3028 I am like a dead writer?

Saturday, July 17, 2010

So many religions. So little God.

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

I guess I'll have to find out who David Foster Wallace is, or was, and read something he wrote.
I submitted three separate samples of my writing to an analysis tool - a blog entry, a private diary entry, and a letter to a friend - and in every case I got

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Hmmmmm. Maybe it was just stuck on D.F.W. this evening? Any opinion from anyone who might be familiar with him?

OUCH!
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3027 Van is another step closer to moving

Saturday, July 17, 2010

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
-- Stephen Roberts --

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The above quote is really, really, worth thinking about. Understand that the person being spoken to is not necessarily Christian.

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

Vic came by last evening and finished working on the van brakes. He tested the A/C and was surprised to find that it worked fine after having sat in the driveway for more than two years. He added a little more whatsis gas to it, and it worked better.

So now I have to find out why one front tire keeps going flat, add some brake fluid, locate the current insurance card, get it registered, and then get it over to the Captain's shop where they can work to figure out why the "check engine" goes on, and why it ate the battery.

He did talk a lot last evening, but I didn't get that too-cosy flirtatious vibe I got from him before. I don't know what happened since the last time, when I had to be rescued by the cavalry, but I don't mind at all. (Hmmm. Maybe he picked up on my reaction to the arrival of the cavalry. I don't suppose he had to be too sensitive to get the idea.)
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3026 No one's looking! Let's steal something!

Friday, July 16, 2010

"The beauty and intricacy of a person's mind
has little or nothing to do with outward appearances."

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Two years after installing them, Arizona has decided to discontinue use of automated cameras on Arizona freeways aimed at catching speeders. According to the New York Times article, Arizona is "bowing to the wishes of a vocal band of conservative activists who complained that photo enforcement intruded on privacy and was mainly designed to raise money."

I don't understand.

The comments on the Times story and the Wall Street Journal blog entry didn't enlighten me, either.

Apparently it's ok to invade the privacy of other people that "we" don't like (ok to hassle anyone who looks vaguely Hispanic, or ok to burst into the bedrooms of possible gays), but not ok to intrude on "our" privacy? Hey, if you don't want your wife to know you were on a certain street when you were supposed to be at work, then don't speed on that street, then you don't have to worry about her seeing the mailed ticket and photo.

Besides, if nobody breaks any laws, then nobody pays any fines, so what's the "designed to raise money" objection? That doesn't make any sense.

I was surprised at the number of commenters who had the attitude that if the police didn't see them breaking the law, then it's ok to break the law (and endanger others). One commenter said, "If the referee doesn’t call a foul, it’s not a foul." Please tell me that isn't a tenet of that "sportsmanship" thing I hear is so valuable to teach our youth.

Sorry. As far as I'm concerned, whether anyone sees the foul or not, even if the person you fouled against isn't aware, it was still a foul, and you should be ashamed. Even if a police officer did not see you speed or run the light, you still broke the law and should suffer the consequences.

Following the twisted logic of those commenters, if no one sees you shoplift, then it's ok to shoplift. It's apparently not a crime to break the law, the only crime is getting caught. And these idiots want to make the catchers follow their rules, even if the miscreants themselves don't have to follow any rules.

These people make me sick.

I wonder if they'd be happier if Arizona raised taxes to quintuple the law enforcement budget, pulled police officers out of neighborhood beats so none could come to 911 calls, hired more officers, and put a cop with a radar gun every quarter mile on the highways. I have a feeling they still wouldn't be happy --- because it's not the cameras they object to, it's the getting caught.
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3025 Want want! Gimme!

Friday, July 16, 2010

Holding resentment is like drinking poison and
expecting the other person to die. It doesn't work.

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Actor Isaiah Mustafa (pant, pant), of the Old Spice commercials, and a team of "creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers" made over 150 short videos (pant pant, yummy!) over Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week, spending no more than an average of 7 minutes per video, including script. They immediately posted them on YouTube.

From http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_old_spice_won_the_internet.php:

The group seeded various social networks with an invitation to ask questions of Mustafa's character, a dashing shirtless man [I want! - Silk] with over-the-top humor and bravado [yummy! - Silk]. Then all the responses were tracked and users who contributed interesting questions and/or were high-profile people on social networks are being responded to directly and by name in short [under a minute, which goes much too quickly - Silk], funny YouTube videos.

The first video I saw was this one: http://www.youtube.com/user/oldspice?...QodnmpkcA. Unfortunately, this particular one doesn't have an imbed button. I don't know why not - it's a regular Old Spice commercial, not one they made in that marathon session - but do go watch it. It's the best of all and introduces the character.

Here's a selection from the "answers" shorts:






The worst thing about these clips is that you can look but not touch, and oh do I want to touch!
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3024 Hallucinations

Thursday, July 15, 2010

"Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind."
-- Dr. Seuss --

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I listened to a TED Talk today (see the July 14 post) on hallucinations. The speaker said that people who are blind have vivid visual hallucinations, and people who are deaf have musical hallucinations. I was reminded of how once he went blind, Jay had hallucinations that seemed very real to him.

Back when I was a little more than a bit "off", in my 20s and early 30s, I used to imagine conversations with people at work, rehearsing so to speak, especially when it was going to be awkward or stressful, but I guess I did it so thoroughly that I fully believed we had already had the conversation. The memory was very clear to me. I distinctly remember what I had said, what they had said, their reactions, everything. Only trouble was, of course, that it had never actually happened. And then I'd get in trouble because even though I had a clear memory of having told someone that some part of the project would be late or whatever, it had never actually happened.

About that same time, I dreamed a lot, and some of those dreams were so clear that I couldn't be sure that they were dreams and not memories. I couldn't tell the difference.

I don't know if any of that is technically hallucinating, but the effect is the same.

I haven't suffered from any of that in almost 30 years. These days I can tell the difference between real and imaginary, although I have noticed a certain problem with short-term memory. If something goes by quickly, I don't always manage to get it "stored". (It started when I had the Versed during the endoscopy in 2005 - post here. Versed is dangerous to memory, and they don't tell you that! In fact, they won't usually even tell you you're getting Versed (pronounced VER-sed))

Anyway, something happened a few days ago that had me very worried about my mental state.

In the evening, I had a memory of something happening earlier in the day, and I wasn't sure that it had actually happened, or whether it was a false memory. I really truly wasn't sure whether it was fact, or a burst of imagination, hallucination. Which was scary because I haven't had that problem in 30 years, and if I imagined it and couldn't tell the difference, well, I'm losing it.

The memory, or hallucination, was of a quick, tactile, auditory, and visual experience, and such an enormous surprise that I didn't react. I didn't react because I didn't know how to react. And then it was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and I moved on to other things. If it was real it was so quick it may not have been stored immediately - the Versed short-term memory problem.

The fact that I couldn't get it out of my head when I went to bed, and then dreamed about it, with extensions, made it worse the next day. I thought I was going crazy. It wasn't the memory that upset me, but that I didn't know whether it was real or imagined. It could have been imagined because it was something I wanted, but can't have, like a horse in the back yard (I want one!), or the fox back in the front yard, or world peace. It could have been real. That I didn't know, scared me.

I may have got a tiny confirmation yesterday (like mysterious hoofprints in the backyard). Or maybe I'm just reading into it. Whatever. The fact that it may have been real doesn't change the fact that I wasn't sure, and that still scares me.
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3023 I disapprove!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Don't taunt the alligator until after you've crossed the creek.

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

I guess the above quote could apply to Vic. I may have to go a step farther and flirt a little.

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

NBC's Today show this morning did a piece on walking/running shoes. The word "support" was used a lot.

Why do people think feet need "support"? In their natural original form, they don't! Feet have been naturally engineered to support the body for standing, walking, and running, and for providing a shock absorber for the back. In their natural form, they are perfect for that.

When a part of your body has spent weeks or months in a cast or brace, the muscles atrophy, and if it's a tight cast, especially when you're growing, it can misshape the bones. This "support" myth has parents cramming toddler feet into hard-soled shoes that shape the foot and don't allow the muscles in the foot, ankle, and calf to develop as designed. Lacing the instep down tightly can flatten the arch.

So yeah, I guess all these self-appointed experts saying that the foot needs "support" do need support, because their feet, and the feet of those they advise, have been purposely damaged since toddlerhood.

I'm lucky. My feet were so tiny that my mother couldn't find "proper" hard-soled shoes to fit me. I grew up in soft booties and barefoot. When I started school, the authorities insisted on proper hard shoes, so I stumbled around in shoes that were too big, with cotton stuffed in the toes. As soon as I got home from school every day they came off. My feet are very happy, thank you. I do not feel a need for "support".

When Daughter was small, I kept her in booties or barefoot as much as I could, and when schools insisted on shoes to protect the sole, I went with soft shoes, like tennis or boat shoes.

Now I'm hearing that parents are putting high heels on little girls.

Many people object to it because of the sexualizing of the children. I am disgusted by the damage they're doing to the kids' legs and feet. I can't be the only person who thinks about stuff like that, can I?

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Heidi Klum, in an AP interview, talking about how she lost the baby weight: "...I also do not sit on the couch with my feet up and eat one potato chip bag after the next, and ..."

Do people usually eat potato chip bags? And how do you eat one after the next? Temporal dissonance there.

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Picture in the newspaper of a young couple, Jay and Megan Mkrtschjan. If that name isn't misspelled, it should be.

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I have come across another couple "engaged" for ten years, with three kids, who "can't afford to get married". It still pisses me off as much as ever. The official paper and a JP costs a few dollars. What they should say is that they can't afford the big fancy party wedding.

But even that isn't the truth.

They really just don't want to officially commit, and they can't look each other in the eye and say that. Otherwise, they could go the JP route, and then have the big wedding when they can finally afford it, if ever.

Yeah. It's the commitment they can't do.

Actually, "they" is probably inaccurate. I suspect it should be "he". As long as they aren't married, and especially if there are children, he has a threat over her head, whether it has ever been spoken or not. And she foolishly thinks the kids are enough of a hold on him.

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

I have to sell stock and pay bills today. I wonder if that has contributed to my disapproving mood.

I was in a discussion a few days ago with someone who is also upset about a lot of things going on in the country and the world. She said that people have to take action, have to DO something, and that she felt guilty because she didn't see that there was anything she could do that would make any difference. Bandaids are not a solution.

I thought about that a while. You know, there are a few people whose death would at least shut them up, keep them from spreading hate and divisiveness. It's a quick and easy solution to at least one small part of one problem to take the gun in the den drawer, point it, and shoot it. At least one can feel one acted.

Maybe assassins aren't as crazy as I thought they were. Or maybe I'm that crazy.
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3022 Wandering the net

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

"Those who can laugh without cause have either
found the true meaning of happiness
or have gone stark raving mad."
-- Norm Papernick --

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Well, Vic called at 5:30ish this evening to say he wouldn't be here to work on the van this evening or tomorrow. Friday for sure. Ok.

He and the builder are racing. What's that race called where whoever comes in last wins?

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

Piper told me at lunch yesterday to get ready to sell the second third of stock today or tomorrow, but not until he calls and tells me to. We're selling stock to buy the new house 1/3 at a time. I sold the first third a few weeks ago.

Looking at graphs today was shocking. The market had been climbing from that long drop, right up until late April, and then almost the day I signed the contract, everything dropped precipitously. It's just now starting to rise again, so I figured out which stocks are back to where they had been, and marked them for selling.

Naturally, those are exactly the ones all the analysts say are "hold" or "buy". That's painful.

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

If you've never heard of the TED Talks (TED = Technology, Education, Design), you're missing something. BMW sent me some CDs with 16 of them, and I've been listening to and enjoying them in the car. You can browse the offerings at http://www.ted.com/talks/browse. They are each about 20 minutes long. Online, they are videos, but it's not necessary to watch them (in fact, that's a little distracting), you can just listen to them. I'm going to download the audio to CD to add to the car collection. They're free for personal use, so there's no copyright issue.

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

Kulula is a South-African airline with a sense of humor. This, https://www.kulula.com/info/aircraft-pictures-kulula-fleet-photo-gallery.aspx, is a real paint job on one of their planes, the "Flying 101" design, which humorously labels all the parts of the plane.

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Here, http://www.truth-out.org/the-disappearing-intellectual-age-economic-darwinism61287, is an essay entitled "The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism". It's slightly long (but 95% of the length is comments, so don't be discouraged by the indicator over there on the far right of your browser) and rather dense, but it expresses exactly what's been bugging me more and more over the past 10 years. It scares me.
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3021 The urban race; the slapping of fingers

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
-- Virginia Woolf --

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I have signed up for the NYC Great Urban Race on August 28th! The Man has agreed to do it with me. It's for charity, and I further signed up to benefit St. Jude's. If I can get $250 in donations, I get to wear a red "St. Jude Hero" cape during the race.

It's kind of a combination road rally and scavenger hunt, except that you do it on foot or public transportation - no taxis allowed. Teams of two get clues to various places in the city, you have to figure it out, go there, and take a picture of the two of you there, and fulfill a few challenges along the way. I don't expect to win, but it should be fun.

Apparently they have this event in various cities all over the country every year.

I have not yet received the packet in the mail with details about how people go about donating, but I've already got $50 promised from Piper and The Angel. You do get credit for the donation on your income taxes, so if anyone wants to donate (you do know St. Jude's, right? The Danny Thomas hospital?), leave a comment and I'll get back to you with the details.

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

My to-do list for today included a trip to the bank to deposit some checks, find lunch, shop for plants for the pots on the new front flower bed, and pay bills (overdue again!). All I got done was the trip to the bank and lunch.

After the bank, I stopped in Piper's office to find out if he had forgiven me yet for raking him over the coals for sending me spam emails. He gets a lot of those politically motivated "let's embarrass some politician we don't like" made-up exposé things, the kind Snopes likes to debunk, and he sent me one last week that was just about the last straw. If you remember some of last week's posts, I was pretty disgusted with the general stupidity I'd been seeing all around, and I fired off a reply that straightened folks out a bit on the truth, and ended with

"You have a moral responsibility to now forward a correction to everyone to whom you sent the original (crap) misinformation. You also have a moral responsibility to do fact checking before you make the same mistake again on the next piece of crap that comes by."

As if that wasn't bad enough, I copied everyone he'd forwarded it to, plus the woman who sent it to him and everyone she had forwarded it to, AND the guy who sent it to her and everyone on his forward list, and so on for four levels of forwards.

I have debunked every prior piece of trash Piper has sent and asked him to also forward the corrections to his list, and I have asked him not to send me any more unless he has verified it before sending it. But he and I are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, and I think he's trying to "educate" me. He's educating me with garbage that he accepts as truth because he wants to believe it, I'm countering with the real truth, and he just doesn't "get it" yet. He should have known better than to send it to me. So I don't feel the least bit guilty for how I responded. He, however, was very upset and said that I had embarrassed him in front of his friends and business associates.

So today I stuck my head in his office door and asked if I was forgiven yet (not that I need forgiveness), and he said yes, and when I said I was going to lunch, he offered to take me to lunch. Naturally, he likes slow places. And Vincent joined us. By the time we'd finished lunch, it was raining. All the places I wanted to look at plants are outside, so I gave up.

I never did get to the bills. Sigh.

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

Vic was supposed to come this evening to work on the van, but called about 5:30 (I was outside, so he left a message) to cancel. He'll be here tomorrow. Or Thursday. But definitely this week. Probably.
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3020 Twisted

Monday, July 12, 2010

"Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth."
-- Lillian Hellman --

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

I've mentioned that the green quotes that start these entries are bits I have saved because they amuse me or make me think - whether or not I agree with them is immaterial.

About a month ago I used this one:

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
-- Sydney J. Harris --

Sounds good, eh? But did you really think about what it's saying?

The first sentence is easy. If you did something you regret, after a while the regret lessens.

The second sentence is not so easy. The top level meaning is that if you did not do something that you later realize you should have done, you will never get over the regret.

But go deeper.

You don't regret the failure to act - you regret the decision not to act. At the time, you considered it and decided that the financial, temporal, social, or psychological cost was too high. If there was no decision, there is no regret.

For example, you didn't invest in Microsoft's 1986 IPO. There's no regret because you'd never heard of the company. No decision, nothing to regret. But then after you had heard of it in 1990 and decided not to invest, then you have something to regret. Wrong decision, you fool.

So what's the lesson?

You should always do everything it crosses your mind to do, the decision should always be to act, in fact you shouldn't analyze it at all, shouldn't subject it to the decision process at all, because if you act and are wrong, you'll eventually get over it, but if your decision is not to act and you are wrong, you'll never get over it. So to avoid a life filled with regret, always act. Do it, whatever it is.

Um, there's something wrong with that. That's taking the governor off. Mr. Harris is telling me to be a psychopath.

See what I mean about thinking about the quotes? A lot of them don't say what you think they say. Sometimes things aren't as good as they sound.
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3019 Honeymoon

Monday, July 12, 2010

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."
-- Evelyn Waugh --

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It hadn't ever occurred to me before, but even though I've been married three times, I've never had a proper fancy honeymoon. I'm not even sure what a honeymoon is supposed to be like. I imagine it as getting away from regular life, job, family, being romantic and relaxing, a lot of snuggling and talking, stuff like that. Like a really nice vacation "with benefits".

Ex#1 had come home on leave from Germany to attend my college graduation (in August), and informed me that we were getting married immediately. (I didn't want to, but that's another story.) Quick wedding, and then since I had arranged to rent a room in a widow's home in Gettysburg to start my teaching job and he had to return to Germany, we spent the three days remaining of his leave in a one-room hunting cabin somewhere in the Pennsylvania woods that a friend had offered him. I got to keep house and play maid and servant for three days with no electricity, a well with a pump, a wood stove, an outhouse, no tub or shower, and oil lanterns. And no curtains on the windows. It was very damp and hot. Sorry. I can't consider that a honeymoon.

Ex#2 and I had a very small informal wedding, and then we went somewhere for a few days, I don't remember where, but it wasn't very far, not very special. Certain parts of his anatomy, um, didn't work. Before we were married, I thought his lack of pressure for intimacy was respect for me, and I was impressed. He, in fact, had told me about a torrid relationship with another woman (which turned out to be a myth), so I was even more impressed with his respect for me. Well, it wasn't respect. I guess he thought simply getting married would fix the problem. When it didn't, he withdrew completely from me, didn't speak to me for the whole trip.

When we returned, we discovered that his sister had "decorated" my house with corn flakes. They were everywhere - in the bed, in my clothing drawers, in the pockets of clothes in the closets, in every dish, bowl, and cup in the cupboards, in vases and decorative bottles.

That wasn't bad enough. She had added water to the corn flakes in all the containers. It had rotted and fermented, grown mold, and attracted bugs. Maggots. The stink was incredible. I had a collection of decorative bottles with narrow necks, and it was impossible to clean the crud out of them - I had to throw them all away. This after a week with a new husband who had refused to acknowledge my presence in the room or car rather than have to talk about the problem.

I didn't consider any of that much of a honeymoon, either. Not according to what I had imagined a honeymoon should be.

Jay and I got married in the judge's chambers with my daughter and a friend of hers as witnesses, and then we just came back to this house and went on with life. But every day with Jay was like a honeymoon, so I didn't miss the "hey, we're newlyweds" bit, and we did have some nice trips over the remaining few years that were every bit as romantic as a honeymoon. In fact, on those trips, we were always asked if we were newly wed, even that last trip to Hawaii, when he was so sick.

So, did I miss anything? Is a proper honeymoon trip everything it's cracked up to be?
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3018 Four days in July

Sunday, July 11, 1020

"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."
-- Seneca --

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Wow. I haven't visited since Wednesday. I didn't realize it's been that long. Nope, haven't been busy, or sick, just distracted I guess.

Thursday evening I went to dinner with a Mensa group at a Moroccan restaurant in Saugerties, "Fez" (which is the name of one of the cities in Morocco that I had visited in April). I couldn't find a website, so wasn't able to look at the menu before I went, so I was a bit disappointed that the choices were heavy on lamb. I don't like lamb, and the chicken dishes were heavily spiced, so I ended up with the steak. Everyone else got more exotic fare, and were pleased.

There were seven or eight of us, and the organizer requested separate checks, which is not usual. She had to leave early, and I found out why she wanted separate checks. "T", who had been sitting next to her, had a tab of $14.42. He put the money on the table on top of his tab, and left. I picked it up to give to the waiter, and discovered he'd left only $12, which didn't cover the cost of his food, let alone tax and tip. I added another $3 and apologized to the waiter.

I sent an email to the organizer and told her about it, and she said yes, he always does that, when they get a combined check she always has to ask him for more money.

This guy is supposed to be smart, right? He was also a member of my Meetup movie group, and he's the one who was angry and scolded me because a) I'd scheduled movies on nights he had other things scheduled, and b) I selected restaurants that didn't cater to his vegan diet.

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

On Friday I went to Poughkeepsie and picked up Hal from the BMW spa. He's all pretty and spiffy again. Stopped for lunch on the way back, and somehow didn't get home until after 4 pm. It was very humid, and the Hairless Hunk was working on the flower bed paving, and sweating like I've never seen him sweat.

On the way up the street, I had passed his wife and waved to her. She walks a LOT! Almost every time I head out or return home, she's walking up or down the street, in snow, wind, rain, heat or cold. I've wondered about that a lot.

Now that school's out, one of his daughters has been turning up when he's working in the yard. It's obvious she (there's an older boy, this girl is the oldest daughter) worships her Daddy. It's cute.

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Saturday a Mensa group was supposed to meet at Storm King Art Center. It had rained overnight, and was still raining in the morning, so the organizer, her daughter, and I were the only ones to show up, and it stopped raining within a half hour of our arrival.

The place is huge, and it's a long walk from end to end and back, but they have trams with drivers who will tell you what you're looking at, so we took that. You can get off at any point and catch the next one.

It's mostly huge I-beam or stone constructions, which leave me a bit cold, but I was very pleased with the landscaping. The grounds are beautiful. As you drive the NYS Thruway, you can see some of the structures off to the east south of Newburgh.

Me, thighs. Note the steam rising off the mountains. The red thing behind me in the field is one of the "sculptures". Uh, ok. I still don't get it.

The organizer of the outing and her daughter.

This piece was made of bits of wood. (From the side, and a slight distance, it looked like the back end of a horse that had run into and become embedded in a tree.) What I liked about it was that it smelled absolutely wonderful. I don't know what kind it was, not cedar and not fresh pine, but some kind of very aromatic wood.
Blur your eyes a bit. Do you see a lion cub's face in the bulge? I do. Or maybe a puppy.
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3017 Progress

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

...electricity is a myth. Everything actually runs off smoke.
We know this because once you let the smoke out of something,
it doesn't work any more.

-- "SteveM", in a comment in Scienceblogs.com http://scienceblogs.
com/pharyngula/2010/07/frickin_electricity_how_does_i.php --

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

I love the above quote!

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Why do so any people have "We're in the Money" as their ringtone?

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We all like fireflies/lightning bugs. All that sparkling is love letters, males flying in the open trying to find females, who are lurking among shrubs and tree leaves, blinking to let the males know where they are.

It's not all poetry and flowers. It turns out there's a sinister aspect, too.

If a female is unfertilized, she will be receptive to a male of her species. However, if she has already mated, something strange happens. She turns into a cannibal, and lures males so she can eat them, to make her eggs. She'll even change her blink pattern to that of another species to widen the buffet.

Story here: http://enature.com/articles/detail.asp?storyID=19

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The paving blocks for the flower bed were delivered today by a huge truck with a crane on the back. Fascinating. Then the Hunk came over and started laying them. It's going to look nice.

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One of the three baby birdies on the porch light fell out of the nest this afternoon. They've been perching on the edge of the nest to try to get a little air, I guess, and he fell off. I tied a strawberry basket with some cedar shavings in it to the bottom of the light and put him in it so his parents could find him but the neighborhood cats couldn't. Now he's perched on the edge of the strawberry basket. I'm worried about him falling again.

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

Vic didn't show up to work on the van this evening, probably because it was close to 100 degrees and humid. He didn't call, either.

I have a Mensa dinner tomorrow evening. If he comes, and I'm off to dinner again, well, I may have to bring him a doggy bag as proof. Otherwise it will look like I'm avoiding him.
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3016 Garages

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
-- Eric Hoffer --

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More stuff I don't understand. All the experts on car care tell you that you should keep your car in a garage, not sitting in the driveway. Why? The usual answer is to prevent fading of the paint by the sun, or other heat and weather damage.

I don't understand this.

Most people drive their cars to work, where it sits in a parking lot all day, in the heat, sun, wind-driven dust, rain, snow, hail. Then they drive home and it sits safely in the garage, at night, in the dark? And we garage it to prevent fading? Seems like a good coat of wax would protect it as well as a garage at night.

Some insurance companies will give you a discount for garaging, but that's understandable because it might lessen vandalism opportunities.

It's kind of like the recommendation to store furs and leathers over the summer in refrigerated storage buildings. "They" say that heat and dry air are bad for fur and leather. So, in the summer, they want you to take your furs out of your cool, air conditioned but still relatively humid home, and pay someone (them) to hold them for you, then in the winter you bring them back into your static-shock-dry heated house.

That makes no sense. Maybe a hundred years ago it did, but not now.

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While I was sitting outside waiting for the rental car at BMW yesterday, a guy pulled in with his car. His sunroof had exploded. He insisted to the service intake manager that although he had been driving when it blew, nothing had hit it. As evidence that it exploded out, not in, you could see that the glass remaining in the frame was bent upward (which those two seemed to put great importance on, but it seemed to me that could have been a consequence of the 55 mph drive to the shop), there was no glass in the car, and the roof and trunk lid had scratches from glass blowing over.

The manager said she'd never seen that before. The man said there were many stories on the internet of it happening to others, some even while the car was sitting alone in the garage. The manager had difficulty believing that it hadn't been hit. She wondered if it might have been the heat causing a pressure buildup.

I didn't say anything. It wasn't my place. But I did notice that no one said anything about whether the sunroof had been open or closed when it blew. That seemed important to me as to whether pressure would have contributed, and which way the glass would have gone even if it had been hit by something. Also, tempered glass has a weakness. When glass is tempered, the process forms an altered layer on both outer sides, "bonded" to the ordinary glass on the inside. If the outside layer is scratched or nicked, even invisibly, if the scratch goes through the tempered layer to the ordinary layer inside, it will create a weakened area that's pulled upon by the tempered layer on the other side of the pane - the tension between the layers is disturbed - and the slightest bump can cause it to shatter.

Not that any of that will have any effect on whether BMW will accept responsibility under the guy's warranty. Even if it did blow spontaneously, it could be argued that it would have been due to a (microscopic dust) scratch or pit, and therefore should be covered by his insurance, not the warranty.
.

3015 The final straw

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit;
Genius hits a target no one else can see."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer --

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"Night Line", a show I have mostly respected for several years, tonight spent the first ten minutes on Lindsey Lohan.

We are lost. They have taken control.

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There seems to be a new bug in Blogger. It might say "0 comments", but when you click on it, there are actually comments there. Very odd.
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3014 Hot birdies

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

"Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious."
-- William Feather --

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I heard some guy today refer to "adulterated jokes". He meant "X-rated jokes". No, he did not say "adult-rated", although that's obviously where his confusion came from.

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There was a doctor on the CBS Early Show this morning who said that campfire smoke is 12 times as carcinogenic as cigarette smoke, and the effects stay in your body up to 45 times as long.

A lot of people in my neighborhood burn wood in woodstoves all winter. Depending on the weather, there's frequently a 3-foot thick undulating layer of smoke, about 6-10 feet up, throughout the lower parts of the street.

So, how long before someone insists that all homes must have scrubbers on their chimneys?

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100 degrees today. Everywhere I went, people were complaining about how hot it was. Oddly, the heat didn't bother me at all. In fact, while waiting at the BMW garage for the rental car, I sat on a bench outside in the shade and read my book.

I don't often have a problem with heat. Humidity can be difficult, but seldom heat.

The baby birds in the nest over the porch light are usually deep in the nest, not visible from the porch. Today they're perched on the edge of the nest. Trying to stay cool, I guess. I took three pictures, and every one is fuzzy, I don't know why, but here they are in the least fuzzy:
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3013 House Delay

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place
but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
-- Dorothy Nevill --

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I just heard a possible reason for the delay in my new house. Apparently future neighbors have overheard some fussing. This may be just gossip, or misunderstood eavesdropping, but ...

... they can't get the power on. It's hooked up, everything is installed, there's an account with the power company, etc. etc., but they throw the switch and nothing happens, and nobody can figure out why.

Duh?

If true, that makes it a little difficult, I guess, to use power tools to do the finish work.
.

3012 Cynical?

Monday, July 5, 2010

"Some things have to be believed to be seen."
-- Ralph Hodgson --

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Bristol Palin: "But I think abstinence is, like -- like, the -- I don't know how to put it -- like, the main -- everyone should be abstinent or whatever, but it's not realistic at all.... because it's more and more accepted now." - from the February 16, 2009, FOX episode of "On the Record".

She is now the Teen Abstinence Ambassador for the Candie’s Foundation, getting around $25,000 for each speaking engagement. I wonder if the money had any influence on her opinion of how realistic abstinence is, or if she's just being hypocritical. I'd be more comfortable if she were speaking just in exchange for travel costs, in the belief that maybe she could help to change that "accepted now".

Either way, it's more than a bit patronizing for someone who has used her pregnancy as a springboard into a television and speaking career to lecture others on how teen sex can ruin their chances in life.
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3011 Inadequate A/C; Inconsiderate a-holes

Monday, July 5, 2010

“Wise men talk because they have something to say;
fools, because they have to say something.”
-- Plato --

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When it hit 87 degrees inside the house last night, I gave up and turned the air conditioning on.

I'd been resisting turning on the A/C as long as possible because the heat pump A/C runs off the well water, so while it's on, I have miserable water pressure, and it stirs up the well so there's silt in the water and I have to change the filter in the basement more often. But last night when it hit 87 degrees in the house, and temperatures are supposed to approach 100 degrees over the next three to five days, I gave in.

There are several steps involved:

1. Turn off the living room thermostat that controls the oil furnace.
2. Change the water filter at the tank in the basement, a very dirty job.
3. Fight through the spider webs and throw the circuit breakers: furnace off, heat pump on.
4. Remove the damper from the heat pump, so the cool air can enter the ducts. This involves standing on a chair and pounding with a hammer.
5. Insert the damper in the furnace ductwork to keep the cool air from dumping through the furnace into the basement.
6. Turn on the water to the heat pump, which involves a tall stepladder and wrist strength.
7. Check for water leaks.
   
8. Turn on the hall thermostat, that controls the heat pump A/C and electric backup heat.

I did all the steps, and when the temperature continued to rise, and there was no air blowing from the ducts, I got very upset. I could hear water flowing through the coils, so I thought the fan had died. There are no parts available for the heat pump. Jay had got a good deal on it when the house was built in 1982, but what they didn't tell him is that the model was discontinued that year. Parts and service were available for only seven more years. Nobody wants to work on it now. I keep planning to replace it with a REAL a/c system, but every year there's another huge unexpected expense (like when I discovered the roof was going to cost $10,000, not the $4,000 or so I'd planned for, that wiped out two years), or I let it go until too late in the year, so, anyway, it hasn't happened.

When I finished freaking out and was able to think logically, I went through all the possibilities, and then realized I'd screwed up step 8. I had turned on the wrong thermostat. The furnace thermostat has a "Cool" setting, but it's not hooked up to anything, and I had forgotten all about the hall thermostat and had flipped the living room thermostat to "cool". Sheesh.

The shutoff valve on the heat pump hasn't worked in years, so water runs through the system constantly. I paid about $5,000 last year (or the year before?) to have the well pipes, pump, and pressure tank replaced, so I hope this doesn't kill them. Plumbers tell me that well pumps like to run, it's going off and on that kills them, so I'm hoping it's ok - as long as I don't pump the well dry.

It's now 11 am, and even with the system having run flat out all night, the inside temperature is already 80 and rising. It's only 84 outside.

I am really starting to hate this house.

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

I'm in a very bad mood partly because my mail box and paper tube have been hit again. It gets hit every few months by people backing out of the driveway across the street. No one EVER stops and apologizes, and that alone pisses me off. And I know how it happens because I have seen the tracks in snow, or in the lawn. Once I was actually in the side yard and saw it.

Three bashes ago, the post for the newspaper tube got bent, so it is no longer in line with the mailbox, making it difficult to reach it from the car. Two bashes ago, the mailbox body got twisted enough that the door no longer closes. There's about a two inch gap at the top. Rain and snow get in. The last previous bash twisted the post far to the left, so the mailbox is not lined up with the street.

Somebody hit it yesterday, twisting the mailbox to the other direction, and destroying the tube. Here's what I have now:


It's impossible now to reach the newspaper from the car. I have to get out of the car, no matter what the weather, no matter how hard it's pouring or hailing. The paper delivery person must be throwing it in or something.

The a-hole must have hit it very hard, because although the mailbox post was designed to twist rather than break when hit by the town snowplow, it's got 25 years of rust and corrosion on it, and when the Hunk straightens it for me, he needs to use a winch on his truck.

And as usual, no one so much as left a note, let alone offered to fix it. I am royally pissed off.

I bought a new mailbox a few months ago, but I want to install it on the other side of the driveway, hoping a-holes will be less likely to hit it, and I haven't decided yet what kind of post I want. I'd prefer something flexible, like a huge spring, but haven't found the right thing yet.

I am really starting to hate people.

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The kicker? The "Service engine soon" light is back on steady in Hal. He's going in tomorrow for the bumper replacement, so I'll mention it then.

I'm really starting to hate this car.
.

3010 More bad attitude

Saturday, July 4, 2010

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs
is to be ruled by evil men.”
-- Plato --

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The above quote - again, random, it was just next in my long list of quotes - seems to fit my topics today. I have been amazed at some of the things I've found this past week. I wonder why bother to pay attention to public affairs when the people we trust make decisions that are obviously not in our best interests, and then lie to us about it.

This is a WTF example. I'd never heard about it before. In 1958ish James Van Allen announced the discovery of the belts of protons and electrons surrounding the Earth, held in place by magnetic fields, now known as the Van Allen belts. In 1962, the US military decided to set off H-bombs in the Van Allen belts to see if they could disrupt them, the theory being that if they didn't do it, the Russians would. On July 9, 1962, they did it.

It really happened.

Code-named "Starfish Prime" by the military, it literally created an artificial extension of the Van Allen belts that could be seen across the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to New Zealand.

In Honolulu, the explosions were front page news. "N-Blast Tonight May Be Dazzling: Good View Likely," said the Honolulu Advertiser. Hotels held what they called "Rainbow Bomb Parties" on rooftops and verandas. When the bomb burst, people told of blackouts and strange electrical malfunctions, like garage doors opening and closing on their own. But the big show was in the sky.

I guess mass stupidity is not a recent phenomenon.

Various colors spread across the sky, like the Northern lights, but bigger, brighter, more colorful.

I still have trouble believing it. I'd never heard about this before. How could they do something so drastic when they had no idea what could result? How lucky were we? Where were the cautious people? The people watching out for us?

The NPR story is at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128170775&ft=1&f=1026.

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The next bit is about BP, and how they and the CIA created the current situation in Iran. Story at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LG01Ak02.html. It's pretty amazing and angrifying, and goes a long way toward explaining why much of the middle east hates westerners.

BTW, I own a lot of BP stock. Sale of it was supposed to pay a good portion of the new house price before the oil hit the water, but I never bought BP. That's a piece of the story linked above that's not quite accurate. I owned Amoco stock, and back in the '80s or '90s when a lot of the oil companies merged, BP either bought or merged with Amoco, and that's how I ended up with BP stock.

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Now I read that conservatives are trying to repaint Joe McCarthy as an American hero.

"On McCarthy’s first day in office, he called a press conference to air his proposal for the end of a coal miner’s strike led by labor leader John L. Lewis. His proposal was for the coal miners, including Lewis, to be drafted into the military, and then when they refused to mine coal, they were to be court martialed for insubordination and then shot.."

Yeah, that guy, the guy who destroyed the lives and careers of people he didn't like on the flimsiest of evidence. (Oops, I guess that explains why conservatives like him.) Story at http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-long-last-sir-have-you-no-sense-of.html, McCarthy bio at http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1774.html.

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And then there was the Marist poll which showed that 26% of Americans didn't know what country the US declared independence from. Of those 26%, 6% hazarded guesses ranging from France, through Spain, to Japan.

That's sickening. Prime products of US school systems.

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I saw a bunch of kids in some kind of ceremony on the TV news earlier today. They were holding lit candles that had been thrust through disposable cups, presumably to protect their hands from hot melted wax.

The cups were Styrofoam.

Um, am I to believe that not one single adult there knew what happens to Styrofoam when exposed to a flame? Was there not one thinking person present?

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Were you aware that in Arizona, Senator John McCain claimed illegal immigrants were deliberately causing fatal car crashes on Arizona highways, Gov. Jan Brewer claimed illegal immigrants were beheading people and leaving the corpses in the desert, and, strapped for cash, the state sold its public buildings, including the Capitol. Yup. All true.

In the US Senate, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama held up confirmation votes on more than 70 Obama administration appointees because he wanted two defense contracts for his home state, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky held up the confirmation of the deputy U.S. trade representative out of pique over a Canadian law banning the sale of flavored tobacco, Harry Reid, the majority leader, accidentally voted No on health care bill, the Senate dining room had an all-shrimp menu in support of gulf fishermen (allergics, Muslims, and Jews be damned), and Republicans invoked a rule prohibiting committee meetings from running past 2 p.m.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, two Republican consultants claimed they had had sex with the Republican gubernatorial candidate, the Lieutenant Governor compared government assistance to the poor with feeding stray animals, and the winner of the Democratic Senate primary turned out to be an unemployed man facing felony charges who had never campaigned.

(One has to wonder how many philosophic conservatives had temporarily registered as Democrats so they could vote in that primary. Nope, that's too smart. He probably won because his was the first name on the list and he wasn't the incumbent. Yeah, that more closely fits the expected level of voter competence.)

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Is it any wonder that the rest of the world considers Americans stupid?

I have retired from the workforce. I may retire from the world. It's getting awfully hard to care.
.

3009 Escapes

Saturday, July 3, 2010

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
-- Plato --

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So, last night the Hairless Hunk was cutting up some downed trees in my yard when Vic arrived to work on the van. I left them to it, and went to dinner and a movie. I didn't get home until very late.

HH called this morning to tell me that Vic fixed the brake line on the driver's side, but then found a leak on the passenger side too. So he'll be returning Tuesday night to replace that one.

Then Vic wants me to re-register it (it's still insured, and has plates on it) and drive it to Captain Vantastic's, where he'll finish the job. I'm not clear on this re-registering business. I let the registration lapse because I couldn't get it inspected. I guess Vic thinks it will pass inspection? And that it will make it to Esopus?

One step at a time. Right now I have to figure out how to avoid being trapped by Vic Tuesday night. I don't think I can just leave again.

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Last night's movie was "City Island". It was really good, funny, I enjoyed it. Trailer here.

One thing I didn't understand was that at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end, a big deal was made about the difference between people born in (on?) City Island (an old fishing village, a piece of New England, in the Bronx), and people who came there from elsewhere. Natives are "clam diggers", and imports are "mussel suckers". It was treated as very important. But the distinction had nothing whatsoever to do with the story.

Perhaps the movie is from a book, and that part was left out.

Watch for it. I recommend it. Men who aren't apes will enjoy it, too.

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Today I went to a demolition derby at the Rhinebeck fairgrounds. I haven't been to a DD in forty years. I used to love them.

Well, I seem to have this problem. Every time I go anywhere new, to a party, on a tour, a hike, a festival, a date, whatever, if I haven't been there before I have a picture in my head of what it will be like, and I am ALWAYS disappointed. Always. I try very hard not to preconceive the experience, but I can't stop me, and reality never meets my expectations.

The old demolition derbies in Pennsylvania were always on a racing oval. It was an actual race (hence "Derby") in one direction around the oval, the drivers tried to put the competition out of commission, and the winner was the last car still moving. It took a while, cars lapped each other, and the track gradually filled with debris, bumpers, fenders, tires, and eventually what was left of the losing cars. Most collisions were either sideways or someone coming up behind another car and hitting it in the rear end. Bumpers, hoods, trunks were not reinforced.

Imagine my disappointment when I arrived and found this (clicking a photo will biggify it):
That's not a track! It's a boxing ring!

And that's pretty much how it went. They had 4 different "events" based on the size and weight of the cars. They'd throw 10 or 12 cars in there, and the drivers mostly just drove backward trying to bash the other cars with their rear ends, aiming mostly for the other guy's motor or tires. They couldn't get up much speed.

Lots of cars lost tires or whole wheels. One valiant little car did a heck of a lot of damage on three wheels - driver's side rear tire was gone. The advantage of four-wheel drive, I guess.

Lining up at the start. The second car from the right has a huge stuffed animal on top.

Getting caught in the middle. Bad place to be.

First and second place winners in this class. The dark car, second place, went through most of the round on three wheels - note that badly tilted front tire.

There were more people in the stands than these photos imply. The largest of the three sets of bleachers had a roof, and therefore shade, and was packed.

See what I mean about them having very little room to move, so no speed? It gets worse when most of the cars are disabled, and you can't get around them. Yeah, that's smoke coming out of the car in front, but it didn't catch fire. Those red things in the back are fire trucks standing by.

And, here's what happens when you go to a demolition derby:
(That's my underarm you're looking at, not what it looks like.)

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Later. Now here's a 1:53 clip of a demolition derby sort of like I remember them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9A_jwF5lQY

This one's more exciting because it's a figure 8 track. Whoop!