Spending the weekend in burned out buildings

What is an acrophobe doing leading a team down an almost totally black stairwell, one with walls but no railings on either side, in a burned out building? I'm glad you asked. Since I had gone up an almost totally black stairwell leading a team, we all kinda wanted to go back the other way. I had no flashlight, altho some of my team members did. I've never done live D&D, but the many times I had played on paper had instilled certain habits. Like walking with a hand on one or both walls. Testing the floor before putting my full weight on it. I found the door when the guys with the flashlights passed right by. Taking nothing for granted. And tell the helpful guy behind me to stop trying to be helpful and point the freakin' flashlight somewhere else. It was easier to go down the pitch black stairwell completely blind than it was with two flashlights putting strange shadows and shapes on the stairs. Twitchy, moving shadows.

It was CERT refresher weekend here in the sunny city of Long Beach, California. I was in the urban search and rescue segment, checking out a four-story building for victims. The previous segment was SAR in a one-story building, for which I had been scribe. That meant I got to record the injured "victims" brought out of the building, one of whom had been drafted with no instructions. When I asked for injuries, he looked at me blankly and said, "They didn't tell me." Right, delusional, send him to Urgent. In the four-story segment, I ended up being scribe again. I asked the fireman trainer if I could go in the building later, as I hadn't been in one. He then drafted himself as scribe, and I got to lead a team. My team, lucky people that we were, got the third and fourth floors of the four story building. And everybody got to follow someone who does not like stairs up and then back down three flights of stairs, slowly and carefully.

When we first arrived, there was a short segment of Opening Ceremonies, mostly reiterating why we were here: to practice what to do during and after emergencies, which included taking care of us first, then victims. We were to rescue victims, not become one. The fireman in charge of first aid said if anyone failed to take care of him/herself, and in the expected heat, that meant hydration hydration hydration, the person would be treated, and then the fireman would kick them in the butt. It was said to us in every segment, at every opportunity, that we must take care of us first. We can't take care of anybody else if we become victims.

When we signed in, we were given wrist bands of various colors. There were eight 45-minute segments; the order we took them was determined by the color. Beth, my best friend and CERT buddy, and I got Disaster Preparedness right off. We could have taught the course. Not necessarily better, but we didn't learn much. One thing we learned was that the Red Cross lady teaching it had never seen an MRE. Three of us tore open our backpacks/kits and pulled ours out. Beth and another guy had the full package, and explained the differences between civilian and military MRE packages. The military has a better eating utensil and has some additional things like toilet paper and chewing gum. I just carry the main dishes. I have to feed a sugar-sensitive person and therefore don't carry the rest of an MRE pack, which is often things full of sugar. Since there's a chance he may grab and eat without thinking, there are no sugar-filled things in the three-day pack. There is no way I want to deal with a sugar-charged guy when I'm also trying to cope with an emergency. And yes, MREs taste good. They aren't cordon bleu cooking, but they're not bad. They're edible in an emergency without wanting to go "ewwwww."

The next segment, Triage, taught me right off that I need to repack my kit. I know I have a pen in there somewhere, but damn if I could find it. Same with the above flashlight I didn't have. (It probably took advantage of my digging for the MRE to dive for the bottom of the kit.) If I have to be scribe for triage, I can't be huntin' for a pen. The firemen overseeing this exercise were quite pleased with our group. We'd cleared the field of "injured," sorted into the medical area in less than 20 minutes, and only misdiagnosed one. The various "victims" had been annointed with "blood," had a half-sheet of paper with "symptoms," had an assortment of prosthetic wounds strapped on, and generally had a hard time keep a straight face as we all poked and prodded them. Later, we heard from another group who said some of their triage victims were lying on the sheet of paper with symptoms, so the CERT team had to wing it. We identified and marked various levels of injuries, then cleared the field of victims, walking wounded walk out on their own, then urgent, not life threatening, and then dead. We were supposed to drag our dead guy to the morgue area, but we made him get up and walk.

Then we got to be Medical. Because Beth had some EMT training, we got stuck with a red tarp, meaning we got the urgent cases. (For those playing at home, in mass injury incidents, areas are designated, and colored tarps are used when you have them to easily identify: Red - Urgent/Dead without medical help NOW, Yellow - Not Life Threatening, Green - Banged and Scraped.) And again, I was scribe. We were told that we'd be getting some victims who hadn't gone thru triage, so we'd have to triage them in Medical. Since the red tarps were closest to the incident site, we got the first one. Open break, what used to be called a compound fracture, of his right arm. He got splinted and wrapped and bandaged within an inch of his life, because we didn't have any other victims at the time. We then got a little old lady with "chest pains." The lady as herself had to sit in a chair, which caused a bit of confusion a bit later when someone walked up and said, "She should be lying down." In reply, he got a chorus of "she is." We were treating her, or trying to treat her, as if she was lying down. Our third victim was a trauma nurse in real life. Which explained why she could replicate the symptoms so well, nausea, coffee-ground vomiting, new and wonderful pains that showed up, etc. We chatted at lunch and found that she was playing a ruptured spleen and something ugly to do with the liver.

Meanwhile, the other red tarp had a screamer. A rather large, athletic guy had been roped in to be a victim who wanted to find Susy, and was extremely resentful of anyone who wanted to tend his injuries. So resentful that at one point, he had two other guys lying on him, trying to hold him down. Better them than me.

I discovered that I should write each victim on a separate page, as victims in the Urgent section had a nasty tendency to add symptoms as we went along. The heart attack lady "stopped" having a pulse at one point, and had to have CPR. We "saved" a life, as her heart "started" again. I wandered over to our broken arm guy, who had initially been slated to go to the yellow tarp once we bandaged him, but was upgraded to urgent when he added dizzyness to his previous light-headedness, and low spinal back pain to his collection of "injuries." He was chatting with one of the firemen overseeing the exercise. I told him he was going to have to play victim again, as I was there to check on him. Life got a bit more interesting when two of the yellow-tarped people got upgraded to urgent. Our team leader decided that they shouldn't be moved, the first, with a head injury, because she was blanketed and comfortable, and didn't need to add to her trauma by moving, and the second because she was a neck injury, who just didn't need to be moved until the paramedics took her away. So now I'm running back and forth between our red tarp and the yellow tarp, tracking changes. The field had been cleared of injured, we were dealing with our last arrival, and starting on prioritizing for transport when the exercise ended. During the triage segment, our team reported to the IC regularly. In Medical, I saw him once. I asked if that was correct, as I all my time was sucked up by tracking changes in our patients. The firemen and the guy who was IC told me I did the right thing. If the IC wanted to talk to me, he could find me.

That was fun. No, really, it was. Beth and I found out we work great as a team. She does medical really well. And I do honest patient reassurance very well. Having been a patient in tremendous pain, I don't want someone telling me I'm ok. If you're going to lie to me on something I know is wrong, what else are you going to lie about? So my patients got variations on no, you're not ok, but you will be. My most difficult reassurance was the head-injury victim who'd lost her ability to speak or understand english, if she'd ever had it. She only spoke in japanese, and I was left with patting and holding her shoulder and repeating "OK?" a couple of times. She was coherent enough to manage "OK" back at me. It had an upside in that the person who'd treated her and I could discuss symptoms and secondary assessment in a light tone without freakin' the patient.

Next we got to talk with the USR people, Urban Search and Rescue. Why aren't they USAR? Because the US Army Reserve claims those initials. The USR guys told us what they did, which is everything from helping in multi-car accidents to whitewater rescue (we don't get a lot of rain here, but when we do, our little trickling rivers turn into whitewater monsters-think flash flood). Because Long Beach has a substantial harbor area, they do a lot of rescues in the port area, ranging from longshoremen trapped under equipment to longshoremen crushed under those huge cargo containers. They showed us their "tool box," a truck as long as the largest hook-and-ladder truck I've seen, full of hand tools, power tools, generators, air compressors for refilling air tanks, 2x4 and 2x8 to prop up collapsing building long enough for SAR to find victims and evacuate them, and just an amazing array of things for breaking stuff up or holding stuff together. Our guide said the busiest guy during the Paradise fire was the engineer, refilling air tanks. Another of his stories was interesting in the insights it gave into thinking outside the box. They couldn't get the truck in close, so hooked a firehose to the jackhammer air compressor and ran it out 300 feet from the truck to power the jackhammer.

Next was lunch. The Long Beach fire department put up several shade areas, so we could rest and eat out of the direct sun, but it didn't help with the overall heat. We were all very glad the event was being held in Long Beach, because it "only" got to the mid 80s. The San Fernando Valley was up around 102-105. It's only mid-May. What is the summer going to be like? *bleh*

After lunch and the above mentioned SAR, we learned how to improvise things to pry and prop up fallen things so we could get people out from under those fallen things. Mostly it was standing under awning, discussing the hows and whys of this process. Then we got to stand or kneel in the sun for a bit, while we built Lincoln-log type structures to pry up and then hold up a car, so someone could drag the victim out from under. By this point, the victim dummy had been dragged back and forth so much (we had to put him back under the car when we were done), his clothes were coming off and his torso was showing a bit of wear. We had a couple of primarily Spanish speaking people in our group, so we also got to learn how to give very simple directions understood by all.

Then we got to play with fire extinguishers. My first extinguisher lasted long enough for me to get within shootin' distance of the fire before it stopped extinguishing. Add it to the dead pile. Beth and I went back around and got a totally unused extinguisher, stood in line, and when it was our turn, tested the extinguisher before moving to the fire. The extinguisher didn't work at all. Add that one to the dead pile and try again. The third one did its test blast well, we moved in on the fire, put it out. But the extinguisher wouldn't turn off. The fireman supervising told me to back away from the fire area and let go of the handle. I said, it won't turn off. He came over and took it away from me, body language saying he will now show this trainee how it's... wait, this extinguisher won't turn off. Cool, guy, now it's your problem. The thing finally ran out of juice and got added to the dead pile. The fireman said we could try again. I said I've tried three extinguishers and they all broke one way or another. I'm not dealing with another one. On top of that, the wind was swirling. The fireman kept repeating, "Approach from the upwind side. Approach from the upwind side." You tell me which side will be the upwind side when I get there, and I'll approach from that side. Nope. Today is not my day for fire extinguisher duty.

By this point, it's late in the day, my feet hurt from standing on them most of the day (I'm a desk jockey most days), and I'm covered in grime and sweat (I'm an inside desk jockey). My thirty pound backpack full of food, water, medical supplies and CERT gear now weighs at least a hundred pounds. And the half dozen chairs in the shade already have people in them. So I sat on the ground. Which meant when that segment was over, I had to clamber all the way back up, not just stand up out of a chair. urf

Fortunately, this last segment was ICS and held indoors. In airconditioned indoors, where my grime and sweat turned into grime and salt. I could listen to ICS trainers all day. Being an IC is the part that scares me the most about being a CERT member. In an emergency, I'm it. No group who at least have taken CERT classes and have a partial clue. I'm going to be organizing civilians. Boy, does that give me sympathy with LEOs and other emergency personnel. Beth agreed, and said even after doing it in a real emergency, it's still the scariest part. She spent ten years in Tampa, Florida, picking up after hurricanes.

The trainer in this segment was great. In a lot of normal classroom situations, you have a "right" answer. Our fireman trainer said there is no right answer in emergencies. There are only choices made based on what we know at the time, which includes the training we have. One scenario was of a two story house, smoke coming from the back. When the view shifted to the back, there was fire visible in an upper window. As we discussed what we would do, the trainer added smoke from the other side of the house, and smoke coming from the attic. The trainer said for fireman, this house fire was routine to them. What would be a "don't go in" second floor area to a CERT member would only be a "proceed with caution" area to a fireman. What would be a "proceed with caution, if at all" first floor to CERT would be a routine no problem area for firemen. One scenario was a fire on or between two tanker cars in a train switching yard. Behind it was a couple of large storage tanks in an oil refinery. I said, "Ohh Shit." The trainer said I was the first person to say that all day. Either everybody else was too polite, or I was too tired to be politely quiet. Or I remember too many refinery explosions from my childhood. What does a CERT member do in that situation? Call 911 and get the heck outta there. Potential explosion, potential hazmat, potential so out of our league, after calling 911, one of the group said call 1-800-HaulButt.

ICS has a number of segments to it, and not all of them are necessary at every incident. Like finance/banking. The fire department needs to consider money when they have a lot of what they call "metal in the air" (firefighting planes, helis) which cost anywhere from $30k to $100k an hour (yes, an hour) to operate. CERT people aren't working with those kind of numbers and mostly don't need to worry about how to pay for stuff. Our trainer got us thinking about what CERT people need to worry about in different scenarios: status of utilities, SAR, supplies. We missed part of the event's closing remarks because we kept asking our ICS trainer questions. I could have sat thru another hour or more of that class.

At the end of class, I picked up my thirty pound turned hundred pound kit that somewhere gained another fifty pounds, and staggered with the rest of the group over to closing ceremonies. All the primary instructors were pleased with us, and were pleased that, even with the heat, we'd stayed hydrated and took care of ourselves. We'd only had one casualty among the CERT people. I got my one last look at all those fit, athletic firemen (one of the perks of having CERT affiliated with the fire department!), staggered out to the carpool van, and toddled on home.

This morning, I was a bit stiff and sore, but not too badly, and my touch of sunburn was still a bit pink but would probably turn into tan by tomorrow. Beth is annoyed, as she has pale skin that burns, peels, and stays pale. Her sunscreen application held up quite nicely, and she didn't get too much sun. I'm now off to find the flashlight I know I have in that kit, add a couple more pens, and generally set things up so I can find what I need in a hurry a bit more quickly. Personal protective equipment, flashlight, marking and writing tools, gotta be on top. And stay there. Bandages and medical supplies next. After that, well, it depends on what I learn in the next refresher, six months from now. With luck, not from an emergency in the meantime.

Sir Arthur C Clarke - a tribute

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
  -- Arthur C Clarke

Just across the ticker on the tv, Arthur C Clarke, Sir Arther, died today. Physical age: 90. The age of his mind and heart: forever young.

Size matters

Sharing a room with a server with half a terabyte effective storage, with 0.5T and 1T drives available for not much money, the subject of "Remember when ..." 10Meg was a lot of space? When 1Gig was thought to be more room than anybody could need for most purposes? When a terabyte was thought to be an outrageous amount of space?

Which then prompted, what's next? What's the next prefix?

The 19th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1991 extended the list of metric prefixes. The list can be found here

For those who only want to know the next prefix, it's peta.

Petabyte. Sounds like something the neighbor's dog would do.

Start the year with a new server!

We have a server for our computer system. Took more than a week to get all the parts in, the parts speaking to each other, installed at my house and then talking to the internet from my house instead of the computer guy's office. We got that completed yesterday. Jim's computer was put to rest. It survived long enough to transfer data to a new machine. The new machine's got clear sides so you can see the innards, and several elements have bright blue leds, so the thing lights up the room. It turns out Jim doesn't like clear sides and bright lights on his computer. I told him we could put a tea-cozy over it.

The downside is that I cleaned my home office and now can't find anything. It's in some pile or other, in the other room.

When we went over to the computer guy's place to pick up the computer, Jim told Mitchell, "You're an enabler. You enable techno junkies!" Mitchell and I looked at each other, grinned and nodded.

An abridged list of 50 things to know by 50

There's a list out there of 50 things you need to know by 50. It's emailed from person to person, supposedly on or close to their 50th birthday. The stuff may be copyright protected, but I have chosen to list a select few - with my own comments. (Of course my own comments. It's my blog.)

---

No matter how many times you bring your mitt to the game, the manager will never gaze out into the stands, land his eyes on you, and say, "Hey, how about that guy?"
  --Dude, I bring my mitt to the game to catch that foul ball and sell it on eBay!!!

Find the Bathroom in Five Languages
  --I'll give you the universal one: Point your toes together, stick your knees together, crouch slightly, put your hands over your abdomen, and look desperate!

What to Do if You Get a Letter From the IRS
  --(These days, confirm that the IRS sent it, not some spammer looking to steal your ID.) In my case, I'll bring my stack of CDs, my laptop and a portable printer. I've scanned *everything*. And a recent court case confirms that scanned documents, under certain conditions, qualify as proof. (Don't ask me the conditions, I don't have that yet.)

How to Navigate the Company Picnic
No good can come of a company picnic.
  --No good can come from missing it, either. They *will* know and remember, come raise time.

If someone says "Smell this," don't.
  --Actually, there's a safe way to do this. You stand back from the item, then use one hand to waft fumes in the direction of your face, gently. Wafting becomes more vigorous as required, but always starts very gently.
The other way to handle this is to say, "Have you?" followed by "show me." Cuts down the exposure to bad smells by a lot without missing the good ones.

How do non-natives ever learn all the nuances of English???

When I was in high school, we had a foreign exchange student from Norway. She did pretty well here, having taken five years of book English before attempting Southern California spanglish-speckled English. She got most idioms fairly well, but was forever stumped on uh-Huh (yes) and Uh-uh (no). She couldn't hear the difference between them. It came to mind when I got the following piece in email. I don't know who wrote this, but if that someone wants to get in touch, I will be more than happy to give credit.

---

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP." It is listed in the dictionary as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come "UP ? Why do we speak UP , and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this up is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP . When i t rains, it wets UP the earth.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so ....

Time to shut UP .....!

Oh...one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?

U P

On a Slow Newsday

kijiji (kee-jee-jee or ki-ji-ji?), a new site claiming to be craigslist only better, has a better format, has a better ordering system, is prettier than craistlist. And probably will start charging for stuff within the year, after we've all gotten hooked. Or running mondo advertising, ditto. After all, it's owned by eBay, and eBay is out there to make money, not provide a service for the fun of it. Craigslist is extremely bare bones, and thus does not need a huge support staff. kijiji will "improve" and "add features" so as to take away market share from Craigslist. What I think will happen is that those of us who use stuff like that will use both systems, until one breaks. My bet is on kijiji breaking first. I could be wrong. I've been known to be so.

And I am *shocked*, SHOCKED I tell you, to hear that PROSTITUTION is RAMPANT on Craistlist. I am appalled, truly APPALLED, that those elements of society that disobey laws "in real life" would stoop to doing exactly the same things on the Internet. I ask you, what is the world coming to?

In other words, yeah? so? I can be grateful that it's such a slow news day, for if things were going wrong, that issue would never get such a big write-up.

Used According To Directions

Tobacco: The only consumer item, when used according to directions, kills you.

Women are different - and so are their heart attacks

Just something someone sent me, that I feel should be added to my collections of things no one but me reads.

Women and heart attacks (Myocardial infarction)

Did you know that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack... you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest and dropping to the floor that we see in the movies. Here is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack.

"I had a completely unexpected heart attack at about 10:30 pm with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might've brought it on. I was sitting all snugly and warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking,"A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up." A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you've been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you've swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn't have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation---the only trouble was that I hadn't taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.

"After that had seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasming), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when dministering CPR). This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws.

"AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening--we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven't we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, "Dear God, I think I'm having a heart attack !" I lowered the foot rest, dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself "If this is a heart attack, I shouldn't be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else....... but, on the other hand, if I don't, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment."

"I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics... I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn't feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts.

She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to unbolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.

"I then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don't remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the Cardiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like "Have you taken any medications?") but I couldn't make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stents to hold open my right coronary artery.

"I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the Paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.

"Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand."

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body not the usual men's symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn't know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when they wake up.... which doesn't happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before. It is better to have a "false alarm" visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said "Call the Paramedics". Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER -- you are a hazard to others on the road and so is your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what's happening with you instead of the road. Do NOT call your doctor--he doesn't know where you live and if it's at night you won't reach him anyway, and if it's daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn't carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.

3. Don't assume it couldn't be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that an cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it's unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure.) MI's are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive.

Labor Shortage

Why are "they" saying there's a labor shortage when they won't hire me? Just because I'm over 50, have a tremendous skill set and would like more than just minimum wage for it, and have a great deal of business experience and won't put up with the "It's corporate policy" BS handed out by those who don't want to think or take responsibility for their actions. You'd think I'd be welcome. But I ask too many questions, and talk back to managers who want me to work 60 to 80 hours for 40 hours pay. I guess there is a labor shortage: a shortage of clueless, questionless, witless, helpless wage slaves. They've all gone to work for the federal government.

President Bush thumbs his nose

When we were small children, we would put our thumbs against our noses and make various gestures with fingers. It was obvious and unmistakable.

President Bush appointed Judge Reggie Walton, because Judge Walton was a tough-on-crime, hard-as-nails, zero-tolerance, no-nonsense judge. President Bush appointed Judge Walton because Judge Walton espoused the philosphies of the right-wing Republican Party.

President Bush appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald as a U.S. Attorney, because Fitzpatrick was a tough prosecutor with a good conviction record. The Department of Justice, full of Bush appointees, chose Fitzgerald as Special Prosecutor.

These tough-on-crime guys tried and convicted a good buddy of President Bush.

President Bush didn't like what these tough-on-crime guys did, because he didn't like the sentence personally. President Bush didn't like it that they picked on his good buddy.

So President Bush over-ruled it, giving his good buddy a "get out of jail free" card.

This is an authoritarian, autocratic, arrogant, elitist, socially and politically clueless nose-thumbing of a spoiled child of privilege. It is obvious and unmistakable.

BiPartisan Immigration Bill Dies - Thank Ghods

Headline reads "Despite wide bipartisan support, comprehensive immigration reform has just been derailed in the Senate." To which I say Huzzah!

Having followed that debate, having read part of the bill-thing they were working on, having a cousin who's an immigration lawyer who was on loan from the federal Immigration Dept to work for Senatory Kyl from AZ and whose opinion I value, I have a bit of insight on that bill:

It sucked. It was destined to go down in flames from the day it waswritten. Ammendments to it only mangled it into a more twisted form. It was bipartisan support only because immigration was a hot-button issue with those who vote. (The 2006 elections got thru to the few remaining Republicans who actually think for themselves.) The support was of the
"get on the bandwagon" type. And when the "swift boaters" attached the phrase "amnesty" to it, there was no hope for that bill or any other to make it out of committee. The "amnesty" program was so harsh as to be punitive in nature, and would more likely cause the illegals to stay here and hope for something better in ten to fifteen years. But the sound-biters grabbed "amnesty" and successfully ran with it for all it was worth.

I am personally grateful the thing didn't make it out of committee. It would have required life-support from the get-go, and our current federal government doesn't provide support for bills it likes, much less those it
doesn't.

We send mixed signals

Why is "smart" used as a negative word when the oft-stated ambition is to send your kids to college?

"You think you're so smart" and "smarty pants" are spoken in a negative, often sarcastic tone. Why, I wonder? If being smart is so bad, why the rush for college? Or are college grads supposed to be as stupid when they come out as they went in? (and do I really want an answer to that last?)

Reading is Doomed!

I read a poll that said people were reading less. It was done by a newspaper, and people were in fact reading newsprint less. They were reading online news websites and blogs far more. The conclusion is that reading was doomed. No, dudes, reading print is fading, but not doomed. There's still the place for bathtub reading because you do NOT want to drop your PDA or e-book reader into the tub. A book so dropped becomes a soggy book. A PDA so dropped becomes loss of your electronic memory unit. Now, when they have a water-proof computer screen on an arm that can swing out over the tub, then I'd worry about the doomedness of print.

Gotta read this book

THE BLACK SWAN, The Impact of the Highly Improbable. By Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The hubris of predictions — and our perpetual surprise when the not-predicted happens — are themes of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s engaging new book, "The Black Swan." It concerns the occurrence of the improbable, the power of rare events...

Any book that contains this quote is worth reading:

...and the author’s lament that "in spite of the empirical record we continue to project into the future as if we were good at it."

How IS this going to turn out

One of three ways, with infinite variations in between:

Worst) We get the *bleep* out. Iran, Syria and the Saudis duke it out for the territory. Iraq didn't exist until the Brits divvied up the Middle East after WW1. Iraq by all rights belongs to Iran, with tidbits to Turkey and Syria. If it goes to all all-out slugfest, Turkey may get sucked in. Good side of this: the fundamentalist Suni/Shia/Shitheads spend all their energy shooting each other, instead of mucking around with our buildings.

Best) We hang in long enough for the next Adminisration to get its shit together. The next Prez thumps heads and gets Iran, Syria, Turkey (which would be a feat, as Turkey wants no part of this mess), the Saudis and maybe a couple of others to sit down at an awkwardly shaped table (everyone has a side) and works something out. Iraq still runs the risk of getting divvied up between the various parties, see above.

Middlin' ground) We stay, we get somebody in the Administration to talk with Iran and Syria who doesn't look like a sulky five-year old (did you see that picture? OY!) and who is willing to discuss reality rather than what they'd like it to be, and get middle eastern leaders to realize they are in as much trouble with these fundies as we are. Actually more so, since the suni/shia/shitheads are local, and only need walk over to blow it up. Whatever "it" is popular at the time. All of us, them, us, Europe, possibly some help from that other HYOOJ Muslim country, Indonesia, go in and kick butt, declare martial law for five years, and then spend the next twenty getting an education system in place that teaches more than just the Q'uoran.

Where will it go? Who the *bleep* knows, as it could tip to really hideous really fast, at which point nuking it back to the stone age is a really good thought. The only thing keeping me from being that blood-thirsty is my cousin the archeologist would ... I can't think of a thing bad enough that she wouldn't do if we nuked all that archeology out of existance.

Rush Limbaugh nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

An acquaintance I unfortunately had to overhear, was mightily impressed with the fact that Rush Limbaugh had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Price. I told this person that to be nominated for the Peace Prize, you can either get a petition signed by lots o'people, or you can pay a fee. The Nobel Prize committee is perfectly happy collecting $$$ from fools with enough money to support that ego trip. There's a list somewhere, and I'm not going to hunt it down, of all the people who nominated themselves for the NPP, or were nominated by $$$, so their little egos can gloat.

I told this acquaintance to please turn the input cycles on his brain to a visual length longer than three words/one headline and an auditory length longer than 30 seconds. Real information comes in larger chunks than headlines and soundbites. It also comes from multiple sources, not just one. (If he thinks all websites tell the truth, go here:
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm)

I don't think this acquaintance was really interested in the truth, in any flavor, but he avoided me like the plague after that.

Global Warming and Changing Course

In a letter from a friend, who said, "Am trying to be a better citizen and pay attention to the daily things I CAN do - but in reality, it's the guys in charge of the rudder who can change course."

My reply: The guy in charge of the rudder will change course when he finds there's no one in his boat any more. Every person who "pays attention to the daily things" will convince one other person by behavior to change boats. "Silent Spring" wasn't popular, or well-known, shortly after it was written. But it has handed person to person, and look where we are now. "Environmentalist" may be a dirty word to some people, but it is a word that no longer gets a "Huh? What's that?" Global warming may have ijits like Inhofe nay-saying it, but nobody (with any connection to news) asks "what's global warming" any more.

If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
  -- Albert Einstein

Fear itself

Of all the liers in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.
     --  Rudyard Kipling

An interesting list of things to remember

Friends send me various humorous lists in email. Sometimes I find them worth sharing.

---

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved and never will achieve its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"
(don't even go there with me - Lin)

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

5. You should not confuse your career with your life.
(explain this one to certain computer game companies - Lin)

6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

7. Never lick a steak knife.

8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
(yes, I can, see below - Lin)

10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
(My boyfriend made a big deal out of my 21st birthday; he could now take me to places that were formerly off limits. This was not an improvement. This may be why he became an ex. - Lin)

12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

13. A person who is nice to you but rude to a waiter is not a nice person.
(This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

14. Your friends love you anyway.

15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

---

Daylight Savings Time conundrum. -- If the clock time stays the same, as the sun rises earlier and earlier, you're now sleeping thru one or more hours of sunlight. If the clock time is pushed back, you are now not sleeping through at least one hour of that sunlight. It's now tucked in at the end of the day, when you're awake and can use it for something productive.

This is, of course, for those whose normal hours are daytime hours. For swingshift or graveyard, your mileage will vary. Or for those who think sleeping is productive. But now you know.

Not Eureka!

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."

-- Isaac Asimov

What I asked for, not what I wanted

I have a website devoted to true type fonts, called Fontage. I've been updating my bookstore with some additional books on typefaces, typography, and type designers.

In trying to find some good books on the history of typeface design, or on those who design typefaces, I used the search terms "type designer." I got such gems as "Death to Diabetes: The Six Stages of Type 2 Diabetes," "The 16 Personality Types, Descriptions for Self-Discovery," and this charmer, "Cocaine, Marijuana, Designer Drugs." Each of these books had the word "designer" or "type" somewhere in the caption, and the other word somewhere in the text of the book. Not quite what I wanted.

I sent email off to Amazon, recommending that one of the options to "Narrow the Search" be to limit the search to words in the title or caption of the object. If eBay can do it, Amazon surely must.

Three Laws of Thermodynamics and Those Who Think They Can Beat Them

**Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You can't win
2) You can't break even
3) You can't get out of the game.

Those who think they can beat them:
1) Capitalism says you can win.
2) Socialism says you can break even
3) Mysticism says you can get out of the game.

**See Quote by C.P. Snow

Dancing and Singing

I was reading other blogs and came across one from a young lady who claimed she couldn't dance. As I started to write a comment on her blog, I thought I'd add it to mine, as well.

I'm mumble-mumble years old, I've taken several years of dance lessons, and I'm perfectly happy dancing the waltz to rumba music. Drove my dance instructor nuts. I think my instructor once had me dancing the tango to swing music just to see if I would have a problem. Not a one. Rhythm? What's that?

My beloved other half says that I'm only allowed to sing in showers because people are supposed to sing off key in showers. And I am one of the few people who lip-syncs to karaoke, because I am not allowed to sing at all.

Your Federal Reserve Bank account has been accessed! Again!

Phishing is an ever-growing problem. Even if you realize the website to which you are directed is not the one from your bank, you are still vulnerable to a number of things. Check out my previous post for the serious side of things.

For some of us, it is one of growing amusement as well. I have a list of email addresses from various companies I forward phishing email to. ("Your Citi account has been violated!" yeah right.) Since I never get just one, I put the report-phishing email addresses in my addressbook. I've got one for the head of security at a credit union. The second time I sent him something, he sent back a thank you, as he hadn't seen that one or the website they were operating from. The last time I sent him something, I said any time he wanted me to stop, just let me know. Haven't heard a thing. I hope some yah-hoo doesn't decide that I'm this great world traveler, based on the "accounts" I have all over. According to the email I get, I have accounts in Alaska, Alabama, Kansas, Indiana, Texas and Tennessee. Oh, and two different accounts in Hawaii.

Man, do I travel a lot, or what?

And with Citi, BofA, Chase, Amazon.com (my credit card with Amazon had been accessed - does Amazon have a credit card?), an assortment of credit unions, the National Credit Union Association (they don't have accounts - I'm waiting for the one about my account with the Federal Reserve Bank), Visa (visa doesn't have individual accounts either), and a host of others.

I choose to be amused. And fight back. To report phishing or spam, these email addresses are useful:

reportphishing@antiphishing.org

spam@uce.gov

That wonderful no-call list

To answer the oft-asked "why don't you put your number on that list thing," that list-thing has more holes than swiss cheese. One is that it doesn't/can't apply to callers from outside the country, so I get lots of calls from guys who say their name is "John," said with a two-tone Indian lilt. I tried one time going thru with a call, to find the name of the company in the US that hired them, so I could complain. Nope, it's still an Indian company, with a generic name, that was pre-screening calls before selling information to an American company. No joy there.

The other is from companies that have a pre-existing relationship. That pre-existing relationship can be established with a simple advertising letter or postcard. Then they call. I had one guy call and ask "did you get the material I sent you last week?" To which I replied, "yes, and I threw it away." He laughed that salesman sort of laugh when they don't take you seriously. I hung up.

We used to get more than a dozen a night. There's a service from the fone company that filters all calls without caller id and sends them to the "Privacy Manager." If the person wants to talk to us, they give their name to the PM, which then calls us and tells us the name. If we want it, we accept, or forward to voice mail, or tell them to fu... go away. So now those foreign companies put "0" or "800 Services" as their caller ID. Since my fone shows me the caller id, I don't answer Mr. 0's calls. Or Mr. Services, either.

Annoyed? Me? nah. I get my revenge, more or less, by picking up the phone, blowing into or tapping on the reciever so the computer at the other end switches me to a live person. I then sit there, holding the line open, while the person at the other end says "Hello? Hello?" I had a great one the other day. The guy didn't disconnect the line before he started talking to his super. Unfortunately, it was not in a language I knew. Fortunately, the sounds of a person being trained come across in any language. Query followed by answer. Answer followed by "oh." Or by something that sounded like the guy was doing something step-by-step and waiting for approval. The call was three or four minutes in length, and was most entertaining.

Customer Service at its best

I have friends who think I'm this great computer person. They also assume that great computer people do not have serious issues with computers. For those of you who think the same, I share my recent "issue" with you.

My internet connection went down Tuesday. It happens. Normally, I call my ISP, I get transferred once or twice, until I get someone who knows what "ping the modem" means. He resets at his end, I fiddle around with stuff at my end, and I'm good to go. Down time, less than an hour. There have been times in the midst of wind storms, or wind-and-rain storms that cable internet and tv have gone down. I call to let them know I'm down to give them an idea of how big the area without service is. But I don't sweat it. I'm usually back up within 12 hours at most. No big.

Tuesday's outage was different.

I called my ISP and got their brand new voice-response customer service menu system. The first voice said "press one for service in english, press two for ser...*beep*" as I pressed one. The next voice said "Say one for technical support, blah blah blah."

I said "one."

The voice said, "Say two for accounting, blah blah blah blah."

I said "one!"

The voice said, "Say three for blah blahblah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah."

I said forcefully, "ONE!" (could it not hear me?)

The voice said, "Say four for blah blahblah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah."

I shouted, "ONE!"

The voice daid, "Say five for...blah blah ..."

"ONE!" (Was it broken?)

"Say..."

"ONE!"

"six..."

"ONE!"

"for..."

"ONE!"

"all..."

"ONE!"

"other..."

"ONE!"

"inquiries."

"ONE!"

"Say eight..."

"ONE!"

"to repeat..." (dear ghods no)

"ONE!"

"this menu..."

"ONE!"

The system gave a strangled squawk.

"ONE!"

And then processed my command.

I then got another menu."Say one for complete outage."

Outage or outrage? "ONE!"

"Say two if your tv ..."

"ONE!"

"reception is blah blah"

"ONE!"

"You can reset your tv box"

"ONE!"

"by holding down the"

"ONE!"

"power key on the "

"ONE!"

"front of the box until"

"ONE!"

"the word 'reboot' appears on the display."

This does not belong as part of the menu. Especially a menu I have to sit through in its entirety. "ONE!"

"Say three if it's..."

"ONE!" It's gotten to be a habit now, shouting "ONE" at the phone.

"regarding email."

"ONE!"

"Say four to repeat..."

"ONE!"

"this menu." Followed by another strangled squawk.

"ONE!"

Unfortunately, the system misheard my "ONE!" and proceeded to run thru the entire menu again. This time I realized the strangled squawk at the end of the menu was the prompt to speak, so I waited until it came around again. It would have been nice to have been told at the beginning that the voice-response system only listened after it bored you to tears with its entire menu. I would still have been irritated, but I wouldn't have added severe frustration to the mix. I was not anywhere close to being a happy camper.

"ONE!"

"Please hold while we transfer you to the next available representative."

Well, now I was at least in line. I got to listen to scratchy music-on-hold, occassional ads for additional services from my ISP, and a voice saying "we're so sorry you're still on hold...."

I got the usual first-filter person, who passed me on to tech support. I spoke with Donovan, who walked me thru various reset procedures, none of which worked. I realized later, I never saw the all-lights-flash-at-once reaction of someone at the other end sending a reset to my modem (see end of story). Donovan passed me to the next person, reassuring me that he had made notes in the file so I wouldn't have to do this all again.

Wrong.

The next person, who's name I don't remember, but who had less patience than I did at that point, proceeded to run me thru the exact same set of reset processed I'd just gone thru with Donovan.

I said, "I just did these with Donovan."

She said, "I need you to...."

I said, "Didn't Donovan write all this in my file?" If I didn't sound annoyed, I should have.

She said, "I have your file. I need you to..."

Fine. Whatever. I'll do it again. Happy-camper quotient going into negative numbers.

She said, "I need you to unplug your modem."

Did that.

She said, "Turn your modem over..."

I said, "There's a lot of cables back here. so this will take a minute or two. It's not an easy process." I was annoyed and made no effort to hide it. She started getting a bit sharp in return.

She said, "I need you to take the backup battery out of the modem. The door to the battery is on the bottom."

I said, "This will take a bit of work. I've got a lot of cables back here."

I don't quite remember the exact words, but she wanted to know if I kept my modem under a bunch of cables. She sounded incredulous, like how stupid could I be. I have a modem, with cable from ISP, power cord and cable running to router. I have a router, with power cord and three more cables running to various computers. I have all this sitting on top of my computer, a Shuttle (it's so cute), which has a power cord, a monitor cable, a keyboard cable, a mouse cable, and a scanner cable. The camera hooks into the front. All of this sits on a rack in my closet. If I do not want to break or dislodge any of this, I have to move things carefully. I also have most of this stuff tied out of the way, so the cats don't dislodge things when they bang around back there (they like to climb into my lap by coming up over the back of my desk - it's a cat thing).

I said, "I don't see a door to the battery on the bottom of the modem."

She said, in a sharp tone, "There is a door there, on the bottom of the modem."

I said, gently, "I see four screws, a lot of little holes, but no door."

She said, testily, "There IS a door on the bottom."

I said, firmly and precisely, "I see no door or doorlike object on the bottom of the modem."

In a tone usually resevered for talking with the terminally stupid, she said, "There ... is... a ... door... on the bottom,... or the side of the modem."

Ahhh, the side. Guess what? There it was, quite obvious, on the side.

I said, "I found it on the side. It's quite easy to see on the side. It wasn't on the bottom."

She started to say something and I cut her off, since it didn't sound like an apology for insisting the door was on the bottom when there were other possibilities.

I said, "I have opened the door, and I'm taking the battery out. Ok, it's out now."

She said, "Wait a minute before putting..."

I cut her off again, and said, "Yes, so the capacitors can discharge."

After a moment, she said to put the battery back. I did. I told her what lights were flashing and what lights were steady. She asked if I had internet access. I said I did not. She said she couldn't do anything more, that a technician would have to come out and test the line at my end. I asked if there would be a problem if I took this modem by the office and swapped it for a new one. She said it wouldn't do any good (how supportive) and I needed (needed?) to make an appointment to have a technician come out. I asked if I could swap out my modem anyway, as I'd like to see if that worked. She said she didn't see how that would help, but I could do it if I wanted. She then said, wouldn't I like to make an appointment now, as a backup in case that didn't work. I made the appointment. Appointments available were: Stay home all day Wednesday and wait for someone (sorry, no good) or have a specific appointment on Thursday. I took the 3pm to 5pm slot on Thursday.

I then went by the office and got a new modem, just to see if that would help. Stranger things have been known to happen. Since I no longer had a cable phone, I got a much smaller modem, with no battery backup. I asked if I would have to have a reset or do something else to get it to work. The customer service rep said all I had to do was plug it in. Cool. I also left a complaint about the voice-lack-of-recognition system used for customer service. I told the man at the counter that he could tell management that if that system was still in place the next time I had to call customer service, I would be looking for a new ISP. It pissed me off that badly.

I took my modem home, plugged it in, and ... nothing. Still no connection. OK, the squirrels eat my telephone wire regularly, maybe they've moved over to cable wire. Let's wait until Thursday and see what the technician says.

-----

Wedneday, for fun and games, I called customer service. I wanted to get dialup access, so I wouldn't be so cut off. I was going thru internet withdrawals. Guess what? They no longer had that nasty voice recognition system in place. I felt a bit better. However, to be able to use dialup, I had to download... yes, download... the dialup software. Um, I don't have cable right now. Gee, I should have gotten the dialup software before my system went down. If I'd known it was going to be down that long, I would have. Since the meaning of your communication is the response you get, I must have sounded like a raving lunatic, because the poor guy was very carefully telling me to go to a friend's house, download the software, put it on a disk, bring the disk home, put the disk in my computer.... Very carefully, very gently, very politely. I realized I was not in the best frame of mind to communicate rationally, humbly thanked him and went away.

-----

Thursday, 5pm arrives. Technician has not. I call my ISP, wanting to know where my technician is. Customer service rep says the ticket has been closed out. Technician arrived, found nothing wrong, and left. Sorry, technician did not arrive. I'm still sitting here, waiting, without service. Customer service rep apologized and gave me a $20 credit for missing their "on-time guarantee." Great. So what about getting someone out here? This rep sent a query to dispatch to find out what happened. She recommended I call back in 15 minutes, as the query should have caused dispatch to put a response back into the system.

I called back. It seems the technician had tested "outside" and found nothing wrong. However, I still don't have an internet connection.

I said, "I have been waiting since Tuesday for this to be resolved. I want it resolved today."

She said, "I'll check with dispatch about getting a technician out today. May I put you on hold?" And how else do I expect you to be able to talk to someone else but put me on hold?

I said yes. And on hold I went.

She got back to me and said there were no technicians available to come out to my home tonight.

I said, "That is unacceptable. I want this resolved today."

She said, "We have no technicians available. You will have to make an appointment to have a technician come out..."

And what, leave me sitting around again, waiting for someone who doesn't have the common courtesy to knock on my door and tell me he didn't find anything? I think not.

I said, "That is unacceptable. I have waited as long as I intend to wait..."

She said, "I understand your frustration, but we don't have a technician that can come out today."

Bowing to the inevitable, I said, "Ok, when can a technician come out?"

She said, "Monday is the first..."

I was not happy. I said, "That is not acceptable. I have been waiting since Tuesday for this to be resolved. I know you understand I'm frustrated, but I am not going to sit around until Monday waiting for another technician to come by. I've already had a technician come by, without the common courtesy to knock on my door to tell me what he'd found, leaving me sitting here, waiting and wondering what happened. This needs to be resolved tonight or the next call I make will be to another service provider. I want to talk to someone in tech support."

She said, "I can certainly transfer you to tech support, but would you like to make an appointment to have a service technician come out on Monday, just in case this doesn't work?"

Not a chance. I said, very precisely and firmly, "No, I do not. If this does not work, the next call will be to another service provider."

She transferred me.

I explained my problem to the service tech, including that I was very annoyed and he was going to get some of the fallout. He was very nice about it. We went thru the unplug and reset routine again, just because, just to double check.

Then all the lights on my modem lit up, then started blinking in sequence. I said, wow, you've done something at your end. He said, yes, he'd sent a reset to my modem. I kept him apprised of the status of the lights, when and how they went on and off. He asked if I still had two blinking lights and two steady lights. I said, no. I had one of each. He said to press the power button on the front of the modem. I did. And got two blinking lights and two steady lights and an internet connection. I said, is that all it took? I went thru three days of waiting, and aggravation and waiting, and that's all it took? That I sat here waiting for a technician to come by, who didn't have the courtesy to knock on my door and tell me he'd checked? That in all probability the two techs I had spoken with on Tuesday had failed to send a reset and this could all have been solved Tuesday?

He said, "Probably."

----

Yes, computer geeks have issues with customer service, too. *sigh*

Can I ask you a question?

A friend just sent me an email, listing nine things "I hate about everyone." One of the items was "People who ask 'Can I ask you a question?'.... "

When asked that, my reply is, "You just did."

I actually had someone, call him John, say, "Can I ask you another question?"

To which I replied, "You just did."

John then said, "Can I ask you an important question?"

My reply, "You only get three questions, and you just used them up."

John said I was mean and all he wanted to do was ask a question.

I said, "If you'd just asked the question instead of continually asking if you could ask, you would have had your answer and been on your way."

Then John said, "Well, I wanted to ask you if.....?"

"So ask me."

"I just did."

"No, you said you wanted to ask me."

"I just wanted to ask if...?"

"So ask me."

I finally gave the nitwit the answer he wanted, because he just didn't get that I was trying to get him to stop asking if he could ask, and just ask. He was so determined to get an answer out of ME that I wouldn't be rid of him till I answered. The positive on this: He never asked me another question.

The hardest part was not breaking out in laughter. I really did want the boob to break the habit of "can I ask...?" and laughing wouldn't have helped. As it turned out, nothing helped.

Branding is everything

Getting your brand name out there is important. So large companies have been putting their names on anything that holds still. Or not. But you gotta wonder about overlapping branding, y'know?

NASCAR has this great race, called the Bank of America 500. It's held at the Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Well, I guess having a bank sponsor something related to home improvement projects does make some sense.

Smaller government

White House Office of Management and Budget estimates government spending will grow to 20.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2006 from 18.5 percent when President George W. Bush took office in 2001.

Isn't the Republican Party the party of smaller government?

Tools of conquest

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts... attitudes... prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone."

Closing narration by Rod Serling from The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. Read it again, and hear Rod Serling's voice and delivery.

The story? From here, in brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.

Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on.

As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.

An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.

The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves."

It was written in 1960. It could have been written today.

Just in case you were wondering...

The problem with allowing a big cheese like our President to flout the law of the land (all for the good of Americans, you understand) is that it sets a pattern of behavior.

It seems Hewlett-Packard has seen fit to follow suit.

Fox News
and
LA Times
so far

Did it ever occur to you that those laws were there for a reason?

Feel safe and secure yet?

Instead Of?

According to a just read headline (NYTimes):

"Going into a critical pre-election stretch, Congressional Republican leaders will concentrate on national security issues instead of immigration."

Um... I thought a lot of the immigration hoopla was based on security concerns. You know, all those nasty terrorists coming in over our unsecured borders, that kind of thing.

Er....

How Can We Make America SAFER?

We can't.

We can require identification to be shown at every state border we cross, but
-we wouldn't be America any more.

We could require people to check in with their local officials if they want to leave their neighborhood, letting the officials know where they're going and why, but
-we wouldn't be America any more.

We could embed RFID chips in all visitors to our citites or states so they could be tracked, but
-we wouldn't be America any more.

We could record every phone call, email, text messaage or other electronic transmission sent anywhere, to make sure we catch any potential terrorists, but
-we wouldn't be America any more.

We could set up anonymous hotlines where neighbor could report on neighbor, reporting any suspicious activity, but
-we wouldn't be America any more.

We could have government enforcers randomly stop people on the street, in their cars, or in their places of work, and ask for proof the person is a citizen, but
-we wouldn't be America any more.

We could require everyone to prove they never spoke with anyone who might be a terrorist, prove they are in no way related to anyone who might be a terrorist, prove they aren't related to anyone in a country that has terrorists, but not only would we not be America any more, but everyone would be suspect -- and without even going as far as six degrees of separation.

We could ban the sale of any product for which it is believed it might ever be used in any way, in any combination, to terrorize people, and live in a kindergarten-safety-scissor world. I'm not sure if we'd be America any more, but we sure as hell wouldn't like it.

We could allow the President to suspend the right to habeas corpus, allowing us to arrest anyone suspected of or accused by their neighbors of terrorism, citizen or not, without having to bring them to trial,
-as long as the President says it is done in the name of protecting the security of Americans.

We could allow the President alone to decide which electronic communications to monitor without resorting to warrants,
-as long as the President says it is in the name of protecting the security of Americans.

We could allow the President alone to define what consititutes being an enemy combatant, or an unlawful enemy combatant, without stating the definition of these terms,
-as long as the President says it is in the name of protecting the security of Americans.

We could allow the President alone to decide to export persons in American custody to foreign countries where they can be "vigorously questioned,"
-as long as the President says it is in the name of protecting the security of Americans.

We could allow the President alone to decide which actions are "state secrets" and therefore not subject to judicial reivew, or any review at all,
-as long as the President says it is in the name of protecting the security of Americans.

We could allow the President alone to choose whether he will enforce laws passed by Congress, choose how to define "enforce" and choose to change that definition randomly and without explanation,
-as long as the President says it is in the name of protecting the security of Americans.

We could change airline baggage requirements without advance notice, whenever someone reports any method for damaging planes, without checking the validity of the method,
-as long as the President says it is in the name of protecting the security of Americans.

We could do all those things. We have done and are doing some of those things.

As long as people are allowed to move around without checks, as long as people are allowed to carry things with them without checks, we will be unsafe.

How far do we go in the name of safety before we stop being Americans?

Twisted Kitty

This is an un-PhotoShopped picture of a friend's cat. She came home from shopping, saw the cat, grabbed the camera and snapped the shot before MuMu got up. I have her permission to share the picture.

Identity theft and warrantless wiretapping

Many supporters of warrantless wiretapping, or other means of mass data gathering by the government, say "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

1) Ever hear of Identity Theft? ID thieves can steal more than your economic data. Data is gathered on you by a company called Choice Point, that claims: "ChoicePoint is the leading provider of identification and credential verification services for business and government." They have information on medical records, legal filings you've made, arrest records you may have. Or someone else has done in your name. Do you know if your records show if you've done anything illegal? Do an Internet search on "Criminal Identity Theft" and be prepared to be horrified. And your credit report will record anyone who's ever used your address. Some guy applied for a job at the local junior college and used my home address. His name now shows up on my credit report as someone who lives at my address. And in some background check somewhere, that can be interpreted as "he lives here." If he gets arrested for something, am I now considered an accessory?

2) Ever hear of Data Entry Error? Anyone who types knows even the best typist makes errors. Anybody who's ever had to deal with massive amounts of data is aware of typographic errors. I heard that a typo in a Nebraska law (I think it was Nebraska) that misplaced a semicolon, made slavery legal in that state until the state legislature could pass a correction. I check my credit reports every year. Every couple of years, someone else's credit data ends up on my report. Since I can't see the underlying data, I assume a transposed set of numbers somewhere. And the above mentioned Criminal Identity Theft can also be caused by "typoed identification numbers into criminal database."

I don't have (much of) a problem with data gathering. It does help track criminal activities. But I'd like to know that someone is guarding the guardians. "Checks and Balances" isn't just a pretty phrase. Sometimes knowing someone is looking over your shoulder is a bloody pain in the ass: Some second-guesser or Monday-morning quarterback is going to nitpick my work. But on the other hand, knowing someone is looking over your shoulder keeps you from taking that first (or second) step down the path to criminality.

So, have you done anything wrong? Or has someone done something wrong in your name and you won't know until the government shows up on your doorstep and takes you away?

When the CIA invests in software...

When the CIA invests in a company that makes identification software, one begins to wonder why. Then again, maybe we don't need to wonder why.

From an eweek article, found at

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2004323,00.asp
The following is just a segment of the entire article. It's a short read.

Initiate Systems' IdentityHub software uses a variety of identification protocols to determine whether records stored under similar names in different databases refer to the same or different patients. It also uses such demographic information as birthdays and address to match records to people who have used different names.

The software helps companies find stored information about clients or patients in real time, and it also helps to identify and delete duplicate records. It has also been used to quickly find prescription information when patients enter the emergency department.

. . .

"Working with In-Q-Tel allows us to provide the intelligence community with already proven technology that directly addresses national security needs. The exposure within the intelligence community that we have already experienced as a result of In-Q-Tel's involvement has been tremendous,". . .

The NSA has stated it can't handle all the data coming in from the warrantless wiretapping. The NSA can't correlate it all. It's too much data. Well, this little program may solve that.

Privacy pundits fear RFID because "THEY" will be able to track every move we make. With this correlation software, we can be traced by the tracks we leave in the electronic economy.

Not bad for a Texas oil promoter

Question posed by Jack Cafferty of CNN: What does a federal judge's ruling that the National Security Agency spying program is illegal mean for President Bush?

It means a clean sweep for President-King George III: He ignores and violates the law as stated in the Constitution. He ignores and violates the law as stated by the Congress. And now he can ignore and violate the decision made by the judiciary. (And on other issues, has ignored and violated international treaties signed by the U.S.) Not bad for a Texas oil promoter.

Universal constants

Two constants in our world are 1) every culture has a flat bread and 2) every religiious/belief system group has prayer elements common to all. Please understand that I use the word "every" loosely. I'm sure somewhere there's a culture or group that does things differently. Ditto with the word "prayer." Just suspend your picknits for a bit, ok?

Flatbread: tortillas, pita, pizza crust

Prayer: clearly visualize/verbalize what you want, release the energy into the universe.

Examples are:

Christian prayer: visualize/verbalize what you want and release it to God to deal with

Buddist prayer: visualize/verbalize what you want and release the energy to the universe

Pagan prayer: visualize/verbalize what you want and release the energy to diety of choice

Many, many, many goal setting systems: visualize/verbalize what you want and focus on it to cause the goal to manifest (from the energy of the universe)

Not having studied lots of religious/belief systems, if my readership (such as it isn't right now) would like to point out such a group that doesn't do a variation on this visualize and release, let me know. Or one that doesn't have a flatbred, either.

Most of us read the beginning...

Most of us read the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, its ringing words of freedom. Well, people, it's time to read a little further down the page.

...the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

[sections cut - read the original at Declaration of Independence

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

[sections cut - read the original at Declaration of Independence

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For those of you who support President-King George III, support his violation of the Constitution, support his violation of the rulings of our courts, what say you to the idea of Hillary getting those self same rights? If those rights are inherent in the presidency, the next president gets to do them to you.

All that evil needs to triumph is that good men do nothing

'nuf said

Strategy

Strategy:

A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime
after those creating it have left the organization.

Trades

George W. Bush is trying to give us the illusion of safety in trade for allowing him to violate international treaties, our own Constitution, and the laws and judgments of our own government.

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you cannot trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
      ---Miles Vorkosigan, Memory

Your Federal Reserve Bank account has been accessed!

Phishing is an ever-growing problem. Even if you realize the website to which you are directed is not the one from your bank, you are still vulnerable to a number of things.

• The most common vulnerability, of course, is entering your username and password. The phisher now has that, and can access your account(s) at will.
• You can, and often do, get cookies containing malicious code from these phishing websites. Since most sites require you to be able to have cookies enabled to be able to use the site, most people accept most cookies. Most are harmless marketing tools. Those few that aren't, however, can contain software called "key loggers," that logs all keystrokes you make and then forwards them to the phisher. This means every time you type in your username and password, the phisher gets it. For every account you access. Personally, I delete my cookies once a day, and more often if I've gone to a web store to buy something. If I get popups, I very definitely delete my cookies. Most are harmless, but I can't tell which are which. And don't want to take the time to learn.
• And since Microsoft makes its software so very helpful, Internet Explorer will easily accept what is called a "browser helper object," to help make your browsing experience friendly and helpful. Your Yahoo or Google browser bar is a browser helper object, one you chose to add. And Yahoo and Google want to continue to have your business, so they aren't going to do anything to ruin their reputations. Going to the wrong website and clicking on the wrong thing will get you malicious, possibly invisible BHOs. Your virus software often does not catch these. Try searching for "spyware removal" software, which can get rid of most of these. I spent two weeks and several phone calls working with spyware removal companies, to find one such. The hackers had changed its name and changed where it was saved on the system. I found it, finally, and reported it.

I have a list of email addresses from various companies I forward phishing email to. ("Your Citi account has been violated!" yeah right.) The two you will find most useful are:

reportphishing@antiphishing.org

spam@uce.gov

Just so you know, the Federal Reserve Bank doesn't have individual accounts.

Suffer Not This King!

Yesterday, a holiday was celebrated in some circles, a day celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Yesterday, speeches were made by all and sundry, some good, some not. Every tv news report I listened to had coverage and commentary about the speech made by New Orleans Mayor Nagin, but only C-SPAN covered the speech by Vice President Gore. (full text)

A friend quoted this poem by Kipling. It's amazing how some things never change. We're still having issues with crazy George III.

The Old Issue
October 9, 1899
(Outbreak of Boer War)

Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets,
  "Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.
"It is the King--the King we schooled aforetime! "
  (Trumpets in the marshes-in the eyot at Runnymede!)

"Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," peal the Trumpets,
  "Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall.
"It is the King!"--inexorable Trumpets--
  (Trumpets round the scaffold af the dawning by Whitehall!)

  .   .   .   .   .   .   .

"He hath veiled the Crown And hid the Scepter," warn the Trumpets,
  "He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will.
"Hard die the Kings--ah hard--dooms hard!" declare the Trumpets,
  Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill!

Ancient and Unteachable, abide--abide the Trumpets!
  Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings
Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets--
  Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings!

All we have of freedom, all we use or know--
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw--
Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law.

Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing
Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the king.

Till our fathers 'stablished,, after bloody years,
How our King is one with us, first among his peers.

So they bought us freedom-not at little cost--
Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost.

Over all things certain, this is sure indeed,
Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed.

Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure.
Whining "He is weak and far"; crying "Time will cure."

(Time himself is witness, till the battle joins,
Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people's loins.)

Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace.
Suffer not the old King here or overseas.

They that beg us barter--wait his yielding mood--
Pledge the years we hold in trust-pawn our brother's blood--

Howso' great their clamour, whatsoe'er their claim,
Suffer not the old King under any name!

Here is naught unproven--here is naught to learn.
It is written what shall fall if the King return.

He shall mark our goings, question whence we came,
Set his guards about us, as in Freedom's name.

He shall take a tribute, toll of all our ware;
He shall change our gold for arms--arms we may not bear.

He shall break his Judges if they cross his word;
He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord.

He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring
Watchers 'neath our window, lest we mock the King --

Hate and all division; hosts of hurrying spies;
Money poured in secret, carrion breeding flies.

Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay,
These shall deal our Justice: sell-deny-delay.

We shall drink dishonour, we shall eat abuse
For the Land we look to--for the Tongue we use.

We shall take our station, dirt beneath his feet,
While his hired captains jeer us in the street.

Cruel in the shadow, crafty in the sun,
Far beyond his borders shall his teachings run.

Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled,
Laying on a new land evil of the old--

Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain--
All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again.

Here is nought at venture, random nor untrue
Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew.

Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid:
Step for step and word for word--so the old Kings did!

Step by step, and word by word: who is ruled may read.
Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed--

All the right they promise--all the wrong they bring.
Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King !

Happy Yule!

Whatever your belief system, y'canna change the laws of physics. This is the day where the sun has reached its southern most point. It's in the sky in the northern hemisphere the shortest number of hours; in the southern hemisphere, the longest number of hours; and in areas south of the antarctic circle, they have been having "midnight sun" for some time now. North of the arctic circle, people have once again had to put their faith in other people telling them about "sun" because they don't see it. The people in the middle get to watch the sun wander from one side to the other, and wonder what a "season" is.

Celebrate! The short days will lengthen, or the long days will shorten. The earth moves, rotates, changes, grows, dies, and grows again. Celebrations include food, good friends, remembrances, and plans for the future. Enjoy!

Should ISPs be accountable for overall Internet security?

How?

Let's start with a basic understanding of what you're looking at. Right now, it's my blog. It has graphics, text, formatting, and all these pieces sit on the blogspot.com server. When you got here, your browser software asked the blogspot.com server for those pieces. Blogspot said sure, no problem, and started to send them.

Due to the way the internet was originally designed (and unless you want to spends billions and billions of dollars moving everybody to a new system, you're stuck with it), things are broken up into smaller byte-sized pieces, wrappped with identifiers called headers, and tossed out into the maelstrom. I don't have a clue how many packets my blog gets broken into, but let's use the number thirty(30) as a working number. Blogspot.com, point A, sends the first five packets out to point B. Point B suddenly gets buried in stuff from somewhere else, so blogspot.com sends the next five packets to point C. Point C is doing ok, so blogspot sends the remaining twenty packets to point C, too. So now we've got five going one way and twenty-five going another. Point B has a good connection down the line, so it sends the five packets on to point D, which in turn connects to points E, F and G. G is your home ISP, and they hand those five packets to your browser. Meanwhile, point C hands off five packets to point H, which says everything is fine so point C hands off five more. But wait! Point H suddenly gets a bunch of stuff from somewhere else, and point C now must hand off the remaining fifteen packets to point I. Point H is so overwhelmed, it can only hand off the ten packets two at a time to point J, who in turn hands them to K, L, O, Q and Beta. Somewhere in there, they finally make it to G, your ISP, and then to your browser. Meanwhile, the fifteen currenly at point I get handed off as a group to point M, which again due to traffic, breaks them up into five packet pieces and hands them off respectively to N, P and S. N's got a direct connection to G. P has to send its packets thru R, then Y and then to G. S has to send one packet each to T, U, V, Z and alpha. Alpha needs to hand off to X before it can get to G, but the rest can hand them all to point G, which gives them to your browser. Your browser now can put them all together and you get my blog.

Everything gets sent that way.

The $64,000 question is this: How can your ISP (point G) check every single packet for the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of users, without slowing down your I-want-it-now web surfing experience, correctly identify that piece as a virus and not as the next version of Norton anti-virus download or the picture of my cat, without having all the pieces, when all the pieces don't come together, in the same order, or even at all? If you can answer that question successfully, I guarantee that you will be richer than Bill Gates in less than two years.

In the mean time, get virus checking software on your computer. Your ISP can check your email because all the pieces have come together on the email server, but everything else is yours. Your computer is the only place all the bits and pieces come together to make a blog, a shopping website or that ugly monster virus.

Christmas?

There once was a holiday called Yule-ish
The end of the year it did rule-ish.
Romans tried taking it,
Christian holiday making it,
Our pocketbooks say they were foolish.

Cats n more cats

Sleeping with cats in the winter
Is comfy and warm, I s'pose.
But try finding a way to turn over
When 'tween cats and spouse you iz squoze.

When cats and spouse get cozy
And they take all the blankets away,
It's warmer to move to the sofa
Where my covers are safe from the fray.

Blackberries

Research In Motion did borrow
A patent, much to its sorrow.
Altho the courts ruled
NTP owns this tool,
Royalty payment's a no-show.

In the hallowed halls of gov'ment
Blackberry notes are frequently sent.
Judge Spencer did rule
To shut down this tool,
Until royalties due NTP are sent.

CNN article

Hurricane Katrina

A storm with some claim to fame,
One Hurricane Katrina by name.
Politics most dire
Set DC on fire.
And poor Katrina gets all of the blame.

Leftovers

The feasting is done,
The leftovers diminished.
What's for sandwiches
When the turkey's finished?

Copyright and times of change

Sent by a friend, as an introduction to an article on the GoogleBook/ search/reprint issue (more on the controversy here:

New frontiers - where do they allow us to go - do we want to go there? Will some aromatherapist figure out a way to infuse the site with the smell of wood pulp and ink? Tactile screens? Dog-ear the corners of screens ? What about those potato chip or Oreo crumbs in the seams? ... Important issues - oh, yes, and of course -what about copyright laws and compensation ... that too.

Where will they allow us to go? Places we didn't expect when we left.

Do we want to go? Do we have a choice? The choices I see are those of "who's in charge?" We will go, but with whom, and with what guidelines? Who decides, and how?

When books went from hand-scribing to moveable type, the trauma to ownership and authorship was traumatic. We are once again, facing that same trauma. For any who think all works should be free to any who want them, I have one question: Will you go to work every day for nothing? Don't tell me "it's different." It's work. It should be compensated. "It's different because I don't have to (read/watch/buy)." Oh? Try living without TV shows, movies, books, magazines, games. Completely without. Don't watch tv, don't go to any movie, don't rent a movie, don't read anything except instruction manuals that come with the products you buy, don't play any games at all. The people who create these things need to pay rent, buy food, pay for utilities to keep warm in the winter.

We are in a time of transition, which is always traumatic. We will figure it out. We may have to go back to the patronage system, whereby the rich "keep" artists of various sorts, who create for the patron, a la Michelangelo and others.

I think what Google is doing is great. My local bookstores don't stock much in the way of selection these days, just the absolute latest and/or most popular. I like to browse books new to me to see if the writing style is one that I can handle before I buy the whole book. And I still like to buy books. You can't take a computer into the bathroom. You most certainly don't want to use one while you soak in the tub.

In terms of having out-of-copyright books available online, the Gutenberg Project is already doing some of that. I've done some proofreading for them. Quite a lot of out-of-copyright books are also out of print, the only source being used book stores (I recommend www.abebooks.com). How many wonderful stories of life-and-times were lost, along with an understanding of the culture that spawned them, when the library at Alexandria burned?

We live in times of change. I'm not saying we have to like it, or that the change will be easy. We can shape that change, or we can stand on a soapbox and scream that the tide stop.

Jim and I both are personally bleeding from the changing times. We have either lost jobs or job opportunities because of shifts in the computer field. Jim is currently working as a security guard, as jobs in the computer field move out of the country, and what's left go to younger, less expensive employees. So, unlike Steve Forbes who speaks of the trauma of change without ever having it damage his lifestyle, I speak from the emergency room of life.

And choose to enjoy the change.

Halloween's delights

Last year, Disney Hall held a screening of Phantom of the Opera, the 1927 silent film, accompanied by the Disney Hall organ, on Halloween. It was wonderful. It had been restored, with some Technicolor bits thrown in. Apparently some of the original had been filmed in Technicolor, and the Phantom's red cape shines brightly on the screen. The movie itself was riveting enough, I rarely watched the octopus-masquerading-as-human who was playing the organ.

This year, they held another silent-with-organ movie on Halloween, the 1922(?) version of Nosferatu. It did not survive the test of time as well as Phantom. It was filled with what are now seriously funny cliches, such as having the bad-guy rise from his coffin as if he was laying on a board. One could only tell day scenes from night scenes by the action and/or dress of the actors. The bad guy, Nosferatu, however, would still make a good villian today - not at all the dashing Dracula one normally thinks of.

The conversation on the drive home was "what will they do next year?" One I'd like to see, but not until Halloween falls on a Satuday, is Metropolis. Why a Saturday, you ask? Because Metropolis is quite long, and if shown on a Saturday, could start earlier and have an intermission, without running into "We've got work tomorrow," at least for most of us. Several silent shorts, one of which was a 20-minute Frankenstein, would also be fun.

Halloween - another harvest festival

This is the third and last pagan harvest festival. The moon is waning, two days short of new. Not what one normally thinks of when "harvest festival" comes around. The "Harvest Moon" actually comes in September, this year September 17th. The full moon in October is called the "Blood Moon" or "Hunter's Moon".

Halloween as practiced in the United States is an amalgam of practices. The name, Halloween, is derived from Hallow's eve, or the day before All Hallows Day, the day Roman Catholics, and later, other Christian groups, celebrate all saints, specified and unspecified. The Irish brought their Celtic-derived observance of seasonal change and festival of the dead. Pagans celebrate "samhain," and in true Celtic fashion, it has a pronunciation totally at odds with its current spelling: "sow-in," rhymes with "cow-in." It comes from the Gaelic "sam," which means summer; "fuin" means "end." So, "Samhain" means "end of the warm season." Contrary to many web sites, there is and has never been a god of death or a sun god with that name.

Many believe the door between this world and the next is thinner at this time. This has resulted in beliefs ranging from evil spirits roaming the earth in search of bodies to take or souls to steal. Others believe this is the time to contact those who have gone before, looking for guidance or just to pay their respects.

But that's not FAIR!

When confronted with the cry "But that's not fair!" some reply "who said life has to be fair?" For those who need a comeback to that, try "Who said unfairness must be tolerated just because it exists?"

As a human being, with the ability to think of "future" and the ability to learn from the past, the concept of "fairness" and my application of that concept is what differentiates me from the bare-bones reactive universe.

---

"The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature."

~Arthur D. Hlavaty

Good things in life

It's been said for years the good things are immoral, illegal or fattening. It has now been pointed out that you can add "causes cancer in rats" to that list.

"Immoral" makes most people avoid you, and the people who do hang around must be watched continuously, which takes a lot of time and effort. "Illegal" carries its own penalty. I'm living with the results of "fattening." And I've come to the conclusion that living "causes cancer in rats." Since Death is inevitable, doesn't that make how you live the important piece in this equation?

Living well is feeling good, doing good and being good. "Doing good" is just what it says. Most of us know what that means. "Being good" means living what you believe. I've met some people who want you to join their church, but don't follow the teachings of their own religious icons. Or their statement "love thy neighbor as thyself" means they hate themselves passionately.

"Feeling good" is applicable both physically and emotionally. I feel pretty good emotionally but my physical health needs attention paid to it (the ravages of age and all that). I've started on a diet and I'm working out at my local gym. Because I'll live longer? In my belief system, what is a few more years in the face of eternal life? I'm here as long as God wants me here. So why the weight loss and gym thing? Because my joints are telling me they don't like the extra weight. Pain makes me grumpy. Grumpy makes people avoid me. I don't like being alone. Healthy feels better, for me and the people around me.

On the other side of that, depriving myself completely of the things that I like to eat would make me grumpy. Grumpy makes people avoid me.... I have a friend who was a vegetarian when I met him. He touted the benefits of vegetarianism, often. I told him in no uncertain terms, God made me an omnivore and omnivore is what I will remain. I'll cut back on red meat, but you take away my barbeque baby back ribs and I'll rip your heart out. Mumble-mumble years later, I'm still an omnivore. My friend is an omnivore, too.

Ice-cream-and-maybe-cancer vs. no-ice-cream-and-maybe-no-cancer. This is a choice? Bring on the ice cream!

Some things never change....

Mostly because we don't pay any attention.

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.
~John G. Pollard

JOHN G. POLLARD (1871-1937)
Served 1930-1934, Democrat

Governor Pollard was an attorney, legal scholar, and former Attorney General from Williamsburg. He guided Virginia through the early days of the Depression without a budget deficit or a tax increase. He also reorganized county government, established workmen's compensation and personally helped establish The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

From the The Governors of Virginia website

Happy Mabon

Another pagan harvest festival.

I'm enjoying the fruits of the harvest -- the world's most pungent onions seem to grow in my garden. I can't get rhubarb to grow, but the chilis are doin' fine! And the grapes growing on my grape tree smell and taste wonderful. (Grape tree? Yes, the loon who planted things in my yard all those years ago planted a lemon tree and a grape vine very close together. So I have a lemon-vine-and-grape-tree combo in that corner.)

Don't forget the financing....

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Everybody else still sees a rock pile until someone gets the permits, files the environmental impact report, and actually gets the guys with the money to do more than say "What a great idea! It's too risky for us to finance."

Failure

Bershere's Formula for Failure:
There are only two kinds of people who fail: those who listen to nobody... and those who listen to everybody.