None of the Above

[ random thoughts weblogs ] 2001-01-31

How big of a jerk am I? Okay, so when I sent in my entry for my weblog to the SXSW web competition, they sent me a note saying I'd be eligible for a discounted ticket into the Interactive conference.

I waited. I heard nothing. So I decided to volunteer and get a free pass instead of paying out the nose for a ticket.

I signed up for FIFTY hours to get a certain kind of pass, about a week and a half ago.

Then, they send me a note saying "Oh, your weblog sucks so you won't get an award, but you can get up to five tickets to the conference for a mere $135 apiece" (paraphrased). Hmm, thinks I. This would end up making my volunteer work worth something a little over two bucks an hour. Hmm.

Well, you can probably imagine what I'm going to do. I'm going to buy a ticket and tell the volunteer people that I'm sorry. And I feel a bit like a jerk, but seriously it would require me to use up too darn many days off for the conference PLUS the volunteering - more vacation days than I've earned to date. Which means when I quit, my pay would be docked. Hmm, I don't like that. Plus I wouldn't have much time to schmooze and see the panels I want to see, and so on.

They only recently released the specific schedules (info I didn't have when I had to sign up for specific volunteer shifts). And in a way it's their own dang fault for not telling me what kind of discount I could get *before* the volunteer call. But I know I'm just rationalizing - I *do* feel like a jerk. A bit. They have plenty of volunteers, really. It's just tough because I hate it when I duck out of things. And in this case I know several of the crew chiefs whose teams I volunteered for personally (they used to work here, and one of them still does). But I think they'll understand. Sigh.

So... it looks like they're going to have some cool stuff at the conference, and I'd like to meet other webloggers & cool internet people (at the conference as well as at parties). Maybe it won't be so great, but at least I'll be able to see what it's like.

And get this: Scott McCloud is going to be there. Oh, I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy! He's one of my absolute favorite authors of all time. His book Understanding Comics is absolutely stunning - every time I read it I gain another deeper level of understanding. He touches on the history of comics, semiotics, icons, panel-to-panel transitions (types, how they work, how they're used differently in Japan vs. the U.S.), and on and on. It's fabulous. And his sequel, Reinventing Comics, is great as well, as is his online work.

So... if you're a person who wants to come to SXSW, and you need a cheap ticket, I might be able to help you out. If you're one of the first three persons who asks, that is. (Tickets 4 & 5 are reserved for me & a pal). Technically you'd uh, have to be part of my uh, web company or something, such as it is :). (read: very loosely organized). And I would definitely prefer you to send the money for your ticket before I have to hand over the cash to the SXSW people. I have to make the order by February 9th, so that's the drop-dead date if you're still thinking about it. Let me know, the sooner the better...

[ good humor ] 2001-01-31

This guy is clever: I blogged a humorous write-up of a crappy experiment by this guy last week, and I also found something else funny at his site - a hilarious description of a botched attempt to change a network card under Windows.

I haven't done this exact task, but I have experienced similar raging frustration in the face of completely incompetent computers...

[ body food rants ] 2001-01-31

I feel like crap today. And I just thought that you should know. Eeeeuuuugh. I brought my ibuprofen, though, so that should help. And I brought some comfort food, including the Roberts family special Cream Cheese N Chive Dip. And I get to have as many Pepsis as I want today. I sure I hope I feel better tomorrow, when I start the first day of my two-day doula training.

I'm pretty sure I'll be better, since this sort of thing usually has one bad day and then gets better. Sometimes it's hard to be a woman, as Tammy Wynette said, and it has nothing to do with giving all your love to just one man.

But of course this is only one component of how bad I feel. Oh well. I think I need a "whine" category - rants just doesn't cover it when I'm feeling self-pity instead of anger. Of course, I can no longer add new categories at my whim, but that'll change when I switch everything over to thirdhand. Muahahahha!!!

So here's the dip. Warning: ADDICTIVE. Once when we were just little bitty kids, my mom made a recipe of this stuff because company was coming over, and before they arrived, my brother and I got to it first. My brother ate all the chips and I ate all the dip. Smeared all over my face, even.

Roberts Family Cream Cheese & Chive Dip
One standard-size block o cream cheese (regular Philly recommended)
A little bit of milk (a few tablespoons or so)
Chives - fresh if at all possible. You can add some freeze dried ones if you must, but it's just not the same flavor.
Potato Chips - Ruffles recommended, but Lay's work well too.
Let the cream cheese sit out on the counter for awhile - this is the preferred, "lazy" method. Or if you're in a hurry, stick it in the microwave on half power for about 20 seconds, and check it with a fork to see if it's slightly mushy. If not, nuke it a little bit more, but don't overdo it.
Put the slightly softened cream cheese in a bowl. Add a little milk, a tablespoon or two or so. Mix up the milk and cream cheese with a fork until it's smooth. Add extra milk if needed to create the desired consistency (softer if you don't want to use dip knives, and you have thin potato chips, for instance).
Wash your chives, then chop them very finely. Add them to the cream cheese, and stir until uniformly chivey. Test the flavor with a chip and the dip that's remaining on the fork. Hide the dip before your company comes over so you won't be tempted.
It is contrary to the spirit of the dip to use low-calorie or low-fat ingredients - this is a once-in-a-while kind of treat, so you might as well go all out. But of course it's up to you. Some recent heretics have suggested that adding seasoned salt to the dip adds flavor, but my brother and I know that it merely adulterates the purity of the cream cheese & chive dip experience.
Enjoy!

So now I get to dig in to my dip. Aren't you jealous? You can watch on the webcam as my troubles melt away with each bite...

[ rants ] 2001-01-30

Today was a lot better than yesterday: But it was still really, really annoying. To wit:

I go to return the videos this morning, and some stupid pedestrians stand in the road right in front of my car as I'm pulling in to park, causing me to block traffic from various directions. Pedestrian #1 gets a clue and steps back to the curb, but Pedestrian #2 stands there staring at me like a deer caught in headlights, unable to move, apparently. I in turn raise my hands in disbelief and give her a look that says: "Go across the street or get back on the curb - make a fucking decision, lady!". Eventually, she did, but it took her *far* too long.
It took me twenty minutes to find a fricking bowling ball today, and still the one I got sucked royally. Why do all the smaller balls have tiny weensy little holes? It's a conspiracy to annoy me, it is. Plus I bowled horribly. At least there was one bright spot - Spencer did incredibly well on his second game, something like 90 points over his average!
It has hurt to walk all day, due to certain (*ahem*) topological disturbances I've been having. So I've had to do far more walking today than normal, due largely to horrific parking karma. And when I had to put something in a mailbox, of course it had to be a mailbox across the street - I couldn't find one that I could reach from the car window. Oh no, that would involve less pain, you see.
In the bank drive-thru lane, I got behind the slowest dumbest woman on the planet, except perhaps for the pedestrian mentioned above. I had to wait forever for the little tube to come to her. Oh goodie, I think, she's done, she'll leave. No. It was not to be. She had to fill out some forms, laboriously, then put the thing back in. Then she *CHANGED HER MIND* after she hit the "Send" button, and tried to get it to stop and give the thing back to her. It jammed, and sat there useless for several minutes until it reset itself. She finally got her stuff and started to pull forward. "It's about fricking time", I thought. She pulls forward two feet. And stops. I wait. She's messing with her papers. She pulls forward another foot. And stops. I just about *SCREAM*. Finally she gets far enough ahead of me so I can reach the tube and do my simple transaction involving depositing ONE simple check and getting nothing back except a receipt, which takes me all of thirty seconds.
It still hurts to walk. This sucks. I feel like an *old* person. I'm not even thirty!

Boy, I sure can whine. Listen, if I don't whine here, then it all bottles up inside of me and I feel even worse. So this is therapeutic for me. I'm sure you're pleased to know that.

[ consume ] 2001-01-30

Mine, mine, all mine! Well, not until I get confirmation from them that they got my check...

I just faxed a check for my first month's payment for Parcel 25 in the Cherry Creek property at OzarkLand.com.

I am not making this up.

It's located in Phelps County, Missouri, very close to the Mark Twain National Forest.

And, needless to say, I'm thrilled. I've thought about buying a little piece of land for a long time, and I found this website yesterday, where this fellow is selling all sorts of land in the Ozarks for no money down. I took a look at the whole site, familiarized myself with what was available, and reassured myself that it wasn't a scam of some sort. The guy seems quite forthright and scrupulous, and even has a wry sense of humor. I even checked out the neighbors' web pages.

I just got a good vibe from the whole thing. So I will now be the owner (after 15 years of payments, unless I pay it all off sooner) of 6 acres of land, with lots of hardwood trees, a sloping hill down to a stream which borders the back of the property, and even a small spring. How cool is that? Plus, there are these neato boulders that stick out of the ground - I'm sure my future goats will appreciate that immensely, since they love to clamber upon such things (and it'll keep their hooves from getting too long, as well).

Sure, it's going to take me awhile to figure out how and where to build a little house, get a septic system, driveway, well, etc. It might take years, that's okay. I am not sure if I would live there full time until I retired or something, but I certainly don't have to decide right now. At the very least it will be a quiet place where I can see the stars, and just know that I Belong. With a capital "B".

Maybe it'd just be a fun vacation cottage for me & family & friends to use now and then... that's okay, too.

I'm sure I'll write lots more on this later. I'm a little worried that someone could have bought this parcel before me, and they just haven't had a chance to remove it from the ones available on their website yet. That's okay - I can pick another one that's available in that property if I want to. Or from one of the dozens of other properties they handle.

[ rants ] 2001-01-29

Please don't make a black hole, guys: Am I the only one who worries about these fellows smashing atoms & stuff into each other repeatedly, looking for denser and denser matter?

"The hope is that by smashing such nuclei together, we can create pressures, densities and temperatures very similar to those in the first microseconds after the Big Bang, and thereby -- on a tiny, tiny microscopic scale -- recreate a smidgen of quark-gluon plasma as it existed in the early universe," said Columbia University physicist William Zajc, spokesperson for one of the four experimental teams matched to the four detectors.

Okay, so, um, what possible benefit could we get from a breakthrough like this? Really. Is there even an answer to this question? Does it have any potential to make life better for people?

I don't think so. Maybe I'm just stupid, though. Why don't we work on eradicating polio or TB or something instead? Or, dare I say, overpopulation, hunger, pollution, something like that?

I just worry one of these days they're going to get matter so dense that it'll make a black hole and really, really screw things up. It makes me very, very nervous. I mean, they don't really know quite what they're dealing with, right? This is why they're doing experiments, is my understanding - because they *don't* comprehend fully what this type of matter can do.

I like science. I just don't see why this is so important - if we're going to spend this money on science, how about funding ways to get renewable energy gently (i.e., not by building dams), efficiently, and cost-effectively?

Argh. I wish I ran the world. I'm thinking this on a more frequent basis lately.

[ good humor ] 2001-01-29

My favorite is: bumper sticker number one. It says, "Equal protection my ass". Guess I'd better get my SASE together and send it in.

This is very cool for this guy to be giving these away for free...

[ consume design rants ] 2001-01-29

Take my George Foreman grill, please!: I finally tried the thing out this weekend, and well, it sucked. (It looks like Sarah Bruner likes hers a lot, though).

For me, this was what was involved:

The raised metal ridges that produce the grill-lines cause the meat to be overcooked (burned) and dried out wherever they touch. Not good.
It doesn't actually drain much grease. I cooked about 1.25 lbs of 85% lean ground beef, and only about three drops of grease dripped out. There was plenty of grease left in the burgers, which got all over the plate I set them on afterwards.
The meat was undercooked in the middle. Really. With all the heat directed at the parts of the burger contacting the ridges, the middle loses out, much more so than when cooked on a traditional flat surface griddle. I'm sure if I knew more about heat transfer, I would be able to explain exactly why this happens.
It splattered grease all over the counter, via the open sides.

So... I'm going to look for a new home for the thing. Used once, and that was one time too many. Good thing I only spent twenty bucks on it.

And to replace it, I'm going to get a standard covered electric skillet. It can cook four burgers at once (instead of only two), has a lid so it won't splatter all over, and it will cook them more evenly (plus, you can make onion soup in it). And I'll do my usual maneuver of soaking up the grease with paper towels - this is far more effective than the George Foreman grill's techniques.

Feh! It's going out, out, out of my house!

[ rants ] 2001-01-29

Oh, *crap*: Please, please, let this polling data (from Salon) be wrong. Please?

There are some signs that foes of abortion have quietly gained ground in recent years. In September 1995, a Gallup poll found that 56 percent of Americans described themselves as "pro-choice," compared with 33 percent who identified themselves as "pro-life." Responding to the same question in October 2000, 47 percent identified themselves as "pro-choice," while 45 percent identified themselves as "pro-life."

Having W in the White House is scary and awful enough, but if there really is enough support in this country to materially restrict abortion rights, then it's... I'm at a loss for words at how awful it is. Ugh.

[ mammalog ] 2001-01-29

Babies born larger are smarter: So they say in a medical study. Makes sense to me.

Evidence:

My birthweight: 9 lbs, 6 oz. My intelligence: incredibly darn high.
My daughter Elena's birthweight: 8 lbs, 7.7oz. Her intelligence: way the heck smarter than me, already.

But then again, I was only breastfed for 9 months, and she has been for 21 going on more...

Anyway, they said:

Experts don't know exactly what makes a heavy baby, but Gale said well-built, well-nourished mothers tend to produce heavier babies.

Well, there ya go. I am certainly "well-built", and I was most clearly "well-nourished" when I was pregnant with Elena.

I gained 57 pounds, I did. Way too darn many, but if it makes her smarter, then it's a fair trade. For the record, I did eventually make it back down to my pre-pregnancy weight, but it took awhile. And I managed to avoid any blood-sugar or high blood pressure problems while pregnant. Yippee!

[ design ] 2001-01-29

Apparently Athena sucks: so says Daniel, who pointed me to this slashdot thread about it. It appears to be some kind of buzzword-compliant monstrosity. Ah, well. I still like my 3-button computer idea - it could use any configurable GUI.

[ rants ] 2001-01-29

I'm stuck in a dial-in meeting: and my brain is melting. Really. I can't stay awake, I can't listen to what's going on, and it hurts.

What's worse is that I'm supposed to be taking meeting minutes.

I just can't escape the fact that everything that everyone is saying in this meeting is utterly meaningless to me. And, I suspect, the rest of the world...

Bzzzzz, I'm nodding off. I'm so bored, I can't even think of a good way to describe how bored I am.

None of this stuff matters. Really. It's just mumbo-jumbo.

Why is every damn thing annoying the piss out of me lately? I have no idea. One could blame hormones and cite PMS, but I don't think that covers it. I think the world is getting more annoying. And it's aimed directly at *me*. Or maybe it's a sign that I need to change my way of life drastically.

I think so. But of course I have to wait until I get my bonus. About six weeks. We'll see if I can stand it that long...

[ good mammalog ] 2001-01-29

I'm very happy to report: that Elena is doing fine now. She stopped throwing up after 2pm on Saturday. Yay! She was still in that super-clingy-and-whiny sick mode for awhile, though.

[ beauty mammalog ] 2001-01-27

She looked happy: When she was up & about, before the last round of gastrointestinal disturbance:

And now she's sleeping, well, like a baby, recovering:

[ mammalog rants ] 2001-01-27

Enough already! Okay, I think I've been puked on enough in the past 16 hours. I would gladly change places and be the puker instead of the puked-upon (and I really, really despise puking, so that is really saying something).

My wee little lass started spewing forth last night, after she fell asleep, and as I was laying in bed next to her reading. With no warning, mind you.

She was sleeping blissfully, cutely, soundly one moment, and the next moment she was sputtering, then she immediately woke up, and was throwing up another burst as I scrambled to get her to a sitting position. This terrifies the crap out of me every time it happens - aspirating vomit is one of the things that can kill a person in an extremely nasty way (just ask Jimi Hendrix, or was it Jim Morrison (or both? I can't remember)).

So after a few more volleys, she was empty and we had a messy bed, a messy little girl, and a very messy mommy. I took it all in good spirit, overall. I rushed the crying small one to the tub and tried to comfort her without having to hug her *too* closely. I rallied Spencer to deal with the now-unsavory bed.

In a little while, we had new sheets on the bed, and a clean Elena and a clean Beth. We were tired, but we were okay.

We were merely being set up for Round 2.

I hoped she could just nurse to sleep, but apparently the nasties in her gastrointestinal tract had other ideas. So, in the middle of nursing, the poor child threw up yet again. And again.

So we repeated the drill - into the tub, change the sheets, comfort the child, start the laundry, etc. She finally fell asleep on the couch while Spencer watched some international soccer match. I had had enough, so I went to sleep in the front room (my side of the bed needed to air out with Febreeze to get rid of the lovely odor).

In the morning, Spencer brought her to me and told me she sipped water through the night periodically, but always brought it up afterwards. Poor, poor thing :(.

This morning she nursed and managed to keep it down, though, so I thought we were out of the woods. I gave her a little banana, some apple juice, and we watched Homeward Bound II and A Bug's Life. Then, as I was taking a mommy break in the bathroom and tending to my own business, she came in with a videotape.

"Doggies!" she said. "Yep, that tape has doggies on it - we just watched it a little while ago--" "Uuuurrrrrrppp!". At least she was on tile this time, instead of a bed. Of course she started crying, she was covered with vomit again, I was distraught, and I realized yet again that there are few things in this world as pitiful as a small child plagued by repeated vomiting.

So... into the tub (short trip - 12 inches this time), roll up the rug, spray & wipe the floor, set aside the tub toys for washing & disinfecting later (as well as the videotape - glad it was still in the plastic cover!), clean off mommy, take a deep breath, and be glad that I'm not puking too. Yet, anyway - I think I've got something similar, but it's not affecting me as strongly as it is her.

Spencer came back from working out, we called the doctor, and she nursed to sleep. And no puking at the moment. I'm crossing my fingers. She had a good 3-4 hours to absorb her morning nursing session before throwing up, so I think that helped her quite a bit. I'm hoping this one stays down too, at least for awhile.

Poor kid. I wish I could trade places with her and do the puking for her, to spare her the pain. And also because I know I make less mess when I do it. :) Heh.

What a cruddy way to start the weekend. Really. But of course I'd rather she be sick at home where she can't transmit it to other kids, and where Spencer and I can take turns taking care of her. I hope she feels better soon.

This is one of those times that I'm unquantifiably grateful that I live in the modern era, where we have machines to wash the pukey clothes, as many warm baths as we need, and powerful medical assistance should we need it. I cannot imagine how awful it would have been to have a sick child way back before antibiotics were around, much less indoor plumbing...

According to the doctor, we have to see what kind of traditional output (wet diapers) she has in the next eight hours to determine whether or not she's dangerously dehydrated. I'm hoping she'll turn the corner and be right back on track. But if not, we might have to take her in and get her an IV or something. Really quite an unpleasant idea, but if that's what she needs to stay reasonably hydrated, I'll have to buck up and try not to cry when they give it to her.

[ design ] 2001-01-26

This Athena thing looks pretty cool: Here are screenshots of a new OS called Athena. Hmmm. Says it's intended eventually to be for commercial distribution but that the developer kit will be freely available. Hmm.

Sounds like something useful for one of my pet projects that I'll never have enough time to do: develop a three-button OS. Y'know, for people who hate computers and only want to do a few simple things.

Button 1: takes them to their email system.

Button 2: takes them to their web browser.

Button 3: takes them to a file tree exploring thing, so they can see/manipulate/retrieve saved files.

Button 4: (hidden) for access to the OS and configuration guts, to be used only by their friendly local geek who knows about computers. This shouldn't be necessary except in rare circumstances - the geek should set the thing up initially and then they shouldn't have to worry about it. Or even better, have it set *itself* up automagically out of the box.

Optional additional buttons, still Keeping It Simple: one for a music player (such as WinAmp), one for a word processor, spreadsheet, office suite kind of thing, one for games.

Beyond that or thereabouts, you're talking about the type of person who would benefit from using a typical OS in its entirety.

I seriously think it would be cool to take cheap Linux boxes and make 3-Button Computers for the masses. Those whose needs will be essentially fully met with a browser, email, and simple document filing capabilities. That's a *lot* of people. Especially when you're talking about people who haven't had a modern technical education, including the elderly. It's a shame that people have to bang their heads against something like Windows when they don't really need to. This should be simple. Really.

Anyway, it's on my list. The list is long... I hope my life is, too.

[ humor ] 2001-01-26

Nice experiment: An understandably annoyed physics student had to do an experiment on the resistivity of Germanium and shared the results here.

Dang, I love it when people refuse to stoop to the lies that are expected of them and just tell it like it is.

This was sent out by Fred, the greatest source of humor here at Lotus Austin.

[ consume design good ] 2001-01-26

I got an electronics kit yesterday: From Radio Shack, of course. I was out shopping while they did my safety inspection, and I got a little Y-audio cable (highway robbery at $5) so that I could use my headphones at work without having to unplug my speakers. Then I wandered around looking for the electronics kits...

My brother had one when we were little, which was fun but a little cheesy. "50 in 1 Electronic Project Thingie" or something like that.

So I look and I found this puppy. It's state of the art. It kicks serious butt! I can't wait to start playing with it. It's even got a *breadboard*. Really.

See, I started out in college at the Colorado School of Mines majoring in Electrical Engineering. But I fizzled out quickly as soon as I took an actual Electrical Engineering class and realized that I hated it.

So I transferred to CU-Boulder and majored in computer science. As a requirement I had to take a class where we did various complicated electronics lab stuff, involving HP computers and little chips on a breadboard. You can probably tell how much I learned. I think I got a D in that class. Undeserved - I should have failed it.

Over the years I have been meaning to learn about electronics, so I can build a simple little blinkenbox for Elena - something with LEDs and buttons she can press to make them light up. She *loves* that kind of thing.

Looking at the books for this kit, it's just *amazing*. It's got all the usual stuff, but it's incredibly detailed. There are two big books - one for basic circuits, and one for the digital logic projects (using ICs and all that fancy stuff). Wow. This is going to be *lots* of fun. And it shouldn't take me too long to be able to figure out how to make a blinkenbox. I might have to get a soldering gun at some point.

The only soldering I've ever done was while messing around with my then-boyfriend Keith's soldering gun at the School of Mines. I pretty much focused on soldering pennies together. It took awhile, but it was fun. Apparently.

And I also enjoyed the many trips we'd make to various little obscure electronics stores where he'd shop for parts for one or another of his assignments. I loved the little anodized aluminum heat sinks - they looked like little bugs or something, and were quite beautiful. And I loved the funky lights and switches and so on, some with obscure Cyrillic lettering on them (Russian surplus?), or nifty lights embedded in them, and that kind of thing. These are the type of thing I'll be looking for to make Elena's blinkenbox.

Keith was (and is) a Real Electrical Engineer - he works for Texas Instruments (at least he did when last we spoke, a couple years ago). He's always been clever with design and electronics, among other magnificent talents, such as welding.

Which brings me to one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Keith grew up in Holly, Colorado (where they used to make sugar from beets under the Holly Sugar brand), and his dad was/is a farmer. He learned how to weld at an early age. When he got a pickup truck, he bought it without a bumper. Because, you see, he and his dad were going to *make* their own bumper, and make it they did...

This bumper looked like a normal bumper, except it wasn't - it was hollow and featured an air valve with a pressure dial on it. They made it airtight and capable of holding air at high pressure for long periods of time. So Keith was always able to refill his tires wherever he went (or assist another person to refill theirs, because he's that kind of person - he'd help anybody).

I just thought this was cooler than sliced bread. I still do. Absolutely brilliant. And it thwarted a prank at the School of Mines...

I'm not sure what started it, but apparently Keith and his roomie Wayne and maybe a few other people had pissed off a friend of theirs named Nelson. Nelson took revenge by letting the air out of all four of Keith's tires. This was silly, since it took Keith about five minutes to fill them back up. :)

This reminds me, I should call Keith again. I hope he still lives in Dallas. When I last spoke to him, he was happily married to Helen (a woman who lived on the same floor in my dorm at Mines), and had a one-year old daughter named Elizabeth. What a lovely name! :) And of course, since then I've had a daughter named Elena, which is a form of the name Helen. Interesting (and no, not done on purpose). So I really must ring him up and visit sometime. He's such a great guy, I hope everything is going well with him & his family these days...

[ mammalog my site ] 2001-01-26

First Box O Doom Cavalcade! I promised I'd share the results of my first box o doom poll this week, and so I shall. I didn't get many responses, largely because I failed to alter the left column to show the questions right near the box o doom itself. The questions only appeared in one log entry, so they were largely missed. Daniel promises to fix things so I can edit the left column at will without bugging him, so it should improve soon.

To recap, here were the questions:

What's the oldest thing in your freezer right now? (if you can identify it)
How long has it been there? (if known)
What are your plans for the future for this item? (if you have any)

Our first respondent answers:

Oldest thing in my freezer is a bottle of Absolut Kurant. it has been there for about three months. It contains roughly half an ounce of vodka which I plan to consume sometime today or tomorrow. Then I will give the bottle to someone who is collecting bottles.

Sounds quite lovely, for those who are fans of vodka. (I'm not among them, alas). Speaking of Absolut, I'd have to say they are one of the few entities who have succeeded in blurring the line between advertising and art (along with Andy Warhol and honorable mention for certain Nike commercials (not any of the recent ones, though, imho)).

On to respondent two:

Oldest thing: korean lychee gel candies, at least 6 months, and we're all waiting with bated breath to see what happens to it.

Ahh, fascinating! I've never had any of these candies myself, though I've seen them in oriental grocery stores (while I was shopping for Pocky, of course). Bonus points for correct usage and spelling of the word "bated" by this respondent!!!

I'm afraid I only got those two responses. Ah, well, if you feel you missed out, feel free to share your intriguing answers to these questions three in the box o doom at the left there.

Now, drumroll please.... my very own answers to these questions three:

The oldest thing in my freezer is a placenta, that which sustained my daughter before she was born. It's been in there for about 21 months, and we brought it with us when we moved (so it's not literally the same freezer). We plan to bury it eventually.
Before Elena was born, we learned how hospitals will sell the things to cosmetics companies to make money (ew), and we decided we weren't too keen on that. We also learned how some people will actually cook and eat the thing (ew), and we decided without hesitation that we were extremely not keen on that.
And we also learned how some folks will bury the placenta under a tree, so that it will help the tree grow, and you can show the child the tree when they are old enough to understand, and tell them of their special connection with the tree. We liked that idea a lot.
And we heard of yet another way to dispose of a placenta, which was that according to some nonspecific Native American tradition, it was customary to bury the placenta by the threshold of the door of the house. The story goes, this was so the child would always be able to find her way back home. We liked this idea very, very much as well. Almost brings a tear to my eye to think of it, really.
Our doorways are fronted by a porch & sidewalk on one end and a deck on the other, so we'll probably go the tree route. We've got three magnificent pecan trees that generously shade our house, so we'll probably choose one of those. And we'll probably do it in Spring sometime, when we're out gardening and so forth.
The only thing I worry about is: how deep do we have to bury it to avoid random urban critters (dogs, cats, raccoons, possums) wanting to, uh, dig it up and make a mess? Anyone have any advice on a minimum recommended depth? Please share via the box o doom if you would be so kind (or via email).

Okay, after two back-to-back placenta-filled entries, I promise I won't mention them again for awhile. Apologies to those of you who are nauseous right now. But remember, you wouldn't be here if it weren't for the honorable work of your placenta! So don't knock 'em too hard, they are essential for each of us.

[ design humor ] 2001-01-26

Amusing Car Names: I was behind a Ford Taurus SES yesterday on the way to work, and as I glanced at the back of the car, I had to do a double-take. The word "Taurus" and the letters "SES" were separated by only a small gap, so at first it looked to me to be an extremely poorly formed plural: "Taurusses".

And then on the way back from getting my Texas safety inspection (two months late, and I didn't get a ticket, yay!) I found myself behind a vehicle which I first took to be an Elantra. I looked more closely and realized that it was an "Entra". Thinking to myself, "wtf?", I then saw the Nissan logo towards the middle, and realized it was merely a Sentra which had lost an "S". I thought it was an amusing name, certainly less ridiculous than the Previa, which is a real name in use.

The Previa makes me think instantly of Placenta Previa, which is a condition in which the placenta is fully or partially covering the cervix. It's not a pleasant thing to have, really, and can be quite dangerous and deadly.

Did they want consumers to think of the Previa vehicle as having a similar role? Blocking traffic much as a placenta previa blocks the birth canal, causing a dangerous outrush of blood?

So every time I see a Previa on the road, I can't help but think that sooner or later they will come out with an Accreta and Abruptio. (Placenta Accreta is when the placenta won't let go of the uterine wall, and Placenta Abruptio is when the placenta prematurely detaches from the uterine wall, usually resulting in a nasty hemorrhage of blood). What were they thinking when they named that thing?

Which reminds me of the latest crime against namespace - what crack was Anderson Consulting smoking when they decided on the new name Accenture? I mean, really.

[ rants ] 2001-01-25

IBM = I'm Being Moved: Well, actually, I was told the joke was that it stood for I've Been Moved, but you get the idea.

Yesterday, they told us in a brief, hastily-called meeting that we're being moved across the street, to the older part of the IBM campus here.

To a building with very few windows. Which are narrow. Ugh. But they tell us that the ~~veal pens~~ cubicles are bigger and taller, and that it will be better because we'll have more space, and so on.

I'm the eternal cynic, so I see the whole thing as fraught with peril. Parking is going to suck horribly, and this building is hemmed in on all sides by other buildings (that's why there are so few windows).

Of course, they briefly considered relocating us to one of the other nice new buildings on this side of the street, but that wasn't suitable. Oh, no. Not at all. Because, you see, these buildings are set up with offices instead of cubicles. And that doesn't "meet our needs". See, we have to have an open cube format, so that the employees don't get uppity from having a door that they can shut for privacy. And so they can concentrate on their work.

Okay, I'm pissy about it. I've read Peopleware, and learned how important the quiet and privacy provided by walls and a door are to technical workers being able to get their jobs done. But I also see how offices are used as a status perk here, and such things piss me off. If offices are so bad, then how come managers get them? So they can bitch people out in private? C'mon, they can reserve a conference room or guest office for that if it's required.

HINT TO IBM: Microsoft gives everyone offices. So I've heard. It doesn't seem to hurt their profitability. Get a clue.

I hate feeling like a second-class citizen because I don't merit anything more than a glorified open carboard box. Screw that! Oh yeah, and they *do* give offices to some technical support analysts - the ones who reach Principal level. Does this diminish their effectiveness? I think not. Does it diminish the ability of colleagues to contact them? I think not (hell, we have Sametime, email, and so on...).

All I can say is that if we're stuck in cubes and can't even have windows anymore, then we at least deserve good-quality indirect non-fluorescent lighting.

Who am I kidding? They'd never give us that. That might actually give us a little bit of comfort and dignity, and any penny spent on such things is a penny stolen from shareholder profits.

So the move is slated for April, they say. I may not even be here by then. I hope not...

[ books ] 2001-01-25

I got the book I wanted: plus a couple others. I called Borders near here to ask if they had a copy, and they had one which they happily put on hold for me. Take that, Amazon! (they have a 3-5 week backorder on the book).

I also browsed through the new non-fiction and found the book My War, by Andy Rooney. I got it because it looked great, and I've always enjoyed his writing. If all you knew of the man was what you saw on his segments on 60 Minutes, you might dismiss him as a mere cranky, whiny curmudgeon. But there is so much more to the man. Seriously. Read his books - there's a lot more, it goes much deeper, and it's very, very good. Well, I think so anyway. It's been awhile since I read some of his books, and it looks like he's written several more in the meantime, so I have to catch up on them. What a delightful thing to look forward to. :) Lucky me!

Anyway, this book is about World War II, in which Rooney was an Army correspondent (among other things).

I also got an O'Reilly travel book, A Woman's World, which is supposed to be good.

I looked for a page about it at the O'Reilly site, but strangely they don't have any of their Traveler's Tales books there. They do have a bunch of medical books though, which look to be geared towards patients & families, dealing with various situations. They look pretty good. Cool! O'Reilly rocks, I've just got to say it. Ever since I bought my Programming Perl book years ago (aka the Camel Book), I've loved their stuff.

I also got a little Richard Scarry book for Elena, and a big cheap world map, which I hope to hang on the wall and scrawl upon indicating the places I've been (so far, all the scrawling will be in North America, but I hope to change that someday).

Speaking of travel, I'm finally going to get a passport. I've never had one. I don't have any specific travel plans, but I figure if I don't have the passport, I won't make any! :) And of course I'm getting one for Elena, too. Under "Occupation" on her application, I'm not sure whether to put "Baby", "Student", or "Parental Frustration and Delight Engineer".

[ design good my site ] 2001-01-24

Posted an update: To thirdhand, since the poor thing is in limbo right now. I am itching to get the thing finished - there's so much content I want to add to my site(s), but it would be largely pointless to do it before I have the thirdhand infrastructure to hold it.

And it really will be cool. Really. I think this could be something big and powerful and innovative enough that I might be able to make some kind of living off of licensing it someday. Maybe.

I could be wrong, though. And if I'm wrong, then I'll still have the coolest informational structure on the web. :)

[ humor ] 2001-01-24

Just came across: the Dubyafyer! Behold, now any web page can be translated into the language of Dubya.

Found via Loren's cool links.

Here's a piece from the front page of the New York Times, Dubyafied:

President or Baseball Commissioner or something Bush and Senator John W. McCain of Arizona was to meet late Wednesday afternoon to discuss an issue that divides the two or three Republocrats: changing the way politicable campaigns is financed.

LOL! Go check it out!

[ good ] 2001-01-24

Ahh, a refreshing view of copyrights: From Larkfarm (again - I'm wandering a lot there today and finding lots of good stuff, including this beautiful picture). Of Words and Copyrights, by Mike Gunderloy:

That's still the way I feel. If you want to link to this web page, that's cool. If you want to copy the words from it and claim you wrote them yourself, well, that's less cool, but I don't really care. There are a lot more words where these came from. If people are coming back to this web site, I presume it's at least in part that they want to read the new words that I come up with.

And I'm sure he'll keep the good stuff coming! Gee, it's nice to be able to quote someone and know that they won't come and sue me for it. :)

[ the net ] 2001-01-24

Wandering today: I've got so many darn browser windows open, I'm wondering when my machine will lock up.

Some stuff I'm rumbling through:

(DEAD LINK) An entertaining trip down China's new super expressway

A legalistic piece about ownership of one's body parts & tissues (after they have been excised):
It will be demonstrated below that, because the statutes for conversion were designed solely to provide a remedy for another's taking of a personal possession, conversion is not an appropriate cause of action for the wrongful use of human tissue in biotechnology research. This is due to the presence of important, competing public policy considerations in biotechnology research, such as encouraging beneficial technological innovation and protecting individual autonomy.
Wtf? This sounds like a load of hooey to me. If you don't own the parts of your body, what the hell *do* you own? I can't think of a better definition of something inalienable than bits of one's own flesh.
And I think biotech will succeed in making new discoveries and profits just fine even if it has to obtain express consent for the use of human tissue from the donor and even *gasp* remuneration when it results in profits. They already cut the researchers in on the deal - their labor sure isn't free, ya know. What's so horrific about having to pay the person whose cells provided the raw material to begin with?
This irks me to no end - of course it's the guys with the money and the big lawyers who are able to protect their interests at the expense of your average human being. Fuckers. (ok, I've only had one Pepsi today, I admit it).

In Defense of Weeding - from Larkfarm

Caleb Carr shows himself to be an even bigger idiot than he previously demonstrated at Salon

Salon on the Illinois Math & Science Academy - a boarding school for gifted kids where they hand out lots of Prozac. Hmm, sounds a bit disconcerting. Prozac withdrawal sucks, by the way.

[ books ] 2001-01-24

I must get this: I heard about this book on NPR last week, when they had an interview with the author. The book is called Beyond the Stone Arches: An American Missionary Doctor in China, 1892-1932 by Edward Bliss, Jr.

It sounds absolutely amazing from what the author was saying about it. I was particularly interested in what he said about his mother - she was a farm girl from Nebraska who just decided to take off to China. By herself. She met his father when she was already over there.

That's incredibly cool. That takes a lot of courage, too. I really want to read more about this family. I'll see if I can find the book locally...

[ body good weblogs ] 2001-01-23

I'm such a slowpoke: I contributed this story to the Lesion Legion section of almostcool.org in December, and I forgot to mention it here. Doh!

Anyway, it's about this nasty dog-bite scar I got about five years ago. Go read it if you wish, I think it's pretty good. Some of the other stories were pretty interesting as well.

Almostcool.org is run by Aaron, the same brilliant fellow who does the excellent Come To My Senses weblog that I like so much. He's got a bunch of other interesting stuff there, too - check it out!

[ design mammalog ] 2001-01-22

Sometimes, I can be a Really Cool Mom: Okay, so I'm bragging, but I'm really proud of this today. I completed my first project with my new sewing machine last night: I made a new seat for Elena's baby doll stroller. The old one wasn't sewn right, so part of the frame was sticking out from the cloth seat as soon as we got it. Plus, the fact that Elena kept sitting in it didn't help much (no, it's not made for children to sit in, just dolls - but *you* try telling that to her (and getting her to comply (without screaming))).

I kept thinking to myself "Hey, I can fix that. No wait, I'll just make her a new one." So I finally did... I went through all my fabric to sort it again, and found some strong, light black nylon. I also used this webbing I got from Denver Fabrics when I went at Xmas.

So, here's the result:

It kicks serious ass - I love the black and silver of the fabric and webbing offsetting the bright pink of the frame. Heh, heh! She hasn't sat in it yet, but I can tell you this: the frame will break long before the seat ever does!

I am amazed at what good workmanship I achieved - usually when I do such projects, they end up with several spots where I feel I really screwed up (usually because I got impatient and rushed it). Other people don't usually notice, but *I* always do, and it bugs me. But this, ahhh, I really achieved what I set out to do! It feels so good, like maybe I'm finally getting good at the craft of sewing, instead of possessing merely passable skill.

I even had to create my own pattern from the existing seat (at which Elena shrieked in indignity that I took it away from her - there was no convincing her that it was for the good). Not too shabby!

So, on days when I feel like the Meanest Mommy In The World, I need to remember this - I did something really neat for her, something not every mom would or could do.

I could have tried to keep her from sitting in the stroller (heh, fat chance with this kid!), but instead I just made it possible for her to do so. I like that. Since, after all, it's not hurting her to sit in the thing. Eventually, she'll break the frame, but I'm hoping that it lasts until she's too big to sit in it (and stops trying).

[ mammalog ] 2001-01-22

Elena worked on her golf swing: This weekend. And Spencer snapped this pic:

Look out, Tiger Woods, here she comes!

[ my site ] 2001-01-22

The pets.com sock puppet has a new gig: Or at least, *mine* does. That's right, Bob has taken the job of acting as my stand-in when I feel too shy to show my own face on my web-cam (hey, I had to be here early for a meeting, so I didn't get a shower...)

Since he's been out of work awhile, he's used the time to develop a deep and abiding interest in recreational mathematics. He's made friends with my Klein bottle, and calls it "Klein". His code name for Klein is "the tabby cat", so when he gleefully says, "I'm here to play with the tabby cat!", I know that it's his new buddy Klein that he's looking for. (You see, he knows that his doggie pals just wouldn't understand his new interest in topology, and would consider him a nerd or something, so he has to use a code-name for Klein to avoid suspicion).

Bob really seems to love Klein, but I'd have to say it's a very one-sided relationship.

[ movies ] 2001-01-20

Some duds, and an unexpected surprise: I rented Princess Mononoke, among other things (and it *was* available on VHS - I was wrong when I wrote that it was only on DVD, mea culpa). It was very, very *bizarre*, and not as good as I thought it would be. It was okay, just... odd. Not what I was really looking for.

We also got some new videos for Elena today, including a few more classics (Sound of Music, Pinocchio, Aristocats), The Brave Little Toaster (haven't finished watching it, but it doesn't look all that great, especially compared to some of the gems we've already got), and Homeward Bound (excellent, makes me bawl my eyes out) plus its sequel. Oh yeah, we also got the Buzz Lightyear animated movie, which I don't have high hopes for, but Spencer wanted.

And this morning I was rooting for something to watch and happened upon The Scent of Green Papaya on the Sundance channel. I *really* liked it. Wow, the imagery is really neat. Lots of gorgeous details, if you're into that kind of thing (many people aren't, of course). I love the Vietnamese houses, and even the clothing. I will have to try to find patterns like those (which, incidentally, are similar to some of the outfits in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an exquisitely excellent film).

I am thinking most people would find Papaya really boring, but I liked watching the household routine, and just staring at the house, courtyard, and so on. Someday it would be nice to have a house kind of like that (in an appropriate climate, of course!)

Anyway, it's replaying now, so I'm taping it. That way I can go back and look at the details...

[ design ] 2001-01-20

Gettin' creative, watch out! With all these new PCs at work (not just mine & my pal JM's, but several dozen other people's), there were a ton of boxes hanging around, including packing material. I realized that the foamie things that protected the four corners of the CPU look like little doll chairs:

So I brought one home for Elena, planning to cover it with fabric at some later time. Well, she decided that SHE wanted to sit in it, even though it didn't quite fit - she had to wedge her little hips into it.

This got me thinking - with all those foam pieces, I could probably make her a chair, just her size. And it wasn't much of a leap from there for me to realize there was enough to make a chair for *me* as well!

So I have lugged home seven CPU boxes full of foam (you can see some of my hoard in the pic above), which contained the foam from 21 PCs. Now I have to figure out what kind of glue would work best to glue the pieces together. Any suggestions? I'm thinking that Elmer's glue, krazy glue, and wood glue would all be bad choices, but I'm not sure. I don't think epoxy would work well either. Well, I'll experiment, and I'll update my log with the results as Project Foamy Chairs goes forward...

[ design ] 2001-01-20

Aha! Singer has machine manuals online! But not for my machine, of course. Argh! I can send 'em ten bucks for a printed copy, though that doesn't seem fair since I never had one in the first place. Maybe I'll email 'em and see if I can get 'em to send me one for free. If they won't, I can just wait until they put it online at some point. Depends on which of my thresholds is higher: cheapness vs. impatience. Since I don't really strictly need the manual that much, at least for now, cheapness is winning out at the moment.

[ canoe ] 2001-01-20

Went down to the lake today: For the first time in awhile. I had a nice paddle, and showed my friend Ron how to put the canoe together and take it apart. I'm letting him borrow the canoe, going forward. Here's a pic of him paddling away:

It was quite chilly, and the headwind on the way back to the dock really challenged me. There's nothing like a powerful wind to force you to focus on your form, as any inefficiency in your stroke is brutally punished. Today I focused on using my back, and on twisting my torso slightly to allow the leading shoulder to have an extra inch or two in the forward direction. This was trickier than it sounds, since I'm not naturally coordinated, so I really had to concentrate to not shift my center of gravity at the same time.

On the right side, shifting one's center of gravity is especially dangerous - you can tip yourself right over if you're not careful. So I watched the ama and tried not to make any sudden swerving turns to the left as I was leading with my right shoulder.

I did pretty well, but I still have a *long* way to go to get my form in top shape, or even to the level it was at when I was paddling with the outrigger canoe club in Hawaii (Manu O Ke Kai).

I still haven't figured out what to do with my head, though. Do I face up and forward? To the side, away from the leading shoulder? Do I point my eyes in a direction other than where I'm facing? (such as ahead of me, f'rinstance). I never had to worry about this stuff when I was in a 6-woman canoe and steering was someone else's responsibility... I guess it'll come with time, as I hone my form and slowly get rid of inefficiencies.

Ron suggested we all take a trip sometime down to Surfside (near Houston), and I agreed that would be great! My canoe hasn't ever been on the ocean, although it came *across* the ocean. Come to think of it, Elena would love the beach. Plus we'd get to meet all those nice people from the Texas Outrigger Canoe Club there, and maybe go paddling with them in one of their bigger canoes. That would be extremely cool...

[ design ] 2001-01-20

Playing with my sewing machine... I find that the sample custom-designed stitches I created didn't work out well at all. :/ And they were simple, too.

Maybe I *do* need the manual, if there is one. Time to bug Singer, I suppose. Or maybe I just need to study the online interactive demo in greater detail.

[ good ] 2001-01-19

There is a certain strange joy: that I get when someone sends me an email message with a return receipt request in it, and I press my little "Kill RR" button that I created in my mail file, removing the ReturnReceipt field to ensure that they have no idea if or when I read their message.

Subversive? Yes. Rude? Not really. I think it's more rude of them to spy on me with a return receipt than it is for me to delete it. I mean, after all, once the message is in my mail file, it's mine to mess with as I please, provided I don't do anything truly nefarious with it.

I just love that little frisson of glee as I click the button. Ha ha! You can't track me! Nice try, but no cigar.

Notes sucks in lots of ways, but at least it's easy to make a button to kill return receipts. (And a column to show you which messages have them, before you open them). Occasionally I do actually let the return receipt be sent, but not often. Oh no, not at all!

Anyway, I mention this because I just did it. Someone sent me a message stating that they didn't think I should have put the new phone number list for our site (which takes effect Monday) in our information repository database. I did this, by the way, at the specific and special request of my boss. So the message was a bit obnoxious (though the writer was reasonably polite), and the return receipt was doubly obnoxious. So I just circumvented it.

Ah, I feel heady with power! I am geek, and I have control of my mail file! Would-be return-receipters beware! I'll read your little message whenever I feel like it, and sometimes I'll back-burner responding to you just because you sent me a return receipt. Muahahahhaha!

I feel just a teeny, tiny bit evil. But not really. :) More like spunky, perhaps.

[ random thoughts ] 2001-01-19

I can't play bejeweled anymore: Because I got a score that was too high - I got 21,820. Holy freakin' cow. I guess my strategy finally got good enough.

But I can't play anymore, because it would take too darn long to get anywhere near my current high score. I hate it when that happens. Just as well, since it's addictive and sucks time away anyway...

[ rants ] 2001-01-19

Driven to distraction: Why do all these things happen on the same day?

They test the fire alarm system here at work - this involves two separate, loud p.a. system announcements preceding the test, plus the actual test (now going on), which is also very LOUD and impossible to ignore
I get three Sametime chat requests, which cause a pop-up window to get in my face while I'm trying to do something else. And when I leave the chat, the other person has to say "bye" afterwards, causing it to pop up again, just so I can see that they said "bye".
Someone comes up behind me to ask me something, startling the crap out of me (not literally).

Okay, it doesn't seem like much, but this is more distraction than I have had in the past several weeks combined. And the day's not over yet.

Of course, this is probably annoying me more than usual due to the lack-of-caffeine thing. I'll be glad when this withdrawal is over with.

Until then, I'd like to work in a cave or something, with no connection to the outside world (not even a net connection) so that I can actually concentrate...

[ beauty ] 2001-01-19

A place that's holy to me: is the Memorial Amphitheatre at Arlington National Cemetary. I have been there only once, but I was overwhelmed with how gorgeous it is. It's right behind/in front of (depending on your perspective) the Tomb of the Unknowns. Here's an aerial photograph:

As you can see, it's round. The seats are marble benches. According to the web page, the marble it's made of is Vermont-quarried Danby marble. I know that the marble for the Tomb itself (at the time, in 1931, it was the largest single piece of marble ever quarried in the United States, at 56 tons) was quarried at the Yule quarry in Marble, Colorado (a place I've visited once as well).

The stone there is gorgeously white, small-grained, and veined with gray. It rivals some of the best Italian statuary marble. I have a pic of myself somewhere at home standing next to a huge block of it at the quarry, on a slope with other huge blocks above. By "huge", I mean 4-6 feet on a side, or larger.

More on the Tomb stone: I read that they originally cut a large solid piece for the Tomb, and then realized after sending it on its way that it had a crack (or maybe it developed the crack on the journey). So they went to cut another piece, but just in case, they actually cut two. One was sent and arrived just fine. The other was lost for years and years, until the quarry re-opened (it had been closed since 1941 and reopened in 1990). At a reunion gathering of the old quarry workers, they were talking about this missing stone. One of the workers knew where it was - he pointed to a hole in the wall of the quarry vault, way up high. When the hole was made and the third Tomb stone was deposited in it, it was at the ground level of the vault (in 1931). After that, they had quarried a lot more stone (until 1941), so the floor level gradually descended.

To check if the stone was really still there, they sent climbers up to check. Sure enough, it was! And the interesting thing is that it will remain there forever - there's no way to get it out. There wouldn't be much point to it, either - it would be far easier to just cut another new one, if you needed such a piece.

Anyway, I liked that story.

I still have lots of pieces of marble I got from the Yule quarry. I hope to carve it into something interesting someday, when I get the time. My favorite piece is about fist-sized, and it's half white, half gray. I have no idea what to make with it, though.

[ my site rants the net ] 2001-01-19

I sent her a reply: As follows:

I didn't read your site [again], but I did get some really uncool email from people who think you're wonderful. I dunno if you asked them to do this, or suggested it, or what, but the hypocrisy level is pretty high, as is the personal insult level. Including some very pointed attacks on my mother's housekeeping skills - my mother who was incredibly weak from battling breast cancer. Gee, how nice of them. Are you glad to know that some of your supporters behave in this way?
Of course it sucks having your stuff ripped off, especially without credit. I totally agree with that, as I wrote in my email to you. I just think it's a bit absurd to try to have an impossible level of control on the web, where data duplication is the rule, rather than the exception. To me, it's a lot easier and less hassle to just share in the first place. If I write or create something that someone finds useful/good/pretty, then I'm happy to let them use it (as long as they don't make a profit on it). I recognize the right of others to differ on their views, of course. It just seems a bit harsh and cold to me, especially the extreme degree to which you take it, forbidding "imitation". That's the most strict copyright notice I've ever seen, anywhere on the net - that's why I felt moved to say something about it.
I have to confess I laughed out loud at the irony of your copyright site getting ripped off. But then again I am a big fan of certain kinds of irony. I believe there are other sites with copyright info that *are* freely distributable, so people probably just assumed (incorrectly) that yours was as well. You might consider making the whole thing a bit shorter, or putting the "do not copy this" text at the top rather than buried further down, so that people will at least be sure to be aware of your policies.
Just out of curiosity, do you forbid Google from indexing (and caching) your sites? You might want to look into it if you are really totally against all forms of unauthorized copying. I'm not sure exactly how preventing it is done, but I believe it's possible. I read somewhere that the Google cache has actually saved several sites from destruction, because their host or internet provider lost all their data. They were able to get everything back from the Google cache - it functioned as a very good unofficial backup. So copying isn't *always* all bad. (in my opinion, anyway)
When it comes down to it, attempting to keep everything you create on the web from being copied at all or even imitated is just a losing battle. You're bound to be frustrated repeatedly by people who don't bother to ask for permission (and who may genuinely be ignorant, not malicious). They may even do it for good causes, to promulgate beliefs which you share (such as the sanctity of copyright, for example). Being unfriendly towards them is just shooting yourself in the foot, really.
And literally speaking, when someone accesses one of your webpages, all of the data is "copied" to their machine instantly, before they have a chance to even read your copyright statement (and before they even decide whether they want to read the whole page). Copying in this fashion is how the web functions...
I wrote *about* your email on my weblog, but I didn't quote anything. You definitely succeed in having quite a chilling effect - not sure if this is your goal, or what. Is having people terrified of you and what you might do to them (like sue them) worth the price of not having your stuff scarfed? Or maybe you consider it a bonus.
-Beth
p.s. you can freely reprint or quote this email, provided context is not lost or abused in order to change my meaning.

[ my site rants weblogs ] 2001-01-19

Gee, I seem to have started a flamewar: Well, the lovely lady I sent my nastygram to yesterday sent me a reply. I dare not quote even one word of it, of course, because she might sue me. She even said something about how she *could* sue me, because her law firm has an office in Texas, in the email, and then below claimed to be joking. I don't really feel like taking the risk, though.

So, she also tracked down my site and my weblog, and apparently wrote about it in her weblog too. Now I'm getting nastygrams from her readers, too!

Lovely.

So.... #1 is from a fellow who uses the following epithets towards me and my rant (directly and obliquely):

loser
"look like a real idiot"
lacking credibility
obnoxious
lacking class
not intelligible
"a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum"
pathetic

Gee, nice tone! Makes what I wrote to her look darn mild. This writer also tells me that it was not appropriate for me to bring her kid into my little rant. Heh. Ooooookay. I thought it was pretty benign, and I didn't say anything except "cute kid" in the email that I sent directly to her. She had to sleuth and find my weblog to read the other comments, which she presumably did willingly (I didn't give her the address).

But anyway, we'll return to this topic later, since evidently it's okay to bring in *my mother* and the status of the cleanliness of her house into this whole thing, at least according to another of this illustrious lady's readers.

#2 comes from someone who thinks that it's not the lack of Pepsi that caused me to write my rant, but rather lack of Prozac. Oh, dearie me. I hate Prozac, haven't touched the stuff in years. Zoloft is another story, but I am also weaning myself off of that at the same time as I'm reducing my caffeine level to something more reasonable.

But I surmise that this person was attempting to insult me by suggesting that my mental state was not normal. Sorry, didn't work - I *know* my mental state isn't quite normal, and I'm not stigmatized by the idea of taking an SSRI.

This person goes on to explain what a wonderful person the copyright lady is, and how she's done so much for people who don't want their artwork & stuff stolen from their sites. Okay, that's great! Good for all of ya. Nothing wrong with that.

I don't really see how that has anything to do with me being annoyed with the attitude expressed in her forbidding even "imitation" of anything at her site(s), though. I saw something that annoyed me, and I told the source why I felt it seemed unreasonable and unfriendly to me, and why I wouldn't visit her sites in the future. But apparently this makes me some kind of demon worthy of any kind of insult that people care to sling at me.

Let us continue with more of #2. I am accused of jealousy (uh, in yer dreams), of attacking her "out of the blue" (um, isn't any feedback on any website, positive or negative, from "out of the blue" by definition unless you already know the person?) (and isn't this author's email attacking *ME* "out of the blue"?), and a suggestion is made that I may be in for "tons" of email defending the copyright lady. I'm sure my employer will be happy with the stress on the email system if it really amounts to "tons" (since bits don't weigh anything, how many messages is that, anyway?). I would just like to suggest that sending me "tons" of mail at my work address is something that is likely to make IBM upset. At you. So I would suggest using one of my other addresses.

I'm also told that I'm missing out on her lovely websites (okay, whatever, somehow I'll get over it by reading the other billion or so pages on the web), that I'm a sad individual (this is true sometimes - I do suffer from blue moods at times, don't we all?), I should be ashamed of myself, and I have "no heart, no shame and certainly no conscience".

The icing on the cake is that this person then chastises me for even *mentioning* her son. This is quite ironic, given the "p.s." to the message, wherein the author proceeds to deride me for the appearance of the room in one of the pictures on my site.

It is suggested that I clean up the house before taking pictures, that there's "crap" all over the place, and other comments including apparent incredulous horror that there are liquor bottles on the mantle, and so on.

That's my mother's house. It was messy because she's been dealing with breast cancer for the past couple of years - chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, the works. She didn't have the strength to tidy things up to someone else's arbitrary specifications, especially when they're just looking for something to insult.

You talk about stooping low, about inappropriate attacks? I call this *way* out of line. I'd like to see the status of the house of the person who wrote me this after *she* had a horrible, debilitating, years-long fight against cancer, and ended up so weak for a time that she couldn't even retrieve her own mail. No, that's not true. I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, even someone who was rude to me. I would just hope that she would realize how out of line those comments were. And how they didn't succeed - you didn't make me feel bad, you just made me realize how uncool people can be when they're looking for *anything* to insult someone about.

Personally, I think this is worse than my nastygram, but I figure each person can decide for themselves.

Oh yeah, and those *are* liquor bottles on the mantle. It's wine, given as a gift to my mother. I fail to see how it's worthy of derision for any reason. Maybe I'm just stupid?

I never thought the choice of where I stood when I asked my mother to take that pic of me would have such ramifications... heh, what a crazy world we live in.

Let's move on to message #3... in which I am called "moronic", and offered this highly ironic advice:

Didn't anyone ever tell you that sometimes it is best to just hit the back button if you see something on a website that you don't like?

Advice which apparently does not apply to the author of this missive.

I am also called "a very unhappy person" (which is true sometimes), and this person seems to think I put the nastygram up on my weblog "proudly...like a badge", and that this is "mentally sick". Uh, I put up all kinds of stuff here, whatever's going on in my life, what I think, see, etc. Some of it I'm genuinely proud of, but other stuff is just stuff, and I don't typically make a clear distinction between the two. Interpretation is left up to the reader.

And further on:

Also, you wrote that you hope that her baby learns how to share. That is the one that really made me want to hurl.

That's right, *how dare I* hope that someone's child learn how to share - what a horrible monstrous person I am to even *think* such a thing, and write it down no less, where people can actually *read* it! If I were truly possessing a black heart, I might also state that it would be nice for any given child to grow up to be generous, or kind-hearted, or loving, or healthy, or smart. But I dare not, for fear of the Hell that would be unleashed by such clear violations of What Is Right.

The next bit of the letter is:

Listen, smartass, you should worry about how your own little girl is going to turn out, especially with a person like you for a mother.

Oh my. For the record, I worry each and every day how she's going to turn out. That's part of my job as her mother - to continually worry and consider and make choices and watch carefully to see how she's doing, adjusting what I do as appropriate to keep her on the right course. Apparently this person thinks I am likely not to be a very good mother - this is my interpretation of these words. Well, history will tell, won't it? Personally, I think I do a rather good job, overall, though I certainly have my bad days, my days of little patience, and times when I am just not sure what to do. It's a tough job.

The letter concludes with a request for me to "get a life". No thanks, already got one!

That's it for now. Anyway, you get the idea of how people will react to such a thing. I confess I am surprised, though not very.

What I find almost amusing is the level of hypocrisy - I am decried for daring to have a difference of opinion and expressing it in a snide, snotty way (I freely admit to this attitude), and the decriers proceed to level bitter personal attacks against me for my crime, far worse than anything *I* did when I suggested that I hoped the copyright lady's son would learn to share when he grew up (unlike his mommy).

But so it is. Make up your mind yourself - am I a cretinous lunatic bitch? Or am I a person who expresses her opinion and who is sometimes snotty, especially when I'm withdrawing from caffeine?

And please, please, pretty please - don't email this lady. Cause it will all come down on *my* head, probably, and I've already got enough email to deal with as it is.

Unless of course you think that she's wonderful and I'm a mentally defective loser, in which case I think she'd probably be glad to get your message, so go for it.

[ cognition ] 2001-01-18

Random insight o the day: The problem of figuring out how to best manage a complex task is to turn problems of decision into problems of implementation. Er, that is, to figure out areas that you can "cheat" - make decisions based on rules, simplified if-then constructs, rather than agonize over which way to go. Then you can just *act*, and that's much easier than deciding.

What prompted this, you ask? Well, I'm playing bejeweled, and thinking about strategy. I was thinking about strategies in general - what's the point of developing one? And how do you know when you've got a good piece of one?

I was thinking how with this game at least, I keep trying to come up with simple rules to govern which pieces I should move. Here's some of my strategy in this game so far:

When in doubt, move pieces at the top rather than lower down. (Higher pieces in general). They can't mess up lower pieces, you see.
If there are two ways to go, and one of them will destroy another potential move, pick the way that does *NOT* ruin other moves.
Certain moves are equivalent, so don't waste time worrying about which one to do.
Make moves that create the potential for additional moves.
Moves that instantly cause other moves to cascade as a result are great, go for those when you can.

I haven't yet been able to determine whether vertical moves are on the whole better than horizontal moves, all other things being equal. It would save me lots of effort if I could figure that one out, once and for all. Right now, I just try to think ahead, to picture the board how it will be after my move, as best I can, but this is quite difficult (computationally expensive).

My top score so far is around 4500. I always get locked up right about then. Argh!

I don't record my score at the site, because you have to register to do that. Oh, and I always play level 1. Time limits are not my cup o tea.

[ cognition ] 2001-01-18

Vocabulary corner: Today's word is:

maestrogenic - noun, meaning: teacher-induced, as a disorder or other problem (compare with "iatrogenic", meaning: doctor-induced, as a disease).

We found it used here by Jerry Pournelle (a little misspelled, but that's okay). Here's a quote (and I fixed the spelling):

I make no doubt that something like ADD exists, just as true dyslexia exists. But true dyslexia is very rare, down under 1%, yet 10% and more of children are diagnosed as "having" dyslexia. Most cases of "dyslexia" are maestrogenic: they kid didn't learn to read because the kid wasn't taught to read. I do not know what the corresponding numbers for ADD are, but I would be astonished if "true ADD" amounted to more than 10% of the boys in schools. I truly would.

I don't see this word appearing in various dictionaries. There are only nine hits at Google (none for the misspelled version). Maybe Pournelle coined this one? I'm not sure, but I like it!

[ good my site rants ] 2001-01-18

Aha! I fixed the caching problem: I asked y'all to help me, but ya didn't, so I had to actually look for my own lazy-ass self. A search at Google for "webcam refresh problem" yielded this handy site which tells me that I needed a meta tag of the "Expires" variety in order to get around IE's idiotic caching even in the face of a Pragma no-cache. Jerks!

What's humorous is Microsoft's recommendation to get around the bug in IE 4.x where it ignores the Pragma no-cache tag - they suggest you add an extra "head" section to your html, below the body and before the closing html tag. I am not making this up.

And for IE 5, they decided not to bother even attempting to support it at all, so you *must* use the meta-expires tag to force it not to cache. Idiots!!!!! Why can't I set this in my user preferences? I *thought* I did, when I told it to check every time I visit the page for any changes. Argh.

[ rants ] 2001-01-18

I wrote her a nastygram: Let's see if she sues me! Okay, I'm being really harsh today, maybe it's the lack of caffeine. I had only one Pepsi yesterday (I usually have at least 2-3 every day), and today I have had none so far. Anyway, here's what I wrote:

Hi,
I wandered to your weblog today, and liked it, but then I saw your copyright stuff. "Nothing is available to take or imitate". Geez, that's pretty harsh.
Oh crap, I just quoted you! Are you going to sue me now?
Sigh. I read your whatiscopyright.org site, too, by the way. No, I'm not some cretin who goes around scarfing other people's writing or design elements or anything like that.
But your attitude seems to imply that if I were so brash as to have a column in a table the same width as one of yours, that it would be construed as ILLEGAL INFRINGEMENT.
Or maybe the line is not really drawn that far, but then again, I'm not sure where it is - you've drawn the line further than anything else I've ever seen, with the simple word "imitate", so I'm scared to step anywhere near it.
Frankly, I have decided to avoid your sites in the future, since I prefer more friendly areas of the web. That is, those that don't go out of their way to inform me how important it is that I don't *dare* even think about imitating anything about them.
Plus, you're a lawyer, so I know you are likely very able to make my life miserable should I accidentally ever be inspired by anything on any of your sites. It's too dangerous for me to view them, given that possibility.
I think that clear overt plagiarism is obviously wrong, and certainly nobody should be making a profit off of someone else's carefully created words or designs. But forbidding imitation? (what kind? You don't specify, so one must assume *any* imitation at all, no matter how abstract...) Asking for special images to be shown when someone so much as *links* to your whatiscopyright.org site? C'mon!
There's what is reasonable, and what is feasible to expect others to do, and then there are your sites...
Don't worry, I'm not under any delusions that you'll care about my opinion, or the fact that I'm not going to visit your sites anymore. I just felt like venting, since your clear unfriendliness really got my hackles up today. I'm withdrawing from caffeine these days, so this may have something to do with it, I dunno.
By the way, cute kid.
-Beth

I was tempted to make some extra-snotty crack about how I hope her cute little baby son learns to share someday, unlike his mommy. But I realized that would be over the top.

See, I *do* have tact! A little tiny bit, at least...

[ rants ] 2001-01-18

An extra freezer answer: Which I am afraid to quote here, because of the nastily-worded copyright notice on the site. It says: "Nothing is available for you to take or imitate."

Geez, how unfriendly. Thanks!

I guess I did "take" something, though - that copyright notice. Heh. Ah well, call it Fair Use, since I'm commenting on it.

Anyway, this is the page with the reference to something stored in a freezer for a long time (second paragraph from the bottom, not including the date line). Oops, I just took that thing-inna-freezer idea from there. And the URL. Doh! Sue me! How abstract do I have to get before the author would deem it fair to come after me?

I dunno, I just find such a copyright notice rather obnoxious. Or rather, it's a snotty little copyright *addition* - she already has a copyright notice, above it.

I wonder if maybe somebody seriously plagiarized her or something, to make her so defensive. Who knows?

Does she ever "take or imitate" something from someone else, without explicit permission?

It's not the "take" I object to so much, it's the "imitate". I mean... it's such a nebulous concept. Obviously I am against clear plagiarism, but c'mon. Imitation is verboten? Geez.

If your ideas/writing/design are so great that you can't bear someone daring to imitate at all, then fine, keep 'em to yourself!

Hmph.

Oh, good lord, I just looked at her site, What Is Copyright?, and it's worse than I thought. And she's a *lawyer*. Okay, now this makes sense.

Sigh. Some people just don't know how to share, at all. I'd prefer to avoid such. So her blog isn't making it to my list o blogs, and I'll likely never bother visiting her site again. I mean, there are so many more worthy sites out there that *don't* go out of their way to snap at you about how you absolutely mustn't imitate anything about their site, ever, at all.

For the record, I freely share my site design stuff here, the little stone sun & background (which I carved & scanned myself) are free to use, I just think it would be nifty if people would let me see what they've done with it, that's all (oh, and don't *sell* it, or I'll get snotty on yer ass).

[ weblogs ] 2001-01-18

Yet more weblogs: I'm wandering far afield today.

Bleublog (and her baby has a log too)
House of boo-boo's
Serious Instructional Technology
The View From Chaos Manor (Jerry Pournelle)

[ beauty ] 2001-01-17

Well, whaddayaknow? Gee, I just happened across mp3 versions of all the songs on the album Highwired by MacAlias.

How spiffy! Go give a listen, it's great music. I promise. :)

Then go buy the album, because these ladies (the two who are the group, or rather, duo) certainly aren't rich. You will probably have to special order it and wait a couple/few weeks, like I did.

Here are a few words from one of the songs, The Gowden Locks Of Anna, which was written by Robert Burns (as were a couple of the other songs). Keep in mind this is Scots, not English:

Yestreen I had a pint o' wine
A place where body saw na;
Yestreen lay on this breast o' mine
The gowden locks o' Anna
The hungry Jew, in wilderness
Rejoicing ower his manna
Was nithin' tae the hinny bliss
Upon the lips o' Anna
...
The Kirk an' State may join an' tell,
To do sic things I maunna:
The Kirk an' State may go tae Hell,
And I'll gae to my Anna.
She is the sunshine o' my e'e,
Tae live but her I canna;
Had I on earth but wishes three,
The first would be my Anna.

The liner notes say:

Anna Park was a blonde barmaid at The Globe Inn, Dumfries, whith whom Burns spent many a night on his way home from his excise rounds. The Globe is still a good place for a drink, and the room in which they slept looks very much the way it did then, with some genuine Burns graffitti scratched on the window pane. Anna bore him a daughter and was sent off to Edinburgh in disgrace by her family. Despite having a baby son of the same age, Jean Armour, Burns' wife, brought up Anna's child as her own. Gowden Locks is, in our humble opinion, one of Burns' most beautiful love songs.

I would certainly agree it's a gorgeous song, especially the way they sing it.

And this album also features the song John C. Clarke, the most wonderful song ever written about a gas installer. :) I knew I had to have this album the moment I heard that song on the radio. Go listen, it's good. And in the liner notes they say: "Commissions for songs about electricians and software engineers accepted."

Heh, I laughed out loud when I read that... I'd love to hear what kind of song they'd come up with about a software engineer...

[ random thoughts ] 2001-01-17

Bounty from the box o doom: Various random bits I've received since its debut yesterday:

"I'm not so sure," said Alice, looking dubiously at the can of worm chins. "I didn't even know they had chins." "Don't be foolish, girl," said the Red Queen. "Fry it up with a few moldy potatoes and we'll have a supper fit for a king. Use the slug fat, there on the shelf." "And the beets!" came the shrill cry of the tiny pig at the table. "Don't forget the green beets!"

Um. I'm not quite sure what to make of this... It may be an oblique reference to my query on the oldest thing in one's freezer, but I doubt it.

Another entry:

Huzzah! Finally, Beth is safe from the hummingbirds!

Oh my, I hadn't even realized that they were out to get me. Good thing they are no longer, though...

I'll do updates on the Freezer Question next week sometime, so send in your responses!

[ body ] 2001-01-17

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

...I had this body:

And the tragic part is that I hated how I looked. I thought I was horrifically ugly. I think it was largely due to my braces, but even on top of that I felt so awkward and just *wrong*, fundamentally. I felt unloveable (romantically, that is).

I was about thirteen.

My, how things change. That was over half a lifetime ago. It makes me feel a bit old to say that. Well, not old, just adult, I suppose.

I look at this picture and I think of how foolish I was, I didn't realize what I had, and so on. But that's part of what youth is about, taking such things for granted. It's a privilege of youth, in other words. Which is as it should be. (Okay, that's arguable, but I'm seeing it this way today).

Also, I look at this picture for motivation, to remind me that somewhere inside of all this extra flesh I've packed on myself, I've got a lithe, muscular, trim athletic body. Yes, of course, I harbor no illusions about the irreversible changes of puberty, not to mention pregnancy and childbirth (or even the time I was on birth control pills for a few months). I don't really lament those changes (except the ones wrought by the birth control pills - argh!). I mean, after all, they were natural, and part of growing up into the full flower of a woman and essential to giving life to my daughter - I wouldn't take back either event, ever.

What hasn't been natural is the way I keep stuffing my face, and don't move my body much. I've been struggling with this for a while, like a typical American. I have been settling for the good feeling that I get from a mouthful of sugar or starch or fast food or whatever I can grab, instead of the deeper good feeling I deserve from a body running as it should.

In a way, I've been wanting that kind of good feeling too much. What I need to do is to achieve it in a different way, a healthier way. I've had my ups and downs, and tried to really "get serious" numerous times. Lately I have had a horrible time with my willpower. I have been incapable of even the most minor postponing of eating chips, or donuts, or pepsi.

But something happened yesterday - I am not sure exactly why, but my willpower came back. I was able to skip lunch with no problem (instead of having a greasy cheeseburger and fries at the bowling alley). I had a very small dinner, and drank lots of water.

I am not sure what caused this change of fortune. I imagine it is something biological - perhaps hormones or neurotransmitters finally got to a crucial point, and suddenly it works now. At any rate, I really must capitalize on it. I'm not getting any younger, as they say. I've got about a year and half left before I hit my thirties.

And as I keep watching the Discovery Health channel, I keep seeing people with crippled bodies, who would do *anything* just to be able to, say, walk normally. Something I take utterly for granted, and hardly even use. How stupid of me, I mean, how utterly cretinous. As just one example: I recently saw a teenaged boy with twisted legs from his dwarfism embark on the first of SIX surgeries he'd have to undergo, just for a chance to be able to walk, say, three blocks.

So even as I admire his courage, and thank whatever Fates there be that I am not cursed in such a manner myself, I sit there looking at my strong, healthy, under-exercised body. What the hell is my problem?

Well, whatever it is, I aim to fix it. Or at least start. I've got this little wavelet of willpower, so I've got to do whatever I can. Pushups and practice kicks in the evening, going out in my canoe more, whatever I can do. Plus I should use my health club membership more, too, though it's boring to plod away on the machines there.

I figure there are about twenty pounds between where I am now and my ideal. Roughly. This goes more by body shape and muscle tone than by numbers. So I'm ready to start knocking them down, one by one. I deserve it. (both the reward, and the work that it will require to achieve it)

As a side note on weight and Fate, consider this: in 1993, I tried to join the Air Force. I went to the induction center place, took the ASVAB (and kicked serious ass on it, *brag* *brag*) and the DLAB (defense language aptitude battery - I wanted to be a linguist (I kicked butt on this one too, *brag* etc)), and then... I stepped on the scale.

I was four pounds too heavy. Four little pounds. I was 176, and they would only take me if I were 172, their cutoff for a six-foot-tall woman. So I didn't go. I wonder what would have happened if I had... I think it would have been worse than the direction my life *did* take, somehow. But I can never really know.

[ my site ] 2001-01-17

My webcam is stuck! I dunno why, though. Apparently the webserver is caching the pic or something? I can't tell whether it's just me - maybe my browser's caching it. It wasn't doing this yesterday, though. Not after I added the pragma no-cache thingie in the html. Anyone know how to fix this? Lemme know in the box o doom if you would be so kind.

[ my site ] 2001-01-16

Doh! Before anyone sends me a box o doom message about it, I hereby pledge not to use the phrase "enthralled at the [very] prospect" again for at least three days. I hate it when I get in a diction rut. Sorry.

[ my site ] 2001-01-16

Behold, the BOX O DOOM! It was inevitable - I finally got permalinks, so the next step in the evolution of my log was set: an input box.

So now I have the box o doom there in the left column - feel free to give me feedback of a non-spam sort. Periodically I will ask for specific types of feedback, responses to assorted questions, and so forth. And if you're wondering whether I'll provide a larger version as Steve of Plurp does, the answer is: no. Just cut 'n' paste from your favorite text editor or something - it's really easy. Oh, and feel free to include html tags if it helps me to format your input.

All text entered into the box o doom will meet a perilous fate - either to be ignored forever in the bit bucket, or turned to serve my own devious ends. So enter only text that you are willing to part with.

For the first round, how about a few interesting questions? Please share your answers to the following:

What's the oldest thing in your freezer right now? (if you can identify it)
How long has it been there? (if known)
What are your plans for the future for this item? (if you have any)

After I get some responses (actually, after they start to peter out), I'll post a compendium, including my own fascinating answers to these questions! I know that both of my readers are enthralled at the very prospect.

[ good my site ] 2001-01-15

New Hardware!!!! After three long years, I finally got a new computer at work. It's very fast, very powerful, and I like it very, very much. The monitor isn't here yet, but it should arrive tomorrow.

Now that I have a machine with a USB port, I can run my webcam here at work. So now you can watch me sit on my butt all day in front of my computer. I know, you're enthralled at the prospect - who wouldn't be? :)

Also, I'm having Daniel update the list o blogs at the left, and add a feedback box o doom. Not sure when he'll get to it, but look for the changes soon (plus a new quote - that one up there is oh-so-stale, sorry).

And, I've uploaded the cute pic of Elena in the laundry basket. Enjoy!

[ family mammalog ] 2001-01-15

Brilliant kids are delightful: ...and also sometimes quite a handful. I think the two go hand-in-hand. Today:

Before taking a shower, I got on the scale. I don't do it often, because I don't like what it tells me. Sure enough, it had bad news, so I exclaimed "Doh!" and stepped off.
At this point, Elena stepped on the scale, looked down, and proclaimed "Stupid!"
I was rolling on the floor - what a smart little thing she is!

As I started running the water for my shower, I noticed it was only lukewarm. What the heck?, I thought... Then I remembered - Elena had been messing about in the laundry room yesterday, where the water heater was, and she had a few seconds before I went in after her (she can now open doors by herself). I retrieved her and didn't think anything of it.
Well, sure enough, she had turned the water heater down *all the way*. It was on "pilot". So I cranked it up to the normal "HOT" setting a little while ago, and I have to wait for it to heat up before I can take a shower.

If you feel the urge to tell me how horrifying it could have been if she'd turned the knob the other way, or done something to it that would have made it explode and burn the house down, don't bother. I have a highly developed sense of guilt, so I've already chastised myself for my stupidity. And we're going to put an Elena-proof latch on the door to the laundry. At the TOP of the door. That oughtta last us until she figures out how to get out the stepladder by herself...

Right now, she's all scrunched up in a basket of warm laundry, watching Chicken Run, and holding her balloon. Yes, I took pix. I'll upload later today...

[ beauty consume design ] 2001-01-15

I am a total geek: When I learned that Singer came out with a new sewing machine controlled with a Game Boy (via Girlhacker), I thought it was terrific, since I just so happened to be in the market for one. My old sewing machine is now ten years old, and having served me well, it nevertheless can't do spiffy things like letters and little duckies-inna-row, which are absolutely essential for making cute little outfits for Elena (and for her dollies).

So, me being me, can you guess how long I waited after finding out that the Singer Izek existed that I bought one?

Answer: the next day.

And it's *sweet*! Here's a little taste of what it can do:

That last line is me experimenting with a combination of two different stitches. I have only gotten to play with it for a little while, but already I have a bullet list to share with you:

You have to have the Game Boy connected to control anything about the stitch. Including the length of it, if you're just doing straight stitch. So it's very important not to lose your Game Boy (or lose track of it, say if someone borrows it to play a game). I can foresee many annoyed seamstresses if their spouses and/or children dare to borrow Mom's Game Boy and not return it to her sewing basket! Heh, what an image!
There's no manual. The videotape that came with it refers repeatedly to the manual, but there ain't one. There was, though, a very nice inspection slip in the box listing all four items that were included: the machine itself, the Game Boy, the Game Boy cartridge, and the videotape. All were neatly checked off on the list. I dunno why they didn't include a manual. Maybe I'll have to bug Singer about it, but I'm not sure whether there's really much point to it - I would like to have a manual, but I understand everything already even without one. As are most technically-savvy persons of my generation (and of some other generations), I am quite able to figure out new gadgets sans manual. But I still like to pore through them for unsuspected features and so on (and occasionally, I have found them essential, particularly for things with really sparse interfaces, namely my Canon ELPH APS camera).
When it seizes up and jams, it does so gently. :) I mis-replaced the bobbin-holding thingie, thus causing a thread monstrosity and much "ka-chunk"-ing to emit from the machine, after which point it gracefully decided that I was nuts, refused to keep attempting to run, and gave me a spiffy little error message on the Game Boy screen. That's cool! Graceful failure modes are fabulous...
In addition to the generous set of patterned stitches that it comes with, I can also do custom ones. I haven't really tried it yet - my first effort was a smiley face that came out all warped because I didn't bother to connect the line segments (well, it wouldn't have been much of a smiley face that way). Look for more intriguing stitches here in the future!
The speed control (for operation without the foot pedal) has a little turtle at the slow end and a bunny at the fast end. Hahahhaha, I love it! I like the pedal-less operation feature, it's nice to just press the "go" button and have it sew away. Of course, I wouldn't walk away from the machine after doing so, but in theory, you could. Oh, and the go/stop button has little LEDs in it, so it changes from green (when it's a "go" button) to red (when it's a "stop" button). Cool! Saves interface real estate, and it's intuitive signaling.
The feed dogs don't come up right away after I take off and replace the metal plate thingie. I think it's a machining-tolerance thing. That is, the gap between the feed dogs and their slots is so small, that they can sometimes catch the edge. They do come up after I mess with the lever a bit, though, so it's not a problem. By the way, feed dogs are the thingies that shove the fabric forward as you sew, if you didn't know.
I'm going to have to get an AC adapter for the Game Boy, or else I'm going to be spending a fortune on batteries. I wish they had included one... I mean, think about it: you've pretty much got to keep the Game Boy on when you're sewing, which can be hours and hours at a stretch. Wait, I could be wrong. You may be able to turn it off after you download your stitch parameters, I'll have to test it out.
You can save your favorite stitches, including four custom ones, and several strings in the lettering section. Spiffy!
Overall, the interface is clean, simple, and elegant. Very, very good design. The Game Boy interface is quite intuitive as well. It's about as complex as it needs to be, and no more. Perfect. Except for the fact that every time I have to turn it on, I have to select English - why can't it remember that?
Oh yeah, it was about $600. Not bad for what it can do. From what I could see, other machines that can do this range of stuff range from $800 to $1000 or more, so I think it's really quite a good buy. It's quite smart to use the Game Boy platform for a lot of the stitch configuration legwork - it allows them to use a tried and tested hardware & software platform rather than reinvent their own onboard the sewing machine (which they've already done, but still...)

I really, really like it. The people who came up with this are quite clever indeed. It makes sense, since they've been doing this for 150 years! There's a neat "Singer 150th Anniversary" logo on it on the front - 1851 - 2001. Wow.

And if you're wondering why I don't put this at epinions as a review, it's because I can't stand the idea of someone else owning my content. Those things just *bug* me for some reason. Same reason I won't do book reviews at Amazon, though I'll read them. I won't give away my writing so that someone else can sell it (for a lot of money) and pay me diddly-squat (pennies at best). If there were a good place for such things that wouldn't do that (or excise URLs pointing elsewhere from what you write), that was noncommercial, then I might consider it, but there isn't.

Anyway, I'll close this with a few more stitches:

And I'll also mention that I did a *HUGE* amount of clearing-away-of-Stuff so that I could justify getting to play with my sewing machine. I went through tons of boxes, put up shelves in the garage, and sorted like crazy, to get to a point where I can sort of manage my Stuff. I'm not done, but I have slogged through an entire room full of disorganized Stuff that is now filtered at least.

[ family ] 2001-01-12

Somebody I know: died yesterday. And I am feeling somewhat guilty that I wasn't nicer to him. I didn't even really know him that well, but I was rather standoffish towards him. More than I needed to be.

I didn't realize how sick he was, either.

Partly because of this, I felt like finding again a bit of Lileks that I had remembered reading. It's something he wrote about the death of his mother:

Mom at the sink, Mom over the washing machine, Mom on skis, about to hurtle over a cliff. Mom coming through the door with the bowling trophy. Mom at the piano, serenading herself after the chores were done. Ordinary moments of an ordinary life.
The ordinary now has its true face: miraculous. Growing up under her hand, her gaze, her heart was a miracle, unbelievable luck. I had no idea at the time; we never do. We take the miraculous as commonplace because it happens every day. And then you find yourself cutting the first piece of hospital chicken for your mother, and you realize that you cannot even begin to repay the debt. You'll spend the rest of your days discovering what you owe.

[ beauty ] 2001-01-12

I like this vision/dream: or whatever the heck it is, (DEAD LINK) from sevencrabrangoon.

I had a dream something similar to this several years ago. There was this group of people I met, they all wore these strange robes. They were very nice, totally at peace and relaxed and happy. And they said I could join them. I was all angstful for some reason, worried about things elsewhere. I guess I had taken refuge there somehow, just making a pit stop.

And they told me I could stay. Of course.

And I remember one robed person holding out their hands to me, offering a big friendly hug. And I was a little nervous and awkward, but I accepted the hug, and hugged back.

And it was wonderful - I felt at peace, I felt loved and accepted and protected and cared for and valued and beautiful and delighted, all at once.

And I knew that I was Home.

I knew that this was where I had always been meant to be.

And so these days I feel like it's my mission to make that place a reality. I know it may sound goofy or naive or stupid or whatever, but I don't fucking care. With the sword of self-respect I slash the hell out of that dragon that goes by the name of: "Fear of appearing like a dork". Life's too short for that shit.

Like I keep saying, I have a *lot* of work to do. The trouble is, my job keeps getting in the way of my Work. I must resolve this somehow.

I haven't slayed all of my dragons yet, I'm afraid. It makes me sad and a little ashamed. Like I know I could do better, should have done better by now. But maybe it just wasn't time yet - maybe I just had to grow a little more, be a little stronger, a little more sure of myself. Maybe I just had to explore the rotten options more fully so I would know just how rotten they were for me. Because otherwise, I might get wistful and think that somehow they were right, I might wish I could live that way. That is, when the going gets tough, and it *will* get tough, that's for sure.

So sometimes I just look myself in the mirror and ask, "Beth, when the hell are you going to finally decide to grow up?"

No answer, yet. Soon, I hope.

[ rants ] 2001-01-10

Okay, this is making me nauseous: It almost seems too horrific to be true. Some stupid woman has started a so-called "Surrendered Wife Movement", convincing women to give themselves over to their husbands without question. I think I'm going to vomit. From (DEAD LINK) this article:

Sex was another big change. "Most men are not interested in having sex with their mothers, and that is who we remind them of when we try to control them. A surrendered wife always says yes, and is always available for sex," she said.

Ewwwww. It's like the Stepford Wives without all the bother of actually having to take obedience-inducing drugs.

[ weblogs ] 2001-01-10

Some more weblogs: I came across these recently:

booknotes (from Austin, woohoo!)
ViewFromTheHeart
loony.org

[ random thoughts ] 2001-01-10

And lo, the axe doth swing: Oh goodie, so I wasn't revealing Top Secret Information in my weblog entry yesterday - there's (DEAD LINK) a story in the Boston Globe about the new Lotus restructuring, saying that layoffs "have not been ruled out". Hah!

Swish swish, here comes the axe!

They've told us it should all be revamped by the end of Q1, so we'll see. I've got a big group meeting next Monday morning - wondering if there will be any interesting announcements...

[ beauty body good manifesto my site ] 2001-01-09

Things are coming together: It's really quite amazing and lovely. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it all, so I'll just start rattling stuff off...

I have been giving lots of personal importance to this new millenium starting, and at first I thought that I'd consider the winter solstice the beginning of the new year for me. You see, I've always kind of had this idea of using my own calendar, something that made more sense to me. I've never actually done it, mind you, but I think I will now.

So anyway, the solstice came and went and it didn't feel all that special to me. Ditto with the first of the year. The eclipse on Xmas eve and the asteroid nearly hitting earth could be said to mean something, if one wants to consider things in a certain way (perhaps signs that the era of Xtianism is waning?).

So I then thought more recently, after getting a nifty moon calendar of 2001 when I was in Denver, that perhaps I should take as my Day 1, Month 1, Year 1 of the New Era the day of the first full moon past the Solstice. Which is today.

And so these things have happened, in the past day, and I choose to take them as signs (and I don't expect anyone else to, mind you):

My mother called last night to tell me that The Notebook has been found. I haven't written here about this special Notebook yet, I kept putting it off. Anyway, it's a black notebook that I left on the Ski Train that was lost - we checked the Lost & Found, badgered the Ski Train people, and it never turned up. I cried when I realized there was no hope - real tears of stupidity, regret, and loss. You see, in the Notebook were several valuable things: 1) all my papers to prove that I've paid around $2500 in debts that still show up on my credit report, including originals of bank statements, check carbons, a settlement letter, a copy of my divorce decree, and my social security card, 2) the memory book from my 10-year high school reunion, containing all the addresses & contact info for anyone I might want to get in touch with, and 3) all my notes for my information system for thirdhand.org. I hadn't worked on a thing since I lost the Notebook - I knew I'd have to re-do it all from memory, which was quite possible, but I didn't have the time to work on it anyway, and I was just kind of stewing in denial for a while. But so, miraculously, the Notebook has returned. I hope that all of its contents are intact - there is nothing of value in it to anyone but me. It's funny that while in Colorado, I dreamed I would get it back, but I dismissed the dream with pessimism, stating that the only dreams I have that ever come true involve the activities of my uterus. (Don't ask me why, but it works. If I get a dream about uh, uterine activity (such as that which tends to happen on a roughly monthly basis or that preceding the birth of a child), then it happens in the next day or two). So, the return of the Notebook is Sign #1.
When I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, quickly brushing my teeth because I was late for the Big Meeting, I saw myself as really beautiful. This is rare, that when I catch a glimpse, it all looks pretty good - I usually focus on something that doesn't look right: something sagging here, a blemish there, some lumpiness over there, wishing it were different somehow. But not this morning. I looked and saw, simply, beauty. And it made me feel quite nice, and thankful for my body. Pretty amazing considering I still need to lose around 20 pounds to get to my ideal, but anyway. So, we have positive Sign #2.
The other day, I had some interesting musings about physics and gravity and probability and whatnot, you know, the Big Questions about how the universe works and why it is the way it is, and so on. Last night, before drifting off to sleep, I regaled Spencer with some of my realizations, and in the process came to some astounding new ones. I think I've finally Figured It Out. Well, from my own point of view, anyway. A bunch of the bigger pieces of the puzzle, at least. And so, this morning, at the Big Meeting that I was late for, as I pretended to take notes during the presentation of boring corporate slides, I clarified my realizations even more, with a mere one page of notes. I think it's really stunning, even if it's just a re-explanation of what Real Physicists already know, just stated in terms that I (and I presume at least a couple other people on the planet) can now understand, with this new perspective I came up with. So, we've got Sign #3.
And during this Big Meeting, the head of our whole division here at work went on about how the latest group of consultants had reported to the managers all the stuff that we've known for a long time about what's wrong and what needs to be changed. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Oh, and he equivocated skilfully when pegged about whether there would be layoffs in Support (we had a corporate restructuring warning from on high the other day). He said something like "I don't know where *all of them* are going to be happening, so I can't say". A true politician - I wanted to get up and say, "We don't care where *all of them* are going to be - we just want to know whether ANY of them will be occuring in Support?". But of course I didn't. I just sat there drawing little symbols during the Q and A. At the end, he spoke of some ship-based analogy, asking us to ask ourselves whether we're committed to being in the boat or not. I guess it was supposed to be inspiring us or something, but all I could think is that I want to find the dinghy and paddle the hell away. Preferable if the dinghy is my outrigger canoe and I can just go off and surf the waves. Anyway... as he was speaking, I felt that truly I don't belong at this company anymore. I kind of almost resolved to quit, a decision I've been postponing for awhile. I can't really afford to, of course, but we'll see what happens - I may not have a choice if I get laid off. That's okay, too. I don't really mind. I'd actually look forward to it. I am so sick of this job, to be honest. It's a good job, but it's just not for me anymore. So I guess that's Sign #4.
And then as I was writing symbols on my notepad, I finally figured out what to use my symbology for. I had developed some nifty symbols several years ago, trying several times to come up with a way to use it to represent a syllibary, a way to write phonetic speech in a simplified way or something, maybe for a language I would make up. I shelved it for a long time, because it just got so tangled any time I tried to take it very far. Anyway, today I figured out what to do with it - I made about 29 symbols that will be very useful for my personal little moon calendar. I really like them, this is going to be neato. So that's Sign #5.
And tonight, we are going to sit down with our friend Luba and discuss the possibility of opening a cafe-type thing in Austin. Luba has found a nice retail space for rent not far from us, in a very choice location. Conceivably, we could all get together on a new business. Spencer worked with her before on her food business, in which she made all kinds of yummy, fresh vegetarian food and delivered it to some area grocery stores which then sold it. She got sick of doing it all herself (which is how it eventually got to be), and she stopped doing it when she went to Beirut earlier this year. So she is considering doing a little cafe with take-out food in refrigerated cases, the same hummus and pasta salads she made before. People could grab it and go - the place isn't big enough for more than just a couple token tables, so she doesn't envision an atmosphere with people spending lots of time there while they eat. I am very excited about the idea - her daughter Clavdia is an artist, and she could surely sell lots of her artwork if it were displayed on the walls there. Heck, I'd like to do artwork too, with cut paper stuff once I get a laser cutter. So perhaps this is a new direction for us all to go in? We'll have to see... But it's an exciting possibility at the very least. Sign #6.

Okay, these things may not sound like a lot to someone else, but to me it's very meaningful. I'm very eager to see where this all leads... and yes, you'll hear more about my theories of physics. To give a quick hint of what I'm getting at - I think I figured out what gravity is (and no, it doesn't involve "gravitons" or any particles other than the matter involved), what black holes are, and why quantum uncertainty is only resolved when an observer steps in. It all fits together very neatly to me. And the implications are amazing - it ties in to so very many things. I do believe I'm going to have to write a book on all of this (including gobs of what's in the Pinata Manifesto (but not the parts I'm embarassed to have written at this point! Heh!)). It connects to the way we think, how events unfold and why, event horizons big and small, belief, magic, and coincidences. Dang, I may have to start a new religion or something (don't worry, I recognize the risk that I'd probably be the only member to ever join, and that doesn't bother me). Or at least a new philosophy. Should be fun!

Who knows, maybe I'll look back on this day years from now and think to myself, "Ah, I was so deluded back then!". But that's okay. When things are going positively, you've just gotta ride that wave, take it where it goes.

But first, you've gotta paddle like mad to catch it! I've got a *lot* of work to do...

[ rants ] 2001-01-08

Good nutshell summary: of why and how health insurance companies are screwing people over, in this article:

This episode clearly illustrates how the business of medical insurance in America works today. The theory behind group health insurance is that it is supposed to spread risks and costs so that the healthy subsidize the sick. That is a fair trade-off since most of us at one time or another will need some sort of expensive medical treatment. The use of these forms, however, makes clear that insurance companies are doing their best not to sell insurance, but to sell prepaid services to people who are unlikely to need much medical treatment or, at worst, who will only need fairly predictable and inexpensive services. As a result, these companies are no longer in the business of spreading risk, but of avoiding risk.

Nicely puts into a few sentences what I've been thinking for a long time. The overall article is about the invasive privacy-breaching questions that health insurance providers ask before they even deign to give coverage (which of course they can drop as soon as the customers actually need significant care). Highway robbery!

[ beauty books good movies ] 2001-01-08

Hayao Miyazaki is amazing! He's the guy who has done My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, and a bunch of other things, including Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.

I am very impressed with his work, and I can't wait to see more of it. I'm going to buy the Nausicaa graphic novels, and since Princess Mononoke came out on DVD but isn't out on VHS, it's the perfect excuse for me to break down and buy a DVD player! :)

I'm just reading all sorts of stuff about him, including interviews with him. Here's a small taste:

An interview fragment:
Even human beings' inability to coexist with nature is part of nature. When humans say when it suits them that they can't coexist, or that that's a bad thing, all that is part of nature too, right? But if you consider whether or not civilization is doing well, as long as nature doesn't become a constraint, I would have to say it's diseased.
Why he uses so many female heroines
A bunch more interviews & articles

I love this exquisite feeling - knowing that I have a bunch of really wonderful things to see and read, and that the author clearly has a worldview similar to mine (at least in certain ways). I'm giddy with anticipation!

[ beauty good ] 2001-01-08

Moro Totoro: Wow, they *do* have toys, I'll have to see what I can get! I'm reading the FAQ at the Totoro site I mentioned below, and it's amazing. I didn't realize that it was originally released as a double feature with Grave of the Fireflies (another excellent animated movie, though heartbreakingly sad (it's about wartime Japan, including the a-bomb and its horrific aftermath)). I also didn't realize that the mother in the story had TB, and that it was sort of autobiographical, in that the writer/director's mother had TB when he was a child.

And it's now been definitively decided that I absolutely *MUST* go to Burning Man this year, even if only for an afternoon. You see, there's going to be a full-sized cat bus (from My Neighbor Totoro)!!! I gotta go, I gotta show Elena. She'll be so thrilled! I'll figure out some way to compromise with Spencer. We can just stop by for an afternoon, long enough to see the cat bus, not long enough to get too uncomfortable...

[ beauty mammalog movies ] 2001-01-08

My Neighbor Totoro: One of the movies in Elena's collection is My Neighbor Totoro, and I like it quite a bit. It features strong, positive female main characters, something I'm always on the lookout for. I'm so glad that there are more of them out there than when I was a kid.

Chicken Run also has strong female characters, too. I love Ginger - I love how she's a responsible leader, good at bringing together the strengths of the other chickens and coordinating their efforts, strong *and* caring, she's brave, clever, adventurous, uncompromising, and also well respected (mostly) by the other chickens. And most of all, she doesn't put up with any crap from Rocky. She eventually earns his respect, too.

Back to Totoro for a moment. I found the script, at a nifty site about the movie. I wish there were some little action figures I could buy for Elena. This movie is great. I love how the characters really work together as a community. And how even though the girls' mother is sick, it's coped with sanely by all involved, I think. It's just so... non-American, really. And I love the underlying reverence for and wonder of nature. Great, great movie. I can't wait to start a garden with Elena this year - I'll bet that she'll yell "Totoro!!" when our seeds start to grow. :)

[ random thoughts ] 2001-01-08

Wow. I have no idea what category to put this in. An abandoned NSA station has been bought by a group of astronomers in a land swap in North Carolina. It's apparently quite amazing, the stuff they left behind.

Found (DEAD LINK) the story on it via the excellent sevencrabrangoon weblog.

[ humor ] 2001-01-08

Monday mirth: I have some of the cleverest, wittiest cow orkers here. No matter how much I may whine about how things suck where I work, the one thing that's really kickass cool is the selection of people they manage to hire.

Here's a lovely little email exchange from this morning, to show you just how spiffy some of the people I work with are. And of course, the clever Fred is the one who started it:

Fred writes:

Subject: To whoever removed the aerator from the 3rd floor breakroom sink...
The sink now acts less like a faucet and more like a showerhead, and it has a tendancy to make quite a mess when turned on.
Now I went to a high school that could best be described as a 'hippie' school. And in this school the aerators would often be removed from the sinks. It seemed that there are several wire screens inside the aerators which are quite handy for certain activities which often go on in the woods behind a high school.
Since I doubt if anyone really likes the idea of getting a cold soaking wet crotch every time they turn on the water to wash out their coffeecup, I can only assume that the aerator from our sink was taken for similar reasons. To prevent the need for this in the future, I have attached a URL which will point you towards a Planet K located conveniently near our facility. Planet K sells quite a few plumbing supplies which I hope will fulfill your needs and prevent future occurances of this problem.
Thank you for your time.
Fred
[link]

To which the inimitable Brent replied:

Fred, that is an amusing writing.
I just wanted to let you know that the aerator was also removed from the 2nd floor some 3 or so years ago. Actually, when we first moved into this facility. I know the reason was that it took about a half an hour to wash out a gross coffee cup with the pitiful gpm the aerator supplied.
Now, note that an aerator is actually the white plastic thingy <--technical term, in the housing that screws off. I don't think this was used for illicit purposes in high school. see the picture that follows:

The screen (often used for illicit purposes) is just the screen. It serves the function of stopping loose deposits and small rocks from coming through to the container you may be filling to drink from. Since you discussed both, I am concerned you have confused people and may need to produce a follow-up note.
Oh, and I also wanted to tell you that if in fact you never find it, (the aerator not the screen) people will adjust to the new water flow. That is, one wet crotch, shame on the perpetrator, two wet crotch(es), shame on the operator.
ciao

And lo, much chuckling was heard emanating from my cube.