Hmmm....

From the Metro.Co.UK website --

Swedish women have launched a campaign called Just Breasts which fights for their right to go topless on beaches and in swimming pools. Scandinavian feminists were outraged when two women were asked to cover up their breasts by a lifeguard at a public pool near Stockholm. One of the pair (sorry), 22-year-old Ragnhild Karlsson, said: 'If women are forced to wear a top, shouldn't men also have to?' As a result, women in southern Sweden set up the Bara Bradiost network, which translates as 'Just Breasts'. A spokeswoman for the group said: 'We want our breasts to be as normal and desexualised as men's, so that we too can pull off our shirts at football matches.' So far, the campaign's strategy has been devastatingly effective. Members of Just Breasts have been jumping into swimming pools across the country wearing nothing more than bikini bottoms.This tactical masterstroke has caused an upheaval in Swedish law - the country's equal opportunities ombudsman will decide whether or not to take up the case later this month.

I kind of think this is a good idea....

Bread

Though I'm not a superchef (and likely never will be!), I do know how to make bread. Which is why, oddly enough, I was fascinated with this article on making a basic loaf of bread. It's simple, and it all sounded right to me. I recommend it.

Visiting the Doc

Went to the dentist this morning, and it turned out pretty much as I expected. He told me he got the rest of the sutures out, and that it'll be three to four months until the implants can be done. Also, not to chew at all using the dental plate until, oh, the Ides of March, 2008. I'm not happy, but the hell with it, if thats what it takes, then thats what it takes.

I also got to see what I think he's really like, when he's alone with his staff -- someone had left the papers from an exam kit on the chair's table, and he jabbed a finger at it while glaring at the nurse. Ho, ho, ho.

Still chilly out.

MMMorning

A bit of an unusual day, and it's just started!

For one, it snowed last night. Just a dusting, but still -- we didn't get any kind of snow until, I think, December of last year. And though the local school district didn't delay school (one in three chance), three districts north of here did.

For another, my daughter mentioned this morning that she'd inadvertently left her cell phone on, last night, and this morning was woken not by her alarm but by the buzz of the phone. Her friend was texting her to tell her that it had snowed. I'd heard kids do that; I didn't really believe it.

I have two events today -- I'm going to the dentist for a checkup, at which (wince) he'll likely try to remove some more sutures. I'm going to ask him how long before I can use the dental plate to chew. I'm expecting that he'll say three months, and express surprise at my surprise. Didn't you know that healing takes at least four months? Which I did, but what is an obvious corollary to him is not always, to me.

And I have a meeting with my mentee. I want to stop by the school early to get a look at his grades. I think it'd be better to do it before he and I meet, and I don't think it'd be fair to take his time while I do it. Also, I want the chance to think about them a bit. In a weird way, what he and I will be doing in that regard is a parallel of what my daughter and I will be doing. I've only met him once, but he seems bright to me.

So thats the day.

Fake Steve

And This is Why

I use Thunderbird as an email client. Its not bad. First off, its not Microsoft; second, its free; third, it does junk mail filtering; fourth, it has the ability to execute rules on mail based on content. Its search capabilities could be better. Still, its an overall decent tool. It does have the occasional surprise, though. For example, this afternoon, it decided to completely forget about all three email identities. Blank, nada, nothing there.

(Nurse, some oxygen over here, stat!)

The good news is, I've been running an intermittant backup, so I had a copy of the emails and file structure thats current as of about a week ago. The bad news is, TBird doesn't seem to acknowledge that you might want to use profiles from someplace else (like the backup folder). I had to recreate the ids, then overlay them with the backed-up profiles. Just putting them in the right place wasn't enough. My guess is, it uses 'something else' to tell itself that those profiles ought to be used.

I added a gimmick to it, though; we'll see if it works. My email comes through a POP mainframe. I put a rule on it to say that any incoming mail for any of those systems ought to be copied to my GMAIL account. This won't save emails going out, but, hey, I'll take what I can get.

This is why I do backups.

[True Knowledge]

But She's A Geek!

Yeah. Isn't it cool?

Desiring Design

I like good design, but I'm only rarely willing to pay for it. Here's an example of what doesn't make the cut, though I wish it could - water carafes with removable insulating covers, from Greener Grass Design.

Shopping

One of the things that makes shopping effective for us is that we've created a spreadsheet of what we normally buy, and where it is in the store. That severely limits impulse buys. Creating such a list can be tedious, however, so I think that this list, predone, might help.

Talking with the Offspring

This afternoon, we're going to sit down with my daughter and talk with her about her performance. Although I tend to be fairly good with winging this kind of thing, I sketched out what points I want to make, because I think its important. I know that she knows I'm unhappy; that I went to this effort should reinforce that to me -- to us -- this is a big deal.

The trick will not be so much in tracking performance and in enforcing excellence (though I have no idea how to handle the situations where the instructor wants one thing, but my daughter though they wanted something else). The trick will be in inculcating this attitude in her. As my wife said this morning, we've seen this problem before, and we thought it was resolved.

These are the notes as they stand now:

Second honors is not bad, but it is below average for you and for your school.
Problems were in doing what was required; doing it on time. Not too much in knowing the material.

Action plan:
1. Review all grade sheets once a week; agenda twice a week (both on average)
2. Review execution of homework and projects once or twice a week; more if problems arise.
Look for completeness, correctness; due date.
Expect that I will be picky.
The devil is in the details.

Notes:
Understand that this is not life or death, but it is very important, because it sets the stage for high school expectations.
Shoot for all As or high Bs. Another second honors means maximum one hour TV per night, if that, and possibly no color guard.
If first honors received next time, will back off on frequency of checking, but not eliminate it until the next marking period after that.

Weighty Matters

Up to two days ago, I'd lost about a pound a day, on average, since the surgery. I wondered what it would stabilize at, and so I started tracking it, instead of simply noting what it was.

In the two days since I started tracking it, I have gained four pounds!

Taser, Cont'd

Apparently, there really is an epidemic of cops going whacko with Tasers. Here's another. To be fair, there's justification -- the victim was a restaurant owner getting food from the restaurant's walk-in cooler.

That's enough, right?

Skuritee

This page describes the use of a product called Fport, which will display who's got ports open on your PC. I thought it an interesting tool.

Visiting

We just came back from visiting my mother at the rehab center. The news there is generally good.

Her speech is generally understandable now -- fuzzy enough to notice, but not bad. She can eat if the food is thick, and she's learned a couple of tricks to make choking less likely. The bad news is that the right side of her jaw is still on the weak side, so she can't easily handle food there. They're working on that.

Physically, she's obviously getting stronger. In some ways -- getting into and out of a low bed -- she can do it by herself. She needs a walker to move around, and our sense is that she'll probably need one for a while. She's got one that she received when she came home from heart bypass surgery, but we might get an upgraded one for her that's got larger wheels and incorporates a seat (not a wheelchair, but it could be used as one) because she tends to get out of breath. The buzzword for that sort of device appears to be 'rollator', and its a bit of a challenge to find a web site for them which doesn't look as if it were hacked together by two guys running an enterprise of dubious legality. But we'll look....

The expectation is that she'll come home on Saturday. I'm a little apprehensive about that, but not as much as I have been. Seeing her move helps. And she'll continue outpatient therapy after she comes home, which is also good. She's not real big on doing those exercises by herself.

I did notice that as I was walking around the physical therapy room, I tended to hide the slight limp that I've still got from the hip surgery.

Prius Trivia

I've noticed on occasion a small yellow light come in the dashboard when I've been punching it around a corner. Not always, but occasionally. Today I found that that's called the 'Slip Indicator Light', and it means the TRAC system's been engaged. TRAC is a form of advanced ABS; its different, but the goal is the same: to reduce slippage when you're in dicey situations. Thats the good news.

The bad news is, if you're in really slippery situations, the Prius TRAC system might decide that its too slippery to allow the vehicle to run, at which point it kills drive power. I've noticed, once or twice, when the light flickered on, that it sounded like the drive system slowed down, almost as if it were shifting (which you never hear on a Prius because of the kind of transmission it has). But I never heard of this.

OMG.

BZWKND

It's going to be a busy weekend.

In about half an hour, we're going over to the rehab hospital to see what the rehab exercises are that my mother does, so that we can assist if needed once she's home (which won't be for another couple of weeks). Halfway through that, we're bringing our daughter over to the church so that she can get 'service hours' by assisting in a church festival, and then we go back to the hospital for another session. This afternoon, we're going over to Home Depot to price a replacement vanity cabinet and flooring for my mother's bathroom, with an eye to trying to get it in before she comes home (unlikely).

Tomorrow, we bring my daughter back to the church again for another service project -- assisting in a pancake breakfast -- which will fulfill her service hours requirement. And in the afternoon, we talk with my daughter about her grades, and what we want to do to address the situation. I'll try to make that as much her solution as ours, because both of us have to be comfortable with it.

BZ.

Muppet Matrix

Very Calm Lady

Took me a couple of moments to realize why...

HDT

No, not High Definition Television, about which, every time I read an article, I get more bemused. One article will say 'You know, you can get HD local signals over the air; no need for cable or satellite; just use an old rabbit ear antenna', and another will say 'Well, we got our Sony Bravia, but the rabbit ears we'd picked up didn't work, so we bought a ....' Gag me.

This HDT, though, is How Doctors Think, which is the book I'm skimming now -- and the choice of verb should give you a sense of the value of it. Its not bad -- I certainly wasn't looking for anything dense -- but it does like to make the point, repeatedly, that doctors are Noble Folk, that they're dreadfully overworked (which is true, unless, as the book and other sources point out, they've moved into administration part time, which saves their sanity and income, or into retainer medicine, which does that and lets them 'practice medicine the way I want to'), and that they are by nature morally better than those scum over at the insurance companies -- the author actually uses the phrase 'bean counters', but you know thats what he wants to say; wonder how he feels about 'pill-pusher'? - who are, dammit, just interested in money. Imagine!

But for all of that, its an interesting book, because it makes several good points about how doctors make mistakes. (Which really should be the title, but I guess HDT was sexier). He's not talking about technical errors --what's that, doctor? you say the heart is ABOVE the belly button? Well, I'll be damned... -- which he says account for only a very small fraction of errors; instead, he's talking about perceptual errors, where the doctor makes a diagnosis based on a misreading of the patient's actual condition. To be fair, this doesn't happen in most cases; the incidents in the book are where normal medicine isn't quite working; you've got some of the characteristics of this disease, but this disease always has red spots, and you don't have that....although lack of red spots could be a byproduct of this drug, but then again... So its not always an easy thing, making a diagnosis, not to mention the differential diagnoses (what could it be if it isn't what I think it is?), while its very easy to take cheap shots afterward (negligence lawyers do it all the time, I'm told).

When errors occur, he says, its frequently because these bright people misapplied a concept that usually works. For example, if it looks, sounds, and walks like a duck, its probably a duck, even if its does have kind of a black torso and seems to really like eating fish and sliding down hills of snow. And if it happens that I live near a duck sanctuary, then thats proof positive: its a duck. Diagnose based on what is the most likely match, ignore the things that don't match (because those are usually distracting background noise, not useful information), and go for the diagnoses that are the most common. Flu Season? Don't diagnose bronchial cancer when the symptoms are pretty consistant with a chest cold. On the other hand, don't entirely rule it out, either. Sometimes, the hoofbeats really do come from a zebra. And people with colds can have cancer, too.

Overall, not bad.

Coming Home to Iraq

This comes from Michael Yon Online Magazine, a very well done web site:


LTC Michael told me today that when al Qaeda came to Dora, they began harassing Christians first, charging them “rent.” It was the local Muslims, according to LTC Michael, who first came to him for help to protect the Christians in his area. That’s right. LTC Michael told me more than once that the Muslims reached out to him to protect the Christians from al Qaeda. Real Muslims here are quick to say that al Qaeda members are not true Muslims. From charging “rent,” al Qaeda’s harassment escalated to killing Christians, and also Muslims. Untold thousands of Christians and Muslims fled Baghdad in the wake of the darkness of civil war. Most of the Christians are gone now; having fled to Syria, Jordan or Northern Iraq..... Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John’s (a church in Baghdad) . Muslims who want their Christian friends and neighbors to come home. The Christians who might see these photos likely will recognize their friends here. The Muslims in this neighborhood worry that other people will take the homes of their Christian neighbors, and that the Christians will never come back. And so they came to St John’s today in force, and they showed their faces, and they said, “Come back to Iraq. Come home.” They wanted the cameras to catch it. They wanted to spread the word: Come home. Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. “Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq.”

Phrase I Learned Today

Oxidation state.

I even understand it. I think.

Mulling it Over

I've mentioned on occasion that as a result of the enforced soft-foods diet that I've been on now for about twelve days, I've lost a fair amount of weight -- around twelve pounds from what I consider my normal size. This has really surprised me, because I didn't regard as what I normally ate as being all that much, nor did I consider myself to be a sedentary person. Yet the effect of eating substantially less -- I can't accurately quantify it; my gut feeling is 'about fifty five or sixty percent of normal' - is obvious. I haven't been hungry, as a rule. What brought this to mind was, oddly enough, being hungry; I didn't have breakfast this morning (I was in a snit, for reasons mentioned earlier), so that by 11, I was thinking that I could use something to eat. It turns out that Honey Wheat Cheerios aren't quite as soft as Rice Krispies, but that didn't stop me having them for lunch. But ten minutes later, I found myself at the pantry cupboard, looking for something else to eat -- then realizing that even if I found something, I couldn't have it, save the occasional cup of pudding or whatever. So I came back outside and resumed reading my current book. That was about half an hour ago, and at the moment, I'm not hungry. It's making me wonder how much I really do normally eat.

The book, incidentally, is How Doctors Think, and its not bad. I'm reading it as it relates to the styles of problem solving, and how people get stuck or sidetracked, though I'm also interested because its about medicine, which I like (in the abstract, anyway), and doctors, whom I don't (in the abstract, anyway).

Tasered

These are not good times for people who make Tasers.

An article in an Australian newspaper relates the death of a man in a Vancouver airport who was hit twice with a Taser. A second article in Canada.com lists a number of failures in how the situation was approached, including how the device was used. Incidents have occurred in United States airports, and colleges, too -- some of which we wouldn't know about were it not for cell-phone cameras and the like.

As the first article points out, Tasers were intended as a substitute for lethal force, which substitution is a good thing. Apparently, that not how it's playing out -- and the commentary by an RCMP spokesman to the effect that the death in Vancouver is 'just one person's view' is disingenuous, at best. Then again, the US had, in Rodney King, an excellent example of a video showing someone not just being Tasered but being actively beaten up by police -- and that went nowhere, so perhaps the RCMP can ignore this as well as we ignored our own.

Makes you wonder -- are we letting our cops away with too much?

Waking Up

There's a couple of old jokes about waking up.

In one, a college professor, teaching an early morning class, is challenged by a student to present the material more simply. It's too early to have to think, the student complains. The professor replies that its all in how you approach the day. He gets up before dawn, exercises, showers, and then he feels rosy all over. From the back of the room, a sleepy voice says 'Tell us more about Rosie.'

In another, a woman talking about her early morning routine says, simply 'Sometimes I wake up grumpy....and sometimes, I let him sleep in.'

This morning, I was more the latter than the former. I am still ticked about the dental surprise, yesterday. About which, what more can I say.

I'm still irritated by my daughter's performance in school. I am trying -- not too successfully -- not to view this as a serious failure. Mostly, I think it is, because I figured out once that about sixty percent or so of the class gets first honors. If she can't, then she's behind the power curve, and I don't like that. I see it as a failure. As I say, I'm trying not to view this as a major problem....but in my heart, I think it is.

Outside, the tree trimmers are busily hacking at our trees. Its what we want.... which I will have to remind myself of, when I see what will undoubtedly look like butchered trees. I know this, because every time its done, thats what they look like. The silver maple looks like the top six feet was whacked off, because thats exactly whats done. The other one, whose type I forget, will look smaller. The large evergreen looks shrunken. Only the small evergreens near the house won't look destroyed. At least, not very destroyed.

What fun, huh?

DRA

That stands for Disaster Recovery Activity; its the actions you take to ensure, as best you can, that your computer operation will survive a catastrophe. It incorporates low-level, routine actions, such as data back up, all the way up to 'The data center blew up, what do we do now?' Disaster Recover drills find problems, but they don't find all problems; nor do they find problems like 'Well, what if A happens, and before we get that fixed, B happens?' Objectively, they should; subjectively, they don't, and won't unless you're willing to staff a really big organization to think about it.

Here's an interesting example of the response to an actual disaster by a Dallas-based hosting organization. You can see that they're trying very hard to be honest, while still trying very hard to say 'Everything's Under Control' and 'No Way Could We Have Foreseen THIS!' Its not funny, but, if you're interested in this sort of thing, it's instructive.

More Unpleasantness

I didn't beat up my daughter, tonight, but I thought about it. Not physically, of course. But verbally, yeah -- I thought about it.

She came in to Talk To Me About Her Grades. Oh, crap, I thought.

Well, it wasn't absolutely terrible news. She'd gotten As and Bs -- but some of the Bs were low Bs, because she'd forgotten to hand in assignments, or did them poorly. And so instead of First Honors, which she's gotten every period up to now, she got Second. And I don't have the stomach -- didn't have the stomach; still don't -- to say Oh, thats okay, you tried. Because to me, not turning things in, not reading directions means she didn't try, not hard enough. Remember what I said about How do you know if that damn agenda book is actually working? Remember my thoughts about the effectiveness of student-led conferences, held when grades are handed out? I consider this to be proof positive of the correctness of my suspicion -- that these concepts are a politically correct failure. Useful and valuable in concept; dismal in execution.

The temptation was to say some very cutting remarks. I came close. I didn't, but I came close. I knew that I'd say something that I'd regret, even if it were true. But boy, did I want to.

She's not getting away scot free from this. I just need to back off a little until just thinking about it doesn't irritate the hell out of me. Which at the moment, it does. After I cool down, we'll figure out how to handle this. For the moment, we'll let it lie.

She knows I'm --disappointed? More than that.

Some mentor I'll be.

===========
Update:
We talked, briefly. I told her that I knew she was smart, and that this didn't change that. I told her that we would figure out what to do, together. And that no matter what, I still loved her. She seemed apprehensive when she came in; somewhat relieved, afterward. As for me -- well, I'm still a little ticked, but I'm working on it.

Dentists Lie

I am pissed.

I went to see the oral surgeon today to get sutures out, and to have the upper plate modified so that I could use it. Both were done.

When you hear the phrase 'modified so that I could use it', what does the word 'use' mean?

In this case: "Wear it if you absolutely need to, but otherwise, don't -- and if you do, don't chew with it. Doing so will imperil the integrity of the graft. Try not to wear it at all. " Before, it was 'Don't wear it for two weeks, then we'll modify it'. A mild caution not to overdo it, chewing wise, once it was in use. But that was it. No warnings about not using it at all. But now that we're at the point of actually using it -- well, well, well, different story.

In that eloquent phrase: WTF?

I know, I said that I like conservative doctors. But it would have been nice, up front, to know that the 'no chewing' period was going to last considerably longer than I thought. I knew that it would be at least four months from when the graft was done to when the first implants were done. I did not know that I was going to have to spend some portion of that continuing to eat soft foods. The first two months of which contain the two prime eating holidays of the year. Oh, joy.

How long will it last? I didn't ask. At that point, I really didn't want to know the answer. Somewhere less than four months, would be my guess. If I'd known this, up front, would I have said the hell with it, just go with dentures? At the moment, I'm thinking: oh, yeah.

Side note 1:
If I've lost ten pounds in ten days, what will months mean? Other than going insane because I won't be able to bake, that is? I do like losing weight, but crunching into something'd be nice, too. Especially if I can be relatively sure that the crunch isn't shattering bone in my jaw.

Side note 2:
As he was taking out the sutures (and without anesthetic!), he muttered that some of the sutures were awfully complicated, to which the nurse replied 'Well, your sutures always are.' He seemed to think this funny, saying 'Yeah, but usually you have to take them out, not me.' Oh, great. So the guy who did them thinks they're complicated -- and someone of lesser talent gets to remove them? This does buckets for my enthusiasm, too.

American Gods

I finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I'm glad that I read it. I'm not sure I'd read anything more by him -- based just on this, his books take a certain amount of committment -- but he has the damndest ability to conjure imagery.... so maybe.

Parenting

I must be very careful never to imply, in the hearing of any child, that I think this is funny. To the contrary, I must be clear that it is coarse, disrespectful, and not to be tolerated. I do not think that it is funny, not in the slightest.

(giggle)

Poetry

Okay, this isn't my usual stuff. But in my defense, I was snared because it's from The Age, the Melbourne, Australia newspaper, and you know how I feel about that city. You'd think I was the original party animal when I was there, I go on about it so much, when in fact most nights I spent alone in my room at the hotel, and only occasionally making a brave excursion out to the bookstore or that place that sold the great tiramisu, in Carlton or Fitzroy, someplace like that. Of course, thinking 'Carlton' makes me think of that great FlashBeer ad, which can still make me smile. But...but I really love Beer, sir!

Howsomever...

This article is about the poet Sappho. Hot diggety, guys think, Sappho, lesbianism, yum! You remember that quote that I like apropos that from the Mad About You series. And thats still true. What's not to like?

But this article is about the poet, not the sex. And I'm impressed (says the guy whose idea of poetry usually starts with something like There Once Was A Girl From Nantucket). It's powerful:

Desire has shaken my mind

As wind through the mountain forests

Roars through trees.

My goodness.

From the Melbourne Age....

Interesting Problem

I have kind of an interesting problem. Not sure what the answer is -- two occur to me, though, and I'm not too thrilled with either one.

I've been eating soft foods now for 10 days, ever since the operation to do the bone graft. Over that time, I've lost about ten pounds, which kind of astonishes me.

I'd like to keep it that way. The two ways that occur to me are a) take up exercise, when I go back to eating normally (which, I do truly believe, wasn't an excessive eating style, or b) eat less, even though (see prior disclaimer). Neither's particularly desirable; the first, just slightly more so.

You can see why I'm perplexed.
==============
Update:
My wife knows that I'm thinking about this, and this morning, she said, with a slight smile, that she knew I'd lost weight, because now, when she hugs me, she can cross her wrists behind me. Okay, granted, its because thats the first step in the Um-Chuck-Ninja Full Body Throw, so that she can fling me to the ground as needed to keep me in line , but still -- that's nice, and something I'd not willingly give up.

Hmm.... might just be worth that damn exercise idea...

Mentor

Well, I met with my mentee (I guess he's called). I think it went pretty well, given that we didn't have a lot to talk about, and we were sort of feeling our way along. He's eleven, in sixth grade. He likes football, reading, some science, some math. Overall, he seems to be a bright kid, actually. Perhaps they gave me the easy one?

We meet again on Monday. I'm almost as terrified as I was today -- what we will talk about? how should I approach it?

Cutting Remarks

Yesterday, I was at a plastic surgeon's office to have the site of the bone graft donation (the iliac crest, if you're into these things) checked out for infection and such. All's well. As we were finishing up, I mentioned that I had seen a brief article on the Google news scoop about a woman who'd died after plastic surgery. Oh, yeah, I saw that, he replied. Didn't read it, though. What was that about? I told him that the woman had apparently had both breast reduction and a tummy tuck done at the same time, though at least one doctor thought it risky; she'd gone home afterward, and died. He shook his head. Well, I just started doing breast reductions, he said, and I've done tummy tucks for years, but I'd never do them both at the same time.

I like knowing a little medicine, and I like conservative doctors, but this really wasn't a conversation I'd ever expected to have.

YaHum

From an article about Yahoo, transferring information, and Chinese dissidents:

Panel members asked Yahoo to pledge not to comply with politically motivated inquests by foreign governments in the future, to support a bill that would make it illegal for U.S. companies to supply foreign governments with politically incriminating information, and to aid the families of Chinese citizens jailed on the basis of information supplied by Yahoo.

Foreign governments? What about domestic, I wonder?

Doing Lunch

Well, I won't be doing lunch, today.

This is the annual Thanksgiving Dinner at my daughter's middle school. I went last year, and I enjoyed it. There's nothing particularly amazing about the lunch -- its just the normal stuff -- but it was a chance to meet some kids that my daughter speaks of from time to time. Frankly, I was looking forward to it. But I knew that there was a chance that she wouldn't want me to come -- its a little embarassing for her to have a parent there (it'd be true if it was my wife, too), and this year, it'd be a little worse, since I don't have the upper dental plate in place, so my speech is a little slurred. I don't think its a big deal, but I know how kids can tease, so I gave her the option, the other day, of having me not come. She said it was okay with her for me to come.

But this morning, she was in a bit of a grumpy mood, after having been out somewhat late, attending the Band (ahem) Boosters Dinner, at which she got a small award. She dislikes public attention (may actually enjoy it, but her time, her way). I mentioned coming to the lunch, and she gave me a glance that caused me to wonder if the deal was still on. So I said that if she wanted, I could just skip it -- and she seemed relieved.

I'm not too disappointed. Would have been nice, though.

=============
Update: When my daughter got home, she said that she was sad for disinviting me. I told her that I understood why, and that I still loved her. Whereupon she brightened up and said 'Lets go to the craft store and buy something for Mom for Christmas!' And even though I know that usually pans out to She Picks, I Pay, I said sure. Because I like being with her.

Scrubs

I like the Scrubs show. I don't watch it a lot, because I don't watch TV a lot, but when I do, its almost invariably good.

Here's an excellent example.

MySpace

This is a very scary story involving MySpace.

Prius BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

One of the irritants on the Prius (which, I overall like quite a lot) is the loud backup beep. I've noticed that I tend now to backup faster, just to get rid of that sound. Haven't hit anything...yet.

Well, apparently, a lot of people dislike that, and it turns out that in the 'Toyota documentation', there's a method of disabling that beep. I didn't find it, but then again, I can't find a lot of stuff in there. It's pretty badly organized, and is one of the things that makes me seriously question the much vaunted 'Toyota Way'. Though that manual is likely the result of the 'Outsourced to the lowest bidder and then vetted by lawyers Way'.

But I found this, here.

Turn off the backing up beep in the Toyota Prius

I found the following hack on how to turn off the back up beep in the Toyota Prius. Source:Disable Backup Beep - GreenHybrid

1. Power on the car to IG-ON or READY. IG-ON will do for this purpose.
2. Using the Trip/ODO button, set the Trip/ODO display to ODO (not Trip A or Trip B)
3. Power off the car.
4. Now power the car to READY (brake on). This is required so that step 6 works correctly.
5. Within 6 seconds of powering on, press and hold the Trip/ODO button for 10 seconds or more (there is no indication... just count)
6. WHILE STILL HOLDING ODO *after* the 10 seconds, shift the "gear" selector to R, then press the P button. Now release the Trip/ODO button.
7. If the last step was successful, "b on" or "b off" should be displayed in the location where the Trip Odometer or Odometer is normally displayed (front dash area). "b on" is beep on (default), and "b off" is beep off.
8. Press Trip/ODO to toggle the mode.
9. Now power the car off to exit the toggle mode.
10. Power the car on to READY and confirm the reverse beep status by shifting to R. The beep should not be audible if "b off" was selected, and should be audible if "b on" was selected.

...and with the addition of a note (do the step 8 toggle quickly, likely within 3 seconds, before it resets to just trip/ODO) ...It Works!

Staff Stuff

It's always interesting for customers when staff at a store seems to be having a bad day.

I just went to the oral surgeon for him to check out the status of the surgery results. He nodded and smiled and said that it all looked good; not so good that he's ready to pull sutures or let me wear the upper plate again. Maybe Thursday. Bummer. I was hoping to be freed from talking with a lisp, not to mention, soft food. But its not intolerable, and hey, I have lost weight.

But what got my attention was that the staff seemed on edge - whether due to some global reason or individual tiffs, I couldn't tell.

The thing about this place is that the surgeon is always pleasant and smiling. It took me a while to realize that he really doesn't mean it. He's not a particularly friendly guy, but if he acts that way, then patients are happier. At least, I assume thats why he does it. I could be wrong about the motivation -- but that he fakes it, I have absolutely no doubt.

The staff is a different story. They're all good, and efficient, but brisk -- except for a couple, you get the clear feeling that they want you to sit down, shut up, wait for the Doctor, and then get the hell out. They're not unfriendly, but they just don't care. As I say, I get the sense that the doctor himself is actually like that, but he hides it -- so maybe what they're doing is simply reflecting him as he actually is, how he actually wants the world to be. That's his empire, and that's how he wants things.

Whatever the cause, it can make visiting there an interesting experience.

Killer Bean

The original was found here.


Killer Bean Forever - Official Trailer -

Proud

I'm proud of myself. Its for something that many, perhaps most people would consider trivial, but I'm proud of it.

I read a full-page book review in the Washington Post Book Section from beginning to end, every damned word. And then I went back and reread a couple, and I formed an opinion about it.

I told you it was trivial. But its been a very long time since I've done that, and I have to say, it felt good.

Incidentally - the book itself, I'll likely never read. The ten, twenty page summary, should one come along ... probably.

Cool Tool

I found this Lee Valley Jar Opener at Kevin Kelley's Cool Tools site, and now I need to convince my wife that it's worth it, because it's a bit pricey -- but, apparently, quite effective.

Fear

In a response to a post on another site, I quoted the following, which is from the Dune series. Its fake theology, or philosophy, or whatever, but, you know what? I like it.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Eating words

When you're on a diet, you don't get points for what you don't eat.

I don't like when people say that something sucks. I say it all the time, and I am only belatedly realizing the illogic of that. So, I'm going to try to not say it.

Not saying it will not encourage others not to say it, either, which is what I'd like to do -- vices are okay in myself, but its others that need to reform, you know -- but I guess I'll have to live with that.

Even though doing so s --- um, is less than desirable.

Afterthought

I mentioned a particular word in that last post. It brings to mind that someone -- I think a comedian -- said "I'm Rick James bitch!" as part of a routine, and people thought it quite funny, to the point where some of them would quote it to him upon meeting him in public. He complained that he didn't think it was very nice of them to say it when he was obviously with his children, and I agree. But - and here's my question - if he said it - the whole phrase, including the last word - doesn't that suggest he's not particularly nice, either?

Of course, when I say it, it's okay - right?

Parent Spats

My wife told me something interesting this morning.

Last night, at the Event, another woman with whom my wife was walking commented with some vexation that she hadn't known that she would not be able to order up candygrams for her daughter at this particular event. At others, you can; go to a table, pick one from their stack, give your child's school and name, and they'll deliver it after the performance. Its usually a small stuffed animal, sometimes a candy bar, and the kids really like them.

When the woman said that, another woman turned, and in a querulous tone, said 'Then you should get in the habit of reading all of the band booster emails and going to the band booster meeting!"

Oh, god, how many different way is that a piss-me-off statement? This many: when my wife told me, I immediately said 'Sounds like YOU need to bite me, lady!'

Information like that does get out, but the band and the color guard have never figured out how to disseminate information. You have to hunt for it. Sometimes info is in an email from one source, sometimes the other, sometimes both, when it's sometimes its the same, but sometimes not. Sometimes the difference matters, and sometimes it doesn't. You get them from the booster group mailbox, people in the booster group, people in color guard, people who just thought they'd respond. It feeds my spam filter all the time. And they take this stuff Seriously. Personally, I think that band booster stuff is a path to brain death, unless you're a True Believer in the Wonderfulness of Band. And I'll cut off the snarky comment that occurs to me. As it happens, this woman's kid was in color guard, not band, which is Just As Goddamn Freaking Good As Band.... Not that it irritates me, because admitting that would be drinking the kool-aid, just a bit. Well, perhaps just a sip, thanks.

Because the woman who'd expressed dismay is a nice person, like my wife, and because you're supposed to Set A Good Example for your Children, she just nodded and smiled.

And, I hope, at least thought ..''Bitch!'

Notes on a Frosty Morning

Otherwise known as Life in the Key of Brrr....

Last night, I was looking for something, can't remember what, and later, in my dreams, I looked again. I was at some kind of training class, away from home, that had something to do with building a small office building, where, after a certain number of lessons, we were supposed to Do Something. It involved eating breakfast at the cafeteria in the office building (inexplicably open, though the building was under construction), and they gave us a pass so that we'd not have to pay. Which is where the problem started. I had the wallet they gave me, with the pass -- I clearly remember that it was a green plastic pass, about four inches long, with decorative cutouts along one short edge. I looked at it, and then, in the logic of dreams, put the decoratively cutout end in my mouth, where it promptly snapped in two, with some crumbly bits dissolving like spun sugar. I took the two pieces out of my mouth and put them back in the wallet, thinking that it could be replaced, but when I went to pull it out again at the cafeteria, the wallet now had about fifteen compartments, all bulging with things, from stray parking receipts to what looked like a mortgage for a home in Wisconsin to sets of keys, all falling out and jumbled together. But I finally found the two pieces, put them down, put everything else back into the wallet -- and the pieces were gone.

It was a very strange dream.

My daughters team did very well last night. I don't exactly know how well, because color guard seems to have multiple layers, iterations, and variations, not to mention that the competition was for the band, not them, and it was them against others 'in their group', whatever that means -- but I guess when you go to a competition, and they say you're best overall, and best in three of six categories, one of which is 'auxiliaries', ie, color guard -- thats pretty good.

I mentioned that I was taping The Bourne Identity. There's a scene where he goes to a bank, opens a safe deposit box, and finds tons of interesting things -- money, passports, documents -- and a gun. I found myself wondering how he got the gun into the bank. It wasn't a bank the way we think of one -- more like a building housing secure storage, no tellers at their little windows -- but when I realized I was fixating on that, I thought 'time to go to bed'. Though I didn't get to sleep of any kind for a few hours, and, in fact, didn't sleep soundly until my wife came to bed. There's a tendency, I think, to romanticize that - aw, you couldn't sleep well without me, kitchy-poo?- but I think its more than you're just used to sensing someone next to you, feeling their presence, not to mention, their body weight on the bed. Speaking of which, we probably ought to be thinking of a new mattress. I hate buying that. Trying one in the store is always so weird -- here I am, all dressed, and I'm going to lie down in the brightly lit store on a barren bed, oh yes, quite nice. I recall reading years ago about how mattress companies really couldn't distinguish their product -- except for the cheapest, they were all reasonably comfortable -- and so they resorted to phrases. Ah, the Posture-Pedic! Nay, the Tempur-pedic! This one has Slumber Coils! That one has Coated Springs! Look, all I want is some sleep.

Or at the moment, breakfast.

PJs

Last night, I put on my pajamas. Not just any pajamas. THE pajamas.

The ones that I was wearing about fifteen months ago, when I lurched up out of a doze, aware that the timer was chiming in the kitchen, and that I had to get those meatballs out of the oven right quick, so I walked quickly up the hall, and my foot caught in the baggy leg of the pajamas, and I went down, shattering the upper part of my left arm to the point where orthopedic surgery was needed to replace the top of the bone and the ball itself.

Free anatomy lesson: the top of the arm looks like a golf club. The 'ball' is irregularly shaped, which is why when you lift the arm all the way up, the shoulder moves, too, for that last bit of motion.

After we found out that this wasn't just a sprain, or just a break, but was, in fact, just about as bad as it could possibly get, I turned to my wife and asked her to get rid of those pajamas. To throw them away, or put them someplace where I'd never see them again. And indeed I didn't. About six months ago, I asked about them, and she didn't know where they were, or even if we still had them. Last night, poring through her box of 'do not wear' clothes, she found them. I tried them on.

They're a little baggy.

Home Alone

My wife and daughter are down in Delaware, where my daughter's color guard is performing as part of the nationals. I suppose its a good thing, but there are a couple of downsides, one being that they got there at 5:30 but don't perform (for all of about eight minutes) until 11:32, the last group to do so, oh joy. We're expecting that they'll get back home around 3:30 AM, which will of course do a number on Sunday. The other downside is that this is outdoor guard, so right now my wife is sitting on bleachers in mid-30 degree weather, with a 5-10 mile per hour wind blowing, and the chance of rain. She bundled way up, including taking a portable blanket along with her, and (I think) a stadium chair. We decided that my inability to chew would cut way the hell down on anything they might have that I could eat, and the prospect of going almost totally without food wasn't one I was willing to engage. I'm a little sorry not to be with her, but not at all sorry to miss that environment. Instead, I went to the store for some groceries, came home to watch a little TV -- The Train was on, and then The Bourne Identity, the latter in uncut but most certainly not commercial-free mode, so I'm taping it for later watching. Well, okay, I watched about half an hour.

And now, I'm thinking about getting some sleep, but first I need to give the guinea pig medicine. What fun, huh?

P&T PU

I have no use for Penn & Teller, mostly because I think that the big one is an oaf who's full of himself, among other things.

Just wanted to mention that.

The Hunt for Red ...China?

Whoops.

Writing

I'm not a writing style bigot, but I know what I don't like. One example: people who said 'this is that...or maybe it isn't.'

For example, from the current issue of Fine Homebuilding, in an editorial about difficulties in choosing a rating system for ecologically sound buildings. "To complicate the situation further, or perhaps to simplify it", (this organization's going to work with that one to do some stuff). Okay, whats your point of view, writer? Do you think its going to make the choosing more difficult, or do you think its going to make it easier? Or do you think they want to make it easier, but won't succeed? Or if making it easier isn't their goal, in your mind, then what is?

I'm not a great writer, but I value style. Words, and how they're used, matter to me. When I see that kind of thing, I cringe. Its sloppy. Its right up there with waiters coming to the table and saying "Hey, howya doin?" I know, don't read anything into it, its just a greeting, but still -- Have we been introduced?

Sorry for sounding like a crotchety guy... it just bugs me. Y'know, man?

The Pod

When we can routinely make devices like this for real, I'll know that the millenium has truly come.

Okay, not really, but its nice to dream.

Beijing Subway

I knew that Beijing was a major league city. But somehow, the idea of them having subway lines, bus lanes, clogged highways, and harried commuters -- that never occurred to me.

Eating

I had dreaded this period after the dental surgery, because the thought of having to eat only soft foods chilled me. What will I find myself eating, I thought: Pablum? (Which is, I think, actually called pabulum, but I could be wrong - who knows, I'm too lazy to look it up!)

But as it turns out, its not been much of a problem. I've eaten rice krispies (batting my daughter's hand from the box, as she likes them, too), and pasta with a very nice sauce we've found from the Milazzo company (sorry, Newman's, you were our favorite, outclassing Prego, until then, but this stuff is great!); also pudding and jello -- my wife made a chocolate pudding (the cooked kind), which tasted odd to me while I was drugged, and afterwards tasted kind-of okay, and then she made a vanilla, whose recipe allowed for being microwaved. That one was outstanding, so I have to guard it, as my daughter really likes that, too. No rest for the wicked. But what with all that, and one or two other things, including the occasional scoop or two of chocolate ice cream (she bought two gallons (!) of Dutch Chocolate, which is actually too rich for me; I eat about two spoonfuls, and thats all I can take), I've not had any problems. And I've lost about four pounds, too; .though I'm not counting on keeping it off, wouldn't it be nice?

But what I miss is baking. I wanted to make that no-knead bread that I referred to, the other day, and I just found a recipe for a sort of cheesecake brownie that sounded like it might be doable, plus a couple of other things that I'd like to do -- nothing slick, just some cookies or whatever -- and I can't do them! Well, okay, to be honest, I can do them; I just can't eat them! Now, when I make these things, I usually don't eat much of them -- I bake for the pleasure of it; if I make two dozen cookies, I might eat two. Three if you forced me. (In case you wonder: the baked goods I don't eat usually get split -- twenty percent to my home, which means my daughter and occasionally my wife, and eighty percent to my wife's office. Her office is great -- they'll take anything I bake.) But thats it. I'm not a big eater of cookies and brownies and whatnot-- I just like making them. The bread, sure, I'll eat that, and wolf it down. The cookies and such, not really. This, incidentally, is how I stay in shape. Round is a shape.

But not eat any? Thats a bit much. That's whats kept me away from the flour and chocolate, this last week. Not to mention, the baking-related blogs.

But next week -- assuming I get the okay to slip the fake uppers in, again -- watch out!

Mentor

The school called me today. They've found a kid to hook up with me for the mentoring program -- a sixth grade boy named Mick. I don't know anything else about him. I'll get to learn more, including meeting him, next Wednesday.

I'm excited -- and terrified.

Flags

Warning: This won't make sense to you unless you watch at least the beginning of this Eddie Izzard video.

I was at the breakfast table the other morning when, apropos of something my daughter'd said, I looked at her and asked "Do you have a flag?" She looked up from her book. Yes, she said carefully, I do. (Color guard uses flags.) Do you? I shook my head. Then you can't have a country, she said with satisfaction. But its okay, you can use ours. Of course, she said, after a moment, you'll have to pay taxes!

What a kid.

Not Stoned...Exactly

Four days after the surgery, and the side effects are beginning to recede. My face, which had puffed out like the Pillsbury Doughboy, is beginning to resume its normal shape; the bruise under one eye - no idea what its from, but we're thinking something to do with sinus surgery - is beginning to fade - still quite visible, though. The ache in my hip is fading -- for a while there, seeing me totter around, you've have thought I was ten, fifteen years older -- so that now I can usually move without thinking about it. And I'm no longer loggy in the morning -- I find that I am thinking again. Not that I have ever been a Great Thinker, but I have my moments. Usually, they're just moments. Remember 'blipverts' from Max Headroom? Thats my insight moments -- blipthoughts.

I wonder about that sometimes, actually. One thing that I find difficult to do is follow a thought to a lengthy conclusion. I don't seem able to think about something that has multiple factors -- once I get past thinking about one or two, I lose track. I forget what point I was trying to make, or what else there was that I thought was significant. I don't like that feeling. I tend to get the same feeling when I am reading something -- I have begun to notice that if an article is more than five or six paragraphs long, I start skipping around. Its worse if its an article on the web -- there, if an article is longer than two or three, I whip to the bottom and look to see what the conclusions are. I was reading something the other day that was making the point that a weaker dollar is a generally good thing -- better for our imports -- and I thought Wait, didn't I read something yesterday where the French president gave a speech saying it was a very bad thing, and it really was? Which is it? Why? And I couldn't remember. I couldn't even remember the points that you need to think about to decide which way it is, what to base that conclusion on.

I think that I'm losing the ability to summarize as I go - to remember the key points that have been made, upon which the remainder relies, or at least relates to. I tried a Firefox extension called Zotero once, which is a web-based cut and paste tool, to keep the gist of articles I read on the web. Its a nice tool, but it didn't summarize for you, think for you. You've got to do that yourself. I think that to summarize as you go, you need to have amalgamated the material (sorry, I can't think of a better word). You have to have mashed it into some kind of shape that makes it yours -- otherwise, you're just copying words. I find that I write best when I write, and then move it around, but even before that, I need to have thought about the material -- and no tool can do that for you.

I don't like it, but I don't know how to address it. Is this -- the inability to focus -- what being stoned is like? Okay, not really, but somewhat?

Why Bus Drivers Twitch

Even Titans Die

Today, I saw a bit of a reality show. Hulk Hogan was evaluating having hair transplanted from the back of his head.

Badfather Chronicles

Well, my daughter asked if I still have a copy of The Golden Compass, and I said sure, though we couldn't find it; we found the two sequel, and we're wondering if we lent TGC to someone. I asked why she wanted it, and she said that she was curious to see a book that people were saying was horrible, and anti-religion. I told her that there actually were such books, and that some of them were cleverly written to persuade you to their way of thought, but I didn't think this was one of them.

As we're looking, she pulls another book from the shelf and asked what it was. It's Lamb, I said. Its the story of Christ as a kid, told by his childhood friend Biff. It's pretty funny. Is it anti-religious? she asked. No, I said. Its got things in there that a seriously religious person wouldn't like, but I liked it a lot. In some ways, it made more sense to me than some of the things you hear in church every week. It's Christ was someone who cared - a lot - about people like me.

By the time she left for color guard, she'd read twenty pages, and was enthusiastically telling another girl about it.

Pricing Higher Education

We have, from time to time, given some passing thought to our daughter's post-high school education. We're hoping that she chooses to go to college for the practical reason that we believe her chances of being financially successful are greater if she does. We don't necessarily believe that she should go immediately after high school -- we've read enough to make us think that for some students, taking time off is a good idea. I didn't so much take time off as bolt entirely, going into the military for a stint. It was beneficial to me, because I needed to mature. Other students might have other reasons. Depending on what her reasons might be, we're prepared to fund a year or two off for her -- it's what we've referred to as the First Year Fund, intended to pay for her first year in any college (barring the absolutely most expensive), but more generally to let her feel that her options are open, based only on her skills and desires -- money shouldn't be one of them. So if what she really wants to do is to go to an expensive school, we'll help her pay for the first year, with the understanding that she'll need to pursue scholarships and loans afterward. And if she wants to take a year or so off and do something that we think is worthwhile, we'll fund it - though if her idea of worthwhile is watching reruns of Scooby-Doo, probably not.

I thought of these things while looking at this, in a general review of popular economics books in a column on the Chronicle of Higher Education's website, here. The article speaks of a book called The Economic Naturalist, by Robert Frank, an instructor at Cornell who has asked students to write short essays on some pattern or behavior that they've witnessed. The reviewer's favorite is this one:

Why don't top-ranked private universities charge higher tuitions than lower-ranked ones? Fox's answer is that capable students are both customers for and producers of college educations. A college with a higher-ranked student body will have more challenging classes attractive to high-ranked students. A college is selling not just the services of its faculty and library but the chance to interact with other smart, lively, and curious students. Were Yale to raise its tuition to a level at which it began losing significant numbers of students to cheaper Wesleyan, it would find that some of its appeal to top-ranked students had vanished. "The top-ranked school," Frank argues, "needs its most accomplished students every bit as much as they need it."

I've heard it said, and I believe, that the first year of college is pretty standard across all campuses, establishing a baseline of understanding for later paths. I've also heard it said, and I believe, that while the opportunity to meet and learn from reknowned instructors is much greater at Harvard, Stanford, and the like than from second-ranked schools, the benefits are only found if you actually do that -- ie, if you're in the classes that the Nobel winner teachers, in the symposia that the former Secretary of State teaches. Otherwise, no benefit. As to the idea that you might want to go to a school because the other students are more likely to be smart and lively -- I can see that as a tertiary, distinguishing characteristic -- but not as a reason to make the first or second cut. You're pacing yourself against them, true -- but not learning from them. I think that you first choose who's good, better, best in your fields of interest; then you look at which are practical for you to attend (I think you should reach, but not to extremes), and only then look for the other reasons to go or not to go.

Of course, I went to a commuter college five miles from my home, doing the program in two years so that I could get it done .... so I could be a little biased.

Scaled

My wife teases me that if I were looking for a weight-loss program, she could have recommended a better one than this. Still, I've been eating only soft foods, the last three days, and not much of that, so I wondered. Apparently, this is, in fact, a method of doing so -- I've lost three pounds. But not to worry, I'm sure that once I have biting capability back, I'll find them. Why, just last night, my daughter brought home a school fund raiser booklet just filled with eating opportunities!

Making Bread

I've seen a number of articles about making bread using a no-knead technique developed by a New York City baking operation. This is the first I've seen, though, with decent pictures of the process.

AM

This may be the first morning that I'm actually awake in the last two days. Not to say that I haven't gotten out of bed since the day of the oral surgery, but I was moving slowly, and now, in retrospect, thinking slowly. I'm guessing that it was a side effect of one of the drugs I was taking, a pain med called Hydrocodone -- one of the noted side effects is sleepiness, another is lethargy. I definitely have felt that. But this morning, I was actually up before my wife or daughter, and we had breakfast together -- even me, though mine was limited to Rice Krispies. I've seen ads for a cereal bowl being sold in the UK called Eat Me Crunchy, which strikes me as an unusual name, but the bowl's a novel gimmick; it elevates the cereal on a platform, so that any milk added on wets the cereal, then pools at the bottom where it can't make the cereal soggy. I've always thought that if the cereal gets soggy, you're taking too long to eat it, but its an interesting design. Pity that it reminds me of the design for toilets in Germany. I've never seen them, but I've heard of them in grotty detail. Also heard very nice things about the Toto brand of toilets, from Japan - and just today, about this, which looks intruiging.

I read a New York Times article this morning about Gen Y leaders, the point of which seemed to be that Gen Y's, who are in their 20s, are energetic and enthusiastic. It wasn't a bad article, but I think that perhaps it missed the point, on two fronts. First, people in their twenties tend to be energetic and enthusiastic. They haven't been beaten up a lot, haven't had a series of bad events or worked at a mundane job or been married a long time. Those things tend to slow you down a bit. They don't deaden you to the world, but they introduce you to the fact that life's going to be uneven and unfair. If you're fortunate, you learn from the experience and build some reflex and redundancy into your style. If you're not, you become a whinger. (I love that word. I don't use it a lot, because if you're not from the UK and its orbit, you don't know it, but I love it.)

The other direction they missed, I believe was in thinking that being a leader is the bestest thing in the world. When the word leader is used, I think people tend to think of capital-L Leaders; the ones with the titles. There aren't that many formal positions of leadership in the world, and if your definition of success is becoming one of them, you'd be well advised to think about how you'll handle the mass of people -- the followers. You have to understand how to motivate and move them, and do it in a way that speaks to their values, which may not be the same as yours. If your goal is to orchestrate how the organization performs, you have to understand it -- and that means understanding the people there, how they operate and interact. When most of them are non-leaders, it takes the ability to be flexible in your thought process -- and thats difficult. Not impossible, though.

Startling Realization

I just realized that I have not heard anything of She Who Must Not Be Named, But Rhymes With Farris Bylton, in quite some time.

Yippie!

He's Up! No, Wait A Minute...

I had a brief burst of being up and moving about this morning. Actually sat at the dining table while my wife and daughter had breakfast, and even ate something semi-solid == mashed banana and orange juice. Why is it that when I want to write orange, it comes out as organge ororgaic or organic? Are there so few words that start with OR that I just assume O R ....yadda yadda yadda.

But then I went back to sleep for an hour. I haven't been keeping track, but I think I've been sleeping about twelve hours a day, last two days. I have never been this sleepy before!

But with all of that -- I voted yesterday!

2L

If you see a familiar name on Second Life, looking like the rawest of newbies....that might well be me.

Caring

I've been in bed about half the day, and I've had some weird dreams. Not weird in the sense of Hallowe'en, just - weird. Like, I was trying to park a large truck. I was doing something with a small boat. And little jokes would occur to me (don't worry, they left quickly). Right now, I have a headache, which I would bet is because in the last 24 hours I've eaten - one spoon of pudding, which tasted horrible to me, and tasted fine to my wife. So, I am eating some applesauce, and drinking a tiny amount of apple cider. And, I took some drugs. It seems as theday goes on, I get stiffer and more headachy. Weird.

Back, Kinda

I'm back. At least, I think I am.

Last night, I was so spaced that I never got to the second floor of the house. You know, where the trivial things like the bedroom and kitchen are. Ditto the dining room and books and this laptop. I staggered in from the garage and cratered on the downstairs couch. And I watched a little tv. You know how they say never go to disneyland while you're doing drugs? Don't watch tv while you're spaced from anesthesia. All those intense, hip, snappy pipple felt like they were lunging out of the tube at me.

I don't have a limp. They said I would, but I don't. As for the soft foods, at least a week. Which is fine with me. My lip is way swollen, and for some obscure reason I have a black and blue mark under one eye. I think he had problems with the sinus, but didn't want to tell me. Made a coy remark about 'occasional nosebleeds' -- which has, in fact, occurred. But other than that, not bad.

Still a little spaced, though.

Softie

I realized that I'm more concerned about what I eat after this surgery than the surgery itself. I don't want to find that the damn graft has shifted because I bit into something that I thought was safe to eat. I've been looking around for what are considered acceptable foods, and this is what I've found:

Yoghurt
Pudding
Custard
Soft bread, without crust
Pancake
Pasta
Noodles
Meatloaf
Tuna salad
Soup
Applesauce
Fruit juices
Ice cream without nuts
Jello
Cold cereal
Mac and Cheese
Broth
oatmeal
baby food desserts
rice pudding

I pared away the things that I really don't like!

This is Scary.

From the New York Times --

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 5 — Police armed with tear gas and clubs attacked thousands of protesting lawyers in the city of Lahore today, and rounded up lawyers in other cities as the government of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, faced the first signs of concerted resistance to the imposition of emergency rule. An estimated 150 lawyers were arrested in Lahore after a pitched battle between police and lawyers who stood on the roof of the High Court throwing stones at the police below.

Its funny, in a way, but its also scary.

Watch The Light

Cleverly lifted from the Anywhere But Here blog --

Heads Up

I'm going to be in a bit of a wimpy mood tomorrow, and for the next couple of days. Probably more.

Reason: we're going to try to get the bone graft done. First time was cancelled because I was taking aspirin routinely, which is apparently not a good thing if you're expecting to bleed. Did I know? Well...yeah. I forgot, and they didn't ask. So, tomorrow's the day. No eating after midnight.

So -- I can expect at least two days, and probably more -- maybe a lot more -- of eating just soft foods. We've stocked up on Jello and pudding, yoghurt and meat loaf. Some liquid nutrition stuff, too. Its not going to be terrible. My daughter says she won't gleefully chew on things in my presence.

Now, the pain part, I'm not sure about. That there will be some, I don't doubt. I usually don't have a problem with pain, but this is the first time I've had this done. When presented with things like this, I tend to wimp. You know --why me, dammit, why me. Then I read things like the Haiku of the Id blog, and I see what she goes through, and then I feel sheepish... for a while. But it comes back. I'm good at self-pity, doncha know.

Just thought I'd warn you.

Non-Implemented Beliefs

I happen to think that it's quite important for a kid to grow up with a strong feeling of self-reliance. I am sure that my actions, when I do things for my daughter, might make one wonder how much I believe in that, but I really do. I also think that it's important for a kid to acquire some degree of ability in salesmanship -- being able to persuade others to see things their way, to do things for them. Puppy dog eyes only go so far.

My problem is that I, personally, am not particularly good in selling other people on what I think. I'm not equipped with enough self-confidence to push ahead in the face of a less-than-delighted audience to get them to do what I want them to do. Everyone knows someone who's the exact opposite. A sort-of friend of ours is a mid-level exec for a local company. How persuasive is she? Well, she got her company to lend her the corporate jet so that she could fly her girl scout troop down south somewhere. I am in awe of people like that, just as I'm sure that to them, it's no big deal. I know that its possible for normal people. I even know that it might be possible for me. I just don't know how to do it. And I really don't know how to show my daughter how to do it.

This afternoon, we were visited by a friend who's daughter is selling stuff for a trip to Australia with a youth group. The trip's going to cost several thousand dollars. Her parents told her that if she drums up sales for half the amount, they'll fund the other half. Apparently, the kid's already sold six hundred dollars of one fund-raiser, and is on track for a couple of thousand dollars for another. And this is not some super-kid. She's actually on the quiet side-- but she's committed. She wants this trip -- and she's willing to get out and sell, sell, sell to make it happen. I remember selling things when I was a kid -- I was the usual 'sold twenty dollars, of which ten was my family and relatives'. Other kids, naturally, did about the same. A couple did phenomenally well. At the time, I thought 'well, some people are just better', but now I think ' why can't my child have this ability?'

And, where can she get it?

Outsight

...or whatever it is that you could call an observation that is startling to you when it occurs...and then you think 'well, sure, everyone knows that.' In this case, my daughter asked, and I quote, 'if I could find that book that I lent her, but she didn't want it, about the boy who had a chip in his brain. I think there was a Pegasus on the cover. And it was blue.'

Uh-huh. So I did what anyone else might do.

"Science Fiction" "Chip in Brain"

Oh, this one?





Hence the outsight: "Man, Google can find anything!"

Insight

By which I do not mean 'ways to spice up that book you've been writing for the last ten years.'

I'm always taken by people who find ways to apply methods from one industry to a completely different one, so its probably not too surprising that I was intrigued by an article in the November issue of CIO Magazine about an unlikely alliance between a hospital and a racing team. The hospital is Great Ormond Street hospital in London; the racing team is Ferrari. The link? The hospital was seeing a surprising number of deaths in their neonatal cardiovascular surgery division. Perplexed and stunned, the surgeon who was encountering this string investigated the possible causes, and - the good news - he was able to account for about half of them, frequently due to specific medical conditions that made the child a high-risk candidate for the surgery. But the bad news was, there was no apparent reason for the others - they just failed; no one knew why.

This is where the Ferrari link came in. The surgeon was a fan of racing, and, noting that the Ferrari racing team was able to execute a number of quick changes in a startlingly brief period, wondered why they were able to get it right every time, but the hospital, with much higher stakes, could not. The hospital contacted the racing team, and came to find that the key was that on the racing team, everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to do, and who was in charge. Every likely and not-so-likely occurence was thought out in advance. As one of the Ferrari people said, if it was raining, they'd plan to have the wet-weather tires on hand, just in case the driver decided to switch without warning. It's tougher, of course, in the hospital, but even there, it became obvious that failures occurred because they didn't track what did fail, and make plans to handle it, if and when it happened again. They instituted processes to handle the failures -- what you might call the 'routine' reasons for failure -- and their failure rate went down. And it all started because the surgeon liked racing. Here's one of the articles that talks about the background of this series of events.

Of course, it wouldn't have been quite as sexy if they said that failures went down when they consulted with a human factors organization -- which is where Ferrari pointed them -- would it? And Process Improvement is such a grindingly dull phrase. But its how Toyota made its cars better.... how Ferrari made its racing team flawless... and how this hospital found out why patients were dying, and what could be done to limit that most catastrophic failure.

I suppose it's a little banal -- wow, problems have causes, and if you look hard enough, you'll find them -- but I think its significant. Whether its cars, racing, surgery, or getting the damn checkbook to balance -- problem have causes.

Okay, thats my insight for today.

Saturday Notes

My mother's in the rehab hospital. She's reasonably content, and even speaking a hair better. We're guessing about a three week stay. Let's hope!

I understand that the new Apple Leopard operating system includes, as its icon for Windows systems, a screen showing the Windows Blue Screen of Death. Crude. So -- what should a Windows system show for any Macs it happens to find?

Kettle brand Honey Dijon potato chips. Delightful.

Was the Lone Ranger the first person/show to use the concept of 'the silver bullet' ?

Relative to a school project, my daughter said that she believes in a modified application of the death penalty. If you kill once, long jail term. If you kill twice, life. If you kill a third time, death. I was impressed by that.

I don't like that the proposed Attorney General won't come out against waterboarding, but I don't think that any AG who would be proposed by Bush would. As someone said, he's better than Gonzales. Then again, so's my grocer.

Politics

I need to remember to apply the same standards to Clinton, whom I like, that I do to Bush, whom I do not like.

When Bush refuses to commit to a plan, I think he's being evasive instead of honest. When Clinton refuses to commit to a plan, I think that it makes sense, because plans change, and besides, all that your opponents want is something to attack -- so don't give it to them.

I don't want to be fair!

Not Supporting The Team

I must be a terrible person.

My daughter is in color guard, which performs at high school foodball games, and also on its own.

The booster club -- the band booster club -- is telling everyone that tonights game will include recognition of graduating high school seniors, and that to enhance this, you can donate a flower -- handmade, real, or artificial -- to a group that will be put on sashes for the seniors to wear.

I don't support the band boosters. I think that the band thing is wildly overdone. I think it ought to be scaled back, not enhanced. I am in the minority on this.

As for the seniors themselves, frankly, I think that if anyone wants to recognize them, fine, but don't push the idea. Let their peers do it, if they want. When my daughter gets there, I won't expect other parents to fund my daughter's recognition. I was willing to be guilted into doing it anyway -- my daughter wanted to -- but I forgot to buy her a flower, and, of course, there are none in bloom -- so, we didn't. The heck with it.

I must be a terrible person.

Charmed, I'm Sure

Every so often, I come across a blog that charms me.

Neuroti.Ca, for example.

I recommend it.

Movin' Day

We talked with my mother's caseworker, who seemed to be looking to us to set direction. So, we did. We told her 'whatever gets her better, fastest, so that she is as close to where she was as she can be'. She said she'd get started on getting transfer authorization, for whenever the medical evaluation said she was ready to go. An hour later, we talked with the doc currently in charge of her case, who told us that the MRI showed some damage to the left temporal lobe, which is consistent with the problems my mother's having. I guess that's a 'so?' deal, but he seemed to think it significant. He said he thought she was ready to be transferred. So, they're going to set that up. Apparently, hospitals are for fixing; rehab, for therapy. Okay, cool.

The facility that she'll most likely move to is one where she's been before, so that's a good thing. She will receive the same kind of therapy there that she just started to get at the hospital, which is, of course, the goal. We're generally pleased, for an odd reason: the hospital is on the noisy side, and she's having a lot of trouble getting any sleep.

The only things we'll have to watch out for, we know from past experience, is that they're understaffed, so we need to be sure my mother's continuing to get attention as needed. And, they have a tendency to hang on to patients (nobody seemed able to say 'Ok to go' last time, until we pushed). They also have the occasional tendency to want to have patients continue outpatient care in facilities that, curiously enough, are owned by doctors on staff. That happened to her once before, when, while she was going to one outpatient facility, a doctor on staff arranged for her to attend his facility, too. Same kind of treatment -- but he profited from it. I put a stop to that.

So, some progress.

Hearing Aid

I don't wear a hearing aid, but there are times that I wish I did. So that I could turn it off.

The other night, I was driving my daughter and two other girls to a color guard event. One of the other girls said that my daughter was unusually antic, and it 'must be that time of the month for you'. (I cringed.) My daughter replied 'No, for you!', and the first girl said 'Well, two days ago, yeah...remember? I said I couldn't decide if I should wear my RED pants? That was why!'

CLICK!

Comparisons

I don't automatically assume that Democrats are better than Republicans. Sometimes they're equally bad; occasionally, even worse.

And then I see things like this, and I remember which party took steps to correct it.

What have the Republicans done to improve the common life, lately?

Status

My wife and I went to see my mother today -- me in the early afternoon, and my wife in the early evening.

The good news is that she's improving, slowly. My wife's guess was that she could understand about three fourths of the things my mother said, so long as she spoke slowly. Still very fuzzy, of course, but decipherable. And she had her menu upgraded just a hair, so that she can eat things that are pureed. Surprisingly (to me), she can't eat things that are pure liquid -- ie, no water, no juice. It's all got to be something thats either naturally thick or thickened. But still, its a little better than last night.

The bad news is that she's pretty frail. She wasn't all that strong to begin with; now, apparently, the stroke has somewhat weakened her right arm and leg, so the hospital's concerned that she could easily fall. She's not supposed to get out of bed without assistance. That's a clear indication to us that she'll be going to a rehab hospital for speech and physical therapy, rather than having it at home. I'm sorry about that. I'd be sorrier if she came home and fell.

Tomorrow, we're going to talk to whatever doctor is on her case, so we can firm these things up. She had an MRI today, and all we know of the results is that they found something, but that it's consistent with what we already know. That sounds scary, but I imagine that its something that therapy will address. At least, I hope so.

My wife observed that it isn't fair, in a way -- these events occur, and you have to deal with them, but in the meantime, you still have to pay bills, go to the dentist, and get calls from telemarketers. You don't get a free pass to just deal with events. Ir'a also not fair to get toward the end of your life and have this kind of thing happen to you. No free pass there, either.

5:08

It's 5:08.

At 5:00, my daughter starting dashing around. When asked why, she said that she had to leave at 5:15, and it took her fifteen minutes to get ready, so she had to hurry. Okay.

At 5:07, I looked up to see her reading a magazine. Done already? I asked. She looked up from the magazine. Hmmm?

Word of the Day

The Word of the Day is Dysphagia, which means 'difficulty in swallowing'. My mother's got it, and according to what I read, its pretty common for stroke victims. The fix is physical therapy to get the mouth and throat muscles back in shape to be able to handle holding and transferring food. Apparently, some stroke victims have it, don't get the knack of eating -- and die.

Let's hope this is temporary.

This, That, And So Forth

As to the topic d'jour -- it now appears (to me, anyway), that what my mother had was an actual stroke, not a TIA. This is based on something I read to the effect that a TIA's effects usually go away quickly, within a day. My mother's not seeing that. She's improving, but she's still having garbled speech about half the time. I found this page to be particularly helpful, in regards to TIAs, and this one, in regards to strokes, equally so.

I had a small flurry of baking in the last two days -- the Mocha Chunk cookies, which went over quite well at my wife's office, and then yesterday I made some chocolate ones for my daughter's French club. They were intended to be delicate cut-out cookies, but that didn't quite happen, so I said the heck with it, made chocolate cookies, and covered them with powdered sugar. My daughter said the club would be lucky to get them.

I'll be doing some cleaning today, and making a run to the library, but mostly I'll be thinking about strokes. What a fun topic, huh?