Gifting

Chrismas has happened at our home. It was relatively painless.

My mother, of course, freaked out at everything---Oh, my, how wonderful, a new box of Depends!!!-- while my mother in law made helpful observations -- Oh, yes, that reminds me of a gift I received in 1942...I never liked it. I've learned to block out such things. And the things they picked for me were pretty neat, actually. A long-sleeve pullover from Nike (apparently, the alternative was an argyle vest --its the thought that counts!). A pretty nice T shirt. A CD that includes That Old Time Rock n' Roll, one of my favorite tunes ever. And a microsized Sansa MP3 player, with built-in FM player and voice recorder, which fell neatly into the category of things I wanted and would never have gotten for myself.

Now this afternoon, my sister in law is coming, and my wife will go into freakout mode alpha. But thats not till later. Right now, I need to play Rock n' Roll again.

Truck Trick

Explanation

In case you were wondering why that pony never arrived under the tree --

Trips

My daughter's been offered the opportunity to go with a group to China (not sure we will; its expensive), but that aside, I like the idea.

I think that it would be useful for her to take a year or two off after high school and before college, and do a little traveling, here, and across the ocean.

In three days, she's going with a group to New York City, where they will break periodically into subgroups and wander around some areas more or less unescorted.

I'm terrified.

Eve

It's Christmas Eve. The Night Before Christmas. I've always liked the sound of that. It brings to mind cold nights with mountains of snow, a huge tree, and Christmas music playing; roaring fireplaces, the murmur of good conversation, mulled cider, egg nog in silver cups. Most of that's not true here -- but it still feels that way. It feels good. It feels right. If not in reality, then in my heart.

To whomever's out there -- Merry Christmas, y'all.

Slick

It's raining. Sleeting, in fact. I just drove down to the mailbox, because I wasn't sure I could remain upright walking the hundred feet across the grass and back. I absolutely wasn't going to try walking on the driveway, which would have been a quick trip down -- in more ways than one. I told my wife that in two days it'll be a year since I broke any major portion of my body, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Fairness

I was reading an article this morning about the possibility that the Senate could reject either/both of the victors in the Minnesota and Illinois Senate openings. The article mentioned some history, including one person who challenged an election, resulting in an 'investigation' that ran for a year with no result, eventually petering out. My wife said she's rarely sure exactly why one action by a politician is legal and fair, and another is not. For example, if I give a politician a donation of $25, and later get a job from him, that's likely fair -- but if I gave $25,000 and got the job, it's not. I said I didn't have a black and white view, either, but I thought that part of it was if I was getting something that others could not have gotten, or using a resource that others could not have had access to, or getting something simply because of who I was or who I knew.

Caroline?

Evaluations

I don't plan on asking people what they think of this site -- I really believe you need more than three evaluations for a reasonable sample -- but if I ever do, I hope I get some that are as creative as these, from the Funtasticus site.

1. “This class was a religious experience for me…I had to take it all on faith.”

2. “Text makes a satisfying ‘thud’ when dropped on the floor.”

3. “The class is worthwhile because I need it for the degree.”

4. “His blackboard technique puts Rembrandt to shame.”

5. “Textbook is confusing…Someone with a knowledge of English should proofread it.”

6. “Have you ever fell asleep in class and awoke in another? That’s the way I felt all term.”

7. “In class I learn that I can fudge answers and get away with it.”

8. “Keep lecturer or tenure board will be shot.”

9. “The recitation instructor would make a good parking lot attendant. Tries to tell you where to go, but you can never understand him.”

10. “Text is useless. I use it to kill roaches in my room.”

11. “In class the syllabus is more important than you are.”

12. “I am convinced that you can learn by osmosis by just sitting in his class.”

13. “Help! I’ve fallen asleep and I can’t wake up!”

14. “Problem sets are a decoy to lure you away from potential exam material.”

15. “Recitation was great. It was so confusing that I forgot who I was, where I was, and what I was doing it’s a great stress reliever.”

16. “He is one of the best teachers I have had…He is well-organized, presents good lectures, and creates interest in the subject. I hope my comments don’t hurt his chances of getting tenure.”

17. “I would sit in class and stare out the window at the squirrels. They’ve got a cool nest in the tree.”

18. “He teaches like Speedy Gonzalez on a caffeine high.”

19. “This course kept me out of trouble from 2-4:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

20. “Most of us spent the 1st 3 weeks terrified of the class. Then solidarity kicked in.”

21. “Bogus number crunching. My HP is exhausted.”

22. “The absolute value of the TA was less than epsilon.”

23. “TA steadily improved throughout the course…I think he started drinking and it really loosened him up.”

24. “Information was presented like a ruptured fire hose–spraying in all directions–no way to stop it.”

25. “I never bought the text. My $60 was better spent on the Led Zeppelin tapes that I used more while doing the problem sets than I would have used the text.”

26. “What’s the quality of the text? ‘Text is printed on high quality papr.’”

OMDB

One More Day, Baby!

Scaled by Population

Found here. I'm not thrilled by the sentiment that goes with it, though.

Observation

Sometimes I wonder if I routinely sell myself short. And sometimes I wonder if I routinely expect too much of myself.

I think sometimes that I ought to be able to come up with really great ideas, really top notch stuff -- and then I find myself having difficulty sustaining enthusiasm for anything more than a short while. I want to be able to cook and bake very well (limited repertoire, but within it, very well), and then I bake something and its okay, nothing great, but I have no idea how to make it better, and little enthusiasm about finding out. I like knowing difficult concepts but I don't like banging my head against a wall to understand them. I am delighted by maglevs and intrigued by transportation plans but have no idea how they get put in use or organized; I think I should, somehow. History fascinates me, but it can also bore my socks off. When I reread The Guns of August I couldn't believe how bored I was -- yet its a classic, and when I read it in high school I was captivated. (Bismarck? An absolute genius. ) I like knowing about neural nets and how they work, and I think I ought to be able to see applications for them wherever I look. Ditto projects and groups like Haystack -- I think why can't I do that? Why have I never been that smart? I want to read more, fiction and serious, hard and easy, but I also want to take a nap, and I tend to pick up the easy books first. I think I want to be entertained more than anything - except even The Sims is too much work for me.

Not sure why I felt like dumping all that out. Weird.

Handouts

Okay, the cookies et al are distributed -- six large oatmeal ones to one neighbor, three of them, three chocolate chip, and some truffles to another, and three of them, three chippers, and some hard candies to a third. I don't think this will become a tradition...but I'm glad we did it.

Chipper

Made chocolate chip cookies tonight, using the recipe from the Dessert University cookbook. Essentially the classic recipe, though it has a quarter-cup of molasses to keep the interior moist, and cooks in 10 minutes at 400 degrees, resulting in a crisp exterior to go with the semi-gooey interior. Not bad. I can't quite categorize the taste --my daughter says it's sweet, but I couldn't really taste that. More of a brown-sugarish taste, I think. I don't think I'll make it again, but I'm glad I gave it a try.

Java vs C#

I am not competent in either of these languages, but I thought this comparison page was kind of neat anyway.

Sweet Caroline

I find it hard to believe that people are seriously contemplating Caroline Kennedy for interim senator from New York. Have they learned nothing about the idea of competence, insight, vision, performance? A little bit of a track record in elected office, perhaps?

Or are they stuck on But she's a KENNEDY!!!!!

Drippy

I like our new -- well, fairly new -- coffee maker. I think that thermal carafe keeps the coffee warm longer with none of the bitter taste that the glass carafe/heating plate had. I like the timer, which gives the ability to set it up at night and have it perking (if you can use that phrase) in the morning. I imagine the clock won't thrill me when time change comes around again, but what the heck. It's a good deal, and I like it. Price was right, too.

But what I don't like is the carafe lid. It screws into the pot, and tightly, too; this is goodness for keeping the coffee warm, but not so good when you want to pour -- because you have to unscrew the lid to do it. Argh. Is this the time I accidentally dump the damn carafe on the floor while I try to undo this damn lid? But what kills me -- as it just did, again, for about the fifth time since we bought the device -- is that if you don't have the lid in place, and you start the cycle, the water will not drain -- it'll stay trapped in the grounds. If you swear, grab the carafe, put the lid on, and slam it back into place, it will begin to drain -- sloppily, and slowly. With little drips, everywhere.

A better design, I think, would have been to make the screw-in much easier to use -- gripping ridges on the outside rather than flanges on the middle. Painted white, or something that would clearly show when it wasn't in place. (Hard to see a black cap in the dark shadow of the grounds-holder.)

I know, I know. Problems of the Idle Rich. But isn't thinking about industrial design fun?

Yup. Yup. Yup.

A CNN poll shows that many people think fraud occurs often in financial institutions, and that more government oversight is needed to stop it.

Except that more oversight will make it less likely. It won't stop it.

Peekabo

Maybe I'm a little strange, but I think pictures like this one are silly.

It's a classic pose; topless woman, photographed from the side, with one hand across her chest and wrapped around so that you can't see her breast. I'm not talking about the whole breast fetish thing (hey, I enjoy seeing them, too, but I do think we'd be better off shaking that), but just the I'm not going to wear a shirt but I'm not going to show you anything, either motif. What's the point? Am I supposed to hope that at the moment of exposure, pun intended, she'll suddenly sneeze, move that hand, and hey, a nipple! Or a mole, but definitely something! Show or don't, but don't be silly about it. Don't play the game of how much can I show before I cross the line? Its an old game, and it's time for a change. There's thousands, hundreds of thousands of shapely young women (living eternally, digitally, too); do we really need two thousand more every year? One perfect bod after another, all ramping up the standards, all air brushed and Photoshopped to a fare-thee-well? Geez. I think it's time, and past time, to rediscover the delights of the well-draped form, the elegance that clothing can provide even to those of us who aren't perfect in line and visage. To experience the pleasures of linen, of fabric, of gauze -- style, suggestion, sophistication.

At least give it a shot. And in the meantime -- get that woman a shirt, okay?

Yeah, That's Me

Bussed

Last evening, I was lying in bed, reading, when my wife came in the room and started to talk about something. After a moment, our daughter came in, too, and joined the conversation -- and when she left, she bent over and gave me her first unsolicited kiss in about three years.

Quite nice.

PS 87

Apparently, there are some very bright kids at PS 87.



From the Liveable Streets web site, which I heartily recommmend.

Mealy

I mentioned that I'd like to be able to bake one or two things as well as the fellow who wrote the Dessert University book.

I just used his recipe for oatmeal cookies. They came out okay - flat, about three inches across, and on the crunchy side. Me, I prefer chewy, but.... anyway. I got about twenty-eight of them out of the recipe.

His notes say that the recipe makes: 65.

W, as they say, TF?

Light? Bright!

Metacafe

Greenery

Cheney

From the Washington Post:

Vice President Cheney offered an unabashed defense of the Bush administration's claims of broad executive powers today, mocking criticism from Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. ... "If he wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that's obviously his call," Cheney said of Biden. "President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president and apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time."

Comes from having a President who can think clearly for himself, I suspect. That'd be a novel experience, for Dick.

ION

In Other News--

The chocolate chip muffins are baking now. I'm making 18 (theres enough batter left for one, possibly two more). I hope that we're giving six each to three neighbors, but I'm leaving that up to my wife. She can do whatever she likes with them (memories of the motorcycle joke come to mind). I also mixed up the dough for some bread, though this is not destined to become bread, per se -- it will become frozen chunks to be used in the future for fried dough -- which is actually not bad stuff.

Finally got through the New York Times Magazine of last week and their annual summary of Great Ideas. As usual, about a third were Hmm, thats nice, a third were What, Are You Kidding Me, and a third were actually quite interesting.

My wife informs me that she's likely to have a meltdown this week - a combination of the ongoing stress of work (when will I get fired), the death of my cousin (still a little hard to accept), the general economic malaise, and, perhaps most significantly, her family (or part of it) is coming here for Christmas. We're having turkey. We never have turkey -- but her family does, so we are. I keep singing We're having..pizza..for Christmas!, but it doesn't seem to be doing much good. At the end of the week, the daughteroid is going on a class trip up to New York City (am I paranoid? Does the Pope have a serious wardrobe issue?), and we're going down to Georgetown for an overnight trip, weather permitting. If I were a good doobie, I'd go up to New York for my cousin's funeral, but four hours plus up, four hours plus back, for a funeral seems a bit much. I suppose that makes me a bit of a creep?

I see where Barack's gone to Hawaii for a vacation. Good idea. He's already done more than the currently resident President has done, lately. I used to get irritated when Bush would take yet another vacation, and perhaps I'll grow to feel that way about Obama, but right now: Charge Up, Man -- as much as you possibly can.

I keep leafing through the book by the White House chef. I can bake a number of things, and he's a pretty easy going writer (none of this The butter, which has been chilled for 18 hours at twenty-six point two degrees Fahrenheit, must be warmed on a metal bowl over a bowl of gently simmering water and stirred with the horn of a unicorn...), but still: I'm envious. I'd like to be able to bake one or two things to his standard. Not the Oh, My God ones, just the ordinary ones, like the cookies and pies. It'd be fun, I think.

And thats it for the mo. Oh, and here's the muffin recipe.

Chocolate Chip Muffins
40 minute prep time Makes 18 - 20

2 1/2 CUPS FLOUR
2 1/4 TSP BAKING POWDER
1/2 TSP SALT
2/3 CUP BUTTER
2/3 CUP SUGAR
3 EGGS
2/3 CUP BUTTERMILK (OR, 3TBLSPOONS DRY BUTTERMILK AND 3/4CUP WATER)
2/3 CUP CHOCOLATE CHIPS
2/3 CUP GOLDEN RAISINS


PREHEAT OVEN TO 375.
GREASE MUFFIN PANS.
IN MEDIUM BOWL, COMBINE FLOUR, BAKING POWDER, AND SALT.
IN ELECTIC MIXER BOWL, CREAM BUTTER AND SUGAR.
ADD EGGS TO MIXER AND BEAT UNTIL SMOOTH
GRADUALLY ADD DRY INGREDIENTS AND BUTTERMILK.
BLEND WELL.
ADD CHIPS AND RAISINS.
DIVIDE BATTER EVENTLY INTO MUFFIN CUPS. FILL EACH CUP HALFWAY OR LESS. (An ice cream scoop works quite well for this)
BAKE 30 MINUTES.
COOL IN PAN 5 MINUTES BEFORE REMOVING.

Floor Map

I found this while cruising past the TwitPic site. It makes sense to me. Reminds me of the old comment: "In public restrooms, as in life, incoming traffic has the right of way".

Apologies

This is one of those sites with people saying they were sorry that Bush was reelected. I particularly like the Canadian's response.

Madoff

From an article:

"We had very little money with the fund — just under a million dollars — so I am not that upset personally,” said Alberto Mugrabi, a son of the family patriarch.

Well, as long as its that kind of people getting fleeced, I don't care nearly as much.

Saturday Plans

The plan was, I was going to bake bread yesterday. But in the flurry of activity last night, the dough never got used. So, the new plan is, my wife would take some of the dough, make fried bread for breakfast, and I would take the rest and bake it. The oven is heating now.

The plan was, I was going to take the metal tray, put some truffles and some brownies on it, and give it to a neighbor. But there was a bit of disagreement about which family would get it (What about the people in the middle of the block? Well, we don't really know them. Yeah, but this would give us a chance to meet them!), and the tray sat in the refrigerator for two days, while the brownies got slowly stale (Hi, people we don't know, have some stale brownies!). So, the new plan is, I put the brownies in the refrigerator by themselves (my daughter will glom onto them), I'll bake something else (I found a recipe I'd saved for Chocolate Chip Muffins), we'll put that on the traywith the truffles.... and then figure out who gets it.

The plan was, I would take my daughter to color guard this morning, getting there by 8:30. But she and the other girl wanted to delay so that they would not have to help unload the materials, plus, when we got there, the school was locked, and no one there had a key. So the new plan turned out to be, I'd sit there while we waited for someone with a key to show up, pretending to be deaf while they discussed the vagaries of bra selection and other things (I think the size is around your chest right under your boob...Oh, yeah, I hope she wears that outfit, she looks really stupid in it ....Oh, she's dumb, I don't think she even knows what a vagina is!) La la la, I don't hear you.

So that's the plan.

Changes

This afternoon, I got a call which told me me two things.

First, my cousin's daughter had successfully delivered a child after a difficult pregnancy and an induced delivery. Her mother, my cousin, had come up to their home to be with her during the pregnancy.

Second, my cousin didn't make it to the hospital with her daughter. The morning that they were supposed to have the induced delivery, she didn't come down when it was time to leave. She had died in her sleep.


She was one year older than me. We were pretty close as kids, though considerably less as we got older. She had a much rougher life than me, married a fellow who took ill for a year, and who had an online affair with a younger woman while he was home recuperating; had two daughters and one son, one who got married and divorced, one who got pregnant and then married. She never graduated from high school, worked a series of clerical and menial jobs, and ended up virtually penniless.

Makes you think.

Truffling

BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES
MAKES ABOUT 30

TRUFFLE BASE
1 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
9 ounces high-quality bittersweet chocolate (70% cocoa), chopped, divided

CHOCOLATE COATING
8 ounces high-quality bittersweet chocolate (70% cocoa), chopped
Unsweetened cocoa powder (optional; for rolling)

FOR TRUFFLE BASE:
Bring cream to simmer in heavy small saucepan. Remove from heat; cool to lukewarm, 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, stir 7 ounces chocolate in metal bowl over saucepan of simmering water until smooth. Remove from heat.
Add 2 ounces chocolate; stir until smooth.
Stir in cream.
Chill truffle base until firm enough to roll, about 3 hours.

Line rimmed baking sheet with waxed paper.
Roll 2 teaspoons truffle base between fingertips into ball.
Transfer to prepared sheet.
Repeat with remaining truffle base.
Chill until firm, about 1 hour.

FOR CHOCOLATE COATING:
Line another rimmed baking sheet with waxed paper.
Stir chocolate in metal bowl over saucepan of simmering water just until melted.
Remove from heat.
Cool slightly.
Scoop some of warm (not hot) melted chocolate into palm of hand.
Place 1 chilled truffle in hand and roll in palm to coat.
Transfer to prepared sheet.
Repeat with remaining melted chocolate and truffles, rewarming chocolate if necessary.
Roll in cocoa powder if desired.

DO AHEAD Can be made 1 week ahead.
Store in airtight container and keep chilled.
Let stand at room temperature 1 hour before serving.

Notes:
ROLLING THE TRUFFLE BASE Start with a well-chilled truffle base (chilled at least three hours), and use your hands as little as possible in the shaping process. Make a sphere by scooping out two teaspoons of truffle base with a mini ice cream scoop (with a release). If you don't have a mini scoop, dig deep into the base with a teaspoon-size measuring spoon or melon bailer, then turn it in a circle to create a sphere of chocolate. Drop onto a lined baking sheet. Dip the spoon or scoop in warm water to clean it. Finally, smooth out the spheres with your fingertips, which are cooler than your palms.

DIPPING THE TRUFFLES When truffles are coated with too much melted chocolate, an unattractive "foot" of chocolate forms at their base. To prevent this from happening make truffle dipping easier—hand roll them in chocolate. First, scoop a little of the melted chocolate into your palm, then roll a truffle around in your palm to coat it with chocolate. When the truffle is uniformly covered in melted chocolate, gently drop it from your palm onto a paper-lined baking sheet.

(From Epicurious)

Fun with Data

We've spent the last two days intermittently trying to figure out what's wrong with our new thermostats. Last night, we tentatively decided: it's us.

The old thermostats were mechanical: rotate a dial to the desired temperature. Since I like a chilly bedroom, each night we'd set it low, around 50 degrees. In the morning, we'd set it higher. With the new ones, we programmed it to do the same: drop down to 50 at 9PM, come up to 68 at 6AM. The heating part worked fine -- if the thermostat said it was 65 degrees in the morning, it'd kick on the heat. But the temperature never got down lower than about 64 degrees. Even if we manually set it to 50, and opened the window -- it's been around 35 degrees outside, last few days -- the room didn't get appreciably colder -- the minimum it'd reach was 62. I touched the heating elements once or twice, and they didn't feel hot, but I thought that perhaps I was just doing it between heating cycles.

And then it occurred to me.

With the old thermostat, I'd set it to 50 at night. I assumed that at that setting, why, that must be the temperature the room dropped to, overnight, particularly when it was cold outside (say, around 32 degrees), and even more so if we had the window open a tad. I never actually knew what the room temperature was, though, until the new thermostats, which have a temperature display, were installed. We wondered: could it be that the room never actually chilled as far as assumed? So we did an experiment. We turned the thermostat off, completely -- no heat at all -- opened the window (about 38 degrees outside), and closed the door to keep any stray heat out. We put a manual thermometer on the bureau. Two hours later, we went in, turned on the thermostat, and looked at the manual thermometer and the thermostat's display. Both said 63 degrees. Apparently, that's as cold as the room will get. Set it as low as you want, but that's it.

I'm guessing ambient heat -- from the lower floor, from other rooms -- is the reason, and we're not completely sure -- but it does seem reasonable.

Amazing what you can do with data, isn't it?

Snowed

My daughter had her first Snow Delay day. She was pleased, though not as pleased as she would have been if she had the day off. I didn't remind her that she once said she preferred delays to cancellations because on a delay day, they had all classes, just compressed, but on a cancellation, the days just got shifted forward -- and if that happened enough, they'd pick up extra school days at the end of the year.

Went to see the oral surgeon again today. He's still looking a bit grim. I think he's nervous that the two replacement implants he did two weeks ago aren't going to take. If that happens, it's essentially game over for The Plan. I don't know what the replacement plan would be, but I'm sure I won't like it very much. On the other hand, he also said that he wants to put another replacement in, some time around March, and let that one age, too. I'm going to be thinking about this next Christmas, I think.

I did read a really interesting article in Conde Nast Portfolio, by the fellow who wrote Liars Poker, about this financial mess, though. It was pretty easy to read -- I didn't feel my eyes starting to cross till almost two thirds of the way through it. The key concept was: if the people doing something can't clearly explain what they're doing, there's a decent chance they don't really understand it. Granted, there's a lot of expert knowledge needed to make that explanation, but it comes down to the ability to clearly understand and communicate. I think that's universally true. We put up with people -- oh, he must know what he's doing-- because of what they can do for us, and we usually don't get burned. But sometimes.... sometimes, they're just snowing us.

A President Worthy of the Title

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I thought Obama's election brought with it a sense of strength -- bringing the possibility that the mass of people might find themselves with a friend in Washington, one who can counterbalance the many, many friends that the wealthy have, in spades. In watching what he is doing now - the actions he's taking, the people that he's appointing - I feel that even more strongly. There is certainly a sense of gloom, depression, despair, and even panic in the air. I can't ignore that. Many people, including me, feel that what is happening to our world is virtually unprecedented. Even though the wise men say that this is nothing like the Great Depression, it is close enough to it for my generation, and the one just ahead of mine as well as the two or three alive now behind it, to be shaken and scared. To see someone acting with calm intelligence and confidence in this environment is a stabilizing image.

I would like very much to believe that Obama can, by his own actions, personal and those he directs, halt this train wreck. It will certainly be harder than it has to be. Even in the current climate, there are still weasels who are angling for the best deal for themselves, and to hell with the public as a whole. He has to face and overcome that. I am not sure that he can. I would like to think that he recognizes this, and that he will make, not the best deals possible from a purist standpoint, but the best possible from a pragmatic standpoint. Some of those deals will definitely come back to bite him, and once things stabilize, the carpers and finger-pointers will come out of the woodwork, carping and finger-pointing. Its what they do.

But the heavy lifting will be his, and I am glad that we will have him to do it. We're not anywhere close to being out of the woods -- as he said, in effect, we're not even halfway into the woods -- but his approach is intelligent and forceful, and I like it. This isn't the change I wanted, from a financial and economic standpoint, but from the political standpoint, it's exactly what I wanted.

Zogg

The Cuddly Menace.

Announcement

This year, I'm making egg nog.

Every year for the last four or five, if not more, I've bemoaned the lack of my egg nog. Oh, we buy it in the store, and its okay, but I have memories of the egg nog my grandmother used to make. I'm sure it had alcohol in it, because she would only let me have a very, very little bit. It was cold and thick, with nutmeg sprinkled atop, and it was great.

I found this recipe years ago, here. I don't recall if I ever made it, but it sounds good.

Ingredients for 8 servings:
4 fresh eggs, separated
1/2 cup sugar, separated
1/2 cup White Rum
1 1/2 cups Milk (whole or 2%)
1 1/2 cups whiskey
1 cup heavy whipping cream, separated
ground nutmeg (1 cup, separated)

1. Separate eggs into yolks and whites in separate bowls (see below for a how-to). I put the whites into the mixer and the yolks into another bowl.
2. Beat egg-yolks with 1/2 of sugar, set aside.
3. Beat egg-whites until stiff, then mix in other 1/2 of sugar.
4. Pour the yolks into the whites and mix together slowly.
5. Stir in white rum slowly. I've tried dark rum and it works.
6. Stir in milk slowly
7. Stir in whiskey slowly (Bourbon, Canadian, Sour Mash. I use Jim Beam or Jack Daniels)
8. Stir in 1/2 of cream slowly
9. Whip rest (1/2) of cream and fold in carefully.
10. Serve at room temperature by ladling the eggnog into cups and sprinkle nutmeg on the top.Try to get some of the foam and some of the liquid (if not fully mixed) in each cup.


This year, I'm making egg nog.

Shoe Event

I find it hard to believe that anyone's surprised - most of all the perpetrator - that the man who threw his shoes at Bush while at a press conference with the Iraqi Prime Minister is now an Iraqi jail, getting beaten up. Just what did he expect - kisses on both cheeks? He's in one of the most violent societies around, with a track record of torturing people they don't like, and he thought he'd get a slap on the wrist?

Idiot.

Snowy Day

Sleet this morning, light snow today.

I'm baking -- two batches of butterscotch brownies (one for a neighbor, to be delivered on the aforementioned Traveling Tray, and one for us), and a batch of chocolate truffles (which I've only made once before, without great success); same deal.

Of course, as soon as my daughter gets home from school, those brownies are gone. Here's the recipe. Pretty easy stuff.

Makes 16

Ingredients:
5 tablespoons butter or marg.
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Optional: chocolate chips, nuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Melt the margarine or butter in microwave,
Pour into mixing bowl and stir in brown sugar, vanilla and egg with a wooden spoon, until mixture looks smooth and glossy.
Blend in the flour, baking powder, and salt until all of the ingredients are well combined.
If desired, add chocolate chips, nuts, or other filler.
Spray a 8 or 9" square baking pan.
Pour mixture into pan.
Bake for 25 mins (8") or 20 mins (9").
Cool slightly.
While warm, cut the brownies into squares.
Allow to cool completely before removal from pan.

In A New York Minute

From the New York Times:

She has not held a full-time job in years, has not run for even the lowliest office, and has promoted such noncontroversial causes as patriotism, poetry and public service. Yet Caroline Kennedy’s decision to ask Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat suggests that she believes she is as well prepared as anyone to serve as the next senator from New York — and is ready to throw her famously publicity-averse self into the challenge of winning back-to-back elections in 2010 and 2012.

Already, some columnists, bloggers and even potential colleagues in Congress have begun asking if she would be taken seriously if not for her surname.

Oh, gosh -- ya think?

Loop

What happens when Dasher and the crew decide to try a loop?

This.

You Ain't Santa

...and that's a fake beard.

The kids at the function today were not your surburban white bread kids, nicely dressed, usually polite and soft spoken.  These were kids who (the older ones) had a clear attitude: Don't lie to me.  The younger ones, not so much.  Some scared me, some I wished I could take home with me.

I'm glad that I did it, but I'll be honest: I'm not sure I'd have the gumption to do it again. Tough crowd.

Chawky

I'm not a chocolate fanatic, and would not go more than two blocks out of my way for an exceptionally fine piece, even if it is artisanal quality dark chocolate enrobed in mocha with musky undertones and imbued with a wafting breeze of chili and cardamon. (Yeah, I made that up. Kind of.)

But these guys sound interesting. Lucky for me they're in London.

Traveling Tray

When I played Santa at a neighbor's house, they gave me a tray of cookies. The tray was a nice, lightweight one, one that I thought they'd want back, so I dropped them a line to that effect. No, they replied, they'd gotten it with cookies from someone else, so I should feel free to do the same - fill it with cookies, send it on its way. So I will. The Brotherhood of the Traveling Cookie Tray.

I like it.

H&D

A certain amount of Hate and Discontent in the household, at the moment.

My wife has been insistent that our daughter should participate in a youth group activity at our church. After much foot-dragging, she agreed that she would go to an event tonight. Preparing to leave, my wife mentioned that she should bring a warm jacket, as they were going to be doing caroling, possibly outside. The daughter announced that she does not do caroling -- and when they got there, the group was just preparing to leave to do just that -- so the daughter refused to stay.

She's in her room, sulking, and the wife is downstairs, simmering. As for me, I'm staying clear of the blast zone.

TMI! TMI!

Sometimes, we get too much information. But, technology to the rescue, with a bold, fresh solution!

Wealth, Greed, and Friends

Some interesting articles have been floating through the news, the last couple of days.

A man who created and ran an investment firm (I referred to it in an earlier post) was in fact running a Ponzi scheme, and has (so far) been shown to have stolen almost fifty billion dollars from a range of people and organizations, many of whom have, as a result, gone from wealth to bankruptcy virtually overnight. A man who is a well-known lawyer in New York, dealing in real estate, has been found to be executing a massive fraud of his own. Two extremely wealthy brothers bought land on a small island near England, bought several of the island's businesses, demanded changes in the legal structure of the country, and then, when the changes were not executed to their liking, shut down the businesses, throwing about a fifth of the island's population out of work.

And then, of course, there's the current governor of Illinois.

A fierce and terrible retribution should be visited on these foul people, and a mighty oath sworn to make right what has gone wrong. Will this happen? I doubt it. The two fraudsters will escape substantial punishment, possibly with the aid of learned comments regarding deep-rooted psychological deficiencies and the need for compassion, not retribution, while the two brothers , whose actions show the moral depth of a boy torturing small animals, will skip any penalties for their actions whatsoever. To such people, the effects of their foul behavior on others is beneath notice. They simply do not care. "Me First" is their motto; frequently, it's "Me Only".

When others can so massively affect your life, you need powerful resources on your side - people of integrity, energy, and purpose. Such people do exist now, but they are not interconnected; they are not collectively strong. I believe that this is what Obama brings - that sense of someone strong who's going to look out for you, make things right, slap down the clever people and the sneaky people and the bold and arrogant people. Not all of them, certainly; but, we can hope, enough - so that there is a recentering of the country's moral and ethical compass. At the personal level, we need to have the equivilent of neighborhood watches, overseeing those who are powerful in our society. We can't rely on the integrity of those in power -- even those as focused and worthy as Obama and his cadre. They are, after all, human; they do, after all, have their own foibles. We can't leave it up to them, entirely. We need to look out for ourselves.

A massive revulsion from and expulsion of those human weasels, involving foul prisons in some dank and bleak gulag, would be awfully nice, too.

Losses

It takes quite a lot for me to feel sorry for wealthy people who have incurred financial losses. This qualifies.Of course, its almost certainly going to mean trickle - or gush - down losses for people of more modest means.

It reminds us, as if we needed to hear it again, that people who manipulate numbers for a living are capable of truly evil, life-destroying actions far in excess of those who merely use a gun, or even a bomb. Unwatched, unchecked, these people can destroy broad sectors of our society.

Tar and feathers, anyone?

RedSuiting

The second of three Santa Outings is done, and as always, I am pleased to have done it, and to have done with it.

The touchstone for how we view other people's child-raising styles is always how we ourselves would do it. I noticed that if a child was some combination of intelligent and friendly, I was more likely to get along with them. The best candidates seemed to be somewhere between five and eight -- younger, and they were either frightened, mute, or incomprehensible; older, and they were beginning to suspect. At lease two kids, around 9 or 10, were almost certainly in on it, but they were there to keep their parents happy; I was able to tease the boy, but the girl was having none of it -- though she was one of the two who came back later to give me a hug. I held more very young children than ever before; most people deposited the child gently, though one fellow gave me his son as if he were lobbing a football. Most parents were cheerful and interested, and a couple even said, relative to a crying child, that they didn't want to push them. I mentally gave them points for that. On the other end of the spectrum was the grandmother who grabbed the arm of a crying boy, yanked him over, and said through gritted teeth that he would SMILE...I am NOT kidding around here. Boy, talk about a joyous experience.

One more to go, possibly the most grueling. It will be almost as long as today - about 90 minutes versus today's two hours, about 56 kids versus today's 175 or so, but all of these will be homeless, and some don't speak English. Should be interesting.

As for me, I am still wasted. I slept for almost two hours, and now I'm thinking that it wouldn't be all that hard to fall asleep again.

Plans

I love it when a plan comes together -- Hannibal Smith

Ask me in four hours for the results, but the plan is, my daughter goes to a local school for color guard practice in five minutes; in 90 minutes, I put on the Santa suit and drive to the school; in 100 minutes, I pick her up and whip over to the hospital, where we race in and hang with the kids. Thats the plan.

We had thought that what with color guard today, she'd be too wiped to do this. Last night, though, she had a minor meltdown, saying that of course she wanted to do it. Well, truth to tell, I liked the idea, so --

We'll see. Hope it works. The good news is, I'm Santa. They can't start without me. Heh.

Winged

Ever heard of 'On a Wing And A Prayer'?

Sahanta

Last night, I went to a neighbor's house, as Santa, and visited with their three children -- one 5 1/2, one 4, and one 6 months.

I had wanted to do things like this for quite some time. Have to say that I was a little apprehensive -- I didn't expect problems, but I was worried that I would disappoint them. Hey, is this all we get for having you over? But it worked very well. The kids were stunned, and it took a while for them to find their voices. Even then, the oldest hardly spoke at all - the middle one did most of the talking. Nobody grabbed the beard (well, except for the baby, once -- they were about to take a photo of me and the two kids when the mother abruptly asked if I'd like to hold him - he looked up, saw this fluffy white thing right next to his hand), and I even got them to giggle a couple of times.

Later, the mother told me that after I left, they'd chattered a lot about how much they'd enjoyed it, so it was a good deal. Glad I did it. Given that I did Santa at EDS last week, I'm doing it at the hospital tomorrow, and again on Monday for the homeless kids' deal (which turns out to be more than I expected; they are having twenty more kids than anticipated) I think this was a nice difference. I'd do it again. Just got to figure out how to publicize it....

Hairy

I want a better Santa wig and beard. Not this year -- I'm throttling way back on optional purchases, what a surprise. But eventually, I want something tight fitting that looks real, not the plastic trash I have now. Something like these --

Animated

For some reason, I'm intrigued by the movie The Tale of Desperaux. I think its that I like the sound of the 'It looked like a sword' line. Or maybe I just feel like we need a hero....

Survival Straps

I'm not one for gimmicks or 'things you'll want if the zombies attack or the plane goes down in the Amazon' -- but Survival Straps looks like an interesting product, and it's reasonably priced.

Home Design

I think that if I were thirty years younger, and had five times the money I do now, I'd want these guys to do my home's interior design. My wife might have different ideas....

We're having the thermostats put in right this minute. I like 'em -- big, back lit display, clear instructions, the whole bit. This is a good thing.

Furious Again

Well, my daughter's furious with me. Again.

I had shown her how she could use File/Save Page As to keep a copy of a web page. She did that, and now she can't get it open again. Apparently, the page is built in Javascript, and so far as I can see, there's no way to invoke the various script elements. Surely there must be...
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Update: I think I have a workaround, if I can persuade my daughter to try it. Thanks for the default history retention setting, Firefox, and that my daugher is profoundly uninterested in knowing (and therefore changing) such things....

Cube War

The Great Office War - =

Gifties

For those of you who are mulling over giving me a gift, but aren't sure as to what, I offer -- this.

Though I should point out this mighty good site, too.

Located

So there he is!

Legal Note

I finally watched an entire episode of Boston Legal. My gosh -- its not at all bad!

PostDental, And So Forth

I had the tooth out this morning. It apparently was a damn good idea that I did.

I'd known for a while that this would be necessary. Periodontal disease had eradicated most of the supporting bone, so that it was only a matter of time until it failed. Two weeks ago, when it became apparently that the dental appliance was being damaged due to it hitting the tooth, the oral surgeon said Now's The Time, and we set it up. This morning, when he took it out (which was completely without incident; I truthfully told him that I didn't know he was doing it until he was done), he expressed surprise, bordering on astonishment: apparently, not only had there been bone loss, but there was an actual cyst there, one that had not shown up on the Xrays, harboring an infection. Since he's been really tense about keeping germ levels down, this was the equivalent of finding a dead rat in the Thanksgiving turkey.

He said that as a result of the cyst, the area where the tooth had been was pretty large; while I did not have to do anything, if I didn't, it would be impossible later to put an implant in its place. So, the question was, did I want that? Well, as I've said, I assumed that was coming, so I said yes, and he spent another twenty minutes making some kind of 'bone slurry' (I've no idea what the actual term is), packing it in, and then suturing it shut. I then got his usual mix of good news and bad news; the bad news was that he doesn't think I'm taking nearly good enough care of the implants, plus he thinks my blood sugar levels are way too high for him, while the good news is that he thinks I'm really a Good Patient, willing to work with him in an intelligent manner. Well, I don't know about the blood sugar levels, since mine are pretty damned good (could they be better? Yeah, always. They're not in the range of 'normal for someone who isn't a diabetic'. But they are in the range of 'normal for someone who is a diabetic, with good control.'). Well, he's like them lower. Truth to tell, I'm not opposed to that, so I'll try. As for the taking care of the implants -- yeah, guilty. I have to take them more seriously.

So the bottom line is that he's not as optimistic as he had been, but he apparently wants me to feel as if he is. While still understanding that, Good Patient or not, if something goes wrong, its either fate's fault, or mine -- not his. I think. Could be wrong.

Man, this is fun!

MoDental

This afternoon, just to anger and irritate myself (since I don't work in an office, I can't rely on others to do it for me), I spent some time reading about dental implants and 'implant bridges', which is where they put in an implant that serves as the support for a bridge. Thats likely whats going to end up happening in my lower jaw. At least, thats the theory -- and we all know how well dental theory's working out for me, don't we?

But the part that A&Ied me was thinking about how, more than a year ago, this was supposed to be when I was done with this .... at least, on the very last lap -- and now I'm at least six months away again. So I'm thinking that tomorrow, when I go in to have this one tooth extracted (which has been hanging fire for a very long time), he's going to say happy, cheerful things about how implant bridges are the way to go, and we should really plan on it, because it'll work just so incredibobbly well. Which opinion he will hold until he actually has to deliver, at which point...(frowny face)...

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By the way. This is an unsolicited endorsement which will mean nothing, but I wanted to do it anyway.

Last December, I broke my hip. I was treated at the Geisinger facility in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania. I was impressed with just about everything about that hospital (well, except the food, but even there, they tried). Even their system of billing amazed me -- it was fast and easy to do, unlike the people I deal with here at home. Today I got a request for donations to their general fund, and I actually thought about it. I never think about things like that -- its always 'scan and pitch' -- the envelope doesn't even make it out of the kitchen. These guys.... well, I'll be honest. I'm cutting back where I can, for obvious reasons, and donations is part of that. So I won't be giving to the Geisinger Fund. But I won't be calling their 800 number to get myself removed from their mailings, either (an 800 number just to say Take Me Off? How cool is that?), because -- well, I like them. I know, to them I'm just one person, a year ago -- but I still have a good feeling about them.

So if you ever have the chance to donate to their fund -- please do. Thanks.

Oh, Blag...

Makes you wonder about the state of Illinois politics, doesn't it?

Virgin Fun

Labelled

I wouldn't say I'm using an old copy of Windows Word.... but when I was setting up the printer to do Christmas labels, I noticed that one of the printer-type options was dot matrix.

Inauguration

Anyone else for just saying the hell with it and doing the Presidential Inauguration right now? They can still hold the festivities later, but do the transfer of power now.

FIOS? Forget It

Verizon's really pushing the idea of FIOS around here. We've gotten phone calls, emails, mailing, and a personal visit. We're reluctant, because Verizon strikes us as a company thats big on marketing, small on customer friendliness. Not that Comcast is all that much better.

Today, though, we came close to it. We pay about $45 a month for Verizon's telephone service, which is for two phone lines. We pay about $99 for Comcast's cable and internet service. Verizon, through their FIOSTRIPLE160 offer, said we could get all three for about $100 a month. Well, okay, right off the bat we knew that this would not last. It would be for ninety days or until the new year or for a limited time only. People with Offers always have weasel words in there. Always. And if we did it, we'd have to change email addresses, which are currently at the Comcast domain. Still: saving forty or so buckes per month? Okay, I'm willing to think about it. So I called.

I put the phone on speaker and walked around the kitchen, taking things out for dinner. I hoped that I would at least get to talk to someone by the time dinner was ready, and I did. After they went through multiple iterations to determine that why, yes, you ARE qualified for this service (gee, thanks for sending the emails, cards, notes, etc telling me I was, then making me wait), I asked them my questions.

We have Lifeline phone service on one line. That service requires a standard landline connection -- can't use VOIP. Is this going to be a standard landline connection? Long pause while the clerk's synapses fuse. He goes away, comes back. Ah, you'll have to ask the local business office, we have no control over that. Hmm.... But, okay.

We have two phone lines. Will this service cover both lines? No. Okay, that's expected. What will the second phone line cost us? Another pause. Ah, you'll have to ask the... Gotcha.

We'll apparently need a tv converter box to use your service. How much is that? Six dollars. One time? Per month. And more if you want HD service. Oh, joy.

We currently have five email boxes. How many would we get with this service? Three, but you can buy more.

Don't know about the Lifeline, or the cost of the second phone line. We'd have to pay for a converter, and for the mailboxes we have now. And a little Googling turns up things like this. Somehow, I don't think we'll be FIOSing any time soon.

FireFlop

FF's dying on me -- just tried three times to start it, and all I got was this little tiny square drawn at various points on the screen, then nothing. I'm actually using IE to write this -- which means I don't have the Greasemonkey extension to resize the Blogger box. Argh!

Descriptions

I just read this as part of someone's self description. I think it's awesome:

Trainer, designer, information architect, builder, visionary.

I love it. Wonder if its too late for me to change?

Music

Pandora is very good. I particularly like this channel. (You may need a subscription to sign on, but it's free, and they don't bug you.)

SMA

I'm in Sloth Mode Alpha, at the moment. I just took a shower, after sleeping - crashing - for about an hour and a half, something like that. My wife said she thought I would, since thats what I usually do when coming back from being Santa, but I said No, I feel pretty good, actually......well, perhaps I'll just lie down for a little bit. 90 minutes later....

There is something that just takes it out of you, doing that kind of thing. I am in awe of the people who can do it professionally, five or six hours straight. I'm not sure where the drain comes from. I have some ideas, though. Part of it is the physical effort, lifting the kid up, holding multiple kids, but thats not a big deal unless the kid's a real chubber. I try to hug kids like that. Well, I try to hug most of them, but especially kids like that. I worry that they aren't getting enough attention, that they're getting written off. I'm likely reading too much into it, I know. But even so: the physical part isn't that big a deal.

Speaking of hugging: three kids actively wanted to be hugged. So I did. Their parents seemed delighted.

Sitting in one place for two hours - yeah, thats something of a strain. And you get so damn hot -- the red suit may not be actually warm enough to keep you comfortable in a blizzard -- I walked from my car in 19 degree weather, and I felt the chill -- but inside, where its heated, you get hot. I started taking my hat off when I could, which had a side benefit: I could play with it, which made a couple of the shy kids laugh. One girl in particular was reduced to paroxysms of laughter at the sight of me with the little white fuzzy ball from the top of the cap dangling right in front of my face, while I said Eh? What? What's so funny? But what I really wanted to do was take off the wig, which was really hot. That, you just can't do. One person did bring me ice water in a cup with a straw, and that was much appreciated, but even that was nothing as compared to the delight -- and shiver of cold -- that I felt once I got back outside, taking off the jacket and the wig. So perhaps dehydration is part of the drain, maybe all of it.

Whatever, it wipes me out. I found myself hoping that the local family who asked me to come to their house didn't decide that today was the day they want to do it. I could... but it'd be an effort.

Big Red Suit

Tomorrow's the first of three scheduled arrangements to wear the big red suit.

I'm a little apprehensive -- I always am, but in this case, it's warranted, as the woman who takes the pictures for this event is very bad with crying children; she tends to think that the way to get them to stop is to wave a stuffed animal in their face; she's also more than willing to say that I'd be glad to hold three or four squirming infants all at once. But I imagine it'll go pretty well. Then one week from tomorrow, I do it for the employee event at the local hospital, and that following Monday, at a function for homeless kids.

I'm also doing (or offering to do) something a little different, this year. It occurred to me that there are at least three neighbors with small children - perhaps they'd like to have Santa come to their house to visit with their child. Free, of course. Not sure if anyone will take me up on it, but its worth a shot.

And then in two and a half weeks, I retire the suit and stuff for another year.

Firefox Load Speed

I run Firefox 3.04 on a Dell Inspiron 1505 running XP SP3, AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile CPU, and 1.87 GB RAM. Normally, it runs just fine, from the startup to the shutdown.

But every so often, it doesn't. In particular, about a week or so ago, startup would occasionally take a long, long time -- on the order of 90 to 120 seconds (where the norm is about five seconds). Being the standard consumer, I figured that if I tried to start four more copies, this would make it load faster (which it of course did not). I could not figure it out, and I still can't. Looking at Task Manager during these interminable waits, it was apparent that Firefox itself was just sitting there, not using any CPU.

I did a search for Firefox Slow Startup, and one thing I found suggested that Firefox is sensitive to the number of add-ons you've installed. Apparently, if an add-on requires that something be done to make it functional, it'll effectively stop Firefox's load until that something is done, and then it'll continue. The suggestion was to try starting Firefox in safe mode (I hadn't even known Firefox had a Safe Mode) which brings it up without any add-ons at all. I did, and it came up like a bullet. I shut it down and started it normally, and it came up sluggishly.

So I started looking at add-ons, turning off everything that I didn't really want - things like Visualise.us, which I like but doesn't do anything personally for me. I found that with all four (Password Exporter, Reload Every, TrackMeNot, and Visualize.us) off, Firefox loaded pretty quickly. I'll likely turn TMN back on, but as for the others, I think I'll just run without them for a while.

Trainspotting

Trainspotting can be a pleasant past time, but it does require you to stand out in the cold and wet, or the heat, waiting for that magical moment when an ElectroMotive GM Series R thunders through the station. But no more. Thanks to the Microtoss Trainspotting Simulator, you can have all the fun, with none of the inconvenience. I could play it for hours....

Kinda Good

I just sucked it up and looked at the current values for two of the major sources of retirement funds for us, worth roughly 45% of the total. I had been using a working assumption that they would be down around 30%, based on what I hear from various sources. From what I see, they're down around 9%. Not good news, but better than I expected. Tomorrow, I'll look at the other 55%.....

Observation

It is very hard to hide a christmas gift from someone when a) it comes in a box boldly marked GODIVA and b) the recipient signs for it while you are out a) talking to a mentoree who can't remember what he did this morning, and b) getting groceries for an elderly parent who didn't want to bother the caregiver that we pay to have for just that sort of thing.

Not that I'm ticked or anything.

Two Way

We expect a lot of Barack. He's all give, give, give, and we're all take, take, take. Well, here's an opportunity to give Barack a little back. So go ahead. Do it.
Give Barack Your Baby.

Accounting

I like accounting, what I know of it. I'm not an accountant, so I suppose my 'knowledge of accounting' would make a garden varienty accountant snicker, and a Big Time Accountant laugh so hard he fell off his chair. But still -- I found this short article, offering the opinion that part of the underlying problem with Wall Street is that it has no recognizable, repeatable, defensible method for valuing intangibles (such as 'skill in innovation', 'team spirit', 'competitive drive') in a company, to be thought-provoking. I have a hunch that she's onto something.

Voice of the Father

From Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford, about George the Elder's reluctance to dump Dan Quayle from the ticket:

"He recalled Bush saying, 'You know, I changed my mind on taxes and this looks like I'm too willing to change my mind on major issues.'"

Since when did that, ipso facto, become a problem? And, is this where Junior got that attitude? Make your mind up, once and done?

Tracking

This morning, I got to take my mother to her hematologist's for another shot that's having the effect of addressing her anemia by increasing the amount of hemoglobin - the iron-rich oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells. Her current reading is just over 11 grams per deciliter; anemic is consider to be 'less than 12' for an adult woman. As she's gotten the shots, she's felt progressively stronger, which is the goal in all of this.

The appointment came as a surprise, which should not have happened because we tend to track these things fairly closely. I've got a calendar on this PC, we have a large paper calendar in the kitchen, and (though not used too much for this kind of thing) my wife has a calendar on her work laptop. Somehow, the appointment dropped through the cracks on all of them, and the first warning we had was when my mother called upstairs to say that she'd be 'waiting in the car'. Mute consternation, followed by a quick job of getting dressed. On the way out, they scheduled her next appointment, and just as they were about to set the date, my mother said that she had something going on that day - so we changed it. Briefly, I thought that it'd be nice if we could do it electronically -- you guys check our file for available times, then zap us an email with the date; we'll get the email at home and zap it into the pc based calendar -- but I guess getting a piece of paper is just as good. Not as efficient, though.

I suppose I was in that mood because I'd been reading an issue of Fortune Small Business, about several small businesses that had had to make some rapid corrections to the way they operated in order to fix problems ranging from a sudden drop in market valuation to the need for an objective method of evaluating employees. (I particularly liked the last one, when the article said that after getting objective proof that one guy was slacking off, they 'mutually agreed' that he should leave.) It got me to thinking a little about how we track medical appointments, let alone, do medical followup. Not well, is what I think. I did have one small piece of insight: new ideas don’t necessarily come from reading listings of good ideas that someone else did. They come from applying those concepts - stretching, bending, molding them to fit a new environment. But you can't tell until you read the article if its going to have any fodder for that process.

Juicy

One of the web sites that I like to read is Juice Analytics, whose mission in life is to make data useable.

Its often said by numbers wonks that something doesn't exist unless it can be measured. The flip side is that something doesn't exist unless that measurement can be understood, and drives action. Everyone's seen floods of data delivered as 'here's that information you want'. The recipient looks at the hundred or thousand pages of printout, flips through a couple of pages, and then chucks it -- because no one's going to spend time looking at every single page unless its critical and there's literally no other way to get the needed result. Even if they DO look at every page, they can't guarantee that they've really read everything, seen every instance, detected every useful number. And, regardless of whether the recipient really did look at everything, unless that looking drove action -- even if the action is the decision to do nothing -- then the looking was useless. You don't have information until the data drives results.

Juice Analytics understands that. I'm particularly impressed by this piece of software.

LAAM

I wonder: will Obama have people sketching out broad scenarios of types of problems, and how they'd broadly approach them, so that they're not starting from square one when they occur? This for a small conventional war, this for a destabilizing act by a hostile power, this for a natural disaster? I know you can't go down to detail level, but I think it'd be useful to set up broad parameters in advance, as much as you can.

Like Anyone Asked Me.

Lit Up

Austerity is on my mind, occasionally, of late -- more with the current news about EDS -- so I've told my daughter that we likely will not be doing the (minor) massive gifting at Christmas that we normally do. Not that we're as lavish as people are with little kids, when the child wades through mountains of boxes, but we try to give her five or seven things, including one or two that she really wanted -- such as, for example, the MP3 player that she drooled over last year and, so far as I know, has actually used twice. With the current fiscal climate, not to mention that she just got a brand new laptop (and I am not noticing the smudge of what appears to be nail polish remover on the matte - blue finish), I'd told her to expect less. She knows this. But this morning I inadvertently made the point strongly when she heard me say that I didn't want anything for Christmas -- just the pleasure of their company would be enough. And the truth is, it would. But hearing that, her head snapped up from reading, and I could see her think Good god, he's serious.

Reading the Economist this morning, I learned two amazing things: first, that there is apparently a British Lap Dancing Association ( I assume British Crotch Grinding Association was insufficiently decorous), and second, it is the stated position of the head of that organization that lap dancing is not intended to be sexually stimulating. I have always admired the British ability toward understatement, but that takes it to a whole new level. Actually, perhaps he's right. Not that I'm likely to know --I've never had a lap dance, nor will I ever, if my wife has anything to say about it, but its one of those things I've always wondered about, both from a serious, sober approach (how do the people who do this feel about it? Do they regard the buyers as fools, unless they're really studly (though I did see one article about a woman who got one from another woman; she seemed to be enjoying it quite a lot) And the customers, do they actually enjoy it or do they feel like idiots, at least a bit?), and a lascivious approach (what's it feel like to have this lithe young woman do this?) Both sets of questions are likely to remain unsatisfied, but if I ever do find out, I'll let you know. Somehow, I think that but honey, I was just doing it for scientific purposes is unlikely to cut it, round here.

Last night, taking a walk, I tried to convince my wife that if she is laid off, as I expect she will be, it's not a judgement on her abilities. She said she knew that, but that it would be an emotional shock, and she would be depressed for several days. She also said that another woman there has told their common manager that if he calls to tell her that she's laid off, she will cry -- expect it. I know the feeling.

We have an artificial Christmas tree in the kitchen. Its one of those things that we'd never have imagined that we'd like so much. We got it after going to a friends house and being delighted by how he'd decorated, including four or five thin artificial ones, brightly decorated. After setting it up, I realized that we needed a timer for it - we have three (!), but we needed all of them for the external lights - one cord stretches from the garage to the base of the driveway, one from the garage to the other side, where the tall evergreen sits at a corner of the walkway, and one coming from an upstairs window and powering the mesh lights that are over the bush which sits outside of my mother's living room window. (Years ago, visiting the home of a wealthy local person, I noticed plugs in the carpet at various locations in his massive living room. I thought 'how useful'. We need that kind of foresight when houses are laid out, and their grounds, too). Anyway - after I got the timer, I set it to turn on from four thirty till about ten. Fine. This morning, when I came out at six, it was on. I thought that perhaps my wife had clicked the buttons to make that happen, thinking 'how nice those lights look; how pleasant to see early in the morning'. Half an hour later, they clicked off -- and I realized it'd been an accident -- the silly tab was partially depressed for the 6AM slot. Ah, well. But I liked it enough that I went and set it deliberately. Now it'll come on in the morning, too, for a short while. We can use some Christmas cheer when we get up, don't you agree?

Cockle-Warming

... and its not even indigestion. Meaningless, but still cockle-warming. From the India Times:

NEW DELHI: Trade Unions seem to have suddenly become active in the IT industry. Trade unions and workers in HP and EDS across Europe are challenging the economic necessity of the lay offs and cut backs in terms and conditions. In late September, IT giant Hewlett-Packard Co had announced plans to cut 7.5 per cent of its work force, or 24,600 jobs, seeking to realise savings from its recent acquisition of Electronic Data Systems Corp. Of the 24,600 job cuts, at least 9,300 are likely to be made in Europe, which is almost 8 per cent of the entire workforce. It is also speculated that benefits will be retrenched. According to agencies, employees and trade unions across Europe are holding demonstrations or rally against the layoff plan in front of HP and EDS offices.

* Austria: Workers assembled in front of EDS headquarters in Vienna. There were also discussions between the mangement, workers and union representatives.
* Belgium: Protestors distributed leaflets, badges pamphlets and ball pens at different HP and EDS sites.
* France: There were demonstrations in front of HP and EDS buildings; A full or half-day strike by workers of all EDS offices outside Paris.
* Germany: Workers and works council meetings during three consecutive days; joint union and works council petition and information desks at all EDS sites; call to join the next union meeting to elect bargaining committee to fight for a collective labor agreement.
* Italy: Two hours strike in Rome and Napoli; flyers distributed.
* Spain: Rallies in front of five EDS buildings for 15 minutes.
* Sweden: Unions called for information meetings and distributed leaflets and badges at various HP and EDS sites.
* Switzerland: Road show at Zurich and petition signatures at all sites.
* United Kingdom: Mobile advertisement mounted outside some large HP locations; badges worn in HP locations with slogan `3,378 reasons to protect your future'.

The company had said it will carry out the cutbacks over the next three years, while replacing about half the jobs in new areas of its services business. HP estimated $1.8 billion in annual cost savings once the three-year cost-cutting programme is completed.

At the time the $13.2 billion merger of computer services provider EDS into HP was announced in May, Hewlett-Packard counted 178,000 employees on its books and EDS had 142,000 employees.

Vista

I have never used this phrase before. I may never use it again. But after just over an hour of trying to get Vista in general, and its new Word in particular, to print, I have only this to say:

Vista. Sucks. Balls.

Cat House

Really.

Observation

Very few people have work that they 'were born to do'. Some have work that, as it happens, they 'were born with the ability to do well'. But a built in 'this is what you were meant to do', as many on-line 'career coaches' like to say? Ah ... no. There is no Meant except, perhaps, for dynastic royalty. People are multipurpose tools that can turn their hands equally well to many things. Some better than others, sure. Compellingly better, no.

Also: Not all work has to be personally fulfilling. Not even most. If it is, good, but that's lagniappe, nothing more.

Answers

So here's the deal.

If something is complex, it takes a fair amount of documentation to describe it. It takes complex concepts to describe. In order to deal with the concepts, you have to be comfortable with that level of complexity.

But most of-- many of-- some -- okay, me -- have a rapidly shortening horizon of awareness. We not only like information in easily digestible bits, we get grumpy and confused when it's not. Our awareness can't handle the big thoughts. Heck, it can't handle the medium thoughts. And drawing logical conclusions at any but the most basic level -- FireBad. Don't stick hand in fire -- is beyond us.

Hyperbright or hyperglib people, on the other hand, are very good at jumping into complex situations and drawing conclusions, and making it sound easy and obvious. The economy is in tatters because gay people are allowed to marry in Massachusetts. Any idiot can see that. Which, as it goes by, makes you think Um, is that...right? I mean... But the speaker is calm and assured, nicely dressed, and very, very confident, so you think Well, maybe so.... And after a while, we don't even try to think. We just listen to the answers that the Calm Speakers give. Oh, some, maybe even a lot, get tossed aside as bogus -- I think that if Rush Limbaugh pronouced two and two to be four, I'd count on my fingers to be sure -- but as the questions become more complex, we get flummoxed. It hurts to think, so we .... don't. Its not that we don't want to think, its that things are so complex, so scary, so Hard -- we don't. Even a little bit. We pick our team -- people who think a certain way -- and thats it. We don't have to think any more. (That this is kind of what people said about those of us who were Obama Fans, that we would accept anything so long as he said it, has not escaped me. I don't agree, but theres truth to it. )

And I don't know what to do about that lack of thinking, of thought. Just me, you understand. But surely I'm not alone?

(I'd love to say I thought of this first, but I'm not that smart. It was inspired by, and is a very poor copy of, this, from Alas - A Blog. )

Chopping

My wife just told me that the rumours of December 1 layoffs at EDS were correct. She's still there... for today.

She told me two of the people who were laid off, and they're names that I recogize as being mainstays of their team -- people who are smart and hard workers. So we can no longer assume that those qualities mean much to the worthies in the executive suite - which in turn means we can't assume that she is long for the company, either. Its time, and likely far past time, to make alternative plans.

What a pleasant feeling.

FunGun

I don't support unlimited gun ownership. I'm not talking about hunters (who I don't really understand either, but hey, fine, if they promise to a) eat what they kill, including other hunters, and b) don't use a helicopter), and I'm definitely not talking about people with handguns for protection at home. I'm talking about the people who say they need heavy artillery, just in case. Automatic weapons. Machine guns. Grenade launchers. Tactical nuclear weapons. (I grant, no one's asked for the latter yet.)

But I'm willing to compromise. They can have one personal, licensed Weapon of Mass Destruction -- if it looks like this.