Communications

I heard a person use the phrase 'on a go-forward basis' today, which was depressing. Just to drive the nail in, I did a search to see how many places it turned up. My oh my oh my.

HST on seal pelts should only be applied on a go forward basis

HST on seal pelts should only be applied on a go forward basis. Tom Rideout, Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, today said that it would be unfair to ... www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2006/fishaq/0104n05.htm - 7k - Cached - Similar pages - Filter

SAS 70: History and Timeline

... the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) will also issue auditing standards for public companies on a go-forward basis. ... www.sas70.com/history.html - 5k - Cached - Similar pages - Filter

Investor Corner - Investor Corner - Cisco Systems

While the impact on a go-forward basis is affected by a number of complex variables including our stock price, and making predictions of future values is ... investor.cisco.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=81192&p=irol-investorcorner - 33k - Cached - Similar pages - Filter

Mineral Rights Information Bulletin 98-3

Add natural gas to the definition of oil sands, on a go-forward basis (this would require an amendment to the Act). All future sales of oil sands rights ... www.energy.gov.ab.ca/2526.asp - 60k - Cached - Similar pages - Filter

AMX - Press ReleasesOn a go-forward basis, the Company expects its effective tax rate to be closer to the normal statutory rate. For the three months ended December 31, 2004: ...
www.amx.com/nr-press-releases.asp?release=2005-01-27 - 22k -

Prospering

I never wanted to own a bank, even though the image of foreclosing on the Widder Brown is an appealing one. But these guys have an interesting take on it....

Ben & Me

Okay, it didn't go quite that far. But yesterday, I had a surprising experience. I wrote to a New York Times mailbox to comment on the Ben Stein article (in words softer than I used here), and I got a response. From Ben Stein.

It wasn't lengthy, but that it happened at all impressed me.

Get Human

This is worth seeing. And the cause is worth supporting.

Games

My wife and I have this game we play sometimes (no, not the one with the jelly doughnuts) where one of us will say something completely out of character, and the other will say 'Who are you, and what have you done with my wife/husband?' The other day, we inadvertently played it for real.

I was musing over the Great Television Thing, back when we were contemplating buying a plasma screen TV (before becoming a little wiser to the intricacies of HDTV; think we'll wait about two years more). It got me thinking about how I'd like to upgrade the stereo system downstairs (which likely dates me; I guess the current phrase is 'the audio system', though perhaps that's out of vogue, too), which led me to thinking about electronics generally, at which point I turned to her and casually suggested that we get another laptop computer, because having the one has worked out so well in terms of easing congestion. At which point she turned to me and gave the word, and I realized how very odd it was for me to offer to spend about a thousand dollars almost on a whim.

I offer as defense that I'd been thinking in rarefied zones while contemplating the cost of the HDTVs, so that my normal standards had gotten a bit out of whack. For about a week, a good salesman at Circuit City (their motto: Don't You Wish Our Stores Were As Good As Our Ads?) could have pushed me into buying the TV, but I got over it. I'm not breathing helium any more.

Unlike Ben Stein. I like him -- you may know him (I was about to refer to him by his initials, but that would be rude) as the guy on Win Ben Stein's Money, as well as a character actor and the guy who looks glumly at you through the Visine ads. He's a surprisingly bright guy (as distinct from one who just sounds bright with the right script) as can be seen in his occasional economics articles in the New York Times. But there are some issues where I think he's breathing helium, as in the current edition of the paper where he asks why people dislike large oil companies making tons of money. You can understand why he would dislike that attitude, being a Republican big-business sort of fellow, but in fact he really does seem to get it in many ways, and in that same column weighed in heavily against the huge endowment of his college, wondering why they still asked for money, and the huge personal profits that some CEOs now make for no corporate gains at all (not to mention, corporate losses). He sounds right. And then he says something like this:

"I can tell you, since I am close friends with a man who wrote speeches for a top executive, that they are not wildly well paid, particularly by Wall Street or Hollywood standards. Out of the 85,000 (employees of Exxon Mobil), only a few earn more than a million dollars in salary a year, which is training-wheels pay for investment banks or big Hollywood talent agencies."

Note the 'in salary a year'. So if I earn some number south of that, but earn a number north of it due to bonuses and stock options, I'm morally pure? And then there's 'more than a million'. Gosh, I'd have put the bar way lower. And finally, the comparison to Hollywood or investment banks (both not known for simplicity of life style and lack of self - aggrandizement). It must be like saying Well, sure, Katrina did do some damage to New Orleans, but its not like the whole damn ocean poured in there!

Maybe I should have used his initials.

Listening to the Music

I know I'm out of it. I usually am. In fact, I'm usually so far out of it that I don't even realize there is an 'it' to be out of. But this is something new. I didn't know that there was a thing called 'Gay Music'. And, listening to it, I don't understand the concept.

None of it is music I'd particularly care to hear routinely, but that's because what I like is old jazz, soulful blues, and DWM classics. But when I was selecting the music channel on my Yahoo IM, I noticed one of the channels was called Gay Radio. Well, shucks, I wondered, what's this all about? Theme song from Brokeback Mountain? So I listened to it. Its not my taste, as I said, but its not bad. And I sure don't hear anything 'gay' about it.

So is this a codeword thing, or is the fact that I don't hear anything gay about it because I'm not?

Medical Practice Mores

That last word is more-ay's, like the eel, not mores, like 'hey, that's good pizza, give me some mores'. Just thought I'd mention that.

I've been intrigued by the operation of medical practices for quite some time. Part of the reason is that medicine itself interests me; diagnostic skills fascinate me, to the point that I was actively disappointed to realize that the very best diagnosticians can't tell you how they arrived at their conclusions. Studying decision theory will give hints as to how decisions are raised (the articles on decision methodology which suggested that good decision makers have not only an alternative decision conclusion but a whole series of them amazed me; the way one article put it was that good decision makers come to a conclusion; great decision makers come to several) but the theory doesn't tell you how they make the leap from the same set of facts that stumped or misled the lesser diagnosticians to an accurate diagnosis. I'm charmed and fascinated by things like that. And knowing what the effects of drugs are on certain bodily functions borders on the mystical for me; I remember when I first found out what an SSRI actually was, and why inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin was a good idea (first reaction: if it was a good idea, why doesn't the body do it naturally?). And beta blockers -- though I have to admit, I still stumble on exactly what a beta blocker is, the concept of knowing that, having that level of fluency with the body -- it just delights me. Its that level of skill that almost -- usually not, but almost -- makes me willing to accept the level of superiority that some doctors exhibit. I think Well, gee, if I know that much about my discipline, I'd likely have more than a little arrogance myself.

But when you move away from the nuts and bolts of the practice of medicine to the practice of managing a medical practice is when you get into an area that for me is even more mysterious, in part because for years I thought 'well, what's the big deal? Make appointments, schedule things, keep track of charts, why is it so difficult?' It seems like its the same problems that the guys who schedule maintenance on my aging Buick have, or the painters who come to my house, or the plumber, or the electrician. But as articles like the one in today's Washington Post show, the practice of medicine is a lot more volatile because its a lot more personal. You're dealing with people, and the people aren't always what you expect, just as you aren't what they expect. It ranges from scheduling an appointment that they know they can't keep, but their attitude is that you Never say no to authority; better to accept the appointment knowing you won't make it than to do that, to understanding who actually gives the medical history when you're talking all at once to the whole extended family. Its a whole shift of mindset. To the credit of some medical practices, they're beginning to shift the way that they operate, and the way that they think, but there's lots more who haven't even contemplated the necessity.

Fascinating stuff.

Weekend

Its been a moderately turbulent weekend, thus far.

Yesterday, my wife went to Philadelphia to participate in a disaster recovery drill. Doing that is part of the job, and its expected that you will give up a weekend here and there to do it. She's fortunate, in a way; most of the drills she participates in are done remotely, so that she can do them from home, or from her desk at work. This one is a new customer, and new customers get extra attention -- at least until the company can figure out what their special needs are, at which point they join the pack. This isn't cheating, though I would imagine that the companies aren't thrilled when they find out. So its not a big deal, but when it means that I have to be without my wife, then it is a big deal, because I don't like it. Its just a taste of what life would be like without her, and its an unpleasant taste. On more than one occasion I've pointed out that the disparity in our ages, and just the general tendencies, mean that I'll likely die ten or fifteen years before her. She never likes that image. Can't say I'm too thrilled with it either.

I've been reading Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, and I have to admit that its put me into a bit of a morbid frame of mind. My daughter occasionally says that she doesn't particularly want to grow up, and reading this book, and others like it, I can agree with her. Even though I believe they're talking, in the more graphic stories, about kids who are one or two standard deviations out from the norm, it's still scary stuff, and when I contemplate that actually they may not be talking that far out, its particularly scary. You want to give your daughter -- your child, male or female -- the strength and ability to handle life, and books like this seem to say Guess What? You might make it. You might not. No telling, Jack. Which is very scary stuff. Its deeply unfortunate that the training they do in middle school to defend against this disruption in the kid's life -- whether from peer pressure, alcohol, drugs, or any of the other apparently nine thousand possible ways to kick the kid off the rails -- is itself inherently scary. My daughter told me that she was actively frightened by a guy who came to talk about drug use, and a friend of hers actually left the auditorium, shaking, during the presentation. Then again, if I knew the truth of whats out there, I might, too.

Didn't help that halfway through reading one story in Ophelia, my mother called for help with her computer. When she bought it, she didn't ask for speakers, and it didn't occur to us to order them. We were going to use the speakers we got back when we got back an old computer that we'd given my mother-in-law. Ah, but when the speakers came back, the power cord didn't, and after trying all of the stray unmarked black power cords lying around, I finally said the hell with this, and just ordered a new set of speakers. Is that silly, stupid, and bizarre? Yes.

The bread is baking now. It didn't rise as much as I expected, but I think that the rise during the baking cycle will compensate for that, at least a bit. And hey, I finally learned why they call it a 'letter fold' when they talk about folding the dough. So the day isn't a total loss!

Tomorrow's Baking

This is the bread that I'm going to try to make tomorrow. The poolish is in the oven (with just the light on) now.... (from //foodgeeks.com/recipes/...
... recipe/18759,ciabatta_____sandwich_bread.phtml )

Ciabatta -- Sandwich Bread

Poolish:
1-1/4 cups cool water (60-70°F)
1/8 tsp. instant dry yeast
2-1/3 cups all-purpose flour

Dough:
4-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
7/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. plus 1/8 tsp. instant dry yeast
1-1/3 cups tepid water (75°F)
3 tbsp. olive oil

Rising and Baking:
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup water, plus water in a spray bottle

Directions:

Poolish: Place cool water in medium bowl; add yeast and stir in flour until well mixed. Cover and let stand at room temperature 10-12 hours or until the mixture is doubled in size, light and foamy with large bubbles.

Dough: In large bowl mix flour, salt and yeast. In a medium bowl whisk together tepid water and olive, then add to flour mixture. Add Poolish to flour mixture. With hands, mix dough until all ingredients are incorporated. Continue mixing, scraping side of bowl, for 8-10 minutes or until dough holds together and is slightly smooth (dough will be sticky, but resist urge to add more flour, dough will become less sticky as process continues). Scrape sides of bowl clean. Cover and let stand 20 minutes.

To develop gluten in flour, stretch and fold dough in series of 4 folds as follows: Turn dough onto floured surface; pat with palms of hands to flatten slightly. Fold side of dough nearest you to center, stretching dough as you fold. Stretch and fold dough opposite you to center. Stretch and fold right side of dough to center; repeat with left side. Slightly dust bowl with flour; place dough, seam side down in bowl. Cover and let stand 30 minutes. Repeat the 4 fold process 3 more times, resting the dough 30 minutes between foldings. After the last fold, oil the inside of the bowl, cover and let stand 50 minutes.

Final Preparation and Baking: Line a large baking sheet with a clean kitchen towel. In a small bowl, mix flour and cornmeal together. Sprinkle 1/3 of the mixture in a 12x4-inch strip on towel-lined pan. Remove dough from bowl and gently place on a floured surface (Be careful not to deflate the dough). Lightly flour and gently pat the dough into a 10-inch square, about 1-inch thick. Let rest for 5 minutes.

Cut dough into 3 equal strips. Stretch 1 dough strip in a 12x4 inch loaf; place on cornmeal strip of towel. Create fold in towel next to loaf; sprinkle with cornmeal mixture and stretch and place second strip. Another fold, sprinkle with cornmeal and stretch and place the last strip of dough. Cover dough with another kitchen towel (not plastic wrap), and let stand 45 minutes.

Place large baking stone in center of oven, with the broiler pan on the bottom rack. Heat to 450°F. Dough should spring back slightly, if too quick, allow to continue to rise longer. Lightly sprinkle tops with cornmeal mixture. Invert onto a transfer peel and slide onto baking stone. Repeat with other loaves. Pour 1/3 cup water into broiler pan, mist tops of loaves and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown and loaves sound hollow when tapped on bottom.

Cool on wire rack.

Mean Kitty

Comfort

I like being married -- its brought me a lot of pleasure, and there have been very, very few problems caused by it (in fact, I can't remember any, but there must have been some). Its a very comfortable and comforting way of life.

The latter is on my mind lately because I've been in need of comforting .Nothing overwhelming, but when you're in a dejected mood, it doesn't take much. When I was very young, I thought that the little buildings marked 'Comfort Station' held very nice people who would give you cookies and hot cocoa and generally make you feel better.

I still think that's a good idea.

Ports

The president says that the deal for the Arab company to operate major US ports has nothing to do with the security of the ports. The head of Homeland Security says there are provisions to ensure this, though, of course, he can't tell us what they are. (To be fair, perhaps he really doesn't have a clue about it. There's a track record for that.)

I don't think either of these people gets it. Operating a port may have nothing to do with its security, but you can screw it up just as badly with a spreadsheet as with a bomb. And all the secret provisions in the world won't help when a major port -- or a series of major ports -- are shut down. When our economy takes a hit because a port is shut down, all of George's pious speeches and scrunched up deer in the headlights looks won't help a whit. If John Kerry or Nancy Pelosi had suggested this, George would be on the horn immediately trumpeting how important it was to keep America secure, and handing over control of major ports was no way to do that. But he's not. He's in favor of the idea.

Wonder why?

Firefox Outfoxed

I wish I could say I figured this out for myself, especially given how simple it turned out to be, but I didn't. However, it works.

When I use Internet Exploiter, one of my bookmarks is actually a text file on the PC . Turns out that FF doesn't do text files. Further, the bookmark file doesn't open HTMLs, either (I tried just saving it as one). What to do?

Did a search, and found an answer. Open the file from FF using the File Open command. Select Bookmark This Page. Go into the Bookmark's Properties and rename it to something a little more user-friendly. Done.

Oh, yeah, that was easy.

Striped Hats and Algorithms

While I was at the opthamologist's the other day, squinting through dilated eyes at an issue of Forbes, and about fifteen minutes away from getting moderately bad news (I guess it's a good thing that we don't know its coming), I read an interesting article about improvements that Norfolk Southern had made to the way that they assemble and route trains. Of course, since this kind of magazine is oriented to financial people, decision makers, and the like, the description of what they did and how it was done was along the lines of 'and then a miracle occurred', but, in a nutshell, they hired a company (I think this is them, but I'm not sure) to chart the connectivity and usage of track between major assembling points. The company also was charged to develop a way to show which pieces of freight (at the boxcar level) had waited longer than the average.

One of the railroad men said that it was an epiphany (my word) to see what this piece of software could show them. He said that he came from the school of thought which said 'We're the railroad; we'll get to your stuff when we're good and ready.' For the first time, they had an objective way to show how long it took to assemble a train, play with what-ifs, and generally try to get the elapsed time down. And, of course, they did (hardly anyone writes about the failures); the average time between two nodes went from a day and a half to three quarters of a day, and freight which had to be expedited could be clearly seen in the master computer system. All of this, you'd assume, had been around for years, but not here. Here, it was fast, new, and sexy.

Computer systems are like that. They can pop up graphic images that amaze you -- not because the detail wasn't known before, but because the detail wasn't known to you before. If you saw The Hunt for Red October, you remember the scene wherein Ryan is on the aircraft carrier, fiddling with the tabletop display that showed where the US submarine fleet was; by clicking on one icon, he saw the name of the sub pop up. 'That's the Dallas', the admiral says. "Bart Mancuso's boat.'

Now think about how a computer system thats set up to execute jobs works. We tell it 'here's the general rules of the road' -- ie, this kind of job is more important than any other; this kind of job should be billed like this. Then we give it a list of jobs to execute, and we give it some more rules -- run these jobs start to finish, one at a time; run those jobs as time permits. We hand crank all that material in. Then we hit Start, and away she goes. The best monitors we have will give us snapshots of how things are going, will tell us when we are in trouble, let us know what work we're running when, and the best schedulers will let us know what we can expect to run in the coming hours, and, if they run as they normally do, how long they can be expected to run. Its up to us to figure out how to run them -- which runs in what order, or which one can be held to let the Cannonball barrel through. The system doesn't do that.

Why not?

Medical Alternatives

I don't know what to make of alternative medicine, but today, shortly after I jokingly (and maybe not so jokingly) told my wife that I was feeling so stressed that I needed some Zoloft (I think that's the name of one of the meds that advertises itself, followed by a prim notice to 'see your doctor'), I found a non-medical alternative that is giving me some tranquility without medication. It comes in two parts. The first is Baileys Irish Cream, in a small etched-glass vessel. And the second is bookshelves. You see, we're going to have the living room painted soon, and part of the preparation for that is unloading the bookcase so that it can be shifted away from the wall. I can't wait to see the dent this thing has left in the carpet after fifteen years!

But as I have been taking books down -- these get tossed, those get filed into the cardboard box -- I have been pausing on occasion to glance at them -- not so much reading them as glancing at the covers and remembering how much pleasure they gave me. One is Thinking in Time, by Richard Neustadt, subtitled 'The Uses of History for Decision Makers'. Another is John W. Gardner's On Leadership. Two more ' Shutterbabe - Adventures in Love and War' (literally), and 'Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives - Tales of Life and Death from the ER'. And 'Moving Mountains - or, The Art of Letting Others See Things Your Way'.

Some books, you might never read again, but you're still glad to have them.

All I know is...

what I read in the paper, hear on the radio, view on the web....and I must say, its quite a jangled mess. This is hardly an original observation, but gosh -- what the heck is going on? We've got whales dying mysteriously, people who've trained for years to get to the Olympics literally missing the bus, minor hunting accidents turned into significant political flaps due to personal intransigence, groups of people rioting over cartoons, the results of a major women's health study being interpreted in two conflicting ways (as was the result of a review of economic data relating to housing prices, and also to economic productivity). What the heck is going on?

My off the cuff guess? We're deep in the trough of interpreting all that we read, hear, view through our own filters. There are no -- or very few -- unambiguous events any more. All them (just about) are susceptible to spin, and we're willing (not eager, but willing) to hear what the spinmeisters have to say. And it affects us -- even when we're willing to bet that we aren't hearing the real story, it affects us. So every event has an evil agenda, a hidden purpose, a Them behind it. Even when we can't believe that, we do believe that the Formally Constituted Authorities are no such thing-- like the minor gods of Olympus, they spend their time battling each other, and occasionally toying with us for their own amusement; they care only in passing for our health, safety, and lives. We can't rely on them. We can't believe them.

So....who do we believe?

Shoes

I've been feeling pretty sorry for myself lately. Last night I got the classic wakeup call. I wish that I could say that it's turned me around; it didn't, but it had an impact.

I was at a competition in which my daughter was entered. The building was jammed with girls in various costumes and uniforms, practicing their routines, running back and forth, doing rolls, and all of that. In one corner of the gymnasium where the actual meet was held, I noticed a girl sitting in a wheelchair, watching. Well, heck, nothing unusual there. Nothing all that unusual. Noth --

She had no legs.

Building a Policitican

Two more characteristics for the ideal presidential candidate.

Knows the difference between principles and compromise; knows when to hold em and when to fold em. I think that in that position you have to give on some principles and standards that are important to you, in favor of keeping the other side and their constituency engaged. Better still that you can convince them to do it your way, but we don't have a lot of people with that eloquence and charisma, these days.

Reads. A lot.

Aftershocks

It usually takes me about 36 hours to recover from a significant shock to my emotional stability, aka, my normal level of obliviousness. It takes longer if there has been more than one. In this case, there have been two over the course of ten days. It accounts, should you wonder, for the generally morose tone of what I've written lately. What I wrote was true, but I don't normally own up to it.
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This morning for the first time in months I actually watched some Saturday morning television. I was startled by the high level of violence (and I do think cartoon violence has an effect) and advertising. I was so taken by it that I started noting the content of channels as I flipped past them. Roughly speaking, there was about 60% cartoons, where the cartoons were about 90% 'we're gonna blast them guys' and 10% were gentler; about 15% shows about becoming wealthy (its amazingly easy); another 15% about losing weight (also surprisingly easy), and 10% miscellaneous, ranging from a CSPAN political interview to movies -- Die Hard 3 was one; I forget the other. Pretty awful stuff, overall.
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I was also amazed to see a program last night wherein they spoke of the Cheney thing in purely spin-control terms. Not whether he was right or wrong to act as he did, but why his response could have limited the political damage had it been executed more along the lines they recommended. They didn't touch on the ideas that Cheney and his puppet/boss basically blow off anything they don't want to hear, or that they never admit error, but even so, I was startled. No ethical conundrums here.

Ah, life. Better than the alternative, I suppose.

Doctors

I may have mentioned on occasion that I don't like doctors.

Its not that I dislike all of them. I know two that I like -- one local, one remote. The local one, I don't see any more since she left the practice where we go to get med stuff done, and the remote one is remote in more ways than one. But still, there are those two.

Overall, though, I don't. Mostly its because they tell me things I don't want to hear, and sometimes its because they've got this attitude which plays right into the old joke about God liking to pretend He's a doctor. A bit is because they make so much money. (And I know, not all of them do , and not compared to med school bills, and no amount of money is worth the stress, and then there's the whole malpractice mess. Right. I saw the letter in Forbes about the average salary for dermatologists. I weep for them, all of them.) And some is because they don't watch out for me -- they think (foolish medfolk) that I'm old enough to do that for myself, given the facts. In fact, I'm not -- I need to be hammered and coaxed. Sorry, thats how I am.

But some, I would like to know, because they sound human. Bright, interesting, funny, insightful. (Plus, since they don't know me, they don't give me bad news.) Like the woman who does this blog. It's well written, and its worth reading. She'd be fun to talk to, I think.