle plans in the face of combat, they get set aside. From the first few words, the spontaneity becomes improvisation, and we take it from there. Over the years, I have done my best to scribble a few notes about the conversations I have had at the Lens Nosed Tiger, and frequently I am left with only the impressions, the feelings, and not the words that were spoken and heard. ...