So - Was It Worth It?

Unquestionably. No attention paid to the standard responses, the sort of thing that you say to teachers and school administrators so that they will purse their lips and stamp their forms and sigh and allow that perhaps, just this once, in view of the great educational benefit... no attention paid to that, it was unquestionably worth it.

We of course received different impressions, different delights, each of us, but there were common wonders as well. We all liked the London Eye. Benefiting from the low number of tourists at the time, our capsule was half full, allowing us to walk back and forth, looking at the other capsules, up and down river, and over into the City, watching Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament from multiple levels and angles. My daughter delighted in simply sitting on the floor, up against the curved glass, watching as the skyline slid by.

And we were all taken by the Tower of London -- amazed that it wasn’t a single Tower, but a series of buildings and castles, complete with a moat (now dry, with a running track and tennis court), all sweeping up from the Thames, the Tower Bridge looming in the background. The grounds reeked of history to each of us, and we all listened with guilty fascination as the uniformed Beefeater (who said that they did not in fact know the origin of the name; all suggestions welcome) told us of the goings-on at the execution spot, and how one woman managed to get away almost to the end of the hill before being hauled back to be hacked to pieces. He told us too of the great Crown Jewel heist that almost made it, and would have had they turned right instead of left -- and that a little known fact was that the ER on his uniform stood, in his case, at least, for Extremely Romantic -- and this after his twenty-plus years of service to the Crown, culminating in recognition for honorable service -- or as he put it, ‘twenty years of undiscovered crime’.

Even the famous Tube had its charms, once we discovered how to manipulate it, taking the Bakerloo line down past Baker Street, sliding around on the Circle Line, navigating the Northern Line. It was hot, and crowded, at times, but it was still fun. And the Westminster Station was not to be believed.

But the single most amazing spot, one where we could have returned again and again, I think, was Westminster Abbey.

I’m not a religious person, and so the building did not fill me with any degree of religious awe. But that left lots of room for awe at the sheer history of the place -- the thought that the building had been there for almost a thousand years, that the names emblazoned on walls, and floors, were the living history of England. And even if it were not, the size and majesty of the building, the glass in the windows -- it damn near took my breath away.

All right, it did take my breath away.

Conversation with a Taxi Driver

When we were returning to London's Heathrow Airport this past Monday for our much awaited return home, we fell into conversation with our vehicle's driver about our trip -- what we'd seen (what? You didn't ride on a double-decker?) , what had taken our fancy (Westminster Abbey, certainly, and the Tower of London complex), what had surprised us (the multiple different accents of the native British, and the multiple foreign languages in use), what had charmed us (standing on Westminster Bridge, listening to Big Ben, feeling its tones resonate through us, thinking: This isn’t a recording, this isn’t a movie, this is the actual Big Ben, the one you heard in the audio clips from World War Two). And then we got onto the subject of the US Presidential elections (the driver thought that Bush would win despite Iraq). That led to a shallow detur into the concept of terrorism, when he told us a couple of things that surprised us.

For one, he insisted that the Al-Qaeda organization was unable to work effectively in Britain because that the British security organization, which he thought might still be called MI-5, had instituted a program to permeate public places with their own undercover personnel, who were alert to activities that were out of the norm. For example, he said, if you went to a shopping mall and simply sat and watched the people, you would see that there were some apparent shoppers who came and went repeatedly, carrying the same packages, going in the same direction as before, again and again. I thought it possible, but also possible that they were simply disorganized shoppers. The proof would be if you came back day after day and noted them -- by which time, if they truly were undercover policemen, they would have noticed you.

But the thing he said that really surprised us was that he thought that for all of the diversity of thought and opinion in Britain, there was a commonality of hope and support for the country as a whole. He thought that it would be inconceivable for most British people, no matter how they felt, politically, to foster or foment damage to the country, because it is their home, and they would simply not be able to harm it, or to help others to harm it. He was sure that terrorist organizations existed in Britain, but because of that basic core support for the country, he doubted it would be able to ever amount to anything.

This struck us as a remarkably naive view, but we hoped that he was right.

Trips Shouldn't Founder on Food

We stayed too long.

That’s surprising to me, because this trip was stretched to take every available day, and at nine days was only a brief part of the trip that it was standing in for, which was to have been a three week trip to Australia. Yet what we found was that after seven days, we began to grow irritable -- parents more than the child. A great deal of that was due to lack of what I’ll call ‘reliable’ food.

What we found there was that most of the food just didn’t suit us. It’s difficult to explain why -- it’s not as if the food was that of an alien race, and other visitors eat it happily -- but for whatever reason, we just couldn’t find food that we liked . Breakfast seemed oriented to people who liked small portions, delicately prepared. French toast, for example, was exquisitely made -- and each of the pieces of bread was about the size of two postage stamps. An excellent arrangement of berries, along with a large pot of creme fraiche, came along, so the presentation was artful -- but it was an appetizer. The ‘standard English breakfast’ sounded promising -- sausage, bacon, cereal, juice, muffins, coffee -- but the sausage was a massive, oily cylinder of meat (the casing; the inside was bland); the bacon was ham, in my terms; the cereal was effectively granola (from back when granola was just the province of Euell Gibbons), the coffee was industrial strength road tar, and the muffins were damn near cold. The juice was pretty good, though I found that if I hadn’t eaten anything, taking a gulp of it would knock my blood sugar down to my socks.

And lunch, and dinner, pretty much the same thing. About mid-week, we started looking for places that sold ‘real food’ that we might recognize -- Italian, for example -- and found some good stuff, but also surprises. Wonder exactly what kind on meat is in that ravioli? When the lasagna came, it had no sauce on it, and just a small decanter. By Friday, we had broken down to going to American places -- Mickey D’s, for example -- and even there, things weren’t quite right. My daughter’s McFlurry was smaller, the flavor was different, and the toppings were alien to her. My single hamburgers were lukewarm upon delivery. Dinner at Pizza Express was remarkable, because both times -- even though the meal was good -- I had to hustle downstairs to the john to barf. No idea what. And the pizza from Pizza Hut was disappointing -- smaller than expected.

Towards the end of the week, when we were both starting to feel a little nauseous routinely, we started to wonder if it could be the tap water. We weren’t experiencing the Trafalgar Two Step, but by that point we were eating so little, there weren’t many suspects left. So we just drank bottled or heated water. Did we have to? We have no idea -- but we were getting desperate. It was about day seven, and we felt the vacation slipping away. On Friday, we barely went out at all. We did what we could, not knowing what it was that was making us nauseous -- just knowing that it was something, and it was different than what we were used to.

At this point you might say well of COURSE its going to be different, and that what we saw was as close to being American and still be different as it was possible to be, and that’s true. And we didn’t make a Herculean effort to find good places to eat, so its possible that we passed dozens, hundreds every day. We just didn’t know how to find them, and having that question hanging over us each day -- are we going to find someplace decent today? -- got to be draining. It didn’t help that having this focus on food made us feel oh so American Tourist -- think pot bellied man with Hawaiian shirt and big camera. It wasn’t the way we wanted to be, but we didn’t know how to fix it.

We do now.

Next time, one suitcase will have soup, cheerios, and granola bars.

And the address of Kettners.

London and Back

We went to London.

Stayed for Nine days.

Which, as it turned out, was Two days too long.

Not because of the city, which could captivate you for days, weeks, years.

But the food.

I should have known. I'm a picky eater, and the food is generally regarded as not the reason that people come to England.

Me, I think the food is why they won the Battle Of Britain.

If they can eat that food, that way, every day -- and like it -- they're way tougher than anything the Germans could throw at them.

By the last day, I was so tired (why do they give you just a heavy blanket (okay, a duvet ) for a room that with the AC running at full blast doesn't cool down past, oh, sixty degrees?) and so queasy (actually puked three times from lingering aftertastes), I would get out of breath walking twenty five feet. I was wasted. Pitiful.

I know that people from other counties look at what we cheerfully eat, and try not to gag. One Australian friend asked if we truly did eat something called 'peanut butter and jelly sandwiches'. Then again, she was the one who told me about Vegemite.

Don't get me wrong. London was great, and I'd go again.

But I'd bring Rice Krispies. Granola bars. And a portable fan.

C Note World

And not the one in the middle of the eighty-eight keys, either.

For about the last year, I've carried a hundred-dollar bill around in my wallet, tucked away in the small pouch that also has a couple of band-aids. I liked the thought that if something amazing came up, something beyond what I'd normally experience, where a credit card was not available, I could still make a good stab at handling it. I didn't really think I ever would, but I was wrong. Today, I did.

We went to a local city to 'experience' a mass hot-air balloon launch. I can be dreamy about some things, and when it comes to that kind of thing, I most certainly am. I see deferential waiters refilling crystal flutes, chamber music, nicely dressed people, and all around, the whuff and chuff of hot air balloons being slowly, languourously inflated by cheerful, energetic people.

I do not see people selling funnel cake, fried Oreos, hot dogs, apple slices with caramel drizzled on them. I do not smell the droppings of a pony ride, or hear children stampeding anywhere. Nor do I hear a christian-oriented guitarist singing cheerful songs about how good it is to find the Lord above, below, and all around you. Oh, and I don't see price gouging for parking, either.

Guess which reality I found myself in? Hint: the parking was what let the C-note see the light of day.

But there was a tethered balloon (one of the one-and-a-half hot air balloons we saw the whole time that we were there), and the offspring and a friend went up in it, peering over the side at the ground that seemed so far below. They liked that, so that part was good.

And we got lost coming home.

The NRA and Iraq

I know this is a simplistic observation. Sometimes, it's the only kind I make.

The National Rifle Association thinks its perfectly okay for people to have weapons out the wazoo. Hand guns, shot guns, rifles, machine guns, bazookas, tanks, you name it. They say it's part of the culture.

People in Iraq have weapons out the wazoo. Hand guns, rifles, machine guns, mortars, mines, you name it. They say it's part of the culture.

Would the NRA, if asked, say that it was perfectly okay for Iraqis to have all those weapons, despite what it means to our troops and those of other nations? As well as any other stray foreign nationals? And any Iraqis that the weapons wielders take a dislike to?

Silly me. Of course they would. They'd say it proved that the Iraqis were civilized. If under-armed.

Sigh.

Midnight Thoughts

I am not a particularly religious or philosophical person. But over the last week, I've woken up more than once from a sound sleep to some variant of this thought:

No one -- no one at all -- gets to die and not find out if there really is any form of afterlife. And if there is, absolutely no one gets to evade it. If there really is judgement, everyone gets judged. If there really is reincarnation, everyone goes through it. Everyone.

Enough to make you start lighting some candles at your local church. Or paying a little more attention to your moral compass. You know, just in case. I've tried wrapping some rudimentary college-philosophy-course logic around it -- the 'do well, and if there is an afterlife, you'll be better off, but whether or not, the world will be better off ' sort of thing -- but the truth is, it's just a scary concept.

Though the thought that I might see a friend who died last year is comforting. I really miss her.

The Wanting of Kerry

In The Wanting Of Levine, a decades-old novel from which most of my political knowledge comes ( before then it was Advise and Consent; at least I've updated my knowledge base by ten or twenty years), Levine comments to an associate that the political convention is stocked with a lot of political amateurs who, thinking that they see a wave of support, can be stampeded into getting on to the bandwagon.

I wonder if that is what is happening with Bush. And, in reverse, to Kerry. Another way to ask that question is, why are Bush’s poll numbers improving, and Kerry’s are decreasing. In The American President, the character of the pollster says that ‘The country has mood swings’, and I agree with that assessment. I think that people are starting to shift their opinions, even though most of them (including, too often, mine) are on the order of what Heinlein once described as 'the process of what they called making up their minds'. Putting it another way, we're usually emotional in how we make up our minds, and so I suspect the reason for any poll movement is predominantly based on emotion -- how we feel.

I am not unalterably opposed to voting for Bush, but it is unlikely that I would do so. His approach to life is too corporate, too politically motivated, too ‘old Texas mentality’ for me to feel comfortable with him. And yet, if he managed to do the right thing most of the time, handling the big issues as I think they ought to be handled, I’d be willing to go his way. Because I do agree that the idea of regime change is an unsettling one, and because I know that my side is no more morally correct than his. For every instance where I see hidden agendas, I am sure that my side has them, too. Being Democratic does not automatically mean being better.

Basically, I could vote for him if I thought that I could trust him -- to do the right things, to be a trustworthy person. But I don’t. I think he is steered by polar stars with which I do not agree.

I don’t think that Kerry is a ‘nice guy’, but now I want to see him kick ass and take names. I want him to punch the Republicans in the areas where they're soft - on the rationale for staying in Iraq, on the stuttering economy, on the war on terror (and while we're at it, how exactly do you have a war on something so nebulous? I think a better name would be The Effort to Create a Climate Which is Generally Iminical to Terroristic Activities, but I guess TECCWGITA -- Tech Wuh Jitta -- does lack a certain ring.) But focus on the broad issues, not simply on the Republican issues, because that's how you engage the public, which isn't happening now. Drop the talk about swift boats and whether Bush cheated to get out of the draft -- it’s not relevant now. Talk about what’s happening now, and what is expected to happen. Don’t get limited to the sexy items or the ones that only one side wants. One of Bush's great strengths has been his ability to talk and talk and talk only about what he and his handlers want to talk about, so that the debate devolves to only what he wants to discuss. Kerry cannot wait for George to agree to discuss the broader spectrum of issues, because George -- and more specifically, those who do the heavy thinking for him -- isn't going to do that. He won't touch them unless he doesn't have a choice.

The time to punch hard is now.

Timing is Everything

A few days ago, we decided that our daughter should stop taking piano lessons. She enjoys it, but just didn't have the time for practicing during the week, due to heavy homework pressures, and resented giving up half an hour on the weekend to do it.

We felt badly about the decision -- visions of 'lifelong pleasure through piano' fading in our minds -- but it seemed reasonable. Plus, we would save money on the piano rental, and on the insurance for value of the rented piano.

Today we found that a neighbor is selling their piano for a decent price.

The Art of Politics.

From today's New York Times--


"...(T)he recent Democrats...believe in the old Progressive view that if you give the public the facts they'll see through the lies. Republicans have more of a sense that the public likes to be entertained and that issues are essentially dull."

- Lewis Gould

By criminy, I think he's got something there.

Paging Doctor Fashion

From today's Sunday Times 'Sunday Styles' section:

What I'm Wearing Now
In a workplace where scrubs and sensible shoes are always in fasion, Dr. Teena Shetty violates the dress code with flair. Dr. Shetty, 30, typically wears high heels, flowing skirts and fine jewelry (along with a white doctor's coat) while seeing patients....

Do patients assume that since their doctor is fashionably dressed, the doctor is successful, and therefore good?

Or do they resent the idea that their illness paid for it?

I think the latter.

Object of Desire

Cameras are sexy. For me, they are objects of desire.

I was just at the Noah Grey photography site, admiring his work once again, and noted that one page had an image of a Leica in the corner. Matte black.

I wanted it.

I don't need it. I don't do any photography to speak of, any more.

I still wanted it.

I still want it.

Oooohhh.......

The Redmond Has Landed

Well, according to Windows Update (motto: We're not tracking private information about you, honest), I have SuckerPunch2 now installed on my PC.

I'm not all that impressed by the Security Center -- I particularly liked their suggestion about how to find out if you have a software firewall installed -- 'Look for programs with names that suggest a firewall' -- but it is nice to have, since it lets me turn off the Tiny Personal Firewall, with which I had gotten increasingly irritated. I know, the Windows Firewall is not as slick, but thats okay. At least, till I find out what holes it left open.

But one thing that does please me is that IE now has a pop-up blocker built-in, and you can customize it to allow pop-ups on certain sites, or of a certain intensity. I like that.

So, on the whole, not bad. So far, anyway.

Sheesh.....

Well, this has been a fairly putrid week.

Labor Day, we cancelled plans to go out to a local festival because my daughter had what looked like chicken pox, but which turned out to be a severe allergy reaction, though from what, we don't know. She's hoping its hamburger, which she hates.

Yesterday, I came down with a hacking cold and had to take both aspirin and Nyquil before I could get to sleep. Woke up feeling loggy and denser than normal.

And today, it's raining.

What's tomorrow,surprise audits?

Labor Day, Labor, and Laborious Thoughts

A cool Labor Day morning. As we do every Labor Day, one of us recalls the comedian's line from several years ago, about how odd it is to celebrate labor by taking the day off. I seem to recall that the celebration is actually in recognition of the solidarity of labor rather than the function itself, but whatever -- its a funny juxtaposition.

The older I get, the more I find that I am reluctant to do labor that I don't particularly enjoy. I like to think that I have an independence of spirit about that, but what I actually have, I think, is more of a willingness to slack off -- to not give my all to something where I don't think that it's a worthwhile use of my talents. Or isn't particularly interesting. Not that I think my talents are all that great, but they're there, and work that doesn't take them into account doesn't get my devoted attention. Which puts me in mind of an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show wherein the newsroom manager is trying to decide who to give a bonus to. The obnoxious announcer says that while he has been giving his all, if he got more money he would give more than 100%. The manager replies that he doesn't think he wants to see this guy giving more than 100%, given what he knows 100% is like now.

Classic management theory -- by which I mean "the management theory that I've read in the last ten years, and with which I agree" -- holds that managers look out for the health and effectiveness of their organization by looking out for the happiness and productivity of their employees. I don't know if that was ever widely true (I'd like to think there were places where it was ) but it's certainly not true now, particularly in large organizations. Now, managers have to hustle just to survive, and the good feelings of their employees are at the bottom of their list of things to worry about -- when they're on the list at all. I have believed for some time that you are responsible for your own happiness in business, now more than ever. That I haven't been happy means that I have myself to ultimately blame. Part of that unhappiness comes from actually believing those management articles, I realize.

I've got to stop believing what I read.

Happy Labor Day.

Just for Fun, Linus?

I've just been reading Linus Torvald's autobiography, Just For Fun, which is a mistake, all things considered.

Not that it isn't interesting reading -- it is. He comes across as a real person, who isn't the altruistic hero that I thought he would be. Got the book because I've been curious for some time about how Linux got started, and how one person could do all of that, and the book lays it right out. It's a thin book, and I'm about three quarters of the way through it, and I'm having a good time with it. So thats not which it's a mistake.

The reason that its a mistake is that I have this character flaw that when I read something about someone whose achievements I admire, I start to get the feeling that maybe I could do something like that, too. This completely ignores the fact that the people with the admirable traits usually have something, and sometimes several somethings, that I don't have, most notably a combination of brains -- which he is very modest about -- and a goal. I've got brains, sure, but no where in that league. And as for a goal, my most challenging goal seems to be surviving the crap that I've been getting in the way of work at my job. In no significant way does this make me different than tons of other folks, but somehow when I read these things, I start to think that maybe I could do it, too. Not write an operating system, but -- something. Something worthwhile, something notable, something -- satisfying.

It usually takes about three to five days for the feeling to go away, and then I'm back to normal. But for a while, there...

Spending Money

Probably the worst time in the world to be thinking about spending money for things that you don't need is right after you've transferred money into your checking account to pay bills related to both taxes and vacations....and found that you didn't transfer enough.

Its not a major deal -- our theory is that while taxes are considered routine expenses (and therefore have to be paid out of routine income; failure to be able to do so means that we need to rethink how much money is going into savings versus checking), vacations are capital expenses which can be paid for out of savings -- money fund, savings accounts, things like that.

You can't do that all the time, of course, which realization has given me a very small appreciation of the mental gymnastics that professionals go through when they decide if corporate expenses can legitimately be charged to available funds, or if they have to be met through recurring earnings (its one of the places, I bet, where the jiggery-pokery happens when the CEO wants earnings to look good). But it makes doing the transfer a little more soothing, emotionally.

Still an unsettling experience, though.

Chocolate: good for blood vessels

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-08/31/content_1928711.htm

BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhuanet) -- Greek researchers have found that eating dark chocolate seems to make the blood vessels more flexible. Now for some news to make chocolate-lovers feel less guilty: eating dark chocolate seems to make the blood vessels more flexible, which helps prevent the hardening of the arteries that leads to heart attacks. China Radio International reported Monday. Researchers at Athens Medical School in Greece studied 17 healthy young volunteers and found that eating dark chocolate may improve the function of the endothelial cells in the walls of the blood vessels for at least three hours.


...and the conga line through the center of Hershey, Pennsylvania wraps right past the Penn State Heart Center.....

Assertions of Power

In an article "Formidable Bush of 2002 Now Merely Life-Size" in today's Washington Post, the following appears:

In its own way, that answer was of a piece with the values Bush has followed at every major juncture of his presidency. It is a brand of politics that believes the assertion of power can create the reality of power - and that it is preferable to act boldly and make other politicians accommodate Bush's agenda rather than try to accommodate their doubts.

The writer presents that as an example of a defective style of governance, but that statement makes sense. In the absence of clearly-stated power, or limits to power, why should a person placed in a position of authority and responsibility refrain from expanding into a vacuum? Clearly, action can generate the assumption that that action was legitimate. Even when there are objections -- the Constitution doesn't allow this; the guidelines didn't intend that -- action generates its own legitimacy, and that legitimacy can ease its way into the popular assumption of 'how things are supposed to be'. To quote that great constitutional scholar, Forrest Gump, 'Legal is as legal does'.

Pursed Lips, Furrowed Brow

When the house air conditioner kicks on, the fan runs at a (presumably) constant rate.

It sucks the air at a steady rate through the air filter

The suction makes a whistling sound.

Wonder if you could estimate the level of clog in the air filter by changes in the frequency of the whistle?

Fun with Other Computers

This has been quite the day.

I got up early to submit a job on a remote computer system. And I spent the day watching the job run, waiting for it to complete. I needed it to complete so that I could say my installation of a product was correct.

And it would not complete. It kept abending -- failing. No idea why. Tried all sorts of things. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

And at around 3:30, the person who told me how to do this blithely mentioned an 'oh, I forgot to tell you.....' so that the step which ran for two hours, last time (before failing) ran in 30 seconds.

Sometimes, I could just go postal.

More fun with Microsoft

Late last night, I found a Microsoft Knowledge Base article which specifically addressed the problem I was having in getting OE reinstalled -- that being, the installer would stop because it detected that the identical verson was already installed. The fix was to zap the registry and tell it that the version was not installed. And then do the installation.

OE still isn't working 'right' -- but we can send and receive emails again. Which is all I want out of an email package.

MSOFT (XP + IE + OE WAB) = FUBAR.

Just spent about six hours over two days trying to fix a problem with Outlook Express. It couldn't open the Address Book. And since it seems to do that when you try to open a screen to create mail, I couldn't send any mail.

Unquestionably my fault -- deleted some registry keys without backing up the registry first. Dumb, stupid, criminal, I know.

Restoring the registry keys did no good.

System Restore was as non-helpful as usual.

Did a reinstall of XP -- what they call an 'upgrade', though I don't know why. It was the recommended action (the other being, install from scratch, I guess). Course, that was a hardcoded recommendation on the page -- ie, it didn't ask anything, it just recommended it. Like a sleazy used-car salesman or insurance pusher. Didn't work. Did pop up with some new annoying things, but maybe they were there when I first installed ZP. Got rid of the ones that I could.

Created another ID for the pc, tried using that. Looked promising. Outlook could open the (empty) address book but it couldn't import the address book from the original ID. Pointed it to the folder where it was, and the display didn't show it. Dammit, I know it's there -- File Mangler shows it! (Excuse me, Explorer. Ahem. ) I copied the file to the Temp directory, and then Outlook could see and import it. Ah, progress. But I couldn't get that identity to import my folders. Though, with the gibberish string that MSoft uses to identify the ID, down in the Identities section, I couldn't even be sure I was trying to import the right old ID folders, anyway.

I said ah, crap (and other things), I'll do the install from scratch. Deleted the new id...and suddenly, Outlook with the old ID works. Well, mostly. Now, when I switch from ID to ID, it either a) only goes to the id that's listed in Manage Identitites as the one to use when starting a program, or b) if that box is unchecked, it glibly says hey, I don't know who you are -- so select your id again.

But it works. I can send mail, open the address book.

I can't hardly wait to see how this PC acts with SuckerPunch2 installed, though. Or how many 'improvements' Msoft slipped in there.

=================

Update: I displayed the Registry Keys, and exported them. That was apparently enough to fug up Outlook. Can't open the AB again.

Joy does not adequately express my feeling.

==================
Update: Poked around, deleted some programs, got an alert from XP that an update had arrived (I keep expecting SuckerPunch2 to show up via FedEx, carried in by a burly guy who's knees are giving out from the weight of the code). Updated, rebooted, and now oe kinda-works again. This must be what it's like to live on the slopes of Vesuvius. Was that thunder?

Bureaucratic Humor

From the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission web site:

"Committed to improving the quality of life for area residents, the Commission strives to create a synergy of economic vitality, environmental stewardship, historic preservation, customer service and fiscal accountability."


Went through there yesterday afternoon, east to west.

Pop quiz:
Does the phrase "EZ PASS ONLY FLASHING YELLOW LIGHT" mean

a) EZ Pass can only be used in lanes with a yellow flashing light.
b) Only EZ Pass can be used in lanes with a yellow flashing light.

Extra credit:
c) How visible are the yellow lights in bright sunlight?

Bonus question:
d) Does the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission web site accept email?

No hurry. Ignore the massive truck with Liberal, Kansas on the driver's door, a driver with a heavy hand on the air horn, and DANGER CORROSIVE EXPLOSIVE on the rear doors of the trailer.

Answers:
A) Unknown.
B) True.
C) Not very. They're on top of the toll booths, silhouetted against the sky. But you can see them from the plaza. Of course, traffic backs up way before that. See Liberal, Kansas, above. Reflect on ironic humor.
D) Nope. You can call, though.

Who says bureaucrats have no sense of humor?

Not So Thrilling

I usually like what I do, and as a result of just taking a week off, I'm not immediately nauseated by doing it again, this coming week. I suppose it isn't the greatest feel-good thought in the world, but it occurs to me that what I do would be considered pretty damn nice by people who have to actually work for a living. Not that the people at my office don't work -- they do, with varying degrees of energy and enthusiasm -- but they don't work hard, like gardeners and truck drivers. As I heard someone put it once, there are jobs that you shower before, and there are jobs that you shower after. Mine is definitely one of the former. So it's worth doing, even if I have to hold my nose while doing some of it. Offends my technical sensibilities, doncha know.

Some backstory -- when I was hired, I thought it was for a techie job. Turned out it was for a job that a clerk could do. I didn't like that, but since I didn't think I could get a job elsewhere, I settled for whimpering and moaning about it, sayng that I wanted to do other stuff -- techie stuff that I liked and knew how to do. After a while, the fellow who was my group's manager at the time said, well, okay, you can do this other stuff, too. After a while, my group's manager changed, and he asked me if I'd do the primary job for some other accounts, too, and I said that I would. It wasn't strenuous, I liked looking at other places even if the basic task was about as challenging as stirring soup, and it made him happy.

But now the skies darkened. The people at my account, looking to cut costs, said well, hell, we don't actually want to pay for you full time because the stuff you do doesn't take all or even most of your time. Which was true. So, they complained to my group's manager, and he said that he would like to find more for me to do. I pointed out that while I was willing to do more, I would really prefer it to be in the other area -- the one I liked. He said that he understood it, and then came up with several new things. None of them were in the area where I really wanted to work. But okay, they pay me, and all that, so all right. ((grumble, grumble)) Po' me.

Today I found out that while we were on vacation, that same manager had tried to get in touch with me to help them handle a problem. The problem was in the area that I want to work. I felt like that character in one of the Police Acadamy flicks who is found banging his head on a police cruiser. A bystander, asked to explain, says 'There was gun play -- and he missed it.' That's me. Damn, I wanted to do that! But, upon reflection, there was more. It occured to me that while the manager wasn't willing to let me do more work that I liked, he was willing to use those talents if the company needed them. But only then.

At the moment, I'm a bit - - ticked. And I’m finding the prospect of going back to work -- not so thrilling. I will, of course. But for the first time, I'm thinking that an end to my employment here is not five or six years from now (when I was thinking about retiring). It may be sooner than that.

Now, I'm not a person with a lot of initiative, and though my wife says (and means) that I can quit at any time, I'm not ready to do that. Our finances are in pretty good shape, but they do assume that I'll be earning this salary for the next five years. I don't know of any way around that. Though the management articles I used to read suggested that good managers listened to people, and let them (i.e., me) do what they could do well, that doesn't seem to pan out in my local version of Real Life. If I did have initiative and guts, I'd just bail, and do Something Else. Of course, I've noticed that by and large, the only jobs people get when they bail tend to pay a lot less, while demanding more. My golly, some are even 'shower after' jobs.

So.... right now, the job situation is Not So Thrilling. Po' me.

Superbus

Back from a week off, visiting relatives, and generally trying to forget about work, which is less thrilling than normal, about which, more later. But first, the Superbus.

Visiting in-laws, and it turned out that two relatives of theirs, which I suppose made them relatives of ours, were visiting. Didn't care for them too much --- a bit too loud, mentioning money-related items a bit too often. We met them at a brunch arranged by the relative, at a restored mansion (which seem to pop up in Connecticut all over the place), and I thought that would be the end of them. But they turned up at the relatives's house when we stopped by for a last-night's visit. And with them, they brought -- the Superbus.

That's not what the maker calls it. The maker is Winnebago, and they call it the Journey . Forty two feet long. Twelve feet high with the suspension air bags inflated. One hundred gallon gas tank. Queen size bed. Three televisions -- one full size one over the center driver's console, one smaller one tucked into the wall of the bedroom, one medium size one below, in the storage compartment -- it slides out for use when you're barbecuing on the grill (which also slides out). Satellite dish that erects and locks on while you're driving so that you don't have to wait till you're stopped to watch those TVs. Corian countertops in the kitchen area. Dishwasher. Microwave. Full size Sub-Zero refrigerator. Full size shower. Apartment size washer/drier tucked into the bedroom wall. Two couches in the plush lounge area (twelve feet wide with the sides extended). Small dining table/PC work station. GPS locator. Bose stereo system. Carpetting throughout.

No perimeter defense system or roof-mounted lasers, but heck, what do you expect for only (gulp) Five Hundred Thousand Dollars. But they got it for less. And actually, they weren't as money-arrogant as I thought. Kind of nice, actually. My cousin said that I liked them more, the more I learned about how much money they had. Hmm....that one touched close to home. Guess I'm touchy about that kind of flagrant success.

The Superbus. Making Volkswagen Beetles tremble from Florida to Maine, and points west.

Customer Service

I received a note from a friend, telling me that she was seriously stressed because her laptop had died while she was in the middle of writing an article, so that now instead of doing actual work, she is doing PC recovery. I empathized with her. Unlike most people, she has a live-in tech support guy who can spend all the time necessary to keep her PC (and all of the others that they have) functioning happily and correctly, with all the latest gadgetry. He has the time, tools, and resources to get her PC functional again. But that doesn't ease the pain of having to go through it, or living without what comes very quickly to feel like an appendage of you. Its right up there with waking up to find out that the toilet has died. Having the PC just die on you when you need it is like biting down on a piece of tinfoil.

That instant-to-hand tech support is nice, though. Most of us don't have that. Even those of us who work for computer companies, where we use PCs all the time, don't have it. I work for one, and it is common -- so common as to be unremarkable now -- to have someone lose their laptop because the hard drive crashed, or because a piece of software stopped working, and they have to either a) send the laptop physically away to be fixed (sometimes they get a replacement; last week, a co-worker went from a laptop with Windows 2000 and all of the apps he needs to a desktop running Windows 95 and few of the apps he needed), or b) attempt to fix it themselves (I know of two people who were shipped a new hard drive which they were supposed to install into the laptop themselves). Your hardware dies, and your life stops while you address it. The idea that you need to drive the process of repair, instead of being able to go to a qualified person and have them take care of it, isn't right, either. But no one seems willing to recognize that as a problem, and more importantly, to fix it. The days of on-site tech support are over, at least in my little corner of the empire, and in other companies as well.

The concept resonated with an article in today's Washington Post about the dearth of service in retail stores, which the author partially attributes to the culture of sale clerks who cannot (or will not) take on responsibility for fixing a transaction that has gone astray -- in one example from the article, a desire to buy a bookcase which is in bubblewrap; the sales clerk didn't know if it was available for sale, her manager didn't know and said he'd have to get the store manager, and, when the store manager didn't respond to a page, said that the bookcase was not available. To which, the customer responded by personally finding the store manager, who said that of course it was for sale; there was a small problem with it, but he would knock down the price by 20% if the customer took it. The tale ended happily, but why couldn't the clerk have done the same? The answer comes, I think, from the idea that no one pays the clerk to take responsibility, and the effects of taking responsibility in a failed transaction can adversely affect the clerk's career. The idea of a mission statement -- remember them? -- was to give general guidance to employees when specific policies didn't exist, or would be too cumbersome to elucidate in detail; in this case, a mission statement could well have said that the clerk is authorized to take the same action as the manager. But when there is no good reason for the clerk to do so -- and a happy customer, in and of itself, isn't perceived as a good reason -- and there is good reason for the clerk not to do so -- the manager might disagree with giving a discount, or think that the discount was too high, and perhaps the book case really wasn't for sale -- then the clerk wouldn't want to take the risk, even if there was a mission statement encouraging her to do so.

The tie in between these two concepts is in the area of responsiveness to problems. No one -- yes, even me, glum though I am to admit it -- will respond to ongoing problems, because a) That’s Not Our Job, and b) Our Manager Cannot Be Counted On To Support Us If We Do It Anyway. There is no up-side. If you want to take the initiative to fix the problem, you have to take the risk. And you've got to do the job right -- mere desire, or 'gee, at least I tried', is not enough. I observed years ago that in a large company, if you want them to keep paying you, you can either Fit In, or Be Exceedingly Excellent (not just excellent). If you fit in, and are a good organization person, the organization will keep paying you; if you're Exceedingly Excellent, the organization will want you, and keep paying you. But if you don't really fit in, and you're not BEE, then you live each week knowing that they may decide this is a good week to get rid of you. So if you'd rather not be fired, you don't take chances -- such as giving out of the norm customer service. It's not worth it.

Not the way most people would choose to live their careers -- and yet they do. Somebody should fix that. In our family, one standing rule is: If it bothers you, fix it.

Does it bother me enough?

Fan Fan

We like fans.

If you came to our house, you'd think we like all kinds of air moving devices. We have a whole house fan. We had whole-house air conditioning (really, just the top floor, don't care what the installers promise) retrofitted, we have a couple of battered old box fans, and we have a ceiling fan in the living room, one of the bedrooms, and the library. And now we have another -- one was just installed in our bedroom. All four are Casablanca. Quiet, reliable.

But that latest one goes beyond what we expected. Two days ago, the night time temp was in the low seventies. We slept with the new fan last night, and this morning, not only was it significantly cooler than normal outside, it was cooler up and down the Eastern seaboard.

Is this cool, pun intended, or what?

Warning: Admiring Parent Ahead

This evening, my daughter again proved what a great kid she is.

For her writing assignment tonight, she put together a short article on what kind of career she'd like, and why, and what she'd like to do if she couldn't do that, and why. Not great literature, granted. But this is a kid who hated writing three sentences in a summer journal -- and now that she gets to pick the topics, she thinks its fun -- sometimes, great fun.

And tomorrow she wants to bake cupcakes for my birthday.

She's terrific. In lots of ways.

I Don't Hate George Bush

... I'm just not planning on voting for him.

I have come to the conclusion that in modern American politics, you are supposed to demonize your opponent. He's stupid, shifty, a liar, not to be trusted. She's crafty, two-faced, not up to the task, has a hidden agenda. I don't agree with that approach. Its been a long time since I heard someone say that in American presidential elections, we take two talented people, either of which could do a decent job, and at the end of it, we call one of them a loser. I don't think we've had an election where that has been true for a while. At best, I would say that we've been lucky -- and I say that knowing that others would not agree. But whether they're both up to the task or not, it seems that we are expected to look only at the worst, assume only the worst. Against George Bush? Then surely when he picked up that blind cripple, he was just doing it because it was fun to watch the crip fall again. Not on John Kerry's side? Then you must agree that when he climbed the tree to rescue Timmy's cat, he was really doing it to peer in the window of Timmy's maiden aunt. We're not supposed to think well of any action taken by the person we don't intend to vote for, and as the intensity of our dislike of the other guy increases, so must our willingness to assume the worst based on the skimpiest of evidence. I don't agree with that, because neither candidate is god or devil.

I don't like George Bush because I don't like his economic policies, and I don't like his failures in international diplomacy. I'm not fond of what he's done to us and to Iraq, either. When you roll them together, I can't see myself being safer, richer, or happier with him around than not. I don't think that things will get better if he gets a second term, and I think there's a decent, though not outstanding, chance that they will if Kerry wins.

Yet for all of that, I think there are things to like about Bush and about his approach to governing. I like the idea of faith-based initiatives; though I think they went overboard, I think the concept was valid, and still is. I like his willingness to proclaim that he is a religious person; though I think he feels that his particular faith makes him probably superior to others of different faiths, and certainly to those of no faith, he's willing to be up front about it, and say that it affects his view of life, and I like that. I think that his policies that reduce the control of government are generally good; though it feels as if he wants to strip away too much, much of what he wants to take away should be taken away. So I'm for him on that.

I think that if George Bush could make me consistently believe that he cares more about people like me, and less about people like corporate chieftans, I might waver in how I feel about Kerry. Concepts like "don't change horses in mid-stream", "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" would come in to play, and I might say "well, aw, jeez....". But he hasn't, and I doubt he will, so I won't. Barring major surprises, I'll be voting for Kerry in November.

But I won't slime George, because he doesn't deserve it.

Dick, of course, is another story entirely.

Politics

I just watched the Democratic campaign video. Most of it, I wanted to like, and I did. Some, I wondered about -- it was more than a little treacly, as if it would end with the Pope saying 'wow, I wish I could vote for that guy...What a saint!' . Once thing's for sure -- when I die, if they do a eulogy, I definitely want Morgan Freeman doing it.

I was surprised that it didn't mention that he had been divorced. There wasn't even a 'well, bad things happen' comment. His first wife was a non-person.  That bothered me. And I wasn't too thrilled to find out he has a brother. Bad history with presidents and sibs.  Though I did like the hamster story.

In a couple of months, Bush will be up there, same kind of stage, nodding, smiling, and garbling the language, but through it all  extolling what a wonderful job he's done.   And he has done some good things. He's done some stupid things, too, but he's hardly unique in that. The Democrats will likely start their own attack ads about the time he's coming to the podium, trying to make him sound completely clueless and totally inept.  Which he isn't, usually.  I used to wonder why politicians wouldn't at least offer the occasional nice comment about an opponent.  Growing up cured me of that thought.

If it weren't so serious, it'd almost be funny.

Creative Writing

My daughter is in her room, writing.  This is a remarkable event. 

Last week, after doing some complaining about the the journal we've been requiring that she keep during the summer (the legacy of her problems last year), she asked if we could try her idea -- we would give her a topic, and she would write about that topic. Dubious, but willing, I agreed. A little bit ago, we all came back from having dinner out with my mother -- it's her eightieth birthday in two days, imagine! - and I reminded her that she hadn't written anything.  She picked the topic 'Why are books better than TV', and came back with a short, well written, correctly spelled, and nicely organized paragraph on the topic.  I was flabbergasted.  This is a kid who doesn't like to write two or three sentences, and she just dashed this out.  In fact, when she was done, she pointed out that she hadn't written anything yesterday, and asked if it would be okay if she wrote today what she might have written yesterday. And thats what she's doing now. She says it's fun.

Wow!

Community of Thought and Effort

One of the key, if underlying, themes in the Commission's report is that of the need for a community of thought and effort.   They speak of the need to share information; to have players be able to know when information is available, to be able to link disparate pieces of information in order to perform analysis and to create a coherent whole, and to be able to keep abreast of what is happening in other locations that's relevant to their own efforts.

This is not limited to anti-terrorist activities.

Years ago, I worked for a large computer company that attempted to implement a knowledge sharing activity.  It was a technological marvel that was only intuitively obvious to the people who built it.   I currently work for a large computer company that has been promoting the idea of resources on demand, and as part of that they have been encouraging us to create on-line profiles so that anyone who wants to know something that we know can query the system and, if desired, contact us.   That works fairly well, though you do have to get someone who is both knowledgeable in the field that you're interested in and able to speak coherently about it to people who, obviously, know less.  That's not a common ability, made less common by the tendency of people who understand technical details to look down on those who know less.

Its an interesting field, and I wish that I knew more about it.

The Commission

An amazing group.

I don't know of a better way to put this than to ape the words from the movie The American President -- these were serious people working on a serious problem, without quarter for political posturing or personal gain.  I felt better knowing that people of that stature were speaking for my country.

I've only read the summary of their findings, and I was startled and dismayed -- even just listening to the presentation where they spoke about them, floored me.  The magnitude of what they said, and the scope of what they described!  

Yet I would bet seriously that most of their recommendations are not implemented fully, that some are not implemented at all.   Having seen -- faintly, with no special insight -- the political turmoil that creation of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration brought, I have little faith that professional politicians can muster enough guts and force to bring about anything like what these remarkable people have pointed out as required if we are to have even a chance of combating these evil, vicious vermin.  Where can we find people of stature enough to lead us in this mighty struggle?

Trivial note: I love the voice of the governor who ran it. His cadence and phrasings were eloquent and memorable.  I'm sure I'm not the first to notice the resemblance between his voice and that of FDR.

But far beyond that is their message.  As Americans, we want -- I want -- a happy ending.  Doesn't look like one is in the offing, any time soon, if at all.

Why Tests Don't Work

From the About:Political Humor -- Bush Loyalty test

Your score is 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. You can't stand George W. Bush. You don’t hate him with the same writhing passion as many liberals do, but you believe he is a smirking, arrogant doofus. You will vote for Anyone But Bush.

From the About:Political Humor -- Kerry Loyalty test

Your score is 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. You believe that John Kerry has some redeeming qualities, but not enough to entrust him with running the country, much less the nuclear launch codes. It's possible that you might change your mind about him, but at this point, you are leaning against him.

Le Grand Fromage

One of the people where I work likes to refer to her boss's boss as Le Grand Fromage.   I smiled when I finally translated it.  Nice to know a little bit of French comes in handy. 

Machine-Augmented Translation

This article, from Dan Gillmor , concerns a coupling of machine translation with human interpretation. I think it's a fascinating concept, with obvious application potential.

One of the big problems in the American presence in Iraq has been a wall of misunderstanding and ignorance brought about by lack of language skills and a lack of information. Machine translation is getting better all the time, and we're seeing some of the results of that improvement here. The gear in the picture is a piece in the puzzle. From a satellite dish outside this tent at the Strong Angel II exercise, it's capturing and recording the Al-Manar TV station, a Hezbollah outlet in Lebanon. U.S. military and aid workers -- not to mention officials in Washington -- may find abhorrent what this and other Arabic stations are broadcasting, but they need to know what's being said; they need to understand what prominent Arab news outlets are saying about the U.S. occupation of Iraq and other issues. Audio is extracted from the news broadcasts, and converted to text in a speech-to-text program. Then the Arabic text is translated, also by a machine, into English. The results, twice removed from what the announcers have said, are rough approximations. But they capture the gist of the reports. The video, audio and texts (Arabic and English) go into a database. Sean Colbath, senior engineer at the BBN Technologies Speech and Language Processing Group, pulls out items -- short video quotes -- that look especially interesting or relevant to the key topics of the day. He bundles them into a file that goes to a human translator on the mainland, who gives an accurate rendering of what the broadcast snippet actually told the audience. This is a blending of human and machine translation capabilities, and it's a smart one. The machines get us part of the way. Humans capture more subtlety, but machines can winnow out a lot of the dross first. At the heart of the machine translation activity here is technology from Language Weaver, a southern California company. Impressive stuff, and it's barely at the beginning of what's possible. Colbath's gear is just one element in the translation tests here at Strong Angel, where people from the military, civilian, governmental and non-governmental spheres are testing new ways to communicate and collaborate in the aftermath of great human tragedy. Another experiment, which I have yet to see, sounds amazing: a chat in which you input in one language, someone gets your input in a different language and replies in his or her own tongue, which then comes back to you in your language.

Thinking About Thinking

I've been thinking off and on about about how hard it is for me to think through difficult concepts, or even to come to a point where I feel that I'm making progress in understanding difficult concepts.  For the longest time, I think I subconsciously believed the Heinleinist view that any problem could be solved with enough attention.   Perhaps thats the case, but if so, then the candlepower necessary to burn through the muck and get to a point of clarity is now frequently beyond me.  Maybe it always was beyond me, perhaps I used to think I had arrived at the POC when in fact I had not, perhaps I've just gotten dumber or more easily distracted,  or maybe the problems have just gotten tougher, but now it seems that I have to accept that there are things that I Just Won't Get.   I cannot easily say how inadequate this makes me feel, but it seems that, inadequate or not, I have no choice.  The only question is whether I'm going to give up entirely on understanding these difficult things, and accept Fox News and the like as my source of information and viewpoints, or generate my own, knowing that it will be full of contradictions and lacunae.

Mirror Dance

 
Which is actually the name of a novel by Lois McMaster Bujold, and one which I think is pretty good, but today is the name of the dance that I have found myself doing, once every hour or so.  I go into the bathroom, turn on the light next to the magnifying mirror, and try to convince myself that the swelling in the surgical area has gone down a little bit more.  And it actually has gone down some, both subjectively -- looking in the mirror -- and objectively -- when I push my chin out, it - mostly - doesn't feel odd, whereas before I could feel some stiffness there even without trying.  The stiffness is the sort of numb feeling (is that a contradiction?) you get when the dentist has zapped you with Novocaine, or Lidocaine, or Michael Caine, and for a while you don't want to drink anything that doesn't have a straw, lest you dribble furiously all over yourself.  Things are improving, but not as quickly as I want.  Of course, until the stitches come out, I'll look like the aforementioned monster, and the dark red around the stitches, outlining them like blood-colored Magic Marker,  contributes to the look. I've started growing my beard back, the better to cover whats happening here, but its going to be several weeks before there is any appreciable coverage.  At the moment, its just at the vagrant-stubble look, enhanced by the fact that my beard comes in at about 95% gray. Oh, hell, 98%.
 
Today was a slow day.  I worked from home -- to my surprise, I am really tired of working from home, having done it all week; I would have thought I could do it forever, but apparently not -- and there wasn't all that much to do.  I did get to sprint up to the Pizza Hut office and pay for those pizzas that I had delivered; the person who was supposed to go pay for them clean forgot, and the urgent pages that I left never got delivered.  Bet that would have done wonders for my rep -- here's five pizzas for all your hard work; you owe use $45 plus tip. Sheesh.

Prediction

One year from now -- perhaps a bit less -- there will be a strong-man in power in Iraq, he won't much like the United States, and certain publications in the US will be featuring articles titled 'Who Lost Iraq?'  And, who knows, maybe some will even be talking about 'regime change' and similar sterile phrases.
 

That's FRAHNKenstein, to you.....

Took the big honkin bandage off this morning. Sort of squinted at the chin, just in case it was...hideous.

Well. Frankenstein's monster has nothing on me.
 
Big ragged T shaped scar with many sutures, the whole area swollen and pretty numb. I look like I've been in a bar fight. At least, my chin does.  And I thought the idea of going to a plastic surgeon was so that the scar wouldn't show as much. Relaxed Skin Tension Lines, and all that.   Pretty prominent, at the moment.

But its okay. It'll get better.  The scar will fade, the swelling will subside, the discolored parts will return to normal.
 
And its still done, done, done.

Words are Cheap, but Pizza -- ah....

I'm a big believer in telling people when you think they've done well.

So on Friday morning at 11AM, I'm having five large pizzas delivered to the Outpatient Surgical area, for the delight and gobbling of everyone there. As a way of saying thanks, tangibly.

I know, I know, they didn't do anything for me that they don't do for every person who gets rolled through the doors. But they were effective and efficient, friendly when they had the time to be, and they made me feel like they cared, at a time when, frankly, I was scared.

They earned it.

Post IT Note

I survived it.

Doc said he did a 'sliding door' rotational graft, taking the skin from the side (and by the name, I'm guessing some from each side, but I don't know, can't find any literature on it other than stuff about 'repair of midline incisional hernias'; the key buzzword appears to be 'tensionless'). Said he'd be willing to discuss it with me when I next see him. Big thick honkin' bandage on my chin, three inches wide, stretches almost all the way down to the notch in my collarbone. Heavy enough to drag my chin down a bit. Comes off in 48 hours. I can't open my mouth very much, and my throat is sore (they said they intubated me). One cold mother of an operating room -- I was happy with just that flimsy gown and a sheet right up till when they brought me in, then I started to shiver -- which is apparently common; they had a stack of heated blankets ready. Got there at 5:40, prepped by 6:40, rolled into the ice chamber arund 7:30, woke up in recovery (whuzzat? Tawking t'me? hmm....lemme sleep some moah...) around 10, and out of there by 1.

Met an 'extern'. Never heard that word before.

Done, by god.

One Day, and Counting

Not exactly sure how many more hours -- the hospital is supposed to call me tonight to tell me when and where to show up. I'm told that they will want me to hang around for a total of 23 hours, so I guess I'll have to bring my jammies. Or wear one of those butt-baring gowns! I'd rather have it done in the morning and go home that evening, but I guess afternoon, perhaps late afternoon, will be more likely.

I did some more reading up on plastic surgery skin flap techniques, and it looks like what this guy is going to do is most likely an 'Advancement Flap". Here's a quote from one site:

The term advancement flap usually refers to a flap created by incisions, which allow for a “sliding”movement of incised tissue. The movement is in one direction, and the flap advances directly over the primary defect. The basic design of an advancement flap is to extend an incision along parallel sides of the defect and then directly advance the tissue over the defect.

which sounds about right (like I'd know!). I suppose the non-technical term would be 'Cut some, grab some, sew some'. What a great party trick!

A Chance to Be Cut is a Chance to Get Cured

...which is a title I stole from another blog, and modified. But its a mindset that I'm working on keeping upfront, these couple of days. In three days, I'll be checking into a local hospital for an excision of a large skin cancer to be followed by a skin flap, aka skin graft, slicing skin from my neck (leaving one end attached) and stretching it up to cover the site of the excision. I'm still freaked about it, don't know why. Three days ago, I was quite calm about the concept, and now it begins to worry me a bit. I've done the math, working down a list of what might be troubling me --

Think he might not get all the cancer?
No -- I think he probably will, though I also think its possible that he might find other, unsuspected damage which will result in a much bigger operative area. I'm a little spooked that other than feeling my chin, he's done nothing -- no probing, no x-rays, nothing. He did ask if it has been biopsied, and he did look in my mouth once. Is that enough for a confident assessment?

Think I'll be in a lot of pain after the anesthetic wears off?
No -- though I am apprehensive about how much pain will there be, I believe it will be controllable; my track record with pain meds is that I never have to take them all, and usually only take a couple -- but that's for major dental surgery, not something like this. Plus, I'll be in a hospital for the first post-operative period, and I suspect that they don't spring right to giving you meds for things that they regard as minor surgery. Well, it's major to me.

Think I'll end up looking hideous after the surgery?
No -- there will be a period of bandages and sutures, but it won't be The Mummy-like bandages or Frankenstein-like sutures. One of the reasons for having this done by a plastic surgeon is for increased attention to the cosmetic quality of the result. Afterwards, I will have an obvious scar on my chin and a set of parallel ones on my neck; they won't be attractive, but I can compensate by growing my beard back, though that does take time. But there will be that initial garish period, and I don't know how long it will last.

---------------------------
Its not that I have nothing to worry about; I think I do, but the things are addressable and most likely controllable. I just want this to be over. And pain-free. And not hideous.

A chin like Kirk Douglas's would be nice, too.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Actually, several.

I just spent, on an annual basis, two hundred and eighty million dollars.

To put it more precisely, in fifteen minutes, I spent $8000, which is the cost of three round trip flights via Virgin Atlantic to London, plus hotel costs and incidentals. (I don't normally think of numbers with three zeros after them as being 'incidental', but when you start with about six thousand dollars right off the bat, that tends to happen.)

Now that we've committed (as Virgin puts it, non-refundable, non-transferrable, non-just about everything), its time to start thinking about exactly what we're going to do while we're there. This will be our Great Trip, having backed off from the Australian idea. We know when, where, name of the hotel, and what the local tube stop is. And even what it means when someone called you a 'facking muppet'.

What else is there to know?

July 3rd

I suppose it's a good thing that days don't have personality or emotion, or July Third would have a bit of a complex because it's not really known for anything other than being the day before the Fourth. Something like one of the groupies known mostly for hanging around really well known people (what was the name of that guy who lived at OJ Simpson's home?) I imagine December 23rd would be one, too (since the twenty fourth is The Night Before Christmas, but no one ever wrote a poem about The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, so the 23rd is a 24th groupie.) Someone, I think it was George Carlin, did a bit once about 'why don't we have a special name for the day after tomorrow the way we have a special name for the day after today', and that made sense to me.

Its getting warm out. I was just at the store, getting the week's groceries (though by the total you'd think I was getting the month's groceries; I suppose getting the pork chops and two pounds of bacon and sausage helped that total right up there) so I got to stroll in it for a while. I find that I've been a lot more aware of warmth, and of the sun, since finding out that I have this skin cancer. Having it scares me, and even just knowing that I have it scares me, which makes no sense -- why should the knowledge of something scary be in itself scary? Don't know, but it is. I have the surgery to get it cut out a week from this Tuesday, and that scares me, too. Not the cutting so much, but the graft - actually, a skin flap, which means they take more than just the surface of the skin; its going to be left attacted at one end and stretched to cover the site where the cancer is cut out. I'm apprehensive -- will I end up looking hideous (probably not) or have lots of bandages, like The Mummy (initially, maybe, though only around my chin and neck). I tell myself all of the things you'd tell a kid in similar circumstances, which is appropriate since I'm acting like a kid, but it isn't helping. I still have the complete order of the anti-anxiety med that I asked for, and two or three times I've thought 'maybe I should take some', but I've not been as totally spaced as I was about two weeks ago, so I just suck it up. Not that I'm against taking meds; I just don't think I need them. Yet. But I still want this whole thing to be over.

One thing I've noted in the supermarket is that elderly people (and some not so elderly) tend to stop about three feet just inside the door, to change from sunglasses, look for shopping lists, and all of that. The people who built the supermarket put a couple of those electronic checkers at the door, though I've never heard them go off, but they do a dandy job of constricting the flow of traffic; when someone is stopped in the far end of that flow (before it starts to spread out to various aisles and whatnot), and maybe you have someone waiting to get out, then you have all the makings of a mini-gridlock. Which led me to think about Paco Underhill's pretty interesting book, The Call Of The Mall, which spoke a bit about the design of malls and stores, but, alas, I had no answer. Just as well. Our supermarket is not known for being cheerfully receptive to customer comments, no matter what their ads might say.

Geek Tools

I never thought I was a capital-G Geek, but I did like to think I had more than a twinge of geekishness about me -- mostly manifested by the things that I think are cool, or interesting, or just worth hearing about. Lots of stuff in that category.

We just bought this last night. And I think its really cool -- stainless steel exterior, indicator lights, jet black interior -- the whole bit. Can't wait to try it out.

But I'm not sure what it says about my geekishness.

Blogs of Note

Good reading can be found at:

Life at TJ's Place
-- the manager of a stripper club talks about what it's like there. A lot more interesting than I would have suspected (and a lot less sexy, too)

Diary of the Food Whore
-- a professional caterer who really loves what she does.... when she isn't totally stressed out and ready to kill the next person who gets in her way, anywhere

Feet First
-- a doctor talks about things of interest to her -- some medical, some societal, all interesting

How good are these? Good enough so that even though they don't have an XML feed, so that I have to manually go to the site (oh, the pain ! ), I still take the time to manually go to the site, just to see what's happened since my last visit.

Go see.

What's Money For?

Which is considerably more glib than I actually am. We don't spend money foolishly, but our idea of foolish doesn't exclude having fun with it, as long as we feel that we can justify it. (All of which equivocation reminds me of a brief session I had with someone who was sort-of a psychologist, during a period when I was quite stressed at work; hearing my reply to a question about what I do for fun (answer: well... ), she said, dryly, "I can hear the joy in your voice"). But thats just the way I am.

In this case, the question is "How much is reasonable to spend for the travel (and lodging, but mostly travel) part of a one week trip to London, which we're contemplating for the end of the year". A friend whose thoughts I value (and who is significantly wealthier than me, though she wouldn't call herself rich, I bet) says that it is silly to pay a ton of money for travel; you'll only be on the plane for maybe ten hours, so just suck it up and save the money.' And she has a point. Round trip airfare to London, economy class, is about $1700, and via business, about $8000. For the extra money, you get better food, more space, things to amuse you during the flight, and access to the airport lounge. Those are all nice, but are they worth $6000? Objectively, you'd have to say no, they aren't.

But this is our Big Flight, maybe our only one for the next ten years. We were supposed to go to Australia for three weeks; that turned out to not be possible, and this is the substitute. This cost is proportional to that cost, so if we were willing to pay that (and we were), then, economically, we ought to be willing to pay this, too. And truth to tell, even if it wasn't proportional, still - it's the Big Trip. We don't get out a lot, we don't spend money freely. And at least one of us will be working for another ten years, so we will be able to replace those funds.

Isn't that what money is for? To be spent to enhance your life, to increase your satisfaction and enjoyment, to be fun? (Sotto voce: yes, when it's someone else's money...)

Ruminations and Cogitations, continued

Some interesting and scary things in the paper today. I guess, since I’m an American, what I find scary might not be what other people find scary, and it could be that I find these things scary because I don’t want to think of the things that really are scary. Say what you will about John Ashcroft – and I don’t like him, not at all – he probably has to think about scary things every day that would leave me shuddering under the bed.

So I’ll stick to the things that scare me but aren’t in that league. Ashcroft comes to mind because of two articles in today’s Washington Post. In one, a guy says that while he was flying, and doing a crossword puzzle, he jotted a piece of dialogue for a book that he’s writing. He wrote this line on the edge of the paper where the crossword was: “I guess this is the bomb.” Another passenger saw the note, alerted the flight attendant, and this guy got to spend extensive quality time with cops and feds, none of whom seemed all that interested in the possibility that they were wrong about him, and it ended up that he was told he would now be on a ‘watch list’.

Its easy to make fun of this, just like its easy to make fun of that guy who wanted to blow up the airliner by using a bomb in his shoe. Wouldn’t have been so funny had he succeeded. Thinking that a person is a threat to an airliner because of something he jotted down on the side of a crossword puzzle seems ludicrous and dumb – but ludicrous and dumb people do pose a threat, and we pay humorless people to deal with that threat. Including people like Ashcroft. And including people like the unnamed person who scrambled a fighter jet in Washington to check out the light aircraft that was carrying a traffic reporter, just like it always does, where it always does, in touch with air traffic control all the time. It ended well, but mysteriously, as apparently no one could be found to say that they asked for the fighter to be scrambled, or even to say that they thought scrambling it was a bad idea. If that plane had been carrying explosives, flying under the cover of its normal mission, would the fighter have been able to stop it, or even get close to it? What about locking on for a missile attack? The light plane, remember, cruises at around 70MPH, and the fighter, around 400MPH. I’m thinking of the fighter to helicopter missile attacks in Blue Thunder, which as you may recall didn’t turn out all that well.

So when humorless people do things like stop and interrogate other people who jot down threatening phrases in public places, or check out apparently normal planes that could be a threat, they’re not doing something wrong. But since that also infringes on our traditional view of how Americans act, it feels wrong.

I don’t know about other people, but I haven’t figured out which it is, yet.

Be careful what you wish for....

Which, granted, is a very lame phrase even if Uhura did say it in Star Trek IV to that snarky ensign who ended up getting locked into the closet.

A few days ago, I was whimpering about not having enough to do, and how I wished I had more, and yesterday, the opportunity came. I got a call around 1:30 to the effect that a customer wanted a piece of software installed, and how it would be appreciated if I would do that. And oh, yes, they'd like it operational when they came in on Monday. At that point, I said 'Did they mean the Monday that is in one day, or the one that's a week from this Monday?' And you know which one they said.

I spent about three hours on the PC, downloading the package from the vendor's site (really glad I was doing this from home, with the cable modem; had I been doing it at the office, with the anemic network we have there, I'd still be doing it today). And talking with the customer, and the vendor's contact for my company, and the vendor's contracts person, who is the keeper of the sacred datecode, without which, you can install all you want, Jack, it isn't going to work. But after about two hours, I thought I had it knocked, no problem. Then I learned that when the vendor had changed from version 5.1 of their software to 5.2, they had made Substantial Changes, which translates into You Have To Reinstall The Whole Package. Oh, fun!

After trying to upload to the mainframe for a while, I tossed in the towel and drove into the office, where it took about two more hours to get the upload completed. Things went pretty well at that point, and by about 9PM I thought I was done. I'd say Start, the product would come up, spit out all kinds of status messages, say 'Ready'.... and then shut right back down again. Not being too bright, I tried it about fifteen more times, and each time, same thing, except that sometimes it'd kick out error messages, too, like 13E abends, which say that a subtask hadn't quite finished running when it was told to shut down, or errors from Unix, saying that a task was ended even though it hadn't been undubbed yet.

Finally, an hour later, I thought, hell with this, and called the vendor, telling them what I was seeing, and the guy said well, the only time I've seen this before, the TCPIP port you're using is already in use by another task. So I renamed the port to something else, and, hey presto, it came up.... and stayed up. Damn!

Fooled around with it a while more, entered some commands just to see that it really would respond, then I called the person who had originally asked me to do it (taking some pleasure in the fact that I was calling at 11 at night), and told him it was in, it was up, I was done. Which pleased him. And I then shut down the laptop, put it away, and thought "Damn. Forgot to shut down the task." So I called Ops, asked them to shut it down, and, after some confusion, because they'd never heard of this task before (obviously, since I'd just built it), they did, and I went sleepily home.

Be careful what you wish for. Someone might be listening.

But you know what? It was fun.

Ruminations and Cogitations

This has been a weird week, and I'm in a weird mood. Some good things happened, though.

The most recent good thing was that we went out to dinner for my wife's birthday. The dinner was pretty good. We went to the Olive Garden, which is Fine Dining around here, and a very popular place. I felt badly -- I didn't get her anything, not even a card. She always says that I don't have to, and I know that's true because its true when I say it, but still.... you want to get something as a recognition. She didn't mind, but I still want to do something.

Buying stuff. I have found over the years that what they say is true, at least for me -- buying stuff does not guarantee happiness. I know that's a trite observation, and in a way its hardly new -- we neither of us have ever felt that buying things just because you can is a desirable thing. I don't understand people who buy new, flashy cars (though I like the cars) or gleaming, blinking audio systems (though I like the systems) or even new clothes when the old ones are perfectly good (though I like the new clothes, especially the Tshirts I just got from Lands' End; yum). I think maybe I like the idea of having new stuff; I just don't like the idea of paying for it.

Yet I'm not cheap, not in any real sense. I just don't like spending money for things that I don't really feel like we need. We recently bought a new dining room table -- actually, it'd be a new dining table, wouldn't it? Why do we say dining room table? Well, why do we say salmon but we say tuna fish? -- and having used the table for a while, I can say that its very nice to have, yes indeed. It is solid and comfortable, and the PIR post I made a few days ago notwithstanding, I am glad that we have it. It was Worth The Money. But a lot of things aren't, at least not to me, and I try not to obviously envy people who either have the money to get this stuff without having to think about the cost, or just get it; to hell with the cost, put it on the credit card. How money works -- how people use it -- has always interested me, a little bit. I recall, years ago, when I lived in South Dakota, courtesy of the Air Force, how people would buy houses downtown for the duration of their stay, and at the end of it -- usually about three years later -- they'd sell them again. I was quite pleased with myself when it occurred to me that they weren't actually buying the house; they were renting it from the bank. I was wary of that idea -- what if no one wanted to buy it when I was ready to leave? What does it cost to get an electrician, a plumber, furniture? I wasn't ready for any of those things, so I didn't even try to get a house. The pleasure of ownership wasn't Worth The Money. That's part of the thing about buying a birthday gift -- its got to be Worth The Money. Some amount of the cost can be directed just to the pleasure of getting it for her -- I'd unquestionably spend more money for her than I would ever spend for myself -- but still, there is the WTM consideration. Jewelry, for example. I've never bought into the idea of A Diamond Is Forever. Does that make me cheap? Maybe just a little....

Another Good Thing that happened this week is the drama camp that my daughter is attending. It's small-potatoes stuff -- even little theater is more advanced than this is -- but she's enjoying it. The play is going to be held at noon today, and of course I'll go. I am glad when she enjoys things like this, because its sometimes quite difficult to find things that she does enjoy. Part of it is that she's not comfortable with making friends in a crowd, so the mass activities at the regular camp don't appeal to her. She's a friendly, open kid, and she enjoys having friends -- but only in the micro sense. In that way, she's a lot like me, though she's better at the concept than I am. Like most parents, I wish I could give her the social skills that I never really mastered. If being part of this drama group helps her there, I'm delighted --but even if all it does is give her something to do, and maybe a sense of accomplishment, that'll be a good thing, too.

Work has been slow this week, even by normal standards. That's made me glum. I really want to be busy, I really want Stuff To Do. Not so much that it drives me crazy, or fills every waking moment with an awareness of its looming mass, but enough so that I feel that I'm contributing something. I get a lot of my sense of value from what I do at work, and if I don't do a lot -- well.... And yet I was surprised to find this week that this doesn't necessarily translate into a desire to try new things. This was an unpleasant surprise. What happened was that a colleague told me of a technical tool that could make one of our systems run better, and I found to my surprise that reading the manual, I had almost no interest in doing it. I'm not sure why. It could be that the concept scared me, but I don't want to believe that. I told my group's manager (I always think of him as the group's manager, not as my manager) that I don't mind failing, but I do mind not having the opportunity to fail. Well, that's true, but not as true as it could be. The truth is, I do mind failing, and I think I've lost my taste for trying new things because I'm getting afraid to fail. You can see how that would be a disturbing realization. I don't like it.

So much for now....

Not Really Goofing....

I'm not really goofing off, at the moment. I am officially working; I have my pager on my hip (both on my hip and on, period); I have gone through emails and responded as needed, and I am using my work laptop to do it. I am Working.

It's also true that I am sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the birds, and looking out at a perfectly glorious day; I am barefoot, wearing shorts and a light blue Tshirt, and sipping coffee while I leaf through a book. So, I'm not really working. More like, I'm holding myself in readiness, should the need arise.

This is, in fact, exactly the condition that the people who reluctantly pay my salary (not just me; they're reluctant to pay anyone's salary, as if they could get away with never paying, then their P&L would be fabulous) were referring to when they balked. Am I working? No, truth is, I'm not. Am I avoiding work, delaying it, refusing or failing to do what I should be doing? No, not at all. Nothing is waiting for me.

I suppose that one way to look at this would be that if I have nothing to do, then I ought to be finding things to do. Because unless one works in valhalla, there are always things that could be done to improve the common weal, the working environment. Thats true. But I am not going to do them, because I have found, over the years, that it simply doesn't matter. Perhaps thats my failure, an inability to see how things could be grandly better, and to contribute my mite to efforts that could possibly lead to such improvement, knowing full well that by myself, I can't change them. And its true that at one time, I though that even if I couldn't change the totality or anything approaching totality of the environment, I could at least make an effort. But I don't think that way any more. I see a problem, I fix it. I see something I can make better in my small realm, I do so. But I don't try to change the world, the nation, the state, the city, the street. Just my little part.

But I'm not goofing off. Much.

Guess the Army was right!

Had a fairly intense conversation with my group's manager, the other day, the nut of which was, you're doing what we asked you to do, and you're doing it well, but we don't like paying full time for you to do it, because obviously, it doesn't take all of your time to do it. Which, as it happens, is true, but the proof of it was that I have time to a) dial into a recurring teleconference held by his boss's boss (capo di tutti capi? Not quite...), and they wondered how a grunt level person would have time to do this, and b) when he would hold his own team meetings, and at the end invite people who were remote (like me) to hang on and listen to the local stuff, I would -- thus proving that I didn't have enough to do. I thought that volunteering to sit in on these things demonstrated a certain amount of interest in how the organization works, above and beyond what is normally shown, but that wasn't how it was perceived. And since the organization runs on what they call 'claim codes', which is to say, billable hours, the people paying the bill objected to paying for me full time when part of the time -- obviously ! -- I had nothing to do.

Now this is a decent guy, trying to do his job with a minumum of bureaucracy.... and even I know that when a group manager gets that way, you'd better just nod and smile abjectly ....so that's what I did. Offered up some defense, but it didn't matter, he'd already come to a conclusion. Whether it was his or his boss's, I don't know. I'm disappointed in him and for him, though. He's better than that. So am I.

But the old Army aphorism was right. Don't volunteer.

PIR

About a week ago, we took delivery of a new dining room table. It's quite nice -- here's a picture, though that isn't where we got it -- but we now have a small problem.

We occasionally have pizza for dinner, and sometimes we'd have it in the dining room. How unconventional! When it would come, we'd grab plates and drinks, drop the box on the table, and have at it -- which is how that table got a nice glossy spot where the heat of the box, um, damaged it. But not a lot. And sometimes the plates would sit there for a while before getting cleaned up.

But this is a nice table. It seems a bit -- I don't know, awkward? tacky? -- to put down something to protect the table from the pizza box -- along the lines of putting heavy plastic on furniture to protect the fabric (and yes, my family has been known to do that, too; your thighs never quite forget that feeling of plastic sticking to them). But neither do we want to damage the table. The first spill - gasp! We could, I suppose, just leave the pizza in the kitchen, which is all of ten steps away -- but that does ruin a bit of the spontaneity of the event. What's next, napkin rings? Though we do have these napkin rings that we almost never use....


File this one under Problems of the Idle Rich.

Is this Panama?

Driving home, feeling the humid, sultry heat, watching the steam rising from the hot pavement, all courtesy of a day of +80 degree heat and our recurring late afternoon rainstorm. A whiff of damp warmth came in through the van window when I rolled it down at the mailbox... instant change from frigid air to soggy dampness.

But no new complaints today, and a couple of nice things happened. My distant acquaintance is speaking to me again -- I'm delighted by that, more than might be obvious. My daughter's unhappiness with some arrangements at summer camp were addressed to her satisfaction, so that's good. And her final grades came back from school, better than expected. All goodness.

Got involved with a discussion about a technical problem that one of our customers had yesterday. Four people, each representing a different technical discipline, and two non-techs trying to get us to speak English. We didn't come to an answer, but it was a fun discussion. Well, I had fun, anyway. It was an interesting question -- see, the deal is that our customer runs a financial application that lots of people need to talk to, either directly or via an application somewhere else that needs info from it. To do this, they either run a job on our system (a big iron mainframe) that talks to the financial database directly, or they dial in, using a session manager that connects them to an application on the mainframe, and run queries against the database, or they use some unknown (to us, anyway) kind of remote application to connect to one of a series of servers that in turn establish a session with network software on the mainframe that then talks to the database. At about mid-day, the session manager started kicking out error messages, saying that it couldn't hear anything from the application -- it was talking to it, but the application wasn't responding. People who were trying to sign on were reporting very long response time -- hanging, is what its called. About thirty minutes into this, the customer shut down one of the servers, and about twenty minutes later, the problem went away -- error messages stopped, response time went back to normal. Question is, what caused it? Well, the roomful of technical experts said, looking slit-eyed at each other, thats a tough question, you know, could be lots of things... so one of the non-techies asked what I thought was a very good question: next time this happens, what information do we want, and where will we get it? Cause you know, you just know its going to happen again. Reprise the slit-eyed scene.
I love that kind of stuff. Course, I love even better figuring it out, and we're not there, yet.

One month from today, plastic surgery. Not looking forward to walking around with stitches in my chin. Hope it doesn't look hideous; hope even more than the surgeon doesn't say Hey, what's THIS?, halfway through the process. I kid about having a nightlight put into my chin so I can read at night, but truth is, I just want this to be over.

But overall, things are good here in Saunaland.

Dueling Headlines

From Google News....

US court-martial to hold pretrial hearings for three soldiers next week
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A US Army court will hold pretrial hearings next week for three soldiers charged with abusing Iraqi inmates in Abu Ghraib prison, a coalition legal officer said Monday.


Somali Charged with Plotting to Blow Up Ohio Mall
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Somali man living in Ohio was charged with plotting with al Qaeda supporters to blow up a shopping mall in Columbus, Ohio, Attorney General John Ashcroft said on Monday.

Hmmm......

Working from Home

I'm working from home today, and will be, on Mondays and Fridays, for the summer. The reason is to let me retrieve my daughter from the summer program at a relatively early hour, like 4:30, without having to cut out from work way early to do so. This way, I start my work day about half an hour earlier, and end it about ten minutes later. That is the rational brain reason. Underlying it is the emotional brain reason, which says that I want to work from home because it saves me an hour of commute time,plus the associated gas. It also isolates me from the noise at my office. Truthfully, the noise isn't that bad, but sometimes, it is. I don't care for people goofing around a lot. A little, sure. A lot, no.

I feel guilty about working from home, though. Feels like I'm cheating. When I'm at the office, that same background noise that can be irritating is also a hum that says yes, you're doing the grown-up thing, you're At The Office. When I work from home, it's not there. I do about 90% of the same stuff no matter where I am. Most of that remaining ten percent is paper-oriented stuff that can only be done there, and the rest is walk-up stuff where the person decides to wait until they see me again. Delaying the first a day or so is not a problem, but I don't like the idea of delaying the second. Part of that is that I don't think it's professional of me to make people wait (okay, they could IM me, and some do, but some don't), and part is that people tend to draw quick assumptions that you're somewhere slacking off -- and as I've said, I tend to feel that way, too. It leads me to question my own professionalism.

I think I need more to do.