Doughnut Oblongs

I found this excellent recipe for Doughnuts at the Indyfoodie blogspot. The batter took about eight minutes to mix up, which gave the fryer time to heat and the butter to melt, and then it was about three minutes until the first batch was ready. They're quite good.

1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon melted butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cup flour
---------------
oil for frying
1/2 cup sugar for coating


Mix all ingredients and pour by teaspoonful into a few inches of hot oil. Just do a few at a time. When they are ready to turn over they will start to flip on their own...some may need a little help. These should be cooked till they are a nice dark brown. Remove from oil and place on a paper towel. While they are still hot drop them in a paper bag that has 1/2 cup of sugar in it. Shake them around till they are well coated. Eat them hot as that's when they are the best!

Burn before Reading

This email explains, better than I could, what fascinates me about people and security at my company. The email comes from a person who is responsible for keeping track of security-related things we're supposed to be doing. (I've altered the email somewhat to disguise what exactly is being requested.)

The requirements for changing the master password on your systems has changed. The passwords need to change every 186 days but there is no longer a requirement to track this task.

Would the Primary on each system please enter the command to change the password.

Please send a note to your self and keep it for audit purposes just in case it is needed in the future.


So as I read that -- we don't have to track doing it any more, but we should track it just in case we change our minds later....

Another One

Another slow day -- slow enough for me to watch about half of these videos; they're pretty good. My favorite? 405, about three quarters down the list.

The day didn't start out too well -- I was grumpy, my toe hurts where I had at it with two knives and a mirror, one of our circuit breakers popped for unknown reason, the daughteroid seemed to think it was our fault that she couldn't find her shoes (I think she was ticked, herself,because I grumpily pointed out the mess she'd left downstairs, last night) -- but it got better. Now I'm just bored. But I know better than to suggest to my group's manager that I'm bored -- he's the sort to cheerfully say Great, I've been looking for someone to help the auditors!

PPR

One of the blogs that I have listed over there on the left has a message that it is suspending publication for a while. The author says that she needs time to evaluate her life so as to find out why things are generally dark and unsatisfying for her. I was a little surprised to see it, because, though this person's blog generally has notes about why she seems to have great difficulty in finding a partner/mate/friend, I didn't get the sense that things were desperate. Now, apparently, they are, and she wants to take time to herself to figure out why, and what she can do about it. I felt sad for this person, and I hope that she can bring herself to a point of happiness, or at least one of contentment.

When I was writing the post about the person who works with me getting terminated, I wrote an earlier version that I then retracted, wherein I mentioned that I often have great difficulty in empathizing with people. Not with my wife; I care a great deal about her, and I care a great deal about my daughter. But as for others - yes, I find it tough. Somehow I tend to see what happens to other people as abstract. I can recognize that it -- whatever 'it' is -- is painful or unsettling, and I am sorry for them, but my empathy doesn't go much further than that. Its as if they are the classic 'people in a typhoon on the other side of the world'. I'm sorry about their problems; okay, time to turn the page. I don't know why. I think of myself as a caring person, but it might be more accurate to say that I am careful about whom I care about. I don't commit to other people, as a rule. I don't even visit relatives very often, or urge them to visit us. They're there; we're here; that's fine. I don't feel that I need them. I envy people who do have close-knit families, even as I shudder slightly at the idea of being close to anyone else. I don't know why that is.

I'm surprised, sometimes, at how open I can be in this blog (I think its a function of being unknown, though there are three people who read it on occasion who do know who I am, but even there, we've never met or talked, and only occasionally exchanged emails). And even with that openness, I sometimes remove or redact what I've written, because its too open. On the other hand, this forum does give me the chance to think about things that I think are useful for me -- even if its boring to those who might read it. What a self-absorbed idiot!

Oh, and that title? It stands for Pan-Pan Response, a reference to the title of that blogger's post.

Keith Olbermann

I had heard of Keith Olbermann's speech, but this was the first that I'd actually seen it. I knew, from what I read, that it was an amazing speech, but I did not know how powerful, how disconcerting it was.

If you have the nerve -- I almost wimped out, halfway through -- watch it.

Seeing What's Not There

Now this is a novel use of technology.

The Iraq Insurgency for Beginners

This is the most lucid description of who, what, when, where, and why that I've seen -- anywhere. It is from the online magazine Salon.

The Iraq insurgency for beginners

A leading expert on the insurgency clarifies who is shooting whom in Iraq, the growing power of al-Qaida, the influence of Iran, and the only thing left for the U.S. to do.

By Kevin Berger

Mar. 02, 2007 | For somebody in America, Evan Kohlmann has a remarkably intimate view of the Iraq insurgency. In 2004, he founded GlobalTerrorAlert.com, a clearinghouse of virtually every communiqué -- video, audio, Internet, printed -- issued by insurgent groups in Iraq. For three years, Kohlmann has pored through every one of them, with the help of Arabic translators, and emerged with a clear-eyed view of who is fighting whom in Iraq and why. Given his insights, Kohlmann has been put to work as a consultant by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA.

(For the remainder of this article, go here.)

Camo'ed

I'm not sure if I posted this before -- I've seen this in multiple places, and always smiled when I did. The most recent was here.

Geekin'

I'm somewhat of a garden variety geek, and I like system monitors -- things that tell me what the system is doing. Doesn't even matter which system -- normally its the mainframe computer system that I work on, but PC level ones are cool, too. I delight in page after page of data, even as I am bewildered by page after page of data. I have this basic belief that this stuff is understandable; that the monitor will tell me what is happening, and that, if I pursue it long enough, I will understand it.

One excellent, and free, tool is Process Monitor, from a company called SysInternals, now part of Microsoft. This page describes it and other utilities. They install easily and are simple to use (though not, I admit, to understand.) Another is PSSHUTDOWN, which I used via a shortcut from the desktop to put this laptop into standby. It's a small thing that saves me the three-step standby process.

I think its useful and occasionally fascinating stuff.

Nice Job!

I recently read an article whose message was that telling kids 'nice job' or 'you're smart' when they succeed at something is counterproductive. The idea is that the child picks up the feeling that they achieved the goal not because they tried, or worked hard, but "because they are smart"; therefore, they gain the impression that they have a certain amount of ability, that this amount of ability is greater (perhaps) than other that of other children, but that this is an all-or-nothing deal -- they can't learn to do things that they can't do now, simply by applying effort to it. The brains they've got are the brains they've got. If they can't do something, they'll never be able to do it, because their 'level of smartness' isn't extensible. They can't 'get smarter'. You've got brown hair! You've got ten toes! You're smart! None of those can be changed. Where they are is where they are. Therefore, the article says, if you praise a child, it should be done in a task-directed manner. Don't say 'good job!'; say 'you stacked those blocks really well'. Don't say 'you're fast'; say 'I like the way you conserved your strength until the last lap and then poured it on while the others were tiring'.

I think that both styles are needed. I believe that praise focuses attention. People like being praised, and they will work to achieve more of it. (Okay, its got to be meaningful praise -- you wouldn't say "you're smart" in quite the same way to someone who's just won the Nobel Prize in Biochemistry-- and its got to come from someone whose praise you value.) But generalized raise by itself is not enough -- the general humour with which people view the attitudes of Californians toward 'feeling good about yourself' reflects the general belief that feeling good is not enough; you've got to do. The feeling is a good bedrock, but it is not achievement. You've got to think you can achieve, but you've also got to think that you can do the specific thing thats keeping you from the higher level of achievement. It's that latter need which is addressed by task-oriented praise.

When I was in high school, I was poor in anything related to math. (This, of course, makes me unique.) I was of the impression, though I never put it into words, that if I could not reach a certain level of achievement; then I could not reach it, any more than I could levitate up three feet by trying really, really hard. Although the primary cause of my poor performance was me, it was also that attitude. If you had asked me if I was trying hard, I would have said yes, I was -- and I was -- with the same effect as that levitation attempt. The effort I was putting into it was not productive, because I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to focus; I didn't know what to focus on. People told me all the time that I was smart, but that didn't help when it came to specifics. I needed to be shown, and, when I occasionally did succeed, I needed specific 'good job' praise for trying and achieving. Both were needed.

It seems like a simple concept now, but it surely wasn't then. Now I can praise myself (when I remember). And who knows? Maybe someday I'll finally understand what the heck that math geek instructor was talking about with his 'polar coordinates', about which, the only thought I would consistently have was 'Isn't that the directions to Santa's house?'

I see that you've read this whole post. Good job!

Sony Baloney

Is it just me, or does anyone else require a translator to get this stuff?

"The Sony BRAVIA KDL-46V3000 LCD HDTV ($TBA; Summer 2007) delivers a full HD 1080p picture, and features high-end tech like Live Color Creation with a WCG-CCFL backlight, BRAVIA Engine EX, BRAVIA Theatre Sync, and HDMI, PC and component inputs."

Sleepy Friday

Work has been very, very slow of late. I have cleaned up everything that was waiting to be done, and I've still had enough time to do web surfing. I don't normally do that at work, but this has been exceptional -- I've not had this little to do for two years. I'm working from home today, and the most productive I've been is baking some chocolate chip cookies -- where I discovered to my distress that a) the recipe I posted here neglected to mention to add the egg, oil, and vanilla (they were in the ingredients, but not in the steps) , and b) we were just about out of flour -- I used the last of it on these cookies. For anyone who used that recipe -- I apologise for the oversight.

One of the people with whom I work was terminated today. He first learned about it two days ago. The motivation was, as it so often is, cost; the company did not want to pay for his time. Given the convoluted structure of this organization, its not exactly clear who made the decision; the local manager denies it, and said he had tried to find an alternative; the contractor organization through which his services were hired was unlikely to have instituted it; the customer for whom we work could not have done it; and the group that he's part of couldn't have, either. Clearly, someone made the decision, and I suppose that if you followed the money, you'd find out who. In a sense, though, that's immaterial. Companies have the right to organize their affairs so as to keep costs down. I don't like it, and I don't like being aware that I could be arbitrarily axed, but its a way of life.

I am glad that due to our own financial prudence over the years, I am able to retire, should I choose, at any point. I don't particularly want to do ; I like most of what I do, and I like earning money. Yet retirement would give me the chance to try working in some other areas. There are two things that I'm thinking about: I'm going to be a reading mentor at a local school, and I'm going to maintain the web site for a local political organisation. But what else? A couple of things. I want to work on my photography. To my surprise, though I really enjoy our little digital camera, it hasn't felt the same as the photography I've done with my Canon AE-1. I found that I missed the heft of it (even as I delighted in its ability to take exceptional shots in dim rooms, or zoom in from very far away indeed). I see so much good work on Flickr that I find myself thinking: Can I do that? Do I have that level of skill? And I want to try. I am not sure how I'd do it --Hey, mister, can I take your picture?-- but it's something that I'd like to do. HTML. Bake. Take photographs. That all sounds good to me.

Of course, our financial health makes that easy for me to say. I mentioned that I am financially secure, and thats mostly true. The only thing that keeps it from being entirely true is that no one knows what phenomenal medical bill lies around the corner. Ever since I was stunned to see the amount that it cost to have my shoulder repaired, I have been more sensitive to the costs of medical practice. I know this is not a new topic; its not new to me, either, but I find that I think about it more often. So when I say that I am financially secure, I mean: assuming there are no surprise medical bills that decimate our savings, that force us out of the comfortable middle class lives we have and into the margins. Do I think thats possible? Yes. Probable? Who knows? But that aside -- we're secure. And thats a very calming thought.

In fact, when we reached The Magic Number, I was a little surprised to realize that I was not giddy with delight. I had always assumed that I would be. This was a goal that I frankly did not think we would reach for at least another year and a half; possibly never. I had joked that if I looked at Quicken, and we were fairly close to TMN, I would fudge the numbers -- rate the value of the stock higher, something. And yet all it took was two months of this year's phenomenal stock market (and even ignoring the startling behavior of a few days ago, it's been phenomenal for the longest time) for us to reach it. I looked at it for a moment, and I thought Well, that's it. My wife had a better reaction: she went and found two small crystal cordial glasses, she pulled out a bottle of Carolyns Irish Cream, and we toasted each other. We have major expenses coming up which will force us down below TMN, but thats okay. Number one, the projection is that we will go back up again, and, in fact, will be there for an extended period. And Number two, its a goal, not a steady state. We did not expect or intend to always have that much money (nifty as it would be to do so). It was the apogee of our financial arc, so that as we retired, we would coast for a good long time. And so, barring medical expenses, we shall.

"Sergeant, engage CYA Mode Alfa !"

From the Army Times:

Walter Reed patients told to keep quiet

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Feb 28, 2007 10:42:37 EST

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training.

Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other problems in their quarters.

They were also told they would be moving out of Building 18 to Building 14 within the next couple of weeks. Building 14 is a barracks that houses the administrative offices for the Medical Hold Unit and was renovated in 2006. It’s also located on the Walter Reed Campus, where reporters must be escorted by public affairs personnel. Building 18 is located just off campus and is easy to access.

The soldiers said they were also told their first sergeant has been relieved of duty, and that all of their platoon sergeants have been moved to other positions at Walter Reed. And 120 permanent-duty soldiers are expected to arrive by mid-March to take control of the Medical Hold Unit, the soldiers said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Army public affairs did not respond to a request sent Sunday evening to verify the personnel changes.

The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: “It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,” referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.

Sex Talk

I just picked up my daughter from an after-school activity. On the way back, I was doing the usual 'how was school' interrogation, when she mentioned that they'd just had the annual sexuality discussion as part of PE. "You don't like that, do you?" I said, and she shook her head. It tends to gross her out. But I thought it would be a good idea to talk about it anyway, especially after she said that her teacher told them only about one in six families actually discuss sexuality with their child. My daughter observed that her mother had talked with her a bit, and given her some literature, but I thought that perhaps a bit more than that was called for, so we did talk a bit, me taking advantage of something I've read recently about how kids can find it easier to talk in the car when the parents attention is not -- cannot be -- focused on them.

Which is how I found myself listening as she talked to me about tampons.

I wasn't actively uneasy, thought I have (obviously) limited knowledge of these things. I did not object, or turn away -- that 'in the car' things works in both directions -- and I did listen with some interest (some pretended, I admit) when she told me that if you leave a tampon in too long, you can get sick and even die. She doesn't use them, she said; she can't get them in. Which kind of falls into the category of too much information, I think. But it did give me a chance to tell her my only tampon-related joke. She thought it was pretty funny.

Communication is a wonderful thing.

Naming

When we named our daughter, we gave the process a fair amount of thought. My initial offerings, which included Helen D (as in, Helen Damnation), didn't make the cut. Eventually, we picked a name that fit several criteria -- it was easy to say and spell, it was a common name but one that wasn't in vogue at the moment (we didn't want her to be Ashley #23, or Rebecca/Rebekka/Rebeccah, though as I think of it, I can't imagine why Chewbaccah didn't occur to me), and it had to sound good with our last name -- it's a short name, so almost anything would go with it. (In the movie 1941, a girl says to the charismatic bandleader 'Sam...tell me..your name isn't really Sam..is it? ' He smiles and shakes his head, No. "What is it, Sam? What's your real name?" He looks at her. "Raoul." She gasps. "Raoul! I knew it! I knew you couldn't have a name as ordinary as Sam! And your last name -- what is it? " He pauses. "Lipshitz.") As it happened, since the first name we picked was plain, we picked a somewhat grand middle name, so that if she even decided that she didn't like the first one, perhaps she'd just drop back to the middle one. An unexpected benefit was when I came up with a little rhyme that incorporated her name and the words 'brings me euphoria'; I would sing it to her sometimes when I did the 2AM walk, and as she grew older she learned it, so that if I would start the song, she'd finish it with a certain amount of glee, knowing, even before she knew what euphoria was, that this was about her, and that it was a Good Thing.

Names are cool. The Romulans say they're considerably more than that, that they evoke the very essence of the thing or person named, and I would bet there are sects on this planet who feel that way, too. I always assume a Colleen will be tall, with red hair (even though the only one I've ever known was short with black hair). Becky's are friendly, Kelly's are athletic, Barbara's are no-nonsense. When I met a woman named Priscilla at a Dallas bookstore, I told her that she was the first one I'd ever met. She said it was not a common name, and that she didn't like it. Oh, I told her, I've always thought that Priscilla's were willowy, gracious, and elegant. Yes, she said, straightening, that's me.

Me? Just call me Bill.

Questions

Sometimes I like to pose myself a question and try to come up with an answer. The question is usually something that I assume is answerable, but the answer isn't obvious. For example, this relatively famous photograph:


How would you retrieve the car so as to get it back on dry land with minimal damage to the car and the boat? What would you need? How would you get it in place?

Best I can think of is some kind of barge under it -- and even then, I'm not sure how I'd lower it down.

Child Raising

I was looking at this site, and a thought occured to me:

If a child is good in one subject, poor in another, do you give them extra help in the one where they're poor, or do you give them extra help to play to their strength in the first?

I'd think both, but I wonder if schools do.

Shivering Angst

I'm sitting in the kitchen, typing on my work laptop, the home laptop having become completely dejuiced by the daughteroid. And I'm feeling apprehensive. I realized a while back that when I am cold, I am more likely to worry; since outside it's snowing (better than inside, I suppose), the kitchen is chilly. I could go put on a sweater, but that would be logical.

I'm also a little apprehensive about the dental thing. This is, as someone or other would say, illogical; I believe that what I'm doing is right, and I believe its got a good (though not overwhelming) chance of success. What worries me is some of the ancillary stuff, like the bone graft -- will it hurt? Will it work? I know they'll give me Strong Drugs, but still: I worry. I'm also not really looking forward to the full upper plate denture that I'll have to wear while the upper jaw is healing from its various travails -- extraction, grafting, implant base insertions. I'm guessing I will have to wear it about six months. I can blithely say 'hey, if this doesn't work, fine, I'll just wear dentures, which is what I anticipated for years, given my dental health', but when it comes right down to it... I worry.

I need to calm down. Right now, I'm tense enough that I find myself getting paradoxically angry at the things which normally calm me, like reading. It takes too long to read, I growl to myself. Which I know is B-zar.

Maybe I should take a nap.

Standby

I know that Microsoft Windows XP is a massive amount of code.

I know that their problem answers have to be generally applicable.

But --

When I look up questions about Standby (my laptop has started only doing it when it damn well feels like it), and their answer is 'something is interfering with the systems ability to enter standby; find that thing and get rid of it', or words to that effect, I feel a little short changed in the diagnostic assistance department.

Heck my hunch about the problem -- that its doing an uninterruptable background task -- is more detailed than that!

Dancin'

I'm not a dancer, but tonight, I danced.

The occasion was a Father-Daughter dance held at the school where my daughter attends. It was open to anyone in the local school district, kindergarten through eighth grade, and there was quite a turnout -- I'd guess about 150 father/daughter pairs, with the girls ranging between five and fourteen years old. The people at our table were fun and interesting -- one was my daughter's best friend, one was a girl she'd known since preschool, and the last was a girl she apparently only knew slightly. That last one really impressed me; in addition to being quite cute, she had a terrific sense of humour -- very quick on the uptake, very dry. I was charmed, and wished to be fourteen again -- though if I were, I'd have been tongue tied and stuttering with the best of them. And not just because of her humor and intelligence; an amazing number of these girls were Clearly Not Kids. They weren't dressed to seduce, but they sure were dressed to impress. If I were that age, I'd have been stunned. As it was, I was quite impressed with their sense of style and color - and just a trace stunned.

The food was catered, and was pretty good; my daughter whacked away her mac and cheese and immediately went to scarf up three brownies, eating one on the way back to the table. As for the dancing, they did the electric slide, the cha cha slide, the twist, some basic rock n'roll, and some pieces better forgotten, though they did not do anything from Hannah Montana, to the ire of two of the girls at my table. My daughter was willing to dance with me -- in fact, came and got me for three of them, even if she did ditch me immediately once for her best friend -- and she had a good time, running back and forth, shrieking with laughter.

I'd do it again.