Back From Ashes

Today was an abnormally warm, spring-like day. The sun was out and shining. There was a bit of a breeze and the temperature was in the sixties. So, it seemed a good day to start prepping the garden for springtime planting.

Lana had died, this past December, and we'd opted to have her cremated. We've kept her ashes in the box the pet crematorium delivered her to us in. We'd wanted to spread them in our yard and gardens so that she might give us one last gift.

I just got back in from raking the Moo's ashes into the garden. Hopefully, she'll help make it nice and green in the coming years.

Food or Toy?

So, after a nice, spicy dinner, a bit of sweet often goes well. For me, a frequently-preferred sweet is a nice, freshly-peeled navel orange. So, I reached into the fruit bowl and gathered one up. As I started for the living room, I realized, "oh, it's time for my evening meds." Not wanting to carry the orange with me back to the kitchen, I tossed the orange at my couch before heading back to the other end of the house. Well, my aim was a touch high (actually, I was trying not to clobber my cat with it as he lazed away on my couch). The orange hit the top of one of the back-rest pillows and then started rolling downward and off the couch. It tumbled to the floor and rolled its way to a stop along the one wall. Cira had seen all of this transpire and was immediately captivated by it. I was just going to fetch it up after taking my meds, but decided that it wasn't worth risking her trying to treat it like a chew toy in my absence. So, I reached down, plucked it up and tossed - properly, this time - onto the couch where it came to a stop next to my lounging cat.

I'm not sure Cira knows whether this orange is food or a ball: either way, she's not happy it's not in her possession. When I came back from the kitchen, she was sitting in front of the couch, head cocked, staring intently at the mysterious object and whining. The whining was not diminished by my picking it up to peel it.

Once I finished peeling it, I figured, "offer her a piece so she knows it's food and not some toy I'm withholding from her." Turns out that oranges are one more bit of human food she's not sure she wants to accept as beggings.

Stupid daig.

What the Change?

Vending machines fascinate, vex and confound me. For such a ubiquitous and long-lived technology, vending machines never seem to quite work. Soda machines keep the sodas too warm (or, rarely, dispense a can or bottle of solid ice). Sometimes, you press a button and nothing comes out. Other times, you press a button and something other than what the button is labeled with comes out. The "sold out" light for your preferred item shows up with far too great a frequency.

Perhaps the most confounding and annoying is the coin return. Many times no change is returned. Often, incorrect change is returned. And, even when the amount returned is correct, it's never returned in an ideal mixture.

Case in point, today at work. Our soda machine charges $1.35 for a 20oz bottle of soda. Fortunately, it generally accepts dollar bills. Today was one such lucky day. I put my two dollar bills in and hit the button. I heard the familiar churn and thunking-tumble of the soda's fall (it always sounds like it's falling from the TOP of the machine). I waited a few more seconds to hear if it was going to try to give me my change. Eventually, the coin return mechanism began to churn. It sputterd forth my 65-cents change. However, when I looked in the return slot, I found nothing but nickels. Awesome.

Other times, I have the joy of having to get my money back after it tells me that my soda choice is not available (what happened to the individual "out of selection" lights for each button just staying lit?). Given the price of the sodas, it's generally a case of shoving two dollar bills into the machine. However, when you have to get your money back, instead of simply returning the two dollar bills, it spits back an array of coins. Dammit: I don't need money for the laundromat and I don't need money for parking (many locations around here have switched to centralized parking kiosks that take credit cards - at $2/hr for street parking they kind of have to). So, why does my selection-bereft soda machine insist on giving me coins back for my dollars??

Argh...

Interesting Juxtaposition

From CNN.Com front page: "Woman saves hubby from tiger" and "Tiger fined for spitting":

Brand Suicide

For years, I've seen restaurants proudly place "Zagat rated" signs on their doors or in their windows. Granted, I never really bothered to read to see exactly what their ratings were. I've also never bothered to pick up a Zagat guide to decide where to eat (and the presence or absence of "Zagat rated" sign influenced my decision to patronized a restaurant). However, I always sort of assumed that someone, out there, must have found value in the "recognition". I figured that there must be some value to the "Zagat" brand that restaurants bothered to put the signs in their windows.

Recently, however, Zagat gave KFC some kind of "best fried chicken" rating. Now, I have several problems with this. For starters, how can one give out an award for chain food? I mean, chain food, by it's very definition, is the food equivalent of an industrialized or mass-produced eating experience. Second, if you're going to give a rating to a chain food, how the hell can you justify giving it to KFC? I mean, KFC's food is truly mediocre. I've had a lot of fried chicken, over the years. None of the mass-produced stuff out there is as good as any number of mom & pop shops' stuff (I've had some great fried chicken in places like Memphis, Dallas and a number of other southern locales). So, there's an immediate "red-flag" on the validity of the rating. And, even of the chain food places out there, KFC sucks compared to places like Popeyes (seriously: how can you have "the best fried chicken" when you don't offer a spicy fried chicken??).

At the end of the day, when I see KFC flogging that "best fried chicken" Zagat-rating in their commercials, it pretty much renders any other Zagat ratings I see meaningless. It makes me wonder, "how much did KFC pay for that rating". It also makes me wonder how much financial trouble Zagat was in that they would have sold that rating. I mean, I have to believe that somebody at Zagat stopped to think "if we give out this rating, we severely damage our credibility". So, I'd have to assume that they'd want to make such damage worthwhile. I mean, at this point, if I see a restaurant sporting a Zagat sign, I'm gonna have to ask the manager, "so, how's it feel to be in the same class as KFC?"

Ugh.

Why Ask When I Want It Delivered?

I'm not big on the whole giving flowers thing. Least of all am I a believer in flowers for Hallmark holidays like Valentines Day. I mean, I give flowers, but I like them to be spontaneous and unexpected. So, I generally avoid participating in the traditional flower days.

This year, I actually bought Vallentines flowers for my wife. I had them included a card that said, "because, sometimes I do send flowers". I'd ordered the flowers several days ago. Still not sure why, just seemed the thing to do, this year. When I ordered them from the FTD web site, in addition to asking where to deliver them, they ask when. Since they were for Valentine's day, I asked that they be delivered on Valentine's day.

Imagine my surprise when, after being in Philadelphia all day, today, we get home and I find the flowers sitting on our front porch. Now, if you notice the posting-date of this post, you'll see that I'm writing this on February 13th.  Now, we didn't get home until nearly 21:00. I'm fairly sure that those flowers had to have been delivered before 17:00. I mean, how many florists are delivering after that on a Sunday. So, those flowers were sitting exposed on our front porch for a minimum of four hours. And, they were sitting there on the wrong day. Hell, the flowers delivery tag included a delivery time request of the 14th.

What the fuck? Thanks, guys. What if I'd asked for them to be delivered on the 14th because we weren't going to be getting home until the 14th??

Yeah, I'm kinda pissed.

Do They Really Have Room to Gloat

I wonder why it is the people most likely to teabag in multiplayer, first person shooter games also tend to be the ones with the lowest scores? I mean, any time I've seen some tool do the lame videogame version of teabagging, it's usually someone who's score is in the bottom third of the current match. I guess they have to celebrate the few victories they get, somehow.

Tastes Like Box

The problem with most food out of boxes is that they taste like they came out of boxes.

Les Habs vs. The Killer Bs

I love good game of "old time" hockey. Tonight, I watched the spectacle that was the Boston Bruins vs the Montreal Canadiens.

For starters, I don't care for either team. I'm a Flyers fan and the Flyers have a bit of a history against both teams. It's a history that makes it difficult to root for one team or the other. About the best one can hope for is that the building they're playing against each other in implodes during the game, wiping out both teams.

That said, while I loathe the Canadiens, I at least have a measure of respect for the Broons. So, when the two play, I'd rather see the Canadiens lose. Given the NHL's current points-award system, I'd rather see the Canadiens lose in regulation time than the game go to a tie (if one team has to get two points for an OT win, there's no point in rewarding the other team for just having gotten to OT).

At any rate, as much as I dislike both teams, tonights game was rather fun to watch. It was high-scoring and both teams were in a pissy mood. It was nice to see them going after each other, physically. Still, for all the hits and fighting, it wasn't as penalty-filled as some past Flyers classics. It's likely to be a long time before anyone matches the 419 minutes of penalties of the Flyers/Senators game on 3/25/2004.

Even though this game paled in comparison, penaty-wise, I did take away some nuggets of knowledge:

• PK Subban's pretty much the Mike Green of the Montreal Canadiens: he's a far better shooter than a defenseman. He's also kind of stupid in his on-ice conduct. Here's hoping for a case of PK jelly-brain!
• Apparently, six is at least one player over-capacity for the penalty box at the Boston Garden...
• I'm gonna have to set the DVR to record the next Habs/Bs game...

Lottery Fantasies

Ok, I admit it: I'm one of those people that buys lottery tickets. And, yes, I am fully cognizant of the odds of winning and that I'm, essentially, throwing money away. While my odds of winning without having bought a ticket are only slightly less than having bought one, there's still that small chance. Yet, for the price of just $1, I have a brief "hit" of hope. I've got something I can build fantasies about.

Now, my fantasies range from the mundane to the ridiculous. Like many people, I'd:

• pay off all my bills
• take care of family
• help out some close friends
• give to charities
• quit or reduce working
• buy property
• invest

However, I'd consider doing some things that others might not. For instance, were I to win a large lottery (say, a take-home of $100Mn+) I'd hire a posse of angry midgets to follow me around. I mean "why not". It's not something you see every day. Hell... Maybe when I buy that big estate on a defensible hill with enough natural resources to go "off the grid", I could put a moat around it ...and have those angry midgets patrol the moat (instead of stocking it with alligators).

Password Security

To start with, I'm one of those people that tends to be more security conscious than your average Internet user. That I write as much here (and elsewhere) in a public fashion was a conscious choice done after weighing out the likely risks of doing so.

I've long used complex passwords. Typically, I've used ones that were more complex than required of the systems I use. Hell, where possible, I make it so that I either need two-factor authentication or some kind of difficult to reproduce token rather than a brute-forceable password string.

Still, most web sites, applications, etc., rely on passwords. Most sites are less security conscious than I am allowing short, non-complex passwords that never expire. Of the few sites that show any level of security consciousness, it seems half-assed at best. Some sites only enforce, say, six-character passwords or, worse, only allow 6-10 character passwords. Some sites want you to have "complex" passwords, but then limit the choice of characters you can use to create that complexity.

At least one of the financial institutions I do business with falls into this limited-complex camp.

How freaking secure are your "complex" passwords when you don't allow any of ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ , or . in your passwords???

What's even more annoying about one, particular, financial institution is that they expire their passwords every 45 days. Now, this isn't an institution I deal with on a regular basis. My day-to-day bank allows me to pay all my bills from their portal. This other institution, I only log into when I need some information. So, every time I log in, I have to change my damned password and deal with the fact that they don't allow me to make my passwords as complex as I'd like. Even more fun, they don't allow me to re-use any of the last dozen passwords.While this is good, in theory, given my access frequency, that means it's going to take nearly two years before I can recycle. Now, given that they hamstring me on the passwords I can/would set, it makes memorization of the password even harder. So, pretty much every time I do log in, I have to go through the "I forgot my password" hassle. If they let me set the passwords I wanted, they'd be good against a brute-force attack for a number of years (basically, a cracking tool would have to work through several hundred quadrillion combinations to stumble on my particular combinations). But, no. I'm stuck with passwords that are several orders of magnitude less complex.

Hum a Jaunty Tune

Much as I don't understand how it is that every morning I wake up, I have some random music rattling about my head, I don't understand how new ones end up getting featured throughout the day. I mean, in some cases, it's because I accidentally heard an earwig. But, in most cases, it's completely random. With wakeups, it's generally a song I've not heard in ages (and didn't even ever particularly like). Even more bizarrely, it's rarely associated with whatever it was I was dreaming just before waking up. In the rare cases that I was dreaming it, the music is usually what wakes me up.

At any rate, I've got another random tune stuck in my head and it got there unprompted and in the middle of the day. All I can do, at this point, is think, "Argh: how did I get Symphony of Destruction stuck in my head??"

Sensible Benchmarks

Does it make sense to measure the expanse of my remaining work years against a retirement system that won't be there by the time I'm eligible?

Some Perches Are Better Than Others

Apparently, some cats think that "on top of the breadmaker, on the kitchen-counter" is a good place to perch. I guess when trying to survey the kitchen for scurrying mice, particularly when a favored scurry-path is behind the dryer on which the breadmaker sits, it makes sense. Still... The prospect of the cats shedding into the heat-vents of the breadmaker (and the likely smell it will make the next time it's used) is less than appetizing.

Iconic Jerseys?

So, I'm watching the Flyers play the Tampa Bay Lightning. Unfortunately, NHL Center Ice had picked the Tampa coverage to carry (it seems the Philly coverage is rarely chosen - I can only guess that CSN Philly charges more for their feed than most other broadcasters).

Next year, Tampa is going to be giving season ticket holders RFID-equipped jerseys. The jerseys will act as the wearers' tickets and also be tied to their credit cards (or whatever) so that everything in the arena can be taken car of with a simple swipe over the RFID's location. Kind of neat but also rather creepy.

Creepiness aside, the thing that stuck out in this whole segment was how jazzed the ownership was about the new jersey design for next year. To me it looked like rubbish, but, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," I guess. At any rate, the people responsible for this design were going on and on about how they were trying to achieve an "iconic design" in the class of the New York Yankees' pinstripes. All I could think was, "what a freaking joke... You're a hockey team in TAMPA: how the hell do you think you're EVER going to be as iconic as a team like the Yankees?" I mean, yeah, great thing to strive for, but, c'mon. It strikes me as one of those "world famous in Poland" kind of deals.

Thanks, Winter

I'm one of those people that keeps a close eye on my vehicles' average gas consumption rates. According to my fuel logbooks, my wife's SUV has gotten around 20.2 MPG over the last two-plus years; my sedan has gotten 24.7.

This past week, the DC area was visited by a fast-falling snowstorm that hit right around rush-hour (and, "rush-hour", in the DC area, is normally a four hour window in the morning and evening). When I go to my regular office, it's about a 19-mile commute. When traffic's sane, it's about a 35-minute trip. Wednesday, that same trip took me over 5.5 hours to complete. Normally, I get about 22MPG on that 19-mile trip when taking my wife's SUV to/from work. In addition to the five-hour snow-penalty, there was a serious MPG penalty: I got around 11.2MPG from the tank. Given that I'd already made the 22MPG morning run to get to the office, it means I probably got rather less than 11.2MPG on the trip home.

Argh. I hate driving in the DC-area during bad weather.

Assault With a Breadly-Weapon

My wife, Donna, loves to bake. She bakes cakes. She bakes cookies. She bakes pies ...She bakes all sorts of things. Most of all, she bakes all sorts of breads (we haven't bought bread from the store in years). 

Recently, she'd made a couple of baguettes from which to make garlic-bread to go with a pasta dinner she'd prepared. Normally, for just the two of us, we eat maybe half a baguette. The dogs normally get the other half chopped up in their next meal.

Normally, a batch of the baguette dough makes two loaves - one of which she bakes off, immediately, the other of which she wraps up and freezes. This time, however, she baked up both loaves. The second, unused loaf, she apparently lost track of, as I found it, a few days later, buried on one of the kitchen counters. Left to sit exposed to the air, it had hardened up quite a bit. I chose to alert her of my find by tapping her on the head with it. I don't think it would have been any more effective had it had "Louisville" branded into the side of it. She was not pleased, but I was rather amused by it.

Milestones of Aging

I dunno why, but, tonight, it suddenly occurred to me, "people born in 1990 will be legal to drink this year". It was a realization that made me feel old. It made me feel old, in part, because it means that, in just shy of one year, there will be kids in the US taking their first legal drinks who weren't even born, yet, when I took my first legal drink.

There's a lot of commonly recognized age milestones in life. For someone born in the US, those are typically things like:

• Turning 16 and being allowed to drive (though, it seems that's getting delayed in some states)
• Turning 18 and being allowed to vote, sign contracts, be tried as an adult (without special legal considerations)
• Turning 21 and being allowed to drink
• Turning 25 and being able to rent a car by yourself (and, in many cases starting on the downhill curve of auto insurance rates)
• Turning 30 ...because you're now "over the hill"
• Turning 55 and, at least according to AARP, joining the ranks of "senior citizens"
• Turning whatever age you're eligible to start receiving Social Security

In addition to these, there are also other less well recognized milestones. These are the kinds of milestones that make you say, "fuck: I'm getting old".

• The first time you open up a Playboy and realize, "I'm older than the Playmate of the Month".
• Remembering sneaking your dad's porn mags when you were a kid looking for porn
• When you get hit by a driver who wasn't even born when you first got your drivers license.
• Looking around, at a concert or nightclub, and being astonished at the younger elements of the crowd being old enough to drink
• Realizing that the T-shirt you're wearing is older than some of the adults in the room
• Having the original versions of several of the T-shirt being hawked by Hot Topic (et. al.)
• Watching a sporting event where the teams are wearing their "throwback" uniforms and remembering when those were the uniforms were current
• Realizing that the "underground" music you love(d) is now twenty or more years old
• Realizing that the band Tshirt some kid is wearing was from a band who's lead-singer (etc.) died before that kid was even born.
• Realizing that so many of the things that are "retro-cool" were things you grew up with or came of age with.
• When your first relative dies of natural causes
• When your first parent dies of natural causes
• When your first peer dies of natural causes
• Realizing that you've been working for a living for nearly two decades ...and that you still have two (or more) decades yet left to work.

There's tons more. It seems I discover more and more of them each day. And, for better or worse, there's many I won't get to experience (e.g., unlike my mother, I'll never have the sobering realization of having a child who's 30, or 40 or has just reached retirement-age).

Maybe GV transcription would improve if they let us submit vmails with corrected transcriptions?

So, I use Google Voice as a call-direction and answering service. When calls go to voicemail, they get transcribed. Once transcribed, I get an email with the transcription and a link to the  recording of the call. Today, I got an email with the following transcription.

Hey Tom, It's Lauren. Mike. Share want to be there, call me. Sometimes Florida. I completely forgot. So I wasn't sure what that was about anyway, gimme a call back when you get a chance. X X XX X:XX XX. Thanks. Bye. 

Now, if the above doesn't make a lot of sense, it's because it's only slightly close to the audio content of the message. Basically, it's close enough that I can sorta understand how it might be transcribed that way (I can only assume GV's transcription software doesn't have good lexical/contextual engines).

When you get the transcription, there's usually two little buttons at the end asking you to rate whether it was useful or not. If you select the "not" option, they ask if you're willing to submit it to help them improve their service. Oddly, there's not the option for you to submit your own transcription. So, if you do submit it, it's completely a matter of faith that it will be constructively used - that, if someone else actually does listen to it, they'll hear it the same way you did.

Ugh: not a perfect process.

I Smell Like a Coffee Shop in Autumn

During hockey season, my wife and I go up to Philadelphia about twice a month to catch Flyers games. Each trip is sort of a ritual for us. We drive up early so that we can make several stops while in Philadelphia - some combination of stops: to get a cheesesteak (of the Geno's/Pat's/Jim's troika, I prefer Jim's); to stop at the Italian market for meats or kitchen appliances; to get gelato; to get pastries; or, to get soaps.

When we get soaps, it's from Duross and Langel. I usually like to get mint or citrus soaps. However, I also sometimes pick up some random "flavor". Apparently, on the last visit, I must have picked up a bar of pumpkin-spice soap. Now, I don't specifically remember having bought this pumpkin-spice soap. Having used it, this morning, I now feel like Starbucks smells in October. It's not horrible, just unsettling.

Turn of Fortune

Wednesday night, the DC area received a sudden snow of 5". This snowfall happened right at rush hour, paralyzing the area. My 20mi commute, which, most evenings, takes about 35 minutes, instead, took over 335 minutes. And, when I came home, I came home to a dark house - the snow-covered trees having taken down the lines on my block and my electricity with it.

The power was off all that evening, the next day and into this evening. I didn't want to spend another night at home, in the cold and dark. I wasn't sleepy, so I didn't want to pack it in, early. So, what to do? Donna and I decided to get out of the house and see a movie. We left the cold, dark house to go see Black Swan.

When we returned, we came back to a warm, lit house. The power had been restored in our absence. The heater had kicked on and warmed the house. Every light attached to a turned on switch was lit.

Infinitely Re-Watchable Movies

There are many great movies out there and there are many, many awful movies out there. However, it seems that, in terms of ability to be watched, over and over, without becoming tired of it, a movie has to have some other quality to it that usually puts it closer to the awful end of the spectrum than the great end of the spectrum.

One of the earliest movies I recall attaining that status of infinitely repeatably-watchable was The Princess Bride. It was just one of those movies you could pop in the VCR (or stumble upon while flipping through the TV channels) and enjoyable watch it, no matter how many times you'd seen it before or at what part of the movie you started watching it. It's a pretty good movie, but it would probably never be considered a "great movie" (no one's ever gonna lump it in the same category as The Godfather).

The next movie I found that fell into this "infinitely repeatably-watchable" category is the movie The Fifth Element. It most definitely is not a great movie. Its plot and story are absurd. Its characters are barely two-dimensional, let alone having a quality that approaches "depth" - which, given the cast, is probably to be expected. The special effects are merely 'ok'. In sum, there's little about the movie that makes it "stand out". Overall, the movie is almost a pure style-piece. However, at the end of the day, it's the kind of movie that makes no pretensions about what it is, nor does it meander from trying to be one kind of movie or another. It's almost fascinating in just how "empty" it is. I don't know what it is that does it, but it's the kind of movie I can sit down and watch, over and over, and I can do so, no matter my mood or whether I've watched from the beginning or some mid-point.

Reserved Terms?

It seems that, somewhere along the lines of my cultural acclimation, I have come to associate certain expectations with the term "custom". And, while I realize, at a rational level, that "custom" is a fairly generic term, I can't help but think of the various TV shows centered on "custom choppers", "custom hotrods" and the like.

Today, I got a sandwich from the Wholefoods sandwich counter. I got one of their daily specials. However, Wholefoods frequently uses red onions, which I have an allergy to, on their sandwiches. Indeed, such was the case for the specialty sandwich I wanted to order today. Thus, I asked the sandwich-maker to substitute raw white onions for the grilled red onions that are part of the sandwich's normal recipe. Now, I don't know whether it was this substitution that warranted it or that it was a daily special, but, the price label on my sandwich's bag said, "custom sandwich". Seeing that label almost immediately prompted me to wonder if I should expect the sandwich in the bag to have some kind of flame paintjob or ridiculous amounts of chrome.

Oooo! Sparkly

With NewDawg, when there's arguments, there's now two sets of scary white teeth flashing and clicking:

Side Effects

Over my life, I've been on a number of medications - primarily for my epilepsy. I've also been on medications for arthritis, migraines, depression and high blood pressure. Each has its upsides and down sides.

The arthritis medications tend to jack with my blood pressure. It was this side-effect that made it so I had to go on high blood pressure medications earlier than genetics might have otherwise required. Towards the end, the arthritis medications were combining with my epilepsy meds to fuck with my liver. Fortunately, dietary changes seems to have removed the need for a daily regimen of arthritis medications.

I've only really been on a couple blood pressure medications. I had to try three or four to find ones that were both effective and didn't render me chronically sleepy. Found that medication at least five years ago and have been on it since then. Other than controlling my blood pressure, it doesn't seem to have any side effects (obviously, if it does, I'm not noticing them or they'll be something that slowly contributes to my ultimate demise).

Fortunately, the migraine medications I've been on have been allocated "as-needed". That is, I only need to take them when I feel a migraine coming on or am in the undeniable midst of a migraine. I generally only seem to have medication-requiring migraines a couple times a year. So, while they may have side effects, the brevity of application means that I don't really notice them compared to the relief I get from the migraine pain.

I've had a life-long problem with depression. For the most part, it's manageable. However, there've been times where it genuinely interfered with my life. Most frequently, it's made me very withdrawn. Sometimes, it's gotten to the point of simply wanting to be "done" with everything. It's made it both so that I've either slept all the time or slept not at all. Once, in the latter-half of my mid-20s, I tried tackling the problem with medication. I tried a number of different medications. Most of them, their side-effects outweighed any curative or even palliative value. The only one that seemed to have more positive effects, for me, than negative effects was Paxil. It ended up making me feel pretty good: got me out of my hole and got me back to wanting to be involved with people and life.

Unfortunately, getting out of the hole and back into life is that sex is part of a normal life. And, while Paxil didn't curb desire or ability to act on desire, it did make it so that sexual engagement was ultimately an exercise in frustration. Nothing like being interest and able to perform but not being able to "achieve satisfaction". Ultimately, it was this lack of "satisfaction" that caused me to quit the medication. Fortunately, it seemed to have reset my body's chemistry such that I could get along without it and its interfering effects.

Epilepsy has been my biggest problem. Unlike the anti-depression meds, where I could simply discontinue use when they became problematic, my only choice with epilepsy medications has been "try another." Without the epilepsy meds, my seizures come back (and, with some of them, they still do, any way).

Over the years, I've been on: Dilantin, Depakote, Topamax, Lamictal and Keppra.

• From age 13 - when I had my first seizure and was diagnosed - to age twenty, I was on Dilantin. Over the time I was on the medication, my body became more and more sensitive to it and it became less and less effective at controlling my seizures. While I've never had a good body self-image, the Dilantin really skewed it: the Dilantin caused me to become skeletally thin, but I still saw myself as being rather overweight. At the same time, toxic episodes with it caused me to display other, severely distorted thinking patterns that bordered on psychosis. During high school, my parents got called in by teachers who were concerned that I was having a drug-abuse problem. It was only after a final cluster of seizures that we sought out a better agent for control.
• From age 20 to age thirty-seven, I was on Depakote. My neurologist, at the time, chose it because, in addition to being an anti-epileptic, it was known to help patients with depression disorders and migraines - both problems I've had, lifelong. Overall, it worked rather well at controlling my seizures, reduced the frequency (though not the severity) of migraines and reduced most of my depression episodes. Pluse, it didn't seem to have overtly-negative mental effects. Yeah, I gained sixty pounds in my first five years, but my seizures were under control and I wasn't psycho like I was on Dilantin. In retrospect, however, I realized that it had turned me into a zombie. Much of my reckless behavior of my twenties was likely attempts at feeling something from life. Eventually, I gave up much of that reckless behavior, mostly due to it not having any real emotive reward.
• Starting the summer of my 37th year, I switched to Topamax. The Depakote had started to show severe effects on my liver. While I was no longer gaining weight on the Depakote, I wasn't losing any, either. So, my neurologist decided to try me on Topamax since a common side-effect was weight loss. This drug lasted around a year. In that year, I dropped fifty pounds. Ultimately, I ended up in the hospital, twice, with pancreatitis caused by the Topamax. It had also turned me into a nervous, anxiety-ridden wreck. But, at least I was at something approaching a healthy weight.
• Starting in early fall of my 38th year, my neurologist tried switching me to Lamictal. This medicine lasted me a little less than a year before it became clear that it wasn't the medication for me. Most of my Depakote weight returned and, after nine months on it, I had my first seizure in nearly 20 years.
• Now, I'm on Keppra. It's been an interesting ride. It seems to control my seizures. Unfortunately, if I don't boost my intake of vitabmin B⁶, I suffer from "kepprage". My depression symptoms are more frequent and deeper than they've been since I'd initially switched to Depakote. I'm also a bit disconnected from my life - though I don't know if that's the medication or the lack of depression-control. Still, it's better than the chronic anxiety attacks of Topamax or psychosis of Dilantin. The other "fun" thing about it is the chronic paresthesia. This symptom varies from being barely noticeable to feeling as though I'm wearing a full-body rubber-suit.The morning tooth-brushing ritual often feels like I'm brushing someone else's teeth. Sex feels like I'm using someone else's dick to fuck with. This latter part is manageable if I'm not having to wear condoms, but the deadening effects of condoms on top of the paresthesia makes condom-requiring sex-acts pretty much pointless. Increasing my vitamin E intake seems to help the paresthesia, but only if I'm taking high doses (1000 IU or higher daily supplements). Even at high doses, it only makes it so that I only notice it when having sex.

I'm now 40 years old (and turn 41, tomorrow). I need to decide whether the chronic lack of sexual satisfaction is something I want to continue living with or not. I mean, at forty, should I really care that sex, pretty much, sucks? I don't even know that changing to another medication is going to improve things. I mean, even if the paresthesia went away, the new medication might cause some other side effect that would make sex either a non-starter or pointless/joyless to engage in. Maybe I should just figure "I'm too old for sex" and move on?

Kinect: One Man's (First) Experience

A long-time friend of mine gave me a Kinect controller for my Xbox as a late Christmas/early birthday present. I didn't get a chance to start playing with it the first day. I guess I have to turn my geek-card in, since I didn't drop my "life" to start messing with it. Then again, having a "life" probably made me forfeit my geek-card long ago.

At any rate, it didn't languish too long - only about thirty-six hours. I couldn't get to it yesterday, when I got home from work, because I was beat and we were going out for the evening, later. I only got chance enough to take it out of its shipping box and place the whole Kinect package/box in my television case before I staggered upstairs for a several-hour nap. After the nap, we got ready to go out, then were gone until around 03:00. I had a Flyers game in Philly that I needed to head out of town for, first thing in the morning, so, I went up to our iceox bedroom and sacked out. After my alarm went off, I staggered downstairs and looked at the still sealed carton. It glared at me as I readied myself for the day's travel and mocked me as I headed out the door. It was still looming in its box when I returned.

Finally, around 22:00, after playing with the pups upon returning home, I set about getting the device set up. I gotta admit, it's a bit nifty. Being able to control my system with my voice and waves of my hands gives kind of a Jedi feeling.That said, it's still very much a new product. It shows signs of being rather cool, but still lacks a lot.

It comes with a video chat functionality. Unfortunately, since it doesn't (yet?) link to services like Skype, you can only video chat with other Kinect owners. There aren't a lot of them right now - at least, not in my circle of friends. So, this isn't likely to be a useful feature any time soon.

While the device is pretty good at figuring out that there's more than one person in the room, it seems to be confused by pets. In fairness, pets are confused by interactions with the Kinect. My cats seem convinced that my waving about is an invitation to them to come be petted. Cats suddenly appearing in what the Kinect sees as control points (my hands) causes the Kinect to sort of lose track of things.

The Kinect also offers voice-control of Xbox functions. Unfortunately, that control isn't well-integrated into the Xbox modules I like to use. Probably doesn't help that the initial Kinect code release doesn't seem to support much more than the most rudimentary of commands. Right now, it's kind of like the dumbest pet you've ever owned or encountered, only dumber. If it were a pet, you'd have to put a hockey helmet on it.Hopefully, as the product matures and code updates come out, it will receive a larger repertoire of spoken commands. For now, the appeal of the voice commands wears off quickly.

At any rate, I ran it through its setup paces and even played some of the games that the device came with. The games are reminiscent of the Wii Fit stuff, without the worry that you'll destroy a controller-board. The Kinect wants a fair amount of motion-space. My living room is barely big enough. I had to move our ottoman out of the way to complete the setup (otherwise, it would eclipse the Kinect's view of my lower legs, causing the Kinect to render my body-position as kneeling in mid-air). While our living room isn't huge, it isn't as small or furniture-restricted as that of many of my friends. So, bear your gaming area's geometry in mind when considering the purchase.

After playing with it a bit, it started to creep me out, a bit. The Kinect has glowing red and green LEDs on the front. When it's active, it puts a little thumbnail of what it "sees" in a little window on your screen. Combine the cold, dead look of the LEDs and the realization that you're being watched, heard and recognized, and you get kind of a 1984/2001 feeling. I gotta think that, as/if these things proliferate, advertisers and hackers alike will want to make use of the Kinects' capabilities. Yeah, you get a nifty gaming interface, but, you realize that you're starting to sell yet another part of your life to "the machine". While the Wii only has a motion sensor bar, the Kinect has eyes and ears and, for the sake of entertainment, you're potentially making yourself observable, each and every time you turn it on.

Oh well...

At any rate, if they ever fully realize the gaming potential and mature the gesture and voice interfaces, it should be pretty cool (imagine in-game fights if you're playing NHL 2K games over Xbox Live!). If Microsoft gets smart and partners with Skype (and/or others), it will be a nifty communication device to keep in touch with far-flung friends and family. For now, it's going to be a "yay, I have one" affair, but will probably only be used, briefly, each time there's a new code update (i.e., to see "what can it do, now?"). Guess I'll also have to test it with each new game I get to see what it's useful for. I'm guessing for most legacy games, it will simply remove the need to have my headset when I want to trash-talk during online gaming (and, I'll have to figure out how to mute that in unobvious ways).

 

Wonder-Inducing Team

One wonders what the Flyers' record might be like if they had a competent power play.

One wonders what the Flyers' record might be like if they could actually hold onto a 2+ goal lead.

One wonders what the Flyers' record might be like if they consistently played an entire sixty, contiguous minutes of hockey.

Just Shoot Me

I know I'm not the only person to ever think or utter the words, "just shoot me." I mean, there even used to be a crappy sitcom by that name.

The past couple weeks, I've been working on a project at work that has been an exercise in nearly endless frustration. Today, when it finally looked like things might be turning a corner, what was around the corner turned out to be a yawning, spike-filled chasm.

For better or worse, where I work comes with very formidably-armed guards. Thus, if I ever really wanted to seek permanent relief from my frustrations, I could probably figure out a way to get myself fatally lit-up. I'd just need to figure out who the most trigger-happy guard was and work on him/her.

Hmm... Probably an exclusion in my various insurance policies for that, somehow.

Timeliness

The problem with wisdom and perspective is that they are too often gained well after it's too late to apply them to yourself. Worse, those who you'd try to impart that knowledge to are never in a place where they will want to learn from it.

Old Man of the Net

Ok, I realize that there's plenty of people out there who've been on the Internet longer than me. I mean, I really only started using it in 1989.

I'd hit an article through StumleUpon about the 100 oldest domains on the Internet. The first .com domains were registered in 1985. I've had my domain, xanthia.com, for quite a while, but couldn't remember exactly when I'd registered it. So, I hit up `whois`, right quick:

Domain Name: XANTHIA.COM
[...]
Updated Date: 11-sep-2009
Creation Date: 27-sep-1995
Expiration Date: 26-sep-2014

I set up my current, primary email address, back when I registered my domain. So, I've had the same primary email address since 1995 (over 15 years, now!) and just ten years less than the oldest .com domain names have existed.

As a side note, having an email address, that long, means that your address is in just about every spam-bot/address-harvester's email list. All I can say is, "thank god for anti-spam software".

Smell vs. Taste

Yesterday's pork vindaloo was awesome. Unfortunately, thirty hours later and the house still kinda smells like rancid swack. Oh well. The price you pay for good food.

Where'd They Go

Either Donna didn't make enough eclairs or she gave too many away. Dammit, those were good.

Argh.

Relative Measures

So, I posted to my FaceBook friends list, "which is bigger: a shitload or a fuckload? A regular fuckload or a metric fuckload?" I mean, FaceBook's the place where you post questions of earth-shattering importance right? Wait, that's Yahoo Questions... Oh well. I got the following responses:

• 
  

  McG

    Does a fuckton figure in any of that?
  

  Yesterday at 12:54am · 
• 
  

  PPC

  
  

  a fuckload is larger than a shitload. A shitload is simply a large amount a fuckload is an extremely large amount. In sequence it is:
  A squirt
  a Piss full = 8 squirts
  A crapload = 4 piss fulls
  A Shitoad = 2 craploads
  A fuckload = 4 shitloads
  
  A metric fuckload is a misnomer the proper term is Metric fuckton which is a measure of weight not volume

  
  

  Yesterday at 1:02am ·  ·  1 person
• 
  

  DGP

   Typically, my shitloads are larger than my fuckloads.
  

  Yesterday at 6:15am · 

Which, really, is far more informative of a response than I'd expected.

Wasted Weekend Redeemed?

Ok, so, this weekend has been an utter waste. I mean, two days into a three day weekend and all I've accomplished is sawing a lotta wood (figurative). At least Donna was able to do something constructive in the form of tonight's dinner: a pan-seared pork tenderloin that was then liberally sprinkled with Penzies Bavarian seasoning and then slow-roasted and served with a nice pan-sauce of white wine, shallots, chicken broth and dijon mustard. On the side, she served-up a nice mix of roasted julienned carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, italian seasoning, bosari salt, and garlic/pepper mix.

Right now, she's in the process of making pastry to house the moca/dark-chocolate custard she made, earlier. Gonna be eclairs for for desert and breakfast.

 

I would not shed a single tear if I were to witness Sean Avery take a devastating, career-ending injury during a game.

I Hate Long Weekends

To be honest, I hate long "holiday" weekends. I particularly hate the ones that aren't purpose-specific (such as Thanksgiving weekends are). That yawning expanse of unstructured time feels like something must be done with it. However, absent an organizing-theme, I invariably end up just sitting around doing nothing.

When I was younger, a "wasted weekend" was one where I spent the weekend wasted. Now, a "wasted weekend" is one that I simply fritter away the extended break doing nothing.

Fmeh.

One of the things that bugged me about Star Wars clone-troopers is, what was the basis for specialization or ranking-up?

Earthstorm's (movie on SyFy) SFX are laughably bad. Looks like rendered on a 5 year old PC.

I'm a geezer: I remember when you used to only find "paid programming" on between 1AM and 5AM.

Senior-moments in the Modern Era

I dunno whether it's ADD or just that I'm on the backside of the aging curve, but, sometimes I'm forgetful. Today, I had a particularly iffy moment. I was reading a web page that made me go, "a hah! I need to look something up." Unfortunately, it was only very tangentially related to what I had been reading. At any rate, I clicked <CTRL-T> to open a new tab. As I was moving my cursor up to type a search term (or, perhaps even a URL), I forgot what I was going to type. Because what I wanted to type was only barely-related to the page I'd just been viewing, that page failed to bring back to mind what I'd forgotten in that brief instance.

Argh.

Fuck You, FDA

I dunno whether it's a manifestation of good intentions or the result of behind-the-scenes lobbying, but recent FDA actions has led to a number of effective medications being taken off the market.

The FDA has only really been certifying the effectiveness and safety of all medications since the early sixties. Prior to that point in time, medications could be certified, but they didn't have to be. When the mandatory certification rules were originally put in place, products on the market prior to that date were grandfathered. Makers could seek certification under the new rules, but they were not required to.

Starting around 2007, the FDA set about rectifying this situation. The FDA decided that any prescription medications previously grandfathered and still on the market would have to be put through the certification process. Unfortunately, because all such products are well outside of patent protections, any pharmaceutical company that would undertake the costs of getting the certification would have little financial incentive to do so.

Certification costs money and research time. Making such investments is usually rewarded by having a market-lock on a particular drug - but only if it's a new drug. Old drugs would be granted no such guaranteed return on investment. So, for the most part, these old drugs are simply being forced off the market as neither the original patent holders or the low-margin generics makers are undertaking the expense to certify.

I wouldn't even know about this, but for the fact that a drug that worked for me was taken off the market, last year (or the year before). I suffer from migraines. My doctor had periodically prescribed me Midrin to help with them. Midrin was available for cheap and it was effective for many of my migraines. Now, it's not available. Now, my options are only new and expensive drugs. Worse, these new drugs have much shorter track-records, so overall efficacy and long-term safety is very much "unknown". Even better, many new drugs aren't covered by health insurance or are covered as "top-tier" non-generic co-pay structures. So, where I previously could get enough effective meds to last me half a year for less than $30 (insured or not), I now have to cough up a $60 co-pay for less than a dozen pills (without insurance, that dozen pills would be over $300). Even better than this price increase is that several of these more expensive drugs just don't work. And, of the options that do, the side-effects lists are pretty daunting.

But, I feel so much safer now. I feel so protected by the FDA. So, kudos to those fuckers for putting policies in place that sound (sorta) reasonable in theory but turn out to be absolutely horrible in practice. I guess this is the result of the FDA being yet another government agency bought and paid for by big business.

Automated Call Handling

I hate automated call-handling systems. I know, "who doesn't". However, some call systems are worse than others. The least odious are the ones where you only have to go one or two menus deep. Then, you get the ones where you punch in more menu options than the numbers you dialed to get to the damned call system. Seriously: who thought that was a good idea?? Other fun ones include the ones where you have no option to hit "0" (or equivalent) to speak to just get routed to someone. Or the call trees that force you to wait till they stop reading menu options before it will accept a key-punch (if I know I want option #2, why the fuck do I have to listen to you tell me what option's 3-9 are?). Of course, the ones that send me into a murderous rage are the ones that make you navigate a byzantine call-tree and then dump you either into a voice mailbox or to a bad extension.

The call system my one doctor's "Patient Care" line implements is really hateful. After you navigate the call tree, you get dumped into a wait-queue. Every twenty seconds or so the (oh so) lovely hold music stops, and you're given the option to "press 1 to leave a message or any other key to be placed back in queue." And, then, it just waits for you to do one or the other. It's not entirely clear that you retain your place in queue if you fail to punch a number in time. Making it even more hateful is the fact that it keeps doing this, ad nauseum. Here's a hint: if you've re-prompted me to continue to hold more than twice (and almost definitely if more than six times), chances are I want to continue to wait for someone, so stop bothering me!

Annoying Defaults

I've said it many times before and I'm sure I'll say it many times in the future: every operating system sucks. If you haven't found what it is that makes your particular-favorite suck, you haven't been using it long enough, hard enough or both (either that, or you're just deluding yourself).

One of my co-workers is a Windows geek (well, it's what he's most comfortable using, any way). He likes to make cracks about Linux as though it will insult me, somehow. I'm not sure why he thinks this will work. I mean, it's not like I wrote Linux, so, I don't have any personal stake in it. But, whatever. Hell, I'll be the person at the head of the line to recite my own list of grievances about it. I'd be the first person at the head of the line bitching about pretty much any piece of technology I've used more than casually.

At any rate: Linux...

There are quite a number of things that I hate about Linux. In fact, when the previously-mentioned co-worker said to me, "Linux sucks," I agreed. I did, however, also say, "but it still sucks less than Windows."

One of the things I have always hated about Linux is its default shell. AT&T-derived UNIX operating systems use the old, bog-standard Bourne shell (/bin/sh) as their default shell. The BSDs brought us the C-Shell (/bin/csh) as the default shell (though, some derivatives later shifted to the TENEX C-Shell - /bin/tcsh). IBM and SGI decided that their OSes, being more up to date derivatives of the AT&T UNIX should have a more modern default shell. Both chose to have Korn Shell (/bin/ksh) as their default login shell.

I used to work for SGI. I've done a lot of work on IBM UNIX systems (AIX). So, I got used to having KSH as my default login shell. I also do a lot of scripting. KSH supports standard Bourne shell syntax but adds a number of useful extensions - in particular, I like the internal function construct. So, at this point in my UNIX-using career, I prefer KSH to all other shells.

Linux, unfortunately, being a "UNIX work-alike", has a different default shell than all other UNIX(y) operating systems. All of the previously-mentioned shells used to not be fully "in the public domain". So, when they needed an interactive shell, the Linux-coders came up with the Bourne Again Shell (or 'BASH'). It's kind of a hodgepodge of all of the shells that had existed when BASH was first created. It offers a lot of featuer-commonality with the other shells, plus some of its own tricks. Unfortunately, as with any "be all" solution, it's a giant ball of compromise rather than being particularly optimized.

Any way, none of that is exactly germane. The particular beef I have with Linux is the use of color in many applications and tools outputs. Where I particularly see it is in the output of the directory listing command, `ls`. In most of the Linux distributions I've used, the default login preferences specification turns on the use of color in the out put of `ls`. The output is what I refer to as "angry fruit salad." It's lots of garish shades of yellow, red, green and blue. It's rather hard to read.

Angry Fruit Salad

If I have rights to disable it, I immediately change the login profile to get rid of it. Unfortunately, it's usually the case that I don't have the rights to permanently disable it. So, the best I can do is, immediately upon login, is do `unalias ls`.

But... I shouldn't have to! Criminy: whose brilliant idea was it to make the BASH default alias for `ls`  display in color???

Bad Combo

So, we're reaching that point in the life-cycle of every personal/home bar: we're near the end of a lot of bottles and are due to restock. Last night, I wanted a rum and orange juice. Normally, this is made with a plain rum or even a coconut, banana or mango rum. Last night, all that was left in the house was raspberry rum.

Word to the wise: if anyone ever offers you a rum and OJ made with raspberry rum, DELCLINE! Run away. Run far away. It was exactly the opposite of "OMG teh yumz0rz.".

A Perspective on Consulting

When I first got in the consulting game, back in 2004, I wondered why it was consultants had such a bad rap. After spending five years working with a really good group of peers, I still had no real clue why consultants had a bad rap. I mean, I knew our group was an elite group, but I didn't think that others could have been that mediocre. I mean, if our group was as elite (as it's become evident), one really wonders why: A) partners kept trying to reduce our rates; B) customers balked at our prices; or, C) how it was the person that took over our group managed to drive our group into the ground in under two years.

I mean, I get that people always want things cheaper. If they didn't, how would Walmart exist. But, at the end of the day, if you're paying good money, one would think you'd want good results. As with many things, in consulting, you get no more than you pay for. If you go cheap, you get crappy consultants and worse results. As a group, we always performed. We came in and executed. We knew our shit cold. So, we did it quick and we did it right. Usually, we did it quickly enough that we could be done with the work early enough to do knowledge transfer and other supplemental tasks.

As a group, we rocked. Many times we got brought in, it was to clean up the messes left behind by prior, less competent consultants.

At any rate, I left that world behind. It wasn't really by choice (see prior notation about the group being managed into the ground), but that's beside the point. Now, I work for an organization that brings in vendor consultants to do the types of things I used to do for a living. As a customer, I'm now able to see, in practice, just how above-the-norm our consulting group was. I mean, every guy in our group, in addition to being experts at the things we were officially "experts" on, was also clued and flexible enough to help integrate our technologies with other operating systems, applications, platforms, networks, etc. What I see from these other consultants is people who barely know just the things they're "experts" on. If things go wrong with that software, they don't really know how to fix or recover from it. If the environment isn't exactly like they're used to, they have a hard time coping with it. If they need to do tasks that aren't strictly part of their expertness (i.e., anything not strictly the software they're managing), they're at a loss.

Ugh. SOOOoooo frustrating.

Hooray for Pay-day?

In the era of electronic banking, pay-day is less a joyful occasion than an exercise in financial whiplash. You wake up in the morning to find the joyful message that you're suddenly flush with fundage. And then, you log into your bank's website and start paying bills. If it's the mortgage pay-cycle, you're pretty much wiped-out by the time you're done.

Hooray.

But It's Not Even Monday!

So, this morning, my alarm goes off at its appointed time. Today, that was 0700 (ish: I'm one of those weirdos who sets my clock ahead anywhere from 10-15 minutes, so, looking at my alarm clock's time is only an approximation). In my sleep haze, my arm shot out, blindly, to silence the ringing of my clock - the key word here is "blindly". I was attempting to snooze my alarm (as I don't wake up quickly and often need two, three, or more screams from the alarm). Unfortunately, on my bedstand, is a bottle of lotion in a pump dispenser. Instead of hitting my snooze button, my hand found the pump. My sleep-haze didn't really allow me distinguish a difference in the sensation of touching the snooze button and the pump-top. That is, I didn't distinguish until the results of pushing down on the pump-top. That woke me right the hell up. No need to snooze the alarm multiple times. Probably hadn't helped that the lotion was ice-cold from our habit of leaving the bedroom open in the dead of winter...

Pending Price Drops

If VZW announces the iPhone, tomorrow, the market for dirt-cheap jailbroken iPhones will soon be huge. I mean, if a couple million people decide to dump AT&T for VZW, there's going to be a lot of people looking to unload their AT&T iPhones. That kind of glut's gotta suppress prices (on eBay, etc.). Gonna be a lot of cheap iPhones available for use on T-Mobile, methinks (or even AT&T GSM resellers).

Lurves Me Some Internet Comments

I think, perhaps, the only reason I don't turn off commenting capability in my blog is that no one ever comments directly on it. The only comments I receive are via the automatic cross-posts to my FaceBook page. Thus, I don't have to view, on my own blog, the mind-bending stupidity that is the norm for comments on various Internet news sites.

For instance, it always amuses (in truth, "bemuses" would be a better term) me when someone declares something to be a "mute point". I can almost picture the poster drooling on the keyboard, as he taps away his witty ripost ...all while wearing a damned hockey helmet.

Pointless Prefaces

Has any statement preceded with "don't get mad" ever not resulted in someone getting mad? It's like most of the "pre-apology" structures used by the passive-aggressive. If you don't want me to get mad at you, then don't say it. If you go ahead and say it, then you don't really care whether I get mad, so why bother with the ruse of the preface?

Need soundtrack to Machete.

There's a lot of good stuff in that soundtrack. The closest I can find is the "Mexican Spaghetti Westerns" disc - but it doesn't have all the songs from the movie. In particular, it misses the rendition of Ave Maria by Chingon.

Dear Skype:

Why can't I disable the voicemail on my online phone number? I didn't want it in the first damned place. I simply wanted to be able to direct Google Voice to my laptop. Hell, the status indicator showing it as "Enabled" looks like a pushable buttong (i.e., like I should be able to toggle it on/off by clicking on the status button). Gimme a damned "disable" button. It's stupid that, if I want to (effectively) disable the voicemail, I only have the option to set it to a ridiculously-long ring time.

Vet Your "Facts"

At the end of the day, I don't care what people believe. In general, so long as their beliefs don't negatively impact me, I figure they can feel free to think what they want.

Unfortunately, a non-trivial percentage of "believers" seem to want to convince everyone else of the "rightness" of their beliefs. In principal, I don't have a problem with this, either. I like to explore new ideas. So long as people are respectful in how they seek to push those ideas, then "cool." Unfortunately, so many "believers" try to convince me of their "rightness" using dubious, and often easily-refutable, facts.

I take it as somewhat disrespectful to try to push your beliefs using factual errors. I take it as you saying to me, "I think you're too dumb or too lazy to verify this information." I also take it as them lying to me. I don't tolerate lying very well.

The other option is to believe that they're simply in error. However, if an error is easily corrected by referencing a cardinal document, a few Google searches or whatever, I have to wonder why they're in error. Is it stupidity? Is it laziness? Is it willful ignorance? None of these are good options. None of them leave me any good avenues for preserving any respect for their arguments.

What's So Hard About "One Way"?

What do you think this sign means?

I live in a small sub-division comprised of narrow, one-way streets. Signs, just like the above, are all over the place. If you're at an intersection in my neighborhood, there's either a "One Way" sign, a "Do Not Enter" sign or both. Even absent those signs, the streets' rights of way are only one car width wide when you subtract the on-street parking on both sides: all the parked cars are faced in the direction of the one-way flow.

Somehow, all of these indicators of the one-way nature of my neighborhood's streets don't seem to manage to breach many drivers' awarenesses. On a daily basis, there's usually someone going the wrong way down one or more of the streets in my neighborhood. Even worse, these twits are usually speeding.

Tonight, Donna had to run out to (the soon to be shuttered) local Shoppers Food Warehouse to pick up some last minute cooking supplies. I was trying to watch football. I heard the familiar sound of her Saturn pulling-in to park. Then, I heard shrieking. I shoved on my slippers and ran outside to find out what the commotion was. As I got out the front door, a primer-grey Ford van was speeding away, the wrong way, down the street that Ts into our street.

At first, I figured, "Donna's trying to yell at someone they're going the wrong way." As I said, it's fairly much of a daily occurrence. However, her tenor was a lot more strident and frantic. So, I tried to sort out why she was so keyed-up. Apparently, the initial "wrong way" screaming she'd done was because the van had been going the wrong way down our street. The driver had apparently stopped, turned around (to, presumably start driving in the correct direction) and hit a car parked in front of one of our neighbors' houses. I'd come out just in time to see the guy speeding away from the collision (and doing so the wrong way down a different street).

I asked, "did you get his plate". Sadly, she'd not gotten the plate, as she'd been too frantic trying to get the go to stop. I was just getting my phone out to report the hit-and-run when the same van I'd seen speeding off was coming back up the street.

I'd tried flagging the driver down. At first, he made like he was going to try to get by me, but eventually pulled to the curb. As he was backing up, I took a picture of his plate (lest I forget the plate number in the excitement) and then called the police.

To their credit, Fairfax county definitely gives you your money's worth on EMS for your taxes. A cruiser was there in under ten minutes from the time I'd hit "send" on my cellphone.

I gave the cop a brief summary of the situation and took Donna into the house to calm down.
It's quite likely our collective reaction was out of scale. I dunno. It's just tiring to have idiots speeding the wrong way down our streets, particularly at night. Capping it off with hitting a neighbor's car and initially driving off does nothing to reduce the agitation of things. Trying to use the excuse "I was lost" not only doesn't excuse the act, it pisses us off worse. I mean, when I'm in unfamiliar areas, I try extra hard to follow street signs and not speed - particularly at night.

Ugh.

Beware: Dancing Elephants

Much as I (probably) write too much, I read too much. Hell, I read even more than I write. If you've looked at my post counts, you'll know that if I'm reading more than I write, I'm writing one helluva lot.

In general, I try to stay away from the news. It's not that I don't want to be informed, it's that I don't want to indulge in the theatre of horrors that the news has become. Worse, the news manages to seek out and find more and more horrors on a daily basis. At this point, it's reached a level that transcends horror and becomes more like absurd.

How to deal with theatre of the absurd? Try to enjoy it because it's out of your hands, any way.

Much of what I see, particularly in the financial press, is dancing elephants. I could read and be outraged, but what does that do for me? I'm relatively powerless. I'm just an ant. I can tell that the elephants are dangerous and will someday, in their stumbling about, crush me and everything I hold dear. All I can really do is try to stay out of the way for as long as possible and enjoy the show.

Netflix Horrors

So, last night was a NetFlix night. Could have watched something on Zune or FiOS's "On Demand" service, but, I wasn't feeling like spending the money.

Netflix had a lot of "new arrivals." However, I think what they mean is "new to their service" not "recently made". At any rate, we found a movie that looked like it would be amusingly bad. The movie was Eyeborgs. It was just about as horribly awful as one might suspect. I suspect that my watching of "Eyeborgs" would have been greatly improved by intelligence-reducing consumables. Unfortunately, the kind of reducers needed aren't really legal, so, I can't partake of them. There's alcohol, but I don't think I could manage the balance between mental obliteration and unconsciousness necessary to make it a watchable flick.

Hatred Is Relative

As much as I hate the Penguins, it would be news of the Canadiens' bus fatally-crashing that I would actually cheer.

Morbid Fantasy

Let me start by saying that, in general, I don't frequently wish bodily harm on people. There are some exceptions, though, more frequently, those exceptions fall into the category of "I wouldn't care if something bad happened to person 'X'."

Today, I was watching the NFL playoffs. At one point, a player ran into a pile-up of players and his helmet came rolling out of the pile. Sometimes, when such things happen, I wish the heads were still in them.

The Sad State of Saturday Morning TV

This morning, Puckett got me up early. I couldn't get back to sleep. So, I came downstairs and turned on the TV. I was very sad at what I found.

When I was a kid, we only had like three TV stations - four if you counted PBS (but, PBS only counted to kids if they were Sesame Street or Electric Company age). Yet, somehow, those three stations managed to have far more to watch than the scads of stations available today. Today, it seems like the great cartoons of the past have been replaced with infantile pablum. Ugh. I *really* pity today's kids given their choices of Saturday morning programming. No Superfriends. No Looney Toons. No Tom and Jerry. No outrageous slapstic. TV's been nerfed - especially Saturday morning TV. It's all just thinly veiled attempts to sell toys - mostly "kid-safe" toys.

But I Know What They're Feeding You!

I am a pet owner. I have two cats and two dogs. The cats are a brother/sister pair of Bengals. The dogs are each rescues - one is 10 and one is 2.

My one cat, Grumbles, loves to sit in my lap. Failing that, he glues himself to my side. If I'm sitting down, I have a cat in close proximity.

Mostly, this is a good thing. However, there are days where he has ungodly gas. I'll be sitting there, minding my own business, and this smell, reminiscent of a tire fire, will waft over me from his direction.

It's during such moments that I'm reminded of the Smelly Cat song from the old NBC sitcom, Friends. However, I don't need to wonder "what are they feeding" him. He gets Eukanuba Lamb & Rice adult formula cat food. It's the same food he's been eating for nearly a decade. I dunno why it is that, some days, his gut converts it to a potential WMD.

E-Collars

Dicovered, today, that Puckett is able to drink with his E-collar on. I'm glad we never had to put one on Lana. I'm thinking she, or any other smushed-nosed dog, for that matter - would not have been able to eat or drink with an E-collar on.

Stay *ON* the Grass!

NewDawg needs to learn that getting into the back garden displeases Donna. It took Puckett a couple years to learn that one. Hopefully, Cira will grok that lesson a bit quicker.

Oddly Heard

Even at my age, when I hear the term "serial rapist" on the news, I still first think "who rapes cereal"?

This probably explains why the types of people referred to as "guerillas", when I was watching the news as a kid, are now called "insurgents".

My Wife Is Such the Über-Gawth.

My wife, being the good goth that she is, has lots and lots and lots of Goth, darker New Wave, Industrial and other music in those veins on her iPod.

She recently started using a new iPod Touch because her old iPod died. She'd never synced the Touch to her iTunes app before her old iPod died. So, she lost a lot of music. Now, she's loading up the Touch with the stuff that I'd previously backed up to our NAS. But, she's also supplementing with Amazon downloads. However, what she's been getting from Amazon is making me question her gawth-cred: first Britney, then Black Eyed Peas, now she wants to download some Lady Gaga?

Oy.

Cone of Shame

Puckett's wearing the collar of shame to try to get him to stop scratching at his neck. Right now, he looks like total a nerd-dog:

Right now, I'm trying to find the humor in this. I mean, something's got his skin really pissed off. In addition to where he's scratched a hole in his neck, he's got spots he's licked raw and he's got a lot of hair falling out. He's going back to the vet, next week, to follow up. Gotta make sure the staph hasn't come back and it's time for his annual checkup, any way.

Fuck Me Sideways...

I gotta sit through an FBI warning to watch a movie on Zune streaming???? I mean, why are they popping up a copy warning when the device I'm playing through can't even record it? And, if I've modded my Xbox such that it could record a Zune stream, am I really gonna care about an FBI piracy warning?

I swear: it'd be better to just bit torrent stuff to my NAS and stream from there. Not only would shit be free, but it would be free of these annoying warnings.

Hidden Tributes

I've long had a tradition of putting easter eggs in code I've written. Often times its in the comments, the names of variables or functions or in the error outputs. I'm not very PC and neither is my coding style.

Most recently, I wrote a script that helps set up "advanced routing" on Linux systems. By default, the rules it creates are all taggesd "34". I'm pretty sure that anyone that audits the systems I added the iproute2 rules to won't get the significance of using 34 for the rule numbers.

It's All in the Timing

Good Idea (yes or no): show up late to work the morning after saying "I won't be in if I win the big lottery"?

Every time the PowerBall or MegaMillions gets into the stratosphere, people like to quip how, "if I win, tonight, I won't be in tomorrow." It's pretty much a given at this point.

Last night, someone (twp people, actually) hit it big on the current über jackpot. Today (due to some bug that's making the rounds of the office) a number of people were absent. Wonder how many managers were worried it was a jackpot-related absence?

Porky Pig of Spelling

For some reason, I always seem to screw up the spelling of "misspell".  I'm also rather paranoid of doing so, and never really trust the built-in spell-checkers in my applications. If I'm Internet-connected, I'll typically hit up dictionary.com, just to be sure.

It's probably safest to just use "spelling error", instead. Unfortunately, that requires restructuring the statement and often times compromises the flow of a written work.

Oh well.

Wrong Tool

Recently, I had cause to write a program that needed to create networking rules. This means having to ass-around with doing network/netmask/broadcast calculations. I so infrequently code that, my least-iffy coding skill-set is with UNIX shell scripts. Unfortunately, string handling and mathematical operations are onerous, at best, in these types of programs.

After a number of hours of fighting it, I finally decided to take a break from my self-imposed ordeal. Perhaps a bourne shell script is not the best way to write a CIDR calculator?

In the end, I woke up ass early in the morning, having had an epiphany on how to solve the problem. Mostly, it involved completely avoiding having to do the calculations and decimal/binary/octal conversions. C'est la vie.

Wrong Numbers

How many fucking times does someone need to call your number before they realize they're dialing the same wrong number?? Apparently, at least for the person dialing me, today, the magic number was "5". Some toolbag with a screaming infant in the background was apparently trying to find his friend/club hookup/drug-dealer/whatever and kept calling me. One would think that on just the second try, he'd have figured out, "damn, I wrote this number down wrong."

I hate people.

Bad Habit or Just Laziness

For a little over five years, I worked as a computer consultant. This job required me to travel away from the house on a regular basis (spending anywhere from 100-200 nights a year in hotels). Being married, I got used to staying in regular touch with my wife via instant messenger. Then, when on an extended trip to Europe, I added video chat to the "keeping in touch" toolset.

I'm no longer a road warrior. In fact, I frequently telecommute. Still, a lot of the daily communications happen via IM and sometimes even video-chat. While our house is by no means large (only 1400SqFt.), my work space and my wife's work spaces are in different areas of the house. Using computer-based communication tools is often the most efficacious method for communicating. I can't decide whether video-chatting is better or worse than IMing someone in the same house. Still, either is preferable to screaming.

Doggy Dentistry

So, we recently got a new daig. Unfortunately, we got a dog with the combination of strength, stubbornness and a desire to not stay in her cage. Three times, we've found her out and loose in the room that we'd left her crated in. The most recent episode, upon investigating the crate she'd escaped from, the door of the crate was pulled inward rather than powered outward.

Apparently, the usual "bash it open" approach hadn't worked, so she used her mouth to yank it inward. Unfortunately, we noticed, today, that she was licking her lips, a lot. Upon investigation, we noticed that one of her fangs was chipped to the pulp.

Great.

Donna took her to the vet. Stoopid NewDawg needs to either get the tooth pulled or, have several $1000s worth of root-canal. I love my dog, but, I can't really afford a root-canal for her, right now. So, yank it is. She goes in for the extraction, Friday.

Work as Refuge

So, it's the New Year. And, this year, New Years fell such that we got a nice, long weekend out of it. Many of my friends on FaceBook have been moaning, in their posts, about having to return to work.

Thanks to Hyundai, I am not moaning about the impending return to the office. With their incessant playing of the cloying, hipster music-backed "Hyundai for the Holidays" commercials, I am almost looking forward to returning to work. I mean, while I'm at the office, I'll be away from the TV. that means at least 9-10 hours of relief from their holiday sales commercial, each day!

I'm Black Beard, You Cock-Sucker

Disney's started flogging the latest installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. It appears that they've cast Ian MacShane as Black Beard.

My first, memorable, exposure to Ian MacShane was as the character he played in Deadwood. That character uttered, rather frequently, the word "cocksucker". Since then, any time I see him, no matter the context, I sort of expect him to bust out with the "cocksucker" exclamations.

So, with the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, can we expect to hear Black Beard spout-off with the "cocksuckers"?

(Hopefully) Poor Career Decision

Let me start by saying, "I fucking hate the 'Hyundai for the Holidays' sales campaign." I hate how frequently they've been playing it. I hate the fact that they're playing Christmas music well past Christmas. I hate the fact that this thing doesn't end until the 3rth (such that I can look forward to being continually pissed off by it, till then). I fucking hate the soulless hipsters that Hyundai chose to play music and act in the commercial campaign.

In fact, I hate those soulless hipsters so much I actually bothered to Google-about so I could find out who they were. Turns out that they're "Pomplamoose" and Nataly Dawn is the soulless, dead-eyed chick singing for them. And, just for added insult to injury, I found out that they do cover's of an equally overplayed and annoying performer, Lady Gaga.

Here's hoping they die in a fire.

TV Listings

Yesterday was not a good day for the Big Ten in their various bowl appearances. And, frankly, I don't understand how we've come to having so many bowl games that all it takes for a team to get there is to have a better than .500 record. And, yeah, I realized it's all about money, but I still don't get how a team with a barely-winning record can even accept a bowl bid. Bowls are supposed to be "the big show" and a reward for a good season. How can you even think to go if you were a mediocre team?

At any rate, I was scanning through the cable guide, looking for something to watch - preferably something less painful than the day's bowl games. Eventually, as I hit the upper channel numbers, I noticed that the Big Ten Network was showing, "Big Ten's Greatest Games". I don't imagine that any of this year's bowl games will end up in future episodes of this show.