Plate of Shrimp

One of the worst things about losing a pet to illness (esp. in the Internet and social media era)? The frequency with which information about what your pet died of begin to plate of shrimp you.

For example: when it come to an illness like kidney disease, how we feed our dogs means that, when the disease has progressed to the point of causing nausea, we've no meaningful way to entice them to eat. Our dogs' daily diet consists heavily of what kibble-fed dogs would probably consist of "treats" (our dogs get real meat, veggies, etc. - so, those aren't really "treats" to them).

Also turns out that dogs quickly associate the nauseated feeling with whatever foods they last ate before becoming sick to their stomachs. With a diet that doesn't leave many things as treats, there's not a broad spectrum of foods with which to entice them to eat. And, because they quickly associate the nauseated feeling with the "treat" foods, that limited-spectrum of "treat" foods is more-quickly burned through than dogs that get the same, manufactured dog food their entire, pre-illness lives.

One of the other suck things about kidney disease is, because your pets can't tell you "I feel sick": you don't usually see symptoms until they're well down the disease's terminal-trajectory; the early symptoms frequently display in a way that seems like behavioral issues rather than obvious signs of illness.

In the case of our cats - particularly our female cat - this manifested as urinating outside of her litterbox. Earlier in her life, eliminating outside of the litter box was behavioral. Things that had prompted it in the past had been: changes to litter-brand; annual vet-trips; us going away for family holidays (Bella got carsick and hated being taken on trips); us going away for work trips; us going away for vacation.

While we always had pet-care, Bella was generally upset for a few days after we got home. This would frequently prompte her to pee on Donna's things (presumably, she blamed Donna for our infrequent absences).

The litter-brand changes weren't our choice. For whatever reason, litter-makers always seem to see the need to "improve" things. And, to "encourage" people to switch to improved products, they'd discontinue the ones our cats liked. This happened a couple times with their litter and at least twice with their food.

As to the vet-trips: it's not like we could, in good conscience, choose to not get them annual exams and shots. I realize plenty of people do skip all that, but I've always tried my best to keep ahead of our pets' health needs. Thus, we were conscientious about veterinary care, diet and the like.

With the exception of the cats - who lived a year and a couple days beyond what was expected for their breed - that conscientiousness seems to have been in vain. We lost the first dog we adopted to cancer after only a bit over seven years ownership. We lost the second dog we adopted to (a different type of) cancer after a little less than seven years of ownership. We just lost our third adopted-dog to kidney disease after just a bit more than six years of ownership. Really hoping the first three dogs were an aberration. It would be nice to see one of our dogs actually live to a ripe old age.

A Pleasant Saturday

On the way home from dog-interviews, had a sudden craving for a milkshake. We stopped at the Five Guys nearest our house - love their oreo shakes. Unfortunately, partway through making my wife's shake, their machine broke. So, had to leave with craving unsated. Decided that we'd swing by the house, drop off our dog and find another place to get shakes. Decided to go to Holy Cow (in the Del Rey neighborhood of Alexandria). Right next door was a little sushi spot. I realized, "huh - I haven't had anything since the borek at the farmers market this morning. I'm kinda hungry and sushi would hit the spot about now." So, we ducked in. Donna got sashimi and I got nigiri. Donna was a bit bummed that they didn't have idako available as sashimi, but they did have it was an appetizer-salad.

We still wanted milkshakes, but figured that fishy milkshake belches would be an ungood thing. So, we walked around Del Rey, for a bit, before finally ending up back at Holy Cow. I got my oreo cookie shake and Donna got a chocolate shake.

Was a nice respite before tax-drudgery. Still silly that it's not even the final week of March and the temperature was up in the mid-70s.

Random Musings on Death

I've had the opportunity to deal with the deaths of loved ones and pets. I've had the opportunity to see to the disposal of the cremated remains of both. What's interesting is that:

• Though radically different in size, the volume of ashes doesn't seem proportionate between a full-grown adult and a 50lb dog.
• Each (pet) death, though done via euthanasia was as unique as the pet being euthanized.

My wife and I believe that one should be present when a pet is being put down. This is at odds with how each was brought up, but it works for us.

Ideally, we're also able to have someone come to the house to administer the euthanasia drugs. This saves the dying pet from having to spend their last few minutes putting up with a car ride to a place they don't like (or are even scared by). It also means that, in a multi-pet household, the surviving pets don't wonder, "where did 'X' disappear to". 

While we've only been able to do the in-home euthanasia thing, once, my wife's preference for doing body-preparation prior to cremation elminates some of the "where did 'X' disappear to" problem. The surviving pets are free to sniff about the body that's being sewn into its burial-shroud and say their goodbyes.

With the euthanasia of our first dog, her survivor howled as we took her out of the house for her death-appointment. He obviously knew something was quite wrong. Doing "in-home" avoids some of that.

Perhaps more interesting is how each pet - even though the methods were notionally the same - died:

• Upon injection of the white (propofol) Lana, seemed unaffected at first. Then, she blinked twice. Then three times. Then slowly slackened and slid to a prone position as we laid her down. Her eyes closed somewhere between sitting an laying. She lay there knocked out, breathing normally. Then, the vet administered the pink (pentobarbitol), and she ceased to breath soon after. There was only very minor twitching in her extremities as the muscles sought the last bits of oxygen. Overall, it was still fairly peaceful.
• Our second dog, Puckett, was in very late stage of cutaneous lymphoma. When we took him in, he went differently. He was severely underweight from the cancer, so the drugs acted far more quickly. With the administration of the white, he quickly melted out of my arms and pancaked onto his blanket. He was so skinny. I could see his heart beating. And when the pink was administered, I could see his heart stop. It stopped long before even the full dose of pink was infused. His only death-twitch was a flip of his tail - almost like he was saying a happy goodbye for the release.
• It was with our cats we first engaged the services of an in-home euthanasia specialist. We'd received the diagnosis that the female cat's kidneys had completely failed and that the males were in stage IV failure. Our vet knew that our cats hated riding in the car, so suggested we look at in-home services. We found Lap of Love. Their staff was very nice and the vet who came to our house to administer the service was very good about providing a non-rushed service (almost too non-rushed: I had a bit of a "can we get on with this" feeling at one point). The cats went a bit differently than the dogs. Upon administration of the white, they went quickly ragdoll. Unlike the dogs - but what is apparently normal for cats - their eyes didn't close. Being less than 20% the weight of the dogs, the administration of the pink was quickly done. And they expired equally quickly - eyes never closing. They twitched a bit more than either of the prior dogs had, but quickly settled.
• This past week/weekend, we assumed we were going to be able to do similar in-home for our Staffie. The vet knew her kidneys were failing, but thought she probably had a few days left if we were able to keep her adequately hydrated (sent us home with several bags of saline having walked us through administering subcutaneous fluids) and eating. Unfortunately, her kidney failure was complicated by a kidney infection. They'd administerd a fairly powerful antibiotic, and she'd initially seemed to rally, but, after about six hours at home, she crashed. We had to abandon our plans to euthanize her at home. In the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, we concluded with the vet "it's time". We took the short trip into the vet hospital. They'd offered to do the service in the car so she wouldn't have to spend her last minutes in the hospital. Problem was, our staffie had far more distaste for the car than the hospital. So, we brought her back to the same room where we'd put Lana and Pucket down six years prior. As sick dogs are want to do, she rallied a bit. Her energy quickly ebbed, though, and she went back to sitting ...though her tail was still wagging and she was still greeting staff as they came in to help with prep. Unlike the prior two dogs, the white didn't make her eyes close. Even though 20% lighter than either of the prior dogs, she didn't succumb to the effects of the white as quickly. Her melt to the quilt was much slower than Lana's had been ...who, in turn, had melted much faster than Puckett had. Instead of looking sleepy, or confused, her eyes just sort of faded. Lights were on, but nobody was home ...much like the cats. And the melt and the lights-out wasn't until well after the white had been completely administered. After she'd fully settled onto the quilt, the vet administered the pink. As with the white, she didn't succumb to its effects until well after it was completely administered. Her breathing shallowed and eventually ceased. A short time later, you could feel her finally leave, and the vet nodded his head that her pulse had finally ceased. As her corpse lay there, there was a lot more twitching than in any of the prior animals' deaths. I guess that, at 8 years and six months' age, her muscles were still a lot more close to in their prime. So, their oxygen starvation elicited greater responses than that of my 17yo cats, my 11yo Lana or my cancer-ridden Puckett. I can only assume the differences were from being a tough little dog ...and probably why she was able to reach the physical state she had without showing symptoms until just a couple days before everything went to hell. 

When Automated Customer-satisfaction Emails Go Horribly, Laughably Awry...

Last night, we had to take our Staffie into the ER at nearly 4AM. We were there to have her put down (due to her kidneys having finally, totally failed). Undoubtedly, in the coming days and weeks, there will be many more posts as I work through my thoughts on yet another loss of pet(s).

This morning, after getting back from dropping her body off at the cremation service, saw new mail notification on my laptop. It was an auto-generated email from our veterinarian's office. It finished out:

We look forward to seeing you and Cira again soon.

Yeah... Maybe your computers should be configured to "know" what services were rendered and whether it's appropriate to send that email.


Yes, I laughed, but it was through a flood of tears that were not happy tears.


Don't get me wrong, even (especially??) in euthanizations, customer-satisfaction is a great thing to try to capture. Just make sure that the tone and content of emails sent for such purposes is appropriately adjusted.

Deathwatch Begins

Apparently, the month of March really seems to hate my/our having pets.

This week, the upset stomach we'd taken Cira to the vet for ultimately resulted in a terminal diagnosis.

It started late Tuesday morning with stomach upset. She'd bolted her food like she often does and then threw it up shortly thereafter. Scarf/barf. This wasn't something she frequently did, but it wasn't completely out of the blue, either. She had the nickname "hollow-dog" for a reason: she's really food-motivated.

Donna tried again with a small, bland food offering. She ate it. And seemed to do ok with it. But she was still showing som signs of nausea, so we called the vet for guidance. They instructed us to come in for an initial evaluation. We were assuming we were succumbing to the usual "overly-nervous dog parents" thing.

The evening vet did an initial evaluation, and decided that, while a little bit dehydrated, she seemed otherwise fine. She was active, waggy and not showing signs of pain - even with fairly firm abdominal palpation. So, he gave her a subcutaneous fluid injection and some anti-nausea medication. He instructed us to bring her back if she showed further symptoms and they'd order further tests and try to address any further symptoms. He also told us to try some Prilosec, the next day, if the nausea persisted.

The remainder of the evening was fairly uneventful, so I went to the office to work, on Wednesday. Cira was still mostly herself, so Donna tried the process of re-introducing her to food. She started with some plain rice and chicken in the morning, and repeated a few more times throughout the day. She'd also given her a Prilosec in the morning, per the vet's orders.

Thursday, I had a doctor's appointment scheduled, so it was going to be a telework day. An hour or so before sunup, I heard Cira hacking - as though she might be gagging or vomiting. Not wanting to light up the whole room, I came over with my cellphone — flashlight on — to check on her. Since I was shortly due to get up to telework, any way, I opted to bring her downstairs with me so she could nap by my side on my couch.

Donna came down with Lady and fed each dog. I apprised her of why I was downstairs so early with Cira. After the dogs finished their breakfasts, she went upstairs to check for vomit and found some in her bed-area. It was about time for me to leave for my doctor's appointment, so I told her to contact the vet and get an opinion. They advised Donna to bring Cira in and had an appointment available to do so. Donna let me know this while I was at my appointment. My appointment ended early enough that I was able to meet them at the vet only a minute or two after the consult started.

The vet gave her more fluids, some more aggressive medications and a script for medications to administer at home. We were instructed try bland food again with the medications and to call if Cira showed further signs of illness. The plan was that, if Cira did exhibit further issues, they'd do Xrays to verify that there weren't any bowel obstructions.

Donna gave her the meds, but Cira wasn't interested in food. I'd assumed that, because the vet had warned us that the one medicine was very bitter, that Cira wasn't interested in food because of how awful the medication made her mouth taste. Later in the afternoon, she threw up the pills and the food she'd had for breakfast. We tried feeding her again, but she still wouldn't eat. More worryingly, she wasn't even interested in licking peanutbutter off of either of our fingers. Obviously, we called the vet and they told us to bring her back.

This trip, they opted to do an X-ray to ensure that the week's sudden onset of vomiting and persistent nausea hadn't been caused by any kind of bowel blockage. The first indications that something truly dire was going on was that her spleen was noticeably enlarged and she had what appeared to be calcification in both her kidneys. We discussed diagnostic and treatment options. We opted to leave her there for some additional testing, some antibiotics and IV fluids and then returned home.

An hour or so after we got home, the vet unexpectedly called us. We weren't expecting a call till the next morning when the various (sent out) tests should have been back. Usually, early callbacks are rarely good news. This call very much wasn't good news. Cira's kidney-function tests were showing extremely high BUN and creatinine levels - a couple multiples of the numbers typically seen for stage IV renal failure in dogs. The enlarged spleen, while worrying, was no longer the top priority.

And now, we're waiting for ultrasound results to try to determine what all's going on in there. It's unlikely that the results will be anything outside of the immediate to less-immediate spectrum. At this point, it's mostly a case of trying to determine how much time she might have left at an acceptable quality of life. Call's already been put in to the in-home euthanasia service to check provider-availability. So, depending on the sonogram results, this could all be over very shortly or in a few day's time.

The bugger of it all, aside from the shear unexpectedness of it, is the timing. We lost both our cats to renal failure on the twelfth of the previous year's March. Similarly, we'd received a lung-cancer diagnosis for an earlier dog back in March of 2011. So, March is proving to be a hateful month for our pet ownership.

Dear Physicians and other Medical Specialists:

Look, I get that HIPAA is a bitch. But you really shouldn't use it as a fucking excuse for not bringing yourselves into the fucking 21^st century. Requiring me to either show up and fill out a form, download and print out a form to bring with me or download, print out and fax a form is just fucking stupid. Really, that you're still fucking doing FAXing rather than secure email is fucking stupid.

There's 19Mn cloud-services out there that allow for the secure sharing of documents - many of them are even certified for HIPAA, SOX and other data compliance legislation. If you can't afford to set up your own, self-hosted system, use one of those many cloud services.

Fuck: if you can't figure out how to accept S/MIME- or PGP-encrypted emails just let me email you a link to a protected document on a cloud service of my choosing.

You might have room to talk to me about data protection policies if I wasn't about 99.999% certain that some hacker hasn't already rifled your databases. Really. There's lots of secure options out there. Don't be such righteous pains in the dick.

To all the Chicken Littles freaking out about Trump

Remember: the US system of governance is a machine. It's a machine that aspires to be the proverbial "immovable object". When you're the one seeking change, this machine sucks. When you're the one seeking to get things done, this machine sucks. For better or worse, it cuts both ways. When people elect the "burn it all down" candidate, that machine acts to blunt those attempts at change and getting things done.

Obama came in in 2008 promising an agenda that would include all sorts of change and transparency: how'd that work out? Is Gitmo closed? Has mass surveillance been curtailed? Have any of the people that created the banking crisis been meaningfully held to task? Are we no longer fighting endless wars? Has any meaningful change really happened that didn't start from the bottom and work its way up?


And, yeah, you might argue that Obama was fighting the House and Senate most of the way. You might argue that Trump has a Republican House and Senate to work with. Really? What does that even mean when a lot of those Congresspeople and Senators are lifers and Republicans that never really considered Trump to be Republican.


While the whackadoos may feel freer to come out from under their rocks, there's not going to be more of those CHUDs than there were Monday night. Things that happened in spite of the machine aren't going to be suddenly undone.


Am I saying things are gonna be just peachy? Am I saying some things aren't going to get worse? No. Not by a long-mile. Just saying that sometimes, you need to trust others' self-interest to keep the fire from turning into a conflagration.

Your Tits: Calm Them

Programming Style Woes

Woulda put this in my tech-wiki, but it's really just a rant and of no real technical value.

Look, I get that the language you wrote your program in isn't your preferred language - and that when you program in your preferred language you're just fine - but there's no excuse for being internally-inconsistent.

• I don't care if you want to do indents as tabs, two spaces, three spaces four spaces or multiples of one of the preceding. What I do care about is that you pick one and stick with it.
• PICK A FUCKING TERM-WIDTH AND STICK WITH IT. I don't want to have to keep widening my xterm each time you write a new, wider line than any line you previously wrote
• I don't care if you want to use module or path/to/module - just be freaking consistent
• I don't care whether you pre-declare your variables (so you can set their type - even if the initial value is null) or not - just make sure that if you pre-declare some variables you pre-declare all your variables.
• There really are better ways to write to a file than "open -> append-write -> close ; open -> append-write -> close": just open the damned file, do all your freaking writes to it, then close it
• If you're gonna regex something using a function that supports multiple operations, call that function ONCE.
• If you're going to explicitly declare that your regex is an extended-regex, make sure that you're actually doing extended regex rather than standard-regex.
• If you're doing the exact same things more than once in the same program, CREATE A FUNCTION AND USE IT. Seeing the same two dozen lines of code scattered multiple times throughout a program is not acceptable.
• Be consistent with how you declare and structure your functions.
• Be consistent with deciding to create functions: don't turn some things into functions and leave other things repetatively declared elsewhere
• Be consistent with how you use logic-branching: don't use nested "else ; if" once place and "elif" in others; don't use case-branching logic one place and ginormous if/elifs elsewhere.

I write in a bunch of different languages. If you're familiar with the various languages, it's easy to tell when I've slipped back into my "mother tongue". That said, I try to at least be consistent with my writing within a given program - even if that means my Python looks very shell-ish (etc.).

I can't figure out how people can debug their own code if they don't at least make it internally-consistent. How the hell do they expect anyone else to work with the code if it's constructed so that even the code-owner is going to struggle with it??

Poor Choice of Terms

I get that the NCAA is trying to reduce the incidence of head trauma. Fine. Noble goal. If you want to say that _any_ hit to the head is illegal, call it an "illegal hit to the head".


When you call it "targeting", however, the use of such term implies intent on the part of the hitter and that the basis is for the call is that intention. If the initial point of contact isn't the head - that the contact to the head was the result of the initial contact getting deflected/redirected into the head, you can't claim intent. If the hitting player was otherwise not in control of their impact-path (e.g., they got blocked), you can't claim intent. Change the name of the fucking penalty.


And, no, I don't care if saying "targeting" is easier for lazy referees to slobber ito their mics than "illegal hit to the head" is.

Rainy Days and Longevity

So roofer came by to do his inspection. Definitely need new roofing all around.

Now to wait to see what the estimate is and whether it all fits within my rainy-day savings or if I have to finance. If I have to finance, I'll probably look to see how much bigger the loan would have to be to accommodate a solar install.

Was kind of funny - if a bit sobering: the estimator had forgotten to leave us with the swatch-book of shingles. When he came back by to correct that oversight, he was showing me the different categories and says to me, "I personally wouldn't splurge on the 'premium' shingles," to which I replied, "my goal, in all of this, is to not have to worry about putting another roof on this house till I'm eligible to collect full social security: I'll be 47 this January". He responded back that I definitely wouldn't need the premium shingles/roofing materials since everything was guaranteed for well longer than 20 years.

One of the funny things about being in the back half of my 40s: I need to start weighing so many more decisions against actuarial likelihoods:

• Will this roof repair last me at least as long as I plan to be working
• Is it likely that this new doctor/dentist/etc.will still be in practice for as long as I need their services
• Does it make sense to buy this new appliance now, or wait "X" years so that its likely end of life will be sometime after I've retired and moved away

And it all ties back to the realization that, even if I live to be 90, I've got less years ahead of me than I do behind me. Right now, for the more ahead than behind to happen, I'd need to live to be 93 or so. In which case, even if I've planned my savings appropriately for a typical lifespan, I'll likely have outlived those savings-plans.

Bleah.

I Didn't Mean It Literally

2" of rain early Monday morning. Another couple inches last night. Forecast is calling for another 2-5" of rain each of the next several days.

Open door, yesterday, and get dripped on as I'm passing through the door frame. Rainwater is dripping from the (rain-swollen) interior-trim around my door frame.

Today, during one of the not-actively-raining periods (and while light enough to still see well), I get out a ladder and try to sort out how the water's getting in. Find that the moisture's coming from the roof-line. Step out into the yard to look at the roof over our foyer. Looks like the roof is ever so slightly sagging in one spot. Roof is 14+ years old (we moved in in 2002). I guess it's not unexpected that it might have age-related sagging. Unfortunately, the slight sagging looks like it might be allowing some capillary action up under the shingles and then between the backing plywood (at least when it's raining so heavily that the rain sheets on the roof).

I have rainy-day savings ...but this is a little too literal requirement for their use.

Dammit, Jerry's

I am not ordering every week - least of all the same thing every week - just so I can shortcut my order by using "recent orders".


Just keep my overall order-history and let me pull from that. If you have to prune, set some kind of multi-month expiry-horizon (or even better: a one-year horizon).


If I'm ordering fast food for delivery, it's because I'm LAZY (and full of self-loathing, but nevermind that): don't make me have to apply effort just to re-order something a couple months later.

Views from the Fence

Down side to being on the centrist side in your group of friends:

• Conservative friends/acquaintances/etc. are screaming bloody murder about Comey's gutlessness
• The HRC-at-any-cost friends/acquaintances/etc are of the blindered mind-set "see: she didn't do anything wrong!"

As per usual, the truth lay somewhere in the middle ...and you're not going to get it just from reading the headlines.

• To my more conservative friends/etc: no, Comey isn't rewriting laws and ignoring the seriousness of HRC's actions.
• To my more HRC-oriented friends/etc: no, Comey didn't say that HRC did nothing sanction-worthy - as much as most of the media outlets might like to make true by allusion.

To both groups, I'd say, "read the full text of Comey's statement". Read the whole thing. Pay attention to the level of detail. Then, if that is not enough, pay attention to the fourth-to-last paragraph:

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

That's not Comey saying "there was no crime here". That's not Comey rewriting laws to let HRC off scot-free.That's Comey going to the very edge of what's generally allowed in these types of statements. He's going to that edge to say "if this were a less-privileged offender, there would be real sanctions" and that "there was wrong-doing, but, the expense of prosecuting it versus the likelihood of achieving a meaningful outcome means that I can't recommend undertaking those expenses" (where "expense" is measured both in financial terms and in political-capital).

For me, this goes back to the "trust" issue that even HRC acknowledged (granted, in a way that indicated that she felt it was a problem with voters rather than her own conduct). It goes back to the shadiness - supposedly ghosts of the past - that was evidenced in Bill Clinton's recent decision to pop-in on Lynch's airplane at Sky Harbor. I don't consider myself particularly right- or left- on the political spectrum - I just believe that laws and regulations should apply equally (whether you're a politician, a cop or "little people"). When people act - probably rightly - that rules (in particular the associated consequences) aren't for everyone, it destroys my ability to trust them.

A Noisy Passage

Witnessed an amusing spectacle, as I was leaving work, today.

I'm walking down the long, tiled hallway that leads to the lobby of the office I frequently work in. Behind me, I start to hear, "PLAP! PLAP! PLAP! PLAP! PLAP!". Eventually, a late twenty-something comes "running" past me.

Note: I put running in quotes because he wasn't traveling significantly faster than me, just much more loudly.

As he passes by, I notice that the cause of the "PLAP!" sound is that he is attempting to run in leather-soled business shoes. His lack of speed - for all his clamor - is due to a combination of the shoes not being well-suited to any form of running and the fact that the tile floor gave his leather soles little in the way of meaningful purchase with which to propel himself.

Making matters worse, he was wearing a backpack while running. By itself, the wearing of the backpack would have been of little note. However, it was so loosely secured that with each bounding-stride (seriously: dude had more vertical travel than forward), that it was bouncing and flopping all over the place. As it flopped and bounced, it contributed a fwipping nylon and buckles sound to the rest of his noisy run.

The thing to complete this picture was that he was wearing a poorly-tailored suit. The suit was so loosely-fit that it, too, was bouncing around much like his backpack. I imagine that, had there not been so much other noise in his passage, that the rustling of the suit's synthetic fabrics would have been making their own din.

It was nearly 15:00 and traffic leaving our business campus becomes horrible not much after. I was similarly inclined to get out as quickly as I could (I usually leave at 14:00) to avoid the trial of incipient rush-hour traffic. So, in his defense, I could understand the rush to get out of the building. Still, for all the sound and fury, the effective pace meant he wasn't likely to be avoiding a meaningful amount of traffic.

Why I tell anyone wanting to mail me something "don't send it via USPS"

Wife ordered a box of gothery from some online shop (overseas, I think). Instead of sending it via FedEx or UPS, they sent it via registered mail. Wife got notification that the item was out for delivery, today.

Wife waits all afternoon for the postie to show up. He does, but, "no package." She asks him if he had any packages waiting in his truck and is informed that there was a package that had a bad code on it that was back at the substation - that she could go down and check to see if that was her package.
Wife walks down to the substation. Upon asking where her package was, they informed her that it had been delivered around 14:00. Wife had been sitting out on her sun-chair on the front porch from about 13:30 to nearly 16:00. No package had been delivered. So, she asks _where_ it was delivered to and who signed for the supposed delivery. She's informed that they won't be able to know until the carrier gets back to the station.

As it stands, Amazon already has it in their records to not use any shipping methods that leverage USPS. Thus, no USPS-direct nor things like FedEx SmartPost. They agreed to this notation after the third so-shipped multi-$100 order disappeared without a trace.
All of my bills and important documents are either delivered via email or are sent in concert with an email notification of pending delivery.

Simply put, if things are sent via USPS, there's about a 70% chance that they'll arrive ...or, at least, arrive on time. Usually, when they arrive late, it's because they were mis-delivered and the recipient was nice enough to bring it over or was nice enough to give it back to the postie on his next trip. But mostly, they just disappear, never to be seen again.

Seriously: how fucking hard is it to deliver mail. Is it really so fucking hard to read the entire goddamned address?

They Just Don't Get It (Or: Magical-Thinking Strikes Again)

Earlier this week, I wrote to my state Senators to express my disapproval of the forthcoming Burr-Feinstein encryption bill. Today, I got back a form response ...not that I was expecting a personal response - it's not like I'm a million-dollar donor:

Dear Mr. Jones,
     Thank you for contacting me regarding digital security and encryption policy. I appreciate hearing your views on this complex subject, which involves multiple competing security interests.

     While the debate over government access to encrypted communications has long been a contentious subject, the issue has received increased attention and scrutiny in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino and, more recently, the ongoing legal battle between Apple Inc. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over access to the iPhone of one of the alleged perpetrators of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. As these attacks showed us, terrorists have become increasingly sophisticated in their use of technology. Social media platforms have become prominent tools for recruitment and radicalization. And when individuals show interest in terrorists' cause, they move their communications to encrypted applications and other secure platforms to evade detection. This presents an extraordinary security challenge for the United States and our allies, leading to warnings by law enforcement officials that conventional tools to track and apprehend these criminals have become increasingly ineffective.

     Frustratingly, there are no easy answers. The same tools that terrorists and criminals are using to hide their nefarious activities are those that everyday Americans rely on to safely shop online, communicate with friends and family, and run their businesses. On top of that, technological innovation changes rapidly and, frequently, beyond the reach of U.S. law. Thousands of new apps are submitted to mobile apps stores daily, most of them utilizing some level of encryption, and a majority of them are developed overseas. Moreover, the fundamental architecture of the Internet is a decentralized and resilient one.

     In order to better understand the issues we're facing and explore potential solutions, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and I introduced S.2604/H.R. 4651, the Digital Security Commission Act of 2016 on February 29, 2016. This legislation would create a national commission on security and technology challenges in the digital age. The Commission would convene a body of experts representing all of the interests at stake so we can evaluate and improve America's security posture as technology — and our adversaries — evolve.

     Our proposal will convene the brightest minds from the technology sector, the legal world, computer science and cryptography, academia, civil liberties and privacy advocates, law enforcement and intelligence to collaboratively explore the intersection of technology and security.

     This would not be a group of politicians debating one another. Nor would the commission be like other blue-ribbon panels, quickly established but soon forgotten. Rather, it would be charged with generating much-needed data and developing a range of actionable recommendations that can protect privacy and public safety. That is why this commission has been endorsed by a wide range of stakeholders – from the technology sector, to respected academic and legal experts, and distinguished national security figures.

     The threats we face with regards to digital security are real. They will not be met easily or dispensed with quickly. But I have no doubt that we are capable of overcoming these challenges if we convene the brightest minds in our country and work together.

     Again, thank you for contacting me. For further information or to sign up for my newsletter please visit my website at http://www.warner.senate.gov.

Sincerely,
MARK R. WARNER
United States Senator

So, while the form-mail isn't saying "I plan to vote for this (Burr-Feinstein) important bill", the text really isn't any less disturbing.

The "best minds" thing, by itself is disturbing. The "best minds" have already very publicly told you that what's being asked for isn't possible. Or, more specifically/technically-correct - it's not possible to both make encrypted data accessible to law enforcement without also making it as easily accessible to entities seeking illegal access. But never mind that, they're apparently just not trying hard enough! Technology is fucking magic and if one bit of magic is possible, any given bit of magic is possible if we just wish hard enough.

Even better is the farce of "we'll get a group of all the stakeholders together to work on this." There have been many such "gatherings of stakeholders to solve a difficult problem" exercises. Usually, the way it works out is that the differences between the stakeholders are irreconcilable. Then, the process either completely falls apart or the stakeholders who just aren't trying hard enough are dropped from the process or otherwise ignored. Only one outcome is acceptable - soundness of that outcome be damned.

So, with all due respect, Mr. Warner (or whichever drone you had compose this steaming pile of response), you're a completely clueless fucking tool. You are not worthy of being in a position to make decisions that affect the security of my personal data. You are not worthy of being voted for.

You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Heh... Tesla sends me an email saying that, if I want to ensure that I can get my hands on one of the new Model IIIs, I need to put a deposit on one, now.


Car is going to be unveiled tonight. Frankly, I don't buy - or pay to reserve a chance to buy - anything that I haven't seen yet. The fact that they're only expecting deliveries to start late next year - and then, only if I'm in California - and that signing up in the first half of 2016 is likely to maybe get me a car sometime in the second half of 2018... I gotta think, "sorry, no."


Even if I were someone who buys based just on a label, a lot can happen in a 2+ year period. You'd have to be a special kind of special to do that. I mean, I sorta understand it for the people who were looking to buy $100K+ cars - because, you're clearly buying an optional vehicle rather than a daily driver - but a car that's supposed to be priced in the daily-driver range? No. Just, no.

The Quiet House

When I was a kid, we had cats and dogs in our house. The order of things was that the dogs were noisy and the cats were comparatively quiet. The dogs alerted at the slightest provocation - wind, cars, bird shadows... you get the idea. On the other hand, my cats were fairly quiet: the first on only mewed when you were getting his breakfast ready or hissed when the clumsy dog stepped on him too hard; the pair I had as a teenager were a bit chattier - doing the usual mewing for food and could sometimes be coaxed to "talk back" if you mewed at them first (the one would also "click" when stalking bugs or spying birds and squirrels outside).

In my 20s, I'd had a couple rabbits. In general, they are very quiet animals. My second rabbit, Bambam, earned his name, however, as he had a tendency to stamp his back foot when he wanted attention. In his indoor hutch, this created a very noisy rattling. When he was roaming the house, it sounded like a shotgun going off.

After cancer took my second rabbit, towards the end of my 20s, I opted to get a cat. I found a local woman who had a litter of pet-quality Bengals she was selling off. I'd really only intended to buy one - the female named Bella - especially given the (then) astounding price of $550 (for one cat!). But, I realized that I actually wanted two of them. There were only four kittens in the litter, and two of them were spoken for. The only one remaining was the litter's runt - a male who quickly earned the name Grumbles (I can't even remember what name he came with: perhaps it's in his veterinary packet, somewhere?). Because he was the runt, she cut me a deal on him and only asked for $350.

As seems to often be the case, the runt grew to be the biggest of the litter. In his prime, Grumbles was a shade under 16lbs. Bella only clocked in at a shade over 10lbs. Neither cat was fat as both pretty much ate only enough to sate their hunger. I could have opted to simply free-feed them and they wouldn't have gotten overweight. So, those weights were very lean-weights. Being relatively short-haired, their muscle-definition and abdominal tucks were very evident.

At any rate, as Bengals, they lived up to many of the breed's peculiarities. They were very people-focussed: Grumbles followed me around the house in a way that you might normally expect of a dog. They also loved playing in water: this meant water bowls always had to have big mats around them and that I had to be very careful to latch the bathroom door while showering if I didn't want to have to towel off two cats (though,mostly Grumbles) after my shower. They were also very talkative. They didn't need to be prompted to converse. Wake up in the morning and you'd be greeted with meowing. Come home from work, be greeted with meowing. Leave the room not allow them to come with you and there'd be chastisement when you came back. And, if you just wanted to converse, you could go back and forth with them for a half hour or more - they never seemed to tire of conversing.

What's more, when the two of them did their twice-per-day exercise sessions (fighting), it would be a half hour of mad scrambling about the house, chasing each other. The thundering noise of these chases were punctuated by hissing, spitting and yowling by Bella (and the occasional "THUNK" as she'd run headlong into an obstacle that she'd misjudged in her flight-path). Grumbles, on the other hand, fought in eerie silence with an devilish look on his face that was a combination of anger and joy (and a whole lot of "fuck you").

In 2003, a few months before we married, Donna wanted a dog. So, after much searching, we got one (Lana: a Boxer/American Bulldog mix). The following summer, I discovered that I wanted a dog, too. PetFinder was quick to find me a good match (Puckett: an American Bulldog/Bull Terrier mix). Both were rather much quieter than any of my childhood dogs.Both really only alerted if they were certain you hadn't seen the potential danger. Lana could be convinced to "sing". Puckett would bark a bit when we rough-housed. But, other than that, they were quiet. The cats were as noisy as ever.

We lost Lana in December of 2010 and Puckett the spring immediately following. Both were lost to cancer.

A few weeks after Lana's death, we found a little, brown staffie (Cira) to fill the hole that Lana's passing had left in our home. When Puckett passed, it took several months to find a dog that: a) wasn't prone to chasing cats; b) was compatible with Cira; and, C) that said "take me home" to me. That dog was Lady - a blue-eyed, Pitbull/Boxer mix (apparently, I have a thing for blue-eyed bulldogs). Compared to the prior pair of bullies, these two are noisy. Not nearly so noisy as my childhood dogs, just in comparison to their immediate predecessors. Cira will quietly "moof" or whine when she wants you to invite her up on the couch or throw a blanket over her. Lady will talk - if you prompt her - and will bark madly if there's someone at the door.

Still, the cats were, on average, far more vocal than the dogs - especially when you measure it in interactive vocalizations.

Even knowing how vocal - how much company - my cats were, the house seems sooo quiet without them. No longer do I come down to a cacophony of "good morning" mews as I rush to get ready and out the door for work. No longer does Grumbles follow me into the bathroom to chat at me while I take my biology-break. No longer do I have anyone glaring and mewing at me to clear the laptop out of their way so they can lay in my lap.

How much of an impact was this vocalization? For the past several years, my wife had been lobbying to get a third dog. With two dogs and two cats in a small house, I'd demured. I'd told her, "maybe after the cats have passed, we can think about fostering". Donna also made frequent mention of how much she disliked having to clean up after the cats - litter box, water splashed out of their bowl, the drifts of fur, etc. Suddenly absent the cats, Donna is finding that she misses them. She misses their talking. She misses their company. And, today, she brings up the topic of adopting a homeless bengal or two (after the day before reminding me that, with our small cars, three, fifty-pound dogs might make holiday travels problematic).

Umm... "I thought you didn't like living with cats".

To be honest, if every cat were like Bella and Grumbles, I think you'd probably have a lot less people wondering "why do people have cats as pets". And I think that less because of my own feelings about them, than the fact that my wife is having to fight the urge to try to fill the hole they've left and seriously thinking about cat(s) rather than a dog.

End Times (Again)

Not that I want her to feel bad, but the problem with pets with a terminal diagnosis is they often "rally" during their decline-trajectory. So, in the days leading up to the appointment with the euthanizer, you're periodically left to wonder, "wait: did I jump the gun on this? Do I need to delay?"

Last night, while she was pretty low on energy, when I took her over to the food dish, she ate well. This morning, I came down, and, for the first time in days, she was off the couch. She was actually down at the water dish, drinking. There was no pee smell on the towel she'd been sleeping on. The secondary (low-sided) litter pan had been used for urination (and the absorbant was pretty much soaked).

I guess I'll see how she's acting when I come home from the work: if she's still in a rally, I'll call the vet who's scheduled to come, tomorrow, and ask her opinion on the matter.

Bah. I don't want to send her off, prematurely, but I don't want the rally to end, be in worse shape than she was before, and have to seek out an emergency euthanization.

I'd made a similar mistake with Puckett. We'd scheduled him for an appointment, based on diagnosis and earlier trends. Difference was, I'd scheduled further out. Then, a few days before he was due to go to that appointment, he crashed. We'd gone for a walk to enjoy the weather. He'd been especially energetic on that walk. However, when we came back and I went to feed him a chunk of cheese slathered in peanutbutter, he refused and gave me kind of an "I'm ready, now" look. I knew that if we waited for the appointment, he'd have been "beyond ready".

I don't really want that for Bella - especially given that I can't even really make the gamble worthwhile (she doesn't do treats).

:(

My Brain Hurts

Customer Rep: "We urgently need your help to fix this problem we're having. Stuff is on fire!"

Me: "Ok, cool. I can give you some time this week and next."

Customer Rep: "Alright. As soon as you can, please come on site and help us"

Me: Arrive on-site. Listen to customer's problem report. "How long has this issue been going on?"

Customer Rep: "The customer alerted us of the problem last month. We've been trying to fix it since then, but things are only  getting worse as time goes by".

Me: (brain showing first signs of imploding) "...aaaand when did your customer first notice this critical problem?"

Customer Rep: "Maybe a few weeks or a month before they reported it to us?"

Me: "...and this is a critical problem?"

Customer Rep: "Yes: the customer can't do any of the things they need to do and the stuff that was working the last time you were here no longer works."

Me: "Did anyone open a support case with the vendor?"

Customer Rep: "We wanted to wait for you to help us. However, we do have some vendor consultants coming in, next week."

Me: "Aaaalright... Just so we can get the most out those consultants, I need you to open a case so we can get appropriate notes put in and appropriate backline experts looking at the problem so that the guys coming onsite don't have their time wasted."

Time passes

Me: "Can you give me the number of the case you opened? I want to put it in my notes"

Customer Rep: "No. We didn't open one. We figured we'd open one next week when the rep got on site if he said he needed one."

Me: "...Open the case, now, please. It takes the vendor time to identify appropriate resources and we need to ensure those resources lined up ahead of time. Give me the case ID when you're done."

More time passes. I have time to begin preliminary investigations prior to vendor's arrival. I make an initial set of recommendations to help address some of the issues reported.

Customer replies (through customer rep), "we don't want to make those kinds of changes."

More time passes, and the vendor comes on-site. By this time, I've done a lot more digging and have identified a set of more concrete symptoms and potential causes and cures. Consult with the vendor's on-stie and backline engineers. Some of the observed issues can be addressed via a very recently-released emergency-patch.

Me: "Vendor has supplied a patch that will address some of your customer's problems. We'l need to take the service offline, for a bit, to apply the patch."

Customer Rep: "Ok, cool. Lemme go ask the customer for a downtime to apply the patch."

Me: "Aaaalright. I coulda sworn you told me that this thing was useless to your customer in its current state?"

Customer Rep: "Well, he's able to do some stuff on it, it's just taking a really long time to do those things and we had to turn off a whole bunch of other things. I know that the customer will want his active tasks to complete before we take the whole shebang offline".

Me: "You do remember me telling you that I saw your customer's scheduled tasks kick back off, every day, at X o'clock, right? You really need to get the patch applied and verified well before that time ...and there's less than two hours till X o'clock."

Customer Rep: "Customer said we can't do anything until his task finishes."

Me: "Remember me telling you about the new task kickoffs? Looking back in their task-tracker's history, those currently running tasks are going to overlap the soon-to-be-started tasks. And the soon-to-be-started tasks will overlap with the next day's tasks: there's not going to be a window during which nothing is happening. We need to take an outage to apply these patches if you ever want to start getting this software back to a working state."

My brain hasn't completely imploded, yet, but I feel this expression crawling across my face every time I have to deal with customers like this one.

First: if something's been going on for days, weeks or months, it's not an emergency

Second: if fixing your problem is less important than continuing to limp along in your "broken" state while you wait for always-overlapping tasks to finish, then your problem really isn't an emergency.

Third: if someone suggests adjustments that can improve performance without causing a downtime, yet you refuse to make those adjustments, your problem really isn't an emergency.