My parents just bought me The Last Lecture as a present for graduating from college (at 37 years old I’m no whiz kid).

Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose “last lecture” about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47.

Randy Pausch emphasized the joy of life in his “last lecture,” originally given in September 2007.

Pausch died at his home in Virginia, university spokeswoman Anne Watzman said. Pausch and his family moved there last fall to be closer to his wife’s relatives.

Pausch was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in September 2006. His popular last lecture at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007 garnered international attention and was viewed by millions on the Internet. In it, Pausch celebrated living the life he had always dreamed of instead of concentrating on impending death.

As much as I am looking forward to listening to the audio CD of The Last Lecture, I find it very strange that Carnegie Mellon named a footbridge after him and an AP author felt that was one of his significant achievements. If I die and you want to remember me, please mention something other than a footbridge. Thanks.

"Green Zone" is perhaps the worst possible name for the sector of Baghdad where the U.S. and Iraqi governments hold court. It should be called the Bullseye instead. Recent reports indicate that the Green Zone is taking lots of mortar and rocket fire. That’s nothing new.

During my year in the Green Zone, I lost count of the number of mortar attacks. Sometimes, they would come while I was in the shower. One time, a mortar landed close enough to my trailer that the concussion knocked the shampoo bottle out of my hand and pushed me against the wall.

Today’s explosions followed a series of recent mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone. Yesterday, nine US embassy contractors were wounded when mortars were fired.
On May 2, two Indians, a Filipino and a Nepalese national working for the US embassy were killed in a rocket attack. Since then, US embassy officials have ordered staff to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings.

I guess people are wearing their flak jackets in the showers now, since they live in "unprotected buildings." Business as usual. I never did get why they didn’t have sandbags protecting the roofs of those trailers we lived in. The British had them.