3546 End of last week catch up

Monday, June 11, 2012

Harvey Korman, on his using Viagra: It would be like putting a new flagpole on a condemned building.

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I have finished Madame Bovary.   I'd never heard or read a synopsis, or seen any of the movies, so I had no real inkling of the story.  Somewhere along the line I'd seen a deathbed scene from a very old movie, possibly a silent movie, and occasional references to Mme. Bovary's romantic nature and her many assignations.  So I had, without thinking about it, assumed she was something like a Parisian courtesan, and that she died a lingering death of "consumption", and that her lovers sadly abandoned her in the end.  Or something like that.

The real story is very different.

As soon as I finished the book, I watched a 2.25 hour French version on YouTube with subtitles.  The movie left out a LOT!  (Also, the movie made it seem more like she was lured, beguiled, into debt by the predatory merchant with no concept of what she was doing.  In the book, it's more like the merchant was just filling her hunger.  And the movie didn't really get into how her neediness put so much pressure on Leon.  So, don't go by the movies.)

Check one off the very bottom of the bucket list.

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According to the GPS, the country house is about 360 feet above sea level.  Harumph.  It seems higher.

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When I return from a trip to the country house, I have to time it just right.  I have to leave by 2 pm at the latest, or wait until after 5 pm, to avoid rush hour on the Garden State Parkway.  The rush hour traffic isn't bad - it's that there's always at least one accident that has traffic backed up for an hour.  Friday I left at 5 pm, but it turned out that was a mistake.  The Rhinebeck Fairgrounds was hosting a huge antique motorcycle show Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  The traffic jam heading toward the (two-lane) bridge over the Hudson River was horrendous.

As I crept along, there were three motorcycles in front of me.  Stop, go, stop, go.  I gave them plenty of room, especially because I appreciated their staying in the lane.  We were passed by dozens of motorcycles roaring down the shoulder on our right, which royally pissed me off.  I mean, if I'd had a gun ... or a barrel of roofing nails ....  They were ignoring courtesy, rules, and speed limits.  But worst of all, it was THE MOTORCYCLE CLUB'S SHOW that generated all this traffic!  It was THEIR FAULT!  And they're just blowing by while we innocents suffer?

When I finally got across the bridge and onto route 209, motorcycles continued to blast by.  55 mph speed limit, and they had to be doing at least 85.  At least.

And they wonder why motorists won't give them a break?  QUIT PISSING US OFF!  Quit acting like laws, rules, and common courtesy don't apply to you.

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I usually return from the country on Thursday, but I was late this week.  So Friday I expected more traffic than usual.  I never use the GPS on that trip because I know the route.  Friday I had it on for no particular reason, and as I entered NJ, I was shocked to hear something I'd never heard before: "Severe traffic ahead.  Recalculating."

Huh?  The traffic application is optional.  I didn't know I had it.

The GPS took me off the Garden State Parkway onto route 3 east, to the NJ Turnpike.  I'm glad I obeyed.  The view of Manhattan from route 3 is amazing!  From the top of the first hill off the Parkway, the cluster of tall gleaming buildings rises high above the trees ahead.  It looks for all the world like a scene from a fairy tale movie.  The sun was in the west hitting the scene full on, and the sky was clear.

Oz!

One of these trips I'll try to take a picture.

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At some point every morning, Nugget goes to the window, points urgently, and says "Amma! Amma!"  Daughter escorts her across the street, and we have this routine.  Nugget pounds on my door, "Amma!  Amma!".  I yell, "Who's that beating on my door?" (Billy Goat Gruff voice) and open it.  Nugget hustles past to look for cat toys (which she prefers to kid toys).

On Thursday, Nugget said it was time to visit Amma, and Daughter said no, Gramma isn't home, and distracted her.  On Friday, Nugget was more insistent and wouldn't be distracted, so Daughter brought her over. Nugget pounded on the door ... and there was no answer.  Daughter tried to explain that the van wasn't in the driveway, Gramma was with the van, gone bye-bye.  Van gone bye-bye, Gramma gone bye-bye. 

Big disappointment.

(Hercules looked up "Amma" to see if it had a meaning and was surprised to find that it is appropriate.  I could have told him - "Amah" is a nursemaid throughout much of southern Asia and India.  So I don't mind if Nugget never masters the "Gr" part.)
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2531 Three days?

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

T.S. Eliot: "Some editors are failed writers,
but so are most writers".

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I haven't updated in a while. I've been busy moving archived emails from AOL to Gmail, and in the process, I'm rereading them. Fascinating. And we've had a few days without rain, so I've been walking. I'm still eating under 1,000 balanced calories per day in five or six "meals", but I'm still stuck at 10 pounds lost and 15 or 20 to go, so every day it's not raining, I walk.

I'm going to a Meetup movie and dinner tonight in Albany. We're to meet in the theater lobby at 6:00, and I don't know exactly where it is, or what rush hour traffic might be like. The GPS says the drive should take an hour, so I figure just to be safe, I've got to leave here a little after 4.

It's not raining, so I want to get a walk in before washing my hair and dressing.

Bye.

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A few minutes later: Wow! Google maps is helpful! The GPS would get me there, but I still wondered where I was going, so I looked it up.

Then I looked at the street view, and my heart fell. The theater fronts on a street full of businesses, with a store abutting on each side. Albany is famous for parking difficulty. I didn't see any sign of a parking lot or lot entrance next to the theater.

So I looked at the satellite view. Bingo! There's a large parking lot immediately behind the theater reached by turning in at the next side street.

GPS wouldn't have told me that.
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1797 Home Again, and Leery of Raccoon Poop

Monday, May 5, 2008

I mapped out my own route home yesterday. Rather than take the GPS-recommended route through Pennsylvania, I dropped down to the DC beltway, swung up past Baltimore and across the Delaware Memorial Bridge (dedicated to war dead. Isn't it odd that the name doesn't say what it's a memorial to? I wondered if it was anticipating the demise of Delaware), and then up the NJ turnpike. It wasn't as direct, but it took an hour less than Friday's route.

Saturday in the hospitality room I was sitting next to a guy who was talking about how GPS devices work, and I mentioned that in lower Manhattan, downtown, the signals are purposely blocked. He snorted at me and said it was not on purpose, that the buildings simply cause the signals to bounce.

Now, I'll grant that there's a possibility he's correct. But there's also a possibility he's not. I tried to tell him that it worked just fine in the canyons of midtown, and in the area where it didn't work downtown we were not in canyons - the nearest buildings on the right were at least three hundred feet away, and on the left was the Hudson river, completely open - so bouncing didn't seem likely, especially a bounce that would put the car three blocks inland from where it actually was.

I was not arguing. I was simply presenting my personal experience, and what I'd been told by someone whom I believe. Input to consider. But he turned his back and refused to listen.

He really really pissed me off the way he simply dismissed me. He was so damn cocksure. Some Mensans do that. They are so sure they're right that they won't listen to or think about any other possibilities. He made no attempt to consider or integrate what I said.

I don't mind being corrected. I do mind being ignored.

Sometimes these folks have no sense.

Friday night at the Jacuzzi, there were about 8 people sitting on the edge with their legs in the water, and 5 fully in the water when I arrived. They didn't have the bubbles on, and I asked why, and they said that it wasn't working right, and it was too loud for conversation. Someone else said let's try it again anyway, for a few minutes. So one of the women went over and turned the dial, then hit the big red button on the wall next to the dial, "to turn it on". It didn't go on. She tried three or four times before someone pointed out that the red button was the emergency cutoff.

So she finally got the thing going, and there're no bubbles. The water level was too high, over the air intake holes, so air was not getting mixed in. Folks complained. The lifeguard came over and said that the max was six people in the water for it to work right. The Mensans counted - we've got six in the water, so duh?

I felt so sorry for the lifeguard when he realized what he'd said. The look on his face was priceless. I knew what he wanted to say, but couldn't. I wanted to say it, too, and couldn't. At least four of the six in the water were close to or well over 400 pounds each. They really didn't seem to notice what the problem was. They decided there was too much water in the pool, and turned it off.

Sigh.

Sometimes I wonder why I go to these things.

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Actually, there was a presentation on Sunday morning that almost made it all worthwhile. It was a guy who works for the Smithsonian, and frequently works with the national zoo (which is run by the Smithsonian) on occupational safety. He talked about the dangers faced by the animal handlers.

He didn't have handouts because it was supposed to be a powerpoint presentation, and we could take notes. The organizers provided a laptop with a projector hookup. In typical Mensa fashion, no one thought to ask what software was needed on the laptop. It didn't have powerpoint. (This is usual, that Mensans seem to assume that "everyone has what I have" and "nobody needs what I don't have". Like when our local guy edited the ByLaws with a proprietary application, and didn't seem to understand what was wrong with that. He liked it, therefore everyone should have it.)

So anyhow, the Smithsonian guy did the presentation with no photos, foils, flipcharts, or handouts, and still managed to make it interesting.

Zoos are crawling with weird diseases. There's some breed of monkey (I forget) that carries a herpes virus that doesn't bother them much at all, but is 100% fatal to humans. They need to be penned in such a way that they can't escape, and can't spit, poop, or piddle on the public, because the virus can enter through the skin. When the handlers enter the compound, they have to wear hazardous materials suits. Having these monkeys costs a fortune in liability insurance. (No one asked why a zoo would want to have them, but the National Zoo is heavily involved in conservation and breeding programs, so I guess that's why.)

Elephants carry TB. Their skin is too thick for the tine test, so they teach the elephants to suck up water and slosh it up and down in their trunks and then squirt it into a beaker for testing. The elephants like to do it.

The zoo doesn't have raccoons (I don't think) but wild raccoons are always entering the compounds from Rock Creek Park. They know where the good food is. Now, this part scared me. It's shocking, and I don't know why we've never heard about it before.

80% of racoons carry a particular type of roundworm in their intestines. Their feces contain roundworm eggs, which become infectious after drying for 30 days. If a human ingests the eggs, the roundworms grow in the intestines, but unlike in the raccoon, they penetrate the intestines and migrate throughout the body, including the eyes and brain, causing irreparable damage.

Ok, I'm not likely to eat raccoon feces. But it gets scarier.

If you breathe in the eggs, he said, the eggs can lodge and hatch in the upper nasal passages, and the larvae migrate directly to the brain, where they form a mass that crowds and kills the brain. Nobody knew that could happen until a recent case of a man who ran over raccoon feces while mowing his lawn.

At this point the audience erupted. 80%? The raccoons in my back yard? Why have we never heard of this before?

Apparently infection is more rare than one would think. Raccoons don't normally poop out in the open. They tend to go next to or under downed and rotting logs in the woods, and in brush piles. So as long as you don't handle raccoons or kick or lick rotting logs, you're unlikely to contact the eggs.

Uh, the places where raccoons poop sound a lot like the places geocachers plant their caches. Could this be a problem for geocachers Daughter and Hercules?

And when a raccoon is run over on the road, um, thirty days later is the roadside full of ripe eggs ready to be breathed?

And if this is all true, why is infection so rare? Is it possible that it's just not diagnosed?

Ick.

The Smithsonian guy also talked about various diseases and dangers with other animals, from cats to reptiles. If you think toxoplasmosis in a housecat is a problem, consider the tiger. And the one company that made coral snake antivenom stopped making it, so you'd better not get bitten. And black-footed ferrets cannot be tamed. And you never look a male gorilla in the eye. And no matter how "tame" a wild animal can be, they have very strong instincts that can be triggered by the most innocent actions. And there's a breed of American squirrel that hates vipers, and has learned to increase the temperature in its tail, so that flicking the tail around allows it to confuse the snake long enough that the squirrel can bite the snake in the back of the neck and kill it, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi style.

So some of the weekend was interesting....
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1785 The Weekend

Monday, April 28, 2008

Wow. Monday already. And Friday's dishes didn't get washed yet. Ouch.

Saturday I went with a friend to dinner and a dance show in Manhattan (a Broadway address, but not a "Broadway show", if you know what I mean). The only way I got to go was because she's a fearless driver! No way I would attempt it on my own. We took my new GPS even though we had no intention of going the way it recommended, just so we could laugh at the GPS lady when she got pissed off.

It turns out that the GPS doesn't work right downtown. The map was right, and the purple route line was correct, but the little car icon was all over the place, not where we actually were. My man later explained that Homeland Security blocks GPS signals in parts of the city. Which is silly, because the GPS doesn't show important buildings anyway, unlike those nice detailed maps you can pick up anywhere. (Oops. Forget I said that. Don't want some idiot outlawing maps!)

The show was fun, there was a nice wine/cookie reception after, an afterparty a bit further uptown, and late night/early morning conversation with a congenial group in a deserted bar on (I think) Fifth Avenue after an abortive search for food for some of the cast members (who don't usually eat much before dancing). I got home just before 4 am.

Sunday I met my man friend in northern NJ at 4 pm. I told him about driving down the Palisades Parkway on Saturday, so when we went out looking for food he decided to drive the Palisades, too. It's very scenic. He's most relaxed and talkative when he's driving, so I didn't mind that we wandered around and didn't stop for food until something like 8:30.

I got home after noon today and, well, I didn't nap or anything, but I think my mind turned off.

I'm going to be confused as to what day it is all week now, I think.

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Oh, yeah, I took Clyde along on Sunday. The man was less amused by Clyde himself than by my interacting with him. When you want to turn Clyde off, it's best to coax him into his sleeping position. That puts his microprocessors into "rest", and curls up his body which protects his servos and gears. To quote: "I cannot believe the most intelligent woman I know is rocking an electronic device in her arms, cooing it to sleep! To sleep! A device! You DO know it's not alive, don't you?"

Silly male....
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1765 More stuff I don't understand

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Ralph Waldo Emerson: There is nothing wrong with having nothing to say --- unless you insist on saying it.

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The old title of this journal was "I Don't Understand". I changed it when I moved it. I shouldn't have. I still don't understand.

I don't understand why people use words with sexual connotations or meanings to express anger, or to demean or disparage something. I understand religious references better. Like, one is asking God to consign something to Hell on our behalf. That at least makes some twisted sense.

So, a woman is sitting next to a man who is watching sports on TV with his buddies, and he's yelling things at the teams, and it's f---ing this and f---ing that, and other words for other acts, as if DOING that kind of stuff is the nastiest thing ever, that no good person would ever do that, or allow it to be done to them, and then that evening he wants to do that very thing to her? Or wants her to do things that are (from all appearances, to hear him talk) even worse, to him? How can he both like it, and consider it the worst thing you can do to someone else?

There's a disconnect there. Either it's good, or it's bad.

Thinking about it today because of a reality show I've been watching, where the guys, mid- to late-twenties I guess, can't get out a sentence without using the f-word.

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I've been reading Michael J. Totten's dispatches from Iraq.

Another disconnect. What he is saying doesn't seem to jive with what we hear and read in the news. I have difficulty understanding how both versions can be true.

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More GPS-isms. It's confused as to where I live.

About ten years ago or so, much of the local area got new addresses for enhanced 911 service.

Prior to then, most of us had rural delivery addresses, like "RD #5 Box 38", where "38" was the number on the mailbox at the end of the driveway, and RD #5 might be 30 miles long. No one except the mailman could find your house given that address. It was handy, because you could give out your mailing address without worrying about some stranger showing up at your door.

It led to a slight schizophrenia. If you wanted the house found (friends, UPS, store deliveries, utility service, etc.) then you had to give the street address, like "38 Woodward Drive".

When they renumbered our street, my new address changed from RD #5 Box 38/38 Woodward Drive (not my real address) to just plain 86 Woodward Drive, both house address and mailing address. Some people got a street name for the first time ever, some got their street name changed. It was a mess for a while.

The idea was that when you call 911 from your home phone, the address shows up on the screen, and the ambulances and fire trucks use that address with GPS to locate the house. That's what we taxpayers were told, to justify the enormous cost associated with renumbering the entire county. Sounds good, except for two problems.

A lot of people don't have "home" phones any more. They are entirely cellular. The address doesn't show up.

Secondly, GPS is still using the old numbers! That blows my mind. If you ask Google maps, Mapquest, or any GPS device to show the location of my house, it points to the OLD box 86 on Woodward Drive, the location of 86 before renumbering. It's been at least ten years.

What has to be updated, and who is responsible for doing that?
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1750 Smooth Trip

Wednesday, March 2, 2008

How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

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I had a 200 mile round trip today, to a place I'd never been before, and I used the new GPS, which by the way is not called a GPS anywhere in its material - it's a "personal travel assistant".

I had enough confidence to leave the house without a Mapquest or Google printout, and got only .1 mile when I questioned the wisdom of that.

There are two routes I usually take to the bridge over the Hudson. I turn left out of my street onto the highway, and then turn right a few hundred feet down the road, or if I have to go into the village first (like for gas or money) I go about 2 miles down the road and then turn right. When I got to the end of my road today, the nice lady told me to turn left, and go 5.5 miles on that road.

OMG, where's she taking me?

We did get to the bridge, but she took me about 2 miles past the bridge, then the right turn, then backtracked to the bridge. So her route was about 4 miles longer than it should have been.

Right before that first right turn there's the remnant of an old road, from back before they cleaned up the intersection, that makes a diagonal over to the other road. It's about 200 feet long, and avoids the traffic light. She told me to turn right on that little road, but I happen to know it's full of potholes, so I didn't turn and continued on to the light.

Now, the voice is very dry and unemotional --- until you don't obey! She said "Recalculating route", and honest to God you could HEAR the disgust, the undercurrent of "You are too stupidly stubborn to follow simple directions, and now *I* have to work to save your tail!"

It's not just me. I stopped in to see Piper on my way home, and told him about it, and I got as far as "... unemotional, until you don't do what she says..." and he laughed and said "And then you can hear the disgust! The way she says 'RE!calculating!'"

The device provides an ETA, which, when I left the house, and until I got on the Thruway, was 11:23 am. On the Thruway I was traveling at 5 mph over the speed limit (not my choice, just staying "with traffic"), and the further I got, the more the ETA moved out. By the time I got to NJ, the ETA was 11:35 am. Odd. Did it expect me to be going faster?

The only complaint I have is that she will tell you when a turn is coming up way ahead of time, but she just says like "Turn in 2.0 miles. ... Turn in 1.1 miles .... Turn in .7 miles" and so on, but she doesn't say which way to turn until the last minute (or it seems that way), which is awkward when you find yourself in heavy fast traffic on a multilane highway, and discover that you have like four seconds to get over to the ramp off the far left lane, from the far right.

My man says that's because I have the female one. If I had the male one, it would be more informative. (Send the angry email to him.)

So, anyway, the trip felt short. Not worrying about missing a turn or getting lost seemed to make a big difference.
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1749 Another Toy

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

HL Mencken: "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

Anon: “Immature love is wanting the other person to be happy with you. Mature love is wanting the other person to be happy. Period.”

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Today it got into the high 60s, and then this evening we had thunder, lightning, wind, heavy rain, and something that was hitting the windows hard enough to worry me. Sleet? Hail? Frozen robins?

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My replacement GSP device arrived today. I've fiddled with it a little, but won't actually try it out in the car until tomorrow.

There's a suction mount for the windshield, a USB cord for connecting to the laptop, and a cigarette lighter cord for charging in the car.

It came preloaded with maps for the entire US. You can ask for the location of restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, gas stations, ATMs. It will warn you if you're in a school zone, or in sight of a safety camera. You can load it with MP3 files or audible books to play while you're driving. It will display JPEGs. It has a currency converter. There's other stuff you can pay for subscriptions to use - none of which I see any need for. Actually, I don't need half the free functions it's got.

I went to the Garmin website to see what accessories there are, and discovered that if I had bought it at the local Staples, it would have cost $599. I paid $299. Not bad.

I did test it. I asked for the location of the new Marriott in Kingston. That hotel has been open just short of a year. It wasn't in the list, so I guess I have to find out how up-to-date, or how complete, the lists are, whether the lists are loaded and have to be updated, or pulled from the satellite, and businesses have to subscribe.

The only documention is a "quick guide". You have to download the full manual from the website if you want it. All I can tell right now is that it wants street addresses or intersections. It says it can be used walking, but I don't know if it can understand latitude/longitude, so I don't know if it can be used hiking. Probably not. That's a separate type of map.

Well, another new toy.
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