This past week I went to see a birds of prey presentation by Jonathan Wood of The Raptor Project.

Compared to the last couple of raptor presentations I've been to (both at Hawk Mountain), this one was much more of a retail bird *show*, rather than just a nature talk. Jonathan was not shy about setting up good photo ops and making everything up close & personal for the audience.

And the "personal" side didn't end there. Jonathan seems to bring equal parts naturalist, comedian, preacher, and political activist. Not your average science show & tell. In any case, he's very enthusiastic and has some amazing birds.

The Raptor Project is sponsored by Nikon, so when Jonathan saw my Canon camera, he came over and said "Here, let me show you something," and he led the Harris Hawk to fly right up to me, glide past my shoulder, and land behind me. I wasn't quite ready, so the bird flew right by before I had the shot set up.

"What's the matter, didn't get the shot? If you had a Nikon, you would have had the picture. OK, I'll give you and your Canon a second try."

Then he sent the bird up & back again, and this time I got it.

Many, many thanks to Jennifer, who told me about this event. I had a lot of fun, and got tons and tons of pictures at this 2-hour event. It was also a good learning experience with our new camera, trying to catch glimpses of fast-moving birds in low light indoors at night.

My favorite photo from that whole night was a shot of a white Gyrfalcon from Iceland, with a bald eagle in the background.

Now for next time, I just have to catch this same show outdoors, in daylight. :)

Last Monday was a holiday, so naturally I went down to Conowingo Dam to take pictures of bald eagles. It was my first day out with a new camera, so I was pretty excited to go.

It was a fairly quiet day, with only about a dozen eagles around, but there were some bursts of activity. Right when I was driving into the parking lot, I saw two eagles fighting over a fish in mid-air directly over the driveway. I knew it would all be over by the time I got the camera out, so I just sat there and enjoyed it while it was happening.

Later in the day, the main focus of attention was a nearby tree where two adult eagles were just standing around on adjacent branches. All of a sudden, one of them hopped over to where the other one was, and there was some squawking. Looks like another fight, but then, oh, no, that's not a fight. That's something else.

So there it is, my first ever photo of bald eagles mating in the wild.

I got some other pictures too, but that one was definitely the highlight of the day.

It's Saturday night, Valentine's Day. It's lightly snowing outside. I'm in my Neon, in the parking lot behind Cascata Caffe. This being perhaps the busiest night of the year for restaurants, the lot is packed, so I'm parked way back in a dark corner near the trash dumpsters. The Chicken Parmigiana is on the floor of the front seat, getting cold. It's about 8:30pm, and I've been trying for nearly an hour to get the car to start.

The remote starter is a tricky thing. It's a great convenience when I need to give the engine a little lead time to warm up before I get to the car, and also when I want to pop into a store for just a brief moment without cranking the starter an extra time, and without leaving keys in the car. But every once in a while, it adds an element of mystery where I really don't need any. Case in point, why won't the car start? Not with the key, not with the remote, not with various incantations that might activate or deactivate the remote, etc.

Kathy had gone off in a different direction to pick up dessert while I was out picking up dinner, so I call her, and she arrives, bringing the instruction manual for the remote starter. I try everything I can think of, but still no luck. No start.

I don't think it's the battery, but I've got jumper cables, so I try jump-starting from Kathy's car. Still no luck.

Just as I'm about to call a tow truck (which could entail sitting out here for another hour or two), Kathy prevails upon me to leave the car parked here overnight and sort it out in the morning. One problem: the car is not in a real parking spot, and it's blocking the trash. As we have already established that the car is not starting, this means we're talking about pushing the car. And I know that my 5-months-pregnant wife isn't going to be out pushing a car, but the alternative still leaves her at the steering wheel, which has no power steering when the engine is off. And I mentioned that it's starting to snow, right?

Commence 10 minutes or so of this sequence: set the emergency brake, set the steering wheel to the right direction, go around to the end of the car, have Kathy release the brake, push for a few steps, tell Kathy when to yank the emergency brake again, go turn the steering wheel again...

Fortunately, the car is on relatively level ground, so the pushing isn't too bad in either direction. Eventually, we get into the proper parking spot that has opened up right next to where I started.

So we're done for the night. It's looking bleak for the morning, but we've got to get past that. Kathy puts the car in park. She pulls at the ignition key, but it doesn't come out right away. "Oh well, it can't do any harm to give it one last try," she mumbles, as she gives the key a twist.

Crank. Vroom.

"Sonofa...", I mutter.

That was it. Car's fine after that.

I have a theory about how this happened. I think the gear shift (which has been a bit dodgy before) was just on the edge of park, and when the car thinks it's out of park, the starter won't crank at all. Not with the key, not with the remote, etc. But there's no visual display to explain that. I think the pushing of the car was only important in that it gave us a reason to shift out of park and then back into park, so this time the car really knew it was in park.

Or, to put it another way... I tried everything I could think of for over an hour, and the car wouldn't start; Kathy gave it one twist and it worked. I always knew she was made of magic.

Happy Valentine's Day.

I just finished listening to President Obama's inaugural address.

I'm not home, so I didn't watch it on TV (not yet, anyway, but I do have it recording at home). I thought I could watch it on streaming video over the Internet, so I didn't bother to bring a portable radio or anything to work.

But then the streaming video wasn't working. I'm not sure if it was overloaded at my end, overloaded on the server end, or something else, but the video stream kept cutting out over & over until it just wouldn't start up at all.

My old cell phone used to have an FM radio tuner built in, but my current one doesn't. The only radio I had nearby was the car stereo, but I wanted to stay at my desk, rather than sit out in the car for a half-hour in the middle of the work day.

The minutes were ticking by, and there wasn't time to go out and *buy* a radio (although I did ever-so-briefly consider it).

Eventually, I solved the problem.

I called from my desk phone to my cell phone and left it connected. I went outside & turned the car on (just to the Accessory position, not running the engine) and tuned the radio to NPR. I set the cell phone on speakerphone, and laid it on the front seat. I left the key in the ignition but locked the car doors with the remote control. I went back to my desk and put on my phone headset, and listened to the whole speech over the phone, with sound quality that I can only compare to a tinny old Depression-era radio.

At least I didn't have to miss the moment.

Yesterday Kathy, Bruce (who's visiting from London), and I had a day of exploring different images of America.

In the morning we went to Wilmington, Delaware, to see Barack Obama. The President-elect was on his way to Washington DC for his inauguration, so we stood out in the cold for a few hours to catch a glimpse of him on one of his train stops. We got there about an hour and a half before the announced start time for the event, and we had a much better view than I had expected. We were way up front in the crowd, but it was hard for me to tell from there quite how many people had piled in behind us.

A little boy standing next to us couldn't see any of the activity, so Bruce picked him up to give him a better view. The boy said he still didn't see Obama, but Bruce figures it was just because he thought all the people on stage were just boring adults.

After the Obama event, since we were already in Delaware, we drove another half-hour down to Maryland to watch some bald eagles at Conowingo Dam. It was cloudy and gray and cold, but it was my first successful attempt to drag other witnesses to Conowingo, so I was happy about that. We didn't stick around very long, but we got to see 4 good flyovers in the few minutes we were there (including 2 soaring low over the car as we drove over the dam - love that panoramic sunroof!).

After all those images of hope and majesty, we needed to achieve some balance, so (joined by Jose) we finished off the day by watching the downfall of a president in the movie "Frost/Nixon".

All in all, a very enjoyable day in America.

I've recently dug up a copy of my old web site from a decade ago, back before they were called blogs. I'll be adding some of those entries here, marked with the original dates of when I wrote them, but that means they won't show up on my front page. I'll use this update list to point out each time I add a new oldie.

Here's what I have so far:

* Juggled at the Inaugural Parade (1997-01-20)

I've often heard church-going friends of mine say that they were reluctant to put any overtly religious symbol (e.g., Jesus Fish) on their car, because it would add all this extra pressure to be a kind & courteous driver, to best represent their group.

I have felt similar pressure about our Obama yard sign. Elsewhere in our town, there are plenty of campaign signs (about 3-1 Obama over McCain), but on our quarter-mile stretch of road, ours is the only presidential sign at all. And our local polling place is in a building directly across the street from our house.

Thus it was that at 8:30 last night (3 hours past dark), I was still out in the yard, raking leaves, until the whole yard looked presentable. Have to display the sign with pride.

So if Obama wins Pennsylvania by a couple hundred votes, and it all traces back to 100% Obama votes in my little precinct, you'll know who's responsible.

You're welcome.

It's October 28. It's snowing. Something ain't right.

Speaking of people who recently resumed their blogs, it looks like Kim is back too. Cool...

Kathy has a new special blog all about the current presidential campaign. You can find it at http://obama.kathichelle.com/. So far she's covered war, religion, abortion, health care... you know, just some little stuff.

Check it out.

Back in May, Kathy & I took a trip to Hawaii, this time visiting the Big Island. It was somewhat quieter than Maui, and somewhat less lush & green than Kauai, but there was a lot to see, especially with wildlife and volcanoes. There were several excellent snorkeling spots, including one right next to our hotel, so we could just walk over with mask & fins and take a swim anytime.

As usual, I took tons of pictures (a little over 3,000 I think), and as usual, it's taking me forever to sort through them and post the keepers online. For now, I have a handful of photos (and one video) posted on Flickr, including turtles, eels, molten lava, and a rare Hawaiian Hawk (even thousands of miles from home, there's no escaping the hawk photos).

Besides the wildlife that we caught on camera, we also saw an endangered Nene (Hawaiian Goose) and a Hawaiian Owl, though we didn't get pictures of these (we sped past the Nene on the highway, and the owl flew across the road at night). It's definitely true what they say about Nenes grazing by the side of the road and nearly getting run over all the time.

For our trip, we had the mixed blessing of lots of volcanic activity at Kilauea (the only active volcano in Hawaii). The upside was that we got to see molten lava splashing & steaming at the ocean's edge. The downside was that the fumes were blowing everywhere, shutting down some areas of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (to avoid exposure to poisonous sulfur dioxide), and also casting a gray haze in the sky for almost the whole week that we were there. Breaks of blue skies were rare, but we definitely enjoyed them when they appeared.

It was definitely worth the trip, and there was plenty to see. But I think our next visit will be to either Oahu or Maui again.

Update (6/14/2008): I also posted a few more of the photos from our previous Hawaii trip in 2005. I'm sure I'll catch up eventually.

On the way home from work last Tuesday, I noticed one of our local red-tailed hawks was perched in its usual spot on top of a cellular phone antenna tower. I had been looking for another opportunity to try out the new telephoto extension on the camera, and the best test is to use it on a subject I've photographed before, to see how much closer I can get under similar conditions.

So, the same as I had done a couple of times last year, I drove into the parking lot near the antenna tower, snapped a few photos of the hawk perched on the antenna, and then more as the hawk got spooked & flew away. Fortunately, the flying away involved some circling around overhead first, so I had plenty of opportunities to take some in-flight shots.

The only downside was that it was cloudy and getting close to sunset when I did that last week. Then last night (another Tuesday), I saw the hawk was there again, on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, with vivid blue skies. The hawk followed much the same pattern again, taking off a few minutes after I arrived, but this time I had much better lighting, and more time for in-flight photos before the hawk disappeared beyond the tree line.

I put all the new photos in the existing Flickr set from when I visited the same spot about a year ago. You can tell that the recent ones toward the end turned out a lot better than the early ones from last year.

To celebrate primary election day in PA yesterday, I went back and took the Political Compass test again. It was so sad. Apparently, a year and a half of home ownership must be taking its toll on my "lower-left" principles - instead of being negative 9-point-something, I'm now barely negative 8-and-a-half on both axes:

Economic Left/Right: -8.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.56

For comparison, *all* of the credible presidential candidates for this year (even Dem ones) show up somewhere in the upper-right quadrant. The only Dem candidate (dispensing with the label "credible") who's with me on the lower-left is Dennis Kucinich, with roughly -2.5, -2.0. Next closest is John Edwards, at about +2.5, +1.5, giving me about a 10-point spread. Not too long after that is Obama, at about +3, +2.

Of course, at our office, Bruce is still the standard bearer, at -9.75, -9.79. If I believed in authority, I'd say he was one.

Here's what you do.

Catch a respiratory virus that gives you a persistent cough for 10 days (so far). And I mean persistent - I cannot overstate this point. Even after a full dose of NyQuil (or more), you should lie awake in bed for hours, unable to stop. Convulse with the effort of coughing out every last bit of your breath, then take a big gasping inhalation (sometimes only halfway in), before falling back into the next cascade of coughs. Repeat "n" times.

To slim down & better show off your abs, it would also help to accompany this with a sore throat that makes you completely uninterested in eating (or ideally, unable to do so).

I'm not saying that my plan is actually yielding any beneficial results, but hey, it's only day 10. And at least I have a plan.

This is getting ridiculous.

On our first anniversary, Kathy & I took a trip to Jamaica. We both got really sick, and had a miserable journey back home.

Then last year for our second anniversary, we stayed home in Philly. We had snow (in mid April), an overturned car in front of our house, and I again got sick from something I ate.

Our third anniversary is coming up in a few days. So far this week, I've had a sore throat (so bad that I would wake up out of a sound sleep just trying to swallow), a cough that's keeping me up all night & giving me muscle strains from the contortions, and just last night I added pinkeye to the mix.

Either I've got some bizarre curse, or I just happened to spend a whole afternoon with a toddler last weekend, and picked up every possible affliction that's going around at his daycare group.

I just found out tonight that Flickr now supports video clips as part of a photo set.

I'm starting with posting a video of the bald eagles, which I had originally posted on my own web server.

I'm sure I'll have more soon.

Almost exactly a year ago, I did some experiments with using Atom to replace the old RSS feed from this site, but I didn't actually put that into production until now.

Behold the new Atom feed, with all the delightful images, links, & formatting: http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-feed.xml.

Enjoy it in Firefox, Thunderbird, Bloglines, etc.

Update (3/7/2008): I changed the filename to not include "RSS" since it technically isn't RSS anymore.

As promised last week, I've now posted the wildlife photos from our Walkabout tour at You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary, two wildlife parks outside Melbourne.

This set includes all the koalas and kangaroos, as well as lots and lots of Australian birds.

Yet another bald eagle photo shoot.

I went to Conowingo Dam again last Monday (my 3rd visit so far). The weather was supposed to be Mostly Cloudy, but we ended up with blue skies for most of the day. A fog had just lifted when I arrived, and rain started falling just as I packed up to leave, but in between was mostly beautiful, warm weather.

This time I was using our own camera (instead of the one I borrowed last time). I was trying out a new telephoto extension for our camera, which gives some extra zoom and also collects more light, which makes it easier to get a quick, focused shot.

I didn't get so many overhead flight photos on this visit, but there was one particular spot, on a low branch in a nearby tree, where two different bald eagles posed for close-up shots. First an immature eagle was feasting on a fish there, and then an adult eagle bullied that young one away from the perch, and proceeded to stay there striking poses for over an hour.

Best of all, I happened to have the camera running in video mode right when the adult chased off the juvenile, so I got a video clip of the whole event.

All in all, a nice, satisfying visit.

I've finally gotten around to sorting through more of the Australia photos, so we now have the set from Melbourne. This includes a game of Australian Rules Football, a van tour around the city, a visit to the Immigration Museum, and some general wandering around town.

Next up, I should have some more of the wildlife photos from You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary soon. Update: Got 'em.

A couple of weeks ago, I went back to Conowingo Dam for more bald eagle photos.

This time it was pretty darn cold, and there wasn't much activity until the electric company turned on the generator at 4:30pm (thus churning out the free fish). By that time, the light was fading, all the other people had gone home, and I could barely feel my toes. Even so, I took about 400 of my 800 pictures just during that last hour or so at the end of the day.

The point of this trip was mostly to try out a different kind of camera, a Canon Digital Rebel borrowed from Jane. I think it went pretty well for my first day out with a DSLR, but there's still plenty left for me to learn.

Kathy's Giants are going to the Super Bowl. They tried to mess it up a few times (mostly fumbles and missed field goals), but finally managed to pull out the win.

Of course, this just means we can schedule additional heart attacks for the big game two weeks from today. Let's just hope it goes better than 2001.

My sister-in-law is an incredible chef, and I found out today that the restaurant where she works, Momofuku, was rated #1 Best New Restaurant in NYC by the New York Times. Hard to get better than that.

And here I thought the coolest thing about Jo was that the answer to "How are things at work?" includes the phrases "knife bag" and "squeeze-bottles of pork fat".

I mentioned in my earlier post about Hawk Mountain that we got to see a bunch of migrating birds of prey that day, but no eagles.

That omission has since been rectified.

We were talking to Dan, one of the volunteers at Hawk Mountain, about what we might see that day, and how we were really hoping for an eagle.

"Well, if you want to see bald eagles, you should really check out Conowingo Dam, especially in the winter."

So I did.

As it turns out, besides having arguably the best hawk migration site in all of North America (Hawk Mountain) just an hour and a half northwest of us, we also have arguably the best bald eagle site east of the Mississippi just an hour and a half southwest of us.

Conowingo Dam is in Maryland, just over the border from Pennsylvania, where US Route 1 crosses the Susquehanna River (the dam itself is also the bridge for US-1). The dam has a hydroelectric generator, and the water that passes through the generator brings fish along with it. The fish, often stunned from getting knocked around in the turbines, make an easy lunch for eagles & other birds on the downstream side. Also, the moderate climate here makes this a good destination (with a steady food supply) for migrating eagles from up north, so the eagle viewing gets even better in the winter.

Last Sunday, I went for a few hours, and I took some pictures.

This was in late October, as the migrant eagles from upstate New York are just beginning to arrive. In another month or two, it should *really* get good.

I've added two new sets of hawk photos on my Flickr account.

First, a couple of weeks ago, I went to pick Kathy up after work, and a huge red-tailed hawk swooped right over my head, carrying its dinner. I (along with a very patient Kathy) ended up hanging out there in the parking lot for about an hour & a half, taking tons & tons of pictures. Besides the pictures, I also got some of it on video.

Then, this past Saturday, Kathy & I went to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a little west of Allentown. They have a couple of good mountain lookouts right on the migration path of several species of raptors, including various hawks, falcons, and eagles. We got some pictures of the migration, and also some closer views of rescued birds (a great horned owl and a red-tailed hawk) back at the Visitors' Center.

We were at the North Lookout for about 2 hours, and must have seen at least 100 sharp-shinned hawks, a handful of red-tailed hawks, and the occasional osprey, Cooper's hawk, American kestrel, northern harrier, and northern goshawk. We also saw at least a dozen turkey vultures go by, but those looked more like local scavengers than migrators (looping around at low altitude, rather than cruising with definite direction & purpose).

The official count that day included 2 bald eagles & 1 golden eagle, but we didn't get to see those. Guess that just gives us reason to go back...

Kathy & I are recently back from a 3-week trip to Australia. We had a great time, and we have tons of pictures, but it'll probably take us a while to sort through the pictures & put them online.

For now, we have a quick photo preview from the first few days (outdoorsy stuff near Melbourne), and a more complete set of underwater pictures from snorkeling & scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef.

That set of underwater pictures contains about 135 photos, narrowed down from 900, and we still have another 1,800 land pictures to sort through. I'll post more as I have them ready.

In the meantime, back to catching up on 500 other things...

Early last year, Ice Breakers mints had a TV commercial featuring various people exclaiming "Whoa!" upon experiencing their "Ice Cubes" gum, in response to one actress's mocking question, "'Whoa'? Who says 'whoa'?" The key to the gag was the final one, a cameo by Joey Lawrence reprising his trademark "Whoa!" from the TV show "Blossom".

In what appears to be a slightly more subtle in-reference, French's mustard now has a commercial featuring a voice that sounds exactly like Didi Conn, saying "Food loves French's." Conn, you may recall, played Frenchy in the movie version of "Grease".

If that's not actually Didi Conn doing the voiceover, it sounds like a clever impersonation.

In Ocean's Thirteen, did anyone else notice Al Pacino's character quoting the Paul Anka "The Guys Get Shirts" rant?

"I move quick and when I do, I slice like a hammer."

It's that time once again. Time for me to exhort people to go and see a theatre production in Philadelphia that's about to close this weekend.

Last night Kathy & I went to see The Fantasticks at Mum Puppettheatre. It's an excellent show with a superb cast - they're not only technically skilled (great singing voices, very deft with the puppets, etc.), but also very expressive & just generally interesting to watch.

I don't want to dwell on the usual questions that people have on first hearing of Mum Puppettheatre, but just to clear a couple of things up... No, it's not a "puppet show" in the sense that you might be thinking. It's theatre. There are actors playing parts. Like most plays, there are props, costumes, and other devices that help tell the story. In some particular plays, the actors seem to have more self-awareness about these devices, and awareness of the audience. The nearest comparison I can think of is "Our Town", with the narrator directly addressing the audience and explaining the sparseness of props & set pieces. In this show, you're simultaneously aware of the puppet and the actor, and the character in most cases lives in the combination of the two. The puppets interact in their own scale, but it's also useful to watch the facial expressions and eye contact of the actors (much like communicating in sign language, where you're watching the face as well as the hands that are making signs).

Anyway, we had never seen Fantasticks before, so we weren't just comparing what's *different* about this production, but enjoying it on its own, and it was very enjoyable. Lots of laughing, lots of emotion, and really impressive execution on the technical side throughout the show.

Our main reason for going was because we knew one of the cast members, Dave Jadico (well, I knew him - Kathy just met him last night). Dave was hilarious & fascinating to watch in a variety of roles (sometimes 2 at a time), including "The Old Actor" & Mortimer (his tragic-death-expert sidekick), "The Mute", orchestra (on mini piano, ukulele, and mandolin), and general prop master. I especially enjoyed some of the physical comedy with his props and his puppet characters, including the Henry/Mortimer bit with the flashlight - a little improv moment that's funny, then it seems played out, then it goes on even longer so that it's funny again (a lot like the Sammy Davis Jr joke that I mentioned from Bomb-itty).

The rest of the cast was equally strong & compelling - the young couple in love, the parental machinations, the dashing El Gallo (played like a young Ricardo Montalban)... all excellent, and well worth the ticket price.

Speaking of the ticket price, it's normally $30, but if you mention this review from the Phillyist web site, you can get tickets for half price ($15). Not bad at all.

So, to sum up, if you're in Philly, and it's not yet past May 6, go see this show. If it's after that, you can still catch Dave on stage at ComedySportz on Saturday nights.

The plagues just keep on comin'...

Apparently this was a bad weekend for fires. First, early Sunday morning, near my sister's house in Oakland, a fuel tanker truck crashed & exploded into flames under an elevated highway, causing the roadway supports to melt & collapse. Nobody died in the crash nor in the collapse, and apparently the driver of the truck came out with only some moderate burns. That area will be a huge traffic mess for at least several months.

Then early this morning, a fire broke out at Eastern Market in Washington, DC, and basically gutted the place. About this time 7 years ago, I was in a production of No Exit on their stage at Market 5 Gallery. It was a great performance space, especially if you didn't mind some of the interesting smells of having portable toilets indoors. I don't know for sure if the fire hit this part of the building, but I'm guessing that the all-wood stage would probably be one of the first things to burn... :(

Update as of 5/1/2007: According to the Washington Post, the fire only destroyed the South part of the building (mostly food markets), but not the North part (art gallery & stage area): "The North Hall, where artists and craftsmakers set up shop, was spared."

Last week Kathy & I had our anniversary.

For our anniversary last year we took a trip to Jamaica, where we both got deathly ill, and Kathy had the worst part of it during the trip home, making for a thoroughly miserable bus ride, airport visit, and flight home.

This year, we're both pretty busy this month, so no time to take a trip. We decided instead to take a long weekend at home, and do lots of silly touristy stuff here in Philadelphia. But the curse nearly caught up with us anyway.

Day 1: Everything's just fine.

Friday night we had a fabulous dinner out at our favorite Melting Pot restaurant. Very lovely, and nothing went tragically wrong with that one.

Day 2: Start out running.

After a morning of lazing around the house and watching Charlie & Lola cartoons, our Saturday adventures began with the journey into Philadelphia. We wanted to go for maximum touristy flavor, so as we waited for the train into center city, we got out the camera and took pictures of sitting around at the train station. We got on the train and started moving.

"Hey hon, do you have the camera?"

"No, you had the camera. You mean...?"

Oh crap. Must've left the camera on the bench at the train station.

On a Saturday, these trains run about every 20 minutes. The stops are all about a half-mile apart. If we get out at the next station, we could probably walk/run back to our station, and (assuming the camera's still there) we could hop on the next train and still (barely) make it to our 3:00 tour in the city.

Start running. Or rather, jogging. Or rather, stumbling uphill in a slightly-faster-than-walking gait.

The first half of the journey back home is all uphill, for about a quarter-mile. Jogging & wheezing soon gave way to walking & wheezing, but we eventually got back to our starting point with about 10 minutes to spare.

I came to the bench where we'd been sitting. No camera.

A guy approaching the station sees me looking confusedly at the bench. "Did you leave a camera here?"

"Yes."

"We found it, and figured we'd hold onto it and put up a sign at the station, rather than just leave it lying around. We live in the first house right over here, and my wife was actually just in the process of making the sign. Hold on, I'll run back and get the camera."

He's carrying a folded-up baby stroller, and was visibly on his way to meet up with friends on the opposite platform, waiting for a train in the other direction. He jogs back up to his house, stroller still in hand. He's in the house for a minute, then comes back out with the camera.

He hands the camera to me and goes running off again, because by now his train has arrived and is waiting on the opposite platform. Fortunately his friends are over there to hold the train for him, but he still has to run down the path, through the tunnel under the tracks, and up the stairs on the other side, still carrying the stroller, to get to the train that's waiting there.

Way above & beyond the call for an act of neighborly goodwill.

So, friendly neighbor guy (I never did get his name) got on his train, and a few minutes later we got on our train (with a firm grip on the camera this time), and we continued on our mission. Gotta remember to write him a thank-you note...

Day 2, continued: Quack.

For the anchor day of our tourist weekend, we went for the ultimate cheesy tourist event, the Ride The Ducks tour, where you ride in an amphibious bus/boat, first around the streets of Old City Philadelphia and then down a stretch of the Delaware River. Upon boarding, you're issued a little plastic duck-call toy, and you're encouraged to quack on various occasions throughout the trip.

On cheese, it did not disappoint. Captain Fred can break out enough embarrassing puns & juvenile jokes to put any father of middle-school children to shame. I resisted the temptation to answer any of his riddles about "quacking up" or about exactly where the Declaration of Independence was signed ("At the bottom!"), but I finally gave in & answered the very last one on the drive back to the visitor center: "They had to build this brick wall around the cemetery. You know why they had to put up the wall?" "Because people were *dying* to get in!" I swear, I was Captain Fred's best friend after that. I'm not proud. :)

Day 2, continued some more: Poissons de poison.

After the tour, we wandered around center city for a bit, and ended up at Caribou Cafe for dinner. It's kind of a fancy place, but they were nice enough to let us in with our jeans & sneakers and no reservation, probably because it was still early, before the prime-time dinner crowd would arrive.

On the window of the restaurant, there's a sign for "Steak Frites, Escargots, Poissons". So we decided to get all 3. Escargot for an appetizer, then Kathy had the Steak Frites (steak & French fries, basically), and I got the featured special of fish. The waitress introduced it as "escolar", and when I asked what that was, she said it's also known as "Hawaiian butter fish" or "walu". It sounded interesting, and presented well. Everything was delicious.

For dessert, we went to Naked Chocolate Cafe for some very intense "drinking chocolate". Not so much like your average American hot cocoa, but more like a chocolate bar melted into a cup. About midway through my 6-ounce chocolate, I had the distinct sensation that I had drastically overdone something. It felt like the same reaction I have to cigar smoke. Very uncomfortable, and very much wanting to stop whatever it was that may have brought me to this place. So I left half of the chocolate, which is not at all like me.

My symptoms only got worse after we got home. I was fine after a couple of hours, but it wasn't until several days later that Kathy showed me where the Wikipedia page about escolar details the common "gastrointestinal symptoms following consumption". Apparently this is just a known feature of eating this fish, and yet restaurants seem to serve it, and suckers like me seem to eat it. Well, once, anyway. I think that's one that I'll remember to avoid from now on.

Day 3: Hey, I know that dude!

On Sunday, we headed back into Philadelphia for dinner and a show, but not in that order.

We had tickets to a 3pm matinee of "The Bomb-itty Of Errors" at 11th Hour Theatre Company. I hadn't heard of this group before, but this show was written by the same guys who did "Nerds://A Musical Software Satire", which Kathy & I both loved, so we were very psyched to see it.

On a Sunday afternoon, I'd expect a small, dead crowd, and on a Sunday afternoon under the flooding rains of a noreaster, I'd expect them even smaller & deader. So imagine my surprise when we came into a lively room of about 40-50 people, and I knew *two* of them.

Right after we sat down, Madi Distefano, the teacher of the acting class I'm taking, came and sat right in front of us. She was there with her daughter and some friends.

Then I was looking through the program for the show. The DJ (in the sound booth right next to our seats) looked vaguely familiar, even through big, dark sunglasses, a giant afro wig, and a hat. Then I read that this was, in fact, Mark Valenzuela, who was a few years behind me in college. We were in Nomadic Theatre together, and we acted together in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (coincidentally, another wacky adaptation of a Shakespeare play).

Who knew I was so plugged-in to the theatre scene in Philadelphia?

Oh, and if you have the chance, you should totally see Bomb-itty (it's here until April 29). It was excellent. Even my teacher said so. There was one part (a joke involving Sammy Davis Jr.) that had me laughing so hard I was gasping for breath for several minutes. Right up there with Little Miss Sunshine, in terms of the danger it posed to my health & safety. Go see it.

After that, a lovely dinner at Roy's. No ill effects from dinner this time, so I had all of my chocolate dessert plus half of Kathy's, trying to catch up. So after another anniversary dinner that couldn't be beat, we went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when things started to fall.

Day 4: Plagues & strange noises.

On Monday, Kathy & I had both taken the day off. It was going to be nice not to have my alarm clock go off at 5:30, but I awoke at 5:00 anyway.

I could swear I heard Kathy in the next room (or maybe downstairs, I wasn't sure) moving boxes around or looking for something in the closet. Just the sound of footsteps and some thumping around. But no, Kathy's right here. That's odd. The random thumping noises continued.

Now let's think about this rationally. No, it's not a burglar. These thumping noises are slow and not accompanied by any clattering or crashing like you'd expect if someone was moving in the dark in an unfamiliar space, or trying to get out in a hurry. But seriously, what the hell is that?

I knew we still had that storm moving through, but this didn't sound like rain, so I figured maybe a tree branch was hanging low and bumping into the house or something. Worst-case, maybe such a branch had poked a hole so a squirrel got in? Time to go take a look.

I checked the guest room, checked downstairs, checked the basement. No water getting in, no holes in the house, all good.

Finally, I looked outside.

Snow.

Big piles of wet, slushy snow. Here in the second half of April.

Mind you, we got married on this day a couple of years earlier, and had a beautiful sunny day of 70 degrees. But this year we had mounds of wet, slushy snow. It was apparently accumulating on the branches of the pine tree that towers over our house (directly above the guest room), then the high winds were blowing it loose in fist-sized clumps, which were thudding onto the roof.

The sound, as well as the incongruity of snow in late April, just kept reminding me of the scene from the movie Magnolia ("Exodus 8:2"), where frogs are raining down on everything. Of course, in the movie, they come crashing through the roofs of houses & cars, so I kept expecting the crashing noises to follow.

With all that, it took some time, but I eventually did get back to sleep until a more decent hour.

Day 4, continued: More strange noises.

Later in the day, the snow had mostly been washed away by rain, which then tapered off to just a light mist/drizzle by early afternoon. It was turning into a nicer, more peaceful day.

Around 3pm, when I was at the back of the house, I heard the noise of a sharp crash or snap outside. My mind instantly jumped to that giant pine tree towering over our house. The noise was big enough that I imagined it as the sound of the top 20 feet of the tree breaking off. Of course, if that were to happen, it would be followed closely by another big noise of the tree landing on something (possibly us). While half-expecting to hear that other shoe drop...

"Kathy, you OK?"

"Yeah."

"What was that?"

"I don't know."

"Sounded like it might have been a big tree or something."

"I'll look out front... Oh my God! Oh my God! There's a car, and it's upside-down!"

Indeed it was. Right in front of our house, on our moderately steep hill, slick from the rain, a car apparently swerved off the road, bounced off a low wall of loosely-piled stones in front of a neighbor's house, and rolled onto its roof.

Now, as a person who (A) used to be an EMT many years ago, and (B) once was in a similarly inverted car crash, I had sort of a unique sense of familiarity about this situation.

You're first on the scene. What do you do?

By the time I even got to the front door, Kathy was already on the phone calling 911. We ran outside to see what's going on, if anybody was trapped inside the car, etc.

Other than being upside-down, the car seemed mostly intact. It was still mostly holding its shape (not squashed down or anything), and there didn't seem to be any external danger (moving parts, fire, fuel leaks, etc.). Nobody had come out of the car yet, and it was pretty quiet, other than the horn that seemed to be stuck in the honk position.

The car hadn't hit anyone else, but there was another driver who happened to be coming up in the other direction, and saw the crash happen. She was now out of her car and coming to get a better look. She & I came around the driver's side of the crashed car, where the driver was in the process of untangling himself from a seatbelt and climbing out. He looked fine (other than a bit dazed), seemed to have no trouble moving, and he hadn't said anything. He was able to get out without much trouble in a matter of seconds.

We asked him if there was anyone else in his car. No.

We asked if he was OK, if anything was hurting. He's fine.

He kept pacing around, looking at the car, looking for the pack of cigarettes that had fallen out of his shirt pocket.

Usually in a car crash, the common injuries (which might go unnoticed) are head trauma and back/neck injuries, and all this walking around is not going to help him if he's got any of those. Kathy ran inside to get a chair, so we could have him sit down, away from the car and out of the road. One of our neighbors who's a doctor had walked over, and was asking the driver some questions to make sure he's OK.

All of that was within about the first 2 minutes and then the first of several police arrived. Pretty darn quick response time. Ambulance & fire truck similarly appeared within about 5 minutes.

As far as we could tell, the driver was completely uninjured. Not even a bad scrape or anything. Eventually, the towtruck crew got the car turned upright & hauled away, the ambulance & firefighters drove off, and the owner accompanied the towing crew back to base, while the main police officer followed along.

Looking at the street an hour later, you wouldn't have guessed the scene that was there a little while ago.

So anyway. A nice quiet weekend at home for our anniversary. We're just hoping for an *actually* quiet one next year.

I wasn't sure whether to go with the Matt O'Donnell reference or the Bonnie Tyler reference. I guess history will decide whether I made the right choice.

In any case, I've determined that I haven't yet figured out how to work all the manual controls on this camera in order to get a decent moon photo.

Tonight we had a total lunar eclipse, with the moon fully in Earth's shadow from about 5:45pm to a little after 7pm EST. From about 7:00 to about 8:00, as the sunlight was beginning to spread across the moon again, I was standing in a field under a sky of thin, fast-moving clouds, trying to snap a photo any time a gap would appear in the clouds.

This camera (Olympus C-770) is mostly a point-and-shoot, but it has 10x zoom, a decent built-in lens, and a bunch of optional manual controls (manual focus, aperture, shutter speed). I had the camera on a tripod on a park bench, and I tried to do all the manual settings that I've been reading about, but I still feel like the white light was coming out way too bright, so even on my best shot it's impossible to make out any detail other than a giant ball of light.

My ideal would be something more like this one on Wikipedia (also taken tonight), with visible dark & light areas on the surface of the moon. Perhaps that's a bit ambitious for not having an SLR camera with a fancy lens, but I'll keep trying. There's another lunar eclipse coming in August, so I have 5 months to practice on regular full moons and get my technique down. We'll see how that goes.

Update (3/5/2007): The first step on my journey - Bruce pointed out to me that by default Flickr shows EXIF information from the photo, including the camera model and the settings used. E.g., this page has search results for all photos tagged with "eclipse", taken with an Olympus C770. Hmm, some used the same settings I had...

A couple of years ago I hastily threw together an RSS feed for this web site, but I kept the format very sparse so that I wouldn't run into errors (no links, no text formatting tags). I'm now in the process of updating this from loosely-defined RSS standards to the more precise Atom standard.

My old RSS feed was at http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-rss-full.xml. My current test of the new Atom feed is at http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-rss-full4.xml. Once I settle all the formatting issues, I'll probably move over to another new filename to reflect that it's more Atom than RSS.

But for the moment, I'd just like to ask any of the people using RSS readers (Google Reader, Bloglines, Thunderbird, etc.) to let me know if the new test file works in the reader. Does it?

Update (3/3/2007): Another one to try, this time including images: http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-rss-full6.xml

On the local morning news here, Matt O'Donnell is one of the anchors. His sense of humor seems to have been honed at a fraternity or an all-boys high school, always full of snarky comments and especially innuendo for the blonde traffic/weather lady, Karen Rogers. His comments are easily the most compelling reason to watch the show, always walking that line between merely inappropriate and downright obscene. It's delightful to watch.

Sometimes it's just silly stuff like this, after a report on 6-foot-tall longstem roses at Valentine's day (paraphrased from memory):

"Bet you'd like one of those roses. / 6 feet? That would eclipse me. / Eclipsing is what I do best."

My favorite so far was earlier this week (unfortunately I didn't catch it on video), when one of the transitions back from commercial showed kids building a snowman on a slushy, muddy snow day. Matt's female co-anchor Tamala Edwards (who plays straight-man to Matt's clowning) made some throwaway comment about "That's got to be the dirtiest snowman I've ever seen." Unable to resist an easy target like that, Matt had to raise the ante: "But if it were a dirty, *naughty* snowman, Karen would be all over that, right, Karen?"

If anything ever happens to Matt, I have a feeling Karen's husband would be a prime suspect.

But anyway, today we had not one but *two* examples - the first one was facilitated by a teaser for a later story about pole dancing (almost too easy), but then the later one was completely out of the blue. And Karen seemed to play along with both, in that awkward way that makes it even worse.

Priceless.

Here's the video.

(Random aside: like my previous citation of bizarre segues on the local ABC news, this one also featured footage of an abused dog - perhaps that's an omen, my signal to fire up the Tivo?)

Last night Kathy & I went to see "Nerds://A Musical Software Satire" at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. It was awesome. We haven't laughed that hard since "Little Miss Sunshine".

It's only playing at this theater until next weekend (Feb 25), and the decent seats are not cheap, but even so, we're considering going back to see it again.

Part of the humor is a wealth of nerdy references - various computer things plus Star Wars, Star Trek, and other cultural icons - but even outside of that it's just hilarious, very energetic, and very well performed.

I don't want to spoil too much of the plot, but I do need to mention that there's a lightsaber battle onstage involving Bill Gates. If that statement alone elicits a positive reaction from you, then you'll like this show. If not, you're really missing out.

I should also mention that Kathy (who got these tickets for me as a surprise) also went the extra mile & booked us for a night when they had a "talk-back" session with the cast after the show. The actors all seem really great, and in particular Jim Poulos (playing Bill Gates) just seems like the nicest guy you'd ever meet. As we were leaving after the talk, other actors disappeared back to backstage, while Jim came out and continued chatting with audience members. When we got outside, we saw him waving down a taxi for an older woman from the audience who was having trouble getting around on the ice & snow on a cold night. Helluva guy.

If you go, you would do well to get seats downstairs, not in the balcony. We've sat in the balcony there before, and discovered that it can be a problem if your legs are more than 8 inches long. Besides, you want to be close enough to smell exactly what Steve Jobs is smoking in his scene with Woz. :)

Last night Kathy happened to turn on the TV right when ABC was doing a teaser for the upcoming news broadcast. It's a 10-second segment, and I would assume they tape these things at least a few minutes in advance, and yet this apparently got through:

"I'm Rob Jennings. Coming up tonight on Action News, new developments in the Anna Nicole paternity fight, it's called the worst case of animal abuse in recent memory."

Judging by the images on screen, it would appear that these were intended to be two separate stories, but I didn't watch the newscast, so I can't say that with absolute certainty.

I'm guessing that the teleprompter left out something important in the middle, such as "[Pause. Change gears. Perhaps insert a conjunction.]"

Everything I need to know about surreal musical collisions I learned from mall food-court background music.

Last night I was at the mall, sitting by the Sbarro's, when something caught my attention in the midst of the bland jazzy ballad that was playing.

No, I must have imagined it. Sometimes one's brain can subconsciously attach patterns & meaning to something just to try to recognize it, but... Wait, there it is again.

I needed a witness. So I called Pax.

"Quick musical question for you. To the best of your knowledge, did Tony Bennett ever do a cover of the Soundgarden song 'Black Hole Sun'?"

In my experience, those words had never been strung together in the same sentence before. But if this song was really out there, then perhaps that was my fault.

As it turns out, it wasn't Tony B, but Paul Anka. It's from his album "Rock Swings", full of similarly incongruous big-band covers of modern songs. And since we live in the age of iTunes, 5 minutes after learning that, I own a copy of it.

In looking up some details about Paul Anka on Wikipedia, I happened upon a link to "The Guys Get Shirts", a surreptitiously recorded, profanity-laced tirade that Anka once leveled at his musicians after a show. It's full of great lines like "When I move, I slice like a [bleep]in' hammer." Very funny stuff.

But even beyond all that, I think my favorite part was when I started listening to the album and heard track 1, the Bon Jovi song "It's My Life". Now, with all the Bon Jovi songs out there, why not go for an earlier, more iconic one like "Livin' On A Prayer" or "You Give Love A Bad Name"? Then he got to this couplet from the original Bon Jovi lyrics:

"My heart is like an open highway / Like Frankie said, I did it my way"

Except the Paul Anka version changed that second line slightly: "Frank said, he did it my way".

The main difference is just a pronoun, and it seems pretty subtle, but it's hugely important when you realize that Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way", was actually written by Paul Anka. Thus, "Frank said, he [Frank] did it my [Paul's] way."

He really does slice like a hammer. Or hit like a knife. Or whatever.

It was a long time coming. After 4 months in our new house, Kathy & I finally have books on bookcases. And there was much rejoicing.

The plan from the beginning (last fall) was to set up our 3 big bookcases on the sun porch at the front entrance of the house. Two problems: (1) the floor in that room is noticeably slanted; and (2) three of the four walls in that room had non-functional baseboard heating units, long since disconnected from the radiator system, taking up space along the wall (and providing shelter to unknown numbers of spiders). So, all we had to do was remove the baseboard heaters and level the floor, and then we could put up the bookcases.

Oh yeah, and also figure out how to attach something to a brick wall, so that the bookcase against that wall wouldn't topple over. So I guess that's 3 problems.

Bringing that plan to fruition (removing the baseboard heaters, cleaning & repainting the exposed wall paneling, caulking the gaps, installing baseboard molding, leveling the bookcases, and attaching various fixtures on wood & brick walls) took about 4 months. Most of the visible progress happened in the past 2 weeks, but the mental preparation was an important part of the process too.

Equally important was calling my sister about a dozen times, because she has more experience in these kinds of remodeling & demolition tasks.

But now we have the bookcases up, and the whole process is documented in pictures here.

The other day, I got an email message from someone who uses Yahoo Mail. Messages sent from Yahoo always have a little footer advertising something about their services, usually in about 15-20 words. Just 15-20 words, carefully chosen by marketing people and probably reviewed by dozens of employees before going into production, so you'd think it would be easy to spell those words correctly.

The footer this time:

"Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut."

I had a boss a while back who consistently wrote "take a peak" where he meant "peek" (or, more rarely, "peak one's curiosity"* instead of "pique"), and it always bothered me. But he couldn't afford a full-time copy editor. The folks at Yahoo have no excuse.

(*) At least the example of "peak one's curiosity" could be construed to convey the same meaning, if you take the alternate transitive verb meaning "to cause to come to a peak, point, or maximum". The "take a peak" expression is still just plain wrong, unless you actually mean that someone should steal the summit from something. And even then you'd say "from" instead of "at".

At about 9:00am yesterday I broke a tiny piece of my Dell laptop. I knocked off the tiny plastic pin that tells the computer when the lid is closed, so that it will shut off the backlight for the screen.

I contacted Dell tech support using the online chat.

I found a web site that linked to a Dell support page, which pointed me to the Service Manual explaining how to remove that plastic panel.

The tech support guy told me he would go ahead and sent out the replacement part (that whole plastic strip with the switch buttons attached). No charge.

The package from Dell arrived this morning. From my support chat yesterday morning, they sent out the part from Houston, TX, yesterday afternoon, and it arrived here in Philly at 9:00 this morning.

Dayum.

It's now installed and working fine. Less than 24 hours in a broken state (which wasn't *tragically* broken anyway), and no cost to me.

That's some good support.

Wonder how good it will be in another couple of weeks, after I pass the 1-year warranty period... :)

Yikes. Almost 3 months since that last post. Here's the quick version of what's been going on the last few months:

* August-September: We bought the house, which has been great.

* October-November: We had our niece & nephew staying with us for a while. Lots of fun, but very exhausting, and we postponed a lot of the unpacking and setup tasks at the house.

* December: As usual, mostly one big stampede from Thanksgiving (in California) to Christmas (in Florida). In the midst of all that, most of my time at work was consumed by multiple levels of SOX audits - questionnaires, audit meetings, system changes, all TOP PRIORITY, and all in service of making my reporting system *less* streamlined... oh, what fun.

* January: Starting to emerge from boxes in our house, while also gearing up for Rick & Vicki's wedding next week.

Then comes the serious unpacking. And posting many more of my photos on Flickr. And maybe a month or more of not flying anywhere. And time for our Philadelphia Renaissance, aided by our new neighbor the Railbus. All good stuff.

We saw this car on the highway yesterday with a scrolling LED text bar built into the license-plate frame. Apparently it's this "License Plate Flash Frame", with programmable messages for the person behind you. This one was advertising to get recruits for the PA Air National Guard, which operates at the nearby base in Willow Grove.

I guess I missed my chance to wow the world with the communication system I was talking about back in 2003 and 2004.

Not the cave crickets from my previous post. This time it's Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs, which recently invaded our soon-to-be-former apartment. We regularly have 1 or 2 of these showing up (crawling in through a window screen that's not properly sealed), but they seem to arrive in droves around this time each year, just as the weather is beginning to get cooler. Apparently they seek out a warm place to hide out for the winter, and they give a scent signal that others follow to come to the same place. So when you have one, you'll often have many more a short time later.

Anyway, yesterday we had a full-on invasion. Kathy was working from home, and she managed to catch about 25-30 of them by the time I got home, and then I caught another 10 or so. As with the cave-cricket thing, we have a whole technique for this (originally developed for a wasp in the house, so we wouldn't have to smash it or set it loose):

1. Trap the bug in a small glass.
2. Where one would normally slide a card under the glass, we use a CD in a paper sleeve - it keeps a rigid flat shape better than cardboard.
3. Put the glass & CD in the freezer.
4. When the bug is frozen dead, dump it into a holding tank with previous catches (another glass or a tupperware container).

Normally, step 5 is to dump them in the toilet, or outside, or something like that.

But this time, Kathy was curious just what the heck was up with these crazy bugs, because we hadn't heard of other people getting infestations like this. It turns out this is a relatively new invasive species, which came over from eastern Asia less than 10 years ago, and started spreading through eastern Pennsylvania in the past few years. Biologists at Cornell and Rutgers are studying the spread of these bugs (which are a major pest for fruit & vegetable farms), and even asking for samples.

Last night I emailed the Cornell guy, Rick Hoebeke, about our catch, including individual and group photos. He wrote back that he wants them:

-------------------
Thanks for your message regarding the sighting of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug in your home. Can you do me a big favor? Can you send a bunch of these specimens (dead in among crumpled tissues in a crush-proof box) to me for an ongoing molecular study of this invasive stink bug? We need specimens from around the NE for extracting DNA (best when bugs have been recently killed by freezing). Please also include your full address and date of collection! They can be sent to my business address under my signature (see below). Please send by First Class or FedEx.

I thank you in advance for this courtesy.

E. R. Hoebeke
-------------------

We'll be mailing those out tomorrow. My only regret is that I have but 35-40 bugs to give for my country.

* All instances of the singular possessive adjective shall be assumed to include the plural, and vice versa.

If you've never encountered a cave cricket (a.k.a. "camel cricket"), you might not know how to react when you first see one up close. You'd probably be a bit grossed out. The big ones have peanut-sized (or even cashew-sized) bodies, with lanky legs more than 2 inches long.

But if you see one in the garage of a house that you're about to buy, and then notice there's a cluster of 50-100 of them the day *after* you buy the house, and see them hopping haphazardly off the floor, walls, and ceiling (they especially like the ceiling), your required reaction is pretty obvious - What the ___ are these things, and how do I get rid of them?

Then you'd look them up on Wikipedia and find a few more references via Google, and you'd mostly learn that they love damp, dark places (e.g., our garage), and that the most effective natural predator is the equally unpleasant-looking house centipede.

If you're into poisons, you could try spraying insecticides, but a few sources say that common pesticides are only *partly* effective on these guys. If, like me, you're *not* into poisons, you'd probably be reluctant to spray stuff on the ceiling, where (A) pesticide would waft through some cracks & crevices to the main house upstairs, and (B) the poison will drip back down onto you whenever there's some condensation on the ceiling.

So how to get rid of the creepy-crawly menace? Enter the Shop Vac, my new best friend.

Vacuuming bugs is a time-honored practice, but what do you do once you've caught them in the vacuum? If they're still alive, you don't want to handle them, and if they're dead, their guts might gum up the works of the vacuum. That's where the "wet" part of "wet/dry vac" comes in handy.

1. Set up the shop vac in "wet" mode (i.e., no paper filter inside).
2. Fill the vac bucket part-way (I did about 4 inches deep) with water.
3. Put a long extension and a pointy tip on the end of the vac hose.
4. Vacuum every living (or dead) creepy-crawly thing you see.
5. Just to be sure, vacuum up some water after the bugs to make sure they've all been doused (have this pool of water ready beforehand).
6. Turn off the vacuum, open it, and dump the contents outside.
7. Rinse the vac innards with a hose as necessary.

Naturally, you should only vacuum up things that are safe to dump outside (e.g., bugs & spider webs, but not household trash, construction debris, etc). If all goes according to plan, everything you vacuumed should now be dead (either from the impact or from drowning), so you shouldn't have to worry about angry bugs taking their vengenance on you. If you're worried anyway, you can dump the contents farther from the house to prevent recidivism, but I really doubt there will be any - mine were all thoroughly dead.

I did this on Saturday, and then another round on Sunday to pick up some stragglers who hid out during the Saturday attack. I think there are still some few survivors, but compared to the infestation we had before, it's a tremendous improvement. Almost ready to let the other bug move in...

I feel like I've been way behind on blogging, so here's the main news: Kathy & I bought a house. We had our closing in late August, and we're officially moving in next week - there was a lot to do in between.

The house is just in the next town over from our apartment, so we're still in the same area.

I'll probably be writing a lot more about the whole process, but I just wanted to get the basic facts out first.

What could be cooler than a rock band with three cellos? How about a rock band with three cellos and a song named "Trogdor"?

Meet Break of Reality.

Oh, and speaking of Trogdor, his nemesis Kerik was in the news this week too: "Kerik now a criminal" and "NY jail ditches former top cop Kerik's name".

I don't know quite how or when the controversy first arose, but a couple of friends & I have long been uncertain about the correct pronunciation of Jeremy Piven's last name. We knew him mostly as the sidekick in a bunch of John Cusack movies, and somehow we had only ever seen his name in print, but hadn't heard it pronounced authoritatively. The two candidates were:

1) "PIE-vin" - long "i", follows the general pattern of long vowel sound before consonant-"e"

2) "PIV-in" - short "i", rhymes with "driven", which shares the same combination of letters

Either one seemed reasonable & logical, but for whatever reason, I found myself favoring (and defending) option #1.

Well, last night Jeremy was on The Tonight Show, and they pretty well laid the issue to rest. The announcer, host Jay Leno, and Jeremy himself all said his name quite clearly as "PIV-in" (option #2). And I managed to capture it all on Tivo.

But don't take my word for it. Here's the video.

Is it just my imagination, or did Dell just take the best laptop I've ever seen (Inspiron 700m/710m) off the market? I don't see it on their product list anymore, and it looks like they might be replacing it with the heavier, fatter, more expensive XPS M1210... :(

A couple of weeks ago, Kathy & I took a weekend trip to visit her parents in Florida. As usual, I came back with a whole bunch of pictures, but no people in any of them. :)

Got some good pictures of some creepy-crawlies around the outside of the house - mostly a couple of lizards and some spiders. The pictures are now posted on Flickr.

This is not a spoiler or anything, but...

If you're going to see X-Men 3 in the theater (as many of you apparently have done), please make sure you stay through the end of the closing credits. There's a bit at the end that you'll want to see.

When we went to a matinee show last Saturday (opening weekend), our group of 5 were the only people left at the end of the credits. All those poor people will now have to go pay for the movie again, or make a very convincing argument to the theater manager, just to get back in and see those extra 30 seconds.

Here's my movie review, in 10 words or less: It's a good popcorn movie. Get the big tub.

Now I'm waiting for the DVD release, and hoping it has an alternate version that digitally removes Halle Berry from all of her scenes. She's just too annoying.

You & your friend went to high school together. You currently work together. You worked together at your previous company too.

You have an extensive music collection stored on your laptop hard drive. This morning your friend asks you if you have a particular David Bowie song. You say "I think so...", but then check and find that you don't have it. Hmm, you really thought you should have that one. You're determined to correct that omission.

Your company policy frowns upon doing personal downloads (especially stuff like MP3 music) on the company network. But that's OK; you have an idea.

At lunchtime, you go off on your own to pick up something at Baja Fresh, but first drive over to Panera Bread. But you don't actually go in to Panera Bread. You park outside & switch on your laptop, which has built-in wireless networking. You connect to Itunes via Panera's free WiFi network, and you buy that David Bowie song. Then you shut down the laptop, and drive over to pick up lunch & bring it back to the office.

As you eat your lunch, you burn that Itunes track to a CD-RW disc, so that you can then convert it to an MP3 file (using a rewriteable disc to avoid waste, because it's just a stepping-stone in the process).

You walk over to your friend's desk with the David Bowie MP3 file on a portable jumpdrive. You hand it to him. You say "Here's something you were looking for. You'll know which one when you see it."

He says, "Hold on, I'll copy it onto my laptop in a minute. I'm busy burning a CD right now."

"OK, but you can take a quick copy of this in the meantime. It's the David Bowie song."

"Really? Where'd you find it?"

"I parked outside Panera & downloaded it from Itunes."

"What time?"

"About 12:30. Why?"

"I was there about 12:45. That's what I'm burning on the CD right now, so that I can..."

You're scary.

Kathy & I just got around to watching last week's episode of "Lost" ("Two For The Road", from May 3) last night. Holy crap. People weren't kidding when they said there's a surprising twist in the last 5 minutes.

If you haven't seen it yourself, you can watch it online here (requires Flash Player 8 and sitting through a few commercials).

They continued to develop that new plot line this week, but I'm just wondering if the episode title has anything to do with this unlucky night for two cast members. For further exploration of this angle (and some major plot spoilers right in the first line of the article), check out this story on Yahoo TV.

This morning, upon encountering the phrase "two shakes of a lamb's tail" for the umpteenth time, two thoughts occurred to me:

1) Somewhere on the great, all-knowing Intarwebs, surely somebody has taken measurements of the tail movements of actual lambs, and calculated a time interval for an "average" or "typical" shake.

2) Perhaps the clever folks at Google would even go so far as to to provide a conversion factor in their search engine, such that I could type in the search phrase "2 shakes of a lamb's tail in seconds" as easily as something more standard like "2 minutes in seconds".

But alas, the Google conversion isn't there.

Furthermore, when I checked at Wikipedia, I found that there actually is a scientific time unit named "shake", based on that same expression about the lamb, but it's only a figurative connection, in that it refers to a very short time interval. A "shake" in nuclear physics terms is 0.00000001 second, or one hundred-millionth of a second. I suppose it depends how excitable the lamb is, but a hundred million shakes per second sounds a bit too ambitious.

Even more disappointing is that I haven't found a satisfactory resolution to issue #1 - my search results turn up plenty of references to the physics term, but no sample data from actual sheep. Perhaps I've found my niche as an ovine research biologist?

One of my co-workers mentioned that some people he knew "aren't buying gas from Exxon anymore, you know, because of that email that's going around, to make prices come down."

The logic was that if everybody shuns a particular supplier, that company will have to lower its price, and then other companies would lower their own prices to stay competitive.

As usual, Snopes has the debunking of this popular myth - here's the important part: "To meet the sudden demand, the 'good guys' would have to buy gasoline wholesale from the 'bad guys', who are suddenly stuck with unwanted gasoline... So motorists would end up paying more for it, because they'd be buying it at fewer stations."

Egads, it appears that these selective-boycott people also have at least one web site solely dedicated to this foolishness - interestingly, they go out of their way to criticize a different fallacy, a competing notion about not buying any gasoline for one day. Naturally, Snopes has that one covered too.

Man, what did we do before we had Wikipedia & Snopes? We didn't know anything, so we'd just believe whatever people sent us in chain emails...

Sorry, I've already used my favorite mattress-related subject line twice before. I'm all out of cleverness.

Just had to jot a little note about the new bed we recently got. It's a good one, but I'm not here to talk about what brand it is, or how comfy, or any of that. Mostly this is about salesman Phil.

Kathy & I went to look at fancy beds about a month ago, and I was dreading the sales pitch. What we got instead was Phil (on the receipt it said "Philip S."). Very helpful, and (at least on the surface) he seemed much more interested in getting things right than in getting the upsell. The key was this exchange:

Phil: "So, do you like this mattress?"

Us: "Yes, it's good."

"Do you like that other one more?"

"I dunno, maybe a little bit."

"But do you like it a thousand dollars more? Because that other one costs a thousand dollars more. The difference is mainly in the mattress topper, and you could always just add your own mattress topper later if you want."

So, he did his job. And he sold a bed. A good one at that.

But that's not the best part. About a week later, we got the followup postcard with the "hope you're happy with it, let me know if you have any questions..." type of message. Signed... Phil Scheetz.

You just can't make this stuff up.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to copy some very large files (video source files larger than 6 GB) from my friend's Mac to my Windows XP laptop. This sounds uncomplicated, but it was a big mess.

1) His files were on an external hard drive (Maxtor OneTouch Firewire/USB). I tried connecting that drive to my laptop, first by Firewire and then by USB. No luck. My machine wouldn't recognize the drive (possibly Mac-formatted) at all.

2) We tried connecting my 160 GB external USB hard drive to his Mac. The Mac didn't like the drive, because it was NTFS formatted (for Windows). He was able to see the existing files on the drive, but unable to write anything new on the drive. I had other files that I needed on that drive, so no option of changing the format.

3) I had thought ahead and brought with me a second portable drive, this one a 40 GB external USB, again NTFS formatted. Again, we could see the current state of the drive, but couldn't copy new files onto it. However, on this one I had no other files, so I was perfectly happy to reformat it.

4) I tried reformatting this drive on my laptop. Windows XP offers format options of NTFS or... NTFS. That's it. No FAT32, which might have accommodated the Mac.

5) Oh well, as long as I'm there, I might as well let him reformat the drive on the Mac, copy the files, and then I'll just see what I can do with that later. He formatted the drive with default options on the Mac. He then started the files copying, and we went for dinner. For whatever reason (probably a limitation of the USB hub built into his keyboard) the USB drive was only responding at USB 1.1 speeds, which is 1/40 of the USB 2.0 speed I was expecting, so the copying was only about 10% done after dinner. I guess I'll come back for it tomorrow.

6) Came back the next day for my portable drive. All the files had copied successfully, as far as we could tell. I plugged the drive into my laptop. No luck. Again, Windows XP didn't recognize the Mac-formatted drive. I kept that Mac-formatted drive with the files on it, but for the moment I didn't have any way of reading it. And he doesn't have a home network, so I couldn't just connect my computer to his.

7) I figured maybe we could squeeze the files (at least one or two of the important ones) onto a DVD-R disc. The main important file was 5.5 GB. We tried zipping it down on the Mac, but the smallest it would get was 4.5 GB (too big for a 4.37 GB recordable DVD). That won't help.

8) A regular recordable DVD (4.37 GB) is too small, but what if we tried a DVD+R double-layer disc (over 8 GB)? We tried this. He copied the files onto a $10 DVD+R DL disc (which required a separate trip out the store to acquire discs), including the zipped version of the main important file.

9) I copied the files off the DVD+R DL disc, but for some reason the zip archive created on the Mac wouldn't open as a normal zip file on my PC. Perhaps password-protected, or compressed in some odd format, but in any case, the thing won't open.

10) In desperation, I start flailing about looking for somebody who can lend me a Mac for an hour or two to copy these files off onto a PC-friendly drive. Perhaps Kinko's or Best Buy? Perhaps the Apple Store at the mall? I tried Kinko's - they don't let you connect external drives. I tried Best Buy - they work with PCs, but not Macs.

11) One last thing before I go off to the Apple Store - perhaps I should check if there's any way I could make use of that Mac-formatted portable drive on my PC. Search Google for "mac formatted hard drive" and "windows computer". Somebody in a forum somewhere mentions a program named "MacDrive", saying "MacDrive is for using A Mac formatted hard drive connected to A windows computer (physically connected)." Well, gee, that sounds like exactly like what I need.

12) I look up MacDrive on Google, and then 5 minutes later I have the program installed for a free 5-day trial, and about an hour or two later I have all 35 GB of data successfully copied onto another (PC-friendly) drive. Done. And the files all work.

See, all I really needed to do was skip steps 6 through 11, install MacDrive, and I could have saved about 5 days of countless headaches.

Buying the MacDrive program costs about $50, and if I had a routine need for this, it's well worth the price. The program is basically just a Windows device driver for recognizing Mac-formatted drives that are connected to your PC (doesn't matter if they're internal, USB, Firewire, or whatever). When it's running, you can plug in a Mac-formatted drive, and it shows up as just another hard drive in Windows Explorer. Completely seamless.

As it happens, the 5-day trial was more than enough for the 2 hours of use that I had in mind, and I'm HUGELY grateful that they made this so easy and also free for a quick use.

Everybody should go out and buy this. And if I ever need it again, I will too.

Hypothetically, if one takes a week off for vacation, and then gets seriously ill for part of that vacation, is it possible to reclaim one of those vacation days as a sick day? In this hypothetical question, let's say the illness was a stomach ailment serious enough to warrant a documented nurse visit and some prescription medication, and it happened on one of the weekdays of the vacation.

I'm guessing that a lot of it would depend on company policy, but I'm wondering if there are any legal limits relating to such policies.

One of my sources tells me that this sort of reassignment is standard practice with at least one former employer in the UK, but I didn't have any information about policies for US companies or US employment law in general.

Anybody have ideas? You know, hypothetically?

I love it when the AP can't get an interview with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, so they have to base their reporting on what they read in my high school newspapaper.

The shocking revelations about enjoying hiking and Seinfeld may not sound like much, but it certainly makes my front-page article about the juggling club seem less like the high point of the paper's history.

Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day is today, in case you hadn't heard. Go.

Atrios today has an interesting chronicle of a recurring pattern:

-----------------------
5/25/2004: "Bush Seeks to Reassure Nation on Iraq"

8/22/2005: "Bush plans bid to rally Iraq support"

12/1/2005: "Bush Presents Plan to Win Iraq War"

Today (3/10/2006): "Bush again aims to rebuild support for Iraq"
-----------------------

Plus ça change...

...equals the mini-cherry on top of the regular cherry on top of the sundae of awesomeness that is my life. (credit to Barney, as you might have guessed)

See, it all started when Kathy & I recently stopped having cable TV. More precisely, we used to have satellite service from Dish Network, which gave us all the basic cable channels for less money than Comcast cable, plus a couple hundred channels we would never have occasion to watch.

In mid-January, near the end of NFL playoffs, and shortly before the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics (two of Kathy's favorites), our Dish service abruptly stopped working. We called it in, and (after walking us through some troubleshooting steps over the phone) they said they could come for a service visit to fix the problem, but (A) we'd have to pay for the visit, and (B) they couldn't come for about a month.

Not looking good, but we figured we'll take what we can get.

The Dish tech support guy said the only better option was to call back during regular hours (our original call was around 9pm on the second day of no service), and they might be able to arrange an earlier time with a subcontractor doing the service visit (no extra cost). So Kathy called back, and the guy she talked to said they could make such a subcontractor appointment for that coming Sunday, 8am-12noon, but toward the end of that conversation the guy said, "I hope this is right - this is the first one of these tickets I've entered."

I probably don't need to tell you the next part.

Sunday came - there was an important playoff game on in the early afternoon, and Kathy was out of town, so it fell to me to be home & conscious at 8:00 on a Sunday morning (when, as it happens, I was out until 3:00am for perfectly innocuous reasons), and to record that game by any means necessary, even if the guy was still working on the Dish service.

8:00 rolled around. I was awake. No Dish guy. 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00; no guy.

I called Dish tech support to ask when the guy was going to be there. They said something to the effect of "Two weeks from Thursday, when you have your appointment."

I mentioned the bit about having changed the appointment to today. They didn't see it that way. I mentioned the bit about the call to the guy earlier that week. They said yes, we see a call in the log. The purpose of the call is marked as "appointment change". But there was no new appointment entered, so the old one still stood. I tried to explain the inconvenience of being home & conscious & not accomplishing anything else from 8am-noon on a Sunday, and how that ought to motivate them to a more satisfactory solution, but I'm sure they've been trained to be impervious to such concerns. Computer says your appointment is two weeks from Thursday, so your appointment is two weeks from Thursday. When's the earliest we could get a guy out there? Two weeks from Thursday.

Yeah. No good.

So I had to fish out an old pair of rabbit-ear antennas from the basement, and reconfigure the Tivo to use regular antenna channels instead of the Dish ones. I managed to get all of that done in time to record the game.

However, by that time our household's rage against Dish Network was getting pretty strong. Two more weeks of this was more than enough time to give up on them completely.

So we got a better set of rabbit-ears, took inventory of what shows we actually watch (now that we were out of Sunday-night football season), and decided that the only thing we would miss, in all the world of cable/satellite TV, was our nightly dose of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Oh well, it doesn't make sense to keep paying this much just for that one show, so let's just quit, and hope that Comedy Central comes up with a simple way for us to get our one show.

Yesterday came the announcement (thanks José for finding it):

----------------
Comedy Central and Apple have quietly added "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart and "The Colbert Report" to the iTunes Music Store. The episodes, however, are not just being sold individually like previous shows on iTunes. Apple has introduced a new feature called "Multi-Pass," which is similar to a paid video podcast.
----------------

I got the note from José last night. I signed up for my Multi-Pass, and this morning I downloaded the first two available episodes (from March 7 & 8). I'm listening to them now. This is what we've been waiting for.

It's $9.99 for 16 episodes at a time (the current one plus the next 15 consecutive episodes), and since they only do the show Monday-Thursday nights, that basically means $10/month for a full dose of Jon Stewart. Cheaper than cable, and focused on what was heretofore cable's only persuasive selling point.

So, in that month & a half of no Daily Show, did I miss any major political stories that lend themselves to satirical treatment? I mean, it's not like any of our elected officials accidentally shot a 78-year-old man in the face, and then blamed the victim, did they?

With all due respect to the original name-that's-fun-to-pronounce, the new co-champions are Chiwetel Ejiofor (who starred in the recent Serenity movie) and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (currently starring on "Lost").

Oh, and speaking of "Lost" - one of these days, I should probably explain that I've utterly forsworn my ruthless mockery of the writing early in the series - I now hold it as the Best Damn Show On Television. My bad.

Anyway, in talking to Bruce about his upcoming month-long business trip to Singapore, I had mentioned that he ought to make a daytrip to Kuala Lumpur, in neighboring Malaysia, just because it's fun to say "Kuala Lumpur". I followed that up with musing whether Chiwetel Ejiofor has ever been to Kuala Lumpur. Bruce responded that he prefers the name of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.

Which got me thinking, I wonder if Chewy and Triple A have been in anything together. And whaddya know.

A quick look at IMDb's "people working together" search tells me that they were both in a TV movie named "Deadly Voyage" back in 1996. The movie exists on videotape, but apparently not on DVD, so no chance of getting it from Netflix. And even the tape is out of production, so the best shot is to spend about $25 to get a used copy on Ebay. Seems like a long way to go for a joke.

Then again, so is this.

Jamie alerted me to this headline currently listed in Top Stories on Yahoo News:

"Man Shot by Cheney Leaving Hospital"

Certainly makes it sound like the VP has a new hobby. Of course, we've had hints of this before.

Has anybody spotted Mr. Cheney huddled in the corner in a red hunter's cap, furiously scribbling notes in his dogeared copy of The Catcher In The Rye?

--------------

Update (as of 3:30pm): For further analysis, see Jamie's new YTMND page (best with speakers turned on).

(via Josh Marshall)

On January 6, 2004, David Brooks wrote a NY Times column ("The Era of Distortion") dismissing various critics of the current administration as conspiracy theorists. He looked all over trying to find the most absurd example, and came up with this:

"Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies; my favorite described a neocon outing organized by Dick Cheney to hunt for humans."

Two years early.

Jamie suggested that I'd probably have better luck selling the laptop at Ebay instead of Craigslist, so I've moved it there. Here's the new Ebay listing for the laptop, and also a separate one for a wireless G router.

Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. But when I wrote this last year about Netflix withholding DVDs from me, I thought that I might just be imagining it (or that it might just be an accident on their part).

Then today I spotted this article about Netflix's deliberate throttling habits ("'Throttling' Angers Netflix Heavy Renters"), and found supporting testimony in Wikipedia and Google.

And here it is explicitly in their Terms Of Service (section entitled "Allocation, Delivery and Return of Rented DVDs"):

"...those subscribers who receive the most movies may experience that (i) the shipment of their next available DVD occurs at least one business day following return of their previously viewed movie, (ii) delivery takes longer, as the shipments may not be processed from their local distribution center and (iii) they receive movies lower in their queue more often than our other subscribers."

Can anyone give me a good reason not to switch to Blockbuster? Are they worse?

For example, do the folks at Blockbuster have a passage like this in their own Terms of Service?

"In determining product allocation, we use various factors including, but not limited to, (i) the historical rental volume for each subscriber, (ii) historical number of outstanding rentals relative to a maximum number of outstanding BLOCKBUSTER Online Rentals allowed under a subscriber's plan, and (iii) the average rental queue position of BLOCKBUSTER Online Rentals that have shipped to a subscriber in the past."

So, um, yeah. I guess they do.

Crap.

Options?

I just got a new one, so I'm selling my Inspiron 1100, along with all the accessories that went with it (wireless adapter, DVD burner drive, carrying case, etc). Details at Craigslist.

--------------
Update (2/12/2006): Moved this to Ebay instead of Craigslist.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the impression that my lunch at Baja Fresh had become a matter of routine, because before I could state my order, the guy at the register already knew what I was going to ask for.

But then today it got to a new level. There was a different person at the register, so I was expecting to have to speak this time. Little did I know that the usual register guy was working at the back, and he had seen me come in. By the time I got to the front of the line, not only did he tell the cashier what I wanted, but he already had it packed up in a bag ready to go, so all I had to do was pay.

Now there's some customer service.

...and/or a customer in need of a more varied lunch regimen.

I was just looking at the Wikipedia page for Ricardo Montalbán, and I noticed that the page didn't mention his "five stages of the actor". This is a glaring omission.

Then I decided to look around on Google to get the exact text, and I was further shocked to find only one search result, and it was only a secondary reference, wherein Montalbán added the sixth & seventh stages.

I still prefer the original five, so here they are (recently added in Wikipedia):

"The first stage is, 'Who is Ricardo Montalbán?' The second stage is, 'Get me Ricardo Montalbán.' Third stage is, 'Get me a Ricardo Montalbán type.' The fourth stage is, 'Get me a young Ricardo Montalbán.' Fifth stage is, 'Who is Ricardo Montalbán?'"

Next time Kathy & I move, I hope we'll move to Schenectady. And not just because it's fun to say "Schenectady". They also have the ZIP code "12345".

I bet Jake Gyllenhaal lives in Schenectady...

Several people (including Kim and José) have commented that the main reason for watching the show "How I Met Your Mother" is for the Neil Patrick Harris character, Barney. He's a brilliantly obnoxious bastard, but I also like the fact that he's intelligent when you least expect it. Case in point:

------------
Barney: You don't bring a date to a wedding. That's like bringing a deer carcass on a hunting trip. Oh Ted, oh Ted, no, NO date.
Ted: Deer carcass, really? That's the metaphor you're going with here?
Barney: Ted, it's a simile.
------------

Anyway, just in case any Barney fans (or future Barney fans) haven't discovered it yet, I just wanted to mention that the Barney character also has a blog (forwards to a section of the CBS web site).

And yes, it includes classics such as the Liberty Bell incident ("Relevant factoid: I have now licked every national monument in the continental United States.") and the Lemon Law.

Love it.

Last week Kathy & I went to the wedding of our friends Robin & Matt. The song "Such Great Heights" was featured twice at the wedding, in two different forms: the peppy electronic version by The Postal Service was the exit music for the ceremony, and the slow acoustic version by Iron & Wine was the bride & groom's first-dance song at the reception.

This very catchy tune has shown up in lots of different places in the past couple of years - the electronic version had a lot of radio play on WXPN in 2003-2004, and also showed up in one or two early episodes of Grey's Anatomy, while the acoustic version was featured in the movie Garden State and also in an M&Ms commercial that plays both on TV and in movie theaters (thanks to Tivo's fast-forward button, I mostly noticed the one in the theaters).

Anyway, ever since the first time I heard the acoustic version (which was a while after I had heard the electronic one), I've wondered which one came first. With a few notable exceptions (e.g., Frente's cover of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle"), the norm seems to be that slow, soft acoustic songs will end up in peppy, loud electrified versions (e.g., the entire catalog of Me First & the Gimme Gimmes). So I couldn't decide whether to side with the version I had heard first (electronic) or the one that just *felt* older (acoustic).

So, was this song done by (A) The Postal Service first, (B) Iron & Wine first, or (C) both simultaneously?

The answer is "A", and sort of "C".

As it turns out, the version by The Postal Service was written & recorded sometime in the 2001-2003 range, and first released on a CD single entitled "Such Great Heights" on January 21, 2003. The version by Iron & Wine (another artist on the same Sub Pop label) was a cover of the song by The Postal Service, but here's the catch - the cover version was released on that same CD single with the original.

I guess this also explains why the Iron & Wine version that I downloaded from iTunes was showing the Postal Service album cover next to it.

Wacky.

Regarding Jamie's recent dream-interpretation blog post:

"I'm back in high school, 'cept I've graduated..." (January 5, 2006)

Don't you mean "I've been graduated"?

"Saying that someone graduated high school makes the speaker sound dumb. Graduating is something that a learning institution does to students..." (September 19, 2005)

Sorry, couldn't resist. Even though that older post of his was kind enough to link back to one of mine... :)

--------------
Update (1/10/2006): The "intransitive" defense. Well played, Flournoy. Well played.

OK, seriously, how long is it going to take for the AP to realize that the headline "Gen. Pace Criticizes Sen. Murtha Remark" is a misstatement of Representative Murtha's job title? They had it wrong in the original release at 4:58pm Thursday, but it still stands uncorrected (and still linked on the front page at Yahoo News) as of 12:45am Friday (last modified 9:22pm Thursday).

Here's the live version, just in case they fix it later today.

--------------
Update (as of 9:00am Friday): They finally got around to changing the headline at 4:02 this morning, now omitting Murtha's title completely: "Murtha Denies Causing Recruitment Woes". It doesn't really qualify as a correction, but at least the omission is better than being wrong.

I haven't seen an official transcript yet, but if Pat Robertson really said this about Ariel Sharon's recent stroke:

"He was dividing God's land. And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations or the United States of America."

...then perhaps Robertson's producers should consider putting him on a 30-second delay, so they have time to filter out any further death threats against foreign heads of state.

Just a suggestion.

And another suggestion: perhaps there are a few medical explanations for how a severely obese 77-year-old man in a high-stress job could happen to have a stroke?

--------------
Update (as of 4:30pm): Yup, he really said it. Media Matters has the video clip and partial transcript from the show.

As of about 2pm today, the top story on Yahoo News had this headline: "Cheney Visits Iraq; Attacks Kill 19". Sorta reminds me of this election-year classic from The Onion: "Cheney Vows To Attack U.S. If Kerry Elected"

In the later afternoon, the headline was changed to one that doesn't suggest so much of a causal link: "Cheney Visits Iraq Amid Surge of Violence". But I know what's really going on, Stuart.

Here's what the original looked like.

I have a habit of linking to Yahoo News stories, either on my blog or in my del.icio.us bookmarks. It always bugs me when they later change the article and/or the headline, with no link back to the original text that was there when I first found it interesting enough to link to it. Until today, I didn't know there was actually a way around that.

On Atrios's political blog "Eschaton", I noticed that the Yahoo News link in his article went to "http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051013/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq_8", which was familiar because I had earlier linked to the article at "bush_iraq" in that same directory. So then I took the logical next step, and tried out all the numbers from 1 through 9, which presented a gradual progression from a skeleton story about a photo-op in #1 "Bush Seeks to Rally U.S. Troops in Iraq", to a much more interesting behind-the-scenes look at political theatre in #9 "Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged".

Here's the full progression:

#1: skeleton story "Bush Seeks to Rally U.S. Troops in Iraq", just 2 short paragraphs

#2: more details, but still superficial coverage of the photo-op

#3: no major changes

#4: a few more paragraphs of Bush soundbites

#5: yet more Bush soundbites, and "He reiterated his contention that the conflict in Iraq is part of a broader war against terrorism."

#6: more soundbites from the participating soldiers

#7: a major shift, adding a new section of 5 small paragraphs in the middle, beginning with "The exchange was carefully choreographed. Before it began, a Pentagon official coached the troops..."

#8: now the staging overshadows the original story, as the headline changes to "Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged" and the opening sentence changes to "It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution."

#9: no major changes

The story seems much more interesting this way...

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I'm wondering if anybody besides me heard it. On Monday Night Football a few weeks ago (I'm pretty sure it was Sept 26 in Denver), there was a whole big pyrotechnics display before the game. One of the commentators (I'm pretty sure it was Al Michaels) described the fanfare by saying, "They're shooting everything but Hunter Thompson out of these cannons tonight." The reference to Thompson's funeral rite seems way too hip and tasteless for Michaels. Makes one wonder if Dennis Miller is still contributing to the game commentary long after he left the booth.

We didn't keep the recording of that game, and I haven't been able to find a transcript yet, so I can't back this up with evidence. Anybody out there have a link to a transcript, or a recording of the game?

Fiid's blog linked to this article about leafblowers. I found the article interesting, but I took issue with this sentence: "Decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale, so a move from 78 to 64 is several orders of magnitude quieter."

Actually, since decibels are measured on a base-10 logarithmic scale (where an increase of 10 dB equals an intensity 10 times as great), and since an "order of magnitude" is commonly taken to mean a multiplier of 10, then the ratio between 78 dB and 64 dB is precisely 1.4 orders of magnitude. Hardly "several".

I would think that the readers who are likely to recognize a mathematical term like "orders of magnitude" are also likely to have a clue about logarithms. Why not make a comparison such as "78 dB is about 25 times as loud 64 dB"?

Then again, I'm probably just giving too much credit for the precise literal interpretation of originally technical terms - the same way I always expect something that's "decimated" to have 1/10 of its number ("decimus") randomly killed as a means of instilling fear and obedience.

Oh, and speaking of esoteric math stuff, "Proof" is now open here for real. I hope I'll get a chance to see it this week, but "Serenity" may get priority. We'll see.

In case anybody out there was looking for a permanent link for one of my blog posts, yes, the links are there - just click on the title of that individual post.

Oh, and I also have an RSS feed from the blog - I just haven't got around to linking it on the front page yet. I'll take care of that tonight.

Speaking of movies I've been looking forward to, the movie of "Proof" that I mentioned 2 years ago is finally opening tomorrow (Sept 16). I had almost forgotten about that.

Guess I know where I'll be tomorrow night...

--------------
Update (9/16/2005): Or, maybe not.

Looks like Proof only has a limited release today, hitting more locations either Sept 23 (according to movies.aol.com) or Sept 30 (according to IMDb). In any case, I think the "OPENS SEPTEMBER 16" on the official movie web site is a bit incomplete.

About a year and a half ago, The Onion ran a ridiculous joke news story about Gillette marketing a razor with 5 blades.

Then just yesterday: "Gillette Announces Five-Blade Razor".

That's the problem with a really good joke. Sometimes the person you're mocking actually embraces the absurdity.

Well, 15 days to be precise, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie Serenity for real, after that preview a few months ago.

Speaking of the preview, thanks to José I finally got my hands on a transcript of that intro speech from writer/director Joss Whedon. Check it out.

Gotta love my new bionic teeth. They just survived a seriously crunchy biscotto from Trader Joe's, with NO sharp shooting pains, and NO pieces of teeth falling off! Incredible.

I'm sure this Pat Robertson/Hugo Chavez stuff is old news by now, but this "misinterpreted" defense still sounds kinda silly.

Original statement (video clip included):

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

Shortly thereafter, in that original broadcast:

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Then, we have the clarification issued today:

-----------
"I said our special forces could take him out. Take him out could be a number of things including kidnapping," Robertson said on his "The 700 Club" television program.

"There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted," Robertson added.
-----------

Somehow, I think that the reason why people "interpreted" Robertson as expressing a desire for assassination was not coming from journalists playing fast & loose with the expression "take him out" - I think it was more from the part where he says "I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

I would be interested to hear some of the other "interpretations" of that part.

But just while we're on the subject, how much more acceptable is it to kidnap a democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation?

--------
Update (as of 5:45pm): Robertson has revised his denial into an apology: "Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized Wednesday for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, only hours after he denied saying Chavez should be killed."

OK, that's a bit more civilized. His apology still has some political statements with which one might heartily disagree, but at least this new version isn't so bloodthirsty nor so brazenly dishonest.

Since it appears that I can't help referring to Wikipedia all the time, I figured it's only right that I kick in a few bucks for their current fundraising drive. Go have a look.

I just noticed today that the new Baja Fresh location near our office complex has finally opened up. They've been teasing us for months with "coming soon" on the sign out front.

If I hadn't already had Baja Fresh fajitas (from the one near home) for dinner both Sunday and Monday, I might have been more inclined to go there for lunch today. But for now, it's just good to know the option is there.

My little old Beetle, "Christine", continues to be an educational, character-building exercise.

I got a bunch of stuff fixed this spring, most notably the whole floor that was rusting out. We used it in the wedding, although the turn signals weren't working.

I took it back to Volks-Tech to take care of the turn signals and some remaining body work. Got it home from that visit, and by the time I arrived home, the headlights stopped working. I took things apart just enough to know it was something I couldn't fix without parts. I also needed help with the windshield wipers (wiper arms coming off their mounts). Definitely over my head.

So I took it to Gene's Foreign Car Service & Parts to take care of the headlights & wipers. They fixed all that, and everything was working fine. I got home that day, and realized the turn signals were suddenly not working again.

Left it alone for a couple of weeks, and then this past Saturday I went out to test the turn signals. This time they worked fine. I tested every combination of turn signals, parking lights, and headlights, and all seemed OK. So I went for a drive. Everything was fine that day. Cool, looks like the car is back to normal...

The next day I hopped in to run some errands. Turned the key. Silence.

Took the key out & retried several times. Still silent.

It didn't seem like a low battery, since the interior light and headlights still worked, with apparently full brightness (hard to tell since it was daylight). But I figured it *might* be the battery or just a bad starter. So rather than take a normal reliable car to the grocery store, I decided to push-start Christine.

So, I pushed her out of the parallel parking spot where I had her, around a corner, up an incline, around another corner, turned around, and up another incline to the uphill end of our parking lot. Unfortunately, as I was doing this alone (and facing backwards to push), I didn't notice how close I was to my neighbor's car, and I left a little scrape of my red paint on their bumper. I left them a note apologizing - hope it doesn't annoy them too much.

Anyway, after about 10 minutes, much sweat, and slightly blistered feet in my Tevas, I got to the uphill end of the lot.

Only then did it occur to me that push-starting might not be my best option - there might be a fixable problem with the starter motor. I've never worked on one before, but I figured I'd try and see if it was anything obvious. I tried the key a few more times, and noticed that the interior light and dashboard gauges didn't waver at all when the key moved from "run" to "start". With a dying battery, I'd expect the attempted start to drain all power from other electrical devices, even if the starter motor didn't have any audible success with turning over. Gotta be either the starter motor itself, or something leading to & from it.

So I checked all the fuses (they were fine), and went around the back to take a look. Around the side of the engine, forward and astarboard from the main engine fan, there was a wire with a frayed, unattached end just hanging out in the air. Nearby was a connector head with no wire attached. They looked like they desperately wanted to be reunited.

I didn't have any spare connectors lying around (that will be corrected soon, from the Home Depot next door), so I just cleared some of the insulation off the end of the wire, then I bent, mangled, and crimped the old broken head back on the wire. Plugged the connector in, went around to the driver's seat, and turned the key. Vroom vroom. Took about 5 minutes with a pocketknife and a pair of needlenose pliers, but it felt good to have my first actual diagnosis & repair of a real live engine problem (albeit a terribly easy one).

I ran my errands, and I got back home. I went to lock the passenger door, but the lock pin didn't want to move. I gave it a little shove, then a little slam. The slam seemed to work. I pulled it up again to test, and then the next slam went not-so-well. Suddenly the pin was on a 30 degree angle from its original position. Now it won't move at all. Guess the passenger door wants to stay locked. Looks like Kathy will have to hop in a la Dukes Of Hazzard.

Or I can just take it to the shop to fix the lock, and then wonder what will go next...

Whatever it is I think I see, becomes a Text Twist word to me.

A few weeks ago I picked up this game card for my Dell Axim PDA. It's an MMC memory card that has a few different word games from Merriam-Webster. The headline game is a collection of crosswords, and that's the reason why I bought it. I had been trying to build my own crossword interface for PocketPC (using crossword content from Yahoo Games) for a while now, so I figured perhaps I could start out by using an off-the-shelf crossword game.

Anyway, it turns out that the crosswords on there are pretty lame - good interface for the grid, questions, etc, but they're all 12x12 instead of 15x15, and they have way too many non-crossing squares (e.g., there's no across to help you with a particular down), so I gave up on that part pretty quickly.

But then I tried Text Twist (Yahoo Games has an online version of this), one of the other games on that card. It's basically an anagram game, where they give you 6 letters, and you try to form all the possible 3, 4, 5, and 6-letter words from that set, within a 2-minute time limit. If you get a sufficient number of the expected words, you advance to the next round, which is just another set of 6 letters with the same rules.

It's a simple concept, but it's become highly addictive. Kathy & I will often sit for over an hour playing the game together. Worse yet, the game stays in my brain after I shut it off, so I find myself driving to work and trying to think of new 6-letter words that have interesting combinations. So far, I've only come up with one that has 3 different 6-letter variations: PAIRED, DIAPER, REPAID. As if that's not exciting enough on its own, add the fact that those last two form a palindrome, mirror images of each other.

Yeah. Exciting. But I have a feeling that it wouldn't get nearly the same reception outside of my house. I definitely married the right person. :)

Hmm... Guests, gusset, guest, gust, gusts, gut, guts, tug, tugs, sue, suet...

--------
Update (8/22/2005): I've been one-upped. Karen sent me this four-word email message over the weekend:

--
singed
signed
deigns
design
--

I'd still like to claim that my palindromic pair "repaid" & "diaper" counts for something, but then again, does any of this really count for anything? :)

When I was driving last night, there were a few times when I noticed the seatbelt warning light lit up in my dashboard display. On each occasion, both people in the front seat had seatbelts on. I didn't think much of it.

Later, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the speedometer needle drop down to zero while I was driving down the highway. By the time I actually looked down, the needle was around 60, so I thought I had imagined it.

I was also driving with my headlights on, but the road in front of me didn't look particularly well lit. I just figured this was because the road was wet, so the light was reflecting up away from me instead of getting reflected back for me to see it. Taken with the other symptoms, however, this could point back to a common root problem.

But then this morning things went completely nuts.

On the way to work, we had just got on the highway, when I had my first confirmed sighting of the speedometer needle dropping down to zero. The seatbelt light was also on. A moment later the speedometer was back up to 60ish, and the seatbelt light went off.

About a minute later it happened again. This time I noticed that the fuel gauge had dropped to empty also. Perhaps I hadn't seen the changing fuel gauge on previous occasions because the actual fuel level was less than 1/4, so it wasn't far to drop.

Less than a minute later it happened again, and this time Kathy pointed out that the temperature gauge was also dropping down all the way to cold when the other needles were dropping.

Eventually, the battery light got in on the fun too, sometimes switching on/off with the others, but then mostly just staying lit.

For the rest of our half-hour drive to work, this pattern repeated at least 4 times per minute.

It started looking more and more like an alternator problem (usually very expensive), but I kept hoping it might be a battery problem (usually cheap).

After dropping Kathy off, I took the car over to National Tire & Battery to have them check the battery & alternator. I had barely launched into my narrative of the symptoms when two of the guys there said "No, it's not the battery. Sounds like the alternator, but not the battery." Anyway, they agreed to check it out, and I haven't heard back from them yet.

All of this comes right after I was lamenting the apparent demise of my favorite Dodge dealer/mechanic, McGarrity-Moser in Havertown. The last couple of times I drove by the shop, I saw the lot was empty, but there was still a sign in the window saying "service department open". Now their web site is gone, and I'm starting to fear the worst...

OK, at least it's not the worst. I just got off the phone with McGarrity-Moser. Their service department does indeed still exist (I didn't ask how tenuously), and I have an appointment for next Monday. I plan to drop it off Friday night. Even if NTB says it's not the alternator (they haven't called yet), I have other stuff for McGarrity-Moser to do (including annual state inspection), so I'll definitely keep the appointment.

Now just hope that the car successfully gets us home tonight and gets to the shop this weekend.

I've been following this story about the CIA leak investigation for a while now, but didn't know until yesterday (when Pax told me) that the guy spearheading the investigation, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, went to our high school (class of 1978).

Let's hope he does us proud.

(aka "Kill nuke me", though I prefer "Inclement evil elephant chunks")

The Anagram Genius web site is my new favorite way to kill a half-hour or so. Enter a name or other phrase, and it will rearrange the letters to something much more interesting.

There are deliberately wacky ones for celebrities like Madonna (though the secondary ones are sometimes even funnier), and one for Alec Guinness that was featured in a Simpsons episode a while back.

So far, my favorite one is my sister, Alien Skull. :)

There's a good reason why I've ordered computer stuff from NewEgg.com 4 times in the past 3 weeks. They're that good.

Earlier this week, Kathy decided she wanted a SecureDigital memory card for her PDA. We ordered this 1 GB card by SanDisk, which should be a good size for lots of music files.

At the same time, I was looking to get a small card reader, sorta like those USB thumb drives but with a slot for removable cards, so that the reader itself doesn't become obsolete and so that I can use my existing collection of cards. I was vacillating between two different readers, so I didn't order that part right away.

Today, I decided on the reader by Ezonics, but when I got to the web page to place my order, I noticed that they had just started a special combo deal where you get $5 off when you buy this particular card reader with this particular memory card. I didn't feel like buying *another* $65 card, so I figured I'd try calling them and see if they would let me sneak in an order for the reader with the special combo discount, even though the other piece was ordered separately (actually, the memory card order had already shipped, and it's on its way here).

The woman on the phone let me get the reader for the discounted price, and she didn't even charge me for shipping for this new order. That means I basically got $7 off a $17 order. 40% discount - not bad.

I just hope deals like this don't run them out of business. They should stick around for a while.

For dinner last night, Kathy & I reheated some leftovers from our favorite Indian restaurant. Khajuraho makes this Chicken Tikka Masala that's simply amazing. Just how amazing? Ask my subconscious.

So, there I was, doing my usual musical-chairs routine with microwaving all the different food containers. As I took out the plastic tub of Chicken Tikka Masala, I'm not entirely sure whether it was too slippery or too hot or whatever, but in any case, I accidentally dropped this tub of freshly irradiated chicken & sauce, which was hot enough to be bubbling a little around the edges. It splattered everywhere, but in particular a large dollop of near-boiling sauce splashed onto the palm of my right hand.

Like any normal person, I had the instinctive response to leap over to the sink and run some cold water over my hand to alleviate the inevitable minor burns.

Unlike any normal person, that was only my *third* instinctive response.

Before dashing to the sink, my first instinctive response was to stand dumbfounded for a moment, staring at the mess I had just caused.

That was quickly followed by my second instinctive response. Seeing the upside-down tub on the kitchen floor, I immediately realized that the food scattered across the floor was now unavailable for eating purposes. So, with that clarity of mind that comes only in such dire emergencies, before rinsing the scalding sauce off of my already-throbbing hand... yes, I first *licked* said hand, to make sure I wouldn't entirely miss out on the flavor that night.

Fortunately, I didn't burn my tongue, so my hand was the only burn to contend with. Also fortunately, we had enough of Kathy's portion of Chicken Korma to share for a decent dinner. But most fortunately of all, that one desperate lick of Chicken Tikka Masala - really really yummy. :)

(* "now" = in four months)

Last night I went with José and Pax to see the special secret super advance pre-release sneak preview of the Firefly movie "Serenity" (official release is set for September).

I'll leave it to the other guys to give a more detailed analysis of the film itself, but my favorite part was the introduction by writer/director Joss Whedon. In that intro, Joss thanked the fans for their ardent support that has made this project possible: a major feature film following up on a long-since cancelled TV series. I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but it was something like:

"This wouldn't have been possible without you. In a really unprecedented way, you helped make this film. So, that means, if it sucks... it's your fault. You'll really let us down."

-----------
Update (9/14/2005): José tracked down an actual transcript of Joss Whedon's introduction - here's the part I was trying to quote:

"It is, in an unprecedented sense, your movie...which means, if it sucks, it's your fault. You let us down, but let's not dwell on your failures because the work is not done."
-----------

Anyway, it's a really good movie. Think Han Solo and a whole boatload of badasses, but with better dialogue.

Actually, "better" doesn't do it justice. Imagine, for every Star Wars line like "Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo", there's instead an exchange like this:

"Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?"
"Big damn heroes, sir."
"Ain't we just."

Go see it in September. Oh, and if possible, watch the TV series on DVD first.

The online product review for this network adapter begins, "This thing spells Convienence."

Really? Can you?

We don't yet have the pictures from the official wedding photographer, but I've collected some from friends & family who were taking pictures that week.

I've put them in a gallery here.

The official ones should be coming soon too...

It's still the same Hawaii pictures I had up yesterday, but now I've moved things from the old Adobe Photoshop gallery to the new Gallery software (from SourceForge).

Among other things, the new system will be a lot easier for me to maintain, and it gives you the ability to click through to see the full-size originals (which, in this case, are 4 megapixels).

Enjoy.

Kathy & I are now back from the honeymoon trip to Hawaii. Just before we left, my parents gave us a very cool new camera as a wedding present, and it got a heck of a lot of use in those first 2 weeks. I'm still working on sifting through the pictures to assemble the galleries like our previous Hawaii trip, but for now I have just picked out a handful of samples.

Some of these are more for me than for you (e.g., testing the zoom, low-light, and high-speed capabilities of the camera, not necessarily all the highlights of the trip). When I get the full collection assembled properly, I'll also include some video clips (taken with that same camera) and a bunch of underwater shots (done with my older Canon camera).

Anyway, enjoy the samples, and be sure to nag me if I don't get the rest of the collection posted in the next couple of weeks...

Update (5/4/2005): I moved the preview gallery to a different format.

This post is just in case anybody comes to salubrio looking for a link to the wedding web site (you'll still have to remember the password though).

Heh - I meant to post this yesterday, when we hit 10 days left to the wedding, but it looks like Kathy already wrote basically the same thing.

To paraphrase from a great "Coupling" episode:
[in English] "Sorry, that was a bit redundant, wasn't it?"
[in Hebrew] "Sorry, that was a bit redundant, wasn't it?"
[in Hebrew] "Yes, it was a bit redundant."
[in English] "Yes, it was a bit redundant."

But anyway, yeah. It's still an incredibly busy time, but the plans are coming together nicely.

And I'm not trying to jinx it or anything, so I just won't say anything about the current weather forecast - forecasts are admittedly not very reliable from 9 days out, but I'm obsessively checking it every couple of hours anyway.

Until today, I hadn't really thought of my apartment as being on a hill. The ground immediately surrounding the building is pretty level, but if you go a mile or two in any direction, it's almost all downhill.

I made this discovery this morning while doing a little something new in my exercise routine. I spent about 40 minutes walking uphill to my apartment, dragging 20 pounds of deadweight.

That's because my 40 minutes of walking were preceded by 8 minutes of riding my bike down the long, long, winding hill that leads away from my apartment to the south. Almost exactly as I passed the low point at the bottom of two miles of hill, came the loud *pop* behind me. "Son-of-a..."

Of course, I can't say I didn't see it coming. It was almost an exercise in pessimistic visualization.

It's been at least a year (probably two) since I last rode that bicycle. I dug it out of the dusty basement of my apartment building, where the bike was sitting in a locker, buried under old Amazon boxes. As expected, I had to go to the gas station across the street to inflate both tires. The whole time I was inflating, I kept checking the pressure gauge on the nozzle. Don't want to overinflate and blow out a tire on my first time out...

Then I tried to decide which direction to go on my ride. I figured I'd take the route between my apartment and Kathy's, since it's a nice woodsy area. That's a long downhill trip, though. Hope I don't get a flat and have to walk back...

The tires felt like they were doing OK, so I started down the road. Don't want to go too fast - if I blow out a tire, I don't want to go flying over the front...

Everything still felt pretty stable as I continued down the steepest part of the trip. I got past the always-amusing "STOP EXCEPT RIGHT TURN" intersection, and started around that blind curve with the steep ditch off the side of the road. If I blow out a tire and have to crash, try to fall to the right so I don't land in traffic...

Just past that curve, the tire blew out, but no drama ensued. Just heard the pop, and then felt the back wheel slowing down a bit. No crashing, swerving, etc. After all that anticipation, I was almost disappointed.

So I just started the trudge back home, and as I walked around that blind curve, half-pushing/half-carrying the bike, I resolved (for the nth time) that suburban neighborhoods don't have nearly enough sidewalks.

After a short visit to the bike shop, I now have a new back tire and both new inner tubes (I figured the front one's days were numbered). Tomorrow I'll be trying again, and wondering what malfunction to expect now that the tires are safe. Better keep an eye out for water buffalo down by the creek...

"Other than that one, your teeth look fine."

Those are words I don't often hear from the dentist.

Even when I was properly going to the dentist twice a year, I usually needed some work done (fillings or bigger) every time. Then, while my dentists were asking me to increase to 3 visits per year, I instead started slipping into going once every year or two. So, naturally, there's always been stuff to do.

Last time was about a year ago - they filled, patched, or otherwise sculpted 5 different teeth that day.

The time before that was a 3-month streak with a different dentist in a different town, where I got 5 crowns, at least 6 fillings, two rounds of "scaling" (which is just as enjoyable as it sounds), and one extraction way at the back.

The time before that (and the reason why I had waited so long) was with another different dentist, who gave me about 5 fillings, talked me into pulling all 4 wisdom teeth, and generally scared me off dentists for a couple of years.

So, with that perspective, it's shockingly good news to hear "We should put a crown on this molar that's already loaded with different fillings. Other than that one, your teeth look fine."

No "Your gums will die if you don't start flossing more", or "Wow - where did you grow up?", or any of the other interesting things dentists tend to say to me. They didn't even try to sell me on a night guard to stop teeth grinding, or any of that other made-up stuff. My teeth "look fine" except for that one molar (which, to be fair, they suggested last year, but I put it off). Bizarre.

And this one isn't even an emergency - it can wait until after the wedding. Hmm, I wonder if there's a way to put that on a gift registry... :)

Emailed a few minutes ago to my former love, Netflix.com...

--------------

I've been a Netflix member since December 2003, and I've recently (since January, it seems) noticed a steep decline in turnaround performance.

It used to be that I could put a return DVD in the mailbox at Southeastern, PA post office (where your PO box is) on a Monday, have it acknowledged Tuesday morning & a new one shipped out Tuesday afternoon, and then I'd have the new disc in my hands on Wednesday.

Now it's much more typical that I'll put it in the mailbox Monday night, it will be acknowledged Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, saying the new disc will ship on Wednesday or Thursday, and then I won't receive the new disc until Friday or Saturday.

This is doubling the turnaround time (sometimes more), and it's very disappointing to me as a loyal customer. Do you know of any reason why the service has gotten so much slower this year? It's enough to make me consider switching to Blockbuster or Wal-Mart, even after investing so much of my time in assembling a queue of 500 videos at Netflix.

I'd appreciate any explanation you can offer, especially if it includes a commitment to do better over the next month or two, while you still have me as a customer.

Sincerely,
Mike Kullen

Let's just hope this "resounding success" doesn't end up like this other one (followed by 8 more years of war).

As some of you already know, my beloved Beetle, "Christine", has been off the road for about 2-1/2 years, because of a rather serious rust problem. Originally, it seemed to be in need of some new floor pans, and my brother-in-law offered to take on the project. He started his work, but as he went along, closer inspection revealed the problem was much bigger than floor pans - and much bigger than a home repair job.

So I had the car towed from my brother-in-law's house (in central NJ) to my apartment (outside Philly) last summer. I had talked to the guys at Ricciardi Auto Body (who previously fixed my Neon after the unfortunate deer suicide a while back) about completing the floor-pan job, and they agreed to take it on.

However, after towing from NJ to my apartment on Sunday night, then towing from my apartment to Ricciardi's on Monday morning, Al Ricciardi took one look at the car and said "Whoa, that's... that's too big. I can't get involved with that." Minutes later, Christine was on her third towtruck within a 24-hour period, heading back to my apartment to regroup and make a new plan. Not cool.

Needless to say, I was more than a little bit disappointed. I tried persuading Al to take on the project, and seemed to be making some progress. He said he wouldn't even know where to get the parts for an old VW, so I did some research and came back to him the next day with a list of 20 possible parts vendors. I then called back at least 3 more times over the following month, and never got an answer or a call back. They obviously didn't want my business.

Of course, I should mention that when I say "I did some research", I really mean that I happened to complain about the situation to my friend Fiid, who does some work on an old Porsche in his spare time. On one of his Porsche discussion boards, Fiid came up with several possible leads. Among others, he found someone who had strongly recommended a shop named Volks-Tech in Burlington, NJ. Volks-Tech sells parts, but it's also a body & engine repair shop specializing in custom restorations. I put them at the top of my list of parts suppliers that I gave to Al Ricciardi, but I'm pretty sure he never even looked at that list.

After I finally gave up on Ricciardi, I called Volks-Tech to see if they could take on the job. I explained the full depth of the situation, yet they still didn't sound scared. I sent them photos of the damage, yet their preliminary estimate was still within my budget. Just the fact that they didn't run away in fear was a big step for me at that point, so I knew there was some potential here.

Anyway, the nature of the work at Volks-Tech is such that they take on a few long-term projects at a time, so they couldn't get me in for a couple of months. I've been emailing & calling back and forth with them since August, and just this weekend I finally had Christine towed up there for the first in-person meeting.

I had already been impressed with Volks-Tech just from what I had heard and from the pictures I had seen on their web site. But when I got there and saw it all in person, I was just blown away. They've taken cars in worse shape than my little rustbucket and made them gleam like a concept car at an auto show. And when I say they do "custom restorations", I don't just mean they change the paint color and the upholstery - I mean completely new creations. Perhaps their flagship project is the "VoltzGhia", a Karmann Ghia that has been converted from the standard 1200 cc (sorry, not "1200 HP" as I had originally written) air-cooled engine to a hybrid electric drive. I'm not sure about all the parts involved, but it somehow involves the starter motor from a jet airplane engine, a solar panel replacing the back vents, and windmill generators rigged in the air intake scoops. Oh, and did I mention they shortened it by 14 inches, and made this hard-top into a convertible? Like I said, no simple "restoration".

The two people I talked to at Volks-Tech were Don (owner of the shop, and owner of the VoltzGhia) and Steve (who commutes to work in this dune buggy). Both of them seem more like master craftsmen than mere repairmen.

So yeah, I'm pretty darn psyched to have Christine in their hands now. Far from the usual pessimism I've been hearing about "it's not worth repairing that much rust", the phrases I kept hearing at Volks-Tech were "no problem", "yup, typical Volkswagen", and "ah, we've seen worse". The attitude at Volks-Tech is, when it comes down to it, metal is metal; they'll find something or make something that fits what you need.

Of course, I'm saying all this before they even start working on my car, but I'm feeling pretty confident that the end result will live up to all this hope.

Four days ago, CNN.com had this story: "Letterman's secret writer: Johnny Carson", which featured this line: "...Carson has always felt privately that Letterman, not Leno, was his rightful successor, Lassally said."

Then the front-page headline on CNN.com today: "TV legend Johnny Carson dead at 79".

And they want us to believe that's just a coincidence.

For obvious reasons (besides the opportunity to use the exotic word "tsunami"), the tsunami disaster in southern Asia has been the dominant news story for a couple of weeks straight. Lots of aid groups are doing lots of work there, and are taking donations to help pay for that work. I happened to be looking at the web site for Doctors Without Borders (aka Médecins Sans Frontières), and I noticed something extraordinary:

"MSF estimates that we have received sufficient funds for our currently foreseen emergency response in South Asia."

On another web page, they specifically mention that they've received about 41 million euro just for this one emergency. They say you can give to their general fund for all their different projects (there are other tragedies every day that get less news coverage), or you could always give to other groups working on the tsunami emergency. So there's certainly a lot of need remaining out there, but it's still kind of encouraging to hear that at least this one fund got all the help it needs for now. And it's also encouraging that they *announce* they've got enough, rather than just diverting the money to other causes without telling the donors.

It takes away some of the "bottomless pit" image that people might have about giving to worthy causes, and it also makes one want to consider giving to MSF on a more regular basis.

The other day I found out that a friend of mine had gotten engaged. Since I'm engaged myself, that apparently puts me into a club of engaged/married couples who are expected to send out cards for every possible occasion. So I was out shopping for an engagement card.

There, under the tag for the "Engagement" category, was this card.

Gotta love the camera phone.

Kathy & I have been looking forward to buying ourselves a washer/dryer set for the new apartment. It would be the first time that either of us was not doing laundry in someone else's machines (owned by the landlord, or the laundromat, or parents).

Then, all of a sudden, some friends of the family offered us their washer & dryer at no charge. They're perfectly functional machines, but the owners had moved into a new house that didn't have the right hookups for an electric dryer, so they got a new set of machines and weren't using the old ones. A few hours and one van trip later (with much help from Jay to move the machines), we had our very own washer & dryer all set up in the basement.

I think I did at least 6 loads of laundry that next day. And on every single one, I'd finish putting clothes into the machine, shut the lid, and reach to my pockets for quarters. Six times in a row, and I still had that happy little realization every time when I didn't need the quarters.

Sometimes I think I'm just too easily amused.

Weird things to obsess about late at night, #24,837: I want to buy things at Micro Center, but I hate having all my purchase info at their marketing fingertips.

They're very agressive about asking for name & address information on every purchase, and (unfortunately) I once caved and gave them my address. Now that I'm in the computer, they look me up by name every time I use my credit card. There's no use in refusing info now, as I'm already In The System.

Lately I've taken to paying cash at Micro Center, just so I can defiantly answer "No, thanks." every time they ask for even my name.

"It'll help us in case you need to return this; it'll make things easier."

"I'd rather not."

"Well... OK. But you'd better hold onto that receipt."

Well, duh. I was going to hold onto the receipt anyway, if I was thinking of returning the thing.

The problem is, for me the credit-card transaction is a useful way for me to passively track my own purchases, so I'm not just filling & emptying my wallet with mysterious cash all the time. If only there were a way to pay by credit card without showing my name...

So I poked around Google a little bit looking for anonymous credit cards, prepaid gift cards, etc. Most of the leads were for debit cards that might have startup fees, replenishment fees, sometimes even monthly service fees. MasterCard and Visa both had links to companies that would provide gift cards, but again, most of them involved fees, some required identification for the purchaser, and all of them involved prepayment.

Then it dawned on me (almost literally, as we're getting into the wee hours of the morning): what I really wanted was just a portal into my main credit-card account (with all the cashback rewards, etc.) that didn't have my name on it. So now I'm seriously considering adding an "authorized user" on my credit-card account for someone who doesn't happen to exist. The credit-card company doesn't care if there's a human life attached to this name; it's just something to print above the number. The number, in turn, points to me, and I (with my real name) am ultimately responsible for paying the bill.

Only question now is which of my various aliases to use for this. I have enough trouble remembering how to sign my own name; now I'll have to have a second signature available on demand.

Also gotta work on suppressing that little voice that says I'm taking this too far... :)

Another installment in my fascinating series on Cabinet nominations...

Bush has nominated Bernard Kerik for Secretary of Homeland Security. Let's just hope Al Qaeda doesn't have a Trogdor (background info on Strong Bad reference here, here, here, and here).

I've been kinda busy the past month or so - work's been hectic enough on its own, but then there were also all the preparations for the Interfamily Thanksgiving Extravaganza that came off without a hitch last week (thanks again to all the Fishers & Kullens who helped make it possible).

So now comes the time to metabolize all the stuff I ate at Thanksgiving (and, more importantly, the junk food that comprised my diet for a long time before that), and also time to catch up on essential things like the blog, before diving headlong into Christmas, final wedding preparations, etc.

How is it that a random musing about the possible Attorney General, of all things, ended up sitting out there as my most recent post for 4 weeks? Yikes.

So, what's new? A quick rundown...

1) Kathy's new apartment. Kathy is fully moved in, and we co-hosted a Thanksgiving dinner there for 15 people, so the place is pretty well broken-in. Starting to feel like home.

2) My new phone. About a month ago my 3-year-old cell phone died, so I got a new Nokia 6230, and I've been really happy with it. Camera phone, MP3 player, FM radio, removeable MMC memory card, Bluetooth connectivity (especially useful for transferring those MP3 files as well as my phonebook entries)... all sorts of cool stuff. I've struggled with the Bluetooth part, because this is my first Bluetooth device (trying to communicate with a Kensington Bluetooth dongle on my laptop), but lately that's been going better (i.e., I no longer need to completely reinstall the Bluetooth drivers every time I use it). Now I just gotta find a way to get standard audio-out from this non-standard Nokia headset jack, or find myself a Bluetooth car stereo. :)

3) Kathy's birthday. Today is Kathy's birthday. I know there are only a few hours left, but if you happen to see her today, you can wish her a happy one.

4) Being smarter than Ken Jennings. As you may recall, Ken Jennings was recently on an impressive, record-breaking winning streak on "Jeopardy". He won a total of 74 games, and then was finally dethroned this Tuesday night by Nancy Zerg. Nancy Zerg's reign lasted one night, because she was apparently bested on Wednesday night by Katie FitzGerald. Katie, as it happens, was a classmate of mine in gradeschool. We were often neck-and-neck in academic competitions, but I'm pretty sure I beat her at a spelling bee or something at least once. Thus, by the transitive property of arbitrary academic contests, it would appear that I'm at least 3 steps smarter than Ken Jennings. :)

OK, that's about it for now. Time to head out to that birthday dinner.

Apparently I was wrong about Rudy Giuliani for Attorney General. This morning's rumor has been confirmed, that Bush is nominating Alberto Gonzales for the job. As White House counsel in recent years, Gonzales was probably most famous for writing up some creative ideas about the Geneva Conventions, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib.

The outgoing Attorney General, John Ashcroft, is a vocal member of the A.G. (Assemblies of God) church. The new nominee has the initials "A.G." in his name. Apparently Rudy just had the wrong first name.

1) Before getting elected mayor of NYC, Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. That's where he got his name in the papers for prosecuting a bunch of Wall Street crooks.

2) Rudy's face has been all over the post-event interviews of the presidential campaign (after debates, on election night, etc) to give the Republican spin. In fact, his presence after the first presidential debate (when the Democrats sent VP candidate John Edwards) led some to suspect that the Bush/Cheney ticket might pull an October Surprise of substituting Giuliani as the VP candidate (presumably by citing health concerns for Cheney).

3) Reports today suggest that John Ashcroft is about to resign as Attorney General.

I would say we're "waiting for the other shoe to drop", but that would suggest that we have a total of 4 shoes. Need a better metaphor. :)

--------
Update (as of 11/9/2004): #3 has come to pass - Ashcroft announced his resignation today. However, the AP story mentions 3 possible replacements, and Giuliani isn't one of them. Was I just imagining that Rudy was such a gimme for that job?

...I hear mourning of the deepest kind.

I was surprised and disappointed by the election results this morning. I realize that different people have different priorities for what issues will sway their vote, but to my mind, this election was primarily a referendum on a presidency that has not gone particularly well (I won't bother to rehash the criteria I previously mentioned). When I first heard the leanings of the electoral count last night, I was fearful that this was not representing the will of the majority of Americans (flashback to 2000's discrepancy between popular & electoral votes). Now, with some perspective (and after seeing Bush's greater-than-50% popular vote), I'm fearful that this *is* representing the expressed will of the majority of Americans.

Four years ago, Bush ran as a centrist Republican, a "compassionate conservative", and only after some time in office (and the political capital built up from retaliating against a terrorist attack) did he turn sharply to the right. For 3 years, Americans could have said "We didn't expect him to turn out like this; this isn't the same person we voted for," but now 51% of American voters just took away that defense.

Now we have four more years of Bush, and we have to make the best of it. There are probably some rough years ahead (ongoing war, deficit, etc), and Bush will have to take responsibility for the situation his team has put us in. Some folks who supported Kerry have even proposed the sour-grapes theory that Kerry is better off not getting saddled with all the current troubles and the pressure of solving pre-existing problems. Perhaps it will make for better chances in future election cycles. But for now, it's time to deal with the one we've got.

CSPAN.org has both Kerry's concession speech and Bush's victory speech online. I'd recommend checking both of them out. I'd say Kerry bowed out with a hell of a lot of grace, dignity, and respect. I sincerely felt a *lot* more hopeful and reassured after watching Kerry's speech. Nicely done.

On a related issue, some people in the electorate apparently need to be reminded that gloating isn't pretty, especially with a "broad" mandate manifest in a margin of 3 percentage points. At about 8:30 this morning (hours before Ohio was officially in the Bush column, and hours before Kerry called Bush to concede the election), I was driving down the main street of my little Philadelphia suburb (in an area that went to Kerry, incidentally), and this guy in a Volvo pulls up next to me at a traffic light. He points to the "Kerry/Edwards" bumper sticker on my car and starts laughing derisively. His gesture was not identical to Bush's "one-fingered victory salute", but the sentiment was clearly the same.

Meanwhile, some countries where "freedom is on the march" had other priorities distracting them from our electoral contest. Yahoo News has this front-page headline: "Iraqis Ignore U.S. Vote Amid Bloodshed". Suddenly our problems pale in comparison.

Just a little nonpartisan patriotism on election day, courtesy of my niece Morgan.

The polling places are crowded today, as everyone has been predicting. I showed up within 15 minutes of their opening this morning, and I still waited in line for over a half-hour to get my turn.

Go vote. Set aside a couple of hours in case you're stuck waiting in line. The earlier you go, the better - the crowds will only get much bigger when everybody starts getting out of work tonight.

(or "Smarter than I am, part II")

Tuesday morning, at about 7:00am, I'll be casting my vote for John Kerry for President of the United States.

Over the past year or so, my position on this election has evolved from merely "anti-Bush" to firmly "pro-Kerry". Admittedly, many of the reasons for my vote start with what I consider the errors or deliberate misdeeds of the current Bush/Cheney administration. They start there, but they don't end there.

It's after midnight, which means it's officially Election Day already, so there really isn't any time for me to put together the long, detailed explanation to persuade all the undecided voters out there. So we'll get just the abbreviated summary:

1) I had questions about the legitimacy of George W Bush's presidency to begin with. In 2000 I was one of those Nader voters (in a state that was going to Gore anyway) who strongly felt that Gore got ripped off.

2) "September 11th changed everything." And then the marketing and exploitation of that tragedy changed everything again. The international community was very sympathetic to us after our tragedy, but much less so when the US goverment leveraged this into a casus belli to invade Iraq. The phrase "squandered international goodwill" started coming up a lot.

3) The Iraq invasion/war/occupation has been a bad operation from start to finish. Questions about the intelligence leading into it, deliberately misleading "links" to the September 11th attacks by Al Qaeda hijackers (mostly from Saudi Arabia, none from Iraq), and a swaggering sense of going it alone made it already look bad even before it got going. Then there's the false celebration of "Mission Accomplished", along with lots of other triumphant stagecraft, tragically followed by a year and a half (so far) of American military occupation and chaotic violence. Americans there are in danger from terror attacks using explosives that were stolen from formerly locked-up Iraqi arsenals ("formerly" meaning "until Americans wiped out the Iraqi guards and then left the sites unguarded because we didn't have enough troops"). Americans at home and abroad are less safe with all of the anti-American sentiment we've stirred up in the process.

4) The Bush tax cuts were inappropriate, especially for giving the biggest tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, especially for cutting the income of a government already in deficit, and especially for underfunding things like the occupation of a foreign coutry or two. Bush likes to tell us how much the "average American" is saving on taxes, but that's the "average" between the middle-class guy getting $250 (1%) back, and the rich guy getting millions back. I know of a lot of conservative Republicans who have acknowledged that this kind of head-first dive into deficit is anything but "conservative". These taxes aren't "cut" if our children and grandchildren will have to cover the tab for this record deficit.

5) Bush pushed the "No Child Left Behind" act, but then didn't provide adequate funding for it. Now lots of schools had to spend time teaching toward specific standardized tests instead of making their own decisions about curriculum, and there wasn't enough money to pay for all of the mandated changes.

6) As I've said before, our President should be "smarter than I am", in order to lead us and to represent us. I feel that Kerry will do a much better job at this than Bush. Bush has grown increasingly petulant as the campaign has gone on, while Kerry has been the superior statesman. This was especially visible in the debates (most of all the first one), but also in general, I respect the fact that Kerry thinks before he speaks. Incidentally, I've revised my previous opinion - I had suggested earlier that Edwards might end up carrying the Democratic ticket, but now I gotta hand it to frontman Kerry.

7) The Bush campaign has touted the importance of "steadfast resolve" for leadership, but firm dedication to a *wrong* pursuit just makes you progressively more wrong. It was especially telling in the second presidential debate when a question to Bush to "name 3 mistakes you've made" yielded an answer of basically nothing, except maybe a few appointments who shall remain nameless (blaming other people and failing to take responsibility - not "strong leader" behavior). The question (like a good job-interview question) even gave the opportunity of "...and what you did to make things right", but Bush still claimed that he hadn't made any mistakes.

8) I believe Kerry will do better to get us out of Iraq. I believe Kerry will get us more international goodwill and less alienation, and I believe the mindset of somebody who's actually been in combat will be much more in touch with what our troops are going through.

9) I believe Kerry will get our deficit under control, partly by not cutting taxes on the wealthy people who can most afford to pay.

10) I believe Kerry will do better for health care, promoting a system by which individual Americans can buy into health insurance ("the same plan Senators have") instead of relying solely on employment in order to be covered. Public education is considered a right (even an obligation) for all Americans, and I believe we should move more toward public health coverage as well.

11) I believe Bush has been bad for the environment - especially with ironically named initiatives like "Clear Skies" to make air pollution worse, or "Healthy Forests" to cut down trees. I'm reminded of the joke story in The Onion about cleaning up National Parks by drilling and removing all that "harmful, toxic petroleum" underground.

12) I believe Bush's notion of "ownership society" is just a new name for "privatization", and I believe it's bad. Saving money in a "private health savings account" is just covering up the fact that you're no longer covered by the shared risk pool of an insurance plan. Investing your own Social Security retirement savings (so you can steer the money) belies the original design of Social Security, where your payments cover *current* retirees, not your own retirement. The whole point of Social Security is that SOCIETY is providing you the security. Incidentally, the volatility of investments would also kill the "Security" part, so really you're left with none of the original idea.

You may think I was kidding when I said this was the short version. I've had to condense my arguments a lot just because it's late and I need to go to bed. There are at least another dozen issues I can think of right off the top of my head, but I just don't have time to explore them all.

I just needed to get the basics out so I can stand up and be counted before the whole thing is officially over. But the most important counting starts in a few hours, so I'd better get some sleep. My walk to the local polling place is just a few hours away...

There's a line from the movie "Cold Mountain" (about the American Civil War), where Inman says "I imagine God is weary of being called down on both sides of an argument." Well, apparently the same can be said of Osama Bin Laden.

Today Al-Jazeera aired a new videotape of Bin Laden, in which he explicitly states that he's not pushing for either presidential candidate to win in the US election: "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands."

It's also interesting that this should show up on the news just days from the election, and just 20 minutes after Josh Marshall posted this prescient blog entry musing that we were due for a terror alert right about now.

High drama in these closing days...

If you're not registered to vote, it may be too late to fix that.

If you are registered, but (like me a few minutes ago) don't know where your polling place is, make sure you find out before Tuesday rolls around. Otherwise it'll be just another excuse to not bother going at all. And you really really should go.

If you have a voter registration card (i.e., if you didn't throw it out or lose it when you got home the day you registered), that should answer your question right there.

Failing that, you can try entering your address in the search form at mypollingplace.com.

Failing that (e.g., they didn't have my address in their system), you can try contacting your county's election department, whose phone number may be listed on your state's web site. Pennsylvania is good with the phone numbers, but no online polling-place search (yet).

Failing all of that, try calling 1-866-OUR-VOTE to see if they can help you. Just make sure you take care of it, and go vote, or else P. Diddy will come and kill you. :)

(sorry for recycling the subject line)

Twice a year I find myself politely correcting the radio announcers who keep talking about the beginning or the end of "Daylight Savings Time". It's officially "Daylight Saving Time" (the word in the middle is a singular participle, not a plural gerund).

Either that, or I start spouting about how it doesn't make sense to have Daylight Saving Time last so long (first Sunday of April until the last Sunday of October), because then the period called "Standard" time only applies to less than half of the year (5 - 5.5 months out of 12). Shouldn't "standard" get the majority?

Or I just sit back smugly and reflect on all the silly people who have written things like "9am EST" over the summer, when they clearly meant "9am EDT", but they just didn't think about what all of those letters actually mean. Why not just write "ET" so you won't have to worry about the calendar? On any of those occasions that required me to show up somewhere, I at least toyed with the idea of deliberately showing up an hour late to call attention to the error.

In any case, it seems to me that Daylight Saving Time just gives me a whole bunch of excuses to be obnoxious. Does that make me a bad person? :)

Many of us have been wondering whether Bill Clinton would be feeling well enough after his heart surgery to get back out on the campaign trail for Kerry. Apparently the answer is yes, and right here in Philly...

------

Update (as of 10/26/2004): This Clinton appearance in Philly happened yesterday. Kerry's web site has a video of Clinton's speech.

A while ago, in my encomium about Mozilla & Adblock, I mentioned something about my fondness for keyboard shortcuts that help me to avoid reaching for the mouse. How is it, then, that I didn't know (until today) how easy it is to create your own keyboard shortcuts?

First you need to have a shortcut (possibly on the desktop, or the start menu, but I can't get it to work for the quick launch bar), which goes to either a program or just a file you want to open. Right-click on the shortcut, click "Properties", then the "Shortcut" tab, then click in the "Shortcut key" field, and make up a combination of Ctrl-Alt-something, or Ctrl-Shift-something... plenty of details at that link.

That web page is mostly about Windows XP, but the same procedure seems to work in Windows 2000. I haven't checked any other Windows versions.

So cool.

Last night I was watching the recent episode of "Lost", entitled "Walkabout" (aired on Wednesday night).

The show is about a bunch of people who crash-land on an unpopulated tropical island when their airplane breaks apart. From the first episode, the parallels to the book "Lord Of The Flies" (or even to the movie adaptation of that book) were obvious.

Mostly it was little images like the body dangling in a tree, an unseen monster feared in the hills, squabbling over the formation of an impromptu colony society, the overweight right-hand-man to the guy taking charge, a leader named Jack (even though this Jack seems to be on the "good guys" side instead of the bad)...

But then this time it just continued to get more specific in mimicking the book. As previous food supplies are running out, a cluster of some medium-size wild animal is suddenly heard nearby. "Oh god, please don't tell me it's wild boars..."

Sure 'nuff. Wild boars. Guess we'll have to hunt them now. And how does one kill a wild boar? That's right, "Slit its throat."

I just keep waiting for one of the characters to say "Hey, this is just like that book..."

Oh, and plagiarized from a different source is the office flashback for one of the characters, where his unreasonable boss asks if he has "those TPS reports" ready. This was obviously a deliberate reference, but combined with all the Lord Of The Flies stuff, it causes one to wonder whether the writer actually invented *anything* in this episode. Besides, to call this boss "unreasonable" is an understatement - he's a ridiculous caricature, picking on his most vulnerable employee with no reason whatsoever.

All of this leads me to believe that the screenplay(s) for "Lost" comprise an early project by a freshman film-school student. You can tell he or she is trying to write creatively (as evidenced by some more interesting character development in the latter half of this last episode), but so much of the story and the dialogue is just lifted or formulated from other works, and so many of the characters are (as yet) completely one-dimensional "types" (angry guy, shallow girl, etc).

I'm waiting to see if the series will develop any sense of realism or originality, or if they'll just keep playing the types and trying to scare us. Somehow, I tend to expect the latter.

Tune in next week for shirtless men in painted faces chanting "Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!"

For a more detailed analysis of the series, check out the listing on Television Without Pity. They have some of the best sarcastic reviews around.

Greg's Tuesday mission continues. This week's installment is a "defense of marriage", but likely not the kind you're thinking of.

As Josh Marshall noted late last night, Cheney slipped on mentioning the name of a fact-checking web site. In his 30-second follow-up for question #8 about sanctions on Iran, Cheney said:

------------
Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know the charges are false.

They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.
------------

The web site sponsored by U Penn is actually factcheck.org. I don't know what "factcheck.com" was before or during the debate, but within minutes *after* the debate, it was redirecting visitors to georgesoros.com. If you're not familiar, George Soros is the major financial backer of MoveOn.org, a political action committee whose prime directive is to end the Bush/Cheney administration. So, um, yeah, not a good place for Cheney to send traffic of undecided voters.

In an amusing self-reference, FactCheck.org this morning has a follow-up on this slip:

------------
Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co., and the vice president even got our name wrong. He overstated matters when he said Edwards voted "for the war" and "to commit the troops, to send them to war." He exaggerated the number of times Kerry has voted to raise taxes, and puffed up the number of small business owners who would see a tax increase under Kerry's proposals.
...
In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right.
------------

Of course, Cheney & friends should know about the dangers of a "dot-com" ending. The official web site of the President's administration is "whitehouse dot gov". For several years (stretching back well into the Clinton administration), the web site at "whitehouse dot com" (which I'm deliberately not linking to) has been an adult web site, very much Not Safe For Work, aiming to pick up on the predictable stream of accidental traffic.

So, I'll be curious to hear within the next couple of days whether that "factcheck.com" redirect to George Soros was arranged in advance, or whether somebody really on-the-ball managed to set that up within minutes after Cheney's statement. A close look at the Whois information for factcheck.com (registered to "Name Administration Inc." in the Cayman Islands) and for georgesoros.com (registered to "Donordigital" in Herndon, VA) suggests that they were not originally set up by the same people.

Update (as of 6pm Wednesday): Looks like this wasn't George Soros's doing at all. According to several sources, including a new AP report on CNN, FactCheck.com was just a regular old web site owned by a regular old for-profit advertising company, and they made the decision to forward their traffic to Soros only after the flood of accidental hits started weighing down their web server(s). It makes sense from a technical perspective, even before you factor in the political potential of that once-in-a-lifetime accidental publicity. The article has a pretty good explanation of the chain of events. Check it out.

As a person following the current presidential race, and even more so as a person with a college degree in biology, I've felt like I was behind the curve whenever the topic of stem cell research came up.

I mean, I could've told you that stem cells are cells that can transform to make different kinds of cells, with some research potential to replace original cells that were damaged or lost (by injury or disease), and I could've told you that the Republican Party is officially opposed to "embryonic" stem cells (linking destroyed embryos with the abortion issue), and that the Democratic Party is officially supporting a wider range of stem-cell research (including embryonic stem cells), but I couldn't have told you much more that that about the technical side. There's plenty of political rhetoric from either of those political parties, but campaign platforms are not a good place to learn about science, so I was looking for a more objective and informative source.

As usual, Wikipedia came through with a good explanation of stem cells, including important distinctions such as embryonic/adult/cord-blood, and totipotent/pluripotent/multipotent. These distinctions are important both scientifically and politically.

Good reference material all in one place, plus *tons* of links to follow up on further details along the way. I highly recommend it.

With the presidential election coming up, and with Wil Wheaton recently focusing almost entirely on Vegas and poker, it seemed like a good time to swap in a new political blog on my links. Welcome Alicublog, by Roy Edroso.

NewEgg.com is my new favorite place to get computer supplies.

For a while, I've been wishing my laptop had a bigger hard drive (came with 20 gig), but the prices were always fairly prohibitive, and I was under the delusion that a *Dell* notebook hard drive was somehow inherently different from a Toshiba one, or Hitachi, or what have you.

First thing: I finally found a web site explaining how to remove & replace the hard drive in a Dell Inspiron 1100. It looked shockingly simple, so I tried taking mine out. Yup, it's really that easy.

And, hmm, now that I see the drive, it looks a lot like that 40-gig Samsung one that I saw at Micro Center the other day. Sure enough, it seems to be a standard form factor for most, if not all, notebook hard drives.

So, then I started looking around for just a generic Notebook hard drive, and happened upon NewEgg.com. Pax had told me about them before, but I had never bought anything there.

I was impressed when I saw the same type of Samsung 40-gig HD for $20 less than at Micro Center. I was even more impressed when I saw an 80-gig Samsung at NewEgg for about the same price as a 40-gig drive at Dell.

So I bought the 80-gig one, and it's now in my laptop, and I'm very happy. But what to do with the old drive that I took out? No sense wasting a perfectly good 20-gig drive, especially when NewEgg has a USB 2.0 enclosure that can make that drive portable for about $20.

This portable enclosure is really very cool. I already had a 60-gig USB 2.0 hard drive by Buslink (which I have since transplanted to make it 160 gig), but that thing is bulky. It's about the size of a CD drive, and it has a power supply that has to plug into the wall, so the whole thing packs into a bag about the size of a football.

By comparison, this new enclosure with the notebook drive is about the size of a PDA (same length/width/height as my Dell Axim X5), and it gets its own power from the USB port, so there's no separate power adapter taking up space and requiring another electrical outlet.

So, if you were thinking of getting a portable hard drive, and you want it to be truly portable (no power outlet needed), there's no need to spend $270 on a SmartDisk Firelite. You can get the same result and save $100 if you go to NewEgg for a Samsung notebook HD and a Bytecc enclosure for it. Besides, I'm willing to bet the SmartDisk drive is basically just the same thing - a notebook HD in an aluminum case, with a USB adapter attached.

By the way, if you're curious about the subject line, here's how the phrase "new egg" translates into some other languages:

Italian: "nuovo uovo"
Spanish: "huevo nuevo"
Portuguese: "ovo novo"

This really bothers me.

CNN.com currently (as of Sunday night) has a story link on its front page with the title "Bush questions Kerry's credibility".

It links to an article bearing the same headline: "Bush questions Kerry's credibility".

So, in an election season, when accusations are being leveled back and forth, why I do I find this headline so bothersome? Because if you read the article itself, it NEVER SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT KERRY'S CREDIBILITY (either for or against). Not even a Bush accusation about same. A more accurate headline to reflect the article's content would be "Bush slams Kerry for questioning *Allawi's* credibility". Or even "Kerry questions Bush's credibility", since Kerry lumped Bush and Allawi together for the rosy picture they presented last week.

The content of the article goes like this: (1) Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Iraq is doing OK, doing better than you'd see on the news; (2) Kerry said that's wishful thinking, contradicted by Allawi's previous statements and many other sources giving more dire impressions; (3) Bush says aw, Kerry, why you gotta be hatin' on Allawi like that, picking on our *friend* and *ally* Allawi?

The word "credibility" appears 3 times in the article, in the following phrases, each clearly referring to Allawi:

1. "questioned the credibility of the interim Iraqi leader" (paragraph 1)

2. "questioned Mr. Allawi's credibility" (paragraph 3)

3. "You can't lead this country if your ally in Iraq feels like you question his credibility." (paragraph 3 again)

So, this is all clearly inconsistent with the headline. But the part that bothers me most of all is that this headline has been there on this story for two and a half days (since Friday afternoon) without correction, even after I submitted a correction notice to them about a half-hour after the article appeared (6pm on Friday). Even if they don't have editors proofreading articles *before* they're released, they could at least check their incoming correction notices every couple of days.

Urg.

Today, Bush II said something with which I completely agree: "...if we fail in Iraq, it's the beginning of a long struggle. We will not have done our duty to our children and our grandchildren."

That statement, in a vacuum, is completely true.

Would've been particularly useful to think of that about 2 years ago.

Two of my friends from college (both of them fellow veterans of Nomadic Theatre) have been doing some writing lately, and they're both worth checking out.

Brady Richards (alias "L.B. Richards") has just published his first novel, entitled "The Adventures of Charley Tooth". It's classified as a Fantasy novel, aimed at the Young Adult market, but mostly it's just clever, funny reading spawned from a very fertile imagination. Through his publisher's web site you can read the first chapter online. And if you can get yourself to lower Manhattan by 6:30 tonight, you can even go to a book release party.

Greg Olear has had a web site, LargerEgo.com, for a while. In one of its previous incarnations, it had several different contributing authors writing weekly columns (authors including Brady, incidentally). Greg's current project is a weekly political column devoted to ousting Bush II in this year's presidential election. Whether or not you're on the same side of the political fence, Greg has an interesting view on this "spirited contest". Here is Greg's mission statement.

What are you still doing here? Go read their stuff...

A few years ago, when I was visiting a friend in Pittsburgh, he introduced me to Bruster's ice cream. It's a chain of roadside ice-cream stands, about the size of your average Dairy Queen, Carvel, etc.

The ice cream is really good (better and fresher than Ben & Jerry's), and the portions are ridiculously huge: take a waffle cone (the big kind) and stuff it from bottom to top, plus a heap of ice cream bulging out the top, and that's a *single*, for about $2.50. I can't even imagine what double and triple look like, because it took me about a half-hour to get through the single.

Anyway, for the 5 years since that Pittsburgh visit, I've never seen another Bruster's, until this past weekend. Kathy & I found one just down the road in Springfield, PA. Then we found the web site, and it turns out they've got a ton of other locations in PA.

Maybe one of these days I'll have to try something other than vanilla. But it's damn good vanilla.

So much for the diet.

Johnny Ramone died yesterday at age 55, after fighting prostate cancer for several years. It's been about 3 years since his fellow founding member of the Ramones, Joey Ramone, died of lymphoma at age 49, and only about 2 years since co-founder Dee Dee Ramone died of a drug overdose at age 49.

The Ramones were sort of an institution in my family - any Kullen kid's music collection (especially during high school) would start with about a half-dozen Ramones tapes.

The first concert I ever went to without my parents was to see The Ramones at The Ritz in NYC back in about December 1989. My big brother Rick brought me there.

The second concert I went to without my parents was The Ramones, at The Ritz, about a year later. With Rick again, and I think my sister Lisa joined us for that one.

Third one: same, another year after that. This time Tony came too, so we had all 4 siblings there.

I believe the lineup at that point was Joey/Johnny/Marky/CJ, but I'm not sure if I was there for the the tail end of Dee Dee's time with the band. I never saw Tommy play, except on the Lifestyles Of The Ramones video that lived in the VCR in our house.

So, I wouldn't say I was an obsessive fan or anything, but it's still a bit sad to watch 3 of the founding 4 members pass away. All that's left now is to wait for Pax to post a celebrity obituary on Plastic. :)

------------
Update (a few hours later): Pax, you're off the hook; someone else posted the obit on Plastic.

Back in June, I mentioned that I was happy about my new long-distance company. In July, another small phone bill, and I was happy again. In August, I actually had *no* phone bill, because I hadn't made any long-distance calls that month, and they have no minimum charges - even happier. Now the September bill - $2.60 for a half-hour's worth of calls, including a call to England.

Love it.

Between the low rates and the identity crisis with the 3 different company names, I halfway wonder if Cognigen/Covista/Capsule Communications is just some sort of money-laundering front. But, to quote a guy I saw selling gold bracelets in the NYC subway a few years ago, "Don't ask me where I got 'em, you don't wanna know. Even if I stole them, what do you care? It's FIVE DOLLARS."

The free computer recycling at Office Depot expired yesterday, but there's a new place to get rid of your old computer, *if* you're in the market for a new HP machine. HP is offering a trade-in of $250 (plus the fair market value of your old machine) if you send them your previous computer while buying a new one from them. Since the "fair market value" of a several-years-old computer rapidly approaches zero, consider it basically $250 plus a few bucks.

The catch is, you can only get one trade-in rebate per computer that you buy from them, so even if you happen to have several old computers sitting around taking up space, you can't add all of them up for a free machine. :(

Oh, and I should mention that this still doesn't make HP machines *cheap*. Even starting at the low end, $250 off an HP computer only gets you down to the $500ish range, so the entry-level Dell still beats this after-rebate price from HP. But if you were already planning on getting a new HP machine, this could sweeten the deal.

"Hast Du etwas Zeit fuer mich..."

For my birthday last week, Kathy took me on a surprise hot-air balloon ride early Saturday morning. It was a surprise that she had been planning for a while, and I'm impressed that she managed to keep it a secret. Nobody spilled the beans, but I had my suspicions - I could only imagine a short list of possible reasons why we had to hit the road at 5:00 that morning, and had to call to confirm (checking the weather recording, it seemed) the night before. When I found out that that was the correct surprise, I was really psyched.

It was a very cool trip. We set up & took off from a small grassy field (more like a backyard) out behind a bank. The part that surprised me most was how quickly they were able to set everything up after pulling pieces out of a small trailer. The balloon crew got the whole apparatus unpacked, assembled, inflated, and launched within about a half-hour.

Once we got into the air, we were floating at around 2000 feet for a while. It was a familiar view that I've seen from small airplanes, but the silence made it drastically different. The balloon goes with the moving air, so you don't feel wind blowing by, and there's nothing between you and the ground to block sounds, so you can hear people even from pretty high up (except, of course, when the giant propane inferno 2 feet above your head is blasting to keep the balloon hot).

And then, after the high drifting, we came down to just over the treetops, and got a closer view of the landscape. The "closer view" eventually came down to actual contact, as we brushed through the top of a stand of trees. After we had gotten accustomed to that detached feeling of the high altitude, it was weird to suddenly be grabbing leaves off the top of a tree (an experience not usually available from the ground, either, given that this was the *top* of the tree).

Just after the leaf-picking, we hovered over to what seemed like a collision course with a big, expensive house. The owners had come out on the porch to see us (the sound of the burner woke a lot of people as we passed by at 7am), and our balloon pilot asked them, "Do you mind if we land in your front yard?" The owners made some nod of acknowledgment, but I'm pretty sure they thought (as we passengers did) that it was a joke. As it turns out, no joke. We coasted over the house with about 5 feet of clearance above the roof, and set down in the cul-de-sac in front of that house. Took another 15 minutes to derig and put everything away, and then we were done.

All in all, an awesome trip. I have the pictures online, and as of December 2008, I finally trimmed that down to just the useful ones (cut out duplicates, etc). Enjoy.

"Bush did nothing to stop them."

-------------

Update (as of 9/6/2004):

Apparently, the AP report linked above (focused on people booing when Bush wished Clinton well) has been retracted. I found that link on Talking Points Memo, where Josh Marshall has since posted updates here and here, and amended his original post here.

Oh, and Pax has pointed me to a few other rebuttals as well.

The gist of the updates is, there were apparently no boos or other inappropriate responses at the rally - just an AP reporter who got something wrong and fed an appetite for a raw-meat political headline. Sorry about the false alarm.

(thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the title riff)

Notwithstanding the other "factual point[s]" claimed in the ad, what part of "may not promote the candidacy of an individual seeking public office" did this candidate not understand?

You can see the commercial for yourself here.

Somehow, that line about "approved this message" always reminds me of this parody from these people.

As I've previously said many times, I have a strong distaste for sales pitches. I don't like the pitch, but I often take morbid pleasure in deconstructing the salesperson to his/her face.

So when Kathy told me she wanted me to make a phone call to one of the agents offering a rental apartment (after she had generously handled most of the calls herself), it wasn't so much because she didn't want to make a phone call. It was because she was suspicious about the listing, and she wanted to unleash my salesperson confrontation machine.

First off, here's what the listing said: "Havertown 2BR w/Yard $700 Small charge. Rental Pros 610-723-RENT"

The part about "small charge" is what made Kathy suspicious, and rightly so.

I called the number.

"Hello, Rental Professionals, how can I help you?"

"Hi, I'm calling about a listing I saw for 'Havertown two bedroom with yard, seven hundred dollars, small charge'. I'm interested in getting more information about that, please."

"OK, sure, I can help you with that. Now, first off, I'll get some information about you, and then I'll go and see what I can get about that apartment. Have you called us before?"

"No."

"And what's your name?"

"Mike."

"OK, and what area are you looking in?"

"This listing says it's in Havertown, and I'm looking for more information about this listing."

"All right. And what's the maximum rent you're looking to pay?"

"This listing says it's for $700, and I'm looking for more information about this listing. Is that something you can help me with?"

"Well, sure, but see, what we do is, we're a search service, and we get some information about what you're looking for, and then we go out and find places that match your needs."

"OK, well, my need is to find out more information about this listing for a $700 2-bedroom apartment in Havertown. Do you have that apartment available?"

"Yes, but, see, what we do for those listings is, we have a few particularly good deals that we specifically mention in the advertisements, and then people call us to find out about our service, and then we..."

"And then you switch them for one that's a *bad* deal?"

"[uncomfortable chuckle] No, we'll find something that fits your needs, within 30 days, and it's a guaranteed service, but I need to put your information into our search system first, and then it will come back with the results that match what you're looking for, including that one if it's still available."

"OK, but all that I'm looking for right now is information about that specific apartment."

"But that's not the way our service works."

"OK, then we're done. Thank you."

That was almost too much fun. :)

-------------

Update (as of 5/5/2005): I got an email today from someone saying he personally got ripped off by the "rental professionals" at Rental Pros:

"The place as you know by calling and questioning them, is a total scam. My wife and I were not as fortunate and were actually convinced to try the service, and were ripped off by them. I have put up a web page at http://rentalpros.tripod.com that will hopefully deter people from falling for the scam."

That web site also links to another one with a similar story.

I now have the first pictures of Morgan, my much-touted new niece.

Kathy is absolutely the coolest.

Last week, she sent me a surprise package at my office. It was intended as a thank-you present for helping her with some work. Inside the box were two 8-packs of the most fondly-remembered snack of my youth: Chocodiles (technically, their official logo is the hyphenated, all-lowercase "choco-diles", but I prefer the conjoined, capitalized form).

Upon seeing the contents, I was thrilled. I haven't seen a Chocodile on the east coast in about 15 years. For the uninitiated, a Chocodile is basically a Twinkie coated in chocolate. Hostess (under parent company IBC) still makes them, but they're apparently only distributed somewhere west of the company HQ in Kansas City, MO. This is the source of much controversy for Chocodile fans in the eastern US.

I saw some Chocodiles in a convenience store in Los Angeles about 5 years ago, and even then I felt like I was face-to-face with a coelacanth. I bought them out (the measly 3 units they had in stock), and an hour later I was back to Chocodilelessness.

Back in the day, Chocodiles were a staple of my (horrible) adolescent diet. I would ride my bike the 2 miles to Imperial Milk Mart to get them, because even then, Chocodiles were not at most stores.

When I would tell people about them, nobody had any idea what I was talking about. Likewise, when Chocodiles stopped showing up on the shelves at Imperial, nobody gave me any sympathy.

So far as I could tell, the only objective proof of Chocodiles' existence that I could demonstrate was a a scene in the movie "Summer School", where Mark Harmon's character tries to tempt Kirstie Alley's character with a Pop-Tart, but she replies, "No, thanks, I'm sticking with the Chocodiles."

It was only with my Los Angeles sighting that I realized Chocodiles still existed in the world. And even since then, I've had little hope of finding one in Pennsylvania. But Kathy came through for me. Kathy found a web site, hometown-treats.com, where you can buy Chocodiles online and have them delivered. So cool. This is a wonderful thing. And certainly easier than trying to make your own.

But here's the catch. My body is no longer quite as resilient as it was 15 years ago. Putting 2-3 Chocodiles into my new, grown-up belly suddenly requires a chaser of 2-3 antacids. That, plus all the empty calories - a Chocodile has 6% of the recommended daily intake of iron, and NO OTHER useful nutrients.

So, in the big picture, maybe it's a good thing that I haven't had them available for 15 years. Maybe my diet and my general health would be even worse if things had been different. But one thing is for certain: Kathy is still the coolest, and finding these for me was still an excellent surprise.

So, perhaps I was getting all worked up unnecessarily. As of Friday afternoon, the BugMeNot web site is back in action.

And I'm not sure if this is new or I just didn't notice it before, but I'd recommend scrolling to the bottom of their Terms Of Use page. The final paragraph basically says if you work for a web site that requires registration, then you must fill out *our* registration form too. The form is pretty funny.

By the way, speaking of privacy, in case you didn't already see it on Jamie's blog, you should check out this ACLU video about ordering a pizza.

Last night, Kathy & I were sitting in the local pizza place, which happened to have a TV tuned to CNN in the background. I couldn't help but notice when they did a meta-meta-fluff piece the likes of which have never been heard.

They were doing what started out sounding like a tongue-in-cheek critique of overhyped celebrity stories. The intro was something like this: "Which of these stories do you think got *too* much media attention this week? [some nonsense of some rich girl's dog that was or wasn't lost] or [some vaguely reassuring story about a famous talk-show host doing her civic duty by serving on a jury]?"

So you expect them to pick one and, if you're an idealistic dreamer like me, you wait for CNN to apologize for its own participation in the ridiculous indulgence of the overhyped story. But what do you *actually* hear next?

"Our poll says you think [dog story] was covered way too much. See, it all began on Monday..."

And then the "reporter" launches into about 3 full minutes of rehashing every stupid detail of the story that she just said was over-covered and didn't have any substance to begin with.

I just... I...

Ack. Thppt.

That title for my previous post got me thinking...

In a world full of lazy students trying to get by on college papers by writing silly comparisons about pop culture, has anyone ever done a good comparative study between the movie Top Gun (1986) and the play Hamlet? I'm surprised that a Google search on '"top gun" hamlet jester' is coming up with nothing useful.

I mean, there's plenty of stuff out there about Hamlet in The Lion King, but nothing tied to Top Gun.

I confess, I don't have a deep familiarity with Hamlet yet (that'll probably change after my class this fall), but I'm just wondering if there are any links besides the standard drama tropes of dead parent, kid who seems to be ascending but then goes off into an exiled crisis of confidence, then comes back with a vengeance... you know, standard stuff for lots of important movies, including a major one directed by Top Gun's own Cougar.

Besides that, there's also the part where the lead character learns important life lessons from a father-figure who is a Jester (whose given name may be Rick instead of Yorick), and some conversations with a relic of a dead friend, but I'm not sure if there's much else, and I'm not sure how much of the overlap is deliberate.

Any scholars out there have a dissertation (I'll settle for a pamphlet) on the subject?

Apart from some users of the BugMeNot extension for Mozilla, nobody seems to be talking about the fact that the BugMeNot web site has been down all week. What's going on? Why haven't the usual geeks been talking about it?

Who could have done this? "Who do you think? The Libyans!"

----------

Update (8/20/2004): see this later post.

Today my little Neon hit 100,000 miles on the odometer (incidentally, Kathy's Civic hit the 100k mark about a week ago - we've had a little race going these past few months).

I bought the Neon with about 30,000 miles on there, but the 70k that I put on is still a whole lot of miles in less than 3 years. If you figure about 28 miles per gallon, this means I've put about 2,500 gallons of gas in there - easily $4,000 worth of gas. I don't know when I'll move on to my next car, but a gas/electric hybrid is starting to sound like a good deal...

As I've previously mentioned, I usually know what I want when I go shopping, and I don't need salespeople, advertisements, or invasive questions(*) getting in my way. So it was good of Pax to show me this article.

I can only echo the sentiment of "Nobody needs shoes that badly."

This week I had another moment of an unsatisfied customer trying to prove a point: I pulled up to a gas station that has pay-at-the-pump credit card readers. I put my card in, and it said "pay inside" instead of the usual "Receipt?". I figured maybe that one machine was malfunctioning, so I walked over to the next pump and tried again. Still "pay inside". The cashier was sitting in his little booth across the parking lot, and there were no other customers, so no line, no waiting. I was really low on gas, so it couldn't wait until the next day. I did what any logical person would do: I drove another 2 miles down the road to get to a station where pay-at-the-pump was working properly. :)

(*) Incidentally, strange things are afoot at BugMeNot.com today. The site has apparently been down or malfunctioning since yesterday. I fear The Man may have come down on them. How long until somebody else sets up "bugmenot2.com"?

I was just looking at Wil Wheaton's blog, and noticed that he had a link to a tourist trap named The Oregon Vortex. It's billed as "an area of naturally occurring visual and perceptual phenomena", which will provide "a challenge to all your accepted theories". Hmm, sounds a lot like The Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, CA, where "you will be baffled as the laws of physics and gravity cease to exist".

They sounded similar enough from the text descriptions, but then it's really undeniable when you see photos from the Vortex and the Spot side by side. They're really just exactly the same gimmick, which is easily explained and more widespread than I imagined. Apparently, all you need is a hillside, some wood, and some bumpkins.

Are you ready for the secret? Are you sure you can handle this? Here goes.

The little shack is built on a slant.

Yeah, that's really all there is to it. I mean, you can dress up the effect by putting lots of different straight lines at lots of different slanted angles, so an onlooker doesn't know which ones to believe as level or upright, but really the whole thing comes down to slanted lines.

I'm not saying it's not fun; I paid my admission fee at The Mystery Spot just like everyone else, and I got some entertainment out of it. However, I do feel some responsibility to deflate any claims suggesting that "the laws of physics and gravity cease to exist". But somehow I figure the tag line "Where your subjective perception becomes somewhat less reliable!" just wouldn't sell enough tickets.

For about 4 hours now, I've been an uncle. My little niece Morgan was born about 8:45 this morning, weighing in at... um... whoops. I'm a bad uncle. Rick gave me all the details when he called this morning, but I wasn't writing them down. Hmm, I'm pretty sure she was about 7.5 pounds (unlike my siblings & me, who were all around 10 lb), and give-or-take an inch from about 20" long. I dunno.

For the *important* stuff, baby and mother (and father, for that matter) are doing fine. For the rest, I'll have to post an update later...

----------

Update (as of about midnight the same day):
Weight: 7 lb, 5 oz.
Length: 19"
Time: 8:48am

Within 3 ounces, 1 inch, and 3 minutes of my previous estimates. Not bad.

According to CNN, 3 separate banks in Davenport, Iowa, were robbed today, the same day when both Bush II and Kerry were campaigning in that town. The CNN headline is "Banks robbed during campaign visits", but it doesn't take J. Jonah Jameson to come up with better than that.

Apparently, police are looking for 11 suspects, including a mastermind described as "gray-haired, but boyishly handsome". :)

Hmm, I just noticed that the AP story actually says "President Bush and Sen. John Kerry clashed at close quarters along the banks of the Mississippi River..." - is that just a coincidence, or a revealing clue?

Along with Netflix and Mozilla Firefox and Adblock, there's a new thing I love: iTunes.

I've long objected to the notion of buying a whole $15 CD just to get the 1 or 2 tracks I like, and anytime I *do* like the music enough to buy the CD, I just copy it to MP3 files as soon as I get home, so that I can play the music on whatever electronic device happens to be with me at any given time. Within 15 minutes of getting unwrapped, a CD in my home will be placed on a shelf with all my other CDs, never to be touched again.

So imagine my joy at a system that lets people buy one track at a time, for about a dollar a piece, in electronic format so I won't have all those pieces of plastic floating around my apartment - I was delighted. But I was skeptical about the selection they'd have available, and I was wary of a system that would overly restrict what I can do with the music after I've bought it.

Well, I finally decided to check it out for myself last night, and I was impressed. All the moderately obscure singer-songwriters I've been hearing on WXPN were on there, along with the expected big-name bands. All for a dollar a song.

I'm still not thrilled about the portability issues, but there are discussion forums where people address those concerns.

So, $15 later, I've picked up 15 songs I really like, from 13 different artists who otherwise wouldn't have gotten my business yet, because I don't know enough about them to spend $195 getting all their separate CDs. I get the music, the artists get the money, and everybody's happy.

Go iTunes.

Last Thursday, John Kerry gave his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for president. But that wasn't the top headline that evening.

A few hours earlier, there was an announcement out of Pakistan that a "most wanted" member of al Qaeda had just been captured.

Coincidence?

OK, what if the capture actually happened four days earlier (note the words "at the weekend" in the Yahoo/Reuters article)? Does it still seem like a coincidence to announce this headline-grabber just before Kerry takes the stage?

And what if lots and lots of people (gosh, even *I* got in on this one) had predicted weeks ago (or even months ago) that Pakistan was under pressure to do exactly this (announce the capture of an al Qaeda "high-value target") exactly then (during the Democratic convention)?

Granted, this guy wasn't a household name like Bin Laden (ever heard of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani before?), but that makes it all the more suspicious that this non-newsworthy story was puffed up to sound like a big achievement, and then held for 4 days to make maximum impact.

And then the terror alert level goes up (at least in NYC & Washington, DC) right after the convention, and public attention is shifted back to how Bush II is supposedly protecting us, sort of exactly like they did in the days after Kerry's running-mate John Edwards was announced.

And through all that, what really bugs me is how the news reports make all of these things sound like surprises, like when a NY Times headline suggests that all the terror news (which might make people rally behind the sitting president) is "beyond the control of either campaign". Well, yeah, except when the news is getting filtered through the Homeland Security Secretary and the Defense Secretary, who both report to *one* of the two candidates (and it's not Kerry).

Bob Harris, Josh Marshall, and Plastic have more.

In the near future, I might have my old Beetle back on the road (more on that later), and once I do, I'm hoping to get back to the Bengies Drive-In Theatre in Baltimore. I can't believe that place is still running. I haven't checked in with them for over 2 years, but today I found that the phone number still has current show listings, and a "now showing" web page has been added as well. And if you've ever been to the Bengies, you'll also remember they have their rules, mostly in ALL-CAPS.

Five years ago, they said they were going to shut down because they had been losing money for a while. They wanted to keep showing movies until the bitter end, to keep their theater license active in case (hoping against hope) a buyer came along who wanted to keep it as a drive-in theater. They've had at least 2 going-out-of-business grand finale parties that I attended, and both of those were over 3 years ago.

Well, more power to 'em, especially as they continue to fight to keep the theater in existence. If only their mayor and his rock band could stage a benefit concert to save them or something. It seems to work in all those John Cusack movies...

The other night, Kathy & I went with some friends to see The Bourne Supremacy. We got there right before showtime, so the only place to find 4 seats together was in the 3rd row from the front. It's a smallish theater, so I figured no big deal; it shouldn't be too bad sitting up close like that.

This just might have been the shakiest, most nauseating camera work I've ever seen (possibly even surpassing The Blair Witch Project, which was *intentionally* shot only on low-budget hand-held cameras). The movie was interesting and all, but one person in our group was completely unable to look at the screen after the first 10 minutes, because the impending threat of regurgitation was relentless. In fact, when a thunderstorm knocked out the theater's power about a half-hour into the movie, we considered it a blessing. Unfortunately, the power came back after a few minutes, and we still had to watch the rest of the movie from point-blank range.

According to the credits, Klemens Becker was the "camera operator: 'a' camera" and "steadicam operator". I'm just curious if he and the director (Paul Greengrass) were (A) drunk, (B) stoned, or (C) out to punish people for coming to see their movie.

That cam ain't steadi.

(with all due respect to Dan Bern)

A few weeks ago, I was going on and on about some electrical projects, and I mentioned how this Black & Decker book was a big help.

Is anybody else bothered by the fact that the photo on the front cover is backwards?

On a normal grounded outlet, the larger (neutral) slot would be on the *right* when the round (grounding) slot is at the top (as pictured), or on the *left* when the grounding slot is at the bottom (as the outlet is normally mounted on the wall). Here they have the grounding slot at the top and the neutral slot on the left.

Also, if you look closely (some would say "obsessively"), the threading on the screw is going to the left instead of to the right.

Yeah. So, like, that was a big deal or something. Oh well, probably just time for me to go to sleep.

There are 6 days left: $349 for a Dell Dimension 2400, 256MB RAM, 80GB (7200rpm) HD, built-in 10/100 Ethernet port... For a low-end computer, it just sounds way too good.

Please, somebody, give me a reason not to do this. I mean, other than the obvious "saving up for the wedding" thing, of course. :)

Maybe what we need to do is to nominate this guy. :)

I don't know where all these political posts lately are coming from. I don't usually do that. Before I stop, there's at least one more I wanted to get out:

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a Fresh Air interview with Bill Clinton, part of the juggernaut of publicity on the release of his new book. No, I haven't bought or read the book, and I don't plan to do so anytime soon. But just listening to him talk, something occurred to me. First, a little backstory...

See, I didn't pay all that much attention to politics when I was growing up. I just sort of assumed that the people in charge generally knew what they were doing, so there was no need for me to devote my mental energy to checking up on them.

The first presidential election after I was eligible to vote was 1992, between Bush I and Clinton. I didn't think it mattered that much, but I cast my vote. For 8 more years, I managed to get by with only moderate concern about what was going on in Washington. I was living there at the time (although we'd call it "DC", not "Washington"), so keeping up on political news basically meant just not deliberately blocking it out - we were constantly immersed in it.

But then, after the White House changed hands in 2001, there seemed to be a bigger change. Something seemed to be lacking. I couldn't always put my finger on it, and as time went by, I sort of drifted into a resigned sense of acceptance, but that "something" was still missing.

Then I heard the Clinton interview. It suddenly struck me what I really want in a leader - what's my big priority.

I want a president who's smarter than I am.

I mean, I'm a reasonably intelligent person. All false modesty aside, I'd say I'm smarter than most of the people I meet. Not among my friends, though. I make a point of seeking out the company of very intelligent people - people who will challenge me to learn more, or to think about things in a different way. Not that I go around ranking people or anything, but I'm happiest when I can say I'm *not* the smartest person in a room, because it means there's something for me to learn there (to be honest, there's also plenty to learn from people who may not fit the classical definition of "smart" - but that's a separate discussion). I don't always have to *agree* with what the people are saying, but I always value hearing from someone who has uncommon expertise, a new perspective, or a well-reasoned opinion. For that reason, in social situations, I'll usually listen a lot more than I talk, often giving people the false impression that I'm shy or don't have anything to say.

So, back to the president part. In my opinion, a president basically has to do two things for our country: lead us and represent us.

To lead us, the president has to know a lot about the issues facing our country. He/she has to be able to gather information, able to seek & listen to advice, able to discern which advice is *good* advice, able to make intelligent & forward-thinking decisions, and able to present an explanation of what course the country is taking and why that course is good for our country.

To represent us (to the rest of the world), the president needs to do all the things mentioned above, plus he/she needs to present an explanation of why our country's course is good for the world, since our country's actions will inevitably have a major impact on other countries. Like it or not, we must realize that people in other countries look at our president, and that's the lens through which they'll see *us*.

Toward both of these goals, our president needs to be smart.

The president can have all the speechwriters money can buy, but he/she also needs to be able to deal with questions, without resorting to spouting back the same set of buzzwords over and over again. Questions from our own journalists, questions from foreign leaders, and even questions from foreign journalists are all fair game, and our president needs to be prepared for all of them.

For whatever feelings you may have about Bill Clinton's politics or his personal life, I think most people would grant that he had (and successfully conveyed) a very keen mind and a sense of understanding the issues at hand. You might disagree with his stance on a particular issue, or even doubt that he had taken any stance on the issue, but you would usually have to admit that he at least understood the question, could distinguish it from other questions, and gave it serious thought before answering.

In my opinion, Bush II has fallen far short of that mark. Listen to a speech of his, and you'll hear "nucular" and "terror[ist|ism]" and "evildoers" n times, but few and far between are the moments of genuine insight. Between the politically polarizing buzzwords on his talking-points memo, he'll attempt some plainspoken country wisdom, often to unimpressive effect.

So, Bush II doesn't do it for me on the "smart" question. As for Kerry, I don't know. I mean, he strikes me as a reasonably serious and well-informed person, but his style is often not engaging enough to demonstrate that he's taking control of the situation. It may just be the slow pace of campaigning with 4 months still ahead, but it often feels like he's content to sit back and (mildly) criticize some actions of the Bush/Cheney camp, without really mapping out what Kerry himself is *for*. It'll take some time for Kerry to grow on me.

The odd thing this time around is that there seems to be much more brainpower and dynamism in the 2nd chair - I'm very much looking forward to the Edwards vs Cheney debates. If I had my druthers, Edwards is the guy I'd pick for the "smart" candidate, out of the whole lot who came & went in the past year. I'm sure Cheney is very sharp too, but he presents very differently.

The problem with Cheney, although he may be a very intelligent and clever guy, is that he's so aggressive and divisive on controversial issues, and he doesn't do much to dispel popular rumors about self-interested motivations (e.g., Halliburton involvement in Iraq contracts, duck-hunting with Scalia), so I'm too busy suspecting him to ever consider admiring him. He comes across as much more *against* the Democrats and *against* Iraq than *for* America. On top of that, Cheney's political clout so outweighs that of his running mate (even after 3.5 years of this presidency), that Bush II feels very much like a figurehead for a Machiavellian puppetmaster behind the scenes.

Case in point - my favorite scene in the VP-selection news frenzy: when asked to compare Edwards and Cheney as VP candidates, Bush II replied, "Dick Cheney can be president." Kerry responded later that day with exactly what some of us cynical types were thinking: "He was right that Dick Cheney was ready to take over on day one, and he did and he has been ever since, and that's what we got to change." I must admit, that's the first time Kerry made me feel unequivocally proud of something he said.

So anyway, Cheney makes me suspicious, and Bush II makes me cringe. Kerry doesn't strike a strong chord one way or another, but he seems stable & intelligent, and he had enough sense to pick the partner who comes across as smart AND dynamic AND good-hearted AND quick on his feet.

So, my pick for the "smarter than I am" ticket is "Kerry/EDWARDS" (emphasis added). :)

Homestar Runner + They Might Be Giants = "Experimental Film".

Thanks to Pax (and in turn to Wil Wheaton) for the link.

Last year, the big news in computer recycling was that Dell and Gateway were starting programs where you can mail your old computers back to them, and you pay a fee (~$15), which covers shipping, processing, etc.

That was a good start, but it somehow wasn't enough to get my lazy butt to find boxes for some of my old computer carcasses (most of them have been torn up to harvest spare parts for other machines) and send them in.

Now it's even easier, as Office Depot is offering free computer recycling at its local stores. No fees, no finding boxes; just go there and hand them the stuff. And there's at least one Office Depot on my way home from work, so I'm really running low on excuses now.

The only significant restriction as far as I can tell is the limit of one item per day (apparently they don't want to be inundated by collections like mine). Guess I know where I'll be stopping every night for the next couple of weeks.

By the way, the story on CNN.com says they'll start July 18, but the recycling page prominently linked from the Office Depot home page says it's "Now through Labor Day". In any case, they agree about the ending on Labor Day, so I'd better start making trips out there soon...

It's not quite at the level of love I have for Adblock, but I've become a fan of BugMeNot. Especially when people are quoting NY Times articles that require a (free) login.

I'm not actually in the market for a new computer, but every once in a while, I go to the Dell web site just to see what's available.

Often, they'll have several different promotional deals going on, and choosing one special deal may make you ineligible for another. You can get a rebate, but only with one particular set of options, etc. Sometimes, it sounds like the rebate is actually causing you to give up something useful, but it's their store, so they can pretty much arrange the deals how they want.

But this time it's gone a bit too far. On the page for the Dimension 4600, one of the checkboxes says "$100 Mail In Rebate - not combinable with memory promotion - Special Offer". Then, for memory, the default option is 256 MB, and the first memory option listed is this: "FREE UPGRADE 512MB Dual Channel 333MHz DDR SDRAM (mail-in rebate not valid)".

No other dependencies or exceptions. Just choose this free upgrade, or choose to get $100 back. Thus, to choose the "free" upgrade, you're sacrificing $100. In my book, that free upgrade costs you $100 (which, incidentally, is a lot more than you'd pay for the extra 256 MB of memory).

But somehow I don't think my complaint would hold much weight, if I called them up and said "I wasn't planning on buying this thing, but *if* I wanted it, I'd feel cheated..." :)

To quote Jeff Spicoli, "Well, something must have happened to them." (link courtesy of Josh Marshall)

And this part: "The disclosure that the payroll records had been destroyed came in a letter signed by C. Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information Office..." You sure that's not "C. Y. Tailbone"?

Today I went to Amazon.com, and noticed something in the recommendations they have on the front page. There was a picture of the front cover of Bill Clinton's recent book, accompanied by the following message: "My Life was released today; We thought you'd be interested because you bought Honda Civic & del sol: 1992 thru 1995 All SOHC models Haynes Repair Manual."

Now, come on. I realize they probably want to recommend this book to *everybody*, and I realize I haven't bought that many other books recently, but is that really the best segué they could come up with?

Some news stories make the mistake of over-explaining something that should be common knowledge, but hey, you can't blame them for trying to make sure their story will make sense to a diverse audience.

In that context, it was amusing to see this whole quasi-political story about keg stands and other college drinking games, which doesn't once explain the term "keg stand" itself. Perhaps even more amusing is the story's treatment of beer pong - the term "beer pong" actually *is* their helpful definition: "...George Bush is the only one that I can see playing Beirut [aka Beer Pong] while shot-gunning a Natty Ice."

Clearly, this article was not intended for any audience that wouldn't be familiar with the terms. :)

Some people thought the official jails run by US troops in Afghanistan & Iraq had enough scandals with unjust capture & improper treatment of prisoners.

Apparently these 3 Americans thought we needed something worse. So they went to Afghanistan, rented a house, and started going out on their own, rounding up locals who looked suspicious, in order to interrogate them about links to al Qaeda.

The phrases "cowboy spirit" and "jingoistic fever" don't even approach the level of chutzpah necessary to travel thousands of miles, into a war zone, apparently without support or sponsorship by US military or even official military contractors (though my conspiracy radar is always open to updates on that), and just start rounding people up and beating them. And apparently, for at least one of the guys, this isn't the first time he's made headlines.

I wonder what these guys wrote on the immigration forms when they went over there. "Purpose of visit?" "Bag me some enemy Eye-rackees... wait, what country are we in again?"

When stuff like this comes out during the election season, I can't help but think of this Tom Tomorrow cartoon.

First off, according to my dictionary, the primary meaning of "terror" is "a state of intense fear". Therefore, someone who causes a state of intense fear by issuing strongly worded warnings about uselessly vague threats is in fact *causing* terror, not fighting it. Argh. That one's been bothering me for a long time now.

And then the manipulation of media attention leads me to put some faith in conspiracy theories like this one about Saddam being found and held by Kurds before the Americans ever got there. I mean, it's plausible that they would stage a capture like they staged the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

But most conspiracy theories have the luxury of digging into the past, and just coming up with explanations for what already transpired. Some more ambitious paranoiacs are actually predicting a new photo op to trump the Hussein capture: aiming to capture Bin Laden during the Democratic convention (late July 2004).

Now don't get me wrong. Once we went into Afghanistan, and shot the whole place up, capturing Bin Laden would at least close a chapter of the open-ended "war" that "might last a year or two", as of 3 years ago. But I'll be particularly suspicious about it if the timing or the staging stinks of propaganda again.

And besides, as much as I'm skeptical about people's motivations in going into these two recent invasions, I'm not the *most* cynical person in the world. I defer to the likes of David Rees, who did this lovely cartoon series (the apparent source of my beloved refrain about the War On Terror: "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War on Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore? It'll be just like that!").

"Important: If the link above is flashing, you have been selected as a Winner Loser!"

If you sat near me at work, you would have heard me (both yesterday and today) constantly exclaiming, "Wow, Adblock is *so* cool!" It lets me select certain URL patterns (e.g., "*doubleclick*", "*.advertising.com/*"), and my browser (Mozilla Firefox) will simply skip any content (ad images, Flash movies, iFrames, JavaScript include files, etc) coming from one of those addresses. It's amazing how much more serene my browsing has become, now that I don't have all of those ads blinking all over. And I still have the option of seeing Flash movies on certain sites for really important occasions.

Of course, I'm not the first one to discover this - Jamie wrote about it just last week. Actually, what got me started down this road was something else that Jamie posted, about a week earlier: a link to an article entitled "Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer". Hmm. As an ironic aside, I just went back and noticed that the aforementioned article has at the top one of those epileptogenic flashing banners. Zap. OK, Adblock fixed it. :)

Anyway, that article was enough to convince me that I should try one of the current Mozilla browsers, instead of just blindly sticking with Internet Explorer. After all, I never had any real *love* for Microsoft; I had chosen IE back in 2000, because IE had a few additional features missing from Netscape (mostly just some convenient keyboard shortcuts). Ever since then, I've held onto the impression that IE was somehow more "ready for primetime" than some open-source experiment like Mozilla.

So, I finally got around to trying Mozilla Firefox last week, and I was very pleasantly surprised:

1) Popup blocking is a default (which you can turn off if you want), rather than requiring a third-party add-on like the IE "toolbars" from Google or Yahoo (which, incidentally, both track your web surfing for their marketing data).

2) Right out of the box (except without the box), Firefox lets you right-click on any image and choose "Block images from www.somewebaddress.com...", which will kinda-sorta take care of a good chunk of the banner-ad problem. For example, as soon as you tell it to block images from "ar.atwola.com", that will stop about half of the ads on CNN.com. Weaknesses: it only stops images (not Flash movies), and it still keeps that image space open and linked (so you'll go to the advertised site if you accidentally click on that blank rectangle). So that's not a complete solution. Enter Adblock...

3) After installing Adblock, I can block any unwanted content from a particular source (including fine-tuned wildcard expressions to keep the photos on imdb.com, while blocking the ads from elsewhere on the same server). Also, Adblock collapses other things into the space previously held for the blocked item, so no accidental link-clicking, and less wasted space. It's just awesome.

4) Mozilla can associate a keyword with each of your bookmarks, so I can just type a word in the address bar instead of reaching for my mouse and choosing bookmarks from a list. For example, I can set the keyword "bank" on a link that takes me straight to the online banking login page for my bank.

5) Even cooler than that, I can throw in a variable with the keyword, so that typing "movie truman show" takes me straight to the IMDB search results for that title, as if I had typed the complete web address, "http://imdb.com/find?q=truman%20show" (thanks Pax for showing me how).

6) And hey, Firefox has more than its fair share of keyboard shortcuts, too.

These and other reasons are also detailed on the Mozilla web site, on pages that suggest why and explain how to switch from IE to Mozilla Firefox. Check it out.

Dayum. Firefox with Adblock is so cool... :)

So, it looks like John Kerry (a 60-ish heterosexual married white male Christian Democrat U.S. senator named John from the northern east coast) has achieved a balanced ticket by choosing John Edwards (a *50*-ish heterosexual married white male Christian Democrat U.S. senator named John from the *southern* east coast) as his running mate.

All kidding aside, I think Edwards will add some things that Kerry has not been exhibiting lately. Kerry has lots of experience in the Senate, but he hasn't seemed very passionate and spontaneous in public appearances, so he's vulnerable to the same criticisms that plagued Gore 4 years ago (portrayed as stiff, impersonal, overly calculating). It's interesting to consider the fact that, 4 short years ago, Kerry was considered the antidote to those same qualities seen in Gore (thanks to Bruce for the link).

But mostly, I'm just trying to figure out why the hell this "Morning Grind" article from CNN starts with this sentence: "John Kerry apparently decided it doesn't matter whether John Edwards was in diapers in 1969." Um, dude? John Edwards was born in 1953. He turned 16 in 1969. If he was wearing diapers then, it would likely be for a medical condition that's none of your darn business, so... WTF?

Ah, OK, nevermind. I hadn't caught this when it was happening, but apparently the "diapers" reference came from an offhand comment Kerry made during the Iowa caucuses, to which Edwards had a kick-ass retort (in a subsequent written statement):

Kerry: When I came home from Vietnam in 1969, I don't know if John Edwards was out of diapers then yet or not, I'm totally not sure. I don't know.

Edwards: I have tremendous respect for Senator Kerry's service to our country in Vietnam. The truth is, in 1969 my family spent a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay for me to go to college, as so many Iowa families do every day.

Nice.

Now, in Kerry's defense, the diaper comment was just a little joke, which he retracted with some quick backpedaling within a few minutes: "That comment I made was not meant to be negative. I don't want to go that road.... I think that what's appropriate to recognize is he's a very talented person. I like him a great deal... He's running a great campaign, I respect that."

Actually, I'm impressed how well both candidates maintained (or quickly recovered) an air of dignity and mutual respect, even in this brief exchange of barbs. Really, all that either of them said was "I respect the other guy, he's great, but I'm even more what you're looking for." You can kinda tell, even then, there was a good chance they'd end up on a ticket together.

If you're anything like me (and God help you if you are), you occasionally stare into the office supply cabinet, wondering "Why in the world does the box of paper clips say 'Gem clips' instead of 'paper clips'?" But in the time it takes to walk back to your desk, you completely forget, and you never bother following up on the question.

So today I finally went and looked it up. Turns out Gem was the name of a company that first made paper clips in the familiar double-oval shape. Other inventors made angular twists of metal to hold paper together, but the oval shape caught on, and people started using the brand name as a generic term, much like Band-Aids, Kleenex, or Aspirin.

So there you have it, your irrelevant history lesson for the day.

I was looking at a discussion on Plastic today, and I was pleased to find someone else who shared my concern about the "Let Freedom Reign" thing I mentioned the other day.

Of course, as Kathy pointed out, there are possible legitimate sources for the altered quotation, but I still think it was botched political stagecraft.

So far, my favorite response is this follow-up in the aforementioned Plastic discussion. Especially the part about using little hearts to dot the i's... :)

I was trying to find a clever way to work in a reference to the word "autochthonous" in my previous post. Then I stumbled upon this odd coincidence regarding the recent spelling bee. Funny stuff.

But I still think the story of how I cheated at cleverly solved a tough spelling-bee word was better:

It was one of the late rounds of the local spelling bee for my town (before the county championship), and the word presented to me was pronounced "YOO-roh-style". I didn't really know the word, but I had some guesses. My two best guesses were "eurostyle" and "urostyle". I asked for a definition. The judge, not having all the definitions memorized (nor printed out on separate paper), opened up a dictionary. He opened to the *back* of the dictionary. I don't even remember if I heard him say the definition, because I had already decided it must be the one that starts with "u". I was right. :)

CNN has a story about the "ahead of schedule" transfer of "sovereignty" in Iraq from the transitional government headed by an American citizen to the transitional government headed by an Iraqi citizen. Accompanying the headline is a photo of a handwritten note from Condoleezza Rice, upon which GW Bush added the words "Let Freedom Reign!"

Please tell me he meant to write that. Please tell me he didn't just misspell the word "ring" from the famous final line of the first verse of "America (My Country 'Tis Of Thee)". Please tell me that, after a year to rehearse a climactic "surprise" like this, he at least had a dramaturge on hand to look up the words of the song, but consciously *chose* to write something different.

Now, I'm not trying to prey on someone's vulnerabilities in a situation that was out of his control. It's not like Bush was given a flashcard with the wrong spelling and just trusted the card. He must've had, no kidding, a *year* to practice this. He (or his designee) could have written the note, and then he could have checked it with his advisers, rechecked it, and maybe even sung the song to himself to take pride in the cleverness of the line: "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I'm swain..."

...and grounded side grounded.

I went to see my parents over the weekend, and I convinced them (almost too easily - I was expecting some resistance) to let me try the electrical receptacle project. Even better than that, I tried it, and it worked. Yeehaw.

I was only at the house for less than a day, so I didn't have time to make widespread changes, but I attacked two of my highest priorities:

1) A previously ungrounded outlet in the living room that had 4 plugs hanging out of various extension cords. I replaced that with a standard grounded receptacle, and then attached a 6-outlet splitter with a built-in surge protector, thereby letting my parents connect more devices, and also bringing them about 50 years closer to being up-to-date.

2) A previously ungrounded outlet in the room where I stay over. This one was admittedly a little bit selfish, so that I can plug in my laptop when I'm visiting. :) But it also helps to spread out the available grounded outlets, so now there are 2 on the second floor, in non-adjacent rooms.

I also did a little bit of testing of the existing outlets before I got started, and noticed that one grounded receptacle in the kitchen (to which the refrigerator is connected) had the hot and neutral wires reversed. This was the same problem I had found at Kathy's apartment, except this time it was on a grounded outlet. Again, it's not that big of a problem, but it's wrong, and there are slight safety reasons to justify fixing it. Mostly, it was just a little practice for me to do something quick in a well-lit space, to get a little familiar with the house's wiring.

Unsurprisingly, I found that my parents' house (much like Kathy's apartment) had mostly really old wires, insulated by something that probably used to be rubberized cloth, but after 70 years or so it mostly has the consistency of dried-out tar. Yummy. I also discovered that solid-copper grounding wires (while nice to have) can be a pain to push back into the cramped little electrical box when you need to squash everything back together. By the time I got through that one, the actual replacements in the other rooms were pretty easy.

So, the whole thing worked. I hit the main outlets that I wanted, and I know what I'll be up against when I get a chance to do more. And when this Internet fad blows over, I may still have some marketable skills. :)

Last night, I attempted the electrical upgrade for Kathy's apartment that I had mentioned here. Unfortunately, it didn't work as planned. Not because of any shortcomings in *me*, mind you, but because of shortcomings in the electrical box.

Namely, there was no proper grounding path to which to attach the grounding wire, and thus no point in installing a "grounded" receptacle that wouldn't truly be grounded.

Normally, there are either 2 or 3 wires feeding into a receptacle box. The first 2 are the hot wire (black) and the neutral wire (white), both of which trace through the circuit-breaker panel and back to the electric company. If there's a 3rd wire, it's the grounding wire, usually bare copper or insulated in green, which connects via wires and/or pipes to THE GROUND (yes, it's actually planted in the dirt). If that grounding wire is absent, the box itself is often grounded - you can touch the metal frame of the box, or any of the screws that hold it together, and conduct current down to ground. You can test this by connecting one probe of a tester to the box, and the other end to a hot source (either in that outlet or another one). Current should flow from hot to ground, lighting up the probe. Not so here. I checked all around, every possible metal surface in the box, and no grounding path.

So, like I said, there was no *proper* way for me to connect the ground wire to a grounding path. I know you can get the same net flow, and get the tester to light up correctly, if you connect the ground wire back to the neutral wire, but that's not really grounded. That's going back through the panel and out to the electric company, not really into the ground, so it's not serving the same safety purpose. And since I don't want to make Kathy's apartment less safe, I decided to leave the 2-prong receptacle as-is. Well, almost.

In the process of doing all my tests, I noticed something weird. Connecting the tester between the hot wire of one circuit and the neutral wire of another circuit should light up the usual "110 volts" indicator. But when I connected this outlet's neutral to another outlet's hot, I got the double-light indicator for 220 volts. That's not normal. Then I did some further permutations on connecting this wire to that one, and discovered that the outlet I was working on (where I hadn't made any changes) had the hot & neutral poles reversed. Hot was connected to the longer slot instead of the shorter one. Not a *huge* safety issue, but it sets us back about 85 years in electrical safety, back before outlets were polarized at all.

So I fixed that. I switched the wires so the poles are attached correctly, and now Kathy's electrical system is just a little bit safer. Thus, I succeeded on 3 of my 4 goals: I didn't get the grounded receptacle in, but I did improve the overall electrical system (wrote up a circuit-breaker map, along with the polarized outlet change), I did avoid breaking any existing equipment, and I did survive the whole thing without electrocuting myself. All in all, a decent day's work.

I've decided that I need a house. The wiring system in my apartment just isn't bad enough. :)

On recent visits to my parents' house, I've been not-so-subtly hinting at how cool it would be if they had more 3-prong electrical outlets in their house. They have *one* such receptacle outside the kitchen - it's convenient for my dad's computer, but that's way down the hall from my mom's computer (which is plugged into one of those little gray 3-prong adapters) and from the room where I stay over (where I would plug my laptop in if I could). There's not even a grounded outlet within 30 feet of the TV & stereo in the living room.

So then I started thinking maybe I could take the matter into my own hands. I could read up on home wiring, pick up some supplies at Home Depot, and figure out how to convert an old 2-prong receptacle to a SAFELY GROUNDED 3-prong receptacle. I mean, they live in an 80-year-old wooden house, so I don't want to add any fire hazards - I want to do the job right.

Then thinking gave way to obsessing (as it is wont to do). In the past week, I've been to Home Depot either 3 or 4 times - I forget. I picked up a copy of Black & Decker's Complete Guide to Home Wiring, and a couple of receptacles. I can now tell the difference between a merely "grounded" circuit and a GFCI one, and I can explain the history (and dangers) of aluminum wiring vs copper. I know what colors the hot, neutral, and ground wires should be, and I know which slot is the short one on a polarized outlet (I also know how to test if either of those was done wrong). A couple of Home Depot visits later, I have 6 receptacles, a 3-prong outlet tester, and a 2-probe tester for other purposes (and more remarkably, I can *name* those other purposes). I'm pretty much set.

Problem is, I don't have anything to work on.

I've looked around my apartment for a way to get some practice, but all the outlets and switches seem fine as they are. I have standard grounded outlets all around the main rooms, and GFCI ones in the kitchen and bathroom. All up to code. Too bad.

I think Kathy has grudgingly agreed to let me experiment on a receptacle in her apartment that's currently just a polarized (2-prong) one. She was definitely grudging - the only question is whether she knows that I think she agreed. :)

It's a good place to start out with an excess of caution, because the circuit-breaker panel for her apartment is about 4 feet away from this outlet - no chance of someone in the other room accidentally flipping the switch while I'm working. And if I get that working, I can go to my parents as an experienced electrical receptacle replacer, instead of just going as a guy with a book. Mostly, I just want to make sure there's some reasonable way of grounding a circuit when the receptacle itself (probably) doesn't have a specifically designated grounding wire. I won't really know until I get in there.

And there's no way of knowing whether my parents' wiring will be similar, either. But I have the book, and I know what to check for to see if it's working right. I've got testers, I've got pigtail grounding wires, and I've got both copper-only and CO/ALR receptacles. Worst come to worst, I can give up part-way through and put things back as they were. It should all be OK.

Just gotta see if Kathy will submit her apartment to be my guinea pig...

I just found out that yesterday my father was elected Village Justice in Shoreham, NY. Congratulations, Dad!

Now, if only his jurisdiction extended down here to Pennsylvania, I'd have to start bribing him to overlook some traffic tickets... :)

Bob Dylan is apparently getting an honorary doctorate from The University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.

He's been a hugely influential figure in music for over 40 years, but he hasn't had (or at least hasn't *accepted*) an honorary degree since 1970. So what finally won the hearts of the St Andrews selection committee? Must've been his recent TV campaign. It's the stuff nightmares are made of.

I just got my long-distance phone bill, and I'm excited. :)

Since I've been living in Philly, I've been mostly making local calls and mostly using my cell phone for out-of-state calls, so my typical long-distance bill of $6-$7 per month was already pretty low by some people's standards. But when you stop to think that I would normally have one $1.00-ish call in a given month, and then $5 in assorted extraneous fees, you can see why I was eager to get away from Sprint.

Kathy has been using Cognigen/Covista/Capsule Communications(*) for long-distance for a while. She discovered them through cheaprates.com, and the 3.9 cents/minute rate caught her attention. What caught my attention more was their shunning of the usual bogus fees that make it impossible to get under the $5 mark with the big companies, even if you're making no long-distance calls at all.

For the month of May, in which I got engaged to Kathy and then had to go call everyone I know, my long-distance bill was $1.23. Yes, that's one dollar and twenty-three cents. Now, granted, I used my cell phone for many of the calls, but I still got in 3 calls in that $1.23. In fact, the three calls cost about 13 cents put together. It's just the small amount of unavoidable fees (and some taxes) that added the extra dollar.

But anyway, I'm excited about Cognigen/Covista/Capsule Communications. If I don't make any calls, I don't get stuck with all the fees (more precisely, I only get stuck for about $1 instead of $6). If I did make lots of calls, the 3.9 cent rate means I'd still hardly pay anything. You just can't go wrong.

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(*)This company has a serious identity crisis. My monthly bill comes from Capsule Communications, "a Covista company", but in order to sign up, you have to go to the Cognigen LD web site, which in turn tells you that it's "©2002 Capsule Communications, a Covista Company."

Over the weekend, Kathy & I got over one of the major early hurdles in the wedding planning: we've picked a date and reserved the locations for both ceremony & reception. It's one of the first things you have to do (because the popular places get booked up early), but it's such a pain because you have to already have certain things decided (approximate guest list, budget, general picture of how you want it to look, etc).

So anyway, we've now got about 3 planning tasks done, and only about 872 yet to go... :)

This is not the greatest horse in the world. This is a tribute.

I was hoping to get this posted on Friday night when I first saw it (and before the race was decided), but I was way too busy this weekend. Oh well.

Anyway, here's the story.

I was driving home from work Friday, when I came up to this local sports bar & grill named Barnaby's. Whenever there's a major holiday or a major sporting event in the Philly area, they'll have a huge inflatable thing up on the roof to celebrate. Usually it's a football helmet when the Eagles are in the playoffs, a turkey around Thanksgiving... obvious stuff like that.

So there I was, driving up toward Barnaby's, when I noticed this big gray shape on the roof. As I got closer, I could tell it was an inflatable elephant, so I started running through possible explanations, mostly related to the Republican party: Another Republican national convention coming up? No, that's supposed to be in NYC this year. A visit from Bush II? No, he's in Europe this week. Since I was looking the elephant head-on, I couldn't yet see the banner draped over its side.

Then, as I pulled up to the traffic light alongside the restaurant, there was the banner to explain things:

GO SMARTY
WE LOVE YOU
this is all they had

When I finally figured out what they were talking about (Smarty Jones, the horse from Philadelphia who was hoping to seal a triple-crown victory at Belmont this Saturday), I laughed my ass off. I pulled over to park my car in the nearest lot, and walked back with my camera to snap a picture.

As a postlude, no, Smarty didn't win the race, but Philadelphians don't blame the horse; they blame The Curse. But you definitely can't blame Barnaby's. At least they tried.

I've already ranted about poorly chosen names for people, but sometimes banks and other companies (which presumably have big important board meetings before choosing their names) are often just as bad.

Am I the only one who reads this bank's name as "First Rust"? Am I the only one who thinks this other bank should aspire to higher things than 3rd place?

Update (5/31/2004): My friend Michelle has done one better (worse?) than "Third Federal" in the quest for mediocrity. I give you: Fourth Federal Savings Bank.

Do I hear a Fifth? Fourth going once, going twice...

Just in case anybody out there is in the same situation in which I found myself a month or two ago (you're looking for an engagement ring, but you don't know anything about them, and you don't want to set foot in an actual jewelry store EVER in your lifetime), here's what I did:

---------------

1. Learn about diamonds. There are fairly simple, quantified rules for measuring diamond quality. The web site for DeBeers (the monopoly that controls most of the diamonds in the world) has a very good explanation of The Four C's. You don't buy directly from DeBeers, but you can get a good education if you spend an hour or so reading that section about the 4 C's.

Once you learn the rules, you'll be able to use those measurements anywhere, and you'll see, for example, that the diamond rings offered at Amazon are very limited, and mostly crap (yes, I actually checked, but that's not a crime). :)

2. Get some basic information about preferences & size. I knew going in that Kathy kinda wanted a Princess cut or maybe Round (DeBeers explains what those look like), and a non-yellow metal (either platinum or white gold instead of yellow gold) for the band. That much was pretty easy to pick up from things she volunteered, so I didn't even have to ask.

Getting her ring size was a little harder to do on the sly, since Kathy doesn't normally wear rings, so she didn't have any lying around in plain sight. If you have the option, covertly borrow a ring she wears on that finger, and take it to a jewelry counter where they can check the size. I didn't have the "covert" option, but when I came out & asked, I was able to borrow two rings that Kathy hadn't worn in years, and I checked both rings at two different jewelry counters to make sure I had the right size (NB: that's jewelry *counters* in different stores at the mall, NOT jewelry *stores*, which I swore I wouldn't enter).

In any case, knowing the size isn't absolutely essential, if you really, really want to preserve the surprise, because most places will let you return the ring for free resizing. But it's a lot nicer if you don't have to say "Isn't that pretty? Now give it back, I have to go bring it back to the shop for a week..."

3. Shop at Blue Nile. The Blue Nile web site has a really huge selection, really good information (to bolster the education you got from DeBeers), and an extremely well-tuned shopping system (worlds better than that other famous tropical river).

The part that impressed me most was their diamond selection process in the "Build Your Own Engagement Ring" section. Since they know that most people are working with an estimated budget, and negotiable priorities on the 4 C's, they have this web page with little slide bars for all the different variables, so you can set the top & bottom range of each criterion, all the while seeing instant updates on the list of available diamonds that fit your choices. Eventually, you can adjust all the options up or down a little bit, until you end up with the one diamond that's the best match.

Besides good selection, Blue Nile will probably beat any local store on price, and they have really good policies about unconditional returns, etc. They encourage you to print out the specs on a Blue Nile ring, and take it to your local store to see if they can compete. Blue Nile just rules.

4. Do your best to avoid Conflict Diamonds. World Vision has some details about the horrible stuff that sometimes goes on in diamond mining areas (most of it involves killing & maiming people to get or maintain control of diamond sources and the income from same).

Right now, the global effort to get rid of conflict diamonds is still pretty much in its infancy, so there's not yet a full end-to-end tracking system to make absolutely sure that the diamond in your hand came from safe & happy sources. However, Blue Nile and others who care about this issue will tell you if they're committed to following the current & future regulations to help get conflict diamonds off the market. Blue Nile has this pledge about conflict diamonds. It's not absolute, but it seems to be about as strong an affirmation as you're going to get these days. In the next few years, we can hope that the movement against conflict diamonds will make further progress. And if, unlike me, you plan to buy more than one diamond ever in your life, you can do more than just hope. Keep the pressure on the industry by reminding your vendor every time how important this priority is for you - keep holding out for the best conflict-free guarantee they can offer.

---------------

A final note: If you do all of your shopping online, you may still be surprised when you see the ring in person, but it probably won't be anything bad. The one thing that caught me off-guard when this ring arrived was just how heavy it was. I chose a setting that was a bit thick, and it was made of platinum, but it's much heavier than you'd think at first glance. I stared at the thing and wondered aloud, "Geez, what's this made of, lead?" I was wrong. Platinum is *heavier* than lead. In fact, pure platinum is almost *twice* as dense as pure lead (21.3 grams per cubic centimeter vs 11.37, according to this chart). Who knew?

Well, that's about it for "Mike's Diamond-Shopping Lessons for the Antisocial". Hope you've enjoyed.

Yes, after just 4 short years together, Kathy & I are engaged!

It's been about a week since we made this official (on Thursday, May 13), but we didn't want to put it on our web sites until we had a chance to tell some friends & family in person. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to think of anything else to talk about in the meantime, thus leaving my blog silent since May 12. Now I think we can safely make it public.

We haven't picked a wedding date yet, but we're probably shooting for next spring, so that we won't stress ourselves out trying to rush the preparations, and so that we won't conflict with holiday family stuff, winter weather, etc.

As you might expect with two computer programmers, our first order of business (well, second, after telling some people) was to start work on the engagement/wedding web site. We're currently in negotiations as to what will be covered there, but we'll have an announcement about that in the next few days.

Well, anyway, I just wanted to get the word out on that. More news coming soon...

I love my new fan.

My apartment came with two very old air conditioners built into the walls (they look like regular window AC units, but not removable). They're crap. They're worse than crap. They churn out dust, eat up electricity, and still don't cool the apartment much.

In contrast, this little $20 window fan from Home Depot (SMC brand 9" Twin Window Fan With Thermostat) has made the temperature in my apartment drop by at least 15 degrees just in the first few minutes after I plugged it in, and compared to the old AC it's barely using any electricity at all.

It seems like a silly little thing, but this has made my apartment so much more habitable, it's crazy.

Oh so nice.

Just a little wisdom from Strong Bad:

"Man, if I had a nickel for every email I get... I would throw them at people in the food court. From that railing, like, up above."

Augh.

The miniseries TV version of "Angels In America" aired on HBO last fall, and it was awesome. It was a really good presentation of a really good play, and I was looking forward to watching it again. My home-videotaped copy of it is out on loan right now, so I was even more looking forward to getting it on DVD. The original announcement that I saw said the DVD would be released on June 1, 2004 (about 3 weeks from now).

So, when I went to Amazon today to pre-order it, and saw the release date as September 7, 2004, I figured it was a misprint. I was all set to email Amazon's webmaster to tell them to fix it, until I happened upon this HBO forum entry confirming the September 7 date. So the bad news is true.

I was having a hard enough time waiting for June. Who knows if I can make it all the way to September...

Bruce finally started a blog. And he's apparently trying to jump-start it, with 5 entries already in the past hour.

We accept him, we accept him, one of us, one of us...

Technically speaking it's a small piece of equipment, but for my recent quest this is huge: I finally got an adapter that will take the S-video output from my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop and convert it to composite video (the yellow part of those standard red/white/yellow RCA cables).

For a while now I've had the A/V input system (USB video-capture device and USB external sound card) for the laptop, but I didn't have a really good way of converting the output to show on a TV set. The Inspiron came with an S-video jack, which would be fine if I had an S-video jack on the TV set to take the other end of the cable, but I don't.

I found that a co-worker of mine with a different Dell laptop had an adapter to convert from S-video to RCA composite, and I tried that on my machine. Yes, it worked. But no such thing came with my Inspiron, and I scoured the Dell web site looking for one, without any luck.

I tried hitting Micro Center, as usual, and picked up a little adapter by QVS that looked basically the same as the borrowed one. However, when I plugged it in and tested, the laptop wasn't recognizing that anything was there. I put the borrowed adapter in and it worked, but then on switching to the QVS it didn't. I took a closer look and found that the borrowed one from Dell had 7 metal pins (in addition to the little plastic peg that helps you orient the plug the right way), but the QVS one had only 4.

I thought I had the secret - I need 7 pins. Until I took a closer look at a standard S-video cable, and found only 4 pins. And a regular S-video cable works fine in my computer, as long as I have an S-video-enabled TV on the other end. Urg.

Anyway, just on a whim (albeit a whim motivated by a moderately obsessive personality), I decided to go back to Micro Center and pick up another brand of adapter, which looks identical to the QVS one. I grabbed this StarTech adapter and brought it home, but it sat neglected in a corner of my apartment for a few weeks. Finally, I pulled it out tonight so that I could run a quick test while there's still time to return it for a refund. Voila. Happy happy joy joy. Successful video conversion, and it looks pretty decent playing a DVD. I don't know what made this one different from the QVS, but it works, and I'm not going to argue.

So now I have the complete video input & output system, to play DVDs, video CDs, captured video files, or whatever else I happen to have lying around. It's not exactly a Tivo (no TV channel tuner, for one thing), but it does some good stuff.

Score one for The Great Quest For Interoperability.

No luck with the screaming. :(

I called up the BankOne customer service line to see if they could answer the questions I had about the account that's supposedly opened in my name, but unavailable to me. The guy on the phone was able to tell me that the account was approved, and he was able to tell me the credit limit (which was decent), but he wouldn't divulge the card number. He said I have to wait for the mail for that.

He said they couldn't give the credit card number over the phone "for security reasons", so I briefly tried parlaying that into a discussion of other possible ways he could give me the number, but he wasn't buying. He actually maintained his composure pretty well, even when I was deliberately interrupting and talking over him. I get the feeling he must deal with pissy people on a fairly regular basis. He didn't show any signs of weakness, and he successfully brought each of my attempts back to the "you'll just have to wait for the mail" response. Even when I said "OK, then that makes the card usesless to me - how do I go about cancelling an application in progress?", his answer was "You'll have to wait for the card to arrive, and then you can cancel it once you receive it."

Clever bastard. :)

Anyway, the uncertainties are mostly resolved, which brings me back to basically where I was an hour ago. I don't have the card number, and I'm not going to have the number during the period when it's most useful to me, so I just have to live without it for now, and possibly cancel it when it arrives (although that still seems a bit extreme, and may look weird on my credit report later).

Oh, and after resolving the uncertainties (will they or won't they tell me the number?), the main thing left was to register my complaint about the misrepresentation in the original offer. For that, the BankOne guy referred me back to Amazon customer service (whom I had emailed, but not called, earlier today), because it's part of the Amazon web site, and then it just links to BankOne for the application form. So I called Amazon and talked to a very nice guy who listened to my story and validated my concern that "Yeah, I can see how that should be more specific." Amazon customer-service dude said he'll forward this on to the web-design folks, telling them that the "instant use" should mention "(for Amazon purchases)", and the approval/confirmation page should include contact info for BankOne customer service (so people don't waste time looking for BankOne's number like I did, running into further confusion as bankone.com suddenly bounced me to firstusa.com).

Ack. Thppt.

So I did my part to make the world a better place (read: "complained to somebody who listened politely and then forwarded my concerns to people who won't care").

I haven't been able to get much in terms of the tangible results I was seeking, but at least the people were nice, and they were competent. They get points for that.

The credit card shuffle continues.

My main credit card with the 0% rate is expiring soon, so I decided this week that I could benefit from having a new card with a 0% interest rate. After much deliberating on the current dearth of credit card offers (unlike last year, when they were rolling in), I decided to go for the Amazon Visa, which gets you a percentage in Amazon kickback credits for all the money you spend with the card, yadda yadda, but that wasn't the main draw for me.

The main thing was that the card offer claimed that I would have "instant use of the card and coupon after approval", and the aforementioned approval was almost-always complete within a minute or two.

So I went for it. I applied. I got approved.

Congratulations, they said. The card is now available to use exclusively for purchases at Amazon.com (included as one of the saved credit cards on my Amazon account), and then when I receive the actual card in about 2 weeks, I can activate it and start using it anywhere Visa is accepted...

Whoa.

Nobody told me in advance that the immediate availability was ONLY AT AMAZON. Never. I checked through the fine print afterward (which I actually did read in detail before submitting the form, because I'm a little bit uptight about stuff like that), and there wasn't anything saying that the availability at Amazon was different from the availability elsewhere. There's a little CYA claim about "In some instances an application may require additional processing and the account will be unavailable for immediate use", but by all reasonable readings of the materials, the account is either available or unavailable, and only delayed if it "require[s] additional processing".

So now this card is useless to me for the first two weeks. I don't know the account number (the saved cards in my Amazon account only show the last 5 digits), I don't know the credit limit, and until a few minutes ago I didn't even have a customer service phone number where I could call to discuss the other things I don't know.

Urg.

I sent Amazon's main customer service a very pissy message, expressing my righteous indignation at the apparent deception here. They actually came through with an appropriately considerate and informative response, but for the main issue (gimme my card info NOW), they referred me to customer service at BankOne (which is actually merged with FirstUSA, a Ghost Of Credit Nightmares Past). Fine. That's what I asked them for, so they gave me the appropriate number to call and yell at someone relevant.

Now it's all over but the screaming. But don't worry. It's good screaming.

(Is that how that goes? I forget where I plagiarized that from...)

I'm having another one of those days. Sorta like that day when I saw two different drivers with things hanging from their cars just waiting to catch in the wheel or something.

This time they were poorly-attached mattresses on car roofs that were just aching to take flight...

Hmm, "roofs" doesn't look right when compared with the likes of "hooves", but Merriam-Webster says it's OK. I just want to make sure I don't end up looking silly like this buncha thiefs in the Great White North.

Sorry. Anyway...

So, yeah, yesterday it was some silly SUV with a mattress on the roof. The first sign of trouble was the driver's hand out the window, firmly grasping the edge of the mattress (as much as you can firmly grasp something that's slippery and much bigger than your hand). Upon closer inspection, the mattress was not moving up off the surface of the roof, but it seemed to be migrating slowly astern. It was tied in two places, but the end of the mattress was hanging about a foot and a half off the back edge of the roof (extending beyond the vertical plane of the back bumper), and the front edge was about a foot back behind the top of the windshield (thereby completely invisible to a driver who might be monitoring its status by looking out the front).

But that didn't look nearly as bad as the one today. I think it was a minivan, but that detail was completely overshadowed by the mattress that was towering above the car. This one appeared to be tied loosely to the roof rack, rather than through the windows, and there appeared to be way too much slack in the rope. So much slack, in fact, that the mattress was riding at about a 45 degree angle against the horizontal plane (or 45 degrees against the vertical, as geometry would have it), acting like a giant scoop that basically doubled the height of the car and much-more-than-doubled its wind resistance. And yet this car was still cruising along at about 55 mph, not visibly worried about his potential to start parasailing at any moment.

I was late for work, and I still haven't started work on the communication system I mentioned last time, so I didn't bother to intervene. I could picture it turning into a bad scene like this one ("Beds are burning" entry) or this one (motor vehicle accident photos at the bottom), but realistically it was probably more ridiculous than dangerous.

Stupidity. Boy, I don't know.

How did I not know this new collection (book 3) of "Y: The Last Man" comics was coming out? I mean, I loved the first two, and just went on and on about them, so I should have just known somehow that the next one was due.

Oh well, never mind the blame. The book is out. And now it's also on its way to me...

Tuesday (April 27) is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's.

I mentioned before that I've been working on getting out of debt, and part of the process was to use my debit card all the time instead of using credit cards (which build up debt) or cash (which is harder to track).

One of my more unusual goals was that I also wanted to avoid writing checks if possible. I started looking around for ways to pay common bills (phone, electricity, car loan, etc.) electronically. In some cases, I would have to log onto a web site each month to view and pay the bill, and in other cases it would be debited automatically on the due date (I prefer the latter, so I don't have to remember, and I don't have to submit early). Some went through a credit-card number, others did direct debit from checking (again I prefer the latter, this time because my card number can change each time I get a new card [either when it expires or when I wear out the strip - like I said, I use it all the time]). But the important thing to me was not writing the checks - I can type all day, but I hate writing things by hand.

So anyway, I succeeded in my quest. I found electronic means of paying all my recurring bills through the vendors' web sites. Eventually I even came up with a way to pay the rent on my apartment without writing checks: USPS.com offers online payment options, including the service of sending out a paper check for me, for $1 per transaction. I was a little reluctant to pay the fee, but I managed to get all my other bills through no-fee systems, and this was helping me to avoid the bigger membership fees normally associated with electronic check services (my bank wanted about $6/month). So I decided to just suck it up and pay the dollar.

Net result: I haven't written a check in 7 months. Well, *almost* 7 months. My last check was September 30 of last year, so it'll be 7 months this Friday.

Which brings me to my struggle earlier this evening. See, during my visit to the DC area a couple of weeks ago, I earned a parking ticket in Alexandria, VA. The ticket itself isn't so bad (and it's well-deserved), but I was dreading the idea of breaking my streak of never writing a check. This minor obsession was counterbalanced by a desire not to pay the extra "convenience fee" that would come if I paid by credit card (an option I was seriously considering just for the check avoidance).

Then I actually went to pursue the credit-card option, by going to the City of Alexandria web site (address given on the back of the ticket). I was hating the fee, but oh well, if I have to... hey... wait a second... I *don't* have to. Besides the credit-card option (which has a fee), Alexandria also accepts payment by direct debit from checking (with no fee). That plus I get to keep the physical ticket, in case questions come up later or whatever, and I don't have to go make a photocopy or anything.

So, the streak continues. And I've decided that Alexandria is the nicest place to get a parking ticket. :)

Wandering around near my old office wasn't the only thing I did in Arlington last week.

Since I don't get to visit too often, I did what any normal person would do. I didn't visit my old college, or look up lots of old friends, but I set aside a couple of hours to stop in and chat with my old VW mechanic, Mr. Carter of Bug & Bunny Clinic. Mind you, I didn't have my Beetle with me at the time, but this was just a social visit. Mr. Carter is a mechanic in a class by himself, but even so, car repairs are far from the only reason to go see him. Even when I was living in the area, and when my Beetle was my primary means of transportation, I would occasionally stop by without the car, and even more often drive there but park the car outside.

The first thing to know about Mr. Carter is his name. His mother named him William, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, his first name is Mister. In fact, if you watch the bartender at his favorite saloon ring him up, his tab is filed under "M". I've known him for 8 years, and he's still "Mr. Carter" to me. It's a bit like the formal "usted" in Spanish or "sie" in German - you use the formal pronoun to show respect, until you're explicitly invited to use the familiar "tu" or "du".

But anyway. I was in town, so I wanted to visit Mr. Carter. I hadn't seen him in over 2 years, and I wasn't at all sure if he'd still be there. Unlike most of downtown Arlington these days, Mr. Carter has been around for decades. This summer I believe he's marking his anniversary of 52 years of being a professional mechanic. Mind you, that's not measuring from birth, but from when he was doing this professionally. Even if he started sometime in his teens, this still means he's been in the business long past where most people would have given up. After 52 years as a mechanic, and over 35 years of working exclusively on Volkswagens (the classic air-cooled varieties, nothing after the late 1970's), it's a vast understatement to say that he knows his cars inside-out.

Back in the winter of 1997-1998, I was temporarily in possession of two Beetles: a 1970 hardtop named "Thundertank" and a 1968 convertible named "Christine". I had just bought Christine that previous summer, and I was working up to selling Thundertank. Problem is, Christine was turning into a bit of a mechanical nightmare (thus her name, from a John Carpenter movie of a Stephen King book), so she was spending more time with Mr. Carter than with me.

One time that winter when I went to check on my poor disabled car, Mr. Carter had a surprise for me. See, Volkswagen was about to release the "New Beetle", and the NBC news folks in DC wanted to do a story comparing the original Beetle and the NewBeetle, so they went looking for an expert on the original. All their sources pointed them to Mr. Carter, and when they arrived with a TV camera, they asked him if they could film him doing some mechanic-type task. They ended up airing about 10 seconds of footage of Mr. Carter lowering the entire engine out of Christine (who was in the shop for a full transmission overhaul). Mr. Carter made me a videotape of the report, and the rest is history.

I'm not entirely sure what I wanted to say about Mr. Carter. Once I get rolling, I run the risk of composing an entire novel about him right here, and that wasn't my intention for today. Suffice it to say, he's good people, and I'm glad to see he's still around.

This week I'm trying to get back into some healthier habits that I used to have. In the past year or so I've pretty much been eating junk most of the time, and not exercising at all. So this week I'm back on a healthier diet, exercising in the mornings, and taking a daily vitamin.

But the first day I went to the medicine cabinet for the vitamins, my hand reached in and pulled out the bottle of antacid instead. I already had the bottle out and open, and I was pouring a couple of tablets of fast-food antidote into my hand before I realized, hey, I *didn't* just have pizza & a Coke. In fact, I hadn't consumed anything except a glass of skim milk. My brain was just completely on autopilot. Reaching into the medicine cabinet = getting antacid = something to do several times a day.

That mistake was, at best, only a minor amusement to me. Until the next day, when it happened again.

Or the day after that, when it happened *again*. And again.

In all, I've now done this four times in a row. The same wrong bottle every single time. My unhappy stomach has ruled my medicine cabinet usage for so long, it might take a while to prop up the new dictator of my health habits.

Of course, I could just put the vitamins on the other shelf. But that would be admitting defeat.

Last week, I happened to be in DC for the first time in a while. I moved out of town in late 2001, and have only had a couple of brief visits since then.

So anyway, while I was in the area, I decided to check out the neighborhood in north Arlington, VA, where I used to work - Wilson Blvd, near Courthouse & Clarendon metro stations, for those of you familiar with the area. I took my Neon to the NTB location there to get its tires rotated, so that gave me some time to wander around on foot.

I had only been away for about 2 years, but OH MY GOD, the whole place looks completely different. What was once an office of my humble Internet training company is now apparently split into a bartending school and a yoga place, but that really wasn't any surprise at all. I mean, I didn't know specifically about those two new businesses, but I knew WestLake had moved out, so no big deal.

The real shocker was when I walked a few blocks up Wilson, which used to be home to a bunch of decrepit little mom & pop stores, a small Blockbuster Video location, and a cafe or two. What I found was nothing short of an outdoor mega-mall to make Disney World blush. The old Whitlow's On Wilson bar & grill is now dwarfed by a Spanish tapas restaurant, a Cheesecake Factory, and two other name-brand bar & grill restaurants within a 1-block radius.

Then, around the corner where there used to be a little bike shop with an oversized (and under-maintained) parking lot, they've got not just a multi-level Crate & Barrel, but also a multi-level Pottery Barn, a multi-level Container Store, a Williams-Sonoma, and a Barnes & Noble. The previously uninhabited side-street has an Orvis, a Nextel wireless store... it's just obscene.

Now don't get me wrong. I wasn't so offended that I didn't *eat* at the Cheesecake Factory, but still, it's all kinda bizarre. In fact, if you get down to it, I guess part of my problem is envy. If they had a Cheesecake Factory 2 blocks away from my office, I don't know if I'd be complaining. What I would be is poor and out of shape (even more so than now). And I wouldn't have spent nearly as much time at Good Taste Gourmet, the little Chinese restaurant down the block that had the $4.95 lunch specials.

For the record, Good Taste is still there, but they no longer have the woman answering the phone "Good Taaaste?" - yes, I actually called to check. :)

I'm still trying to get over the shock of it all.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I just noticed that today's date is kinda fun: 20040420. In European format, it would be 20/04/2004. Not quite as cool as October 2, 2001 (20011002) or February 20, 2002 (20020220, or 20/02/2002 in European format), but still pretty neat.

Fascinating to nobody but me. :)

Just for reference, this is coming from someone who had a party on November 19, 1999, to celebrate the last date with all-odd digits for the next thousand years (until January 1, 3111).

(just trying to show I can do one better than a "trust me, I know what I'm doing" reference)

Today, Pax informed me that the short-lived TV series "Sledge Hammer!" is being released on DVD in a few months, going on sale July 27. (Hmm, do you get the idea that that author really likes the word "skein"?)

I can't wait to see this, for the first time in over 15 years (probably less than that since I lost my last videotaped episode of the series, but still). I'm not a crazy-obsessive fan or anything, but Sledge was a major influence on my yearbook quotations, if nothing else.

Anyway, sounds like it'll be fun.

All I'm saying is, I disagree with the popular claim that nothing rhymes with "orange".

Yesterday I got a haircut, and I did it right. I went to the Italian barber around the corner, and sat in the chair of the guy whose name is on the door.

From about birth to age 18, I got my hair cut by a guy named Antonio, or one of his colleagues at Antonio's Barber Shop. This time the name on the door is Mario, but the same level of professionalism applies. You sit, you chat, you discuss what part of Italy his parents & your grandparents came from; it's like family. To get some street-cred, it helps to have had a college roommate from Ischia, and to have attended his wedding in Amalfi.

All the while he's clipping and sculpting. He asks you how you'd like it cut ("What do you prefer in the back? Box-cut or tapered?"), but in the end he tells you what you *really* need ("Nah, I think box-cut would work better for this tangled cowlick in the back here..."). Then at the end he breaks out the straight razor. As he's applying the shaving cream (from a machine, of course, not a can) around the temples and the back of the neck, you realize in an instant just how much trust you're placing in this person's hands. A little trim here and there to make nice crisp lines, and he's done.

I started developing a theory that middle-aged (and older) Italian men just automatically make better barbers than other people. There have been some notable exceptions over the years, including a woman named Vanessa Nguyen in Arlington, VA. I suppose female & Vietnamese is about as far as you can get from my prejudicial archetype, but she had the gift too. Most importantly, she had the straight razor. There's also a woman at Mario's shop here who does a great job (albeit taking some liberties as to which hair is within her sovereignty), though at the moment I'm blanking on her name.

Hmm. So maybe the gender and ethnic stereotypes don't necessarily stick. Maybe it's all about the straight razor. And the barber pole. But until I find an old Italian dude named Luigi Haircuttery or Vincenzo Supercuts, you know two places where you won't ever find me.

When I joined Netflix a few months ago, I quickly amassed a long list of movies in my rental queue. How to decide which to see first? I noticed that a couple of movies I hadn't seen had the pattern "X's Y" (e.g., "Rosemary's Baby") in the title. So I decided to put all of the "X's Y" movies at the top of the list.

Then I started watching them, and a weird pattern emerged. Out of this short list of movies, four of the storylines ("Rosemary's Baby", "The Astronaut's Wife", "The Devil's Advocate", and "Agnes Of God" [which, depending on how loosely you translate it, could be "God's Agnes"]) center around a woman who was impregnated, possibly by some supernatural entity, specifically by the devil at least half the time.

I haven't watched "A Bug's Life" yet, but now I'm afraid...

Dan Bern has a song entitled "Krautmeyer". The second line in the song is "Charles Manson's real name was Charles Krautmeyer." The rest of the song questions whether Charles' life would have been profoundly different if other people had known his real name.

When I first heard the song, I took this statement at face value, and filed it away as a factoid about a minor celebrity.

Then a few days ago (probably prompted by watching Rosemary's Baby, a film about a pregnant woman whose baby is coveted by a blood-obsessed cult, directed by Roman Polanski, whose pregnant wife was later killed by Manson's blood-obsessed cult) I actually took a minute to look it up.

At least according to his IMDB biography page (and apparently also The Biography Channel), Charles Manson's name at birth was Charles Maddox. When his mother (Kathleen Maddox) married a man named William Manson, Charles' "real" name became "Charles Manson".

Maybe it was just intended as a joke, and I should just let it be that (file it with conversations with God that Dan relates in other songs), but apparently some people are taking the "Krautmeyer" claim as fact.

Oh well. There's only so much debunking of urban legends that one person can do.

[I actually started this entry a couple of weeks ago, but I'm just getting around to posting it now. Pax also commented on this show (entry "Nonviolent Sociopath"), but I figure I should get my two cents in too.]

Arguably my favorite live musical act is a singer/songwriter named Mary Prankster, whom I first encountered at the 9:30 Club in DC when she opened for Violent Femmes back in 1998. I started going to lots of her shows in the DC area over the next couple of years - she's from Annapolis, and her shows are generally centered around Baltimore & DC. She has an unabashed style, part pottymouth, part Lit major. She's a little bit country, and a little bit rock & roll. But most of all, she writes about stuff that's true.

Another one of my favorite musicians to see live is Dan Bern (a.k.a. "Bernstein"), a singer/songwriter with even more emphasis on the "songwriter" part (not only does he have 90% new songs for every show I see; he also seems to compose some of them on the fly while he's on stage). I first encountered Dan when my brother Tony played "Jerusalem" and "Marilyn" off Dan's eponymous CD.

They're chocolate and peanut butter. Peanut butter and chocolate. Two great tastes that go great together. And a couple of weeks ago (March 19, to be exact) they were on the same stage on the same night, for the first time ever. I couldn't quite contain my fanboy enthusiasm, but I tried. It's sort of like that moment in Star Wars Episode I when Qui-Gon Jinn says "Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi," and the whole audience applauds (at least when I went to see it on opening night they did).

It was excellent show, albeit a bit short-lived. It was a small venue with two shows scheduled that night (7pm and 10pm), and both artists played at both shows. We caught the second show, and I was impressed how both Mary & Dan still had the energy to make it fresh after they must've been a little tired.

I believe "the moment" for that night goes to Dan, on his song "Marilyn". It's one of his earliest hits, and he gets a lot of audience participation, especially on the chorus. So much so that his expectations of the audience have been raised over the years. The whole room sang along for one of the choruses, as Dan just strummed the guitar, not singing at all. Then, as we got into the next verse, some of the less intense fans got lost on the lyrics & started just mumbling along with the tune. Dan looks out on the crowd and says, "Come on, is that the best you can do? I might as well sing the damn thing myself."

Last night I went with Pax to see Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers in concert. This is the band formerly known as The Refreshments, who had a couple of decent radio hits around 1996 with "Banditos" ("Everybody knows, the world is full of stupid people, so meet me at the mission at midnight, we'll divvy up there...") and "Down Together" ("Whoever said there's nothing new under the sun, never thought much about individuals, but he's dead anyway...").

I've only seen them live once before (at a North Philly dive called The Fire), but I can safely say that "as usual", they put on a kick-ass show. I'm not quite a follow-them-around kind of fan, but when they're in town, it's good to see a group who really seem to put everything they have into every show they do. I don't know quite how many shots of tequila Roger downed on stage last night, or what was in that flask that he borrowed from an audience member to take a swig, but it seems to work for him. He (and to a slightly lesser degree, the rest of the band) was absolutely bouncing-off-the-walls enthusiastic for the whole 2-hour set. Excellent show, with festival-sized energy, on a small club stage. Good stuff.

By far my favorite moment of the night was one time when Roger was rambling through introducing a new song, and then suddenly he just kinda forgot which one he was introducing, and he just stopped. He turns around to the drummer, then back to the audience, and says, "Wait a second, what song was that again? I dunno. Probably something about Mexico, tequila, women, and celebrating life." Given their discography, that's a pretty safe bet.

Anybody who regularly checks my site may have noticed my relative silence of late. Basically, I keep having little inspirations, but then I put all this pressure on myself to build an interesting, detailed story around each one (especially when some people are churning out 3 tomes a week), and I get frustrated part-way in when I realize that I really don't have *that* much to say about this or that minor epiphany or observation.

So, just a little warning, I'm going to start with more entries, but shorter ones, and hope that'll get things flowing again. Eventually, some of them will be back in the category of long, rambling streams of consciousness, but don't expect that every time. And also forgive me if some of the entries look like they're from a few weeks ago, as I start clearing some of the backlog of these unfinished symphonies.

And as usual, I'll continue to invest more energy in the titles than in the stories themselves. :)

What better way to mark the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide, than to listen to Mary Prankster's "Punk Rock Heaven"?

There's also Wil Wheaton's take on this anniversary.

I just ran my dishwasher.

29 cups/glasses/mugs (all used by me, and not more than one at a time), 4 bowls (suitable size for catching a freshly microwaved chicken pot pie), 5 forks, 4 spoons, 1 oven pan (for heating up frozen garlic bread), 1 saucepan w/lid, and 0 (yes, zero) plates.

I get the feeling I haven't cooked an actual meal in a while. :)

Mostly, I'm just in a hurry to post this before Pax posts the same thing... :)

Pax mentioned something about a colleague who made show-offish use of the word "fungible" in a business email. Rather than pretend to know what a spline is, I decided to look it up.

Merriam-Webster had this helpful definition:

------------
Main Entry: ¹fun·gi·ble
Pronunciation: 'f&n-j&-b&l
Function: noun
: something that is fungible -- usually used in plural
------------

Thanks for clearing that up.

Actually, what I object to is not the fact that one of the definitions for the word "fungible" refers back to the same word, but the fact that this is described as the "Main Entry", with a number "1" on it, and it's the first place they take me when I look for that word. They do have a more helpful definition for the adjective form of that word, but it's still only the second thing you can get to, even though the noun definition relies completely on this adjective one for any sort of context.

Really, it's just another example of my favorite Jargon File entry of all time: their definition for "self-reference".

Hmm. A while back, I theorized about the ideal plan for Netflix throughput, assuming that Monday through Saturday were the available business days for the Postal Service and Netflix.

But then I started to notice something. The movies I was putting in the mail on Friday morning, for Netflix arrival on Saturday, weren't getting turned around until Monday. In the past 2 months of membership, I've had Netflix exchange movies on Mondays through Fridays (including two Mondays that are ostensibly national holidays), but never on a Saturday.

Hmm. So really, I should plan to mail out my movie returns on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday (to be exchanged at Netflix on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Monday, respectively), but I should *not* mail them out on Tuesday or Friday.

Oh, and remember how I joked about how extreme the 8-disc "Ultimate" plan was? Well, yeah, you may have guessed, that's my subscription now. :)

Ever. I mean it.

(Warning: this is gonna be a long one...)

I don't mean that nobody is ever allowed to exchange goods & services for my money, but rather that nobody will ever score any points with me by doing a sales pitch. The instant that I hear the games beginning, I'll shut down. Not only won't I buy the additional thing you're pushing, but if I came in already set to buy one specific thing, I may put it down and walk out.

So don't sell me anything.

I feel bad picking on Micro Center, since I usually find good computer stuff there for good prices, but a few of their salespeople push a bit too hard. And then there's the occasional one who pushes *way* too hard.

Last night, I was in Micro Center to buy 2 specific things. I knew exactly where those 2 things were, but I stuck around for an extra half-hour to browse. This one particular salesguy came over while I was looking at something I had taken off the shelf (I wasn't staring blankly in a lost way, but reading a label on something that interested me).

He asked, "What can I help you find tonight?"

"Nothing, thanks. I'm just browsing." I made eye contact, but in a way that would make anybody (if he's paying attention) keenly aware that I don't want or need him there. And then I went back to reading the label.

"OK, well if you need anything, I'll be right over there...", or something like that, was his response. His tone was heavily scripted and over-rehearsed, with a certain saccharine quality on top of that to make it sound extra condescending.

I continued my browsing, deliberately wandering *away* from his post. About 10-15 minutes later (not long enough to forget a person who just told you to get lost), I was looking at something down another aisle, and he found me again. He drops into his script again, apparently completely oblivious to our recent encounter.

"What can I help you find tonight?"

I almost laughed out loud. It took me a second to realize that he honestly didn't remember (or didn't care) that he had just bothered me and been rebuffed a few minutes earlier.

"No, nothing. I'm still just browsing." I made eye contact for the merest moment (just long enough to see his face showed no sense of recognizing me), and I wasn't openly rude, but I put a little extra emphasis on the word "still" in hopes of jogging his memory, and then I went right back to looking away from him.

I had already turned my back by the time he followed up: "OK, well if you need anything, I'll be right over there..." I put down the thing I had been looking at, and walked away. He might have still been talking; I don't know.

So now I was really annoyed.

My understanding is that the sales pitch (apart from providing actual directional assistance to someone who asks for it) is largely aimed at making the customer feel welcomed and respected - "How may I *serve* you, o lordly customer?" is the basic idea behind the script. There is no more thorough way to torpedo that mission than to forget somebody you spoke to within the past 10 minutes.

But it gets better. You can probably guess where this is going...

Another 10 or 15 minutes later, I'm in another aisle, again reading a label, which apparently made me vulnerable for attack *again*. Same guy. I'm not even making this up.

"What can I help you find tonight?"

"STILL nothing. THANK you." This time I didn't make eye contact at all, doing my best "I'm so angry I can't even look at you" face. I put down the item I had in my hand and walked away. This time I was already several steps away by the time he squeezed out those last words, "OK, well if you need anything, I'll be right over there..."

Just absolutely ridiculous. I mean, there are people with bad social skills, and then there are people with a psychotic detachment from reality, and then, somewhere way beyond that, is this salesguy.

So, in case any similarly socially inept salespeople are out there reading this, here's a handy guide:

------------------

Clue #1: If I don't initiate eye contact with a salesperson, I'm not looking for a salesperson to help me find anything. So leave me alone.

Clue #2: If I'm standing and reading something, I'm probably interested in that thing (which I have obviously found), and not interested in being diverted to something else. So leave me alone.

Clue #3: If you offer to help me, and I rebuff you in 10 words or less(*), it means I'm not interested in where you are or what you can help me find. So leave me alone.

Clue #4: If you just harassed me 10 minutes ago, and you told me where you would be, and I didn't come looking for you there, it means I'm still not interested in talking to you. So leave me alone.

Apply clues #3 & #4 as often as necessary to cover the subsequent return visits, and the central message is still the same: LEAVE ME ALONE, you big annoying salesguy.

------------------

It was almost enough to make me complain to the store manager. Yeah, see how you do on commissions *now*. But that still seemed like an excessive response. In any event, I was done with my shopping, so I just bought the 2 things and left.

Oh, and I should mention, all this vitriol was stirred up by a person whose actual, official job description is to encourage me to buy things. This doesn't even touch on the special loathing that I reserve for people trying to sell to me by manipulating religious sensibilities. That's something else that's been on my mind in recent weeks, and it's worthy of a whole separate post...


(*) Regarding the distinction between "less" and "fewer": yes, I realize that "fewer" is the term applied to a smaller number of discrete items, and you might think that "10 words" calls for a comparative form of "many/few" rather than "much/little". However, I maintain that the rebuffing of a salesperson involves a total arsenal of body language, vocal tone, and other non-verbal physical cues, so the mere count of words is not the whole picture. To employ a less vehement defense on the whole, therefore, involves using "less", not "fewer", than 10 words.

It's been over a month since I posted anything, so beware, I may let loose the backlog of random musings over the next few days. Anyway, as for the current random thought:

On various occasions, I've seen trucks with the message "HELP THAT CHILD" (italicized and in quotation marks) painted on the front. For example, it may be a dump truck or a garbage truck or some such thing, with a red cab, and with white letters painted across the front bumper. I've seen it on a number of occasions, but always when I'm least expecting it, and I haven't really made note of what kind of truck it was each time.

So, naturally, I'm puzzled by this message, and I tried looking for an explanation online. Google had nothing useful for '"help that child" truck', '"help that child" slogan', or any other related phrase I could think of.

Anybody out there heard of this before? Anybody know what the hell this slogan is supposed to mean? If I don't find out soon, I'm gonna start roaming the streets looking for one of these trucks, and I'll call the owners when I figure out who they are.

The good news keeps getting better...

In response to yesterday's post about Shutterfly, a friend of mine emailed me to ask if the online services could fix cropping problems that he previously had when he got digital photos printed at a store. The basic problem is that a typical digital photo has an aspect ratio of 4:3 (e.g., 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels), but a typical 4x6 print has an aspect ratio of 3:2. Thus, the print would look like a longer, skinnier rectangle by cutting off part of the two long sides.

So I decided to go check it out. Good news: YES, the online systems have tools that let you do your own cropping, as well as other adjustments. I've mostly focused my attention on Shutterfly, but I'm sure the others must have something similar in order to stay competitive. In Shutterfly, they have a whole picture-fixing area where you can make several changes to your photos, including cropping and color adjustment.

Here is a screenshot of the cropping tool, where you can see the drag & drop outline for where the picture will be cropped. In this example, my image had more interesting stuff at the bottom than at the top, so I dragged it all the way to the bottom. You can drag that rectangle as a whole to take the maximum possible size, or you can move the corners of that rectangle to take a smaller chunk of the original image (resulting in enlargement for the final print). They give you the option of cropping for a specific print size (since some have different aspect ratios), and in case you're planning to print the same image in various sizes, they offer "Easy Crop", which lets you define a rectangle that will definitely get kept, no matter what size you print (they'll add from the surrounding area to fill the remaining space for certain sizes).

They also offer color adjustment - beyond just black & white or normal color, there's lots of fine-tuning available. For example, you have the option of adjusting the color saturation along a broad scale, in case you have an original image that's too colorful or not colorful enough. Here's an extreme case, super-saturating the color from that previous screenshot (notice that it still has the cropped dimensions I specified in the previous step). I wouldn't actually want to print it so saturated, but having this adjustment addresses one of Kathy's concerns, that Ofoto seemed to have a slightly more natural-looking color balance in one of my test prints. Now I have the power to adjust that saturation any way I like.

I continue to be impressed.

Lots of people are shy about using digital cameras because they'd prefer a permanent, shiny photo print in their hands. Personally, I strongly prefer a digital image file stored on a computer somewhere, safely backed up somewhere else, that doesn't take up physical space or get lost in my apartment. So it took me a while to get on the bandwagon about online photo printing services.

Finally, after two separate people indicated an interest in prints of digital photos, right around Christmas time, I started looking into getting prints as a gift.

I checked out 3 of the big companies, but I'm sure there are others. The ones I tried were Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Ofoto. All of them seem good, with subtle differences.

First off, I was pleasantly surprised that all 3 had pretty good systems for uploading, organizing, and ordering pictures. They all had optional downloadable programs to help you submit multiple image files, but they all gave the alternative of a standard HTTP upload form (I prefer not to install any of their software). All 3 also had 10-15 free regular-size prints (4"x6") for new customers, and fairly inexpensive shipping through regular mail.

So I placed an order with each of the 3 companies, all for the same image, each time ordering a free 4x6 and a regular-price 5x7 (about $1.00), and then shipping was about $1.00-$1.50 in each case. All 3 produced pretty good-looking prints, just as good as a film camera (no visible pixels) from a 1600 x 1200 pixel image.

So, all were satisfactory. Shutterfly got extra points for being the first one delivered (took 4 days, compared to Snapfish 5 days and Ofoto 6 days), for offering gift certificates (I emailed customer service at the other two, and they told me they don't have any way to give their service as a gift), and for taking extra-good care of the prints (providing a stiff envelope instead of the floppy one at Snapfish, and enclosing an index print for both the small set and the large set).

So in case anyone else out there is in the market for one of these, my recommendation is for Shutterfly, but I think they're all pretty good.

They say that this guy was probably drunk when he flew his Piper Cherokee around the Philly area for 3 hours last night, before finally landing at his home airport in Limerick.

First off, unless he was actively drinking there in the cockpit, he'd have to be pretty darn drunk at the beginning to still be drunk after 3 hours up there. My guess is it could be some metabolic condition (diabetes, etc) that causes chemical reactions similar to what alcohol does.

Second, there were 20 mph winds last night. I've flown a Cherokee before, and 20 mph winds can make landings tricky while *sober*. This guy supposedly landed his Cherokee, while drunk, in the dark, in that wind, and is still alive to tell about it. I say the guy deserves a medal. If he can fly that well while impaired, he's probably just honing his skills, like a batter swinging two bats - imagine how smooth he'll be the next time he flies sober. Just get him somebody in the cockpit to operate the radio, so he doesn't worry all those nice air traffic controllers... :)

Back in October, I complained about NBC rearranging their schedule on short notice, specifically pre-empting "Scrubs". Since that's the only show I regularly* watch on TV, that messed with my schedule.

(* The word "regularly" seems to suggest that the show is on at a "regular" time on a recurring schedule, but actually I mean that I followed it around to all different Thursday-night time slots, for the sole purpose of seeing this one show.)

In that previous post, I commented that replacing Scrubs with "Whoopi" reruns (twice) was the ultimate insult. Now, I'm not so sure. Tonight's episode of Scrubs (after not happening for 3 weeks because of various holidays) has been replaced with that new stupid reality show, the one with Donald Trump (who, incidentally, has appeared in at least two movies with Whoopi Goldberg, so he's at most one degree of separation from the previously crowned Ultimate Insult).

NBC, here's my official notice: I'm giving up. I'm not going to sit around all year waiting for you to air episodes that you undoubtedly have ready to go, just sitting on a shelf somewhere while you run and re-run this mindless crap. I gave up on West Wing a few months ago (not just for the schedule, but because the writing went to hell when Sorkin left), and I'm giving up on Scrubs now (even though 4 weeks ago, the last time they aired an episode, the writing still seemed to be in top form).

I have my Netflix subscription. When Scrubs seasons come out on DVD, I'll watch them, but I'm not going to follow your schedule anymore. It's over.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if anybody's looking for me, I'll be home, watching movies.

It's only been an hour and a half, but I have an update on the Netflix thing: Kim tells me that there are other Netflix options I've overlooked (apparently not listed on the non-member area of their site, but this link works for Netflix members)...

$39.95 Netflix Ultimate
Unlimited rentals - up to 8 movies out at a time for a flat monthly fee of $39.95.

$29.95 Netflix Plus
Unlimited rentals - up to 5 movies out at a time for a flat monthly fee of $29.95.

$19.95 Netflix Standard
Unlimited rentals - up to 3 movies out at a time for a flat monthly fee of $19.95.

$13.95 Netflix Economy
Up to 4 rentals a month - up to 2 movies out at a time for a flat monthly fee of $13.95.

8 at a time?!! As you can see, I was wrong to underestimate Netflix's ability to drain my wallet. :)

In a previous post, I mentioned that after less than a week, I had 155 DVDs in my Netflix queue. Well, now (after about 2 weeks) that number has grown to 403.

For those of you scoring at home (or even if you're alone), it's basically physically impossible to do more than about 300 in a year. It works something like this:

1) You get 3 DVDs at a time. Let's say you receive these 3 discs on a Monday.

2) You watch them Monday night, and drop them in the mail for pickup Tuesday morning.

3) The USPS, at its best, delivers the discs to Netflix the next day (Wednesday).

4) Netflix, at its best, turns around and sends out your replacement discs the same day (still Wednesday).

5) The USPS, at its best, delivers these new discs back to you the next day (Thursday).

6) Assuming the same overnight turnaround for watching this second set of videos, you put them back in the mail Friday, they get exchanged at Netflix on Saturday, and you receive your next set on the following Monday.

So, there's a maximum of 6 discs per week if you really work at it. Multiply that by 52 weeks and you get 312, but you haven't factored in the holidays (USPS loves holidays), or any realistic contingencies that will delay some of the various shipments. Heck, I don't even know if Netflix works on Saturdays.

So anyway, if you *really* work at it, you can get about 300 discs in a year. I have 403 on my list.

Oh yeah, and then there's also the Netflix limit of 500 discs - they won't let you put more than that in your queue. Given that I've accumulated 403 in 2 weeks, if there are any movies still out there that *aren't* on my list, I should reach saturation pretty darn soon.

This is all just a long way of saying, if anybody's looking for me over the next year or two, I'll be home, watching movies. :)

Today I happened upon this little Flash animation on this guy's weblog. I especially like the twitch. :)

Kinda reminds me of some animated cartoons on the Joe Cartoon site, first introduced to me a few years ago by some students in a computer training class I was teaching. The highlight of Joe Cartoon back then was a piece named "Joe Fish" - entertainer of sick minds, and disrupter of many classes.

Over the weekend, CNN.com had this article about a mountain lion that attacked some bicyclists. Included with the article was an interactive pop-up entitled "Living with mountain lions", which included the following tips on how to survive an encounter with a mountain lion:

• Do not run or crouch down
• Do not approach the lion
• Make noise
• Try to appear larger by waving your hands or opening your coat
• Throw stones if the lion is aggressive
• Pick up small children

I'm just assuming that the last one is supposed to end with the words "...when you run out of stones." :)

Speaking of candidate/movie connections...

On Tom Tomorrow's blog, he mentions a NY Times article about Joe Lieberman (free subscription required, unfortunately) that opens with this sentence: "In many ways, Stan Kowalski is precisely the kind of undecided voter that the campaign of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman is trying to reach."

...um, except maybe for the fact that he's a fictional character, from the play-turned-movie "A Streetcar Named Desire" (played by Marlon Brando both times)?

I mean, I'm sure there are some actual people in the world who actually have the name "Stanley Kowalski". Neither the first name nor the last name is particularly rare, especially if one's parents were fans of "Streetcar" when one was born. But I would think the name is at least enough of a cultural reference to merit a brief aside about the name coincidentally resembling the fictional character. Perhaps even a terrible, predictable pun about not being the "desired" type of voter? But at least *something*.

At best, Ms Cardwell missed an opportunity at a cultural reference. At worst, she gave the impression that she may have fabricated her entire story, and chose a character name from fiction because she couldn't make one up for herself. I mean, if you're gonna fabricate a story, you could at least be more clever than that. (Didja ever notice that the name "Stephen L. Glass" contains the letters "S-T-E-L-L-A"? Coincidence? I think not.)

"...is no way to go through life, son."

I don't believe that Wesley Clark is any of those things. But I'm pretty sure the generic "COLLEGE" sweatshirt he's wearing in the photo for this article is modeled on the one worn by "Bluto" Blutarsky in the movie Animal House. Y'know, Bluto, the dumb guy, butt of many jokes, with the 0.0 grade-point average? Yeah, that one.

I appreciate the fact that Clark is trying to make a cultural reference for the college crowd, but perhaps he could have picked a more flattering one. I mean, I'm sure he's just trying to be "cool", but when you can already legitimately put the title "Supreme Allied Commander" next to your name, is there really anything cooler? :)

In my previous post this morning, I mentioned that I had discovered this Computer Management/ Disk Management console, but that I still hadn't fixed everything yet. Well, sure enough, that same Disk Management thing that fixed my drive letters also let me re-partition the 160-gig drive to recognize its actual size. No Seagate-brand tools necessary.

This is how it's meant to be.

Now peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars...

I still haven't resolved all the problems from yesterday's rant, but at least one thing is now working right.

For a while, I got the new drive working with the old drives (although the new one was still showing the wrong capacity), but the drive letters were out of order. My C drive (40 GB) was still C, but my new drive (160 GB) had taken over letter D, relegating the former D drive (80 GB) to letter E. This messed up my whole plan of keeping existing data on D (including a bunch of programs set to save there by default), so I fought with it for most of last night, trying to get the letters reassigned. I tried unplugging drives and rebooting, I tried disabling drives in Windows (which usually caused unhappy spontaneous reboots anyway), and I tried disabling certain devices in BIOS, but nothing worked. I tried a Google search, but apparently didn't have the magic words to find any useful advice, so I kept trying my own experiments.

Finally, this morning I found the right search phrase: "change drive letter", which brought me to this page. Pretty cool - I never knew that "Computer Management" console existed under "My Computer".

So, Google eventually came through for me (again). And peace was restored.

For a time, anyway. Still gotta get the missing 20 gig recognized...

I've had several different generations of computers, and it seems that I'm always asking them to do slightly more than they really want to do. Specifically, I'm always trying to install hard drives that are larger than the computer wants to accept.

Back in the old days of Windows 95, "large hard drive" support meant over 2 gigabytes. Some computers couldn't handle that at all, and others required BIOS upgrades or other meddling to enable it. Occasionally you'd have to partition a large drive into segments of 2 gig or less, so one drive might show up as 3 drives. But you've got a "large" hard drive and everything's cool.

Of course, other advances come along, and you get a new computer that can handle a 6-gig hard drive without extra work. Even cooler.

Until a couple of years go by, and you accumulate a bunch of data files (especially if you're doing any multimedia stuff), and suddenly that 6-gig drive doesn't seem so "large" anymore. So you try to install a 20-gig drive. Sorry, now 10 gig is considered "large", and you'll need a special controller card or other nonsense to support over 10 gig.

You go through all that hassle, get the 20-gig drive working, but then soon afterward you upgrade to a computer that comes with its own 40-gig drive. Obviously, this one is designed for "large" drives. Life is cool again.

After a year or two, you find a good deal on 80-gig drives. You plop one in alongside that old 40-gig drive, and now things are even better. Operating system and installed programs go on the "small" 40-gig drive so you can reinstall from scratch anytime you want, and keep all the data files on the larger 80-gig drive.

Then the 80 starts to fill up. You find another good deal, this time on a 160-gig drive by Seagate. Rather than waste either of the existing drives, you decide to keep them both in there and install this as a third drive (which requires disconnecting the Zip drive, but that wasn't getting used anyway).

But then the old trouble comes back. Now 137 gig (actually 137 billion bytes, closer to 127 gig - I have a whole separate rant about dishonest "gigabytes" and "megabytes") is considered "large", and my computer doesn't want to support that without a fight. After a *lot* of finagling, I was able to get my computer to recognize this drive as 127 gig (nominally 137), but that's still at least 20 gigs going to waste. I tried running the system tools that came with the new drive, but the re-format tool therein is not even acknowledging that this drive exists. I have Windows XP Pro, service pack 1, and I installed the big drive enabler from Maxtor that should tell XP to recognize the large drive, but no luck. XP still only lets me format it up to 127 gig, and the installer tools from Seagate still don't acknowledge that the drive is attached.

For a while, I may just use this drive with the limited capacity, or pull out my main 40-gig drive and see if it helps to reshuffle the drives in different positions, but I really don't want to do either of those. I bought 280 gigs' worth of storage, and I want to use all of it.

(Random aside: my English teachers would kill me for mixing first- & second-person narration there, and also for mixing past & present tenses, but you get the idea. And grammar is the least of my worries right now. Whoops, now I'm starting sentences with conjunctions. Oh, never mind.)

In any event, if any of you out there are in the market for one of these new "large" drives, just be warned that you may be in for adventures of your own if you go over 130 gig.

And if any of you out there are computer manufacturers or authorities in the selection of computer standards, I BEG YOU: please, somebody, invent a standard for a computer that can take an infinitely large hard drive, that will not automatically become obsolete as soon as I get to five, or ten, or a hundred times the current "standard" size. OK, maybe "infinite" is impractical, but hitting a wall 3 separate times in 8 years, to get from 2 to 10 to 137 gigabytes, suggests a staggering lack of foresight.

Urg.

There are two popular ways to do video input/editing/archiving/authoring on a home computer:

1) Buy lots of specialized hardware and lots of specialized software for your PC, figure out by trial & error which combinations are compatible, and eventually spend more on accessories than on the computer itself, or...

2) Own a Macintosh.

As it happens, I'm pretty well invested in solution #1 right now, and I've had OK results. The incremental cost has been easier to swallow than just buying a computer primarily for this purpose, but I'll freely admit that I've paid the price by constantly having to add things on.

For the past 6 months or so, I've been pretty happy with my ATI TV Wonder VE video input card. It has both coaxial cable (like regular cable TV) and composite video (like the cables from a DVD player) inputs, and it includes a TV tuner so you can program it to record from various TV channels, basically like a VCR. It's often promoted as an alternative to TiVo, but this solution doesn't include any of the automatic program-schedule updates that come with the (expensive) TiVo subscription. Also, the TV Wonder is a PCI card that you install in an expansion slot, so it's really only available for desktop PCs. Anyway, for $50, it's not bad.

However, recently I had a hankering for a more portable solution. I was looking for a way to record video directly on my laptop, so I can record at places other than my home (where I happen to have my computer and my TV/VCR/etc very close together). Eventually, I found a couple of solutions from Belkin: (1) the "Hi-Speed USB DVD Creator" and (2) the "USB VideoBus II".

Option #1 was interesting, but it appeared to handle only the "video" side of "audio/video", so I would have to do something about capturing the sound. Knowing that my laptop has a horrible sound card (only a microphone jack for input, and very bad sound capture), I decided to opt instead for #2, which seems to capture both audio and video, and feed both of them into the computer's USB port. That, plus the VideoBus was in stock at CompUSA, so I had something I could take home that day.

That's all well and good, but I got home and discovered (to my chagrin) that the audio input is still dependent on the capabilities of the sound card for recording the sound. Thus, the video clips recorded through this capture device didn't physically plug into my laptop's sound input jack, but they still ended up with really bad sound. I decided to try one more workaround...

One more trip to Micro Center got me the USB Sound Blaster MP3+, an external sound card that plugs into a USB port. Nice and compact, and it has its own input and output jacks for sound. It worked.

Thus, the current setup: DVD/VCR output goes via standard RCA audio/video cables (red/white/yellow), with the sound (red & white plugs) going directly into the Sound Blaster (feeding into USB port 1), and the video (yellow plug) going into the VideoBus (feeding into USB port 2). The capture software that came with the VideoBus is crap (only records in AVI format, with low frame rate & large consumption of disk space), so I'm now using some freely available Microsoft capture software (Windows Media Encoder, with files downloadable from ATI's web site). To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure which of those files are actually necessary to make this work, but I installed the whole set of them, in the order recommended, and I'm doing OK.

Anyway, the portable capture setup seems to be working OK, with decent picture and excellent stereo sound, in a file format that eats up just 10 MB per minute (that sounds like a lot, but the included software for the VideoBus was consuming more than 20 times as much disk space).

Whatever. The point is, after all these hours of research and troubleshooting, I finally have something that works almost as well as a Mac. :)

After 2 weeks out of the office, I'm finally back from vacation. Managed to visit family on Long Island and central Florida, and still had some time at the end to readjust before going back to work. That came in very handy, especially after the whirlwind tour of Florida that included a 20-hour trip to Universal Studios with a 9-year-old and a 1-year-old (we were at the park from opening until closing, and had a 2-hour drive each way). Exhaustion found new meaning.

Anyway, as usual, I have tons of pictures to sort through before they show up here, and I hope to get on that soon.

In other news, I have bought into the Netflix juggernaut, and quickly got into the spirit of the never-ending movie queue (I've been a member less than a week, and I already have my next 155 DVDs lined up). Of course, the first item on my list was X-Files Season 3, Disc 5, which (as you may have read) I was eagerly awaiting. I am very happy with Netflix so far.

PS: Many thanks to those of you who offered to help me with the José Chung taping project. I've got it covered now.

Christmas came a few days early at the Kullen house. Last night I set up the DSL connection and wireless router that will let my parents have 2 independent computers both get to the Internet without dealing with the slowness of AOL (and a million other little inconveniences of dial-up existence).

I'm now typing this on my laptop, 2 rooms over from where the Internet connection is set up. So nice.

But I swear, I did this (at least partly) for *them*. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying their new network while I'm here, but this was not (completely) for my own selfish reasons. It's for *them* to enjoy more easily the wonders of the Internet: emails from me, pictures on my web site... :)

...until about dinner time.

For anyone who was skeptical about the government's ability to maintain "Homeland Security" funding in such tough financial times, your fears have been confirmed. Apparently there's only enough financial support to stand united during regular business hours (extended slightly on Fridays in case of... well, I don't know why).

Of course, I should give Kathy credit for spotting this sign outside a local shopping center a few weeks ago. Today was just the first time I thought ahead to have my camera handy when I drove by.

In case you're wondering, this guy is "Cullen" with a "C". Not one of ours.

Just curious, why do non-existent people named "Erin M Kullen" and "Stephen Kullen" get more and better credit card offers in my mailbox than I do? Don't these companies check names with a credit bureau first? It's one thing when young people with no credit history get better offers than you do (as one of my relatives once decried about her college-student daughters); it's something else when you're being beat out by names with no corresponding physical manifestation (at least as far as my Google and Switchboard searches are able to determine).

Then again, changing my first name sounds like a small price to pay for a 0% rate through 2005... :)

Stream of consciousness #1, actually from a couple of weeks ago:

So, the other day, I happened to be on IMDB to look up something about Jake Gyllenhaal (I heard Maggie Gyllenhaal's name mentioned in a movie trailer, and just had to confirm my suspicion that they're siblings).

Random aside: isn't it fun to say "Gyllenhaal" (pronounced /JILL-un-hall/)?

Anyway, there in his filmography, one entry stood out: "Proof (2004) (filming) .... Hal".

Now, I know the play "Proof". Know it as in I've studied it in two different acting classes, I'm playing a scene from it in an acting class right now, and I've seen it performed on Broadway. I love this play, and I don't want them to mess it up. I mean, there are certain plays that translate well to movies because they have lots of special effects or other features that are difficult to fit on a stage (I'm looking forward to the "Angels In America" miniseries for this reason). And then there are some plays where they just basically film a stage production of it ("Death Of A Salesman") or do the play as written, but on a movie set ("Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf").

So there's potential for them to do this right. But I'm still a little scared about my baby. I'm also a little scared of anything involving Gwyneth Paltrow, or anything where the ages of actors and characters seem acutely mismatched (Paltrow is 31 playing 25, and Gyllenhaal is 22 playing 28). It may seem like there's not a lot of difference there, but one of the themes of the play is the elder PhD-in-mathematics Hal condescending to the younger college-dropout Catherine, and, well, I won't throw in any more to spoil it.

And after seeing "Finding Forrester", I'm pretty sure the world doesn't need another remake of "Good Will Hunting".

All I'm saying is, they'd better do it right. And picking Gwyneth was not an auspicious beginning.

Stream #2:

Yesterday, CNN had a story about the new largest known prime number. Actually, it turns out that this discovery was about a month old, and nobody thought to tell me until now.

Actually, the main reason why that "largest prime number" thing caught my attention was because of something from the dialogue of Proof (Act 1, Scene 3), about the largest known Germain prime (cited in the play as 92,305 x 2^16,998 + 1). As it turns out, that record has apparently been blown away (assuming it was correct as of the writing of the play).

And just a little aside about the notoriously crappy science reporting at CNN.com: the headline "Student finds largest known prime number" is a bit misleading - but I guess "Experimental software distributed to thousands of volunteers worldwide finds largest known prime number, on one particular computer that happens to be owned by a student" wouldn't quite fit on the page.

Stream #3:

Proof won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001.

Today, I happened to catch an ad on Amazon.com about "Wit", an interesting play-turned-movie that won the Pulitzer in 1999. It suddenly occurred to me that I was also very fond of some other recent Pulitzer-winning plays (including "How I Learned To Drive" and "Angels In America"), so I decided to check the list of other Pulitzer winners to see if there were others I'd enjoy.

On that list (confirmed on the official Pulitzer web site), the 1997 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Drama was... nobody. I think that's great. In a world of "Top Ten [X] Of The Year", it's great to hear of somebody who doesn't just *always* give an award. On the Pulitzer history page, there it is in Joseph Pulitzer's original creation of the prize system: "He also empowered the board to withhold any award where entries fell below its standards of excellence." A little further digging has uncovered a remarkable string of accomplishments for this celebrated "No Award".

Start here, if you haven't already.

I invite Pax to fill in the details from his perspective, but here's the story as it pertains to my curse:

Since I was taking my car to the shop for repair attempt #3, I needed a ride from the shop to the office in the morning. He came & picked me up. There's some minor flooding in the area, so one of the back roads heading kinda sorta toward our office had a puddle on it.

Well, it was really more of a pond than a puddle. It covered the whole width of the road (a road previously unknown to us) and it continued across a small field off the side.

There was some discussion between the courageous driver and his more conservative passenger as to the wisdom of continuing forward (there was no other traffic on the road, so no pressure from behind, and no evidence whether the passage was safe).

A unilateral decision was made that we would proceed.

We proceeded.

We emerged from the other side, and it was considered a victory.

We got safely to the office, and joked about having escaped any trouble from the wet passage.

Then we drove to lunch (with Bruce as well). Sputter, stall. Start again. Sputter, stall.

It continued in that fashion all the way to the local pizzeria. On arrival, we actually got out and pushed the car into the parking lot.

After a lovely lunch, we went back to investigate the car situation, and found the wire lead for one of the four spark plugs was visibly hanging out from where it should be firmly seated. We tried pushing it down into position, but it resisted. Interestingly, with the engine running, the rattling and sputtering in the engine went away each time that we pushed the plug down.

Eventually, we got back to the office with the same start & stop method that got us to our lunch, and then some co-workers helped re-fasten the spark plugs, and all seems OK so far. But here's the thing: (in a situation not unlike mine) Pax had been to a Honda dealer/mechanic for a standard oil-change-etcetera 2 days ago. This rattling spark plug has been an issue for a lot longer than that. You couldn't open the hood and not notice this thing hanging out. Unless, perhaps, it wasn't mentioned on the work order someone handed you...

I'm not saying that all mechanics are bad. My surprisingly good experience with a body shop last month has raised my hopes. But in a random sampling of 2 mechanics this week, 100% of them seem to have difficulty distinguishing between scatological matter and Shinola.

I'm waiting to be impressed.

Just to update you from last time...

1) The Beetle: still off the road for that rust repair job.

2) The Neon is the main star today. I'm still OK from the collision repair a few weeks ago, but that deer collision actually forced me to postpone the appointment I had for a tune-up.

See, on the Neon's original trip to the mechanic (separate from the body shop), the #1 problem on the agenda (well, right after the state inspection, which they also missed) was to check the automatic transmission - it wasn't shifting properly, so it whines in low gear when it should be upshifting.

On mechanic visit #1, they told me they made slight throttle adjustments, but they couldn't really duplicate the problem in order to troubleshoot.

On mechanic visit #2, they fixed 3 other things (state inspection, windshield wiper motor, and airbag module) that were supposed to be done on visit #1, but they still couldn't find anything wrong with the transmission. I figured I'd take it home and see if the problem was still there. 5 minutes out the door, I could tell it was.

So I made an appointment for visit #3, this time scheduling a standard tune-up, because that seemed to fix a similar shifting problem a year earlier. Unfortunately, I had to cancel that tune-up appointment because of the deer thing, and I'm just getting around to it now.

So, today I went in for the tune-up. I got a call around lunchtime from the mechanic. He said several things:

A) They can do the standard tune-up, spark plugs, etc, that's fine (and not too expensive).

B) The transmission fluid was pretty low, and that could very likely cause the shifting trouble I was observing. There may or may not be a transmission fluid leak, but it's hard to tell because it would be masked by the fact that...

C) There's a nasty oil leak around the head gasket on one of the cylinders. The oil is currently about 2 quarts down.

So, "A" is fine. For "B", they're topping off the transmission fluid, but I'm wondering why this wasn't cited (not checked?) on my previous 2 visits to this shop FOR TRANSMISSION PROBLEMS, and also why my recent visit to Grease Monkey for oil change and supposedly TOPPING OFF OTHER FLUIDS didn't fix this.

Then there's "C". The oil leak is the completely unexpected part, and so of course it costs 4 times as much as A & B put together. That plus it wouldn't be ready today, because it's a solid 7-hour job (must be one hell of a complicated gasket).

(UPDATE: After consulting with Bruce, I've accepted the plausibility of the 7-hour gasket-replacement job, because replacing that bit of rubber apparently requires taking out everything around it in order to get at it. This basically amounts to disassembling the engine and reassembling it, as well as re-adjusting all of the adjacent pieces as they're put back in. I'm still not thrilled about it, but I've accepted the idea academically.)

I'm less and less impressed at each step of the way. But for the moment I'm getting A & B done, and leaving C to get done later (if at all). Before this, I've driven old Beetles for 7 years, so I'm used to the idea of driving with a few spare bottles of oil in the trunk. What I'm not used to are these repair trips that end up being 5 times as expensive as they seemed at the outset (and still mostly unsuccessful so far).

And then the curse hit Pax's car. But that seems worthy of a separate post...

Clearly, the flu vaccine people have a great marketing team. They must be making money hand over fist.

Headlines like "Flu fears and vaccine shortage grip nation", and sentences like "Widespread outbreaks already have been reported, but federal health officials say this year's flu season has not yet peaked and vaccine supplies are running low" get people all riled up to get their shots "while supplies last", but they belie the actual situation, which doesn't get mentioned until the 4th paragraph or later: "The especially virulent strain of the virus that is predominant this season was not included in this year's flu vaccine."

1) Yes, there is apparently a bad strain of the flu going around this year (though that fact itself may be over-hyped).

2) Yes, there is a thing called a flu vaccine that is designed to prevent people from catching certain strains of the flu.

3) Whether or not there was a shortage of vaccine before, the combination of stories 1 & 2 will cause a surge in demand, so there will certainly be a shortage soon.

But if #2 doesn't protect you from #1, why become part of the statistics of people rushing out to get their shots (#3)? So you can dodge the weaker varieties of flu, but have nasty cold symptoms for a week or so, and still run the risk of catching the worst flu strain?

None for me, thanks.

"This is only a test..."

There's a certain episode of The X-Files of which I'm very fond. You may have heard me mention it in passing before. The episode is named "José Chung's 'From Outer Space'", and it tells the tale of a recursive alien abduction through the memories of several different people, who may or may not have been brainwashed to create or erase certain memories. There's some complicated psychological and philosophical stuff, but it's also hilariously funny (more so if you're already familiar with the main characters).

Anyway, when I first saw this episode on its original broadcast (in April 1996) I didn't get it on tape, but I made it my quest to find a rerun and record that.

In January 1997, I finally caught the rerun of this episode, and I recorded it. I've kept that tape around, but after about 7 years and over a dozen times watching it, the tape is starting to get a bit grainy. So I wanted to preserve it in a format that wouldn't degrade. I tried copying from that tape onto my computer, but the grainy picture was obvious.

So, next idea was maybe it's worth investing in part of the DVD series. Then I looked at the Season 3 DVD set on Amazon. $135 to capture one important hour of television? I don't think so.

That leaves me back where I was in 1996-1997, cruising for reruns. It's easier now that various cable channels show it several times a week, but I still considered it very lucky when I started looking and found TNT was going to have my episode in a few weeks.

The last couple of weeks of November, I was all excited about taping this episode on December 3, and Kathy even set the VCR timer before Thanksgiving vacation so we wouldn't miss it.

I had Kathy set the timer to start way before and end way after the episode, to avoid any chance of missing a minute here or there.

After the taping, I watched a few minutes of the beginning and a few minutes of the end to make sure we had it all. Everything looked great. Very crisp picture.

Then I started recording from the tape onto my computer for preservation, and things seemed to be going well. TNT shuffled up all the commercial breaks - fading out in the middle of a conversation that had background music going and everything, instead of using the obvious, intended transition points. But no matter. Once I edit the commercials out, it won't make any visible difference.

As I got toward the middle of the episode, that's when it happened. The event that instantly transformed TNT from my hero to my worst enemy.

Just as the Honorable Jesse Ventura (playing a Man In Black) is getting all riled up, spouting to Roky about human arrogance, "Yet YOU somehow brazenly declare..."

(screen cuts to "WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES - PLEASE STAND BY...")

"[Screeching modem noise 3 times, then] Test. This is a statewide test of the Emergency Alert System. This is only a test. [Screeching modem noise 3 more times]"

(screen cuts back to the scene, ALREADY IN PROGRESS)

Roky: "You can't threaten me."

MIB: "I just did."

No, you didn't. Because we didn't get to hear it. What was the brazen declaration? What was the threat? ARGH!

I blame Ted Turner, who is already responsible for so much that's wrong with the world, so why not put this on him too?

Fox and FX have long since given up on X Files, TNT has to get through 10 whole seasons of episodes before cycling back to this one, and I don't know if anybody I know gets the SciFi channel, so my options now are a bit limited.

Looks like I'm back to my grainy old tape. :(

UPDATE (1/5/2004): All taken care of.

The Neon is back in service.

The good folks at Ricciardi Auto Body did an incredible job of undoing the damage from that deer who attacked my car last week. The fender panel and hood look even better than what I had before the deer, and they're blended perfectly with the surrounding parts. I even got the old paint scrape from the back bumper touched up while they had the car there. Ricciardi came highly recommended, and now I see why.

Anyway, here's the main comparison: the right front corner, before and after the repair last week.

Yeehaw.

José's weblog is finally up and running. Betcha can't guess who built it. And betcha couldn't tell that my design style is basically "find something that works and stick with it". :)

Hmm, now I'm curious about that ER episode that José mentioned. I don't normally watch the show, but I recorded it this week because I just left the tape going after Scrubs. Guess I'll have to watch this one, or at least have my intellectual property lawyers take a look. :)

Oh, and just for the record, when mentioning José, I'm going to try to be really conscientious about doing the "é" accent properly in his name for about the first week, and then I'll start getting lazy after that.

I own a VW Beetle. It's older than I am, so the floor has naturally rusted out. That's being repaired, so I haven't seen that car for a while. But that's OK, because...

My main transportation is a Dodge Neon. Unfortunately, the Neon got hit by a deer the other day, so it's out of commission this week to get the body damage repaired. But that's OK, because...

In the meantime, I'm borrowing Kathy's Honda Civic, and driving her to & from work every day. The past few days, her clutch pedal has been traveling progressively farther down before it engages, recently engaging about an inch above the floor.

Today as I was leaving my office, heading over to pick Kathy up, I went to start her car, and the clutch wasn't engaging at all. Which is to say, the car was permanently in gear or out of gear, and there was no switching it with a moving engine (not without shredding her transmission, anyway).

I frantically set about looking for someone who could repair a broken clutch cable (something I've experienced before with Beetles) at 6:00 at night. I called up Pep Boys. The helpful guy on the phone explained that the clutch system of a '94 Civic is actually *hydraulic*, not cable-driven, and he told me where to check (and top off) the fluid.

I caught a ride to Pep Boys, where I bought a 32-oz bottle of DOT3 brake fluid, which I hoped would be enough.

I got back to the car, opened the filler spout, and put in about *3* of the 32 ounces before the spout was overflowing. I pumped the clutch pedal a few times, and there were visible bubbles coming up from the tube.

Popped the cap back on, and good to go. Now Kathy has a working car, plus about 29 spare ounces of brake fluid just in case. And life was back on schedule, give or take an hour.

Let's just hope I don't have to borrow (and subsequently cripple) Pax's car next... :)

Sometimes it really sucks to be right.

If you were on my site about 6 weeks ago, you may have read my jubilation about finishing the payments on my car loan ahead of schedule. I celebrated by cutting the comprehensive/collision insurance that the bank had required, but tempered my enthusiasm with a cynical prediction that this would be the perfect time for a car accident.

So, tonight I'm minding my own business, driving home from work (under the speed limit, even), on an unlit road alongside a cornfield, when all of a sudden there's this thump, and my car pulls to the right. It felt basically like blowing out the front tire, but I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the deer there on the side of the road. Awww crap.

By the time my brain caught up with what had happened, I was about 100 ft down the road, and I didn't really have any desire to go back to where the deer was. It wasn't moving at this point, so at least there wasn't the traumatic aftermath I've heard about from some other people's deer-hitting experiences.

Anyway, so far as I can tell, I didn't hit the deer so much as the deer hit me. It apparently bounded out from the roadside, hitting the front right corner ahead of the wheel, mostly at the side but just enough at the front to knock out the headlight. The car was still driveable, but I stuck around and called the police to do it by the book.

The driver behind me pulled over to check if I was OK - I was.

I called the police, and Officer Mike from Upper Dublin Township was there within a few minutes. He was very helpful, checking out my car damage to make sure I could drive away OK, and checking on the deer to "see if he's already deceased, or if I need to help him with that".

So anyway. I'm not looking forward to paying for the damage, but I can't say I wasn't warned. And who knows, if I did still have the insurance, they could've raised my rates and made it not pay off.

Oh well. Next time I make a prophetic prediction like that, somebody remind me to keep my mouth shut.

Urg.

Maybe I'm alone on this. I'm not a big fan of Christmas music. I don't think I'm that much of a Scrooge or anything, but I make a point of not turning on the radio at all on Christmas day, because I know there's nothing on for me.

So, last December, it surprised me that one major radio station here in Philadelphia decided to do all Christmas music all that month. It wasn't a station I normally listened to anyway, and I gave them some slack for the fact that they had just just changed their format & their name a couple of months before (incidentally, their web site still reflects their old call letters after more than a year now), so they probably just hadn't figured out their identity yet.

But now they're doing it again. And this time they're starting in early November.

And worse yet, they're not the only ones. Another station that I don't listen to decided to jump on the bandwagon. So now there are *two* stations playing nothing but the same old pile of Christmas songs, and competing with each other for that holiday-music-lovin' crowd, so they're also subjecting me to snippets of the same tunes on their TV commercials.

I'm not saying there isn't any Christmas music I like, nor even that I dislike all of the standard favorites. I just can't stand hearing them *constantly*, and that's exactly what these stations (and every retail store everywhere) have set out to do.

I figure if they're gonna stick to Christmas-themed music, they could at least throw some variety into the mix. Ideally, they'd include Dan Bern, The Ramones, Spinal Tap, and AC/DC, but for now I'll settle for The Waitresses, The Kinks, Run-DMC...

But my point is, it's still freakin' November. At least have the decency to wait until after Thanksgiving. Is it too much to ask to have 11 Christmas-free months each year?

I don't know if there was any kind of national trend or anything, but my friend Jamie, 3,000 miles away, apparently had exactly the same Halloween costume idea that I had (Roy Horn getting mauled by a white tiger, a recent theme here). Jamie already posted his photo, so here's mine.

I saw Matrix Revolutions last night. Good movie.

I think one of the things I enjoy most about the Matrix series isn't the storyline, or the fight scenes, but the little themes and symbols that show up throughout. There are carefully chosen religious and philosophical references throughout, and those are usually pretty obvious, but also followed up with more subtle things like obscure quotes and scriptural references in name plates.

But most of those things aren't for me. I mean, it's cool when I recognize what they're going for, but they put that stuff in for someone else. This one finally had something they put in just for me: an obscure marine biology reference.

I'm not going to spoil anything about the plot here, so don't worry if you haven't seen it yet...

Throughout all 3 Matrix movies, the "real world" is this murky, shadowy place, and underground looks a lot like under sea. There's a lot of aquatic imagery, from ships that move like whales to tentacled robots nicknamed "squids" all schooling together.

Anyway, at one point in the new movie, a large, black, spiny sphere comes up over the horizon. It looks unmistakably like a black spiny sea urchin, Diadema antillarum. At least, it looks unmistakably that way to me, because I spent most of my senior year in college writing a thesis about these guys.

So, the fact that this thing looked spiny wasn't the cool part. The cool part was when I heard the sound of something like a mechanical door opening, before the door of the spiny thing was visible, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if the door of this thing consisted of 5 interlocking teeth, just like the mouth of a sea urchin?"

Sure enough. Five teeth.

It's hard to see in that Matrix still photo, cuz someone's standing in front of the door, and it's hard to see in my thesis illustrations, because the mouth diagram there is a profile shot, but that 5-way symmetry is an important feature of sea urchins, more obvious in their close relatives the starfish (more precisely called "sea stars", since they're not fish, but then again they're not technically stars either) and the sand dollar (which is actually just the skeleton of another type of sea urchin).

So anyway, yeah. Invest a couple hundred million dollars in dazzling special effects, and what does it take to impress me? Five teeth. I bet the budget folks for the Matrix movies would love to hear that.

I forgot to mention in my first post about the skydiving, besides being fun and making a great video, Kathy's jump was also a world-record-breaking skydive. See, the guy tied to her back was Don Kellner, who currently holds the Guinness world record for most parachute descents of anyone ever in the world (Guinness lists him with 30,000 jumps, but he has now gone beyond 34,000). And when you hold the current record, every additional jump breaks the existing record, so that means that Don's jump with Kathy broke the existing world record for most parachute jumps by any person.

Just another way that Kathy's jump was better than mine... :)

This past weekend, Kathy & I went skydiving for the first time. One of my co-workers found a place in the Poconos that does tandem jumps (you're tied to a professional who does most of the controls, including the ripcord), and a group of 6 of us went up there on Saturday.

I'll preface this by saying Kathy & others in our group (especially the lighter people) had a great time, and my experience is not necessarily typical...

The flying up part was fine (small planes are nothing new), the leaping out part was fine, and the freefall part was fine (basically like walking on a very windy day), but the moment of deploying the parachute was a bit more abrupt than I had expected. We had a brief training session on the ground where we learned that we'd want to hold our hands on the shoulder straps to take up some of that impact, but there was nothing my hands could do to stop this.

Imagine jumping off a skyscraper sitting in a basket at the end of a bungee cord, and then realizing at the bottom that it's not a bungee cord, but rather a steel cable. Not a lot of shock absorption, and the jolt was enough to knock the wind out of me. So there I am, a mile above the ground, not breathing, and the guy strapped on my back is starting to give me the instructions on how to steer the parachute (basically like flying a big kite, so that was pretty familiar to me). The steering thing wasn't complicated, but I was a little more focused on the breathing thing that I wasn't doing. And how do you communicate that fact to somebody who's *behind* you, and who can't hear you because you're not breathing enough to talk?

Well, anyway, I survived. I got my breath back, and was able to start participating in the steering before we got all the way down, but most of the ride happened when I wasn't able to pay attention. At lunch an hour later, I still couldn't inhale to my full lung capacity, and my back & legs were not recovered from the shock. Now, two days later, I'm breathing OK, but the backache and headache are still there.

So, while some folks in our group spent the drive home checking out the training requirements for moving up to solo jumps, I'm pretty well resolved that I wouldn't do it again, even if it were free (which it definitely isn't). If anybody else out there is thinking of going for the first time, I wouldn't talk you out of it, but if you have the choice between dieting before the jump or dieting after, I'd strongly recommend *before*. :)

So, I don't suppose you'd want to see the video, would you? :) Here's mine, as well as Kathy's.

Heard on Monday Night Football, John Madden and Al Michaels...

John: Was that guy naked?

Al: I thought he was. We are so high. We might as well be calling this game from the blimp.

'Nuff said.

Contrary to my fears, the car repair trip yesterday actually turned out OK.

The car passed state inspection without any additional work, and the windshield wiper motor and airbag module got installed successfully, within the budget they had told me.

The only bad news: the shifting problem is still about the same, because the folks at the shop haven't been able to duplicate the problem in order to diagnose it. Of course, I much prefer this approach (we couldn't pinpoint it, so we just did little tweaks that won't cost you much) rather than having them just make guesses and fix a bunch of expensive things that don't need fixing. And the car may just need a regular old tune-up (something they didn't do on this occasion, but by the time I talked to them about it, it was the end of their workday, so this would require another visit).

Anyway, I have a working car, authorized to be on the road, with functional wipers and airbags that probably won't explode unnecessarily. All in all, a good day at the shop.

Some of you out there probably wonder where the heck I ever got a domain name like "salubrio". Well, the good people at Merriam-Webster finally have an answer for you. They've chosen "salubrious" as today's Word Of The Day.

Of course, for a more complete explanation of my domain name, you would've had to be at WestLake in the late 90's, but this is at least a start.

Oh yeah, and this is my 100th post to my modest weblog. Yay.

I was feeling a bit left out when California got to be a national laughingstock for its political mess. But now we have our own in Philly.

Well, technically, I don't live or work *in* Philadelphia, so I don't have a vote in the matter, but I'm close enough to be entertained by all the horribly bitter TV commercials from both campaigns. :)

Yippee.

As Steven Wright used to say, "The other day, I bought some batteries. But they weren't included, so I had to buy them again." That's sort of how I feel about car repair this week.

Last Thursday, I took my car in for service. I made an appointment ahead of time, and told them I needed the state inspection, and also wanted them to check 3 other things:

1) The automatic transmission isn't shifting properly - it's staying in low gear way too long.

2) The windshield wipers are going very quickly and not stopping at the bottom, even on the lowest setting, and if you turn them off in mid-cycle, the wipers just stay there in the middle of the windshield, instead of going down to the "park" position.

3) The airbag warning light in the console is lit, and I've already checked the fuses - something must be wrong in the electronics or in the airbags themselves.

When I went to retrieve the car that afternoon, they were 0 for 4:

1) They told me they made only slight throttle adjustments to fix the shifting problem - I was happy they charged less than a half-hour of labor, but unhappy that the problem was still exactly the same as before.

2) The wiper problem was attributed to a faulty wiper motor assembly, which needed to be completely replaced (couple hundred dollars, prepaid, to order the part that they didn't have in stock).

3) The airbag problem was attributed to a faulty airbag computer module, which also needed to be completely replaced (another couple hundred dollars, also prepaid, also not in stock).

And the guy didn't mention anything about the inspection.

"And was state inspection on your list of things to do?"

"Oh, you wanted the inspection too?"

In his defense, I hadn't specifically mentioned the inspection when I showed up that morning, but I had told the (different) person on the phone when I made the appointment, so I assumed (incorrectly) they'd pass that information along.

So I brought the car in with 4 problems, paid for 3 of them, only one of which was attempted, none of which succeeded. Not a good record.

So anyway, that was last Thursday. They ordered the parts, and made me another appointment for today (Tuesday). Among the paperwork I took home with me was a receipt for the preordered parts, which had "Customer has appt for 10/21" handwritten at the top.

So I showed up this morning. "I have my Neon here for its second day of service. First and foremost, I need the state inspection, and then there are these two sets of prepaid parts that were special-ordered, and also the thing from last week didn't fix the problem with the transmission..."

"OK. Do you have an appointment?"

"Yes. The name is Kullen. K-U-L-L-E-N."

"Hmm. I don't see it. Is it possibly under another name?"

"No, I don't think so. Let's see, here's the receipt I have from paying for the parts, with my appointment date written on it."

"So it is. OK, looks like you're all set then." (still a puzzled look on his face)

So, there's not a lot of wiggle room for today's stuff. The car is either inspected or not. The several-hundred-dollars-worth of parts are either installed or not. The transmission thing is either fixed or not (I'll know within 5 minutes of driving out). The best I can figure is that I'll get there tonight and they'll turn to each other and say "Neon? Hmm, we didn't see a Neon in here today, did we?"

Ack. Thppt.

In my previous note, I forgot to mention the other eerie part. After the trooper got through painting morbid pictures in my mind, I drove away and turned on the radio. What song was just coming on, but "Last Kiss" (Pearl Jam cover of J Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers).

Message received.

As previously mentioned here, I sometimes drive faster than I'm supposed to.

Today I think I got a speeding ticket on the way to work, which would be my first for Pennsylvania. I say "I think" because the state trooper (or whatever's the correct term - he had the wide-brimmed hat, if that makes a difference) didn't actually *hand* me a ticket. First there was the initial contact...

He pulled me over, told me that he had clocked me going too fast, and in a construction zone to boot. Then he proceeded to put images in my head of all the terrible things that can happen when a driver goes too fast, especially where construction workers might be walking around in harm's way. Lots of images. I mean, he kept asking questions of the "Have you ever seen what can happen..." and the "Have you ever had to tell someone that their father or brother who was working on the highway..