So That's What Homilies Do

I take my daughter to church on Sunday mornings, the 7:30 Mass, which is the one that doesn't have singing. I don't care for the singing, and neither does she. Truth to tell, though, neither of us particularly cares for the mass anyway. We don't get anything out of it. I go because I think she should; she goes because I make her go. I'm not sure this is a terrific arrangement, but it's probably not all that unusual.

This morning, the pastor gave the homily. He's been the pastor for a long time. His homilies are not very dynamic, but he tries, and I think that he means what he says. I've had the full course of Catholic school, though, which tends to bend you pretty sharply one way or the other. You either become a true believer, or you shuck it all off. I don't usually get much from the homily.

This morning was different.

He told a joke, which he likes to do. The jokes are usually pretty corny, but he usually gets a polite laugh (though he got a bigger one when he remarked abruptly, having walked away from the lectern at the end of his sermon, 'Hey, I didn't have the mike on! Could you hear me? Hate to think I did all that work and all you saw was my lips moving!). But what he said today caught my attention.

He said that a lot of people don't like things the way they are. They don't like their job, their marriage, their kids. As a result, they hide from the things they don't like -- lingering in thoughts of how great things used to be, or mulling over how nice life would be if something great happened. But they don't take even a small step toward fixing the things that they don't like, and so, usually, those things don't change. They won't tell themselves the things they don't want to know -- your marriage stinks, your kids are out of control, you're not very good at your job -- and they won't even think about the possibility of trying to fix any of it. They cringe away from the idea.

I know about this.

Purely aside from my reaction to doctors, about which I've spoken, I know about cringing from things I don't want to face. About three years ago, I wanted to create a spreadsheet to give me a general idea about how much money we'd have when we retired. I was flabbergasted to discover how little that would be. As it turns out, I had forgotten a couple of income sources, and I had overstated one expense, and I had forgotten that one expense would not last past another ten years or so -- but I was so stung by the experience, that it literally took me six months to get back to making the spreadsheet work. I would see it in the list of files, and think 'I should work at that', and I would shiver at the thought. And this was just a spreadsheet, not a person, not a family, not a job. Scared the bejesus out of me.

So while he was saying all of this, I was thinking, well, yeah, that's true, but you don't understand -- I'm fat, and I can't seem to lose weight; I don't take care of myself or my chronic medical condition, which never gets better and stays that way; I don't get stuff done that ought to be done .... and then I thought - well, just what the hell do you think he's talking about? And who?

Oh.

Now, I don't think my life is going to now be a series of illuminated steps in the darkness, just because a homily gave me something to think about. I am just as capable now of ignoring and defering as ever before.

But I at least know that someone thinks that change is possible, that improvement is possible. It can be and probably will be a bitch, and its not a guarantee, but if you try, truly try, then yes -- its possible.

Giving that sort of hope -- I guess that's what homilies do.

Chin Music

I'm pretty sure that that's a way of slyly saying 'A lot of talking, not a lot of saying.' That's kind of what I'm in the mood for, though, at the moment, and it's even one of the things I've been thinking about.

Found out about three weeks ago that a really large lump on my chin is a basal cell carcinoma. As cancers go, it's pretty small potatoes, but anything like that on your own personal body is unsettling, and this one was big enough to cause the plastic surgeon to express surprise. Came to figure out, too, that I've likely had it for Quite Some Time, because of a combination of things -- my beard covered it, doctors that I see for other stuff didn't notice it (or when they did, thought it was something minor), and, mostly, because I didn't push the question with them, because I don't like going to doctors, because they tell you things you don't want to hear. I realize that's stupid -- I have known that for some time. Now I really know it. In about four weeks, I'll have some plastic surgery, and it should be corrected. The carcinoma scares me, the surgery kind-of scares me, and the 'should be' scares me. So much so that last week I asked my local medical people for some kind of tranquilizer, because, frankly, I was freaking out. Not running, ranting, and shouting, but fixating on it and not sleeping. They gave me some. So far, I haven't had to use it. Hope not to, but it's nice to have.

I also found this week that a friend of mine -- I guess 'acquaintance' would be a better term -- whom I know only via email may be getting ready to end our electronic acquaintance. She tells me that she's just becoming more guarded about who she talks with, and since she doesn't really know me.... well. I guess I understand that. It's what I'd advise my daughter to do. Can't say I like it much, though. But its a funny thing -- protesting Hey, I'm Normal! sends exactly the opposite message.

And we learned on Wednesday that a) the woman who comes one day a week to spend time with my mother, whom we like very much (both of them!) may be quitting that business. She spends a lot of time with infirm people, and it's getting to her, and b) the cleaning crew that does our house once every couple of weeks told their boss that they're quitting, en masse. They did want to tell us that they liked my mother, though.

Good news is in short supply this week -- which may be partially why I am so taken by the Varley book. No, on second thought, that's not it. It really is a good book.

I could use some lazy, hazy days in the hammock, though, right about now.

John Varley is a Good Writer

...which I realize is like saying 'And that Isaac Asimov, and that Robert Heinlein, man, they're pretty good, you know?' People know this already. Nevertheless, I wanted to say it, because I like sharing information, and heck, who knows, someone might stop by who's looking for a good read.

The novel is Red Thunder. Its the kind of book that I can lose myself in, looking up after twenty minutes have passed that I didn't even notice go by. The plot is fun, the characters are believable (okay, there is one... but I want to believe in him, so I will.)

I'm starting to care about these people, and I'm only on the fourth chapter.

Red Thunder. Good read.

Man, This Makes Me Feel Old....

I was just wandering through the list of Favorites on my browser, and came across this page, which is dedicated to a squadron that I was part of when I was in South East Asia -- Korat RTAFB, Thailand, to be exact. I clicked on a couple of the pictures, and smiled. And then I thought: that picture is more than forty years old, dude....

I don't care. It reminds me of my youth, and I like it.

Late night munchies

Living life asynchronously, at the moment -- went to bed early, while the others were awake; then I woke up just as the daughter went to bed and the wife was signing on to work to look at a job she had run, which meant that I couldn't check email. So I did what most people would do -- went out to the kitchen and found something to eat.

I was reading a magazine, the other day, that's oriented to people who really like to fix up their homes with lavish technologies. (Actually, the phrase that came to mind was 'people who like to tart up their homes') I know, the magazines are intended to sell the concept, but even so: small microwaves and refrigerators for the master suite so that you don't have to trudge all the way to the kitchen for a midnight snack? A central command post controller in the kitchen so that you can see if the garage door is open? Speakers in the halls so that you can listen to the soundtrack of the movie playing down in the media room? Good golly.......

I read the magazine to get some ideas, and I did. Obviously, I'm not doing enough to support the economy. Think I'll buy some books.

Iraq. Prisons. Torture. Us.

I hate being on this side of the torture question. I hate thinking that maybe its okay.

Is any action, any attitude all right as long as it destroys a despised and hated foulness? What if it just weakens the foulness? Do we back off? Or do we then say that we need to kick it up a notch, because the level of intensity we were at was not good enough, not meeting its desired purpose?

Who gets to decide? The instruments of the action? Or someone else?

And if we truly got material from what we did that could not have been gotten any other way, and if that material was truly worth it -- was the action ok?

Why isn't this obvious to me?

Beheading.

They're animals. Pure and simple. Rabid, frothing at the mouth, animals. They dishonor their heritage, their religion, and their nation. This foul act begs for revenge.

I hope we don't do it. Justice, absolutely. Revenge -- I don't think so. My gut says yes, smash them, smash them all, they, in fact, the whole region, responds to strength, not mercy. My brain says 'The cycle has to stop somewhere.'

Want to bet they didn't have this discussion?

Gas prices and the stock market

Let me see if I've got this straight.

Gas prices are going up because demand is up, reserves are down, and the base cost is up.

Because gas prices are going up (among other things), the feeling is that 'inflation is back'.

Because inflation is a bad thing, the cost of loans is expected to go up as an anti-inflationary measure.

Because the cost of loans is expected to go up, corporate profits are expected to go down.

Because corporate profits are expected to go down, people sell stocks now.

Because people sell stocks now, the value of the stock market goes down.

Because the value of the stock market goes down, the value of stocks, overall, goes down, and the net wealth of the country is less (barring direct and cost free transfers into other financial instruments).

Ok, I think I've got it.

I've heard that the reason grown-ups like to ask kids what they want to be when they grow up is that the grown-ups are still trying to figure that one out, and are looking for ideas.

I think that's true.

I had a bit of a pleasant surprise in the reading department this week.

I have a running list of books that I want to read. I've been keeping the list for years, ever since I realized that I would buy a book and then not get around to reading it for months, by which time it would frequently be out in paperback. Adding insult to injury, I was finding that a lot of the books that I bought weren't as good as I had thought they would be. I seemed to have developed the gift of hitting the best part when I was skimming it in the bookstore, and finding out only at home that the rest was not up to that standard. So I started my list. When I took a year off, I promised myself that I would get the list down. At its peak, it was up around 75 books, and I did get it down -- to about 68; hardly as many as I wanted to have read during that hiatus.

About two weeks ago, I realized that the list was pretty big again, and since I was looking for something to read that wasn't technical (or at least not intensely so), I thought to order some books through my local library's interlibrary loan system. My library has a somewhat cumbersome process for doing that. It's manual, and it uses a different ILL order card depending on whether the book is being reserved within the library, ordered from the library system of which they're a part, or ordered from another system entirely. That might make sense to a librarian, but it makes no sense to me. On a couple of occasions, I was halfway through a card before realizing it was the wrong one. What joy! What made all of this particularly irritating is that I had the info on the book -- title, author, ISBN - already keyed into spreadsheet that I had made while searching the library system through the Internet. To then take the digital information and hand write it so that someone else could key it into another computer system was offensive to my sense of How Things Should Be (which, admittedly, is sometimes much sterner than it ought to be). Plus, I notice that the more I have to write, the less legible my writing becomes. I'm sure the librarians really enjoy that.

So this week, I thought to ask the librarians if I could do it digitally -- fill out a form on line, or send them an email with my requests. To my surprise, they said yes. Its clearly something that, if lots of people asked for it, they'd not do, but I gather that this is an unusual request for them, and they were willing to honor it. I even told them that I'd be willing to pay a premium for this additional service. I think a buck a book would be reasonable. I suggested that they consider adding this feature to their web site. Doubt that will happen, though -- I get the impression they are part of The Official Library Computer System, and changes are not made to that lightly.

Still, I'm pleased. Now I just want to see if the books ordered this way actually do come. I hope so -- I just added two books (The BeeKeeper’s Apprentice, and The Working Poor) to the list. Gotta read, gotta read.

Two words I like.

Refectory.

Clerestory.

Solid, substantial words. I like 'em.

Sitting in the car at a light, I did the math.

I use twenty gallons of gas every two weeks, mostly going to work and back. That works out to 520 gallons a year. That ignores long trips, of course.

Gas is now about 50 cents a gallon more than it was three months ago. Assuming it stays that way -- and Dick Cheney's pals will make sure of that, and then some, I bet -- that works out to $260 more a year out of my pocket.

That $260, at the current gas price, would pay for about 138 gallons of gas, or 69 round trips to work. That's about 6 round trips a month. So, if I worked from home 6 days a month, I'd break even. More if -- and when -- the price goes up, of course.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I just went outside and took about fifteen pictures.

It's been a long time since I've done any photography, and I had forgotten how much fun it can be to look for the right angle, look for something to frame, something to make the picture come alive. I'm not a stylistic photographer, but I like to think that what I take is worth keeping -- which I suppose makes it odd that I routinely throw away seventy percent of the pictures that I take. That'll likely happen this time, too. The motivation for the shoot was that someday -- not soon -- we'll be selling this house, and we wanted a photograph showing the house with the landscaping in bloom. Got some nice ones. I wandered around in the street with a ladder, stepping up on occasion for a better angle (the house is on a very slight rise), and occasionally kneeling to get some up-close photographs of some of the more striking flowers. I thought to invite the family out to the landing, and took some shots of them, too, at the conclusion of which, the daughter borrowed the camera and took some shots, herself. She said she really loves doing it, and me, I love that she loves it.

Hope they come out.

This morning, I was teasing my wife about not knowing how to make 'peanut bobbles', and how every other family has a wife who knows how to make it, and that the knowledge is passed down from generation to generation, but I seem to have been left in the lurch, and didn't this call into question the whole likelihood of the marriage surviving? In the middle of which, our daughter came into the kitchen, and I looked at her and said 'Can you beleive it -- this will shock you -- your mother doesn't know how to make peanut bobbles!" She stared at her mother with a stunned expression, and her mother said 'Do YOU know how to make peanut bobbles?' Whereupon the daughter smiled and said "Kids don't have to know. Only moms are supposed to know how to make peanut bobbles.'

Is she cool, or what?

I currently work for the largest software company in the world.

I used to work for the second largest, although as things go, its probably about the fifth, now.

Both companies say and said repeatedly how important people were in the delivery of their service.

Both have cut back dramatically in training for their technical people, the sources of their technically oriented products, and one of the sources of their success, to the point where it is rare to get any training at all, and reservations are voiced even about taking electronic courses which cost nothing.

What should one conclude from this?

To characterize each company's management as, say, 'lying sacks of shit' does comes to mind....but that would be childish, immature, and wrong.

Besides, the excrement would be offended.

Stray thoughts on a rainy April morning.

April showers bring May flowers. That is holding true -- our front yard's landscaped area is starting to come into bloom, and when it is fully there, I will again envy the people who live in more temperate climates, where the flowers are always in bloom. They probably don't appreciate them as intently as we do, but I like to think they do notice them.

My daughter and I just went for a short walk. It was intended to be a longer one -- she even wore a down vest that she liked -- but it got cut short when she noticed that the sleeveless vest was doing nothing to keep her arms dry -- arms that were cold to the touch, too. If her mother had been here, she'd have been sure that the daughter went out properly protected, but I exercised the guy's right to say heck, she's not gonna die, and this way, she'll learn without me telling her. And that apparently worked -- she stopped at one point and suggested that we make a quick loop back to the house, and have some hot chocolate on arrival, too. I asked her if it was getting chilly, and she nodded. I noticed that, too, I said -- and that was all.

We have the Sunday papers stacked on the kitchen counter, and as it was just below the cabinet where the sprinkles were (can't have ice cream without sprinkles), the daughter stopped to read the headlines. She asked me why people were still fighting in Iraq if we had already found out that Iraq doesn't have massive weapons. I didn't have Condi Rice here to help me spin that one, so I simply told her it was a group of people who didn't want us there, some of whom had further agendas. She thought that it was dumb of them to fight us if we were trying to help them, and I think that a bit, too. I like clean answers, but there aren't any there. I do think its intriguing that the guy in power who used to be a military guy is the one pushing against a military solution, and the guy who wasn't, is. Food for deep philosophy, there.

I am quite taken by that YCC concept car that Volvo made. If this is a realistic example of what women designers can come up with, we ought to get lots more. I like it so much (except for those doors) that I can even accept the comment one of them made (it might have been an American, actually; I've heard it both ways) that once you meet a woman's expectations, you've exceeded a mans. That sure does seem to be true in this case. Though it leaves me wondering: if it were available, would I buy it or the Prius? The attraction of the Prius is lessening the use of gas. I like the idea of sticking it to OPEC, and I'm sure that my refusal of five hundred gallons a year would bring them to their senses right away. Except that economically, I think they *are* in their senses -- getting as much money as they can for their product, right now. And they could be getting more, too. I'm sure they've noticed that.

I hear where a woman came up with a site whose name is, I think, Down With Bush, and where the ultimate expression of acceptance for that concept is that you shave off your pubic hair. So far as I know, its limited to women. I wonder if women are as taken by the idea of a guy without pubic hair as guys are for similarly shaved women? I admit, I find the idea tittilating, but I always feel stupid when I think about it. I mean, whats the big deal? I recall reading quite some time ago that in societies where things we hide, like breasts, are exposed, its very rapidly accepted as normal to see them. In my one foray to a nude beach, I noticed that -- just like I noticed the boat going back and forth . Remember the song lyrics about 'a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking'? Sheesh. Maybe guys never do grow up.

You know what would be cool? Being able to have the cell phone plug into the audio system of the van, so that while I am driving to lunch I can still listen in to a teleconference, using the speakers of the audio system. Okay, its probably possible, but not for me. Not yet, anyway. Someday....

The other day, I was thinking about the price of gasoline. I use about 12 gallons a week, mostly driving to work, which takes about a gallon each way, so at the local average about about $1.70 a gallon, I pay about seventeen dollars a week for the privilege of driving. That's up about two bucks per week. I wondered how high it would have to go before it affected my consumption. I guessed that for me to make a change, the price would have to increase up to about $2.50 a gallon. At that point, I’d be paying around thirty dollars a week, and that, I’d notice.

Those thoughts came back to me as I read in the Sunday paper that some people feel that an increase in gasoline taxes would reduce dependence on foreign oil by reducing consumption. It would probably reduce consumption overall, but I would bet that it wouldn’t affect it for everyone, or even most people, because the driving they do, they have to do.They don’t have a convenient alternative. Until the price got so high that it cost more to commute than the person earned, they’d continue to pay. Like me, they’d likely notice the difference, and grumble, but they wouldn’t use substantially less.

Buying cars would be a different matter. The demand for fuel economy is probably elastic with respect to gasoline prices to a lesser extend than usage; as prices go up, people are more likely to think about the mileage that they expect from a new vehicle when they are researching the purchase. But e-ven then it's questionable - I doubt mileage is a major factor in what vehicle to buy, though it might be a factor in differentiating between acceptable vehicles.

Several months ago, when my partner and I were both pretty busy, and were finding it difficult to come up with ideas for dinners that could be accomplished quickly, we started a list of meals that we liked. It had two columns -- one for things that took a little bit of time, and one for things that took longer. We went through a couple of iterations of how to organize the list -- one of the first tries was Hard to Make, Easy to Make, and another was Weekday/Weekend -- but it settled down pretty quickly into QUICK and LONG. QUICK is something we can make quickly, and LONG is something that takes effort, and is expected to be seen again at some point. QUICK is as you’d expect; things we can make almost on the fly -- burritos, hamburgers, soup, grilled cheese, and the ever-popular Round Food, a.k.a. pizza. The LONGs are more complex, or at least take more time to make than we usually have during the week. They’re expected to generate leftovers. In fact, some of them generate so many leftovers that the output is bifurcated into something we eat and something we store, and that second category is split again into something we store to have later in the week, and something we freeze to have in two or three weeks -- or longer. An example of that is the Bean Bake, which I dearly love; it’s a simple recipe that takes a while to cook in the crockpot, but once done, I know I’ll want it twice, perhaps three times in one week -- and then not again for a while. So, some we eat, some we store, and some we freeze, to be found weeks or even months later when we’re roaming through the kitchen saying Don’t we have anything to eat?

In our house, it works out that if someone is going to make a complex breakfast (meat, waffles, coffee, muffins or toast), it’ll probably be me; if someone is going to make a complex dinner (more than five minutes prep time), it’ll probably be my partner . Lately, though, with all of the time that my partner been putting in with preparations for the school’s Science Night, our dinners have been a little on the basic side, even if she’s the one making them; if I make them, you can pretty much count on them being of the soup or spaghetti level of difficulty. So, we thought that this might be a good time to start doing a little revamping of the menu list, the better to motivate one or the other of us to actually make the meal. To that end, I took two of our cookbooks into the bedroom, settled back, and started leafing through the first one. It happens to be one that we bought for our child, but though it is a ‘kids cookbook’, it’s a real one, with real food in it. Insofar as I eat like a kid, this is a cookbook for me, but some of it is advanced for my tastes. Still, its a great place to start, and indeed I came up with two things to try. One is a simple spaghetti sauce. A couple of years ago, we thought to try to make our own sauce. I had visions of the scene in The Godfather where the round guy -- what was his name? Don’t recall, but I do remember a line he had after they’d just shot the chauffeur and were abandoning the car - "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." -- is stirring the huge pot of sauce while commiserating with Michael’s troubles. It turned out that it was a lot more difficult to make the sauce than I thought it would be, and since then we’ve discovered the Newman’s Own brand of sauce. I had originally been against buying it (or Emeril’s, or any other sauce with a recognizable name) because I thought heck, how good can it be? But it turns out that the Newman’s sauce is actually quite good, and that’s been our staple ever since -- and probably will be even after we try the one from the book. But the one in the book is really quite simple -- carrot, celery, garlic, tomato and puree -- so what the heck, we’re going to try it. It’ll just be the two of us; our child believes that to have any kind of pasta other than angel hair is an abomination, and to have any topping other than butter and a lot of grated cheese compounds the offense. We’ll see. The other thing we’ll try out of that book is a form of french toast. We all like FT, though since we discovered the delights of freshly made waffles, especially made our way, which is to say, with white chocolate chips in the batter, with a side of sausage or bacon, it’s been a tossup. But this sounds good -- cut the bread into star shapes, make the FT immersion batter, fry it in hot oil, sprinkle cinnamon on it. Crunchy French Toast. We’ve still got a little vanilla ice cream in the freezer, too, so we’ll likely have that on top. That’s actually the kid's idea, and its a good one. First time I bit into it, I recalled the story of how the ice cream cone got started. Don’t know if it’s a true story, but I like it.

That's the plan for two meals, this next week. If I can come up with two more additional things to try for the first time, we’ll add them to the menu list, and that’ll be it.

Went to the barbers, got my usual chop and hack job. Barbers don't think, they run by muscle memory. Probably not completely true; definitely not completely not. Got home, found out that the nurse practicitioner I have been seeing, is going to quit the practice. Bummer. Takes me a while to warm up to any doc, and we were just getting somewhere.

I've always been fascinated by architecture.

I'm not sure that fascinated is the right word, but what the hell. And I guess always isn't the right word, either. Double what the hell. I've always been fascinated by architecture.

Both the style and the substance intrigue me. The style: making shapes that excite you, move you. The great hall of St. Peter's cathedral, or St. Patricks. When I hear designers talk about things like moving from a small space into a large one, so that you get the gradually growing sense of width and mass, that grabs my attention. I wonder how you learn how to do that -- if its something that you have to be born with, but which can be enhanced by training, or whether anyone can be taught to do it (though even then, the best, I guess, can do it better, no matter what). But how do you know what's possible? And where does it start? Got to believe that it comes from a whole lot of messing around with models, literally just playing around with shapes to see what clicks. Sure, some are major flops, delightful only to purists of the art, but man, when you play in a ballpark that visible, you've got to accept that. Look at all the dazzling buildings in Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, New York.......

And the substance: making a building that works -- that lays out space in innovative ways. Curtain walls, staggered elevator shafts, multiple elevators in the same shaft. My goodness. And the materials they're made of -- how do you find out what’s even possible? I recall reading about why an I beam is that shape. How long were beams the way they were before people figured out that half the mass of the thing wasn't contributing to the support it offered? Or at least, cost more to have than it offered as support? And new solutions to old problems. I remember reading about a building which has a moving mass of concrete half way up its height that acts as a damper when the building is swayed by high winds, keeping it stable, or, at least, more stable. Wow! What kind of mind can think of stuff like that?

Maybe fascinated is a good word, after all.

Today I get to meet with the auditors -- the Corporate Auditors; when people mention them, you can hear the capitalized initials in their voices. I don't have a problem with the concept of auditors; I think of them as keepers of the faith who, by their rigidity, pull an organization toward the pole that the corporation says it hews to all the time, religiously (The analogy of the Taliban does occur to me). What I've got a problem with is the basis of audits, and response to them.

BASIS: Too much of audits are based on the whim and bias of the auditor. While some, and perhaps even most, of this is based on expert and/or experienced knowledge, much of it is based on the bias of the auditor, and what a given auditor expects and chooses to accept. What's acceptable to one is not acceptable to another; it might not even be acceptable to the same auditor at a later date.

RECOURSE: In corporations, there is no recourse from what an auditor chooses to write up. Even the IRS can be beaten into submission if you're willing to spend the time and money, but auditors have no similar back door. Most times, a manager will just roll his eyes and advise you to go along. That's not right.

I know its not that straightforward. When you delve into the intricacies of any human system, there are plenty of opportunities for disagreement. One person thinks a change is minor and should not require oversight; another thinks it's major, and ought to be reviewed. Usually, the second view is that of a person who doesn't personally have to wait for the oversight -- but that doesn't make them wrong.

Resilient systems allow for human error. About two months ago, I sneaked in a change. It was a change that was needed, and was valid -- but I forgot to get prior authorization, and waiting to get authorization at that point would have meant public notice that the change went in late. So I just did it. Was that wrong? Yes, unquestionably. I did the wrong thing, just so I wouldn’t be held to blame. A better answer would have been that I remembered to get authorization -- which is why there is now a piece of note paper on my cubicle wall with the name of that system in big black letters, to remind me that yes, I am responsible for that system, too. And if an auditor asks why I have that system name written there -- I'll -- ah....prevaricate.

Fascinating article in the Times today on findings regarding the effectiveness of stents vs cholesterol/blood pressure reduction in the reduction of likelihood of heart attacks. Really, really interesting stuff.

Whenever I see an article about concierge medical services, I read it. And I usually stop when I hit The Phrase. Sometimes it shows up in the beginning, sometimes in the middle. But it's always there.

From today's Washington Post: Doctoring at Your Service

"Eichelberger and Blakeslee say they were forced to try this new model for patient service because the managed health care system had been cutting doctors' fees. "I had no choice. It was my only way to actually stay in business," Blakeslee said. "I would have been out of business in three years for financial reasons." ..."This is not an easy road. This is not get-rich-quick", Eichelberger said. "We're probably making a little bit more money than we did before. But we know that we have potential for growth."

And there it is, again.

Of course, who can blame them? Do what you want to do, the way you want to do it? Desirable. And have less annoying paperwork? Excellent. And your customers really do get better medical treatment? Faster, more focused, more comprehensive? Outstanding. And earn more at the same time? Stellar. Go for it.

Why can't they admit that the increased dollars are attractive? Do they think it will detract from their image as noble healers? And, if so, is that so bad?

Another bullet dodged.

After the failure of the second remote control for the Sony DVD/VCR player, we had thought to stop by Circuit City to look for a replacement unit. We did this grudgingly, as the idea of replacing the entire unit simply because the remote doesn't work does not fill us with happiness. Bad enough that the remote is a modern masterpiece of non-design, but to have to replace the whole thing.... well.

We were in the store for quite some time, looking at units ranging from a very inexpensive DVD player to a quite expensive DVD player/recorder with 80 GB hard drive. After wandering back and forth, thinking about the method that we'd use to connect the player to the TV in a way that would allow connection of the old VCR (which we still have), we balked. None of the options, from the cheapest to the most expensive, sounded right to us. A combination of gibberish on the units (what in the hell is 'Double ReMastering'? One unit proclaimed this ability) and on the advertising copy (how expansive is 80GB for video recording? Is that ten minutes or ten hours?), along with the thought that we had just done this, why were we even thinking about doing it again -- convinced us that we weren't going to buy spontaneously, no matter how long we had to wait for the remote's replacement.

Which was in the mailbox when we got home. Zing!

That's not to say that we won't eventually do a massive replacement. We've agreed that when the television dies, we'll replace it with a flat screen unit that can display letter box format but is not necessarily high-definition ready. What I'd really like is the ability to mount the television up above the mantel, where there is a socket, though no cable or antenna connection. I understand that there is the capability to have wireless television connectivity; I don't know how to do that, though, and I certainly don't trust the people at Circuit City to tell me, no matter that I did once see an article about a person -- one person, one Circuit City -- who was quite good at it. If it becomes commonly possible, that's one thing. We're neither of us pioneers.

We'd also like to replace the audio equipment that's in that room. It currently consists of an amplifier that I bought when I was in Thailand with the Air Force (which is to say, 30+ years ago), a turntable, and a cassette deck. There's also a pair of speakers hung on the wall which were once connected, and now are not. The basic problem there is two fold; first, I detest the design of pretty much all amplifiers; they are black in black on black. I want something with elegance, style, simplicity, and color. Come on, it is possible. And second, the newer amps (which means, those built in the last fifteen years ) don't accept turntable input. I resent having to buy a module just to connect them. I know that that makes me sound like someone who resents that there are no decent buggy-whip makers these days.

An interface to the PC (or the local LAN) would be nice. A Tivo would be good, too, because we do watch television on occasion (why, just last night we watched Men in Black; how cutting edge is that?) , and hard drive recorders make more sense than tape, provided you can watch one thing from the hard drive while recording another. Can't do that with tape. Oh, and being able to watch something from the hard drive while the timer is set to record something else, or even starts to record something else -- that would be good, too. Can't do that with tape, either.

We vaguely know what we want. We vaguely know how it's might be possible. We just don't know how to put it together so that it actually works, and we know of no one we trust to guide us, impartially, on this. No matter how many cheery Circuit City ads we see.

Good thing we enjoy figuring things out.

I've come to the conclusion that any job which is described using the phrase "your .....professional', as in 'your financial services professional', 'your window repair professional', your television and audio professional', is more than likely referring to someone who is undertrained and unempowered. People who can actually do things -- who iknow what to do and can do it of their own volition -- don't have that phrase in their job title. They actually ARE professionals.

One of the sayings that I like is 'Sometimes wrong, never uncertain'. Not universally applicable, but it comes into its own on occasion -- as this evening, when I had a quiet discussion with my daughter about the mechanics of having her period (or as she referred to it, "that end of sentence thing"). She knows what will happen, and how it will manifest itself, but she didn't really know how she'd handle telling the teacher that she had to go to the bathroom right now, and she couldn't see herself going up to her in the middle of class, whispering urgently while other kids milled around. I had a couple of ideas about that, which she accepted with some relief. I told her that if she needed to talk to someone, and there weren't any girls around to talk to, she could talk to me, and I promised not to laugh or think that what she was saying was gross (though, truth to tell, I could have done without learning a couple of details about her friends that she mentioned as proof that they knew what they were talking about.) She told me that she knew that while the whole process might be messy, it wouldn't hurt, and I agreed. Like I know.

But what the heck. Sometimes wrong, never uncertain.

This morning, we had an exceptionally fine Sunday brunch.

For one, we had hazelnut coffee, which we both like, adding to it a bit of the intense coffee beans which we bought from Ten Thousand Villages (or as I like to call them, to my daughter's dismay, Ten Thousand Maniacs). Along with that, we had seasoned bacon -- thick cuts of bacon which were seasoned with rosemary, brown sugar, and cayenne pepper. But the piece de resistance was the waffles, and only then when my daughter looked up and slyly asked if she could put a scoop of ice cream on hers. Ice cream? With brunch? Well, what the hell.....

Paper, coffee, good food, family -- excellent. Truly excellent.

This morning, my daughter told me that she had played her mother in Rummy, and 'whupped her butt'. The maternal sense of humor wasn't engaged by this phrase, and her mother was looking for an alternative. I suggested 'made her cry like a girl', which for some reason she didn't like either. At last, she suggested 'cleaned her clock', and the daughter said 'I didn't clean your clock, Mom. I don't like to clean.'

Is she great, or what?

I didn't write this. Wish I had. I found it at http://www.margilowry.com/archives/000476.html

Operator: "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your..."

Customer: "Hi, I'd like to order."

Operator: "May I have your NIDN first, sir?"

Customer: "My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it's
6102049998-45-54610."

Operator: "Thank you, Mr. Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland
Drive, and the phone number's 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln
Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number's 266-2566. Which number are
you calling from, sir?"

Customer: "Huh? I'm at home. Where d'ya get all this information?"

Operator: "We're wired into the system, sir."

Customer: (Sighs) "Oh, well, I'd like to order a couple of your
All-Meat Special pizzas..."

Operator: "I don't think that's a good idea, sir."

Customer: "Whaddya mean?"

Operator: "Sir, your medical records indicate that you've got very
high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Your National
Health Care provider won't allow such an unhealthy choice."

Customer: "Damn. What do you recommend, then?"

Operator: "You might try our low-fat Soybean Yogurt Pizza. I'm
sure you'll like it"

Customer: "What makes you think I'd like something like that?"

Operator: "Well, you checked out 'Gourmet Soybean Recipes' from
your local library last week, sir. That's why I made the suggestion."

Customer: "All right, all right. Give me two family sized ones, then.
What's the damage?"

Operator: "That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four
kids, sir. The 'damage,' as you put it, heh, heh, comes $49.99."

Customer: "Lemme give you my credit card number."

Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay in cash.
Your credit card balance is over its limit."

Customer: "I'll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your
driver gets here."

Operator: "That won't work either, sir. Your checking account's
overdrawn."

Customer: "Never mind. Just send the pizzas. I'll have the cash ready.
How long will it take?"

Operator: "We're running a little behind, sir. It'll be about 45 minutes,
sir. If you're in a hurry you might want to pick 'em up while you're out
getting the cash, but carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little
awkward."

Customer: "How the hell do you know I'm riding a bike?"

Operator: "It says here you're in arrears on your car payments,
so your car got repo'ed. But your Harley's paid up, so I just assumed
that you'd be using it."

Customer: "@#%/$@&?#!"

Operator: "I'd advise watching your language, sir. You've already got
a July 2006 conviction for cussing out a cop."

Customer: (Speechless)

Operator: "Will there be anything else, sir?"

Customer: "No, nothing. oh, yeah, don't forget the two free liters of
Coke your ad says I get with the pizzas."

Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but our ad's exclusionary clause prevents
us from offering free soda to diabetics."

--------
How silly, huh? I mean, COME ON! The Pizza Dude would have caller ID, so he'd know which number the customer was calling from. Sheesh.

We're going to be selecting wallpaper for one of the rooms, and dreading the thought of going to the store, leafing through tons of samples, dragging some home... why isn't this stuff digitally available? Key in some search criteria (dark, pattern, blue), and let it show you page of possibilities? Much more effective...

Its just before noon on a chilly Sunday morning. I was up early today, dialing in to monitor a system upgrade. I never sleep well, the night before having to do that, and I almost always wake up before the alarm. Of course, then I turn it off and lie there, and moments pass...or more. The upgrade was without incident, as we expected it would be. While I was waiting for them to announce that it was a success, I took the opportunity to fire up Quicken and create some reports with which to update our retirement spreadsheet. The recent surges in the market have had a startling effect on our net worth, and I have taken to saying well, when the market dropped, we lost this percent of our stock-based net worth, so if that were to happen again, here's what our net worth would be. Which is sobering, but only for a little while. In fact, we had arbitarily picked a total net worth (excluding the house) value out of thin air a few years ago, saying that when we reached it, one of us could retire, and it actually seems like we're going to reach it this year. Then you start thinking well, sure, you're at that number, but retirement means an immediate drop in income, so don't you really mean some higher number, like 1.1 or 1.2 X, so that the drop puts you where you were when you retired? Truth is, no matter how much we have, it never seems like it'll be enough. Then you look at some articles about the number of people living in middle-class poverty, let alone all of those living near the actual poverty line, and you feel positively flush.

My wife's company is making the great switch from desk tops to laptops. Last night, we got her laptop working with a phone dialup, and then we found that the Dell Latitude contained a MiniPCI card, which is a wireless card, so we activated that (why didn't it come activated? Beats me), and then she could just talk wirelessly to the router and thence to the cable modem. So this morning, she was at the kitchen table, wirelessly talking to the router, then to the Internet, then to her company network, then to her office LAN, and then to the hard drive on her office PC -- accessing files, moving them back and forth, no prob.

Wow.

Sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea, looking at the sunlight reflecting off the snowy fields and onto the barns of the neighboring farmer. I know it can't last, but it's sure nice while its here. I hadn't planned to work from home today, but my daughter's ill, so I trekked in to the office early, picked up my laptop and some materials, and came back. One of the very nice things about working for my company is that I can do things like this, usually without having to warn people in advance. And one of the nicer things about being an IT person is the ability to work remotely.

I have always enjoyed learning how things work.

For years, I wondered how exactly how a house gets built -- what, literally, do you do to build a house. How do the walls get built? What’s inside them, anyway? And why don't they fall down? I found a book several years ago, titled, I think, Why Buildings Don't Fall Down, that answered a lot of that, but some of my knowledge there comes from just watching builders, when I can. I've been surprised to see just how basic some of those fixes and methods are -- how a wall actually gets built, and what keeps them on the foundation. A couple of years ago, I was leafing through Fine Homebuilding, and was astonished to learn that they don't, always; they had pictures of buildings in San Francisco that had literally slid right off their foundations. I was amazed. So were the owners, I guess.

Usually, my desire for knowledge doesn't go too deep into the topic. Take my recent fascination with the concept of aortic dissection, something which I'll grant most people would not want to know about at all, let alone want to understand the innards of. I think its pretty cool stuff. I like knowing what it is, what’s actually happening, how it comes to pass, how it gets fixed. My knowledge about the phenomenon isn't too detailed, even for a layman, and I surely couldn't speak of it at length with anyone who actually understands it deeply. There’s a line that appears with some regularity in the Aubrey/Maturin novels, wherein someone who is talking to Stephen Maturin, who, in addition to his other skills, happens to be a physician (not a surgeon, he notes with some acerbity at one point); the person will say something like 'I am not to be speaking of medicine to a doctor of medicine....', the implication being that it would be presumptuous at best, and insulting at worst, to bring up the topic. I probably would, though, at least mention it, because it lets me establish a bit of a linkage with people who do understand the topic, and that might let me learn a little bit more about it. It also might help me know a bit more about people who understand this sort of thing, and I like that, too. So, I'd mention it.

Robert Heinlein was fond of saying (or having his characters say) that without substantial theoretical underpinnings, people could not offer valid opinions on the topic. That’s not so. It isn't normally necessary to understand an idea comprehensively in order to judge it. An informed opinion is sufficient, and sometimes, even less than that. How many people can speak authoritatively and provably regarding the relative worth of outfielders in professional baseball? But understanding what the outfielder is there to do is the basis for being able to speak about it. Similarly, knowing how a blood vessel works, how walls are attached to build a house, what a derivative is, understanding the role of the outfielder -- they all say that you are conversant with your world; you know more than what comes at you every day from your own discipline, your own narrow corridor. When you hear about something new, it provides linkage, a place to hook ideas together, or a framework against which to judge those new concepts for validity and usefulness. It allows you to offer opinions based on what you've just learned, and what you already knew. They might not be right, but they'll be worth something.

Plus, sometimes it’s just fun to know things.

Just knowing that stuff really does have a logical basis for how it works is satisfying to me. The current craze for carb counting is part of that. Years ago, I was talking with the woman who was our family doc about the concept of blood sugar, and what it literally meant, and she mentioned that people who want to track that and affect it will count how many carbs they eat. I asked her why, and, surprised that I wouldn't know that, she gave me thirty seconds of the relationship between carbohydrates and sugar. How could I not have known that, she seemed to think. But we all have holes in our understanding of the world. There’s a scene in Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where an artist asks the author why, if a light switch doesn't always work, is the author sure that its the switch that’s probably bad. Why not the wire? Or the light fixture, or the bulb? And why doesn't it take a couple of seconds for the light to light up, when you flick the switch? (Okay, that one, I knew.) But the idea that there would be people to whom that concept is as alien as the relationship of carbs and sugar is to me - - wow, that's amazing, and sometimes I remember that when I don't understand why people just don't GET some concept that I think is perfectly clear.

Of course, this is the time of year to think about impenetrable concepts, that being another way of referring to the US Tax Code (Why is it a code? Because it’s a secret! ). I was pleased when I realized, quite some time ago, that it wasn’t just coincidental that articles about what happens to people who don’t pay their taxes would show up in papers right about now. Doesn’t seem to happen all that much lately, though, but I think that’s because more people have a cavalier attitude to what they owe; Dennis and Martha’s behaviors probably are, if not the proximal cause of that, at least contributing factors. There is a terrific quote from today’s paper; a guy who wrote ‘Confessions of a Tax Collector’ (which I want to read; sounds good) says, in an article he co-wrote with a tax evader, that he learned the basic rules of tax collecting: Find what they love, and take it; if you can’t find what they love, find what they fear, and exploit it. Wow. He says it all comes down to knowing how to push people’s buttons. I’ve never been any good at that. Never have. I’m doing good to understand why buildings don’t fall down. Hey, I understand the concept of curtain walls and laminar flow, doesn’t that count for something? People and motivations, though, that’s beyond me. I did figure out, years ago, that most people are insecure to some degree. Some of us are insecure to a great degree, but everyone has some insecurity, and if all you do is tell them that they’re okay, that the image they’re putting out isn’t all fake, they really are hacking it, they really are worthwhile -- well, they don’t get that message from many other people, so they appreciate hearing it.

And that’s my big insight for today.

What if you could click on a hyperlink in the newspaper?

I have a spreadsheet showing current and projected expenses and income for the next couple of decades. I use it to remind myself why I'm nowhere near retirement.

One of the columns is projected routine spending, which is current routine expenses like insurance, taxes, bread and milk, plus projected increases in routine spending (ie, things we don't pay for now, but I assume we will have to in the future, like health care premiums). Since costs rise, year to year, I add a percentage increase, just for inflation, each year.

A second column is projected extraordinary expenses -- new cars and the like.

Last night, I thought 'why separate out projected changes in routine from extraordinary? Both are money we expect to spend, and both are limited in how often we'll have to pay -- they don't go on forever. ' So I changed the projected routine spending to be just that, and changed projected extraordinary to be just projected one-time spending. Hey, what's the diff, right? Just cleaning up the spreadsheet.

Oh, my goodness.

It turns out that by combining the one-timers with the normal spending, I was making the implicit assumption that the one-timers would actually happen in whatever year they occurred -- and every year thereafter. Once I pulled them out, so that they don't get rolled up each year, the spreadsheet projected our total spending over the entire period to be about 70% of what it otherwise would have been. And the net effect is, our projected ending net worth is projected to be about 15% higher.

Maybe I will retire.

I didn't write this. The person at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dowbrigade/2003/10/26#a1592 did. It's terrific.

Mission Impossible - Dowbrigade Remix
The Dowbrigade has discovered that although busses and subways in Boston run much diminished schedules on Sundays, with meticulous planning and split-second timing it is possible to get from Malden to the tennis courts in under an hour, even on that Godly day.

As I waited for the first bus on my route, the 108, which stops right in front of our house, I popped into my cheapo CD player the disk I burned last night just for that purpose. Old reggae from the Heptones got me to the Malden Center stop on the Orange Line, then the sweet acapella of the Persuasions.

Finally, the train pulled into Downtown Crossing, the labyrinthine underground complex which unites the Orange, Red and Green lines and, as a bonus, features a direct entrance to Filene's Basement. I needed to navigate the narrow Orange Line platform, race down two flights of stairs, down an underground concourse, up a short set of steps and across two sets of Green Line tracks and dash down a final stairwell onto the Red Line outbound platform, within 2 minutes, in order to catch the 9:15 train to Cambridge, Central Square being the closest subway stop to the Just Don't Suck Tennis Club.

Just as the doors of my Orange Line train opened (I could barely hear the annoyingly androgynous announcer intone "Change here for the Red and Green Lines" with my headphones on) when the playlist I was listening to sprung up with Moby's techno re-mix of the theme from "Mission Impossible". It was perfect.

As I stepped off the train, I was instantly enveloped in a world of choreographed precision in which every detail had stark definition and significance. The soundtrack took over my Central Nervous System and I began moving in smooth and stylized unpredictable jerks, like a boxer bobbing and weaving to make a more elusive target. My eyes shot around the station in time to the music, cutting reality into diffuse shots, glimpses and quick cuts; a face watching out of the corner of one eye, a buff businessman holding too tightly to a slick atachee case, a suspicious bulge under the My Little Pony blanket covering an innocent looking baby stroller.

My feet moved to the beat of the tense techno strains of MI. I deftly sidestepped two clueless tourists studying the system map like Egyptologist trying to decipher previously unknown hieroglyphics inside a pyramid, lept lightly over the opened guitar case of an overtly gay bleached blond Rasta, and slipped adroitly between two concrete columns, disappearing from the sight of anyone who happened to be on my tail.

As the music's staccato pace quickened with tension I found my stairwell and bolted up two steps at a stride, still in time to the music. Emerging on the Green line complex my eyes chopped the scene into sharp, revealing shots, cutaways revealing a professors umbrella, an odd bag of fruit, a particularly repulsive hairdo, and plotting a path across the two trolley tracks between where I was standing and the stairwell to the Red Line.

Like a mad ballerina I dashed, juking and feinting, shooting glances left and right, searching for danger, the opposition, the unexpected, inevitable, ultimate sanction. The music was building to its dramatic crescendo. I was moving at a great pace now, my feet dancing over the tracks like Arthur Murray possessed, moving surely and lightly like the seasoned pro I was.

I was going to make it. I had a full 30 seconds to get down the stairs and into the Red Line train. 4 stops to Central. I'd be on the court in 15 minutes. As a finishing flourish to shake off any surviving tails, I faked towards the stairway to the left, then darted between a cement bench and a huge column toward the right stairway - and smack into an 87-year-old Chinese grandmother retuning from the Chinatown markets loaded down with boxes bags and baskets. We both went sprawling on the cold grimy floor of the station. Small white feathers had escaped from one of her many packages and lay on both our bodies, and the floor. A few still hung in the air.

Thank God she wasn't hurt or a lawyer! I helped her to her feet, apologizing profusely, and offering (stupidly) to replace her feathers. She addressed me at length in Chinese, and though understanding not a word I felt chastised and chagrinned.

Needless to say, I missed the train, and finally got to the courts still shaking from my close escape. However, had I not had that fortuitous run-in with the Nationalist Chinese agent, the highly-trained hit squad waiting for me at the foot of the right stairway disguised as a troop of highly decorated girl scouts might have done me in.

An interesting comment in the Times today about what the effect would be if employers paid for car insurance. The conclusion was that a lot more cars would spend time in the shop, they would be in better shape and be around for more years, and the average cost of car insurance would go up. The analogy was, of course, to health insurance, and it was aimed at making the point that people will spend money that isn't theirs to the limit that they can, and that one way of reducing that expenditure would be to require copays of increasingly higher amounts. The problem then becomes, what level of copay would have the effect of limiting use, and would that level be higher than the poor could afford? If so, doesn't that mean you are rationing health care according to income?

No answers here.

I just got through paying this week's bills. Nothing particularly shocking, but it got me thinking about the customization that ought to be possible with the credit card bill. When I enter total credit card charge into Quicken -- the old version, not the thrice-dammed ad-besotted current one -- I usually tell Q to split the bill, meaning that I take the total figure and run down the entries in the bill -- this much for books and magazines, this much for my PC backup service, this much for medical, and so on. About 70% of the items which show up are routine and recurring. I wondered -- why can't I buy a service from Mastercard to group those for me in the bill? Here's the three Books and Mags entries, and the total was this. I know, I know -- they would have to be able to categorize everybody's bill, by whatever categories they might use -- but still, don't you think that'd be a useful concept? Even just the ability to take the bill, electronically, into a spreadsheet would be nice..... Maybe thats a market for a client-side appllication.

Why is the Google news searcher so fascinated with the formerly conjoined twins? Or put more accurately, why are the news sources Google scans so fascinated?

I like precision. I'm not a precise person, but I like it when things add up.

I just took our most recent bank statement and put the numbers into a spreadsheet I've been keeping of expenses for the last 13 months. I take the big numbers -- so much in and out from the ATM account, the deltas on the other accounts -- but I also take the individual ATM entries, categorize them -- books, cleaners, groceries, etc -- and give them a spreadsheet entry all their own. The net out is that I can see, overall and by category, how spending has changed over the last however many months I want to look. Today I added a small bit of sophistication to that. Our bank doesn't supply the ATM transactions in electronic format (at least, I don't think they do), so up to now I've typed them in. Today, I scanned in the statement and lifted the numbers from the scanned file directly into the spreadsheet. Nice. I still have to categorize them, and I did find that the OCR component of the package isn't 100% reliable -- but it was still faster and neater.

I like that. This is the functionality I wanted in Quicken, that accursed product. (The current version, not the vintage one I'm still using.) Now, if I could just automate the charting, and put some intelligence into it....

Some years ago, I recall reading a Doonesbury strip where a guy is talking to his son about getting a job, and the son says that he wants a job where (I'm making this part up from memory) the environment is relaxed, and his coworkers are an interesting, collegial bunch. The father replies 'So you're not getting a job.' and the son says 'I didn't say that'.

The phrase 'collegial' came to mind a bit ago as I was thinking about the people I work with, and the people that we do our work for -- a state organization with lots and lots of bureaucrats. I begin to suspect that their attitude to life is catching. Don't take chances, get approval for everything, take copies of everything. The reason I think its catching is that I see myself starting to adopt that protective attitude. I don't like it. I know that I'm not the free and independent thinker that I'd like to believe I am, and I know that what I call my inability to suffer fools is partially just a way to keep from dealing with stuff I don't want to handle -- but not all of it. Some of it really is an intellectual aversion to people who manifest the bureaucratic virus, and when I think about the idea that I might have caught it, I feel like I need a long, hot shower.

I can hardly see this screen, at the moment, the effect of standing out in the cul-de-sac in the bright sun, watching my daughter and two neighbor's kids ride bikes and scooters round and round and round. Normally, our life being someone on the dull side, this would count as optional entertainment, but this time it was sort-of required, as our daughter breathlessly informed us that the dog's name was Lil Man, and that his owners weren't home. The owners, it turned out, were the family which recently starred in a police report which used words like drugs, gun, and felon (it is such a delight to drive home and notice three police cars in the neighborhood streets, just sitting and watching), and the dog in question, it turns out, is a pit bull. Very friendly, with big jaws and an oversized chest. And what look like mad eyes to me, but what do I know. Anyway, we thought it would be a good idea to stay out and watch the kids, the neighbor thought it would be a good idea to stay out, too, and another neighbor thought it would be a good idea to call the local cops and say hey, come lock this dog up somewhere. Of course, as I pointed out, we have very few cops around here, and right now there must be one saying 'dammed if I'm going after a pit bull by myself; I'm calling the ASPCA'. But right now we're all back inside, so we don't care what the dog is doing. Although what it was more recently doing was chewing on a fist sized rock.

I am probably certifiably crazy. Within a day of thinking occasionally about retirement homes and what they should look like, I have started to mull over have major renovations to this house -- this being the one which we would decamp from upon retirement, but heck, that's years away. I have often said that if we ever put in a pool, it would have to be in a poolhouse so that we could use it more than the two or three months of the year that our climate allows that sort of thing. Well, one of BH&Gs specialty magazines shows this cool little poolhouse cum patio, except that it isn't a pool but rather a hot tub -- southwestern motif, terracotta tiling, quite nice. I have heard some stories about hot tubs that make me a little reluctant to have one put in, but the image alone is enough to make me start mulling over having a wing put on the house, having the bedroom/bathroom bumped out oh, six feet, that sort of thing. Certifiably loony.

From ABC News web site:

"Not all banned items are passing through security at U.S. airports. Since the TSA took over security at airports in February 2002, more than 8 million prohibited items have been intercepted or voluntarily surrendered. That number includes 51,408 box cutters, 2,453,039 knives and 1,498 firearms."

Okay, the knives, I can see. And maybe even the guns. But 51,408 box cutters? Didn't anyone wonder why these people were carrying these provably murderous tools around? Were they expecting to encounter the need to open a box? Or was it just a test to see if they could get them past security? Or perhaps it should be "security".

As one person said, the TSA is getting good at getting toenail clippers away little old ladies, though.

Would moving jobs offshore in the software industry be more or less prevalent if the people doing it

a) had to publicly announce that they were doing it, and why
b) had their own jobs subject to being moved
c) had thought about the idea that they were training their future competitors?

Didn't think so.

Yesterday, I found myself wondering how an actual light saber would work.

I say this knowing that there are people who can actually put some impressive brain power onto that question and come up with something that might actually have a decent chance of working, with only a couple of 'then a miracle occurs' constructs to power it, whereas my own TAMOs are roughly the size of Albuquerque. And there are probably Star Wars freaks (I mean that in the kindest way, honest) who have given this some thought, and who have written scholarly articles on it. I mean, what the hell -- if there are people who've written about how warp drive must work, surely there are people who've written about how a light saber would work. So, I know my own contribution to the canon would be inconsequential. I do know this, but it doesn't stop me.

Activated, a light saber would have to have a cutting edge on all sides. Though I don't recall ever seeing anyone jab with one (or for that matter, with an actual saber), I would guess that there has to be a point, too. In fact, thinking about it, why a light saber and not, say, a light epee? Or a light foil? Heavy sabers are used for heavy slashing attacks, so they would have to have a lot of power in them, as distinct from lighter-weight weapons. I used to occasionally mull over whether light sabers had swapoutable batteries, or jumper cables.... I know, they're probably powered by the Force, and therefore unlikely to ever wear out, but still...

And there's the question of whether a light saber is tunable, or is it an all-or-nothing thing, either inert, or full furious power? In other words, could you use a light saber as a penlight? A cigar lighter?

I assume that the height of the 'blade' isn't adjustable, so the pulsating 'flame' that you see build when the saber is switched on probably comes from the internal power being translated into the biting edge of, say, an oxyacetylene torch, but controlled by some kind of shield that keeps the blade focused -- though obviously it couldn't be a 'protective' shield, else it'd be like fighting with a sword that is still in its sheath.

Well, that's it. More intro than main act, I guess. But I liked it.

Tonight's the big sleepover, and the living is antsy.

My daughter's having two friends over. Both are qualified as 'her best friend' (despite her grandmother insisting that you can only have one best friend, my daughter says that she has two; my feeling is, have as many as you want, kiddo). One was over last week for a play date which went so badly that at one point my daughter was in the kitchen complaining loudly to her mother about injustices past and current perpetrated by the other girl, while I was in the living room holding the other girl while she cried into my shoulder. The other is the offspring of some well-off people, and so is used to a certain degree of pampering that we're unlikely to meet. She's a decent kid, though.

My daughter has a series of games and events that she wants to do because she saw them in American Girl, and the girls there were clearly having fun, so she is sure she will, too. We've advised her not to take their reluctance to play to her agenda as a personal affront, but that didn't fly with her. She's not a control freak but she does like being in control, which the other kids don't like. She doesn't know how to let that go, and neither do we.

We are holding our breath. My daughter's take is, if tonight doesn't work, she'll never do a sleepover here again.

I'm interested in distance learning.

From what I see in the ads, the elapsed time from thinking about a distance degree to acquisition of the degree is about thirty seconds, which certainly fits in with my schedule. Okay, that's dumb, but the original statement is true. I like the idea of being able to get learning without physically attending a school. Some things can't be taught remotely, I know this, but most can, with varying degrees of effectiveness, so I'm going to look into it. Anything that keeps me from having to go to one of the local colleges, where the staff is an average of one hundred and nine years old, and therefore regards me as just a kid who needs to be strictly controlled and coerced into doing things Their Way, is a good thing.

No courses in being a cowboy, though. Pity.

I haven't been blgging for a while == I know you've noticed == but a couple of events of late impulsed me to do it again, at least for a while.

In one of the Star Trek flicks, there is a scene wherein Spock gives Kirk a birthday present. I think that it's just a quick shot in the flick, but in the book, there is a moment where Spock watches a woman creating elegant package wrappings in an origami style, and purchases one; later, after Kirk has taken the present away, Spock stands and absent-mindedly folds the now-empty wrapping closed again. Most origami leaves me cold -- yes, a dancing mantis, how nice; oh, look, a hopping frog, how creative -- but the image of the wrapping folding silently back to the original perfection of the box has attracted me since first I heard of it. I was therefore delighted when a relative showed my daughter how, with a series of simple folds, and ordinary paper, she could create a cube. I searched for instructions on the Web on how to do it; I came across a number of pages that speak of it, each requiring some level of knowledge that was beyond me. The best of these was here, titled 'Origami for Everyone'. The page is not perfect -- at the end, my daughter had to point out to me where the 'hole' was that you blow into to inflate the structure -- but it's pretty good, and better than the rest. The cube -- now a little battered -- sits on this desk, and pleases me when I see it.

I'm still not going to make any hopping frogs, though.

I've been doing a lot of reading of other people's blogs of late. I'm amazed at the quality of writing that is out there to be found. Some of it is good enough to be publishable.

Because I'm interested in the area, a substantial portion of the blogs whose address I've saved (in Ampehtadesk, if they have an RSS feed; in my favorites folder, if not) are medical blogs. About three fourths of those are written by people in the early years of medical practice; of the remainder, most have been practicing for multiple years, and a couple are in ancillary support positions -- transcriptionist, EMT, and so forth.

I like seeing the enthusiasm and intellectual curiousity of these people, even as I am irritated at their occasional presumption. Like the last 'new crop' of federal legislators, many of them come into medicine swearing not to become arrogant and unfeeling, but rather to remain sensitive and to listen more than they talk. Usually, they keep to that. Sometimes, they don't. Some have already made the leap to regarding patients as either interesting, meaning there's something wrong with them that's unusual or difficult to treat, or tedious, meaning this is the twentieth of this type they've seen today, how boring.

Interesting reading, though -- particularly folks like Doc Shazam and A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure.

I just learned about the DARPA plan today. I like it.

Oh, okay, there's lots not to like, but Wolfowitz said that they were looking (I'm paraphrasing here) for out of the box, brilliant thinking. Well, think about what they wanted. They were looking for ways to forecast what might happen, given that no one really seems to know how to predict where terrorists will work their evil. So you need a way to get people thinking about it, in a real-world way. Giving them the chance to earn money sounds like a decent way.

So far as I can see, the only problem was, they went with the blue-sky approach before anyone had a chance to round off the rough edges. And the blue skies turned out to be greyer than they thought.

Lazy day. Sometimes, that's not bad.

These Netflix people may have my number.

I don't watch a lot of movies. Mostly it's a matter of time -- I just don't have enough that I'm willing to commit to 90 minutes or more in a stretch, and watching in chunks tends to ruin the continuity - and as for going out, I usually don't want to pony up the tarrif. But there is a time when the price is right, and watching in chunks is perfectly okay, and that's when I'm on my exercise bike, looking through the channels for something to distract me as I pedal along. Not a lot on to do that, at 5:40 in the morning -- but a movie, ah, that's a different story. Plus, since I don't see movies when they first come out, usually, I can trawl through the older listings at Netflix, the ones that are always available because no one rents them anymore. I just ordered three for a roadtrip (all kids movies), and three more for when we return. I can already see myself slotting those jewels and peddling mindlessly.

I think I like this service.

I take a while to learn things, sometimes.

For years, I have seen articles that say that if you're trying to address the problems of an organization, you should talk with the people who actually deliver the service. They see the problems every day, and they can tell you all about them. Well, okay, I knew it couldn't possibly be that simple, but it wasn't until this week when I abruptly realized that it was true -- but that you have to listen to a hundred (or a thousand, or ten thousand) bogus comments before coming across the gem -- and even then, you have to know what the gem looks like in the rough, and polish it before it's worth something. And sometimes, you have to see the unpolished gem multiple times before it clicks that this is a gem, and not just another piece of rubble.

Can't believe it took me that long to figure that out.

I just checked, and I don’t have any emails from my friend in the land of granola. I didn’t expect to, but it would have been nice. I like hearing from her, even though... and that 'even though' is the reason that today is day 2 of my latest ‘lets see how long I can go without writing’ streak. That's my recurring effort where I see if I can wean myself from writing to this person so often. Like a compulsive dieter, or a lapsing drunk, I have climbed on this wagon before -- look, there are skid marks on the steps from the last time -- and I’ll likely fall off again, too. But for my own self-respect, I need to try.

I see where some dueling opinions are emerging regarding whether it’s okay for businesses to move work to other countries. The advocates say that this is a way for a company to make its product at a lower cost, thus helping it in the battle against other companies, and helping its stockholders. The opponents say that this manuever enriches other countries by boosting their economies at the cost of ours, thus weakening us economically and prolonging the recovery from the recession. I think they’re both right. It’s not the job of a company to take into account what the US economy needs; it needs to worry about its customers, stockholders, and employees (though that last seems pretty uncommon, these days). It’s the job of the US government to worry about and orchestrate control of the economy. But when the US government is so heavily beholden to companies, and so sensitive to their needs, it tends to adopt a 'whats good for General Motors...' philosophy. Bush says that the tax cut will spur jobs; in the words of one US senator, I’d like a world where Julia Roberts is going to call me, but that doesn’t seem likely. Either.

This is a reading weekend. I picked up a copy of A Tribe Apart, a study of adolescence in a Reston, Virginia school, and it's fascinating. The subject's of interest because my daughter's going to be part of that tribe in four years (four years -- forever, right?), and like any parent, I want to be ready, or at least aware of what to expect. And I've been reading a lot of weblogs, the result of picking up a copy of Amphetadesk, a newsfeed aggregator (boy, there's a couple of words that only tell you what it is if you already know what it is). I'm still reading A Perfect Mind, the biography of John Forbes Nash, and the biography of Benjamin Franklin. All good stuff. And I found a recipe for strawberry soup that I hope to make today. I baked some chocolate chip cookies yesterday, just to get something that I thought my daughter might eat -- she's been sick-- and the soup will be fun. No pies lately, though.

From the web site of the North Carolina Office of the Attorney General -- Kid's Section (http://www.jus.state.nc.us/fkframe.htm) -

The Story of Jack and Jill in Legalese

The party of the first part shall hereinafter be referred to as Jack, and the party of the second part shall hereinafter be referred to as Jill.

The parties ascended or caused to be ascended an elevation of undetermined height and degree of slope. Their purpose was to obtain, attain, procure, secure, or otherwise gain access to a receptacle suitable for the transport of a liquid consisting of hydrogen and oxygen.

The proportions of which shall not be greater than nor less than two parts of the first mentioned element and one of the latter. This composition shall hereinafter be called water. On the occasion stated above, it has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that Jack did plunge, tumble, topple, or otherwise was caused to lose his footing in such a manner as to thrust his body in the downward direction.

As a direct and proximate cause of these combined circumstances, Jack suffered fractures and contusions to his cranial region. Jill is said to have fallen after Jack. Whether after is used in the spatial or time passage sense has not been determined.

From Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science:

"Medical malpractice suites are a remarkably ineffective remedy. Troyen Brennan, a Harvard professor of law and public health, points out that research has consistently failed to find evidence that litigation reduces medical error rates. In part, this may be because the weapon is so imprecise. Brennan led several studies following up on the patients in the Harvard Medical Practice Study. He found that fewer than 2 percent of the patients who had received substandard care ever filed suit. Conversely, only a small minority among the patients who did sue had in fact been the victims of negligent care. And a patient's likelihood of winning a suit depended primarily on how poor his or her outcome was, regardless of whether that outcome was caused by disease or unavoidable risks of care."

As the prior post shows, I'm surprisingly inept at making cogent, forceful commentary.

I never thought of myself as a great orator, but this past weekend I discovered how poor my rhetorical skills are. I was talking with a relative about my irritation with the president's comments, and the best that I could come out with was, essentially, 'geez, what an asshole'. Which I realize is not commentary likely to burnish my reputation for language. I think I ought to be able to do better than that.

When I was in Mensa (briefly), I hoped that I would find that it was stuffed with people who could make lucid, penetrating conversation. I'm aware that unless you're a member of the Algonquin Round Table, or William Buckley, the chances of insightful conversation all the time are slim -- yet I was dismayed to find that they were, for the most part, conversationalists just like those you meet all the time. Dammit, I wanted to say, what is it with you people, that you can't be interesting and obviously bright in your conversation! Instead, this pedestrian garbage -- hell, I could do better than this! And I really did think so. I thought that the fact that I was (and am) interested in multiple disciplines -- medicine, programming, traffic control, architecture -- showed me to be someone who could make insightful, perceptive comments.

But apparently not.

Bring it on? This must be what happens when Cheney lets Bush speak without checking with him first.

What an idiot.

Where I work, you can learn stuff that has nothing to do with what we do.

I work for a little tiny piece of a really big computer company. We do some data servicing for a local government, but we're not the people who own the contract -- another computer company is. My little piece of real estate is very close to where the people who work for the other company sit, and stand around arguing, so I tend to overhear a lot of their conversations. I'm not particularly interested in anything they say, though I will admit that I perk up just a bit when I hear them mention my company's name, but what I notice is that they have the same kinds of complaints and problems that we do. This morning I heard one of their people arguing that they needed to make sure that their managers knew that a recent problem wasn't their fault -- it was the fault of a contractor who told them that all was okay with something, when, it turned out, it was not. The person doing the arguing was being told that no, this was not a good idea, because it would make it appear that they were not getting along with the contractor, and that would make their managers unhappy, and lead to more direct management intervention in problems, which no one wanted. At that point, I tuned out, but it resonated with me for a while. My partner works for yet another large computer company, and they have the same complaints and conversations. Sometimes, it seems that my company is but a branch of that company, or the reverse, and now, as a result of hearing the conversation this morning, it appears that there's another company which is pretty much the same as ours. The technology changes, the buzzwords change, but the concepts, the sociological strata, are the same.

I can be happy again. I finally found a site that tells me what the deal is with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

From the Blue Cross of Minnesota site --

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, also known as SSRIs or serotonin boosters, are thought to work by correcting chemical imbalances in the brain. Normally, chemicals called neurotransmitters carry signals from one nerve cell to another. These chemicals are constantly being released and taken back up at the ends of nerve cells. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors act on one particular neurotransmitter, serotonin, reducing its re-entry into nerve cells and thus allowing serotonin to build up. Although scientists are not exactly sure how it works, serotonin is involved in the control of moods, as well as other functions such as sleep, body temperature, and appetite for sweets and other carbohydrates. Somehow, drugs that prevent the uptake of serotonin improve the moods of people with serious depression, OCD, and some types of anxiety disorders

Ohhh.......

Time once again for that fun game, Whining About Email.

Yes, it's true, once again a lengthy amount of time has gone by without hearing from my perenially busy friend slash acquaintance in the Land of Sun and Granola, leading me to once again whimper to myself about how I never hear from her any more, she must not be a real friend, and all of that. It's pretty pitiful, really, and if it were anyone else, I'd advise them to just Knock It Off, already, no friendship that causes you -- well, not pain, exactly, but certainly discomfort -- is worth it unless there are other overriding considerations. Which, I have to admit, there occasionally are, but not that overwhelming, and none at the moment. Times like this, I feel like I'm definitely a C list correspondent. You know -- A list gets responses quickly, B list gets them within a week or so, and C list, just about when everything else is done, and you're feeling charitable. I like my F/A, but -- once again, come on, you know the chorus to this song -- sometimes, I wonder why.

Of course (goes the refrain), I know why. I like knowing smart, capable people, and my F/A is certainly one of them. Makes me feel good to know people like that. Course, it makes me feel stupid at times like this -- like, hey, what am I, chopped liver, that I shouldn't expect responses to emails? And if so, who's doing the chopping? Its a familiar face, can't quite place it.... oh. Yeah. Its me.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Thanks, Eleanor.

Well, the first try at make a pie shell didn’t work. Despite the warning that ‘even though the dough will look like it needs water, it doesn’t’, it did. Took it out of the refrigerator, let it warm up for about two minutes, and it immediately cracked upon application of the rolling pin. Back to the drawing board. But heck, even Mary Poppins said that piecrusts are easily made, so its no great donation of time to have at it again.

An interesting question reported on NPR this morning. The Kansas Attorney General is requiring abortion providers (and, eventually, by extension, gynecologists and obstetricians) to report if they have a client under sixteen. The logic is that anyone needing an abortion must have had sex, and if they had sex under sixteen, it’s likely child abuse. The retort is that if under-sixteens know that they’ll be reported, then they are less likely to have a legal abortion, which the pro-abortionists say would lead to problems of a different sort. Can’t argue with that, but the anti-abortionists say that’s okay, these kids shouldn’t be having sex. They use trigger words such as ‘pedophile’, which I don’t think helps rational discussion, but if its an older-than-16 guy involved, I suppose its true.

What’s disingenuous about the KAGs comments is that he says this will ‘protect young girls’. Hard to see how constraining abortion will do that, unless it’s the legal theory that used to hold you hang a horse thief to deter the other potential horse thieves. Would a rapist be stopped because he thought he might get exposed to scrutiny as a result of an abortion? I doubt it.

This delightful piece of information is lifted whole and entire -- well, pretty much -- from http://www.relevanthistory.com/archive/000698.html


Amazon.com's customer help number
I spent a good part of the late afternoon searching for a customer service number for Amazon.com. It turns out that they do exist, but they're just not on the Amazon site-- which I scoured thoroughly. It turns out that someone else has had the same problem, and posted The Amazon.Com Customer Service Page.

It's amazing that they have a number, but don't put it up on the site. I can only guess that there's a law saying that they have to have customer service, but no rule about making the number known. Regardless of the reason, it's a pretty unbecoming move on their part.

The number, by the way, is (800) 201-7575.

I would imagine that architecture is something that everyone thinks they can do. They'd be wrong. Architecture is an art based on a combination of science and philosphy. When it comes together correctly, you get something that will withstand the elements and may even lift your spirits. When it doesn't -- well, it'll probably still withstand the elements, but it won't lift the spirit. You might get something like the new middle school that came up in our area -- a massive, heavy structure, looks like it could be converted into a prison without too much effort, and inside, very dark walls, lots of stone textures, a main lobby with an Italian Fascist aura. Add a site placement that hides the main entrance (around the corner, not visible from the road), no signage, and an uninspired parking lot (two places where the main traffic flow feeds directly into a DO NOT ENTER) and what you get is a site that squandered the opportunity. It'll last through an earthquake, though....unfortunately.

I rarely have much sympathy for doctors. I know a couple, and I like them -- they're accomplished and smart - but as a rule, the profession can't count me in it's corner. When they complain about malpractice costs, I grudgingly agree that they’ve got a point, and it isn't fair, and ought to be fixed, but they're certainly in a much better position to handle that problem than the vast majority of patients are to handle their own medical costs; if we can only fix one problem, I know which one I'd choose. And when I hear them talking about practices where you have to pay a fee just so they will turn their golden gaze upon you -- well, then I start even lower in the sympathy scale. I've no use for doctors who 'just want to practice medicine their way, darn it'... and oh yes. earn more for doing so. Practice their own way, free of insurance and HMO bozos, certainly; make more money at it, too, sounds like a shakedown. Of course, the answer is 'if you don't like it, don't go to them', and presented with the problem, that's likely what I'd do.

Finding out that doctors and their offices don't talk to each other, but expect that the person being treated will take care of any interoffice communication, is a great example of what drives me nuts about the profession. This week, I found that my mother, who had a chest xray done at facility A, at the behest of a doctor at facility B, and with the (thank you, HMOs) approval of her primary doc at facility C, has to get the physical film of the xray from facility D, where it was sent by facility A to be read and stored, so that another doctor, at facility E, can decide if she needs an outpatient procedure, which would be done at facility F, and which would require that the film be physically transported there in order for it to be done.

No problem in getting a 79 year old woman to handle this, right?

And medicine is the caring profession. Imagine if it weren't.

Gah.

Lately, I've been wondering how to build a stoop. Or a stoep, if you're Dutch.

Our house has a small to middling sized stoop in front of the main door, and a short flight of stairs comes down from it to meet a flagstone walkway. The stoop and stairs are bounded by a rusty iron railing, and on the house side of the steps are two plantable areas -- plantable only for things that don't require any water, as the overhang of the house's second story does an excellent job of keeping that area bone dry in all but the most furious of storms. Even the most recent set of storms in our area have left those spots dry, so that we've given up with the thought of planting something.

As a number of the bricks in the steps are showing the signs of wear, to the point where I recently got to play handyman with much more QuikCrete than a professional would have used to lay a whole row of brick, and this just to set one back in place, we're starting to think about having the whole thing replaced. Replaced by what, is the question. We'd like to junk the steps and put in either pressed concrete that has been imprinted (and colored?) to look like brick, or with slabs of stone that will match the flagstone walk. The iron railing would be replaced by some kind of plastic equivilent; it would have to be very high quality, even as I think high quality plastic? Surely that isn't an oxymoron?

That leaves the plantable areas. We're tending to think of making them (there are two, one above and two feet to the side of the other) into some kind of rock garden, with lighting put into the sides to illuminate the steps when the door's overhead light is switched on. For a while, I wanted to make them into a small waterfall, but gave up on that idea when I realized that it would of necessity involve plumbing, electricity, and masonry. Can you spell cost overrun?

Underlying all of this, though, is the stoop. How do you make one? I'm guessing that the square U (the fourth wall being the house foundation) is just concrete in a form until it hardens, possibly with some reinforcing iron rods. But how is the top, the part that forms the platform, put into place? My guess is, pretty simply, given that thousands of homes have one.

But I don't know how. Yet, anyway.

Well, it appears that maybe I don't know what invagination is, but then again, maybe I do.

Don't recall where I came across the word, but wherever it was, it was so deeply mired in anatomical gobbledegook that I was clueless not only about what it was, but even if it was a verb, noun, or act of congress. Then I noticed what word was in the middle, and thought 'Could it mean some kind of pouching or something like that?', and promptly started looking down a series of references in Google, none of which helped me even get an image. Then I came across a reference to intussusception at www.vulgaris-medical.com, and -- even though I can't say it without a running jump -- I know what that word means, kind of a pouch fold in the intestines -- so, maybe I do.

I enjoy anatomical words and medical articles. I just don't always understand them.