Icy

Ice Cube Trays Make Ice, Silently.

Ice Makers Make Ice, Noisily.

And this is an improvement?

Fried Day

Interesting day so far.

Our relatively new remote switch for the outside lights failed in the ON position. We get to have an electrician come out today to try and figure out why. Gah. Technology!
---update: guess what happens when you have about 500 watts of lights controlled by a switch rated at 300? Gah, again. Now we have to find a higher-rated alternative. As my daughter likes to say, have fun with that!

I cooked myself a burrito in a garlic and herb tortilla that was so potent, I damn near needed an emesis basin.

My daughter cooked some crepes that are.... well, I'm not sure what colors are in there. One of them is green, though.

I shipped the pillows back, and they're sending me new, firmer ones. Why isn't there some kind of objective way to measure pillow firmness? And why does UPS cost so much?

Got a request for donations from the Smithsonian. Thing is, its been years since I found Air and Space magazine interesting. On the other hand, it's a worthwhile institution. On the third hand, give them money, they'll come back for more. Organizations are like politicians, that way.

Its muggy and raining.

So, I did the reasonable thing: I ordered a book from the librarium: Sustainment of Army Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Should be fun.

Babelfish?

I came across this phrase on a web site:

I will represent how to use an xml file as a data provider of a flex application using Cairngorm, but the benefit of the method I will repesent is toggling between xml and remote service is very easy without any further coding....

....I know what XML is, but as to the rest....hmm.

TidyRead

I like the ability of Firefox to expand and reduce font size, easily.

But Tidy Read is pretty cool, too.

Arlen

This is from a mass mailing, but I really liked it. Well, most of it.
-----------------------------

Dear Friends,

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up the question portion of the hearing on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. As I told her at the end of my second round of questions, I think Judge Sotomayor did quite an outstanding job as a witness. She displayed intellect, humor and stamina to match her exemplary academic and professional record.

I thought you would appreciate today's Washington Post story regarding the hearing.

As Questioner, Lawmaker Is Man on Own Mission; Specter Well Prepared to Grill Sotomayor

By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 16, 2009

Sen. Arlen Specter is 79, was a Democrat before he was a Republican before he was a Democrat again, and has grilled every Supreme Court nominee since William H. Rehnquist. He has had two bouts of cancer, two brain surgeries and a heart bypass operation. In this political town, where the greatest game of all is survival, Specter plays at the level of a grandmaster.

Yesterday morning, he lifted weights for an hour. Then he was pumped to take Sonia Sotomayor to school -- as well as his fellow panelists on the Judiciary Committee, the current Supreme Court justices, and anybody watching on television or contemplating taking Intro to Constitutional Law.

He pelted the nominee with questions about separation of powers, and wireless wiretaps, and secret CIA programs, and voting rights, and the Americans With Disabilities Act, and abortion rights, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Clean Water Act, and televisions in court, and the Second Amendment -- all in an economical 30 minutes.

Specter spent hours laboriously preparing for yesterday's questioning, and he sent Sotomayor three letters alerting her to his interests so she could study up. When she stalled, he said, abruptly: "Well, I can tell you're not going to answer. Let me move on." He did this five times.

The senior senator from Pennsylvania chaired the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.; he interrupted them, too, when they didn't answer. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor "really was the last one who answered questions," Specter said later.

Roberts testified one way during his confirmation hearings, specifically on the issues of deference to Congress and taking on a heavier court caseload, and then did something else, Specter charged.

This frustration was on full display yesterday. "Is there anything the Senate or Congress can do if a nominee says one thing seated at that table and does something exactly the opposite once they walk across the street?" he demanded of Sotomayor.

"That, in fact, is one of the beauties of our constitutional system," she began, "which is we do have a separation of . . ."

"Beauty!" Specter nearly snorted, then chuckled. "Beauty -- beauty in the eyes of the beholder."

He gave a colloquy on the limits of executive power: "The president disregarded that in a secret program called the terrorist surveillance program. Didn't even tell the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which is the required practice, or accepted practice. Didn't tell the intelligence committees, where the law mandates that they be told about such programs."

Would the judge, Specter wanted to know, agree that the Supreme Court should take up such cases?

"I know it must be very frustrating to you to . . ." Sotomayor began.

"It sure is," Specter interrupted. "I was the chairman who wasn't notified!"

What Specter also cares about, deeply, urgently, is getting televisions into the Supreme Court so that Americans can see what the robed ones are doing in there. He has introduced such legislation twice.

"They are unaccountable," he said yesterday in an interview after he questioned Sotomayor. "It's not a kingdom. You're not King George V."

Perry Mason? Arlen Specter is not interested in Perry Mason. He left that for Sen. Al Franken to discuss. Specter is interested in secret courts and secret presidential initiatives and the "irreparable harm" of 100 million people voting in a presidential election that eventually was decided by one vote, in a grand building about two blocks away from the Hart Senate Office Building, where yesterday's session was held.

"I want her to be aware of these issues," Specter said when asked why he was pushing the judge to answer his questions. Wise Latina? He's fine with that. Empathy? He's good with that, too. Her record, he said yesterday, is "exemplary." But that doesn't mean he's necessarily going to vote for her. "That's the conventional wisdom," he said. "But I have not said that."

For a generation, as a Republican in a Democratic-leaning state, Specter kept returning to Washington with a combination of mainstream Republican votes, some union support, black votes in Philadelphia and the backing of women's organizations, including NARAL, and other abortion-rights voters. This became an increasingly difficult feat to pull off, and the moment he realized it would no longer work, facing a tough primary fight from the right, Specter called his old buddies Ed Rendell and Joe Biden this spring and accepted their longtime suggestion that he shape-shift back into a Democrat.

When he made his move, he lost his place as ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee and most of his staff. He would be the most junior member, had Franken (D-Minn.) not come along last week. While he stormed through his questioning yesterday, only six other panel members were even in the room.

While his fellow Democrats have divvied up their tasks -- one asked about Sotomayor's prosecutorial days, another covered her role as a commercial litigator -- no one tried to rein in Specter.

"No, no one said anything to me," he said, with some satisfaction. His eyes brightened. "And I have more questions for her tomorrow."

Silver Bears

My wife has three sisters. There is a tradition in their family that on the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the others will chip in for some sort of silver gift, usually a tray. My feeling is, we don't need it, and if we got it, it'd sit, unused, for months, perhaps years on end. Nevertheless, it's a tradition, so we're trying to find something in the line of silver table ware that we'd actually use. The closest I've found is this:


Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.

Likelihoods

I may have mentioned that I'm retired. I don't expect to ever work formally, for a paycheck, ever again. So it might seem odd that whenever I see an article about how to land a job, or how to keep from getting fired, or how to advance in your career, I read it. The reason is simple. I'm never sure how to go about those things. I wasn't sure about it when I did it before, and I'm not sure now. It's not that I don't know the buzzwords; it's that I don't know how to apply them. I no more believe in their efficacy than I believe that if I pull really hard on my Rockports (preferred footwear of the retired), I will fly. It seems impractical, improbable, and just not gonna happen. But I still read them. When I come across an article in the Sunday paper, I give it a quick scan, and if it looks promising -- which is very easy to do -- I put the section aside for later reading.

Thus it came to pass that this week, in addition to the sections I always read -- Business, because it's interesting, and World Affairs, because it's perplexing -- I put aside the Jobs section ("The Unpaid Payoff of a Between-Jobs Job") and ("Preoccupations: Finding a Job of His Own Dreaming"). The latter was particularly seductive, as it details the experience of a fellow who was out of work for six months, did all of the right things, and then, somewhat through happenstance, made a connection, pitched a concept, and, almost to his own surprise, was hired. Gee, I think, reading that, why can't I do that? That I don't have to doesn't remove the question. I don't think that anything short of discovering that I'm Bill Gates sole heir, and he's feeling poorly, would do that.

This is a long standing problem of mine, but over the years I've gotten a couple of insights into how people get employed, stay employed, and get promoted. (By this rate, I should have it figured out by the time I'm 125... or so.) If you're willing to hear them from someone who freely admits that he, personally, isn't very good at them -

One is that you don't have to love what you do. It helps, surely it does, but you don't have to feel that the sun rises and sets on it. In fact, you can despise it. Despising it makes it harder to do the things you do need to do, but it doesn't make them impossible. If you can do the job, do it competently and thoroughly, that's enough.

Another is that you have to have a pretty good sense of how what you do contributes to the success of the company. That part gets exponentially harder, the bigger the company. I worked for EDS and I worked for IBM, both big companies, and I rarely had the sense of how what I did affected them. For the longest time (for which read: still, a little), I blamed my managers for this, and you know what? It doesn't matter. It probably was their fault, but it was my problem. That second part, I never got. I was going to say here 'until I got the sense of how I mattered...', but the truth is, I never did. Nevertheless, I can say that it's important, for two reasons. One, it helps you survive the nasty days when you really don't want to go do it, if you think: but they need me, and this is why. I'm not going to say it makes you want to spring out of bed, but it helps. And Two (the important one), it allows you to identify your 'selling proposition'. "Here's why you guys have me; here's why you need me. " Okay, that second part is a little tough when you're one of hundreds of cubicle drones - but if you've done the first part, it's a little easier for you than it is for others. And if you've got that selling proposition, what you've got is what makes you unique, and desirable. Its the raw material that can become, directly or indirectly, part of what you present when you decide (or it gets decided for you) that its time to look somewhere else. It is the what of who you are, the thing that identifies you to people who could care less about you, personally, but do care about what you can do for them.

A side comment. I read once of a salesman who figured out that for every $100,000 in sales that he sold, he made twenty cold calls that went nowhere. He talked himself into thinking that every one of those calls was worth a $5,000 sale -- so when he did make that big sale, it was expected -- but if he didn't make the cold calls, he couldn't expect it. Now, I think 'how silly is that' -- but for him, it worked.

Is there more? Oh, yeah. For one, attitude. I used to work, while I was in the Air Force, with a captain who was known as General Jim, because our feeling was that this guy was going places. Not because he was bright, or energetic (though he was, much as I didn't want to admit it), but because he exuded the sense that he was going to go someplace. Some of that was a certain smarminess -- he never met a colonel or general that he didn't like -- but most of it was this projected sense of inevitability. I'm the person you need, he seemed to say, and most times, people agreed with him. He was there, he was smart, he was eager, and he was ambitious. People liked that. I hated it... but even hating it, I recognized it. I don't think it's key to advancement, but people like having subordinates who are upbeat. (Fortunately, this can be faked.)

Another useful skill is the ability to publicize yourself. I never particuarly cared for the idea of blowing your own horn -- it seemed silly to me; after all, knowing what I was doing was the job of the group's manager -- but I have to admit that part of that feeling was because I wasn't very good at it. That had two components -- I didn't know how to bring myself to people's attention who needed (from my perspective) to hear about me, and I didn't know how to flag things so that when they did hear about me, they heard good things. Sometimes, I lucked into those opportunities -- I was invited/commanded to attend a recurring meeting with my manager's manager's manager, so he got to know who I was -- but usually, I didn't. And part of that was that I scorned people who volunteered for things that I considered a big waste of time. What I never did was think about the idea that maybe those further up the organization thought them a waste of time, too -- but they pushed them, which mean that if I wanted those people to think kindly of me, I should push them, too. How to do that without losing my soul was something I never figured out, but I think it's a skill you need when you're in an environment where your future can be affected by the actions of people who have no idea who you are.

And then theres the question of figuring out whats important to those people. Maybe next time. Enough for now.

SCOTUS

I think that she meant what she said, and in her heart still means it, but now regrets having said it. I think that she wasn't saying that people of her ethnicity or gender were necessarily better -- but she suspected that there were times, maybe a lot of times, when yes, they were.

Unfortunately, talking to a bunch of white guys wouldn't have been a good time to make that point.

Baking Bummed

I'm sitting in the kitchen, looking at a bouquet our neighbor gave us in appreciation for looking after their house while they were away, feeling the gentle breeze coming in through the sliding glass door, and being just a little bummed. Today's little baking experiment is not going at all well.

I had found a recipe where a woman said she'd been trying out a recipe for butter cookies, and didn't care for them, so she used them as the basis for a Milanos clone, which turned out pretty well. Such is not the case here. I made four batches (by the third time, the 'batches' were just one round of dough), and they were all very dry, very bland. They're supposed to brown, just a bit, around the edges, and it took me until the fourth try to get that. The dough, I've decided, is actually pie crust dough -- very, very soft, very, very buttery. So I think I'm going to save the rest of it and see about making a pie. But these cookies?

Pepperide Farm has nothing to worry about from me.

A MICROSOFT Ad????

All Obama, All The Time

Obama Actions and Initiatives

Foreign Policy:
Condemns the Iranian government's crackdown (Jun23)
Voices qualified support for Colombia trade deal(Jul02-http://tinyurl.com/mss3sy)
Pressed African countries to be more open and honest(Jul 13 - http://tinyurl.com/lonjvr)

Financial:
Will limit Fed lending power, grant it more systemic regulatory authority
Will recommend a non-regulatory insurance oversight office
Will allow SEC, CFTC to regulate derivatives

Human Services:
Federal benefits to be extended to gay/unmarried partners
Calls for a public service plan for individuals

Health Care:
Lobbies doctors for support of changes
Consults experts on 1976 swine flu outbreak (Jul1 - http://tinyurl.com/mzhn8m)

Government:
Urges Congress not to put off immigration reform(Jun25-http://tinyurl.com/lkvavl)
Takes action on food safety(Jul07-http://tinyurl.com/nthjy8)
Announces Surgeon General Nominee(Jul13 - http://tinyurl.com/ne7b3n)
Threatens to veto spending over F22 cost (Jul 13 - http://tinyurl.com/md5d2q)

Science:
Urges action on global warming
Urges fast work on climate-change bill (jun24)

MIL Fun

Interesting time at dinner tonight. As my wife was working, I made dinner. My MIL watched me cook the beef, make the salad, add the condiments. At the table, having eaten a bit, she turned toward my wife and remarked that it was quite a tasty meal.

I'm not reading anything much into it, but I do think it's funny.

Subterfuge

I wonder if my daughter realizes that when I was talking to her about what I'd read regarding how a Cystic Fibrosis program increased its success rate through dogged persistance and manic devotion to detail, never accepting the status quo, but always striving to find a way to do better, what I was really talking about was how to succeed in school?

Where's my Visor?

Though I suppose the Trekkers would insist that I call it a V.I.S.O.R....

I thought of this while reading the Sunday New York Times Bright Ideas article titled Kicking Reality Up A Notch, by Leslie Berlin, about a concept called Augmented Reality. Essentially, it's a method for infusing what you see (or hear, I would suppose) by using your normal tools -- glasses, binoculars, phone screen images -- with information from other sources. The article calls it "(T)he real world is overlaid with virtual information." Here's an illustration from the article, showing a display from a European system called Layar:
I'd like to say that it works through what an instructor of mine in radio school called FM (Fuckin' Magic), but the tools are almost pedestrian -- location-aware software coupled with geotagged information, and, in the future, possibly image-recogition software. Is it easy? Not for me, no, but these people surely do make it look that way.

Maybe it is FM!

This is Not Me

Yet.

Events

The other night, I had two interesting experiences.

First off, I heard a report on NPR that oil speculators were losing money because the price of oil had not gone up as much as they wanted, and now they were running out of capacity for the oil they'd contracted -- and so were having to dump it on the market, with the result that they lost money and the price went down some more. I laughed out loud.

And second, waiting at a light, I saw a police car go back with NOT IN SERVICE taped across its light bar. Odd car, though -- it was all white, with a big gold star on the door, and a county name below it. Only thing was, the name of the county was Hazzard. Huh?

Sharing

Two stories:
When I was first married, my wife used to tell the story of cooking, and how we'd share it -- one day she'd cook, and the next day I'd cook. Then she'd cook, and then we'd have pizza. Then she'd cook, and they we'd have leftovers. Then she'd cook, and then we'd go out to eat. She cooked, she would say, fifty percent of the time, which was what she wanted.

Before we were married, I asked her if it mattered who was the 'head of the family'. I didn't particularly want to be, because I didn't see myself as commanding or all-knowing, but I wondered what we would do if we ever got to a point where somebody had to make a choice. She said we'd just figure it out then, which is what we've done. Or will, if we ever just flat don't agree, and can't work it out.

The impetus for these thoughts: an article in today's Times - an interview with Justice Ginsberg. At the end, the woman doing the interview asked, essentially, if men will ever achieve equality in marriage; her answer was, essentially, probably not. She used her daughter's marriage as an example that change is possible, saying that her daughter's husband 'carries his fair share of the load' as she travels around the world, saying that their arrangement works for them because her daughter is a great cook; later, though, she says that the court can never order a man to do more than simply take out the garbage.

I think that's a snide observation, but I don't know if the underlying implication - that women usually do the heavy lifting in making a relationship work - is true. Years ago, I came across an observation that marriage is an asymmetrical arrangement - sometimes one partner is seventy percent, sometimes the other, usually based on what they're doing at the time. My feeling is that whatever works for the couple is what it ought to be -- there isn't any external right or wrong. For example, to use a pretty common reference: Fairly early in our marriage, I asked my wife if it mattered to her whether the toilet seat was left up, and she said that it did not. I still wondered about it, because I thought it possible that this was the kind of thing that did matter -- all the articles said so -- so that perhaps she was just being nice -- or even, saving it up to use against me later. Nothing she said or did bred this suspicion; it was the articles that would have me believe that this was the way life really was. I do believe that for some, it is. Just, not for me. Not for us.

So I'd say that just as a court can never order a man to do more than simply take out the garbage, it can't order a couple to figure out what makes sense for them, and quit living by what Cosmopolitian thinks. Which is bad news, I guess, for Justice Ginsburg.

Notes

Well, I'm not as grumpy as I was yesterday, but I'm not particularly pleased with myself for having been grumpy. Its not the kind of person I think of myself as being. Does that seem weird?

From an article about a guy on MSNBC: "Hoff was charged with disorderly conduct, public indecency and failure to comply with fingerprinting." I always think it's a cheap hit when you get charged with something that is, itself, not a crime, or when its ancillary. Fingerprinting? Same thing for when you get charged with 'evading arrest'. Hey, I think that if you don't want to be arrested, its the same thing when you boogie to avoid it as when you refuse to say something that will incriminate yourself. I guess this means that me and most of the legal establishment see things a little differently. Or the DMV, which I think is more than a little anal: from a different story - Division of Motor Vehicles, which blocked her plan because they thought the combination of letters could be interpreted as profane. Her suggestion for the plate on her Suzuki: "ILVTOFU." I just don't get people who are offended by things like that. Though, to be honest, if the plate had flat out said what they said it implied, I'd have thought it was funny. Unless I had to explain it to a kid...

My daughter is refusing to go see her cousin perform at a dance recital. I pointed out to her that she likes it when the cousin comes to see her perform. No, I don't, she said indignantly. Yeah, right.

Animalistic

I am not a major fan of cute animal pictures, but these seem to me to be exceptionally good.

Funky

I am in a serious funk at the moment.

My wife's mother is visiting, and I thought it would be nice if I made a decent dinner that she would appreciate. So, though it wasn't a big deal, I did put some effort into making both a spaghetti sauce from scratch, and meatballs. I didn't do it for kudos, but - well, I expected some gratitude.

My wife did appreciate it.

She also informed me that tomrrow, when I go to church (which I only do to bring my daughter, because it's important to my wife), I'll be bringing my mother along, too.My mother didn't feel up to it, today, when my wife and her mother went. And my wife is doing something with her mother tomorrow, so she doesn't particularly want to take her to church. But, being an Irish Catholic, my mother, of course, has to go. Can't just skip it. Oh, no. So, guess what?

I am not in a good mood. I feel taken.

Pre-Waldo

Everyone knows Waldo, but very few know how he started.

Always

An extract from a New York Times article --

"As soon as the Obama administration-in-waiting announced its stimulus plan — this was before Inauguration Day — some of us worried that the...."

Always, always -- someone worries. Always. Jump right on the concept, and worry. And they're frequently the ones who get the headlines. Right, Fox?

Ee-Ah

I live in Pennsylvania.

Most people pronounce that as Pencil - Vane - Yah. A young reporter for a local radio station, though, says it all the way out - Penn-Sill-Vane-Ee-Aa. When I first heard her, I thought it odd and a bit affected -- too much elocution school, my dear! -- but over time, its grown on me. It reminds me of how I like the name 'Australia' more when they say it as 'Aus-Trail-Ee-Ah' and not 'Aus-Trail-Yah'. In one of the songs from the musical 1776, a character, proclaiming his refusal to create the Declaration of Independence, says ' So I refuse, to use the Pen, in Pennsylvania!' And he says it all the way out.

Of course, there are place names that don't have that penultimate syllable, and should -- Canada/Canadia comes to mind -- but for now, I'll stick with this. EE-AH!

Softie

I like a lot of pillows on a bed. I have two that I use regularly -- one's queen size, one a bit smaller -- that have gotten matted down over time. I have a third that is pretty small, which I use for an odd reason -- before I hurt my shoulder, I used to sleep on my side, with one arm under the pillow; now, I can't quite make the arm lie flat, and I miss that -- so the small pillow is there for me to hang onto. It's not a teddy bear... even if that analogy has occurred to me.

We're looking at new mattresses, for ourselves and our daughter. We tried a couple at a local store, and were surprised to find that what they called their 'top of the line' seemed way too firm for me. I did like another; my wife asked if we could wait until they got a slightly firmer version in so that she could try it and I could see if it was acceptable to me. Along with that, I'd like new pillows. These were bought at Linens N' Things, of sainted memory -- well, not so sainted, as I went there once to try to replace them with exactly the same kind, and they no longer had them. Turkeys. So now I have ordered two from a pillow company. At this price, they ought to be not only comfortable, but wake me up with a cup of coffee, a croissant, and fresh orange juice. I'll settle for the comfort, though.

GoogleBing

I'm using Bing as my home page for a while, for two reasons: first, to see if I like it (Like? Something from Microsoft? Argh...), and second, because lately, for reasons unknown, Google keeps forgetting the preferences I've set, and that's irritating. So, we'll see.

Hey, Cupcake!

Baked these this afternoon. My, oh, my. Creamy in the middle and on top. Way too many for us to eat, so we froze some for my wife to take into work on Monday.


FOR THE FILLING:
8 ounces cream cheese,at room temperature
1 large egg
1/3 cup sugar
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
FOR THE CAKES:
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cider vinegar

Heat the oven to 350°F.
Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners.
Prepare the filling:
Mix the cream cheese, egg, sugar, and chocolate chips together in a large bowl until thoroughly combined. Set the filling aside.
Prepare the cake batter:
Mix the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, and baking soda together in a large mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine the oil, vanilla, vinegar, and 2 cups water.
Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until combined, about 1 minute.
Increase the speed by one level and mix until the batter is lump-free, about 3 minutes.
Scoop the batter into the lined muffin cups, filling them approximately three-fourths full.
Drop a small spoonful of filling on top of the batter in each cup.
Bake untl the tops of the cakes are firm when pressed, 18 to 20 minutes. Let them cool slightly, and serve warm.

Elderly Folks

This August, I'll turn 60. My daughter says that this is the cutoff for mid-life crises. I can have one up to then. What about afterward? I asked her. We'll put it down to senility, she replied. We do tease about that. She told me that she told some friends that she teases me about being old and being a crip. They were astonished, and she was astonished by their astonishment. I guess most Dads don't tease like that, she concluded. I guess not.

My imminent entry into the ranks of elderhood has affected how I think about old people, a little, even though I still maintain that the older I get, the older old gets. (Currently, it's about 75). I get somewhat exasperated when my mother does some things, as when she threw out all of her Tylenol, because she'd heard of people damaging their kidneys or livers through excessive use; it took a call from her family doc to assure her that taking up to four thousand milligrams per day (which works out to eight extra-strength Tylenols) would be okay. Or when she agreed that I could take her to the library on our way back from her medical appointment; after going significantly out of the way from home, she said as we were pulling into the lot, that she didn't really think she wanted to go in; she would wait in the car while I got some books for her. Then why the hell... I thought. I didn't say it, but I think it was fairly obvious what I thought. I have to remember that this is a fairly old -- 85 -- woman who's somewhat frail and apprehensive; she doesn't like new things, or exerting herself, or challenging authority (and she has a wide range of what she considers to be 'authority'; her once a week companion, for example, carries the same weight as her doctor). I will occasionally say to my wife If I ever get like that, just shoot me. I just don't have much patience for it.

And yet this afternoon, when she looked really frail and sounded really tired, I thought I know she's going to die, probably in the next five years, and maybe less, but I hope it isn't today. Because though I can handle the idea intellectually, I don't think I could do it emotionally. And because she asks so little now, it's more than a little cheap of me not to give it willingly, while I have the time.

ShutMyMouth!

Actually, PC -- Thinkpads now have an app that can receive a coded message and be shut down remotely -- for use when your laptop's missing and possibly stolen. Though not quite as cool as this, it's pretty nice.