No One Is Home

Am I Back?

2011-06-15T21:22:00.001-05:00

Now that I have an entirely too clever phone (which is not the same thing as smart), will I start blogging again in quiet moments?

Live Long and Prosper

2008-12-19T22:09:00.003-06:00

Several weeks ago a cow-orker of mine made the famous "Live long and prosper" hand sign invented by Leonard Nimoy for his Spock character on Star Trek. But he was unsure of whether the sign was made with the thumb extended or not.

Of course we quickly found the answer (thanks, Google), including pictures from the TV episode where it was first used.

Anyway, I thought of that hand sign immediately when I saw the cast they put on my younger son, 2 of 2.

In case you're curious, he wiped out on his scooter and when he put his hand out to break his fall, he broke his pinkie and ring fingers. The doctor said it was a Salter 2 fracture, and the orthopedist said that they had to be immobilized to give them a chance to heal properly. You can Google for Salter fractures if you are curious.

Live long and prosper,
Dad

New Olympic Sports

2008-08-26T17:00:00.003-05:00

One of the fun things about any Olympics, including the one just finished in China, is watching the new sports. Who can forget the excitement that swept the world when curling was introduced at the 1988 Calgary games?

Actually, it was RE-introduced, having appeared in the first Winter Games way back in 1924 and also having been part of the '32 games in Lake Placid. Curling was a "demonstration" sport in '88 and '92, and became an official Olympic event in 1998. What was once so exciting for its newness is now part of the fabric of the games.

This year's Summer Games brought BMX racing to Beijing. While this is not a new sport to us Merkins, it is probably pretty new to much of the rest of the world.

But apparently you can change existing sports as well. Witness the Decathlon and Heptathlon and the throwing of Javelinas. Not being a big track and field fan, I don't know what javelina throwing replaced in the competition for the title of "World's Greatest Athlete". NBC declined to show the javelina throwing competition during its prime-time coverage, probably to avoid the protests that would surely come from PETA. I also couldn't find it at nbcolympics.com.

And it's a shame, too. I would be interested to know the proper technique for throwing javelinas, and wonder how far a world-class athuhleet can throw a javelina.

I would also like to know how athletes train in parts of the world where javelinas are hard to come by. We've all cringed as we've watched third world swimmers struggle to compete when they have no (50-meter) pools in which to practice. How do prospective javelina throwers practice? Do they use pot-belly pigs? Or worse -- midgets?

Enquiring minds want to know (and the National Enquirer(TM) has been silent on this controversial issue).

Inspector Gadget

2008-08-19T13:50:00.002-05:00

With apologies to the animated Inspector Gadget(TM), that name seemed an appropriate title for a post which introduces my experiments with gadgets on my blog. It (my experiment) is clumsy and, in many ways, clueless. In other words, perhaps a lot like what you'd expect from Inspector Gadget if he were to write a blog.

So Many Gadgets, So Little Time

There are quite a lot of gadgets to choose from. Something north of 40,000, if I remember correctly. Indeed, with that many gadgets, how can one peruse them all to find the best? Most popular, perhaps? But would that really be the best? Or would it only be the best of the first 100 or so that were presented in the first couple of lists?

Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen

So I chose "this date in history" and "quote of the day". Both are inspired by my good friend, Seamus, who occasionally sends out very interesting "this day in history" types of lessons and whose emails always end in a supposedly random but often quite apropos quote.

I should note that Seamus' history notes arrive occasionally, not that they are occasionally interesting. In fact, they are usually interesting, unlike actual history lessons from my days in publick skool.

I shall enjoy seeing what these gadgets have to offer.

Confused

If you peruse the list of gadgets, you may find yourself mildly confused, as I am, by the pictures that accompany each gadget in the list. For example, the Jokes gadget is presented beside a picture of a woman's bikini clad chest. The text describing the gadget indicates that you can choose from several joke categories, including "clean" jokes, but why did they choose that image as the visual identity of the gadget? I've never thought of either breasts or of bikinis as particularly funny.

And what happens to the wholesome, family nature of my blog if I put jokes in it? Will that cleavage photo appear next to every joke? Or will that depend on a "picture on/off" setting? And what about the jokes? I learned a long time ago that almost any joke is sure to offend someone. Indeed, a friend of mine recently sent out a joke that caused a few "I'm offended" messages (followed by the obligatory "I'm offended that you're offended" replies). So this is a current concern. I'm not sure that I could put an unregulated joke gadget in my blog without offending someone among my readership. So I guess I'll have to pass on that one.

Come to think of it, the two I am trying out (history and quotes) could end up offending some people. But at least they aren't accompanied by myopic pictures of buxom women.

What do you think? Are gadgets a good idea? Hmmm. Maybe I'll choose the poll gadget!

Man vs Machine

2008-07-20T16:33:00.002-05:00

I vaguely remember in some literature class of my youth that there were only four story themes. I'm pretty sure three of them were:

Man vs Man
Man vs Nature
Man vs Himself

But what was the fourth? Today I will nominate "Man vs Machine".

The particular machine today was my dishwasher.

The battle actually started a few days ago at roughly midnight. I had started the dishwasher before going to bed, as I often do. We have a pretty quiet dishwasher so the sound has never been a problem before. But on this fitful night it started to make a horrible racket which continued for almost all of its water spraying time -- over an hour.

According to the owners manual (yes, I still have it) this usually indicates that something hard has entered the food grider. It should go away after it gets all ground up. But of course, the sound never went away or lessened. Owner's manual's recommendation: call for service. But since I'm unemployed, I decided to battle the dishwasher myself.

6/10ths (my better half) gurgled our dishwasher model number and found a service manual for the equivalent Whirlpool model (ours is a Kenmore). I printed the PDF and went to work.

Aside #100 decibels: The troubleshooting guide in the service guide said nothing about noise as a possible problem.

I removed the racks and started taking out parts until I got down to, and removed, the food grinder. There was nothing around to explain the noise, leaving me to conclude that the main motor (which turns the grinder as well as pumping water through the sprayers) was going bad.

I went back to the owner's manual (the service guide didn't include a parts list) and then to Sears' parts store (online, of course). A new motor was $140 (+tax and shipping). A new sump and motor assembly was $180. Since there were lots of dire warnings in the service manual about damaging delicate parts when removing or installing the motor, I decided that for an extra $40 I'd go ahead and get the sump and motor assembly. But it was sold-out @ Sears (both online and at all stores within 100 miles). The motor was available online, but not at the local Sears store).

Gurgle confirmed that bad motors were not uncommon for Whirlpool/Kenmore dishwashers and that most technicians prefer to replace the motor and sump as an assembly rather than just the motor. You have to remove the motor and sump assembly before you can get the motor off to replace it, so treating the thing as an FRU (Field Replaceable Unit) was not unreasonable.

The odd thing was that Sears' price was among the lowest believable prices (the $68 one on EBay sounded "too good to be true"(tm)). So I called my local appliance store and was told that they could have one for me the next morning. $200. Whatever, I bought it. Chalk it up to the cost of needing it now. Besides, that $20 premium was certainly lower than the trip charge any repairman would tack on.

Of course, there are dishes to do in the meantime. So I tried to reassemble the dishwasher. I couldn't get the grinder back in place. It seems that they expect you to take the sump assembly out first before you go disassembling it. I didn't do that. I just started taking it apart while the main housing was still in the dishwasher tub. The proper way to access the food grinder also requires removing the motor (dire warnings and all). Of course, having not removed the sump, I also hadn't removed the motor. So I put it all back together without the food grinder and made sure to rinse my dishes very well before putting them in the washer.

Guess what? Yep. It was much quieter without the food grinder installed. But it still made the horrible grating noise about half the time. I guess the food grinder put enough stress on the motor to make it complain all the time.

In the end, I got my new sump and motor assembly, got the old one out, got the new one in, and am now doing my first load.

Nice and quiet.

Keeping my fingers crossed that my surgical procedures didn't cause any incontinence.

Energy Credit - HAH!

2007-11-03T20:12:00.000-05:00

6/10ths (my better half) has been worried about our water heater for some time. It's over 10 years old and sits in our attic. While it is in a drain pan connected to a drain, she has no faith that the pan will be able to handle a catastrophic failure of the tank.

Based on the water released when other water heaters I've known have failed, I think she's right.

So we've been wanting to replace the heater before it fails, but have been procrastinating for a couple of years now. Friday's newspaper contained a Sears advert saying that major appliances (including water heaters) were 10% off, so she thought that was a good excuse to go buy one.

But Wait... we might be able to get an Energy Credit on our taxes — up to $300! IRS Form 5695 says that you can get an "energy credit" off your taxes if you buy a water heater with an energy factor rating of 0.80 or higher. Each dollar spent on such an appliance gets you $1 off your federal income taxes (up to $300).

"Cool," says 6/10ths. She goes to the Sears web site. Nothing about energy factors. She calls Sears. None of their gas heaters qualify. We go to Lowes' web site. They report energy factors on gas water heaters as around 0.60.

Huh? How can this be? What does it take to get this tax credit? We poke around some more. It seems that the only gas water heaters which qualify are tankless. They cost a lot of money. They would also cost a lot to put into my house because I'd have to run a bigger gas line to my attic, or a new gas line to some other part of the house, before I could install one. Sorry guys.

But wait, several of the electric units have energy factors over 0.80! Great!

Or maybe not.

I don't have a 30-amp, 240V circuit in my attic.

So how much do those electric puppies cost to run? For a 50-gal heater they range from $350 to $400 per year, compared to $209 for the gas unit we were looking at @ Sears (all figures from the yellow energy label). Hmm. Those figures are based on 2004 prices. How much does gas cost today? How about electricity? The yellow label says electricity in 2004 was 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour. Today we pay over 14. So that electric heater will cost us (for comparison purposes) $583 to $666 per year. EVIL!

The yellow label says that gas is about 91 cents per therm. My gas bill doesn't list therms, but the internet quickly tells me that a therm is about 10 times more than an MCF, which is how my gas company measures. A crude calculation (which ignores the fact that I pay a fixed $10 per month just for the privilege of being a customer), shows that I pay about $1 per therm, so the adjusted cost of operating the gas heater would be $230 per year.

So even if I had the choice of gas vs electric, it would cost me $350 to $430 more per year to run the electric one. Even factoring the $300 energy credit and the slightly lower cost to purchase the electric one, within a year and a half I'd be better off with the gas model. And with these puppies lasting 10 years or more, I'd be stupid to buy the electric model, wouldn't I?

On the other hand, how much would I save, purely in operating costs, with a tankless unit? Lowes doesn't show the energy label, so maybe I can assume that my Sears gas tank model has an energy factor of 0.60 and the tankless is 0.80. Does that mean that the tankless would cost 75% as much as the tank one? If so, then my yearly cost to operate the tankless would be $172, or almost $60 per year less. At that rate, the $400 difference in price would take over 6 years to break even. Factor in the cost of plumbing upgrades that are needed (the bigger gas pipe) and it would probably go out to 10 years or even longer.

Sorry, I can't afford that right now. Maybe if I were building a new house or doing some major remodeling. But not for an existing home.

Of PCs, Vista, and Office 2007

2007-08-25T18:37:00.000-05:00

Our local elementary school PTA needed a new computer and I got picked to buy it and get it working.

Even though I've purchased two other PCs in about the past 18 months I was surprised by how much things have changed. For example, you can't buy 15" LCD monitors anymore and 17" LCDs are getting scarce (and cost as much as 19" monitors).

The monitor issue was a surprise and a problem because the PTA has very little room in which to cram the monitor and a printer. An awful lot of the 19" monitors were widescreen models, which were too wide for our space! So we ended up spending a relatively obscene amount of money for a 17" standard ratio LCD.

Another thing that surprised me was the size of disk drives. Only the very cheapest PCs have less than 320GB drives, which is about three times bigger than we really need for this application.

Another problem is that I was trying to buy in the middle of the performance range because I didn't know when the PTA would have budget again. But prices seemed to jump from $350 for a wimpy computer (which would probably be just fine right now) to $700 and more for just a tiny increment in performance (but a much bigger disk).

And Intel based boxes are expensive! I did my homework and I knew which Intel cpus were comparable to which AMD cpus. But virtually every system I found in my price range had an AMD processor. I have no problem with AMD — quite the opposite, actually; every PC I own has an AMD processor in it. But this time I thought I might actually get one with an Intel chip. I was wrong.

I was starting to think I'd be better off going the white box route.

Then I finally found a decent machine for a decent price. $400 for an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+, 1GB memory, $250GB disk, dual-layer DVD+/-RW.

Vista Home Premium

The new PC has Microsoft's Vista Home Premium installed on it. Of course it was loaded with bloatware and eye candy. It took over an hour to ferret it all out and remove it. But I was struck during the process by how pervasive the internet has become. This PC will not be on a network (but was during my configuration) because the school won't let us connect to their network and doesn't offer any external internet connections. It is amazing how many programs have options to automatically check the internet for updates or supplemental information of some sort.

When I first started, I was also rather shocked by how long start-up and shut-down were compared to Windows XP. It made waiting in line for a driver's license seem speedy by comparison! Fortunately, as I succeeded in turning off all the junk loaded by the PC manufacturer the process got significantly faster. The PTA PC now boots and shuts down much faster than XP. Well, I also turned off a bunch of "helpful" Vista stuff, too.

Office 2007

One of the PTA requirements was for Microsoft's Office Suite. Did you know that there are 4376 versions of the Office 2007 Suite? Well, it seemed that way. I don't know if you can find them all in the stores, but there seem to be way more versions than are necessary. And when you try to compare versions using the Microsoft web site the feature comparison didn't list programs — it listed "features". What kind of BS is that? No, don't answer. I already know.

We finally found a page comparing the programs included in each of the packages and ended up buying Office 2007 Professional.

I was concerned because I've read many times that the user interface has changed a lot in Office 2007 and the implication was that it was changed for the sake of change.

So I was dreading what it would be like when I first fired it up. But you know what? I think I like the new UI! It will probably take a bit of getting used to, but at first glance it seemed really nice and pretty easy to use.

The biggest problem, and hardly big after the first 60 seconds, was that the File menu has been replaced by the "Office Button". No big whoop. I even figured out how to add a "print preview" button at the top of the screen (my wife likes that button).

I may change my tune after trying to actually use Office 2007, but since I still have older versions on the PCs I actually use (this one isn't mine) I'll have to wait a while for that experience.

EOB

Black (and Blue) Belt

2007-08-18T10:27:00.000-05:00

Wow! Busy couple of weeks.

1 of 2 was promoted to 1st Dan Junior Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do on August 3rd.

The whole summer has been very stressful for 1 as we've been preparing. To be honest, he's been kind of tired of the whole Karate thing for the last year. But we've put so much time (and money) into it that we wouldn't let him quit. Years from now he'll be able to look at that belt and have some real self esteem from having sucked it up and pushed through to the end, including a truly grueling Black Belt exam.

The two weeks preceding the exam were the toughest as we tried to polish up not only his technique, but his presentation. The worst, for me, was the one-steps and three-steps. These are mini sparring exercises and are designed, I think, to teach you how to deal with an attack and end it quickly.

One-steps start with the attacker throwing either a left or right punch. The "victim" dodges, blocks, or parries the punch and then delivers a series of blows designed to end the fight immediately.

Three-steps are like one-steps, except the victim doesn't try to kill until they've dodged, blocked, or parried the third punch, while stepping back from the onrushing attacker. I think the idea is convince witnesses that you really don't want to fight; you're not provoking the attacker; but you had no choice but to maim them.

When you start out in Tae Kwon Do they introduce one-steps as simple little things that involve a couple of punches or a kick, and they're all laid out and numbered for you. But by the time you test for Black Belt you have to make up your own (or copy someone else's) and most of them involve take-downs (so you can deliver a flying suplex? (sp?)).

My knees are still not completely right, but they are getting better. You see, in the final two weeks I was the attacker, so I was the guy getting his arm ripped off or his knee broken or his legs just knocked out from under him.

We need thicker padding under our carpet.

So we get to the test and everyone survived. Stress levels couldn't have been higher. 6/10ths is still upset about what they put 1 of 2 through. But he survived. He got his belt.

In the immediate euphoria of it being over he chatted about how he'd like to pursue a Black Belt in weapons. In the calm of the following day he said that he never wants to go within a mile of the dojo again.

Oh, and as we're driving away into the sunset, 1 of 2 tells us that he forgot his cup.

No, not his water. His protective cup — for the (future) family jewels.

At home.

He sparred I-don't-know-how-many matches, most against adult Black Belts, and even a 7-against-1 match (or was it two 7-against-1 matches?), without a very important piece of protective gear.

Somehow he didn't get kicked there the entire day. You're not supposed to kick anyone there, but it happens anyway from time to time.

So we're done. We survived. He survived. 6/10ths is still touch-and-go.

Contratulations, 1. I'm proud of you.

Harry Couple of Weeks

2007-07-31T22:05:00.000-05:00

There are people out there who have no clue about what's going on in the world. I doubt those people read blogs, but just in case they do (and happen to be reading mine), this post is about the phenomenon that is Harry Potter.

This past month saw not just one, but two (count with me: 1, 2!) major Harry Potter events:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the 5th movie in the series, was released on July 11 (I think that's right — it seems so long ago now)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last Harry Potter book ever, was released on July 21

If you've ever been to my house you know that it is populated with Potterheads. No, we don't have a snitch inlaid in the foyer tile, though that's not a bad idea! But you are likely to see a wand or two lying about. Maybe a Hogwarts robe. Probably a book or DVD.

So July was a very exciting month. Both kids wanted to go to the first showing of the movie, but I refused to go to a midnight showing of anything besides the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But we did go on opening weekend. In fact, we went to a 9:30 a.m. showing (because that was the cheapest ticket).

I liked the movie. The kids loved it. I'm sure we'll be adding the DVD to our set. I think there were two things that prevented me from liking the movie more: first was that there were so many things that just couldn't be made to fit in the time limits of a movie that I would really liked to have seen. I mean, my internal movie projector has imagined them, but it would be interesting to see them on the big screen. And second, there were several things that just seemed to be missing the energy they should have had, or were just plain done wrong.

Case in point: the very first scene. Privet Drive is in the middle of suburbia. English suburbia, yes, but suburbia nonetheless. So why is Harry walking through a wheat field? Maybe they were trying to highlight Harry's loneliness or feeling of isolation. But come on! What is more lonely and depressing and oppressive than mile after mile of tract housing? That's how I picture Privet Drive. Faux upscale tract housing; each house predictably different from the ones on either side but with a repeating pattern more obvious than wallpaper.

And then there's Mrs. Figg. She sure didn't seem all that fussed about the dementors in the movie, but why not? I fear that in trying to cut down all the stuff in the book they are tempted to keep only the exciting bits, and then they discover that having only high tension and excitement becomes numbing long before you reach the end. So they have to take emotion out of high tension or high excitement scenes. But then it just feels wrong. I think it would have been far better to settle us back down and set us up for the next jolt by using calmer passages from the book.

But overall it was a decent movie, and those who only watch the movies and don't read the books may not understand my feelings on this.

And then there was the book. Don't worry, I won't spoil it for anyone. We were one of those million who pre-ordered from Amazon with the promise that it would arrive on the release date. And it did. But once again I refused to go to the midnight sale at the local Barnes and Noble or Borders. Noon delivery from the post office was good enough for me — I don't care if Evelyn Wood had already finished reading her copy and sold it to Half Price Books.

As it turns out, my kids were at their grandparents' house on the 21st, so we didn't get to start reading until that evening. But we stayed up late to read a few chapters out loud.

One promise I made to my kids was that I wouldn't read ahead and I wouldn't let anyone else read ahead. That last bit was required to keep 2 of 2 happy because 1 of 2 would've hogged the book while I was at work during the week and would undoubtedly have let one or two facts slip out accidentally on purpose, spoiling some excitement.

To that end, I didn't open the package when the book arrived. I waited until I picked them up that evening, opening it in the car and reading aloud while 6/10ths drove. And each night I hid the book until the next evening when I returned home.

By the following Saturday morning we were only about halfway done. But 2 of 2 had an ear infection and 6/10ths was feeling lousy and coughing her head off and I was feeling kind of down and had a headache that just wouldn't go away. So we spent practically the entire weekend reading off and on. We finished the book early Sunday afternoon.

I read the entire thing aloud. Did voices for all the dialog. Hagrid in any state (calm or angry) is the hardest on my voice. Yelling is also hard after awhile, and there is a lot of yelling in this book. The kids were particularly amused by my impression of Phlegm.

I don't know if this book just invited it, or if my kids are just developing, but there were a lot of breaks where we each offered our predictions about what would happen next, or what would happen to some character, or how some turn of events might affect things later on.

And we kept saying, "she can't kill Harry yet, there're too many pages left!"

But boy did he (and just about everyone else) find themselves in mortal danger at every turn. And strangely, I don't recall any mention of Mrs. Weasley's clock! I guess mentioning it would've been a forhead slapping, DOH!

I liked this book a lot. I liked the lot of them a lot, but I think this one might be my favorite.

I wonder if Ms. Rowling will allow someone to do a spin-off based on Luna Lovegood? They could probably make a pretty good sitcom around that character. And by "they" I mean the BBC. Us Merkins would screw it up.

Peep! (Part Two)

2007-07-29T15:19:00.000-05:00

Wow, I'm a bit stunned. In my previous post I whined about how smoke alarms never seem to signal a low battery at a convenient time. Then I bemoaned the inability to find a replacement of the same brand and how this was a problem caused by incompatibilities in the way interconnected smoke detectors are interconnected.

The second comment to that post is Anonymous, but it's pretty clear that it was posted by a FireX employee. I can guarantee that a Kidde employee wouldn't have included the comment about FireX making smoke alarms for over 25 years.

But it brings up a serious issue: fire safety and the impact of standards on safety. I'd like to ask the nice folks at Firex (and Kidde and all other brands) two questions:

Why don't you make your batteries easier to replace?
Why don't you make it easier to replace an old or failed smoke alarm?

Oh, and here's another one:

HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?

Years ago you'd see a report on the evening news about a fatal house fire and the reporter would say in somber tones, "there were no smoke alarms in the house."

But listen now and the comment is somewhat different.

There were no WORKING smoke alarms in the house.

That one extra word is huge, and it is the reason that I ask how the makers of smoke alarms can sleep at night.

I know from personal experience that replacing the batteries in my old smoke alarms was difficult, and often physically painful. To start with, the battery was hard to get to — you had to remove the alarm from the ceiling to get to it. And far too often, twisting the alarm to remove it from the base plate caused the base plate to come off the ceiling with the alarm. And it was hard to separate the two pieces because there were no really good places to grab hold, and the alarms were large enough around that it was hard to get a really tight grip, and there were lots of sharp little plastic bits. When you did manage to separate the base plate from the alarm, the door was hard to pry open with a fingernail. And when you did get it open there was that infernal 9-volt battery connector that is so hard to get off.

Backing up again to that base plate problem: yes, I could put it on the ceiling so that turning the alarm wouldn't remove the plate with it. But then putting the alarm back on would make the plate come off! Tighten the screws holding the plate, you say? What a brilliant idea! Unfortunately, the screws only go into those stupid keyhole slots. Nothing to hold them tight but friction. And since we're talking about wired alarms, they're mounted over electrical boxes. That means that at least part of the plastic around the keyhole is over air. Plastic flexes under pressure. Do too much and you either break it or you deform it so much that the base plate no longer mates with the alarm. And if you find that happy middle ground, just wait a year and the base plate will have weakened enough that — wait for it — it'll come off with the alarm!

What happens when batteries are too hard to replace? They don't get replaced. Is that the homeowners fault? Partly. But I think the companies who make the devices also share some of the blame. And they know it. How do I know that they know it? Because some new models have batteries that are very easy to replace. My new Kidde smoke alarms have a front accessible battery compartment and don't use that hated battery connector. I look forward to years of easy battery replacements.

But I noticed something. Not all Kidde smoke alarms have this easy to replace battery. FireX also has some, but not all, models with easy to replace batteries. Why not all? What possible reason can they give to justify the deaths that must surely occur because of unreplaced smoke alarm batteries?

And then there's the lifetime issue. Everything has a lifetime. Nothing lasts forever. I accept that. But why is there the vendor lock-in for those wonderful AC powered, interconnected smoke alarms? Are they looking out for the safety of the end-user with that proprietary connector and signaling specification? Or are they trying to support electrical contractors and their own market share?

The anonymous poster was right. Many people lack the skill or confidence or time or money to rewire their smoke alarms while replacing the whole lot. But why should they have to have any skill or confidence or even much time? Why should they have to replace them all at once? Why should they have to rewire? Why should they have to hire a contractor?

I had to replace one of my smoke alarms a few years ago. I was replacing all of the batteries and one alarm started sounding the instant I put in its new battery. Not chirping — full volume alarm tone. I pulled out the battery and called FireX. They replaced the unit and I was reasonably happy. But not anymore.

Again, I accept that everything has a lifetime. But when you're talking about something like this it would sure be nice to be able to replace them over a few months. But that wasn't an option because none of the local retail establishments carry FireX. Faced with the choice to leave a hole where the failed alarm had been (an old, failed alarm was what started this whole thing) and saving up the money, or biting the bullet and replacing them all right now, I chose to replace them all right now.

But why was that choice necessary? How many people can't afford to do what I did? And that isn't even considering the cost of hiring someone since I did it myself. How many people have no choice but to wait. And hope.

There were no working smoke alarms in the house.

Standards are good. Standards save lifes. Ease of use is good. Ease of use saves lives.

How do you sleep at night?

PEEP!

2007-07-25T22:39:00.000-05:00

What is about smoke alarms that causes them to peep (or beep, chirp, or whatever you call that sound) at 2 a.m.?

Aside #9V: If you have a night job (meaning that you sleep during the day), does your smoke alarm peep only during the day?

If you don't know what I'm talking about then you're probably one of those sick people who dutifully changes the batteries in their smoke alarms each year when you switch back to daylight saving time (or are you supposed to do it when you go back to standard time?).

But as a founding member of the local chapter of the Procrastinator's Club (well, I will be when I get around to helping found it) I tend to put off replacing the batteries until one of them dies, causing the alarm to start chirping (at 2 a.m.). Actually, I tend to think that the first failure is premature and wait until the second or third before 6/10ths manages to force me to replace them all.

And I did just that — changed all the smoke alarm batteries — a couple months ago. So why did that smoke alarm start chirping at 2 a.m. last week? And why did it chirp 3 times, then stop? For a couple of days. Chirp three more times (at 2 a.m.), then stop? And why did the second one start doing the same thing? And maybe even a third?

After testing the batteries I came to the conclusion that the batteries were not bad, but the smoke alarms had crossed that magical threshold called "the end of the warrantee period". Unfortunately, further research revealed that they were probably well beyond the warrantee period. And when they tell you to replace your smoke detectors every 10 years, they mean it. If you don't follow that advice you can expect to deal with a lot of chirping that stops just before you manage to zero in on the offender. At 2 a.m.

I decided to bite the bullet and replace all of my smoke alarms. That's when I figured out why my builder's own house burned to the ground — it was probably torched by an irate homeowner who was ticked off by the constant and malicious use of products that are either non-standard sizes or regional brands from some other region than our own. Current example: Firex brand smoke alarms. Not sold at Home Depot. Not sold at Lowes. Not sold at Elliots. Not sold at Ace. Not sold at True Value. Not sold at Target. Not sold at Wal-Mart.

What can you get at all those stores? Kidde brand.

I'm not trying to imply that Firex doesn't make good smoke alarms or that Kidde makes a better smoke alarm. I have no way of knowing and have had no complaints regarding my Firex smoke alarms (except for the 2 a.m. chirping). The problem is that all of my smoke alarms are wired together and there is no standard for such connections. You can't replace one Firex smoke alarm with a Kidde if they're wired together.

Why would you wire together smoke alarms? Well, if your smoke alarms are wired together then they will all go off if one senses a fire. So the alarm is sounded throughout your McMansion, helping to ensure that everyone gets out safely.

Guess what I did last weekend? Yep. I bought seven new Kidde smoke alarms and replaced the whole lot. I'm set for another 10 years.

End of Hiatus

2007-07-25T22:18:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't posted much in the past many months. But I have a feeling that's about to change.

Why the drought? There are a combination of reasons, most of which I won't go into here, but one that I will mention is concern over any potential impact to my employment.

I started a new job at the beginning of April and, as one might imagine, there were a lot of things that I could have blogged about. After 10 years as a full-time telecommuter I find myself going into an office every day. That alone was probably worth a dozen postings. But even though my identity is fairly well hidden there are still people who might recognize references to my new employer and figure out that I am the author.

And it's not even that my new bosses are particularly evil or pointy-haired — they aren't — but it is a fairly big company and fairly big companies have a tendency to occasionally do pointy-haired things. They can't help themselves.

So while I could have blogged about my new pimps, I choose not to just to avoid the admittedly remote chance of offending them.

But I feel the urge once again and have a supply of topics about which I would like to write. I won't be winning any Pullet Surprises or Webbies; I might not even inspire (m)any comments. And that's okay, because I'm good enough, and I'm smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!

Cinco de Mayo

2007-05-06T20:17:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or did we collectively forget about Cinco de Mayo this year?

We Americans take our melting pot history seriously, or at least we seem to be willing to celebrate any holiday from a country with decent beer. Oktoberfest and St. Patrick's Day are just two. Cinco de Mayo used to be a third. But this year we seem to have forgotten it, which is especially odd since it fell on a weekend. Weekend holidays are especially treasured because they coincide with our normal hedonistic cycle.

Even Google, which modifies its logo for everything, didn't have anything special this year on the 5th.

Or maybe Jay Leno gave us a hint when he joked that Cinco de Mayo means "they outnumber us 5 to 1." There has been a lot of news in the past year about immigration, most of which is from Mexico. Are we so fed up with talking about Mexico and Mexicans and Mexican-Americans that we don't even want to drink cerveza in early May? Can we really go from Mardi Gras (which bucks the trend by being from a country without a beer tradition) to Memorial Day with only one hangover?

I never thought I'd see it come this.

Happy Emancipation Day

2007-04-16T21:19:00.000-05:00

Thank God for emancipation!

Federal income taxes are usually due on the 15th of April, unless that day falls on a weekend or federal holiday, which bumps the due date to the next business day.

Aside #15: The 15th of April is not the Ides of April. Lots of people have heard the warning, "Beware the Ides of March," from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Those people can be forgiven for thinking that the Ides of every month is on the 15th, as it is in March. But those people don't have the friends I do, and so they don't know that the Ides is only on the 15th in March, May, July, and October. In all other months the Ides is on the 13th.

Since the 15th of April (17 days before the Kalends of May) falls on a Sunday you'd also be justified in thinking that taxes were due on the 16th. In fact, the IRS thought that was the due date when they printed this year's forms.

But there is another rule which says that taxes cannot be due on a holiday celebrated in the District of Columbia. Guess what? Today (16 days before the Kalends of May) is a holiday in my birthplace, Washington, D.C. It is Emancipation Day. Therefore, taxpayers across this great land are allowed to mail their tax returns (or applications for an extension) on the 17th and still be counted as on-time.

Don't believe me? Check out the following (poorly worded) posting on the IRS website:

Questions and Answers — April 17 Deadline

So today I add a new reason to celebrate the freeing of the slaves. And we Texans get to celebrate it again in just a couple of months.

New Grindstone

2007-04-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

After a longer time than I would have liked, I have a new job. I started today and can report that while the job search market has changed considerably since the last time I was looking, the struggles to get new hires productive are the same as they ever were.

I was told to show up at 10 a.m. But the "first day logistics team" wasn't there. Maybe that's because today was a Monday. I wouldn't ordinarily think that should be a factor, but several people expressed surprise that this was my first day because most people start on Tuesday or Thursday.

The building I work in is a secure building, meaning that there is a guard shack to get onto the property and a guarded outer lobby before you get into the soft, chewy parts of the building. Since the 1st day logistics team was AWOL I had to wait until a real employee (not a contractor) could come to let me in. I'm a contractor and even though my (new) firm has a boatload of people working in the building, none of them could escort me past the sentries because they're all contractors, too. But I did eventually get in.

Once inside I began the typical new hire game of "hurry up and wait". Except there was no apparent hurry. In fairly short order they did figure out my seating assignment, but my login and phone aren't working yet. Someone printed out a bunch of stuff for me to read and I sat down to, well, read.

ZZZZZzzzzzz. <snort!>

Oops. Sorry, I must've dozed off. My cube is in a very quiet area. It is in a single-file row, so there are hallways / aisles to the east and west and adjacent cubes to the north and south. The north cube is empty. Two of the three closest cubes across the east aisle are empty. There are no cubes across the west aisle. The cubes around me are occupied by introverted programmers. They don't call anyone. No one calls them. They don't socialize much (that's how you know they're introverts). You can't play music without headphones. There is no piped in music. The keyboards are pretty quiet. The HVAC system makes a soft sound. The lighting is dim — they must expect you to use the task lighting in your cube, but only one of my task lights is working.

In other words, it's dark and quiet. And I'm reading very dry material with which I can't really do anything.

Thank goodness for caffeine.

I'm told that my login might work tomorrow. I sure hope so because I finished all the reading today.

The Real Father Is ...

2007-02-15T07:46:00.000-06:00

I'll probably get sued by all the media companies who are making a mint off this whole "whose the daddy" bizness with Anna Nicole Smith's baby, but the truth must come out (and it will make you free) even if it means that the media frenzy must come to an end.

The sad part is that I only figured it out this morning while I was lying in bed and fondly recalling the wild activities that took place last night (Valentine's Day). But context is often the key to recognizing relationships between things — or people — so I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

Anyway, I have a friend who is not only a big ANS fan, but is also a spy with the NSA. You remember them? When you're talking on the phone and think you hear someone else on the extension but you know it can't be true because neither you nor the person you're calling has an extension (i.e. you're both on cell phones) — that's the NSA.

Anyway, when it came time to tap the phone of Ms. Smith, I have no doubt that my friend would have been shouldering his way to the front of the line. And once he was on the job he'd want to make sure it was done right so he'd put in multiple taps, including some inside her house / condo / hotel room. Then, being the international man of mystery that he is, Ms. Smith would be overcome with desire and would end up in the sack with him.

Yes, this would happen even though my friend would be wearing some clever disguise. There's just something about the aura of international men of mystery that shines through any disguise and makes almost all women (and some men) lose all inhibitions.

So there you have it. My friend is, in all likelihood, the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby! The sad thing is that I cannot reveal the identity of my friend without being thrown in jail, tagged forever by all the president's men as an evil-doer. So poor little Danilynne will never meet her real father and he will never know the joy of raising a trust fund baby.

Ah, well, "'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all". Surely those words will be comfort to many this day after Valentine's Day. On the other hand, for many others the phrase "yes, we have the morning after pill" will be more comforting.

Pine Wood Derby - Video!

2007-02-11T16:01:00.000-06:00

Back on Candlemas I blogged about my kids' first experience with the Pine Wood Derby.

I actually took video using my in-laws' digital camera and wanted to post that video in my blog. But it turned out that neither Windows Movie Maker nor the version of Muvee bundled with our HP computers could read the .mov formatted videos produced by the camera. Muvee did offer me a special price to upgrade to a full-featured version that could grok the format, but I am a miser these days.

Then I read a news item in a tech rag about free on-line movie editing sites and decided to try it out. So what you see below is thanks to eyespot.com.

Hope you like it.

Deal or No Deal?

2007-02-08T23:05:00.000-06:00

Me:    "Hi, my name is William-Bob and I drive a
        gas guzzler."
Crowd: "Hi, William-Bob."

I bought my gas guzzler in the days of cheap gasoline and telecommuting. It is rapidly approaching 7 years of age and just passed 192,000 furlongs on the odometer (24,000 miles to you Philistines). It is actually classified by the feds as an LEV (Low Emission Vehicle) and the Republic of Texas came this close to passing a law at the turn of the millennium that would have given me a rebate for purchasing an LEV!

It is a crew cab three-quarter ton pickup truck that averages 80 furlongs per gallon in mixed city and highway driving. Since I've measured it getting 136 furlongs per gallon on the interstate (at 560 fph) I shudder to think what the city figure is.

All this comes to mind because my next job will most likely include a commute. One possible employer is 352 furlongs from my house, so you can imagine my new-found concern about fuel efficiency.

The problem is two-fold: first, my truck is paid for; and second, I would probably be lucky to get $10,000 for it. Actually, my problems go deeper than that. Whatever I buy now will probably become 1 of 2's car when he starts to drive a few years from now, so I don't want to skimp on safety features like stability control and air-bags all the way around. That severely limits the used car selection and results in higher prices, which also means financing. A $250 car payment would be low for a decent new vehicle.

So how much money could I save on gasoline if I trade the Fuel-ossiraptor in for something a little less thirsty?

According to the napkin spreadsheet, my F-250 would use about 8.8 gallons per day if I got stuck in enough traffic each way each day. By contrast, a Toyota Corolla might use as little as 2.2 gallons each day if I managed to avoid rush hour. That's a very extreme comparison, but it serves to show the limits of savings potential.

That 6.6 gallon per day differential equates to $19.80 per day if gasoline is $3/gal. If there are 4.33 weeks per month and 5 commute days per week that comes to $428.67 per month savings by trading in. Not bad. But if gas sells in the neighborhood of $2, as it has recently, then the savings is only $285.78, which doesn't leave much wiggle room for the car payment.

And, of course, that was an awfully unfair comparison. If I assume the same commuting environment for the truck as for the car, then the fuel use of the truck drops to 5.17 gallons and the $3 gas savings goes down to $192.90 per month, with the $2 gas savings coming in at a paltry $128.60 per month.

In fact, the true comparison has to factor in that I don't really want something as small as a Corolla. Substitute a Camry (33 mpg) or a RAV4 (30 mpg) and the gasoline savings continue to drop.

Those savings would still be okay if I could trade vehicles straight up. But when you add in car payments there's a really good chance that trading in the battle tank will end up costing me more money than keeping it — maybe to the tune of a couple hundred per month.

So do I buy a new vehicle or not?

Gravitational Drive

2007-02-02T21:18:00.000-06:00

I know I've been slow, but trust me, I have a really lame reason! The issue at hand is my procrastination in posting about my kids' first Pine Wood Derby race.

If you'll remember, they both decided to join Cub Scouts this year. And if you're in Cub Scouts then you have to enter the Pine Wood Derby. I remember one Pine Wood Derby car from my own youth. I don't remember actually racing it, but I remember the car. Sort of. What I remember may not bear much resemblance to the truth, but I remember it well!

Back then the PWD car kit had a notch already made for the driver's seat. In profile it looked something like this (in ASCII art):

+-----------+   +-------+
|           |   |       |
|           +---+       |
+-+               +-+   |
  +---------------+ +---+

I show a couple of other notches on the bottom. I think that you glued some sort of axle housing into these notches. The idea was that the front of the car was on the left (in my drawing) and the rear was on the right.

PWD racetracks come in various configurations, but I think the most common one is an immediate slope from the starting line going into a long straightaway to the finish. Like so:

\
 \
  \
   \
    \__________________________________________________

Of course, the slope isn't quite that severe and the transition to the straightaway is more fluid.

Way back when, the cars must have been held at the starting line by something the wheels rested on, because my dear old Dad, an engineer, figured out that if we reversed the design of my car, so that the front was on the right of my drawing, then we could get almost a full inch head start on the other cars. Unfortunately, the race organizers were not cowed by the brilliance of my father and they insisted on racing my car backwards, in the traditional orientation.

I mention all this because my experience as a Dad of Pine Wood Derby racers is very different from my childhood recollections. First of all, there is no longer a notch pre-cut for the "driver". It actually makes reference to this in the directions which come with the kit, so I know that this part of my memory is not flawed. But instead of a big notch for some axle assembly, there is merely a pair of cuts for the axles (nails) to be pushed/hammered into. And the cars are held in place at the starting line by a peg in front of each position. So it really doesn't matter where you put your wheels or which end is your front — your car is held in-line with all the other cars.

And the rules specifically forbid you notching your front to allow it to extend forward of the peg!

So my children both entered cars, shown here with the awards they won:

The orange car on the left belongs to 1 of 2 and is the external fuel tank of the Space Shuttle (notice the NASA emblem). The red and white striped car on the right is 2 of 2's and is a stick of Fruit Stripe Gum, complete with Yipes, the gum's zebra mascot.

Actually, the zebra on the car is named Zak and was obtained from Vacation Bible School a couple of summers ago (they had a safari theme and we got a zebra, an elephant, a lion, a giraffe, and a bird of some sort). And Zak/Yipes had a rough first race: when the car hit the foam at the end of the track, Zak was ejected from the vehicle and left for dead on the track. 2 of 2 had to run up and rescue him before they started the second heat.

Speaking of heats, they have a lot! Cub Scouts are divided by grade into dens: Tigers (1st grade), Wolves, Bears, Webelos I, and Webelos II. Each den competes separately and there are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in each den. They also have a siblings category for brothers and sisters of Cub Scouts and a parents category for the adults. The siblings raced first, I assume it was to shake out any bugs in the track management system.

It's all computerized, including electronic timing down to thousandths of a second! We have four lanes on our track and each car races on each lane. If only four cars are entered (as was the case for the bears) then there are four heats with each car racing once on each lane. Points are awarded in each heat (1 point for 1st, 2 for 2nd, etc.) and the car with the fewest total points wins. If there are more than 4 cars then there are more heats with cars racing against different mixes of competitors as well as on different lanes. I think most dens had twenty (20!) races before they could declare the winners.

It was a long night.

So about those awards:

the medal between the cars was given to 2 of 2 for participating in the race (i.e. he didn't place in the top three)
the trophy behind the rocket fuel tank is the third place trophy won by 1 of 2's car
the trophy behind the Fruit Stripe Gum is second place for Most Imaginative Design

Next year we plan to actually try to make our cars fast by prepping the axles and wheels better and by making sure we are as close as possible to the 5 ounce weight limit.

Fusion Power Here At Last!

2007-02-02T08:32:00.000-06:00

More than 60 years after the first public demonstration of fission power comes Fusion Power, and you can hold it in your hand!

Well, to be completely truthful, what I'm holding in my hand is the un-powered version of Fusion, but it comes with a $1 coupon for the powered one.

Aside #mc²: I wonder if physicists use Fusion.

I am, of course, talking about the Fusion razor by Gilette. They sent me one in the mail along with a selection of coupons for blades, the battery powered version, and shaving creme.

The battery powered one vibrates, which supposedly "enhances" the shaving experience. One can't help but wonder where they're shaving! Do they have a version for women, perhaps with a bigger handle?

Anyway, the Fusion razor is the latest salvo in the shaving arms race. It has no less than six (yes, 6) blades. Five of these blades are lined up to give you an extremely close shave while the 6^th is positioned on the top edge to help you get those "tricky areas". Again one must ask just where they're shaving!

After thinking about it, I'm sort of surprised that Norelco hasn't touted the number of blades in their electric shavers. Each of those round thingees must have 20 or more blades and there are at least two of them (and often three) in each razor. Remington, which uses a different technology, probably has thirty or so blades in their products.

Then again, the knock on 'lectric shavers is that they don't shave as close as a "blade", in spite of their vastly superior number of cutting surfaces. Is there a number of surfaces beyond which the efficacy is reduced?

Note to self: Write up research grant application to investigate limits of increasing number of blades in razor. Should be worth a few million of taxpayer money.

Skillz Te$t

2007-01-22T17:46:00.000-06:00

Today I had my the second interview "test" of my life. 17 years ago I had applied for a job at Convex and one of the interviews was with a group of programmers who spent an hour or so grilling me on everything I claimed on my resume. I had to write programs or functions in C, sed, and awk, evaluate the order of computation for an algorithm, and other computer gymnastics. I guess I passed because I was offered the job (which I turned down).

Today's interview was a screening interview for a consulting company. But it wasn't conducted by anyone at the company that might hire me. It turns out that there is at least one company whose major business is conducting technical interviews. They questioned me on AIX/Unix, project management, SDLC, leadership, SQL, C, Perl, and Korn shell programming. It was a bit nerve-racking.

I was surprisingly nervous the instant the phone rang. I didn't have a really good handle on what they might be testing me on because I've never seen a job description for the position. Plus, I've never done a technical interview on the phone, or at least not one that had been advertised as a "test". So I think it was all just so different that it was a bit discombobulating.

I think I did okay, though I stumbled on a couple of (hopefully minor) questions. The interviewer will send a report within a couple of hours and I hope to hear from the potential employer in a few days.

Update — 23 January:
I just got a call from the (in-house) recruiter and I passed the test. I have an interview next week.

The Great North Texas Blizzard of 2007

2007-01-17T08:47:00.000-06:00

This closed schools across the DFW metroplex. To be fair, that's ice pellets, which can be tricky to drive on. Indeed, the traffic reports on the radio are very short: "accident every 100 yards on all highways and major surface streets."

But still, it lacks the visual impact of the recent snowstorms in Colorado.

Fraud! Chicanery!

2007-01-11T19:32:00.000-06:00

If you think that public school is full of thugs and other ne'er-do-wells, well, I think you're right. And now I know why! It's because they teach kids to be dishonest.

I know, I didn't believe it at first, either. But today 1 of 2 came home and told us that he had to forge an old letter. He was to make it look as if written on parchment and singed in some fire long ago. His teacher gave him manila paper to write on. He had to use black ink and write like a girl. Then he had to crumple it up and burn it.

Here's the result:

I'm aghast!

Wheeeeeeee!

2006-12-26T16:14:00.000-06:00

It was a very Nintendo Christmas this year. No, we didn't get a Wii (whatever made you think we might've?), but we did get a couple of Nintendo DS Lites — one for each of the young-uns.

Full Disclosure: The handheld gaming devices and accessories were gifts from the grandparents — both sets. In other words, my parents and 6/10ths parents went together to buy them.

The game players are definitely the top gifts of the year. They even discovered the wireless IM feature and used it when they were supposed to be sleeping last night.

That wireless capability is actually kind of cool. You can buy one copy of Mario Kart and when one starts the game he chooses multiplayer/simple and then the other kid can connect wirelessly to the game. It transmits the game through the "ether" and then they race each other.

At first, 1 of 2 won every time. But 2 of 2 started to get the hang of steering and also enjoyed doing goofy things, like driving off of bridges into the water. By being silly he discovered some "shortcuts" and started winning consistently. 1 of 2 was convinced that the computer was driving for him because "no one can steer that smooth!" I had them switch consoles and race. 2 of 2 still won, even though 1 of 2 now had the computer assisted car. That just made him madder. We told him that he needed to figure out why 2 was winning and copy his techniques. By the end of the evening, 1 was more competitive.

Another case of fratricide avoided.

Chicks Dig Scars

2006-12-05T17:02:00.000-06:00

Chicks Dig Scars. That's what I'm telling 1 of 2 to console him over his injuries.

Sunday, in the middle of the first quarter of the Cowboys / Giants game, 1 of 2 decided to go bike riding in front of our house. His helmet wasn't fitting properly (he'd managed to release the clamps holding the straps). So I spent a few minutes getting it all adjusted again. Good thing, too, because he wasn't out there more than 5 minutes before he showed up inside again in extreme pain.

I'm not sure of all the details, but he was going relatively fast when he lost control and hurtled to the pavement. 6/10ths (my better half) saw him hit the ground and slide, face down. He bruised and scraped his left knee (and tore a hole in his new pants), scraped the knuckles of his left hand, and scraped his nose and upper lip (and cracked his bike helmet).

We put bandages on his knee and fingers but the scrape on his nose started right between the eyes and goes down to the tip. We figured that it was just too hard to bandage — the small bandages wouldn't cover the scrape and the big ones wouldn't fit between his eyes. So we just cleaned it and let it scab over.

He looks pretty bad and is getting a lot of grief at school. But I keep promising him that scars give a guy a certain, I don't know what exactly, but a certain je ne sais quoi that the girls seem to be attracted to.

Aside #1: I do know that "je ne sais quoi" means "I don't know what". But 1 of 2 doesn't so it works.

In the meantime he's taking a lot of oral analgesics.

Aside #2: I love the way that sounds — oral analgesics. And yes, I tell them that the termometer is a rectal one, just to see their reaction. Still works after all these years!

Another bonus is that we get to avoid posing for any more Christmas pictures this year!

Tree Houses

2006-12-02T11:46:00.000-06:00

Long time no post. By the time I'm done with work these days I'm just too tired to post. The odd thing about that statement is that I don't have a job! Except to find a new job. And it's a lot of work.

Anyway, a week ago, right after Thanksgiving, my wife took her three boys to the Dallas Arboretum to see the Tree House exhibit. I think it was the last weekend, so I'm sorry if this post makes you want to go see it. (HA!)

Anyway, the first thing to keep in mind is that no trees were harmed by this exhibit. I can understand the requirement. But what I don't understand is why they let artists design the tree houses, and I can assure you that they were artistic. That's not a good thing.

For starters, one requirement for any "tree house" design ought to be that you could put it up in a tree. Only two of the thirteen "tree houses" had obvious tree potential. One other "tree house", while lacking any resemblance to something you could put in a tree, managed to include some structural elements (large PVC piping) that that could clearly have been used to support elevated tree houses so that no damage would have been done to the trees.

Instead, we were treated to very artistic designs on the ground that not only had no potential to exist in a tree, but looked like they would be absolutely no fun to play or spend time in!

I'm sorry, but a tree house is, first and foremost, a play structure. It is secondarily a clubhouse. If you build a structure that cannot be placed in a tree, cannot be used as a play structure, and cannot serve as a clubhouse — well, you darned well better not call it a tree house!

Camping

2006-10-25T18:57:00.000-05:00

We survived our first Cub Scout camp-out. In case you don't remember, my idea of roughing it is staying at a hotel that doesn't have room service after midnight. So the idea of me camping in anything, even the famous Madden Bus, is a bit of a snort.

But I'm a dad, and you've just gotta do what you've gotta do.

This is actually my second campout with the kids. By the time they're adults I may even figure out if camp out is one word, two words, or hyphenated. The first campout was at the Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano. That was a special one night, no cooking, planned activities for the kids, family camping event sponsored by the City of Plano Parks and Rec department. We got through with a tent, the kids' two sleeping bags unzipped and laid out on top of rented sleeping pads, and some sheets and pillows.

This time there were two cooking opportunities and the weather was going to be colder, so we needed to buy some gear.

Coleman 2-burner camp stove
several 16.4 oz. cans of propane
2 more sleeping bags
queen size inflatable air mattress for mom and dad
small folding table

We decided to use normal pots and cooking utensils along with paper plates and plastic table-ware. The planned menu was:

Dinner

hot dogs
Cheetos
grapes

Breakfast

scrambled eggs
sausage
tortillas

The camp-site was Hidden Cove Park in Frisco, on Lake Lewisville. We got there about 4 p.m. and quickly set up the tent (in spite of the broken pole), including the air mattress, and the cooking stuff. The cub-master had arranged for stew, but I knew that it was risking a night of whining if they didn't like it. Turns out they also provided hot dogs (which wasn't advertised). But of course, their hot dogs were grilled and my kids don't like the "brown stuff" that grilling leaves on dogs. So it's a good thing we brought our own and were prepared to boil them.

The wind was pretty heavy and as night fell it got much cooler. By the time the pack meeting was over we were ready to retreat to the comfort of our sleeping bags. That was when the lack of proper planning became most evident. Our tent is a 7' x 9' dome chosen for the kids to use in our game room. I'm not sure how they measured 7 x 9 because none of my rulers confirm it. Plus, like most domed tents the sides make about a 60° angle with the floor, so you can't really use all of the floor space anyway. The queen-sized mattress took up most of the tent. Our plan of having the wife and me on the bed and the kids on the floor quickly fell apart and 2 of 2, the smaller one, joined us on the bed.

2 of 2 fell asleep immediately, so he couldn't be too uncomfortable, but from the complaints in the morning it seems that 1 of 2 was the only one who got a truly good night's sleep.

By the time it was light I was ready to leave. The temperature had fallen into the 30's and the wind was still pretty brisk. I didn't have any gloves, had slept very poorly (pinned against the side of the tent and unable to move), and lacked any desire to fire up the camp stove and cook breakfast. So we broke camp very quickly. Didn't bother folding or rolling anything. Just picked it up in whatever wad I could, threw it into the back of the minivan, and left the rest of the campers to choke on our exhaust.

Then we got stuck at the gate, which didn't open for another 10 minutes.

We ate breakfast at La Madeleine in Plano.

Next purchase: a bigger tent. And a hat to sleep in.

Ewwww!

2006-10-08T20:26:00.000-05:00

I just looked at my blog to see how long it had been since my last post (I know it's been a while) and was somewhat distressed to see that the advert placed by the Googleplex said

Eliminate Pubic Hair
Want that smooth clean look & feel Eliminate pubic hair guaranteed

Aren't these ads supposed to be context sensitive? If so, I can't imagine what I did to trigger this ad. Was it something I wrote in my blog? Or does surfing Yahoo and Consumer Reports and car company web sites somehow correlate with shaving your privates?

No, wait -- I think I know what did it: my posts about Merkins! Google is smarter than I look!

My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine ...

2006-08-24T11:35:00.000-05:00

Today's big news (so far) is that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has voted to define planet in such a way that Pluto is demoted from plain old planet, or Classical Planet, to Dwarf Planet, or Minor Planet.

I haven't been able to get to the IAU's website this morning (I guess it's overwhelmed) and the major news sites don't seem to think it is important to publish the actual definition, so I don't know if all of those terms are actually in there or if some of them are just the preferred terms of some of the astronomers at the meeting.

But what really concerns me is what the new mnemonic will be to help our children remember the names and order of the planets.

For some time now the English mnemonic has been some variation of "My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas." Without Pluto (Pizzas), what will we use? What did they use before Pluto was found?

Powerless

2006-08-22T21:13:00.000-05:00

First I was out of options. Then I was powerless.

Fortunately, the power is now restored.

This evening, at about 6:50 p.m. CDT, our power went out after flickering a couple of times. There was a mild thunderstorm in the area, but we've seen much worse without the power going out. We expected the power to return in a few seconds because it always has in the past — in 9+ years in this house we've never had a power outage longer than a minute or two, and those have been very rare.

Tonight the power was out for about an hour and a half. It finally came back when I left to buy some ice to keep food fresh in an extended outage. In hindsight, I should've gone out immediately.

Another factor which made this event more exciting was the presence of two children in the house. These things are always a much bigger deal for the kids than for the parents. It was nearing bedtime (and nightfall) and kids are much more afraid of the dark than us old folks. So 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 were running around collecting batteries and flashlights and radios and acting like we were suddenly living in the dark ages — or in Lebanon.

I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Out of Options

2006-08-22T14:07:00.000-05:00

Today was the day that I chose to sell the last of my stock options. Or, at least, the last of my stock options that were "above water".

I was going to have to sell in the next few months anyway, and I just didn't see anything in my crystal ball that made a significant rise in value seem probable. So, since I had the time, I plunked my dime into the pay-phone and called my friendly Stock Option Plan Administrator.

After fees and taxes I'll take home just over two grand. A far cry from the days when I bought a car with stock options, but not bad considering where this stock was selling a few months ago.

Housekeeping

2006-08-20T16:25:00.000-05:00

I've been cleaning out my home office and came across a note, so I have to deal with it now. It said:

North Merkin
Central Merkin
South Merkin

Those of you who know me know that I enjoy it when people pronounce American as merkin, as in "Ah'm proud to a merkin!"

Makes me laugh every time.

I'm assuming, of course, that you, gentle reader, know what a merkin is. If not, let me just say that a merkin is a toupé — for the pubic area.

I can only imagine that the aforementioned note was written when I read some news item about nationalist statements in some other "Merkin" country.

So I have to wonder, what is the difference between a North Merkin, a Central Merkin, and a South Merkin? Perhaps a North Merkin is a toupé in the normal sense (i.e. on the head). A South Merkin could be a merkin in the normal sense (i.e. fake pubic hair).

Since the hair on your head is typically visible (in western countries) and the hair down there typically isn't, does that make head hair public and pubic hair non-public?

So what would a Central Merkin be? Fake chest hair? That sort of makes sense if you think of the sayings that something will "put hair on your chest" as meaning that something will make a boy into a man.

Maybe an adventurous reader will propose a mapping of fake hair in different areas to characteristics of nationalists in different parts of the Americas. Politically incorrect, to be sure, but could be humorous.

Color Blind Society?

2006-08-18T17:48:00.000-05:00

I was recently laid off after 16 years with the same company. One of the first things my wife said was that I'd need to start dying my hair to avoid age discrimination.

Yep, my hair is almost all gray, and a great many people make the assumption that I am much older than I am. My mother-in-law even reported that she received comments about my age (relative to my wife) from relatives who had seen my wedding pictures — they simply noticed the gray and made an assumption. I was 28 and my blushing bride is only 4 years my junior. And my hair is much grayer now.

As I started looking around in job groups I saw a good many comments from people who felt that their age (50 and up) was causing them problems getting a job in a high-tech field. The comments weren't just about hair color. It was an overall perception of age.

While I'm only 44, I've frequently encountered people who express surprise and admit to thinking I was much older, because of the hair. And it comes up surprisingly frequently, probably because they think 6/10ths (my better half) must be much younger than me and they are intrigued by the prospect of ours being one of those "May-December" romances.

So I've finally decided that I'd rather not get discriminated against for something that isn't true (i.e. I'm not over 50). I got my hair dyed.

Now I have to get used to the color. It's lighter than my natural color and has a bit of a reddish cast to it. It's hard to tell if my uneasiness with it is due to the drastic change (which those who don't know me won't experience) or if the problem is with the reddish tones.

I may have to get it done darker.

RIF / Backyard Progress

2006-08-05T13:41:00.000-05:00

The big news this week is that I got laid off on Thursday. Nothin' quite like losing your job in the middle of an expensive construction project!

I know what you're thinking: "What does getting laid off have to do with reading?" RIF is a well known acronym for the Reading Is Fundamental program, but it is also used in the corporate world to mean "Reduction In Force" — a lay off. And since acronyms become words (e.g. scuba and radar) and since any word can become a verb, to rif means to lay off. So I was riffed.

Anyway, the backyard is coming along fine. The wall and fence are up and the preliminary sprinkler work has been done. A couple of piles of dirt have been delivered and are waiting for stronger backs than mine to move them into place. That should happen Monday morning. A few last fence details are also supposed to happen Monday morning and the fence is supposed to be stained that day as well. Sounds like a busy day.

As for the lay off, my employer has a fairly generous severance package so I'm not panicking just yet. But if you know of anyone looking for an experienced senior IT kind of guy (to work in the Dallas area), please leave their contact info in a comment and I'll follow up on it.

Not the Cruddiest Anymore

2006-07-29T08:26:00.000-05:00

As of two days ago, I no longer have the cruddiest fence on the alley. I don't have the best fence either, though that is due at least in part to the fact that I have no fence at the moment.

My old fence was getting pretty pathetic with lots of rotting cross pieces and boards falling off. It's gotten so bad in the past year or two that even screws weren't enough to reattach the boards, so I've been making periodic trips to the home improvement store to buy replacement bits. I'll bet the neighbors love the patchwork appearance!

But no more. The fence is gone and a stone wall with fence atop are being constructed. The yard behind the wall will be leveled, making for a better play space for the kids and allowing the planting of a vegetable garden when the drought is over.

The only sad thing is that the old wooden fence posts weren't rotten enough to fall over in a strong wind. If that had happened I might have been able to get insurance to pay for part of the replacement.

Windows 98SE; Rest In Peace

2006-07-12T08:21:00.000-05:00

As of yesterday, July 11, 2006, Microsoft will no longer support or provide updates to Windows 95, 98, 98SE, or ME, even though they estimate between 50 and 70 million users are still running these operating systems.

I have only one computer left running Win98SE. It is an old Gateway tower with a 600MHz Pentium III processor. I have slower computers running XP, so I can probably upgrade, but since this is primarily the kids' computer and used mostly for running (very old) kids games I have not felt the need.

Indeed, for a month or two we had my wife's new computer using their monitor during a transition from her old notebook and we tried a couple of the kids' games on it. There were a few troubles, including programs that wouldn't run or that would crash regularly or failed in some operation (printing, saving, etc.)

We'll probably keep using this PC as is. There's nothing critical on it and the kids are well trained. Virus protection is in place and they only surf to a small number of sites that are vetted in advance by me or 6/10ths (my better half). We've never had a virus or worm, so I suspect that we'll be okay for the next 6 months or so. Heck, if I don't get laid off by my employer this August I might celebrate by buying them a new, faster computer with an LCD monitor!

On-Line Gambling Soon To Be Illegal in U.S.

2006-07-12T07:59:00.000-05:00

Schwab Stock Drops 50%

The US house "overwhelmingly" passed new legislation this week to further clarify internet gambling laws and to curb the popular activity. Among the measures intended to thwart gamblers is a prohibition against the use of credit cards or wire transfers to pay for gambling debts.

I haven't read the law, but here's an obvious work-around: Transfer the money to an offshore account that is not (directly) related to internet gambling. Then transfer the money to your bookie.

Or here's another way: the gambling houses require you to put money up front into an account with them. You aren't paying a gambling dept because you haven't yet gambled with that money. Later, when you lose a bet the casino takes money from your account.

Oh, and of course the law exempts several types of gambling, including horse racing and state run lotteries. And the stock market, the biggest gambling operation in history.

I saw a NightLine piece this week about bodog.com. I think they guy was right when he said that if the U.S. Congress really wanted to put him out of business they would legalize internet gambling so that the big U.S. casinos could get into it. That would hurt his business more than anything, though to be fair, I suspect it would also increase the total amount of gambling being done.

It should also be noted that the measure has yet to pass the Senate. For my international readers (ha!) who aren't familiar with the way laws are made here, a law must pass both the House and the Senate and be signed by the President to become law. The Senate has shot down several recent attempts to kill internet gambling and may do so again.

Four-Eyes

2006-06-30T14:58:00.000-05:00

The summer of 2006 will go down in my immediate family as the summer of corrective lenses.

Both of my children started wearing glasses full-time; I got VDT glasses; and both my wife and I got contact lenses.

Aside #20/20:What is it about doctors and long, hard to pronounce names? My eye doc is referred to as Dr. B. and my kids' eye doc is Dr. S., both use initials because their names are long and hard to pronounce (by those who can't say words longer than two cylinders). And our pediatrician is Dr. D.

1 of 2 joined the glass eye community in first grade when he was diagnosed with a visual information management problem and sent to Dr. S., who specializes in such things. He got some prism glasses which didn't really have any correction, but which helped his eyes track left and right. We were shocked by the effectiveness of those glasses because his reading really took off with them. Before glasses, 1 of 2 was at risk of not meeting the reading goals for 1st grade. Within a month or two he was reading at the end of 2nd grade level. But those glasses were part time usage -- only for reading and close up work. This spring we went back to Dr. S. for an exam and found out that 1 of 2 needed full-time corrective lenses.

Aside Probability: 1. Of course, those glasses got broken within the week. In hindsight, it was a certainty because they were "unbreakable". The optician demonstrated their flex steel capabilities by twisting them into a pretzel right there in the store! But the give-away was the guarantee, which included a $25 replacement charge should they actually get broken.

So then it was 2 of 2's turn for a visit to Dr. S. Just to make sure. Turns out his vision is worse than 1 of 2's! Glasses are on order.

6/10ths (my better half) went in at the beginning of summer to get some contact lenses to wear while swimming. Like me, she's nearsighted and was concerned that she couldn't see well when we went swimming with the kids. It's hard to keep an eye on them when you can't see them. We both looked into prescription goggles, but decided that they were too expensive and that you'd kind of look funny if you left them on while talking to someone at the pool. So she got some disposable soft contacts and a pair of regular goggles. She's been wearing the contacts other times as well, but dry eyes prevent her from wearing them all the time.

I also got some soft contacts for swimming, but due to some tradeoffs I can't see well enough to drive with them (except in an emergency). But they're great for swimming.

Aside 300#: One drawback of being able to see better at the pool is that I can now see the "manatees" much more clearly. I've always known they were there, and could see their large pinkish forms well enough to avoid collisions, but I was always spared the full force of their — er — beauty. No more.

The problem I have with soft contacts is three-fold: 1) I have significant astigmatism; 2) I wanted disposable lenses; and 3) the lenses I got don't go up to my correction. There are soft contacts available that can correct much of my astigmatism and go up to my power, but they aren't disposables. I don't want to hassle with cleaning, especially since I expect to occasionally go weeks to months between uses. I doubt that soft lenses can be safely stored for months after use and then be used again.

And then there is the issue of presbyopia. I have reached that age when it often becomes necessary to adapt for the shortening of my arms and the shrinking of letters. Yesterday I took delivery of special VDT glasses (VDT = Video Display Terminal). I use a computer all day long in my work and I was having to greatly increase the font size on my computer in order to avoid eye strain. I can already tell a big difference with these glasses and have been able to shrink the font on my computer to something approaching normal. This actually makes many programs much easier to use and makes many web sites possible to use. They're also great for reading.

Unfortunately, my VDT glasses don't work so well for watching TV. I like to work the crossword from the newspaper while watching the news on TV, but I don't yet have any glasses that make it easy to do both at the same time. I can use my regular glasses to watch TV or I can use my VDT glasses to do the crossword. In August I'll be eligible for new lenses in my regular glasses and plan to get bi-focals. Sigh. I guess I'll have to sign up with AARP soon.

Interest Rates, Inflation, and the Economy

2006-06-09T14:40:00.000-05:00

I'm getting very worried about the economy. In the past year or so the cost of energy has jumped quite a bit (no, really), upsetting the balance of many budgets.

The jump is severe enough that something has to be done to bring the overall budget back into line. The something, for companies, is to raise prices. The something, for laborers, is to ask for a pay raise, which will, of course, require employers to raise prices a bit more.

Some employers have other options, like investing in technology to boost productivity. But that often requires borrowing money and this is where the Fed comes in as the managers of interest rates.

To be fair, what the Fed manages is actually just the interest rate used by banks borrowing money overnight (or something like that). But this rate trickles down (isn't that a Laffer?) to other rates, including home mortgages, home improvement loans, and business loans.

The Fed adjusts this key interest rate as a control on inflation. They raise it to stop inflation and lower it to spur business growth.

So the business that wants to invest in technology to use in the US may find itself having to pay higher interest rates because the Fed wants to prevent inflation.

Do you see the conflict yet? In order to avoid raising prices (inflation) a company wants to invest in technology that will boost productivity, but can't because they can't afford the interest rates that the Fed is jacking up.

So what happens? Well, for some companies they are now forced to another option: off-shoring. Yep, you can invest in new technology in another country for less money (especially when factoring in the lower labor costs over there).

Good-bye jobs. Good-bye middle class. Thanks a lot, Fed.

I would argue instead that inflation can be a good thing in limited quantities. For example, the government isn't upset about inflation of 2 to 3 percent. I would also suggest that inflation which simply brings the cost of energy back into line isn't a problem either.

To be sure, inflation is hard for those on fixed or very low incomes. But since the government has a pretty good grasp on those they can be dealt with: Raise the minimum wage; raise benefits for entitlement programs (e.g. social security, welfare, etc.).

So long as inflation is simply to address rebalancing, it shouldn't be a disaster. And I fear that the alternative will be worse as the economy grinds to a screeching halt.

I am reminded of the axiom which says that everything looks like a nail if your only tool is a hammer. The Fed needs some vision correction.

Nausea

2006-06-08T11:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a rough day. Have you ever stood up quickly and become light-headed or dizzy? It usually goes away after a few seconds. But yesterday morning I got up from my desk to go to the bathroom and the dizziness didn't go away.

I managed to complete my bio-break without incident and returned to my desk, but quickly went into the kitchen (I'm a telecommuter, so I was at home) and got a bowl, then went to sit down on the couch.

By now the room was spinning quite out of control, which made me nauseated and, predictably, led to the Total™ loss of my breakfast (Total™ cereal and a banana). I was so dizzy and off balance that I almost fell off the couch (I was sitting).

The room finally stabilized a few minutes later, though the dizziness persisted in a lower state for some hours. After that I was woozy for the remainder of the day and am still not 100%.

Then came the Tonight Show. Jay sent Kelly Pickler, of Merkin Idle fame, to interview celebs on the red carpet outside the MTV Movie Awards (?).

OHMYGOD! This woman makes Jessica Simpson look smart! I predict that she will become very rich and get maximum media saturation for the next year or so, then drop (mercifully) from sight when she runs out of new ways to demonstrate her idiocy.

One example: she talked to some guy whom I've never seen before (I'm not a celebrity watcher) and he asked her if she'd ever hugged a Jewish person before. She admitted that she had not and asked him for a hug. While hugging she looks at the camera and says, "I've just hugged my first Jew!". Then, after letting go, she attempted to CROSS HERSELF! She botched it horribly, then asked the Jewish guy if she'd done it right! She thought she was making some sort of Jewish sign!

I almost tossed my cookies again.

May: The Holiday Month

2006-05-12T17:04:00.000-05:00

May must be the Latin word for Holiday because this month seems to be chock full of them.

First we had May Day (May 1), which leftist leaning countries use to celebrate the oppression of the common worker for the benefit of the ruling party and people who can goose-step in unison. This year the first of May was also used to commemorate the rights of people to sneak into countries they hate (and which hate them right back).

Next came Cinco de Mayo (May 5), a mostly U.S. celebration of the native Mexicans winning a battle against the French on the way to losing the war. But it fits in with the collective alcoholic tendencies of Americans (motto: "I'll drink to that!"). Notice that Americans are also very fond of St. Patrick's Day and OctoberFest. The common theme is that the cultures associated with these holidays are all known for their beer. I cannot recall a French themed holiday, which seems fitting because the French aren't known for their beer.

In a couple of days we get to celebrate Mother's Day (May 14 this year, but different Sundays in other years), in which we celebrate the oppression of women for the propagation of the species and the benefit of, well, men. 'Nuff said.

Then, at the end of the month we have Memorial Day (May 29, I think). I'm sure that Memorial Day commemorates something, but no one seems to be able to remember what. Some memorial! As with most holidays, Memorial Day, which has been stretched into a whole weekend, requires the consumption of copious quantities of alcohol.

Jim: "Hey, Bob, what did we do last Memorial Day?"
Bob: "I don't remember, but it must've been fun!"
Jim: "I'll drink to that!"

So maybe Memorial Day is to commemorate all the brain (memory) cells which lose their lives each Memorial Day.

Oh, and Memorial Day marks when ladies and old men can begin wearing white patent leather shoes and light colored clothing. They have to stop on Labor Day.

Are there any other holidays in this month?

(Obligatory?) Knee-Jerk Reaction

2006-05-09T11:23:00.000-05:00

Since I live in one of the reddest counties in Texas (and the richest), it is my duty, if not always my reflex, to respond in a knee-jerk fashion from time to time. To whit: HOMOPHONES.

I learned yesterday that my school is teaching my third grader about HOMOPHONES! What on God's green earth is a HOMOPHONE and why are they teaching my children about it? Just because I don't home school and can't afford to send my children to a private (Christian) school doesn't mean that I subscribe to the gay agenda and want the schools to brainwash my kids.

But of course, I don't want to appear ignerrent so I'm gonna do some googling to figure out exactly what a HOMOPHONE is.

Aside <B>: Whoever figured out that typing a thing in all caps is an effective way of showing that it is evil was brilliant!

Of course, the key to successful googling is to make some informed guesses about the thing you are searching for and include those terms in your google search. That makes the most relevant links show up at the top of the first page. Therefore, I am going to search for the following sets of terms:

GAY PHONE
GAY PHONE SEX
HOMO PHONE SEX
HOMO HAND SEX

I won't post the results here because they are too disturbing for a child-friendly blog like mine.

Aside #14 bids:Apparently EBay is involved in the sale of GAY PHONE SEX services (and its variants) because every one of my google searches had a link near the top which said something like "Looking for GAY PHONE SEX? Get it on EBay!"

A little more searching proved what we've all known instinctively for a long time: the arts in general and the lingual arts in particular, are pushing the gay agenda.

Aside #20-to-life:Do you really think the similarity between cunning linguists and cunnilingus is a coincidence?

For example, in addition to HOMOPHONES, English teachers seem to have a fixation on HOMONYMS. The difference between a HOMOPHONES and HOMONYMS is similar to that between LESBIANS and GAYS: all LESBIANS are GAY but not all GAYS are LESBIANS.

Anyway, I'm gonna get to the bottom of this HOMOPHONE stuff and make sure that they stop teaching it in our schools!

Uno de Mayo

2006-05-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

Today is the day when a large number of immigrants are supposed to:

not show up for work, or
not buy anything, or
both.

I am slightly bothered by this. First, they're trying to mingle illegal and legal immigration. Second, they're ignoring the problem of unemployment or underemployment in this country. Third, they're ignoring the plight of illegal immigrants. And finally, they are ignoring the national security issues with our borders.

Disclosure #1:Some of my own ancestors came to this country without the permission of the host government. That was in the 1650's and the Powhantan Nation had quite a bit of trouble with the illegal immigrants in what is now called Virginia.

We also need to get one thing straight: the US is a country of immigrants, and a lot of them arrived without proper permission beforehand (some even without their own permission). These immigrants have contributed greatly to this country, and immigration is still beneficial to the US.

But ...

We clearly cannot take in all of the poor of the world. We ain't that rich and we don't have that much land. So there have to be some limits. Once you have limits you have the issue of illegal immigrants and what to do with them. If you just keep saying, "Oh, well. I guess you can stay" then you basically have no limits.

Then, of course, we have a lot of unemployed and underemployed Americans. Even though the official unemployment rate is very low (less than 5%), it is believed by economists that a lot of people who would like to work have given up. These people are not counted as unemployed. The changing economy has also moved a lot of good paying jobs to lower wage countries and forced millions of people to find lower paying jobs.

Even highly educated people, like engineers are finding themselves in new fields because they can't find jobs. Of course, that doesn't keep Gates and Co. from pushing for more visas for foreign engineers. Hey, it's just business!

But even at the lower end, Hurricane Katrina gave us many examples of Americans who rushed to work in the cleanup effort, only to get fired when the illegals arrived (many brand spanking new to the country) to work for less pay, no benefits, and willing to tolerate absolute squalor.

Which leads me to the treatment of illegals. Illegal immigrants are exploited by American business. They are paid less, they get no benefits, and they work in dangerous conditions -- all because they can't complain. They are also victims of more crime because they are afraid to call the police.

And then there is the issue of those newly manufactured kewler bombs and other weapons of terrorism.

Aside #238: Why are we so obsessed with new kewler bombs? Are the old ones less dangerous in some way? Or are they so big and cumbersome that we don't think they could be smuggled in?

Some are calling for a fence along the border with Mexico. Opponents like to show pictures of chain link fences (some quite tall) and how easily they are penetrated. Funny, but no one seems to show fences like the one the Israelis are building.

Of course, a wall isn't the final answer. We'd have to build one across Canada as well, for one thing. And we'd have to monitor it closely enough to stop people from climbing it. And we'd have to do something to secure the coastline. And we'd have to monitor border crossings, airports, and shipping more closely. But I reject the idea that we can't do any of these things simply because we cannot do all of them currently or perfectly. We need to try harder to keep out those who wish to do us harm and the tools they would like to use. And we can't do that if we don't have better control of who is coming in.

Right now, the tremendous bulk of illegal immigration comes across our Mexican border. Given the poverty of those who cross, it makes sense that making that crossing more difficult will price it out of range for at least some. It also pushes more illegal immigrants and imports to ports and crossings where we might have a better chance of catching it. Or maybe we will in the future.

Disclosure #2: I'm glad that the immigrant who cleans my house every other week showed up for work today, though I wouldn't have fired her if she didn't. She's here legally and we believe that we pay her about the same as other legal immigrants in this line of work (we used to have a caucasian doing this job, and she made about the same money).

In response to today's protests, I propose that all persons legally in the country boycott the upcoming Cinco de Mayo celebrations.

Revenge of the Nerds

2006-04-24T11:42:00.000-05:00

I think the nerds are out to get us. Or at least to scare the pants off us. Case in point, the periodic scares of impending doom from

volcanoes
tsunamis
hurricanes
tornados (they're not just for trailer parks anymore)
meteors
CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections)

Add to the list, GRBs (Gamma Ray Bursts) from black holes or colliding neutron stars. GRBs are also called "Interstellar Death Rays" by the media, who seem to be involved in the plot with the nerds.

Odd, isn't it, that two groups that probably wouldn't have had anything to do with each other in high school have teamed up to get their revenge on the rest of the community?

But we can now relax because the nerds have examined more data and decided that the risk of earth being hit by a GRB is pretty small. Now we can go back to watching the jocks on TV.

Mel Ott?

2006-04-18T22:08:00.000-05:00

My local rag, The Plano Star Courier, runs the NEA crossword puzzle. I've been working them for the past few months and have noticed that certain words come up again and again. The repetition doesn't really bother me but some of the words they choose to repeat do kind of grate, and they did so the first time they showed up.

One repeated word, actually two related words, are "MEL" and "OTT", as in "Mel Ott", the baseball player. I have nothing against Mr. Ott — he is a hall of famer, after all — but he hasn't played in almost 60 years and the clue is usually something like "baseball slugger." Gee, who pops to the top of your mind when you hear the phrase "baseball slugger"? Maybe a current player like Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds (he's in the news a lot). Maybe Ted Williams, whose season home run record was smashed a few years ago by Androstenedione and other pharmaceuticals, or Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth? But Mel Ott? Give me a break!

Then there is one of my real favorites: "MOMA Artist". If you don't already know it, MOMA is New York's Museum Of Modern Art. Gee, how many artists have work on display there right now? Maybe a permanent collection? Go ahead and look at the web site and see if you can figure out who they mean.

The answer is KLEE. You found that name straight away, didn't you? Me, too.

Not in the realm of repeats, but certainly in the "you gotta be kidding" arena: MHO. Yes, MHO. The clue was "electrical unit". If you randomly asked me what a mho was I could actually have told you (the inverse of ohms) because I was an electrical engineering major for a couple of years in college, but what the hell are mhos doing in a syndicated crossword puzzle? The only way most people will get that is by getting all the crossing words (actually, that's how I got it). You can't even make the excuse that you're expanding someone's vocabulary (literary or cultural) because mhos will never come up in casual conversation.

I'll close with a few of my other favorite repeats: "ELS" (urban commuter trains), "ESS" (curve in the road), "CEE" (average grade).

22K and Counting (Slowly)

2006-04-17T15:34:00.000-05:00

Way back on February 21, 2005 CE, I blogged about crossing 160,000 furlongs on the ol' oh-dough-meter. At that point, I was racking them up at the rate of roughly 1300 furlongs per fortnight.

Tomorrow morning the meter will turn over once more to three zeros on the right, this time to 176,000 furlongs (16,000 more than when I last blogged on this topic).

If you'll recall, the price of gasoline spiked to over $3 per gallon last fall (and is flirting with that price once more). You might also recall that my V-hickle averages about 80 furlongs per gallon of petrol. Naturally, I've cut back on my driving a bit and drive the castration-mobile more frequently (my wife's minivan). This reduction in use of the truck is reflected in the turning of the mile markers.

So I now seem to be averaging about 533 and a third; RPM — er — furlongs per fortnight. That's a decrease of nearly 60 percent from the previous rate. If this continues, and if 1 of 2 takes over this vehicle, it may have only 272,000 furlongs on it!

Then again, he may not be able to afford to drive it.

Where to Point the Finger

2006-04-06T13:31:00.000-05:00

In many cases it is hard to figure out what causes some malady, though that doesn't seem to matter to legislators and other do-gooders.

Aside #4 out of 5: If someone does something bad in an attempt to do something good, are they still a do-gooder or are they now an evil-doer? Or can we coin a new name, a do-gooder-evil-doer?

Further muddying the waters is the difficulty of figuring out whether something is good or bad. An Israeli company has produced a kosher cell phone. That's right, kosher. It's a cell phone that only makes calls. No web, no games, no text messaging, no video, no camera. They consider all the of those extras to be evil because they make it easier to do or access evil things. But many people really like those features and don't do things with them that they think are bad. So are these features good or bad?

Which got me to thinking about the causality side of these features: if one goes blind wanking off to porn viewed on a cell phone display, was it the wanking off or the eye-strain which caused the blindness?

Shitty Venue

2006-04-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

The wife and I went to the Meyerson this past Sunday for a concert. As usual, it was freezing in there. Uncharacteristically, my wife forgot to bring a jacket. So at intermission, while I was buying some refreshments, she bolted for the outdoors.

When I got outside she was returning, all hunched over and warning others to stay out from under the trees.

You see, the smokers also go outside and she was trying to get past them to fresher air. That took her under a canopy of trees full of grackles fresh from the fields. The grackles were settling down for the night and performing their pre-bedtime constitutionals. She got hit twice: once on the head and once on the shoulder (a black blouse).

01:02:03 04/05/06

2006-04-05T10:03:00.000-05:00

By now you've all seen the news that shortly after 1 o'clock this morning the time and date could be written as 01:02:03 04/05/06.

I saw one email that said that it would never happen again.

Oh, yeah?

What about this afternoon? I don't use a 24-hour clock, so 01:02:03 will occur in the p.m. as well

What about next month? Most of the world writes the date in the form day/month/year, so for them the 4th of May will be written as 04/05/06

What about every hundred years? The 04/05/06 example is omitting the century designation — is that going to change in 2100?

As for me, I think I'll just party like it's 1999.

Taxes Away!

2006-03-29T14:44:00.000-06:00

Last year we filed an extension and struggled to file before the extended deadline. This year was better and we mailed it off yesterday.

Yes, mailed.

It seems that if you are too charitable you can't file electronically. Specifically, if you need more than two copies of form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contribution, then you must mail in your taxes forms.

The problem is that each time you give things away, whether it's gifts for the "Angel Tree" at XMAS time, or canned goods to the food bank, or used clothing and household goods to the many organizations that leave plastic bags on your door, you get a receipt and take up one line of form 8283. And each form 8283 can only record five (5) such donations. We went to four forms 8283 this year.

Next year we will give things away in fewer chunks.

Slip Slidin' Away

2006-03-26T17:37:00.000-06:00

Got some new bowling shoes this weekend. I'm gonna try 'em out on Monday in league play.

My old shoes were getting really old. The leather uppers looked like the bottom of a dry lake bed and the leather sliding surface wasn't always sliding. Last Monday, in particular, was very tough. I couldn't get a decent slide through the whole first game and it was throwing me off balance and putting extra stress on my back. After the first game I bought some "Ultra Glide" at the pro shop and that helped a lot, but the damage was done. It took me most of the second game to recover, which is my excuse for another poor game.

Anyway, the old shoes were starting to make noise when I walked, they looked terrible, and the sliding surface was very worn. I don't know how old they are, but I think they're at least 8 years old. So I guess spending $25 on new ones isn't too extravagant.

EBay Through 6-Year Old Eyes

2006-03-07T13:59:00.000-06:00

I returned from bowling last night to the news that my 6-year old son, 2 of 2, had fallen in love with an item on EBay. So in love, to be specific, that he was willing to spend his own money on it.

How do you explain EBay to a 6-year old? In the past, purchases have been governed by how much money you have and by priorities. For example, I have $10, would I rather have this crap or that crap?

From time to time we also have to deal with limited product availability. But that is, at least, a fairly discreet issue: it's in stock or it's not. If it's in stock you get it at the advertised price. If not, you don't get it.

But with EBay we introduce competition. It's in stock, but two or more people want it. How much is it? Wrong question. How much are you willing to pay?

Last night the object of desire was $19.01 and the auction was set to end at 8:17 this morning. This morning the new high bid was $22.50. He still wanted it, even at the higher price. So we bid $23 only to discover that the previous high bidder had an even higher maximum price.

Aside #Going once, twice, SOLD: A few years ago you had to manually bid up the price. But now it is automatic. You can still do it manually, or you can enter your the max you're willing to pay and let the system automatically increase your bid in response to competing bids.

We played the manual bid process a couple of times until the new high bid was $25. 2 of 2 still wanted the item and decided that $30 was the most he could afford (plus $8 shipping was all he had in his piggy bank). So we entered a bid at $30.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have the high bid at $27.00

So now we were on pins and needles for the remaining 9 minutes and 30 seconds of the auction. Would anyone else bid? Would the person we so recently beat enter a new maximum bid amount?

We must have refreshed that screen a dozen times in those few minutes. But as with all things, it came to an end. And in the end we had "won" the auction.

I hope we haven't unleashed a monster.

W was right?

2006-03-03T12:00:00.000-06:00

Following the release of video of the Presidential briefing the day before Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast, one can make the case that Bush was correct when he made his famous statement, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."

The video shows that Brownie had a solid understanding of the situation and expressed his concerns to the President. You get the distinct sense that Brownie understood that there were neither all the right types nor all the right amounts of resources in place to handle highly likely events. I imagine that, had he had the authority, he would have directed a much different response.

So Brownie was doing the best job that could be done given his authority. Maybe we were too quick to denigrate his prior experience as head of the Doogie Howser Fan Club, or whatever it was. And maybe his current gig doing disaster planning consulting isn't the farce that we've been lead to believe.

Doctor's Notes

2006-02-27T11:39:00.000-06:00

2 of 2 has been sick a lot this year. He is in kindergarten in public school and has missed so many days (15) that we, his parents or guardians, were called in for a meeting this morning.

I was expecting the principal, his teacher, and maybe the attendance czar from the school district. Instead, we faced the principal, all five kindergarten teachers, two student teachers, and the school counselor. The room was pretty crowded! But there was no attendance czar.

The optimist in me says that these kinds of meetings are necessary because some parents treat school as optional, allowing their kids to skip school for all manner of reasons. Or maybe the parents don't realize that their kids aren't going to school. So these meetings may be educational for the parents (e.g. whose kids are skipping without their knowledge) or necessary to keep the kids from falling behind academically, eventually dropping out and facing a life of one dead end job after another until they end up in prison.

The pessimist in me says that since public school funding is tied to attendance, the schools are cracking down because it hits their bottom line. They're only in it for the money.

The realist in me says that it is a combination of the two. Like it or not, money is needed to keep the school operating and excessive absences impact the schools' ability to perform their job for the other kids — the ones who do come. And for most kids, and most grades, attendance is critical to success.

But 2 of 2 is not most kids and kindergarten is not most grades. The primary goals of kindergarten are to get kids ready for first grade by making sure they can count, know their letters, and are at "pre-reading" level (whatever that is). 2 of 2 could count to 100 before school started, and can do basic arithmetic already. He is reading at nearly the 2nd grade level now and was recommended by his teacher for PACE (the school district's gifted program), to which he was accepted.

So academically, 2 of 2 is not just doing well, he's doing great.

And he really has been sick a lot this year. What am I supposed to do? Send him to school when he's sick so he can get other kids sick? Doesn't that turn 1 absence into many? Wouldn't that cost the district more money?

Well, it turns out that we learned something. There is a magic thing called a "doctor's note" which seems to mollify the school about absences. We've been sending our kids to this school for nearly 4 years (1 of 2 is in 3rd grade now) and have never heard of doctor's notes. The pediatrician has never offered us one. The teachers have never asked for one. We send in the required note explaining each absence when the child returns and it has always been good enough.

Of course, there is still the issue of illness which doesn't result in a doctor's visit. A large number of doctor's visits end with the doctor saying that it's a viral thing and it will just have to run its course. So we don't take our kids to the doctor unless they have certain symptoms or don't seem to be able to shake it off.

But we'll get the doctor to go back through their files and fax a summary to the school of how many times they saw 2 of 2, and that should get the district off our back. And we'll ask for notes from now on. And maybe we'll enrich the doctor a bit more, just so that we'll have a note.

It's all a big game and you have to know the rules to succeed (or not fail). The problem is finding out the rules.

Olympic Ratings

2006-02-17T14:29:00.000-06:00

The NBC brain-trust is probably wondering why TV ratings for the winter Olympics are so low. They'll probably blame Merkin Idol and peer-to-peer networks and global warming — the usual suspects. But I think it is bone-headed programming.

I'm not watching the winter Olympics because all I get on broadcast are highlights. Guess what, I got those several hours earlier on the internet. Why should I watch them again?

What would get me to tune in would be more varied coverage of the entire Olympic Games, or at least detailed coverage of the most popular sports.

So if they want to show figure skating, show us all of it. Yes, I'd like to see the skater from Equatorial Guinea. Merkins like to see crashes (Nascar ratings are pretty good aren't they?). And if you can't do that, how about getting up close and personal with the athletes you do feature? You know what I'm talking about: I'd like a little spice added to the coverage to keep it interesting. They can start by stopping that idiotic practice of changing the camera angle every time a figure skater is skating backwards toward the camera. You know what I'm talking about.

Then again, since I don't have paid TV I may be missing interesting coverage that is already there. But somehow I suspect that what you're really getting on cable's Olympic coverage is more idiotic banter between Katie and Jim and fawning interviews with Merkin athletes asking the same tired questions that fawning reporters have always asked. Yawn. I'm gonna switch back to FOX — I hear they're going to show a selection of the worst tryouts for Merkin Idol!

Windows is better?

2006-02-14T11:25:00.000-06:00

One area that Linux geeks usually have to concede superiority to Windows is the handling of multimedia. Many of the codecs are closed source and some are unavailable to Linux users.

I recently got an old, used notebook which had a DVD player and decided to try to get it to play DVDs. It had been loaded with WinME and had the DVD software bundled with it. But everyone I talk to says that WinME is a poor OS and so I decided to install WinXP.

After several trips to the Windows Update site and many reboots (why, oh why, can't they just download all the updates I need in one swell foop and install them just once?) I confirmed that WinXP cannot play DVDs. The rescue disks for WinME were constructed in such a way that I could not install the DVD player software from them without reloading WinME. Full blown DVD player software costs about $50, but an article (at Microsoft, no less), claimed that I could buy the codecs unbundled for about $15 and use them with Windows Media Player. The software companies actually did this and were happy to take my $15.

I installed the codec as described and now Windows Media Player was able to recognize the DVD in the drive (telling me the title, etc.). But it couldn't play it. Every time I tried I got a message about an error and having to close ... so sorry. Internet searches for a solution (including the codec vendor's support page) proved futile, as did removing and reinstalling the software, downgrading Windows Media Player, reupgrading, rebooting -- all in various combinations.

Then, I decided to try RealPlayer. It hadn't worked before I bought the codec, but it was worth a shot now that I had a codec. It worked!

So I happily took my new old laptop on a business trip. But when I tried to play my DVD it didn't work. Same error as Windows Media Player was giving. WMP didn't work either. So I rebooted into Linux and decided to give it a try, not expecting success, but it doesn't hurt to try. Guess what? Linux (totem) played it just fine.

Scratch one more thing off the list for why I need to load Windows on my machines.

Assume The Position!

2006-02-13T12:07:00.000-06:00

"When the flight attendant yells "brace", assume the crash position."

I'm not sure how many times that message came over the loud speaker, but the pilot must have finally told them to stop it because we never got the order.

I was flying into DFW airport on United flight 702 early Friday afternoon (February 10) when the pilot came on the intercom to explain why we were flying in circles rather than landing: our flaps wouldn't go down. This isn't exactly an emergency, and the pilot sounded quite calm and unconcerned. The flaps, when deployed, generate additional lift (and drag). The extra lift is useful when landing because it means that you can fly slower, requiring less braking and/or a shorter amount of runway.

So without flaps we were going to be going a bit faster at touchdown — 170 knots instead of 140. The biggest risk, according to the pilot, was that the brakes would overheat and catch on fire. In that case there was a small chance that we would need to evacuate the plane and so the flight attendants were going to be reviewing emergency exit procedures. In the meantime, we were circling to burn off excess fuel to lighten the load. Less weight means that you need less lift which means that you can, again, land at a lower speed.

Then the flight attendants took over and the tone of voice couldn't have been more different. They sounded TERRIFIED!

Aside #2500°F: Jet Blue was recently in the news with landing gear problems. Afterwards the passengers noted how good the flight attendants were in keeping them calm. I guess that's the difference between a top tier airline and a cut-rate one.

Aside #200USD: Another difference between the top tier airlines and the cut rate ones is that the cut rate airlines have a TV in the back of each seat so that you can watch your own (potential) disaster as it unfolds. Not that our situation rated national coverage. (And we didn't have TVs.)

We were told to take off our glasses and put them into the pouch in the seatback in front of us, along with any pens or other objects in shirt or jacket pockets. We were also instructed in the proper crash position and the flight attendants went row by row asking us to demonstrate the position and to ensure compliance with the instructions regarding glasses and such. They also reviewed exit door locations (row by row) and recruited helpers for the evacuation.

Then, of course, were the periodic and frantic sounding announcements to go into our crash positions when the flight attendants yelled "BRACE!" This all went on for between 20 and 30 minutes.

When the rubber hit the road, so to speak, it didn't seem to me like we were going particularly fast, though the braking seemed slightly lighter than normal. I suppose they were trying to avoid overheating the brakes. It was also one of the smoother landings I've experienced. The pilot did a good job.

We stopped at the end of the runway (or maybe we turned just off it) so that our brakes could be inspected by the airport fire fighters. They then followed us all the way to the terminal. Perhaps there was a chance that the brakes could still burst into flames with the additional strain of braking during taxiing and parking at the gate. To my knowledge, there was no fire.

And, thankfully, we never got the order to BRACE or to evacuate the plane.

Hilton On The Way Down

2006-02-08T20:22:00.000-06:00

In the case of Paris, going down is nothing new. I guess it isn't for the hotel chain, either. Hilton used to be the standard for a really nice hotel in most of America. Several years ago Hilton's reputation started to decline, but they've been clawing their way back, or so I thought, more recently.

Well, it doesn't seem to have caught up to the one in Fremont, CA.

What sets one hotel apart from another is usually the small things. And this is really where this particular Hilton fails.

For example, when I inquired at the desk about internet access, they had to write the authentication directions manually. And they weren't unique to me (unless newark/newark just happened to be the login/password generated for me).

They also didn't have a local street map. Neither at the front desk nor at the bellman's stand. And neither the front desk worker nor the bellman spoke English as their native language and both had enough of an accent that they were hard to understand when they tried to give me directions verbally. And this at a hotel that caters to business travelers?

In the room there was a switch to turn on a light right at the front door, but the hallway from the front door to the main part of the room was long enough that it was hard to see around the room. And there wasn't another switch anywhere to turn on lights in the main room.

Similarly, there was no light for an area that included the closet and some odd shelf (which also had no plugs and was about 40" high and had no storage underneath it).

Nothing major. But not what I would have expected from a Hilton. I won't be back.

Airport Toilets

2006-02-08T19:52:00.000-06:00

If you had asked me when I first got started in this thing (the blogosphere — a term I loath) what I would and would not write about, public toilets wouldn't have made either list because they are generally quite far from my general consciousness. Oh, I notice aspects of them from time to time, but almost always because they are either exceptionally grotesque or because they are exceptionally opulent (which, I suppose, is a form of grotesqueness in its own right).

Rarely, however, do I notice a new "why hasn't anyone ever thought of that before" kind of feature. But this week I came across what I consider to be one of those features and instantly knew I would be writing about it.

It is a ledge behind the toilet (or urinal) in a public bathroom. Why is this interesting? Because I need some place to put my umbrella / briefcase / drink / crack pipe — whatever I am carrying when I need to use the facilities.

I don't want to leave things on a "community" ledge like I find in some public restrooms. And why are those community ledges always near the door? Did the restroom thief lobby pay off the owner to make it easier to make their getaway? Or are they really poorly labeled baby changing stations?

Neither do I want to place things on the floor in the stall or even on the floor next to me when using a urinal. Both places are disgustingly filthy and anywhere beside or behind me at a urinal leaves my things rather exposed, so to speak. :-)

Aside #1: There's a topic for Dilbert™ or a TV comedy: a businessman is doing his business at the urinal with his computer bag on the floor beside him. A thief grabs the bag and runs, quickly followed by the businessman who fears the exposure of the data on his computer but forgets the other things which are now exposed.

Aside #2: Did you notice that the numbers on these tangential comments are not merely enumerative, but also punny in the bathroom context?

The solution is to have a ledge / shelf on the wall behind the toilet or urinal. In the toilet stall case the ledge should be relatively clean because it is (one hopes) safe from toilet overflows. It is also safe from people reaching under or over the door (to grab things from the floor or hook).

In the case of a ledge / shelf behind (over?) the urinal, again we are safe from overflow (and splash), and it will be harder for someone to reach over my shoulder to grab my things, thereby making them safer from theft.

I saw the toilet stall ledges in a restroom in the San Jose airport this week. They didn't have the urinal ledges. But I hope that both of these features become popular.

Science Fair

2006-01-31T13:34:00.000-06:00

It's all over but the crying. Science Fair projects were due this morning and we got them completed by bed-time last night.

1 of 2, like all third graders, was required to do a science project this year. Entering it into the Science Fair was optional, but since the requirements were the same I cannot imagine anyone not doing it.

1 of 2 chose to work with a friend (F of 1 of 2) on a project. They each had their own log book and report, but collaborated on a display (project board). 2 of 2 worked solo.

I knew that getting 1 of 2 and F of 1 of 2 together to work on their project was going to be like herding cats, so we started early. And it's a good thing we did because F of 1 of 2, unlike 1 of 2, is not a free-range child. His schedule is very full and our work time was always restricted by another activity. Science does not like to be rushed and restricted. Then again, the attention span of your average third grader isn't conducive to much science, either. The optimist in me will say that the lessons learned from the failed experiments are as valuable as those learned from the successful ones. The pessimist in me says that the paperwork requirements of these projects seem designed to snuff out any interest the students may have in science. Perhaps it is part of a plot by supporters of intelligent design?

2 of 2 was more enthusiastic. Perhaps it was because doing the science project was optional in kindergarten. But he, too, had his periods of waning interest. 2 of 2's project was also delayed while 1 of 2 and F of 1 of 2 were in the "lab" and again by a series of illnesses. As a result we were a bit rushed for time in that we couldn't take any days off in the last week. And mom had to help with the last bit of the project board when I had to go to my bowling league. But it got done.

The next problem is that they are both convinced that they are going to win first place and go on to district! I hope they won't be too crushed when the Asian kid with the overbearing parent or the white kid whose dad did 90% of the experiment and 100% of the display ends up winning.

Ahh, The Simple Life

2006-01-19T08:38:00.000-06:00

No, not that wretched show featuring two spoiled rotten brats. I'm referring to my newly simplified telephone wiring, now that aDSL service has finally been turned off.

In early December I subscribed to Verizon's FiOS service and have blogged about it several times. Last week I blogged about the termination of my Earthlink DSL account. But even though my Earthlink account was dead, the carrier, for lack of a better term, was still active on my phone line. I know this because the DSL modem still had green lights for the "modem" and "data" indicators.

The reason this is important is that my DSL installation used in-line filters on all of my telephones. You see, DSL shares the same copper wire that provides your phone service, but uses frequencies that are not normally used by voice communications. In order for these two services to co-exist on the same wire you have to plug each telephone into a special dohickey and plug that dohickey into the wall. I'm not exactly sure what would happen if you didn't use the dohickey, but I've never been willing to risk the ire of my wife should the worst happen and my phone got fried. After all, I do have to sleep and we have sharp knives in the house.

Anywho, in my office I have two phone lines (line 2 has the DSL on it) connected in various combinations to 4 devices: a single line phone, a two-line phone, a fax machine, and the DSL modem. The tangle of splitters (and joiners), pair switches, and filter is rather scary.

Today, 7 days after Earthlink stopped accepting my username and password, the modem and data lights have gone dark. With any luck this means that the DSL service has been completely disconnected and I can remove the filters and tangle of wires, replacing them with a single two-line splitter.

I'm so happy! It's the simple things in life that give us the most joy. <sniff>

Next Blog

2006-01-18T12:07:00.000-06:00

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. From time to time the subject of blogs comes up in conversation and 98.37 percent of the people don't know what a blog is (43.78% have never heard the term).

Aside #rand(): 95% of all stated percentages in all published studies are lower than 82%, which is the number of statistics that are completely made up. This makes the 98.37% number stated above a relatively rare result and, therefore, highly significant.

After learning what a blog is, most people wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to write one and what sort of person they (bloggers) might be?

Aside #2: Very few people consider me to be in my right mind.

The first assumption is that bloggers must be very self-centered. This assumption is supported by a general impression that everyone is more concerned about getting their 15 minutes of fame than in doing anything worthwhile. Even fame for doing something stupid or badly seems to be okay. If it weren't, where do reality shows, small claims court shows, and Jerry Springer find people?

Another data point supporting the self-centered conclusion can be found right here on blogger by clicking on the "Next Blog" button at the top of this post. How many blogs can you find this way? Not very many before you find someone who has sent the blogger header into oblivion with custom CSS. Why do people do this? It seems to me to be an attention grabbing technique. "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! NO! DON'T GO! STAY HERE AND READ MY BLOG!

I'm disappointed when someone doesn't have the "Next Blog" button. I sometimes like to click it to see what is out there. Occasionally (though not often) you can find something interesting. But my stroll down the blogging avenue rarely goes more than a half dozen clicks before I am tripped up by someone who has dug up the sidewalk.

Like I said, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

No Spam (Yet)

2006-01-12T09:29:00.000-06:00

I've had my new internet connection, with its new email address, for a month now and have yet to receive a single piece of spam. Heck, the only email that account has received at all were a couple of test messages I sent on the first day.

To what do I owe this tremendous success? Well, for starters I haven't sent anyone email with the account in question (and no, I won't divulge the address here).

I did, in a moment of temporary insanity, use the email address when creating an account at an e-tailer. I was at a kiosk in the B&M instantiation of the business and wanted to buy something. This particular merchant is almost a pure play internet business, but does allow locals to walk in and buy things without having them shipped. The trick is that you still buy from the internet (hence the kiosks). Anyway, their shopping cart requires that you have an account and login to buy anything. I use unique passwords with all of my accounts and record them on yellow sticky notes on the underside of my keyboard. But since I wasn't home I couldn't look under my keyboard, so I was sort of stuck. So I created the new account.

That was less than a week ago, and I suppose it will take a while before the virus grows enough to be detected. But for now I am still blissfully free of symptoms and so I will continue to live my life as always.

As a point of comparison, I had an account with Earthlink for about four years and never used that account for any e-commerce, memberships, sweepstakes, bulletin boards, etc. But it got spam regularly. I don't recall how long it took for it to start getting spam, though.

It is known that spammers try random user names with known domain names, hoping for a hit. So it's a really bad idea to register a user name like "smith". I suppose that's how they hit on my earthlink address. Oddly, many people add supposedly random numbers to the end of their user names in the hopes that this will ward off the spammers. But if the spammers can send a million messages at no cost, what's to stop them from sending to every possible variation of "smitty1053280@aol.com"?

Another thing, we know that spam email written in HTML has a couple of tricks to verify your address, like including a graphic with a link of the form

<img src="http://spam.com/dot.gif?joey104338@hotmail.com">

That's why I use POP and an email program that doesn't display HTML (unless I want it to). But lots of people just love webmail and the providers seem blissfully unconcerned that they are exposing their users to more spam by not giving them the option to render messages in plain text. Maybe they get more users by touting their anti-spam features, and that is only effective if the users get lots of spam unless they turn on the anti-spam feature.

So Long

2006-01-11T16:49:00.000-06:00

"So long, and thanks for all the fish."
                  -- the dolphins
                  in "The Hitchhiker's
                  Guide to the Galaxy"
                  by Douglas Adams

Today marks the end of my relationship with Earth(link), so the good-bye of the dolphins as they depart the Earth in Douglas Adams' semi-autobiographical novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, seems appropriate.

I think our parting is amicable. I know it is for my part. During our four years together I got nothing but excellent internet service from Earthlink. It was rock solid and consistently performed at the top of the marketed "up to" speeds.

My only complaint with Earthlink was that they never reduced the price of their service as other competitors lowered theirs. I guess they simply assumed that the cost of switching was more than most people could tolerate. I suppose they were right, to a point.

The point, for me, was the introduction by Verizon of a service called FiOS.

Aside #5/2Mbps:Does market research show that products with non-standard capitalization are perceived as more technically sophisticated?

FiOS gives me about 7 times faster internet access than Earthlink DSL, and does it for 20% less money. The money alone is compelling. And the increase in speed is appreciated at least once a month — on Patch Tuesday.

Maybe Earthlink will win me back one day, just as Arthur Dent found himself back on Earth. But until then, do I have to keep the fishbowl?

Hook 'Em!

2006-01-10T14:02:00.000-06:00

Okay, the color of the "Rounders 2" header was a bit too Aggie-ish for this Longhorn's taste. So I've changed it. Or tried to.

Hook 'Em.

New Format

2006-01-10T13:46:00.000-06:00

It's a new year, and I'm tired of the look of my blog. So I decided to see what other canned formats they offered. I chose one called "Rounders 2". Don't know if I'll keep it.

Or maybe I'll customize it. Yeah, that's what I'll do; I'll rewire it!

Life After Vince

2006-01-05T10:42:00.000-06:00

As happy as I am about the National Championship, it didn't take long before the discussion turned to Vince Young's pro prospects.

Vince said after losing the Heisman Trophy that he would come back next year to win it. Reggie Bush could come back as well, but one has to wonder if he would beat Young in the voting again. Bush had a pretty solid game, to be sure, but Vince really stole the show. That will probably remain in the voters' minds next year.

But even if Mr. Young stays another year, the post-Vince era is drawing rapidly to a close. What comes next?

Vince Young is an incredible athlete, the kind you don't find in every recruiting class, or every decade. So who will pick up the slack when Vince moves on to (much) greener pastures? Of course we really can't know. We didn't know that Vince would turn out to be, well, Vince when he first came on the scene. True, he was a highly recruited and touted high school player, but those are a dime a dozen and rarely pan out.

The fear, of course, is that UT will regress to the old ways. You remember those, don't you? It was the norm only three years ago: Darkie up the middle; Darkie up the middle; Whitey pass; Whitey punt. Yes, that's not a very PC way of describing it, but it is accurate, perhaps in more way than one (i.e. that stereotypes fitting players to positions by race are slow to change, even in the face of prime counter examples).

Much has been made of a transformation on the part of Mack Brown, saying that he has learned to relax and have fun (and let his team have fun). They try to imply that that is why UT is winning now. Oddly, or maybe not, this transformation coincides exactly with Vince Young's ascension. So which was the cause and which the effect? Will Mack's new fun approach carry on when Vince has gone on? Will the team remain unpredictable — and successful?

It will be interesting to watch.

Oh Me of Little Faith!

2006-01-04T14:08:00.000-06:00

A few months ago I whined about Texas being ranked number 2 in the preseason football polls. I predicted that you'd be able to tell whether we really were #2 by the flushing sound. Gotta love scatological humor, eh?

Well, believe it or don't, we're still #2 in the polls and tonight we play top ranked U$C in the Rose Bowl! Don't go wavin' any feathers around or I might fall and hurt myself.

Along the way, we managed to not lose to Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, or Frankford Middle School (or whatever patsies we played before conference play began). We had some tough games, but every time we managed to avoid snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and that's something new for a Mack Brown team.

So I am cautiously optimistic that Texas will at least be respectable in tonight's game. Though I still have trouble believing that we'll actually win.

Two-Wheelin'

2006-01-04T13:54:00.000-06:00

Haven't had time to blog about it, but I really am thrilled that 2 of 2 threw off the shackles of training wheels last week started riding his bike the way God™, or at least Schwinn™, intended!

At 6½ years old, he was probably on the old side to have still been using training wheels, and his quick success without them tells me that he was definitely ready, from a balance and coordination point of view. So did we wait too long, or was this the right time? Is there any real value in falling over and over again while trying to learn to ride?

We did the same thing with 1 of 2, though he actually asked us to remove the training wheels. But they were both about the same age and both had similar immediate success.

So what was the technique? We took him to a local park where there was a short, moderate slope followed by a large flat area. He mounted the bike and put his feet on the pedals while I held the bike upright. I gave him a bit of a push and told him to steer and pedal, and he was off! Step 2 (of 2, of course), was to describe how to start from a standing position. It took a few tries, and is still the hardest part of riding, but he's on his way.

The only problem that has arisen due to 2 of 2's new mode of transport is that I spent a lot of time jogging beside him during those first several minutes. I'm not in the proper shape for that. My shins were killing me for several days afterwards.

So way to go, 2! Your triumph is now permanently recorded in the blogosphere.

New Year Resolutions (2006)

2006-01-02T11:57:00.000-06:00

Well it's that time of year, isn't it? A time to reflect on the year just completed and to look forward to the year just begun. And, of course, to make resolutions to do better this year that we did last.

But why? How many people do you know who make NYRs and actively work on them throughout the year? It's really just a waste of time and is often depressing, first because last year's failures are often the inspiration for this year's resolutions and then because you fail so early and give up all hope of succeeding.

Who needs that?

I have only kept one new year resolution, and that was several years ago when I resolved to not make any more.

XMAS Newsletter

2005-12-20T14:08:00.000-06:00

I count myself lucky to not have "friends" who send me bragging newsletters at Christmastime. My mom used to get them from some old neighbors. Moving didn't stop them — I guess my mom was too polite to refuse the request for their new address.

If you have never seen one then you have something else to be thankful for this year. These snoozeletters (I think they're boring) are a way to show how much better your family is than the poor schmucks who receive it.

"Bobby made the honor role ... Betty is the captain of her cheerleading squad ... John got promoted to Senior Executive Vice President ..."

If they're so smart, how come you can always find some gaff like the honor "role"?

Here's what I've been tempted to send out, but have never had the guts to:

We think Tommy is going to pass third grade this year — on only his 2nd try! ... Jennie is recovering nicely from the head lice. She's might even continue shaving her head; she thinks it looks good with her new piercings. ... Barb should get her license back next month, just in time for her release from prison (can you believe the judge gave her 6 months? It was only her third DUI!) ... The federal court ruled that those billboards with the pictures of people who hired hookers are unconstitutional and they've been taken down. It's about time, too; I was getting tired of people pointing and whispering as I walk by. On an unrelated note, I've been lesion free for 9 months now! ...

Hope you have a Merry Christmas, even if you don't celebrate Christmas.

(Yes, this is your card. Feel free to print it and put it on your mantle.)

'Tis the Season

2005-12-19T15:53:00.000-06:00

I just can't seem to help it. I'm a curmudgeon when it comes to Christmas.

It's not that I'm cheap. In fact, my tendency is to be anything but cheap. But I still find myself very short of patience and Christmas cheer and it only gets worse the closer we get to Christmas.

So what is it that makes me grumpy? I'm not sure. Part of it is probably that I'm an introvert and this is the time of year when there are a lot of demands to spend time socializing. Putting on a happy face and socializing is very tiring for me. My brother, 3 of 3 among my generation (I'm 2 of 3), seems to be the opposite from me in this regard. I think he gets energy from gatherings and he just doesn't understand me. But I digress.

Another thing that drives me nuts is the need to keep things equal. If you have kids you probably know of this requirement. It means that you have to give each child the same number of gifts. The price of those gifts also has to be equal, as does the WOW! factor.

Aside # $52.37:Did you ever notice that "WOW" upside down is "MOM"?

Also, if you do the purchasing for grandparents you have to make sure that the WOW and fun factors are balanced well between your and your SO's parents.

Of course, I understand all of these requirements very well and am not prepared to simply toss them out and let the (cow) chips fall where they may. Nevertheless, trying to get everything to balance is hard. It leaves me weary and short tempered.

Another thing that bugs me is decorating. My wife and I have — er — different ideas about how to decorate. But I guess I must consider myself lucky overall if, for no other reason than that she doesn't with to go whole hog with the outdoor decorations. I'll admit it, I'm a lazy bastard. Especially where it involves working in the yard. Those outdoor decorations are expensive to buy, expensive to run, hard to store, and a pain in the bum to put up and take down. What's not to love? If any of my neighbors says anything about my lack of outdoor decorations I may just have to buy a menorah and put it in the window.

I could go on, but what's the point? So I'll just close with Bah! Humbug!

Bye-Bye, Earthlink. It's been great.

2005-12-15T17:10:00.000-06:00

I have used Earthlink DSL for nearly four years, but today I cancelled the service. As mentioned in a previous post, Verizon has a sexy new service called FiOS. It was finally enough to tempt me to switch.

I got the cheapest and slowest FiOS internet service. Assuming that taxes and fees will be a wash, FiOS will cost me $10 less each month than I was paying with Earthlink. And now that I've done a few largish downloads I can report that FiOS is about 7 times faster than what Earthlink was able to deliver. Those are numbers I can't ignore.

But as I leave Earthlink I have to commend them for a solid service. In the four years I was with them I had very few outages. Like maybe one per year, with nothing lasting longer than a couple of hours. And the performance was consistent. There were no daily slowdowns when the kids got home from school. There were no seasonal slowdowns. Even the Victoria's Secret online fashion show didn't slow down my other internet use.

And, it must be noted, I came to Earthlink from ISDN, where I was paying about $1500 per month for 128 kilobits per second (both ways). So $50 per month for 768 kilobits down and 256 kilobits up was a real deal! FiOS is the next step. I wonder what the future will bring.

Big Ideas

2005-12-13T22:08:00.000-06:00

First off, yes, I'll admit that I'm a bit odd. Now, with that out of the way, let's get down to the topic of infinity, shall we?

Aside #sqrt(2)/2: I promised Gene-Bob that I would discuss the cardinality of the continuum the next day, but failed to follow up, citing a discontinuity in the continuum. Interestingly enough, it was a discontinuity in Fourier series that led Georg Cantor to the discovery that all infinities were not the same.

Aside #aleph_0 + 1: My family's fascination with infinity, or at least my and 2 of 2's fascination with infinity, probably began with Buzz Lightyear, who always departed with the phrase, "To infinity, and beyond!"

So, what is infinity? You might be tempted to say that it is the largest number. But couldn't I define a number as infinity plus 1, and wouldn't that be bigger than infinity? Well, yes and no. Mathematicians avoid these kinds of problems by dodging the issue and saying that infinity is more of a concept than a quantity. It's similar to how physicists say that light is sort of a particle and sort of a wave.

Aside #many: A very strange, but very beloved friend of mine at the Looniversity of Tex-Mex at Autism, is fond, after a few beers and a couple of slices of Milto's pizza, of saying that there are really only a few numbers that really matter. For example, 1 and 2. Anything more than a very small number can be represented as "many". I think he used to cite some ancient culture that had such a limited number system. "Many" was their infinity.

Aside #0: I can't recall if my friend had a concept of zero in his numbering system. Oh, by the way, he was the accountant for one of the departments at the University.

So back in the 70's (the 1870's), a curious fellow named Georg started looking into the concept of the continuum. An example of a continuum would be the points on a line. How many are there? Is it the same number as the number of cardinal numbers?

Curious Georg decided that there were more points in the continuum than there were counting numbers (i.e. cardinal numbers). In this off-Cantor world, there are orders, or levels, of infinity. The lowest order of infinity is called aleph null.

Aside #128: As they say at the First Brobdignagian Babatist Church of Suburbia when discussing the King James Version of the Bible, "if it was good enough for JEE-sus then it's good enough for me." I think a similar statement can be made for the ASCII character set and we should be immediately suspicious of someone who proposes the use of characters that aren't in ASCII.

Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And not only is it not found in ASCII, it isn't in the ISO 8859-1 character set either. So since I doubt that ℵ happens to produce a funny looking X on your screen, I'll just have to write aleph_0 and you should think "aleph null". Similarly, aleph_1 is "aleph one".

Now that we have notation nailed down, let's get back to infinity. Aleph_0 is defined as the number of counting numbers, or the number of elements in any countably infinite set. Counting numbers are a good example since it is fairly easy to construct the next in the sequence no matter where you are. So we can accept that, given infinite time we could count (list) all of the counting numbers. Don't you just love circular definitions? Okay, let's just say that you can list all of the counting numbers from zero on up, without missing any, for as long as you have the time. For example, you could list every last counting number from 1 to 1,000,000. With any luck, you now understand the concept of a set being countably infinite. The size of that set (its cardinality) is aleph_0.

The next issue is to figure out if a given infinite set is countable or not. We do this by trying to do a one-to-one mapping between the set of interest and the set of cardinals. For example, is the set of even numbers countably infinite? Well, yes it is because we can map the cardinal 1 to the even number 2, the cardinal 2 to the even number 4, and so on, for all possible even numbers. We'll never finish the job, but since we can define a one-to-one mapping that clearly won't miss any of the even numbers, and since we've already accepted that the cardinals are countably infinite, we have proven that the set of even numbers is also countably infinite. So both sets are the same size, and the size is aleph_0.

Stop! Back up. Did I just say that there are as many (positive) even numbers as there are cardinals? Yep. I did. Maybe now you're starting to understand why Curious Georg lost his mind and wound up in the looney bin.

Let's try another set: the real numbers between zero and one. Is it countably infinite? Let's make a list. Each number will be represented by an infinite set of digits, so 0.2 is written in our list as 0.20000000... (with an infinite number of 0's off to the right, so that we can distinguish it from 0.200000000...1). Here's a bit of my list (not in order):

1) 0.1000000000... 2) 0.1844765194... 3) 0.1368698456... 4) 0.1684413685... 5) 0.1277569545... 6) 0.9423655486... 7) 0.7526952756... 8) 0.3149712951... 9) 0.8211036501... 10) 0.3741098120...

Okay, I've listed every cotton-picken real number between 0 and 1! It took a while, but I did it! Now lets check to make sure that I didn't miss any. To do this I'm gonna make a new number and see if it's in my list. Like all of my numbers, my new number has an infinite number of digits in it. The first digit (to the right of the decimal) will be different from the first digit in the first entry on my list. The second digit will be different from the second digit of the second entry in the list. You following me? Let's look at my list and highlight the digits I'm looking at:

1) 0.1000000000... 2) 0.1844765194... 3) 0.1368698456... 4) 0.1684413685... 5) 0.1277569545... 6) 0.9423655486... 7) 0.7526952756... 8) 0.3149712951... 9) 0.8211036501... 10) 0.3741098120...

The red digits in my list are going to be used to create my new number using this formula: new digit = (old digit + 1) modulo 10. That's a fancy way of saying that I'll change a 0 into a 1, a 1 into a 2, a 2 into a 3, and so on, with a 9 becoming a 0. Here's the transform:

0.1864552900... becomes 0.2975663011...

Guess what? It isn't in my list. How do I know? Well, because it is different from the first number in my list in at least the first decimal place. And it is different from the second number in my list in at least the second decimal place. And it is different from the third number in my list in at least the third decimal place. And so on into infinity. So my list wasn't complete after all. I failed in producing that one-to-one mapping from the cardinals to the reals without missing any! And it can't be done!

Therefore, the set of reals (between 0 and 1, and by extension the set of all reals) is uncountably infinite. We define the number of elements in this uncountable set as aleph_1.

Later on, in a proof I haven't seen, Cantor proposes that aleph_1 = 2^aleph_0. I'll have to take his word for it.

FTP

2005-12-13T11:09:00.000-06:00

There are so many acronyms today that it's hard to keep up with them. But it gets even harder when new acronyms are also old ones. Case in point: FTP, which has stood for File Transfer Protocol (and File Transfer Program) for more than 20 years. I use ftp every week and in a previous life I was even part of a team that wrote an ftp program (in assembly language) for a CDC supercomputer.

A couple of years ago FTP gained another definition: Fiber To (the) Premises. It means that a fiber optic cable is connected to your house. Well, yesterday, fiber came to my premises in the form of a service called FiOS, from Verizon.

I had ordered the lowest priced FiOS internet service: $39.95 for 5 Megabits per second download and 2 Megabits per second upload. This is $10 cheaper than my current ISP and at least 3 times the marketing speed. When you order FiOS internet service they also move your (main) telephone line to the fiber. In January they will start offering TV over FiOS.

The install went pretty well, though it takes a long time. Since fiber optic cable cannot transmit electricity, and since ethernet and telephones both require electricity, there has to be a big box that converts the light signals from the fiber into electrical signals on the copper that runs through the house. And that box needs a battery backup if you want your phone to continue working during a power outage. Of course, who has a non-powered (i.e. not a cordless) phone anymore? Well, besides me.

Then, too, there was the small fact that easternet cable isn't quite the same thing as telephone wahr. I had DSL, which came over the telephone wire. I didn't have ethernet cable from the exterior telephone CPE to my router. So they had to install that as well by drilling yet another hole through the exterior of my house.

When it was all done I got to setup a new username and password for my internet stuff and we verified that it really did work. Now I just have to recable the office (the router is in a different place) and make it all look nice.

Then my wife asked, "Why doesn't the phone work?"

Sigh. I forgot to test that before the installer left. I did some tests and called Verizon. They had me do the same tests, then said they'd get the installer back out. Well, he had been gone over an hour and it was well past normal quittin' time, so I had to wait until the morning to get my telephone working. Turns out that the computer which was responsible for switching my phone from the copper lines to the fiber had gotten stuck mid-way and there was a "hold" on my line. They cleared that and now everything is working as it should.

Of course, the big question is whether it is faster or not. The answer is that it depends. There are a lot of things you do on the internet which are limited by things other than your network speed. For example, when you point your browser to some site you've never visited before (or more than an hour ago) then your computer uses DNS to look up the internet address for that web site. The DNS protocol has built in delays (of up to a minute) to give the servers time to answer before throwing up an error screen. Then the HTTP protocol does a lot of chatting back and forth with lots of little delays. Finally you get your content, and unless that is big you probably won't notice any significant speed difference. Then again, there are plenty of servers on the net which are incapable of giving you what you asked for at your internet connection's speed. They were slow with DSL and are no faster with FiOS.

When all is said and done, I do expect to see some important speed increases for the stuff I do over the internet. I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with that extra $10 each month!

I See Dead People

2005-12-07T15:29:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, my wife and I took our children to their first funeral, for Great Grand Aunt Margaret. The kids had met Aunt Margaret about two years ago when we all went down to celebrate her 90th birthday, and we thought that her funeral was a good opportunity to introduce and discuss a wide variety of topics, both practical and religious. Because they had met Margaret and had heard about her from time to time there was a connection. But they weren't so close to her as to be overcome with grief, and therefore be unable to absorb any of the other lessons.

Aside #10: It appears that death takes 10 years off your life! Margaret, who was born in 1913, was listed as 82 years old in the obituary which was published in the local paper.

The first new experience of the day was the viewing. Neither boy had ever seen a dead person up close before. Of course, an embalmed body in a funeral home viewing is quite a bit different from some of the other options. I prepared them by saying that it would look like she was sleeping — except that she wouldn't be drooling. :-)

The second lesson, which really wasn't expected, was to see how people used to deal with funeral processions (and apparently still do in small towns). As we followed the hearse to the cemetery we were preceded by a police car and ignored stop signs and traffic lights (we passed through two of the town's three lights). Other traffic on the street (i.e. going the opposite direction) even stopped and waited until we were all past! In Dallas people get upset when the traffic lights switch to allow a fire truck to zoom by on the way to an emergency! (Heck, any red light makes the majority of big city drivers furious.)

Then, of course there were lots of little things to observe, and I won't bore you further with their details. It was a good experience and there were many good little discussions. I'm glad that my children were able to experience death in such a low stress way and to see how a family handles it.

Now if I can only get them stop running with scissors ...

Global Warming?!? Balderdash!

2005-12-05T12:38:00.000-06:00

Harrumph! Global warming my a**! Woke up this morning to find the temperature below freezing. In Texas! And yet, my kids still had to go to school!

Aside #9/5+32: Here in Texas we put on Parkas when the temperature goes below 32 degrees Celcius!

I, for one, am not going to sit still for this! I'm gonna write to my erected representatives and demand that they do something about it!

And it's not just in Texas. Oh, no, there's an ice-age coming to Europe on account of a failure of the Gulf Stream. I read it on the internet, so it must be true. How can you have an ICE AGE if there's GLOBAL WARMING? Why would the polar ice caps melt if it's so cold that France will have permafrost?

I think this cold weather is just another plot by libberralls to turn Texas into a BLUE state! They must think that if our lips and fingers are blue then we'll vote for Hillary.

Well, it ain't gonna work! We're gonna vote for George Bush in 2008! P, that is. Next in line for the throne. Just you wait.

Done! (Well, almost)

2005-11-22T10:55:00.000-06:00

My wife and I went shopping this past weekend, hoping to make a serious dent in our lists, thereby reducing our stress in the weeks leading up to Festivus. Judging by the traffic, we weren't the only ones.

The most amazing thing is that we are 1 gift away from being done! And we should be able to bag that today!

Slightly less amazing, but amazing nonetheless, is that only one of our purchases was on the internet. We made a determined effort to buy locally, and especially in our city. We weren't, however, willing to pay significantly higher prices just to support our local merchants and fill the city coffers. And we didn't have to! Prices locally were very close to internet prices, often identical and sometimes even less (and, yes, sometimes slightly more). Additionally, I think sales tax and shipping would have been about the same, overall.

Aside #8.25%: I continue to be amazed that small merchants haven't setup kiosks in their stores to allow them to special order from a wider stock, taking advantage of the same middlemen that allow internet sites to carry a wide selection with no actual warehouse. Instead they carry a small selection and sigh at lost sales when people ask for an item they don't stock, even though they carry other items by the same manufacturer! And then they blame Wal-Mart for driving them out of business!

Oh, and I'm proud to say that none of my purchases came from Wal-Mart. The pink-slip that comes a week later as a result of my choice of merchants may be my own.

Great American Smoke-Out

2005-11-17T10:26:00.000-06:00

Today is the Great American Smoke-Out. I'm not sure why it's so late in the year. The weather-guesser on the local news said that the average date of the first freeze of the fall/winter is November 17 (in Dallas). Sure enough, we had our first freeze of the season this morning.

But the GASO is a national event and other areas probably get their first cooler weather before this. So why do they hold the annual turn-on-the-furnace-to-burn-off-the-dust-and-set-off-the-smoke-alarm (sending everyone in the house scurrying outside) event so late? I ran my furnace a couple of weeks ago when the weather was nice and we could have the windows open (and the kids were playing outside already).

But I'm a good, patriotic Merkin, so I turned on the gas fireplace as a substitute. Didn't do much. Probably because the glass doors keep out most of the dust. The smoke alarms didn't even go off. And judging from the lack of people fleeing their houses to get away from shrieking smoke alarms, no one else waited this long either.

Sync Schmink

2005-11-07T08:13:00.000-06:00

In a previous life I was a FORTRAN jock. Yes, it's supposed to be spelled in all capital letters.

Round about the mid '80's the big deal in the number crunching world was the so-called device independent graphics library. This meant that you could display your graph on a graphics terminal, work out all the kinks, and then re-run your program to print on a pen plotter, all without having to re-write, let alone re-compile, your program.

My boss at the time (who was Bard from everywhere he'd ever been) never passed up the opportunity to ask about the blackboard driver, pointing out that until these libraries could display on a blackboard they weren't truly device independent.

The blackboard driver popped onto my stack — er — popped into my brain — this morning as I entered an appointment on the calendar hanging in the kitchen. It was my third entry of this appointment in as many devices.

I am stuck in this duplicate entry purgatory because of the twin sins of being in a mixed marriage (my wife is not a geek) and of not running a Microsoft™ operating system on my computer. Well, and my employer doesn't use Exchange™.

So I write things down on the wall calendar, and in my PDA, and finally in my corporate calendar. Scheduling the dentist is almost as unpleasant as going to the dentist. By the way, it's on Monday, the 21st.

Cargo Cults

2005-11-03T14:47:00.000-06:00

Some South Pacific Islanders (e.g. in Papua New Guinea) believe that western goods (called "cargo") are produced by ancestral gods. They build airstrips in the jungles to entice the gods to send them airplanes full of cargo. These religious groups are known as "cargo cults". Several members were arrested recently, which is how I heard about them.

This makes me wonder. Do the cargo cults consider the cargo planes to be religious artifacts? Are the pilot and crew considered gods, or angels, or priests, or ... ?

And what about the cargo itself? Is it considered sacred or special in some way because it came from the gods, or is it just stuff that the gods give to the people in fulfillment of some sort of provider role?

Further, is it possible to infer anything about the gods' state of mind from the contents of the cargo? For example, if the cargo is food does that mean the gods are happy with the people, but a shipment of schoolbooks means they're angry? (Schoolbooks could be like extra homework assigned by an angry teacher.) Or is any cargo a sign of the gods' pleasure and its absence an indicator of displeasure?

Similarly, does the contents of the cargo signal the desires of the gods? Or an omen? How do you tell the difference? I mean, what does a shipment of guns mean? Is it a gift to help the people hunt for food? Weapons to help defend themselves from an imminent attack? Weapons to help them get revenge on a neighboring village? Or a suggestion to kill themselves? Or would that be a shipment of Cool-Aid™? :-)

Gotta go, I think I hear a plane coming.

I'm Gonna Miss Her

2005-11-02T15:10:00.000-06:00

If you are a registered voter and have a telephone (POTS) in Texas then you've probably gotten a call from one or more parties interested in your vote on Proposition 2 on November 8.

Article I, Texas Constitution, (The Bill of Rights) is amended by adding Section 32 to read as follows:

(a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.

(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

Proponents of this amendment say that it defends marriage by preventing homosexuals from getting married. Putting aside the fact that Texas law already prohibits marriage between members of the same sex, I'm not sure how, exactly, my marriage is threatened by a couple getting married, no matter what their gender, race, religion, national origin, etc.

Opposing Proposition 2 we have many groups, including one called, interestingly enough, Save Texas Marriage, which makes an interesting observation: clause (a) of the proposition defines marriage, and clause (b) outlaws it.

In other words, Proposition 2 completely abolishes the institution of marriage! It is expected to pass by wide margins.

I'm gonna miss her.

Still Here

2005-11-01T22:03:00.000-06:00

Haven't posted in a while. Nothin' to say, really. Not that what I normally write about is significant.

Family was sick last week. Mom and 2 of 2 had strep throat and are on antibiotics. 1 of 2 and I are feeling kind of down, but not quite sick.

We made it through Halloween. Rain stopped in time to go out and shake down the neighbors for candy. Didn't seem like as many folks decorated this year. Back at home I used the 5-foot tall inflatable T-Rex to answer the door (ROAR!) — didn't scare anyone. :-( And hardly anyone came by to get candy.

Unrelated, Texas continues to surprise me by remaining undefeated. Will be rooting for Miami this weekend.

I Smell A Wumpus!

2005-10-25T20:43:00.000-05:00

My new computer is getting close to fully configured now. So I'm starting to see the effect of the extra 1000 marketing megahertz. What, you're not familiar with marketing megahertz? Well, they're closely related to MIPS, which used to be a common way to measure the speed of a processor. MIPS used to stand for Millions of Instructions Per Second, but then got redefined as Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed. After MIPS died people seemed to become enamored of megahertz and then gigahertz, largely thanks to the efforts of Intel.

Unfortunately for consumers, megahertz (MHz) and gigahertz (GHz) are no more useful than MIPS for figuring out how fast a processor, or a system, will be. AMD decided to get off the treadmill by naming their processors with an equivalency number. So an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ was supposedly equivalent to an Intel Pentium 4 running at 2 GHz (2000 MHz). The AMD Athlon XP 2000+ itself ran at something like 1600 MHz.

Unfortunately for AMD, the game has changed again. It turns out that processor makers are now up against the wall on MHz/GHz and are having to do other things to make their processors and systems better. Since MHz and GHz are no longer the dominant differentiators, Intel has dropped them from processor names and AMD has been left with a marketing megahertz number on their processor that doesn't really help much in figuring out which Intel processor to compare it to.

But I digress (though, to be fair, isn't that the point of a blog?). Anyway, my old system had an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ running at 1600 MHz or so while my new system has an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ running at 1800 MHz or so. It's only about 200 MHz faster in some oscillator, but it's a whole thousand more in marketing MHz!

Of course, the interesting question is, is it any faster? Well, I dunno. Downloads of stuff are still limited by my 1.5 Mbps DSL line. Uploads are even more limited by the 384 Kbps limit of my ADSL connection (why does no one call it ADSL anymore?).

OOH, ooh! I could try some games! Okay, I fired up adventure. I'm still clueless. How about wumpus? Wumpus still gets me every time except for the times I fall into a bottomless pit. Screw the games. Business apps? Darn, doesn't seem to echo my keystrokes any faster in OpenOffice.org than it did before. I know, personal communications! Crap! AIM (actually, gaim) doesn't seem any faster. Still limited by my typing, network, AOL's servers, and the attentiveness and typing skills of the people I converse with.

So what was the point of this upgrade? Well, for one thing, the old system was breaking somewhere in the memory interface and was locking up far too frequently. Running Linux, I'd gotten used to not dealing with the BSODs and lockups that still plague my wife's computer. And second, I couldn't stand the thought of spending a couple hundred dollars and not getting something that was, at least theoretically, faster. And this one is, theoretically, faster. By 1000 marketing megahertz.

I was right! Phew!

2005-10-23T20:08:00.000-05:00

I'd been having problems with (computer) system stability and finally decided that it was something besides memory, even though memtest86+ showed lots of errors. My suspicions were raised when I put the memory in my wife's computer and memtest86+ thought it was fine there. Unfortunately, my wife's computer also ran the memory with very conservative timings which, in addition to reducing memory performance by at least 1/3rd, may have also allowed the memory to work without error. I'm not willing to run my system crippled in that fashion, so I gambled that the memory actually was okay and ordered a new processor and motherboard.

They arrived on Tuesday and I finally had the time to install them on Friday. The first stick of memory, the newest, showed one error at a single address, but only about once every three passes or so. Running at full speed. This same stick had shown hundreds of errors every pass at a wide range of addresses, when run in my old system.

The second stick tested perfect at full speed over 14 hours (many passes through memtest86+'s test suite). Likewise the third, and oldest, stick.

So my gamble was right! There was something wrong with my old cpu or motherboard. I just wish I knew which it was. If I could find an AMD Athlon XP processor slow enough, and cheap enough, I'd like to give it a try. Unfortunately, cheap enough would have to be pretty dog-gone cheap to justify the effort because the problem could be the northbridge chip on the motherboard, and that requires a new motherboard.

Anyway, the new processor and motherboard are doing fine. I'm compiling Linux right now (writing this on the kids' computer) and am looking forward to a newly stable system.

Oh, and I have to get that memory stick replaced. It has a lifetime warranty and the manufacturer has a reputation for honoring it.

Why not $10?

2005-10-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Or at least $7.60?

I'm talking minimum wage. The Senate just rejected a proposal by Ted "Another Round" Kennedy to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $6.25. Kennedy said that it was unacceptable that a single mother with two children working full time for the minimum wage was still $4,500 below the poverty line. Well, $6.25 would leave her $2,700 below — is that acceptable? Why didn't Kennedy propose raising the minimum wage to $7.60 per hour? At least that would put the hypothetical worker at the poverty level.

But the bigger question is, why should someone working full time have an income at the poverty level? Shouldn't someone with a full time job earn enough money to not be living in poverty?

I know we can get into all kinds of stereotypes about what poor people have, or expect to have. Like big screen home theater setups, new cars with $4000 custom wheels, pack-a-day cigarette and 6-pack-a-day beer habits. But if you think about the cost of a decent apartment (where gun shots aren't routinely heard at night), utilities, food from a grocery store, a car bought used (2 years old) and kept for 8 years, clothes, etc.; could you live on $15,200 per year? Even without a cell phone, cable TV, etc.? I don't think I could.

I think the minimum wage should be $10. At least.

But I'd have to be willing to give up the $1 menu at Wendy's. And prices might have to go up at a few other places. Maybe I'd eat at home a bit more, and I'd probably be healthier for it.

I recall that Henry Ford paid his workers the unheard of wage of $5 per day, thinking that he needed workers who could afford to buy his own product. Those wages surely increased the costs of his cars (compared to what they would cost if he paid less). And it is credited with increasing wages of other factory workers. I'm sure some prices went up as a result. But it didn't cause a massive layoff of workers and didn't throw the economy into a tailspin.

I say it's time to do it again.

Jesus and Java, Part II

2005-10-19T20:41:00.000-05:00

Almost a year ago I wrote about Jesus and Java, admitting my confusion between coffee and a computer programming language and wondering how either related to Jesus.

But I just saw an article in USA Today about Starbucks' plan to put a religious quote on their coffee cups.

The quote, from the author of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren, is part of a larger campaign, called The Way I See It, that includes quotes from writers, scientists, musicians, athletes, politicians, and cultural critics. So no, Starbucks isn't coming out of the closet, so to speak, and joining companies like Chick-fil-A as openly religious.

But it will be interesting to watch the commentary from those who are offended by the quote and from those who defend it.

One Man's Trash

2005-10-17T09:57:00.000-05:00

"One man's trash is another man's treasure." That is the fervent hope of everyone who hosts a garage sale, and probably also of those who frequent them.

I should disclose up front that I am not a garage sale person. I have only been to a couple of garage sales, and have not been tempted to buy anything in them. Every person I've spoken to who has hosted a garage sale talks of the thefts that occur, and of the people who will haggle over a 10 cent item.

I am not a haggler, and I am not so proud of my trash as to think that other people should be delighted to have it.

Nevertheless, I succumbed to my wife, as all happily married men learn to do, and agreed to let her have a garage sale. But she had to do all the work. I moved a few heavy pieces and stood around during the sale pointing out who they had to haggle with.

My in-laws brought some stuff over, as did a neighbor. Some of it sold, some didn't. We made a little money, but I won't be quitting my day job.

One thing that was really annoying was the sign ordinance here in Plano. Basically, you can't have them. At least not in the public right of way, which extends at least 10 feet from the curb and includes everything up to and including any privacy wall or neighborhood entrance stuff. So we had one puny sign in a neighbor's yard near a minorly major road. The setback requirements made it hidden from view until you were too close to read the address before you were past it. And we didn't dare to violate the ordinance because the city has been cracking down on it in recent months (minimum fine: $500).

So we had virtually no drive-by traffic. If you didn't see our puny ad in the newspaper ($150 for three words) then you didn't show up. And you didn't. Maybe our next garage sale, in 2012, will be more successful.

This is Progress

2005-10-13T14:29:00.000-05:00

I placed my order today. New CPU and motherboard. I reported earlier that I thought my CPU was going bad. I had several memory modules which were showing errors under memtest86+ when placed in my system but not when placed in my wife's system. According to the memtest86+ docs such problems could be caused by problems with the L1/L2 cache (on the CPU) or the memory controller (on the CPU for some CPUs, separate for others).

One way to do further diagnosis would be to try another CPU in the same motherboard. If the problems exist with the new CPU then try another motherboard but with the original CPU. The power supply (P/S or PSU depending on your religion) could also be a culprit. Of course, I don't have spare components hanging around and don't know anyone who does. So trying components means buying components. That can cost money, if they can even be found.

I went looking for a new CPU and discovered that they are not generally available. I'm talking AMD Athlon XP in the low 2000+ range (Socket A). Oh, I found a few — for shockingly high prices (supply & demand, I suppose). I wasn't willing to spend that kind of moola for a relatively old, slow chip. I even checked to see if my mobo maker (Soyo) offered a newer BIOS that would support faster chips in the Athlon XP line. They didn't. :-(

So I felt compelled to go for a new CPU/motherboard combo. For religious reasons I want an AMD Athlon 64 CPU. Don't ask why — it's a matter of faith which simply cannot be challenged or discussed rationally. ;-)

The problem I faced next is that the DIY computer biz caters to a community of geeks who have to have the latest, greatest, sexiest thing out there. The result is that anything older (i.e. over 1 year old) becomes very hard to find. And in the past year or so we have a new graphics bus (PCI Express x16, replacing AGP), new chipsets (e.g. nForce4 replacing nForce3, K8T890 replacing K8T800), new memory (DDR2 replacing DDR), new disk drive interface (SATA replacing PATA), and a new power supply connector (24-pin replacing 20-pin).

Yep, I have an AGP graphics card, DDR memory, ATA disks, and a 20-pin connector on my ATX PSU. And I want to reuse them all to save money. So I go looking for motherboards using chipsets which support my stuff, and motherboards using them.

Yeah, you're right again. Both nForce4 and K8T890 chipsets (the newer ones), don't support AGP graphics. And motherboards using them don't support 20-pin ATX power connectors. On the bright side, AMD still uses DDR memory and all motherboards still have a couple of PATA (IDE) connectors. Causing consternation, however, is that while they loudly brag about booting off SATA disks, they fail to mention booting from PATA disks (surely they wouldn't drop that capability — they still boot from floppy, after all).

I found several interesting motherboards that fit my needs, but when I went to find e-tailers who carried them I kept coming up empty-handed. Case in point, the DFI LanParty UT nF3 Ultra-D. The manufacturer's website labels it as NEW, but no one sells it anymore (it's actually old).

I finally ended up choosing an MSI K8N Neo2-F motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor. Should arrive next week. Then I'll put it together and test my memory (again).

Wilma!

2005-10-11T09:05:00.000-05:00

As of today, we have only one name left for naming Atlantic storms: Wilma. What happens if we have Wilma and then more storms? According to an article that Gebo will probably link to in a comment, Once we've run out of the 21 names on the list (hurricane names don't start with Q, U, X, Y, or Z) we start using the names of the letters of the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, etc.).

Since the himmicane season lasts until the end of November there is a very real risk that we'll have a hurricane named Beta (the wonder dog?).

But I have a better idea, inspired by the last name on this year's list: name them after Flintstones characters! Oh, and weather reporters on the news should be required to yell the names in Flintstone style. (Unless anyone can remember a Flintstones Character starting with 'A', we'll just go straight to Bam-Bam!)

This is progress?

2005-10-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

I've been having some stability problems with my computer lately, and I've come to the conclusion that the CPU is going bad. The real problem, however, is that I cannot be certain. The symptom is occasional lockups of random processes. Memtest86+ shows a boatload of errors, but with the caveat that the problem could lie in my cpu's cache.

I put the memory into my wife's computer and ran Memtest86+ there and the memory tests just fine, but the bandwidth reported is much less (about a third less) than on my system, leading me to believe that her computer isn't running the memory at its supposedly rated speed. I'm not overclocking my system, or even manually setting the memory timings — I let the system read the SPD from the DIMMs and do its thing. But I guess my wife's el-cheapo Compaq intentionally cripples performance to help differentiate systems by price point.

So the basic theory is that if memory tests good in one system and bad in another then you probably have a bad cpu (cache). Or a bad motherboard. Or a bad P/S.

So where to start? And how much will I end up spending? My memory bandwidth discovery (crippled performance in the low price computer) makes me leery of just buying a cheap computer. If I'm going to spend money — a few hundred $mackeroo$ — then I want to end up with a faster system, not just a newer one.

Sadly, my mobo is just old enough that I can't seem to get new processors, or even refurbished processors, for it. That means a new mobo/cpu combination, and probably a new cooler as well. But I have to be careful, or I'll need new memory (e.g. DDR2), disk drives (SATA), video card (PCIe), and P/S (ATX2) at the same time. I don't have that many coins in the old change jar.

Sigh. This is turning into a big research project that I really wasn't ready for.

In the Future

2005-09-27T09:54:00.000-05:00

"In the future we will ... screw with batteries, ..."

That was part of an essay my third grader wrote in class yesterday. I asked him a few questions about some of his other predictions and then asked, "what does it mean that we'll screw with batteries?"

He said that batteries will include built-in screw drivers for opening the battery compartments on toys.

I suppose that the old, dead batteries will be used to re-secure the battery cover, but didn't get into all the possible scenarios with him. I was just relieved that he wasn't talking about battery powered sex toys! :-0

Hot Air

2005-09-24T22:25:00.000-05:00

Wind, Rain, and Gas all have one thing in common: hot air.

I'm thinking, of course, of the hot air at the center of a hurricane and the wind and rain that accompany it. And these days we're all concerned about the effects of hurricanes on our gas supply. If only we could effectively harness all the hot air coming from both ends of our erected leaders (local, state, and federal).

Wait, back up. What rain? I live in the Greater Dallas Metropolitan Area and I got what I estimate to be 10 or 20 drops per square foot around 3:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time. That was it!

Now I know that one gully-washer wouldn't cure the drought we're in, but since we're supposed to be heading into our second wet season (wet season being relative, of course), I was kinda hopin' this would get us off to a good start. As they say, if a hurricane is inevitable, then you might as well lie back and enjoy it!

Back to the gas. To do my part to conserve gas I'm not going to drive to work for the rest of this year! Yep, that's right, I'm a gonna park that 6.8 liter engine in the driveway and walk to work! For the rest of the year!

Oh, wait, I've walked to work for about the last 2.5 years. And for the 5 years before that I only drove if I had to go to the airport for a business trip.

Well, okay, here's a real change: for the past couple of months I've driven my wife's minivan instead of my truck whenever possible. And we're both planning trips more carefully to minimize miles driven.

Now if only I could harness the methane that seems to be associated with the beans that are so prevalent in the Tex-Mex food that I love so much.

Yankee, Go Home!

2005-09-21T19:59:00.000-05:00

Today, after 9 years in Texas, my friend, E, crossed the border into Arkansas with a U-Haul trailer on his way back to Maryland.

No, he wasn't fleeing Hurricane Rita. He was going back home to live with his Momma. :-)

Nah, while technically correct (for now), that wasn't the purpose of his move to MD. He took a job with the gummint and the job is in the 'burbs of D.C. E's mother lives in Glen Burnie, a town so behind the times that it doesn't have a web site. He's going to move into her condo for a couple of months to build up his savings before moving into his own apartment.

E's new job is with one of the so-called intelligence agencies, so he's changing his email signature to "00E". I don't think the new job includes a "license to kill", like other double-aught agents, but then again, he does have a driver's license and that's nearly the same thing here in Texas.

Anyway, here's to ya, 00E. Now go get a haircut. And tuck in your shirt. Put away the milk, too! I know you lived in Texas for 9 years, but did you live in a barn?

GO 1-3?

2005-09-13T10:36:00.000-05:00

One of my kids just started playing Tee Ball and we had our first two games this past weekend. It's a lot of fun to watch, but it's a guilty pleasure because you're enjoying the complete and total incompetence!

Case in point, one of the few outs recorded (most innings end when the batting team scores 5 runs) came when a line drive bounced off the "pitcher" and rolled straight to the 1st baseman (slow enough for him to grab it).

I decided to score the play as a ground out, 1-3.

Let Them Snort ...

2005-09-07T21:09:00.000-05:00

1) New Orleans has a crime problem (even before Madam Katrina blew into town). 2) Drug dealers are probably having a hard time getting product. 3) There are lots of houses with wallboard that needs replacing.

Here in North Texas we've seen first hand how even "experts" can't tell the difference between ground up sheetrock and cocaine. So I propose that the dealers take wallboard from flooded houses, dry it out, grind it up, sell it to the addicts, and donate a percentage of the proceeds to the cleanup effort.

Heck, just by removing the sheetrock they'd be aiding in the cleanup — without filling up the dumps! The addicts might also benefit by breaking their immediate dependency (since I doubt that snorting gypsum has the same pharmacological effect as cocaine).

Sounds like a win, win, win situation to me! :-)

OMG! Company's Coming!

2005-09-02T14:45:00.000-05:00

If you're married then you've experienced the panic that precedes the arrival of company. Everything has to be spic-n-span, but make sure you put the Spic and Span away or the company will know that you cleaned up for them.

I can understand some cleanup. I don't want the place to be a pigsty, but since I've always been comfortable in what might be called organized clutter I've never understood the need to completely disrupt the normal functioning of your house to make it perfect for visitors. For example, why do I have to put away the stack of stuff next to the couch? I still want to go through that stuff and I'll just be moving it back right after the guests leave. That's not only wasted labor, but I suspect that everyone has such stacks and no one (at least not the husbands) will think any the worse of me for having it there in plain view.

In a similar vein, why do you have to clean something that isn't exactly dirty, or can never be exactly clean? Like the toilet? I'm not talking about a disgusting toilet, like some of my bachelor friends have. Our toilets get cleaned at least once a week. They don't have stains. They don't stink. To casual observation they're pretty clean. When they become not pretty clean they get cleaned.

But I just got sent to clean the toilet — company's coming! We have knives in the kitchen and I like to sleep at least once a day, so I did as ordered.

Then company arrived. An 8-year old and a 6-year old.

Boys.

For a play date with my kids.

I have a new item on my visitor list: Why clean something if its cleanliness (or lack thereof) won't be noticed by the guests?

Free At Last

2005-09-01T14:02:00.000-05:00

Free at last,
Free at Last!
Thank God Almighty,
She's free at last!

At 12:01 a.m. EDT, the gross injustice that was the Martha Stewart Incarceration was ended with the snip of a rubber band.

While we all undoubtedly rejoice at her renewed freedom, my soul fairly cries at the imaginings of the pain and anguish which Martha endured lo these many restless months. Months that can never be returned to her.

My heart aches. I'm sure that James Thomas feels the same way.

This is NOT your father's PM

2005-08-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

I recently picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics after reading part of an article in a waiting room.

Aside #10 a.m.: Why is it that your wait in any waiting room is inversely proportional to your interest in the magazines they have available?

It was the September 2005 issue and has several really good articles.

Anyway, I was flipping through the ads at the back and right there with utility trailers, portable buildings, and log splitters, was an advertisement for LoveLiberator.

Oh, my.

I don't ever remember seeing ads like that in PM before, though it has been a while since I read one. I wonder if a future issue will have detailed plans to build your own vibrator (to soothe your sore muscles after spending a day splitting wood, of course).

Home Schooled University Degree?

2005-08-22T10:33:00.000-05:00

GeBo's comment on my posting about the start of school in Plano raises more questions and thoughts than can be covered in a reply. Maybe more than can be covered in a single post. But here 'goes.

Gebo wonders why we can't home school our kids to a Harvard degree. My first thought is that we can — just look at W's degree at Yale. :-)

Okay, enough with the jokes. The first question that really comes to mind in this is what kind of diploma do home schooled kids get when they "complete" high school? The answer probably varies from state to state, but in Texas the answer is none. In fact, Texas considers home schools to be private schools and does not regulate them in any way! There are no attendance requirements, no test requirements, no curriculum requirements — nothing!

So when your home schooled child "graduates" from home school they only get a diploma if you print one or order one from the internet. Their "transcript" is whatever you type up.

So now I have to wonder, if my kid's public school performance sucked, can I just claim that they were home schooled on the college applications? How would the university check? Could they check?

So, back to the home schooled university degree. Since home schooled secondary school students don't get a diploma from the state or the local school district I can't claim a home schooled PISD degree. Similarly there is no reason to expect to be able to claim a home schooled university degree from any particular university.

Of course, everyone seems to be offering "distance learning" programs where you "attend" a university via the internet. So I could get a degree from many institutions without ever darkening the doorway of any building on their campus.

But that is playing by their rules and I'm into local control and want to protect my precious children from the corrupting influences of outsiders.

So what, really, is preventing me from home schooling my kids' college educations? Well, nothing, I suppose. Except the acceptance of that education by employers.

So, Gebo, school away. 'Course you'll have to have kids first.