Creaky

When I worked for IBM, they gave me a Lenovo laptop.  My impression was that it was a tough, solid piece of hardware.  I liked it, to the point where, having need of a new home laptop, years later, I bought one.  This was after IBM no longer made them, having sold the brand to a Chinese company.  This laptop still had the cute little almost-useless track-pointer set down between the G, H, and B keys; still had the bold THINKPAD logo.  I liked it.

This may be news, but laptops tend to get moved around.  And since they don't come with handles, they tend to get grabbed by the edge. 

It turns out that there is a microswitch inside the Thinkpad -- specifically, the Yoga 14 Thinkpad -- along the front edge, that is intended to warn the PC if it is under abnornal stress - the kind that can cause a head crash on the drive.  If the microswitch gets depressed, it will immediately cut power to the spinning hard drive, protecting it.  As a side note, it shuts down the PC, too.

My Thinkpad creaks and flexes.  And every so often, I squeeze it at just the right spot....

Money

The other day, my daughter informed me that she was doing some serious budgeting for her upcoming trip to Florida (Disney cruise), and the long and short of it was that she needed funds.  She said I don't want to sound like the classic kid who says Oh, I'll just ask my parents for the money.  I assured her that she was not, and that I thought she had a good grasp of financial essentials.

As if to nail that one down, she called today and said Hey, I got this call, they said it was someone's fraud analysis department, and they wanted to know about this charge on your credit card for a hotel in Florida?  Well, as it happens, she does have access to my card, but she had not ordered anything -- so I called the credit card people and said hey, this isn''t valid, we object....and while I was talking, I noticed another charge on the card, for food from Jimmy Johns! So we objected to that, too.  I made sure to tell my daughter that she'd done exactly the right thing in her reaction to that call.

Odd, though.  I have one of the new credit cards -- the ones with a chip, but without a PIN?  Who would have guessed that the lack of a PIN might mean that someone could still hijack the card?  Clearly, not the people who issued my card!

(Though I do wonder -- how do you keep a card secure if its being used online? )

Backup

I'm in the last stages of restoring my PC after it died (specifically, went into a 'reboot loop'.  I am sure that Microsoft does some amazing things, making them look easy, but 'system restores' don't appear to be in that category.)  I do regular backups, and yet I still find that there were things I did not have -- for example, a current set of email addresses for my friends.  Not to mention, emails I sent, emails I saved.  Totally gone.

Software guys like to stash stuff in obscure places.  Their favorite is the APPDATA folder (which is, by the way, a hidden system folder; you have to say SHOW before you can see it and its contents), but there are others.  The data file for a database I use to keep track of stray info (Personal Knowbase; its really quite good) likes to put its file in one place but then stick a 'fake' file somewhere else, so that when you go to copy it -- there's nothing there!  And Calendarscope, my PC calender (also highly recommended); you can tell it to back up routinely, and it will - at the end of the day. But suppose you make a change at 2PM and you crash at 3PM - is that change saved anywhere?  Don't be silly.

Argh.  I would ask that software designers include backup and restore functions (other than the simple ones that many do have), but that'd get into the well, where shall we hide it, what shall we call it, hmm, do we really want to users to be able to get to it discussion.

And don't get me started on Window's 10s System File function, which LOOKS awesome and WORKS .... almost not at all. 

So, for anyone who is interested, here is my current list of backup actions I have to take routinely.  You will notice that some are incomplete -- I know I have to do them; I just don't.  At least, I am not sure.  Its all confusing, and thinking about it hurts my head.


Any software with a key goes into KNOWBASE/Software Licence Keys
Any friends email address goes into OUR EXCEL FILES / ADDRDB spreadsheet
Firefox bookmarks go into BILLS FILES/FIREFOX BOOKMARKS
Firefox Passwords go into BILLS FILES/FIREFOX PASSWORDS
BILLS FILES gets copied as part of overall data grab 
Thunderbird emails, folders, email addresses, profiles, message classification  rules go to ??????????
Calendarscope ACTIVE file is in BILL FILES/CALENDARSCOPE DATA FILE
CALENDARSCOPE BACKUPS go to CALENDARSCOPE CLOUD
KNOWBASE DATA FILE GOES TO BILL FILES/KNOWBASE DATA FILES AND BACKUP
OUR EXCEL FILES  GOES TO...???????
EXCEL MACROS REPOSITORY GOES TO ???
WORD MACROS REPOSITORY GOES TO ????

Oh, and my Network Attached Storage device?  The My Cloud?  Its really quite nice, but every so often....Windows says NAS?  What NAS? NETWORK PATH NOT FOUND.  A few minutes later oh, there it is!

This is why French flummoxes me

This is a headline from the French version of Slate:

La démocratie américaine a encore beaucoup à nous apprendre

Translated directly, it is
The democracy american has still a lot to us to teach.

Or as we would say
American democracy still has a lot to teach us.

Took me five minutes to translate that one bitty sentence.....

And so....

Hillary will say I won.  And she did.

Bernie will say Close enough! And it was.  But not a win.

Cruz will say See, they all love me.  But they don't.  Yet.

And Trump will say It doesn't matter, I'm going on.  And he will.  And on, and on.



Ain't politics fun?

Reinstallation

I usually don't mind Windows 10.  But when I say yeah, do a system restore back to before your last critical update,  and Windows replies Oh yeah?  Well eat this -- REBOOT LOOP ERROR, so that I have to completely reinstall Windows (easy to do, since the PC has a Recovery Partition, though why it felt it necessary to throw away parts or all of several applications, I have no idea) -- well, then, I'm not too fond of it.  Good thing I am retired, with lots of spare time.

As it turns out, having to reinstall windows is a (relatively) painless way of updating the applications that you use... and trashing the ones you don't. Still would not recommend it as a fun time activity, though.

And for those people who say that you don't really need a CD copy of the software, because hey, you can just download it, right?  -- just about everything went right back in *except* the one that was acquired via streaming download. I'll probably end up buying it again. (It's Quicken, whose idea of customer service leaves a lot to be desired.) So, yeah. You need the CD.

Conundrum

Do you vote for the candidate whom you honestly like the best and think would be the best for the country, or for the candidate whom you honestly think has the best chance of winning in the general election?

Don't Tell Him

"Don't Tell Me" featuring Bernie Sanders from rodd perry on Vimeo.

Late Night

Lying in bed with the headsets on, listening again to the brief news article in French that's this week's homework.  Thinking There's no insanity in my family, I've got it all...

Pity That It's Only Digital

Speaking, Sure. Understanding? Ummm.....

For the last two weeks, I've been working with a French teacher to improve my ability to understand spoken French, particularly rapidly spoken French.  I can understand, if the other person speaks at a moderate pace, but if they speed up, or use vocabulary with which I'm unfamiliar, my comprehension goes way down.

Several people have told me that they learned to speak English simply by listening to English-language songs, repetitively.  I've found that hard to believe, and impossible to replicate.  I think that they probably do learn the rhythm of their new language,  and possibly some words,  but they don't know what they're saying.

KIRK: Spock, could the humpback's answer to this call be simulated?
SPOCK: The sounds, but not the language. We would be responding in gibberish.
- Star Trek IV

For example, a friend, in an email, used the phrase notre quatre, and though I knew those words ('our four'), it was only because I'd heard a similar phrase on a CD, played while a French friend was with me,  that I learned that notre quatre is a way of referring to all of the people in the speaker's family - in this case, four. Or, if you happen to listen to a song that's in French, and hear the word trois,  you'd reasonably assume that it is spelled as twah, or perhaps trwah, but you wouldn't have a clue that it means three.  You have no reference!

As part of this language work, I've been listening to very short -- perhaps forty seconds to a minute -- Youtube news articles, selected by my instructor, who listens to them and writes a very detailed script of what's been said.  For example, if the speaker hesitates while saying We need to address this problem, saying in fact We need, uh, to speak ab -- to address this problem, that's what my instructor writes.  As a result, I have a fighting shot of understanding when a given sound is just a hesitation or mispronunciation, and when it's actually part of a word. 

(Which reminds me of the joke about the actress who was going to try out for a role on Broadway where she'd be required to speak with a Swedish accent.  Not being happy with her ability to emulate that accent, she hit upon the idea of routinely going to a local cafe where the cook was Swedish.  She'd linger over coffee, just listening to him speak. When the time came for the audition, she performed flawlessly.  At the end, the director said That was really great, you really nailed that accent.  But, tell me -- why'd you do it with a lisp?)

Sometimes my ability to understand French is like that. I kind of get it -- and then I don't.

But I'm working on it. 

Cooking Follies

As a rule of thumb, having your mixer's rubber gasket fall into the chopped chocolate and get blended in is a somewhat discouraging event.

Learning

I am never going to understand rapidly spoken French.  Ja-frickin-mais.  I should just accept it.

Being Blue

If you don't know the word 'blue', what color is her hair? 

Mortality

Found here.

Disappearing Fathers

by Faith Shearin 

Sometime after I turned forty the fathers from my childhood
began disappearing; they had heart attacks
during business dinners or while digging their shovels
into a late April snow. Some fathers began forgetting things:
their phone numbers, which neighborhoods belonged
to them, which houses. They had a shortness of breath,
the world’s air suddenly too thin, as if it came
from some other altitude. They were gone:
the fathers I had seen dissecting cars
in garages, the fathers with suits
and briefcases, the fathers who slipped down
rivers on fishing boats and the ones
who drank television and beer. Most of my friends
still had mothers but the fathers
were endangered, then extinct.
I was surprised, though I had always known
the ladies lasted longer; the fathers fooled me
with their toughness; I had been duped
by their jogging and heavy lifting, misled
by their strength when they slapped
me on the back or shook my hand. I kept imagining
I would see them again: out walking their dogs
on the roads near my childhood house,
lighting cigars on their porches, waving to me
from their canoes while I waited on shore.

Blacked

It's always nice when my daughter comes home, always a bit sad when she leaves.

When she announces prior to departure that the Tivo remote control that she'd carried upstairs seems to be missing,  but she's positive that she didn't pack it with her stuff..... mixed feelings.

Why are the things you are prone to losing always black? Keys, wallet, remote control....

Voting

Unless he makes an incredible faux pas between now and the presidential primary, I think I'm going to vote for Bernie. Its the flip side of my vote not really counting -- why not spend it on someone whom I really like? And I like his attitudes much better than Hillary's -- the more I hear of her past, the more I think that she is lying about significant items. ( Which appears to be a requirement for national political office held for more than, say, six months - you just naturally fall into lying, obfuscation, and *well, you really have to understand* oblique explanations.... I know that the world is not nearly as simple as I would like to think, and there are times when you really do have to take them on faith -- but lately, it seems to happen a LOT. I don't like that. ) 

I know that Bernie is very weak on foreign policy. Further, I know that his election would severely shock lots of businesses, who will take the economic equivilent of those people who stock up on guns, every time there is a shooting -- *well, Sanders MIGHT impose draconican taxes, so we'd better move our businesses to Bolivia NOW rather than in six months!* Still, I prefer his attitudes to those of people who are quite comfortable with private jets and secret handshakes. His first impulses seem to be along the lines of *what's best for the most people?* Businesses have legions of lobbyists and bought-and-paid-for politicians. Maybe we should have Bernie on our side, just to balance the scales.

Voting for a Republican isn't out of the question -- but it has to be an intelligent, insightful, thoughtful person. Yeah.  Good luck with that.

Pithivier

My life is complete -- I now know what a pithivier is.   Even if it is pronounced pee tee vee ay, it looks like it should be pronounced like something that Yosemite Sam would say!

Politics

I was amazed by Paul Ryan's admission that he was wrong to refer to people as 'makers and takers', and that in fact while some people do prefer to live on the dole, most do not.  I still am not fond of him, but his comments raised my opinion of him.

I happened to see his comments shortly before coming across this phrase, here:
"I am not a supporter of the minimum wage. I believe it is better to start at a lower wage and get lots of raises for good performance rather than have everyone start at a higher wage. I do not support the minimum wage because it doesn't help with poverty and instead hurts people that it is supposed to help. I'd rather start at a job where my wage is a bit low but I know I can get raise through hard work and exceptional performance than one where my wage is essentially set in stone no matter how hard I work."

I think the speaker is honest; I also think he's wrong.  To hope for an increased wage based on performance is reasonable; to hope to get to a livable wage based on performance -- and not just performance but exceptional performance -- is wrong, because it means the employer is accepting that people are not being paid enough to live, and that they have to do exceptionally well to get a raise.  Most people don't do exceptionally well -- thats why we call it exceptional -- so most people won't be paid a livable wage.

But even if the 'exceptional' in that quote is just hyperbole, like the people who describe everything they like as outstanding and superb, it's still wrong, because a higher wage does help with poverty.  How can that hurt?  (If a way is found, I'd like to see some CEOs stop hurting themselves, and slash their own salaries.  I won't hold my breath.)

Parties

From a New York Times article about the election:

“The Republican Party has never done anything for the working man like me, even though we’ve voted Republican for years,” said Leo Martin, a 62-year-old machinist from Newport, N.H., who attended Mr. Trump’s Claremont rally. “This election is the first in my life where we can change what it means to be a Republican.”

Do something for the working man?  Perhaps it means that he should be a Democrat...

Observation

Is it weird that I feel sorry for her?

Reaction

Of course the GOP will challenge Obama's leadership (granted, mostly symbolic) in gun control.  They think unfettered gun ownership is more important than keeping your kids alive.

These are the same people who are violently against a government that can give aid in a disaster - until its their state that needs aid.  But they're not entirely hypocritical: they're still willing to vote against aid for other states.

GOP.  Genuinely Outrageous Politicians -- and proud of it.

Well....SHI...P !

This Christmas, I shipped gifts (pastries, mostly) from a French pastry company (Pierre Hermé) to eight French friends and one Italian friend.  The Italian one was extremely expensive; I didn't notice at the time, and when I did, it was too late to cancel. (I have a hunch it had something to do with crossing the border; if I ship something to Canada, the price goes way up, too.)   The French ones cost about 32 Euros each.  I was tickled by the idea -- look how cosmopolitan I am, with all these French friends  -- and didn't do the math.  One shipment was about $35.  Eight shipments was....hum.

So I thought well, hell, I like to bake, home made is best (maybe....), why not bake stuff and mail it? Cut the shipment costs way down.  So I spent a little time looking at the Fed Ex, UPS, and USPS sites.

As a general statement, it appears that the minimum cost to ship a one pound box to France is about $6.00.... but thats just a guess.  The Post Office makes it hard to ask the question; their web site talks a lot about rules, guidelines, standards, and so forth; very little about what will one pound from here to there, cheapest rate, cost me?  The Fed Ex and UPS guys are clearer.... and cost about $40 a box.

Maybe next year I will just send a card...

EOY Comment

To all those who read this site, even if just occasionally:

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!  

May you have the happiest of all possible New Years, tomorrow and forever. 

Patè à Choux

Piping

Having a piping bag blow off its coupler, thus spreading under-pressure dough everywhere, is dramatic but not actually as much fun as one might expect.

Fud

One of the delights of having your child home for Christmas break is finding that our kitchen, and the foods we cook for dinner, are no match for the array of foods available at the college cafeteria. It's not reallly a fair fight -- her school has been recognized as having superior meals for the students - but, still, the comparison gripes me, a bit.

In keeping with the season, though, I restrain myself from pointing out that in six months, she will probably be living on her own, and able to cook whatever she wants.  Assuming she has the time.  Or eat out whenever she wants.  Assuming she has the money.

Ho, Ho, Ho !

Reaction - ary

I don't usually read the Physics website, because most of physics is beyond me, but this article was intriguing, and not just because I thought it was intuitively obvious.

Liberals' attitudes toward Muslims and immigrants became more like those of conservatives following the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, new research shows. Data from two nationally representative surveys of British citizens revealed that feelings of national loyalty increased and endorsement of equality decreased among political liberals following the terrorist attack.

 

Yup.  I believe that.

Liberals' attitudes toward Muslims and immigrants became more like those of conservatives following the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, new research shows. Data from two nationally representative surveys of British citizens revealed that feelings of national loyalty increased and endorsement of equality decreased among political liberals following the terrorist attack.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-terrorism-liberals.html#jCp

Liberals' attitudes toward Muslims and immigrants became more like those of conservatives following the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, new research shows. Data from two nationally representative surveys of British citizens revealed that feelings of national loyalty increased and endorsement of equality decreased among political liberals following the terrorist attack.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-terrorism-liberals.html#jCp

Differences

A man was arrested about five miles from here for supporting ISIS.  He commented about how easy it was to buy weapons in Pennsylvania.

The far right sees his arrest as reason to buy more weapons.

I see it as a reason to restrict weapons sales.



We will never agree, will we?

Supporting

I was told by a friend, about two weeks ago,  that she had discovered she had genital herpes.  I had assumed that this was the result of having sex, but apparently no, you can actually get it by the luck of the draw.  Which makes me want to requisition a case of those blue poly gloves that lab techs use. Or maybe just a full-body environment suit.

Anyway, she told me today of an irritating event that had occurred on a date, relative to her condition. During the conversation,  I discovered something.  I really don't know how to say I'm sorry that you were on a date with a guy which went south because he was poking around in your stuff when he shouldn't have,  found out that you have herpes, and he freaked out. Sometimes, words fail me. I want to be supportive, but I don't know how, in this case,  without sounding - I don't know, creepy.

So I just said the core message -- that I was sorry that this had happened to her.  Because I am.  But I wish that I could have done more.  She's a good person, and she deserved better.

Écoles

I guess I do have a thing about France.  I just did a search on Google Images for Écoles Primaire Municipales, and was charmed by the pictures of all the little French kids.  I know, pictures of little kids are almost always charming, but these seemed somehow special.  Go figure.

Get the chopper!

Observation: the words "crystalized ginger" and "finely chopped" should not appear near each other in a recipe. That way lies madness. And gunked-up knives, choppers, and food processors.

French Milk

Reading French Milk, a graphic novel by a woman detailing a month that she spent in Paris.  The title comes from her fondness for the French milk, which always tastes fresher to her.  A lot of the book is about her visits to museums, particularly graphic arts museums, but much is we found this cute little store that sold all these great pens, and we found this place that is stocked to the ceiling with all of this kitchen stuff, we bought an oyster-opener,  and we walked through the gardens, they were really nice even though it was freezing out.  And I think Why is it that when I go to Paris, I never find these cute little stores?  Part of it is because I'm not a shopping fiend, but still.... I once told a French friend that I never even saw a boulangerie in Paris, and he was amazed. Are you sure that you were in Paris? he asked.  Sometimes, I wonder.....

Watch Out!

They want you to grow up!

BM

This is an example of why I really don't get people's fascination with Bill Murray.  Nice vest, though.

Responses

How does one determine what's a decent response when someone thinks that their situation (their class, their gender, their country) is in dire straits, and begs/insists on/demands resolution/recompense, and you think that the situation is unfortunate, but not more? 

The response will be moderated by multiple factors - am I of that class, that gender, that country- and more, but it should start with compassion, a sense of fairness.  Probably won't, though. We can't relate. My stubbed toe is more important to me than your country's famine.  We exhaust the pool of compassion pretty quickly.

Language

I think that my capacity to learn languages -- to improve my ability to understand spoken French, to speak, let alone understand, Italian -- and to use them is dropping.  I am not sure why, but it's a depressing thought.

It's just harder than it was, five years ago.  Words don't stick.  (Okay, some: I'll probably always remember C'est quoi, cette merde? But most, not).  Its not as much fun to learn new phrases.  Even the one that a correspondant told me the other day, saying I knew you would like this  -- which was, I think, Je te renverrai l'ascenseur, which means literally I'll send the elevator back for you, and effectively I'll pay you back for this appreciated action  -- doesn't quite stick.  I like the idea, but the actual phrase, I'm not sure I will remember in one month, two months.  Let alone be able to work into a conversation.

I hope I'm not getting stupider.

Endings

Ah, Discord's Apple.  You were going so well, right up to the last few pages.  Great plot.  Intriguing characters. Inventive devices. Hey, when I finish this one, I should find more by this author.

And then, right at the end,  something amazing happened.  That plot that you spent the last hundred pages on, the one that kept me turning the pages?  Gone. Those characters?  Mostly gone.  Their world? Vanished.  Something magical happened.

I know it's tough to be an author, but has the concept of a satisfying conclusion evaded you?

Latest

After the San Bernadino shooting, when the people who did it were revealed to have stocks of guns, pipe bombs, and remote control bombs, for the first time I thought What kind of people just happen to have heavy weaponry, terrorist-type, available?  Maybe people like Trump are right.  Maybe we should round these people up and deport them. 

I don't want to believe that.  But I don't want to die, either.  

See Plus?

I got this from a French conversation partner who is working on his accreditation in the C++ language.  His question:  what's wrong with this?


#include

int voyelle (char *ChLue, char *Voyelle, int *nbV);
int voyelle (char *ChLue, char *Voyelle, int *nbV)
    {
        int i=0;
        printf("%s",Voyelle);
        while(ChLue[i]!='\0')
        {
            i++;
        }
        return i;


    }
int main(void)
    {
    char ChLue[256],Voyelle[6]="AEIOUY";
    int nbV=0,nbcaractere=0;
    printf("saisir une chaine de caractere");
    scanf("%255s",ChLue);
    //printf("%s",Voyelle);
    nbcaractere=voyelle (ChLue,Voyelle,&nbV);
    printf("%d\n",nbcaractere);
    return 0;
    }




Ummm......

Certainty

How I know that this actually is my daughter:  When she said that she was looking for something to read, and we pointed out the box of books by her desk, she said No, that's the box of books I already read but I don't want to throw away.  And then she pivots and looks under the desk. Oh, here's the ones I haven't read yet!

Calling Captain Obvious....

Colorado Springs Shooting Suspect's Ramblings Suggest Animosity Toward Planned Parenthood, Sources Say

Can you keep a secret?

There are always people who can defend what seems to me to be indefensible; reject what seems to me to be obviously desirable. 

I read recently of a technique to convince people whose political philosophy is opposed to yours to nonetheless support positions which you support – even if those positions are inimical to their own.  Basically, you frame the question in such a way that it echoes things that they already believe in.  For example, to convince a gun freak that registration of gun owners is a good thing, you might say that this is a method of eliminating the argument of anti-gun forces that nobody knows who owns guns, so they should all be removed from the general population’s control.  You frame this position as a way of pre-emptively weakening the opposing side.  

The people who promote this don’t seem to care if you actually believe what you say or not.  The goal is to win the argument.

What brought this to mind was an article I read on the question of strong encryption.  Several politicians think that encryption methods should have back-doors so that law enforcement can get access to the encrypted communications of terrorists and criminals.   

This section got my attention:

“People who protect liberty have to take care not to imply, much less acknowledge, that the draconian anti-liberty measures advocated by the surveillance state crowd are justified, tactically or morally, no matter what the circumstances. Someday a terrorist will be known to have used strong encryption, and the right response will be: “Yes, they did, and we still have to protect strong encryption, because weakening it will make things worse.”

That “and the right response will be” gets me, because I don’t think that you can say that in advance.  I think there will be times when encryption should remain inviolate, and there will be times when we will want law enforcement to be able to break it.  The problem is that we don’t know in advance.  The cops don’t like the idea of having to ask for access each time.  I don’t like the idea of the cops having unfettered access to secrets, because I distrust their integrity.  

People who use phrases like and the right response will be are not primarily interested in the objective  truth.  They just want to win the argument. In this case, I think we want both -- security, but trustworthy security. We want to be able to trust the cops, but their actions lead us to think that we need protection from them, too. 

I believe that the 'authorities' know much more about the real world than I do.  But what do you do when you don't trust them?

Attitude

Sometimes I think that I am a bit of a snob because I prefer,  and am willing to pay for,  hotels which delight.  Hotels which deliver a quality product.  As in --

- rooms that have sufficient acoustic insulation so that all one hears from people passing in the hall is a quiet murmur.

- restaurants with actual food, linens, and utensils.  I like a bowl of Froot Loops as much as the next person, but watching underpaid workers have to hustle to feed the masses is distressing, as is watching said masses showing up in pajamas.

- check in staff who know that the word is 'you', not 'yuhz'.

Good thing I don't have money, or I really would be a snob.

Thinking about Syria

I read an article this morning about Syria, and how it became a hotbed of terrorism (which apparently describes Belgium, too.  Belgium!) It made me wonder when it is okay for a nation to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation. Who gets to decide?

And then I think Man, thats so awfully liberal of you....

thoughts

Trying to get restarted, with Italian, with French, with making menus, doing shopping.  But the memory of my daughter's travail hangs on..... and the idea of international terrorism sucks the air out of the room. I just want to huddle in bed.

Hoping that there are people who are smarter and more compassionate than me, running things.  Smarter, probably. More compassionate... compassionate at all to those who aren't like them.... kind of doubt it.

I want simple answers, and answers at all are thin on the ground. 

Its over

Her appeal was granted.  She gets to stay in the Corps.

She also gets every single punishment that the cadets who actually did something wrong got.  Every single one.  Because, you know, she lied.

It appears that what nailed her was her desire to tell the whole story, which lead her to write a second explanatory statement, which lead them to say that the first was therefore a lie.  Apparently, their standard for statements is not 'truthful and complete', but just 'truthful'.  Leave out whatever you want. She told the full truth, and got nailed for it.

But she got what she wanted.  She's still in the Corps.

Hurray.  

Ring!

Oh joy. I'm now getting spam calls on my cell phone.

Still Waiting

Its not fair to say that, really.  She just turned in her appeal last night.  It will be at least a day, and possibly a week, until she hears whether the emperor gave a thumbs up or a thumbs down.  But when have they been fair in all of this?

One decent thing has happened, though.  Three different people have written to the emperor -- sorry, the commandant -- to say that she's a decent person, she's the kind of person we need, she's always gone above and beyond.  Two comments in particular struck me -- one, from a fellow cadet, one of the senior cadet-commanders, saying You always tell us that this is a training environment where we can make mistakes without affecting our lives.  And one from an actual officer,  saying I know this person, she's good, energetic, works all the time for the betterment of the corps.  I stand by her. And We can't let rigid adherence to rules make this a place where we are afraid to fail.

Neither sentiment is black and white, and the question of whether she acted exactly in the desired manner is black and white.  So perhaps these responses won't count for much in the results of things.

But finding out that her leaders, her compatriots - they think well of her -- that counts for me.

Waiting

And now we wait - again; this time, for the appeal to be lodged and reviewed - to see how deeply the insanity goes, in the Corps of Cadets.

Insanity

The Corps of Cadets Honor Court at my daughter's school recommended that she be expelled from the Corps.

Her sin?  When she wrote a statement of what happened during her roommates contravention of the Corps rules, she skipped over that she helped her roommates make a bed on the floor for the guys who were staying there past legal hours.  The next day, realizing that she should have included that, she amended her report to indicate that she had done that.

The Corps calls that initial omission 'lying on an official document'.  Not tolerable for someone who's going to be an officer.  Except, she's not.  She's in the civilian track. Everyone I've talked to says yeah, she'll get punished, but nothing serious.

Right. 

My disgust with the Corps knows no bounds. I imagine they're deeply concerned about that.

Perceptions

I really want to take the Republican candidates seriously, especially since there is a chance that one of them could win it all - even Trump.  I think oh surely NOT, then I look at Silvio Berlusconi and think oh crap. Amuse the masses, make them feel as if only they get you, you're their pal, their defense against the nameless terrors,  and they'll elect you. They'll give you the keys. It's been done. 

So I really want to take them seriously.  I don't want to just despise them reflexively, I want to honestly look at them, evaluate them.

But they're such idiots and liars!

FWP

That stands for First World Problems, of which I am about to describe one.  Normally I would be secretive about this, but one of the advantages of having very few readers of this blog -- I don't look at stats, but I would be surprised if it was more than five people, routinely - is that I can admit to being a FWP holder.

Here's the problem components, in no specific order --

Neither I nor my wife like vacations that keep us away from home for more than about 15 days. 10 is better, but longer is okay if we don't have to change a lot. Because -

Neither of us like vacations of any length that require us to change lodging frequently, defined informally as two days out of three, three days out of five, that kind of thing. We go somewhere, we pretty much want to stay there.

I want to go to France to see people that I know in Lille, Paris, Burgundy, Toulouse, Villelaure, Aix-en-Provence, and Nice.  Thats seven locations. The first three are in the north and middle of France; the other four are in the south.

I want to go to Italy to see a person I know who lives in the north; also, to a town in the center which is the ancestral home of some of my wife's relatives; and to Rome.  Thats three locations. One in northern Italy (not too far from southern France), and two in central Italy.

So as a rough counting, its ten locations, which means that  if we changed locations every other day, that a total of 20 days.  But of course we would want to be in Paris and in Rome for more than one day each, and the same is true for a couple of other places.  Say, 4 or 5 days in Paris, and 3 or 4 days in Rome, and 2 or 3 in other places.  Thats about 28 days, which if you're keeping track is about twice as long as we like to be away from home. Plus, for half the trip, maybe a little more, its a series of show up/stay a day/leave.  Something like five places in a row.  Unpack/do the tourist thing/pack. Which in turn argues for a shorter trip.

We''re contemplating breaking it into two trips.  Keeps the length manageable.  Does nothing for the staccato stuff in the south of France, and adds a second round trip flight from the US.  Ugh.

We're contemplating renting an apartment in central France and staying in it for three weeks, with field trips, which kind of works -- but still, this is travel from the north of France to central Italy.  Short of having a Lear Jet at our disposal, there's a lot of travel time involved. We would spend as much time away from it as in it.  Plus, we'd still have to pay for hotels. AND the apartment.  Ugh.

I know, its a nice problem to have.  But it is a problem. A First World Problem.

Daisy Owl Is Tricky

Needed

A handcart, which I will need so that I can move.  Because, arrived yesterday -

- six packages of Wolfermans Muffins
- two bottles of Wolfermans Ice Cream Sauce


and today:

- one box of Williams-Sonoma frozen almond croissants.

Plus, there's a recipe for New York Style pizza dough I've been wanting to try -- even bought some Double-Oh flour for it.  So there's that.

Oh, and a larger belt, I'll need that, too......

Printers, Redux

When young, we laugh at older people for their pathetically naive view of how technology works.  Grandma, you don't have to turn off the TV to use your new phone!

Then we look up How to get an offline-printer back on line, and the first suggestion is Turn it off and back on.  Which is what Grandma would do, even though clearly all you need to do is reboot the PC, apply some patches, change your sharing options, remove some other devices, update the drivers, and do the little dance.

Clearly.

Today

Interesting day.  Where Interesting means okay can we start today again?

Cat has taken to puking on a routine basis. What they say is true:  the sound most likely to get you out of a comfortable bed quickly is that of a cat hurking on the carpet.

Rocket Italian is doing okay, but it does seem aimed at people who don't pick up things quickly.  Though in a couple of lessons, I might be saying slow down, slow down!  If I haven't ditched it, that is. 

Woke up in the middle of the night thinking about authority in student-led organizations.  I've never understood how things like that are supposed to work.  When I was my daughter's age, I was in a military training organization where the bulk of daily activities were run by three levels of student leadership - the 'green ropes', responsible for one flight of about 20 people; the 'yellow ropes', responsible for three or four flights, and the 'red rope', responsible for the organization overall.  It seemed to work reasonably well, but after whats going on with my daughter, where the thing she fears most -- the thing which is still not resolved, after more than a month -- is run by students,  I wonder: where does student authority come from?  Where do they get trained?  How do they get judged? All of this did not occur to me back then -- they just were -- but now, I wonder.  In training organizations where the average course was 8 months long before departure, how could any "student leader" get enough experience to be any good?


Of course, I would not be thinking about this if my daughter was not still waiting to find out if the Corps 'Honor Court" is going to kick her out of the corps (for something that I think is significant but hardly worthy of expulsion).  And seeing her academic performance dropping because she is so fixated on this.  In her last year of college, when she should be thinking about looking for jobs, filling out resumes, all of that. Though I try to reassure her, its an uphill climb.

Her college is a decent school, and the Corps of Cadets is a good organization.  My daughter adores both of them. But the Corps' sluggish performance in resolving this imbroglio hasn't found any fans in me. Waiting for them to get off the stick is tormenting my daughter, and I can do nothing about it.

Getting Rocketed

Mildly bummed.  After looking at several sources for an Italian course, I finally settled on Rocket Languages Italian, as it has numerous high recommendations from people who've tried other places.  Of course, they always compare it to Rosetta Stone, which has apparently not improved its interface or its style for years, and to DuoLingo, which is good but incomplete.  I also tried people's personal efforts, being impressed with 30 Minute Italian -- only to find that while the content was good, the author had the tendency to say OMG during my last trip to the south of Italy it was just so gorgeous, you have to go. So, I took the plunge with RLI.

Well.  It's possible that I don't understand how to use their site.  But here's what I sent off to them after four hours, off and on, there --

I just started today, and I have a number of questions.  Most relate to Rocket Italian, very first lessons. Overall, this is a very rocky start!

1) The Rocket Italian first lesson seems to have a typo -- it asks for AND YOU in the informal tense (e tu), but E LEI and CIAO are also shown as acceptable.  Surely not!  (note: E LEI does mean 'and you', but in the formal tense, while CIAO means 'hello' or 'goodbye')

2) Trying to left click or double click an icon (see it, hear it, write it, etc) does not work -- I have to right click OPEN LINK AS NEW WINDOW to get the options to work. Is that normal?

3) The Playback (to hear my own recording) button disappeared halfway through the second lesson -- (still there but grayed out and nonselectable) Is that intentional?

4) How many words do you have to do on each section?  I keep doing them until I get tired, but there is no indication of when a section is 'done'.

5) How does the score counter work?  Mine went past 900, then I scrolled backwards to see what the scroll did, realized it was showing me yesterday (I bought the package today), scrolled back, and suddenly it was about 347.  What?

6) how can you tell what your current lesson is? I would expect that there's a 'latest lesson you've done' indicator, but I don't see one. Does one exist?

I'm hoping they have reasonable and quick responses. Otherwise, I'll be seeing how well their guaranteed refund if not satisfied works.

Books

Reading The heart and the fist : the education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL.  Recommended by my daughter.   Intense.  Not at all what I expected. (The book, not my daughter.)

Printers

Skydiving without having personally checked your chute first is nothing.  You want to demonstrate fearlessness, go ahead and delete your printer drivers as the HP software suggests, and then see whether the new drivers can even be installed, let alone actually work.

Traveling

It appears that if you tell your daughter, who's driving 5 hours to get home, if you get tired, call us, and we will come and get you, she will take you up on it when a combination of a long day, construction, and heavy traffic means she is starting to get sleepy half way home.  When we arrived at her stopping point in a semi-isolated gas station, she hugged me, and she said -- three times -- on the drive home with her mother that she really appreciated our arrival.

It also appears that if her location is two hours away, that means you have to travel two hours to get there -- well, duh, of course -- as well as two more hours to get home.  Oh, yeah.

Which means that if you've left the house at 930 PM, you won't get home until about 130AM. 

Which is on the seriously late side for the one of you that still has to get up in the morning in order to get to work.

Ooops.

Sarah

I just found this in my repository of saved images.  I wonder what happened to her?  Stupidity shouldn't destroy your life....

Republicans, Techology, and My Daughter

You almost have to feel sorry for the Republicans.  But then you have to feel sorry for the rest of us, too.  Their lead guy said that he's quitting, and now their guaranteed shoo-in replacement says he has gotten so much pressure already from their radical don't care we we burn the building down wing, he doesn't want the job any more. He needs their votes to get the position, and felt that the position just was not worth the grief. Of course, the radicals don't care -- they are perfectly willing to shut down the goverment, just to get their way.  In fact, that would probably be desirable, to them.  The Wall Street Journal today said it's a battle between ideological purity and proving that you can govern.  They offered Newt Gingrich's Congress as proof that you can't have both - you need to be able to compromise. Otherwise, you fail. Of course, when the House (or Senate) fails, so does Congress.  The problem is that the radical conservatives absolutely despise the success that the liberals have had - eg, Obamacare, the Iran deal - and would give anything to undo it.  Well, except a plausible plan for governing.

I like the looks of the Microsoft Surface book.  Was fascinating to read a tech guru saying well of course you want an improved laptop, all that talk about Everyone will want a tablet was CLEARLY bushwah.  Um, yeah.  Clearly.  We're contemplating replacing our desktop -- which is still happily, if slowly, running Windows XP - and the idea of getting something with laptop ease of use and the ability to occasionally use it as a tablet is quite nice.  The initial comments have been uniformly positive.  Can't wait to see what people say about it after they have played with it for a while.  And you know that it will come loaded with Junkware.  I mean, tools to enhance your computing experience. 

This afternoon my daughter meets with the review board for the Corps of Cadets.  It turns out now that the Honor Court will also get involved, though it's vague exactly how -- on the one hand, a Corps staff officer will 'adjudicate all charges', which sounds like he will say Guilty or Not for each of them; on the other, if (their word) the Honor Court is involved, they will do a review and issue recommendations  So what I think will happen, and what actually will happen, are probably congruent but not identical.  We drove down to see my daughter yesterday, and had breakfast with her today.  She's cheerful but tense.  Four more hours....

Uptick

Things with my daughter are guardedly better.

First off, she requested and got an immediate transfer to a new room.  Things were getting toxic with her roommate -- not hate-and-vitriol toxic, but 'getting snarky texts' toxic.  She actually wasn't sure she wanted to move, but when the roommate sent a text asking, snarkily, why didn't you tell me that you are moving to a different room - which hadn't been yet decided (though it was mentioned), she decided I have to get out of here.  Which happened that very night.  She is now in a room with the fourth roommate -- the one who informed on them.  They are both happy.  The change in my daughter's voice was amazing.

Second, I asked for opinions from the mother of one of the other cadets -- but not just any mother of any cadet;  this one had been the administrator of the Facebook page for parents of kids in the cadet group, and her son had been the highest-ranking cadet in the corps before he graduated.  I figured if anyone would understand, yet hold up the corps of cadets viewpoint, she would.  She told me that yes, it was serious, but she doubted any lasting damage would be done to my daughter -- which means, nothing that will keep her from graduating with the corps. (She told me that she knew of one cadet, last year, who decided to bring alcohol into the dorm, and was informed two days before graduation that he would not be graduating with the corps of cadets - with his class, yes, but with the corps, no - which meant he would not be getting a commission, which meant he would not be going into the military.  Enjoy your life, kid.  My daughter did not bring in or use alcohol, but the others involved in this fandango did.)

Third, another cadet was talking to a member of the corps staff who happens to know my daughter fairly well.  The staff member made an offhand remark that there would be repercussions for my daughter, but he doubted that they would be serious.  The cadet happens to be friends with my daughter's boyfriend, so the word was passed pretty quickly.

Of course, it ain't over till it's over.... but things aren't quite as gloomy as they were two days ago.