Catching up

Apparently, it's been a busy week. Or I've simply been too depressed to post. Either way, I haven't had much to say lately. For those who pop in to see what's going on at Chez Phouka, sorry about that.

So what's up? The wine cellar is in and trimmed up, and I've been feverishly entering all the wine into the Wine Curator software that I bought. Very nice. And then printing out labels to hang on all the bottle tags so we can identify things. Yes, appealing to my weird, OCD-organizational habits. I even found little images of grapes, red and white, to put on the labels.

We talked today about Rukh, and decided that we really don't want to keep him on the metronomic chemo that he's on. The combination of chemo, anti-inflammatory, and antiobotic seems to really make him feel crappy, and frankly, I'm not willing to make him feel crappy anymore. I'd rather have four weeks of happy-dog than six of not-so-happy. We're going in for x-rays on Saturday to see where things are, but we've stopped everything except the thyroid meds -- and even after only a day he actually seems perkier and his face looks better. Yeah, you, might think it's hard to discern much of an expression on a fuzzy face, but anyone who's met the beastie would notice a difference. I feel much more calm about the whole thing now. Now we just make him comfortable and spoil him rotten and wait. That's ok.

I expect that his xrays show rather aggressive growth of the tumors in his lungs -- I will be surprised if things haven't progressed much. Although even if they haven't, and things appear to have stalled, we're still going to stop treatment for the cancer itself (chemo, etc). It will give us an idea of how long we really have, though, and that's important.

Seeing in the Dark

As anyone in the technology industries know, the cock-eyed change to Daylight Savings Time early this year caused all sorts of computer distress: patch releases for Windows that boogered up other applications, database issues with timestamps, etc. All in the name of "saving energy".

I've always been skeptical that this has any effect on energy consumption. So what if using lights later in the evening...we're just using them earlier in the mornign to make up for it. We no longer have the luxury of changing our schedules to match the sunrise-sunset, we still have to get up in the morning for work at 6:00 am, for example, and if it's dark outside, we're turning on the lights and turning up the heat.

But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

"We haven't seen any measurable impact," said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation's largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

It's nice to have more hours in the evening that are light, and leave work in the daylight, but the whole "energy savings" things is a bust -- an opinion that most energy companies expressed last year when this whole thing was suggested.

I feel quite vindicated.

Internet Gateway

I have to admit that I get very annoyed at poor spelling and grammar on the 'net. Not that I am immune to typos or dangling participles, but the number of people who can't figure out the difference between your and you're and don't understandthat there, they're and their are different words. Or too and to. Its and it's. And the bizarre evolution of txtspk in IM and text messages has me confused.

I can't tell you how many emails I receive that have 'I really like you're website'. Or the misplaced apostrophes that show up all over in ads and webpages. We should have some sort of standard!

So, Defective Yeti blog has set up an Internet Gateway for users, testing just these things. Refresh the page a few times -- there are a number of different tests!

Wine Cellar

The Adorable Husband spent yesterday putting together the 19 boxes of wine racks that arrived last week. They come as an enormous jigsaw puzzle of side pieces and cross bars and molding and all that -- something the Adorable Husband loves to do.

He didn't have to buy new tools, but he did have to special order really long screws to secure things to the wall. We ended up adding another 2 1/2" of insulation to the outer concrete wall because we were actually having problems keeping the cellar WARM enough. It seems to be stabilizing now. At any rate, in order to secure the racks to the walls, he had to find 5" screws to get through the wallboard, insulation, and the bracing for the racks. And, since the Adorable Husband is a Handy-Fix-It-Scandinavian, they are solid. We could climb them. There is no way these things are moving.

It took him the better part of two days to get things together and attached and laid out properly but it looks so cool! I'll take some pictures and post them when he gets all the molding up. Soon, I promise!

More info on Dog Food

Ok, I'm not defending Menu Foods, I think their response to this tragedy is shameful. They are making decisions based on the bottom line, and trying desperately to cover their collective asses about this whole thing because it wil cost money to fix it.

However, even human food producers don't test every product they use. They don't test each load of ingredients, regardless of where they come from. THey might test samples now and then, but each new shipment is not checked before dumping the bag into the hopper of the machine. That doesn't happen. While I feel Menu Foods needs to step up and take responsbility for their actions, the tainted wheat was not something that would have normally been tested for, even if it was used in your wheaties.

Even if they did test, what do they test for? It doesn't seem reasonable to expect testing for "everything" -- our food producers rely on existing laws and regulations to ensure that the food they receive is "good". By choosing to import food from an unregulated country, Menu Foods made a huge mistake; but we import billions of dollars of foodstuffs from countries that do not follow our FDA rules. And even if they did follow those rules, only about 1.3% of the food imported into the US is ever inspected or tested at all. 1.3%. Scares the hell out of me, I tell you. Less than five percent of US beef is inspected. We risk eating contaminated food every time we eat something we didn't grow ourselves. And even then.

What I can't figure out is why Menu Foods and the related companies didn't approach this like the Tylenol case -- "Holy Crap! THis is awful! Something happened and we're going to get to the bottom of it. We were following the laws about food safety and apparently that wasn't enough. Here's what we're going to do...."

Instead, we get protestations that they don't really see a clear correlation, that it's someone else's fault, that they aren't liable because it was tainted when they bought it, etc. Shameful. I'm waiting for one of hte high-end dog foods (SD, Euk, etc) to start advertising that they are making food NOT at Menu Foods, even if they have to open their own plants to do so.

By the way, the shipper of the tainted wheat gluten is ChemNutra, sourcing from Xuzhour Anying. ChemNutra’s shipments commenced November 9, 2006 and ended March 8, 2007. [snip] ChemNutra shipped to supplies wheat gluten only to pet food manufacturers.

The total quantity of Xuzhou Anying wheat gluten shipped was 792 metric tons.

Wikipedia is keeping up with the story -- perhaps not as fast a breaking news, but they seem to be well fact-checked.

Slower than Molasses in January

I never thought about the old saw, "Slower than Molasses in January", but I never would have thought it derived from an actual event.

In 1919, a huge molasses tank in Boston, owned by US Industrial Alcohol, exploded and flooded the town with a sixteen-foot-tall wall of molasses that killed 21 people, injured over a hundred, and took out several buildings. Two and a half million gallons of molasses (about 14,000 tons) leveled several city blocks. The molasses was for distillation purposes (for industrial alcohol and rum)-- and the accident precedes the start of Prohibition by one day.

More here, and a writeup on the accident here.

As I read through some of the articles, I discovered that this is not the only Molasses Flood. This happened in 1911 in New Orleans, as well.

And how fast is molasses in January? Well, estimates say that the molasses ran through the streets and through buildings at about 35 miles per hour.

Snow!

Woke up this morning to about six inches of SNOW.

Last weekend it was near 80 degrees. Yesterday was in the 70s and sunny and beautiful. Last night at 1am (when I finally staggered up to bed) it was clear as a bell.

This morning? SNOW. Lots of it.

Good news for us, since we've got family coming in today who want to go skiing over the weekend. Yeah!

Another Decider

Hypocrisy, thy name is Dobson.

James Dobson, from Focus on the Family, has self-righteously decided that HE is the arbiter of who is christian and who is not. According to Dobson, Fred Thompson (a former TN senator who may throw his hat in the ring for the 2008 election) is not a Christian. Dobson weighed in (apparently with the self-described role of judge) on the presidential hopefuls for 2008. Apparently, most of them aren't really Christian...at least according to the definition that Dobson made up.

Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson's claim. He said that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless "has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith."

"We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians," Schneeberger added. "Dr. Dobson wasn't expressing a personal opinion about his eaction to a Thompson candidacy; he was trying to 'read the tea leaves' about such a
possibility."

So according to Dobson, to be a Christian you must “talk openly about your faith”. Non-evangelicals aren't Christian? Oh, really? Pulled that out of your ass, did you? Does it matter that you're directly contradicted by your own religious foundation?

Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 6:1)

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. (Matthew 6:5)

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it’s up to somebody who consistently acts in opposition to the teachings of the Christ to decide who’s a Christian and who isn’t. I know a lot of good people who are christians, in act and deed every single day. They don't go around proclaiming how righteous they are, how much better they are -- they just do it. Every day. Dobson talks the talk but he certainly doesn't walk the walk.

Of course, the fabulous construct that he used: I don't know he's X because I've never seen him do Y, has no basis in logic, no basis in fact, and I think we should use the same idea to characterize everyone else, too. I don't know that Dobson isn't a child molester, because I've never seen him throw up when someone mentions it. I don't know that Newt Gingrich isn't addicted to crack because I haven't seen him refuse to buy some.

Hey, this is FUN! I can make up some cockamany definition of something and then hold everyone up to it, or accuse them of being horrible people. Don't eat popcorn? You're obviously a terrorist. Watch Friends on TV? You're definitely stealing from your employer. Drive a pickup truck? You're a shoplifter. See how easy this is?

Well, if you don't mind being a hypocrite.

Wichita

So far, the one and only travel requirement for my current client has been one day travelling to Wichita for a face-to-face meeting. Well, it ends up taking two days, since you can't get a direct flight except in the evening, but that's it. One day.

So I flew out with the project manager on Monday night and returned Tuesday night. It was a fun trip, to be honest. They took us out (all of the project team -- some 12 people) to a veeeeerrry nice steak dinner when we arrived, and then we spent a day in a meeting.

Sometimes those can be horrible -- people aren't prepared, the people in the room can't make decisions, all the worst behavior you find in business settings. We may have been bemoaning the fact that the client doesn't seem to have done large projects before, and that they don't quite understand the importance of the requirements and design phase of things....but they were absolutely on the ball for this meeting and it was tremendously productive. Wow.

Of course, my travel karma reared its ugly head, and our flight out was delayed 2 hours and the flight back by nearly an hour. Pretty tame, compared to my usual travel chaos.

I am SO looking forward to starting the development on the project!

Manual vs Automatic

Both the Adorable Husband and I drive manual transmission cars -- we both prefer them, and have driven sticks since we started buying our own cars. But they're getting harder to find, as most new cars are build with advanced automatic transmissions (Triptronic, etc) and only a few car options on the very cheap end and the very expensive sports car range continue to offer manuals.

Not so in Europe, of course, were most cars are still manuals. But in the US, only 17% of the cars on the road are stick shifts. This came up recently because we're just starting to look for options for a next car for the Adorable Husband (in two years or so) and his current favorite -- the Passat -- is moving away from offering a manual transmission and opting for their Triptronic automatic in all their cars. You can apparently still order a manual, but it's now more expensive than the automatics. Instead of the surcharge for an automatic, which was the norm for many years, it's now a premium to have a stick.

What surprised me more was the percentage of people who are driving sticks and looking for cars with manual transmissions. From Product Design and Development,

...consider the findings of Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, which conducts extensive surveys at the retail end of the automotive business. He says that for the past three years, women, not men, have driven the manual transmission market.

In last year’s survey, 14.3 percent of women versus just 8.5 percent of men were shopping for a stick shift. In 1985, the numbers were dramatically reversed: 4.4 percent of women versus 52.8 percent of men.

I wonder what has prompted the change? Control? Manuals used to be cheaper? Flexbility? One of the suggestions about why over 80% of cars on the road are automatics is that people are doing so much more intheir cars -- cell phones, Starbucks coffee, etc. They don't have a hand free any longer to shift. Sounds reasonable to me.

Although I'm still looking for manuals when I buy my next car.

Beastie Update

Just an update on Rukh. He's doing pretty well, although we can tell that he's not feeling terrific. We're not sure if it's because of the new drugs he's on, or just feeling crappy in general. He's on a major antibiotic daily, Piroxicam (like Rimdayl) as an anti-inflammatory, and Cytoxin every other day as a low-dose chemo drug.

It's supposed to slow things down a bit, but we're not sure that it's worth it if the combination makes him queasy and unhappy. If he's only got a few weeks or months left, I'd rather they all be as happy as possible, you know? So, we're giving it a week and we'll see if he perks up or not.

We're also looking at putting him on thyroid meds to see if that also makes him feel a bit better. HE's always been on the low end of normal, which is low for an Akita. He wasn't symptomatic before, but with everything else that's going on, he seems to be now -- losing his fur, feeling lethargic, etc. It's hard to decide what to do; with so many drugs in his system, and so much happening in the last few weeks we can't tell what's causing the problems, so it's just shooting in the dark.

But, he's still happy to go for a short walk, get's excited about biscuits, and seems to be feeling ok, if not good at this point. He gets tired really quickly, and sleeps a lot, but that's to be expected. At the moment, he's racked out inthe living room, after having had pizza for lunch.

Dog Food Recall

By now, everyone knows about the Menu Foods pet food recall -- apparently the new info is that hte culprit is a chemical used as rat poison that contaminated the wheat-gluten that the company imports from China. The chemical is not illegal in China.

If you feed either canned food or those little foil packets of food from any of fifty three name brands, definitely check the list of recalled foods here.

Makes me wonder if it's worth paying a premium for Eukanuba when the same plant produces wall-mart brand goods, too. So far, this does not extend to dried kibble, but I have to wonder.

Buttons

I heard a perfectly common-sense theory on why women's clothing buttons "backwards" -- ie, left-handed with buttons on the right, and men's clothing buttons right-handed, with the buttons on the left. I never really thought about it, except to laugh a bit when one of my coats is "backwards" for me or I wear on of the Adorable Husband's shirts.

The explanation? Buttons showed up on women's clothing in the mid-19th century, when the whole concept of "idle rich" was a real biggie. Women's buttons were backwards because the had to be right-handed for the maid. Men usually dressed themselves (although not always, I guess), and so they needed to have the buttons properly placed for a right-handed person to dress themself, while women had assistance and thus the buttons were placed for a right-handed person to dress someone else.

Kind of elegantly simple, don't you think?

There are, of course, many other theories (including some cockamamie idea that it forces women to use their inferior hand to remind them that they are inferior to men).

Someone else has spent a LOT of time thinking about the buttons quandary, and has written up a neat article on it.

Brilliant

Archaeologists have argued and puzzled about how the enormous stones of Stonehenge were moved and set upright, how the many-ton blocks of the pyramids were moved, how people without benefit of pulleys and complex machinery could move these enormous weights.

Well, the elegant and amazingly simple solution of a retired Flint, MI carpenter may be just the ticket. Wally Wallington has figured out how to move enormous stones by himself, how to tilt up the standing stones, he even moved his son-in-law's barn 300 feet by himself. He has a website explaining how he figures all of this out. Brilliant. You can watch the entire proces here.

Absolutely brilliant. A wooden crossbar, a few stones and one human. He raised, moved, and set a 10-ton stone by himself with tools available to neolithic builders. Wow.

Carpet Woes

Once again, I am VERY thankful that I bought a SpotBot -- the little carpet cleaning thing from Bissel that you set on the spot, push a button, and voila! clean carpet.

We came home to a really stupendous spray of dog barf in my office. From experience, we know that these sorts of spots (mostly bile, I think) stain the carpet yellow. Seriously, after all the chemo and the rest of it, we're going to have to recarpet the house. But then again, what's a little urp and pee between friends, eh?

Anyway, this thing (the Spotbot) is amazing. Fill it with pet stain remover and some sort of Oxy-clean stuff and it pulls out even the worst stains with no effort at all. One of the best hundred bucks I've ever spent. I never anticipated using it this much, but I'm really glad that I bought it! No muss, no fuss, and it works like a charm. I don't often really recommend household appliances, but we've used this little carpet cleaner thingy more than anythign else in the house, including the vacuum.

No Pizza Delivery

How on earth do they get up here?

Yes, it's a real house -- of many on the page of Weird Houses. I just thought it was rather fun. I like the Trout house, too.

Pretty amazing view, though, he?

Crime in Erie

This was the FIRST item in the Police Blotter of our local newspaper. Obviously crime is a serious issue in our little town:

A man called Erie POlicy at about 8:30p.m., Wednesday, March 7, to report a suspicious peanut in his back yard.

The man told police he just wanted to document the incident at his home in the [local development].

No further information was available.

A suspicious peanut? I mean, can you imagine the poor officer having to respond to that without laughing hysterically? What could possibly be suspicious about a peanut? "Well, officer, it seemed to be....lurking."

Further rant

I'm bit better this morning, and Rukh seems to be perky as ever. Well, it's gray and rainy outside, so he's lumping around and snoring blissfully, but you get the idea!

The vet says that this isn't going to be painful, he'll just get sicker and sicker and eventually will have a hard time getting a deep breath. DH and I are on the same page about "quality of life", so hopefully the beastie will do his part and let us know when he really feels like crap.

On the no-hair front, the vet also thinks that it might be thyroid related -- that all the chemo and stuff set his hormones out of whack and he's hypothyroid, so the hair isn't growing back/thinning. He's pretty pink all over now, because much of his undercoat is thinned. So we're going to see if the blood test confirms that and get him on synthroid to see if we can make him feel better, even if only for a few weeks. Low thyroid might explain the blahs, too, so hopefuly that will help.

All I could think yesterday was "why can't we be the people who love pugs and yorkies, they live about twenty years!"

And I hope this doesn't sound really, really cold-hearted, but we had a talk last night about searching for a new puppy. We can't replace Rukh, we woudln't try, but we know from experience taht we cannot be a one-dog household. Uulaq is going to be a neurotic mess when he goes.We will be, too. It takes a long time to search for a good breeder and find a puppy, etc. We had figured to wait until fall before talking to people, but our schedule got a lot shorter.

Probably the first time in my life that a puppy for my birthday isn't a good thing. I don't want a new puppy. I want to keep the OLD one around longer! Nine years is not enough. Damn.

Today has been a truly shitty day.

No more chemo, I suppose that's good, but it's because the bone cancer has already metastazied into Rukh's lungs -- eight weeks ago, his chest xrays were clear. Today they show dime-size (+)tumors.

He'd been doing so well, too; he still seems to feel ok and has romped around the yard with Uulaq. Our vet said 2-4 months, tops. Maybe less. The fact that things grew so quickly doesn't bode well for more than a few months.

We expected this, of course -- but we thought we'd have a year or so.

Baad commercials

Working from home for me = having Discover Channel on all day. It's background noise, and I find that I'm actually more productive. Yeah, weird, I know, but it does seem to keep me focused.

(Unlike the Adorable Husband, who can't remember how to speak when the television is on)

But it does mean that I end up seeing a boatload of commercials during the day. When did advertising agencies adopt the theory that we're stupid and don't notice how awful the ads are? They're embarassing, or gross. I leap for the mute button when some of these show up.

There is currently an ad for colon cancer screening that actually involves a man making a colon-shaped gulley in a mound of mashed potatoes and dropping in a pea, all the while talkiing about polyps and how they can be removed...and then he eats the pea. Eeu.

A Healthy Choise talks about "adding flavor to taste" in the new ads for their food. What in the hell does that mean? Flavor to taste? Huh?

Dominos Pizza has the freaky facial-cgi guys.

Even Target has fallen into the trap. Their new "less" campaign has skinny models frolicking about while words emerge on the screen: fearLESS, endLESS, etc...and then marveLESS and fabuLESS. Huh? Marveless? Fabuless? Can they not spell? I wonder how many people noticed that one.

And those are ads for well-known, large corporations. The cheapo ads for fat-reduction pills, esurance, and Head-On are even worse.

Maps of Conquest

Someone spent a lot of time getting this right, and it's really cool -- a history of conquest in the middle east from 3000 BCE to today, as a 90-second flash movie. Egyptians, Macedonians, Mongols, British, and all the empires in between. Definitely worth a minute and a half of your time!

The Website, Maps of War, is an interesting browse. Cool!

Mistaken Identity

My dear friend Mark is buying a house. After years of renting, he found a really neat development and he closes on the new house next week. During the design phase of the housebuilding, he asked me to come along to the sessions to help him pick tile and carpet and flooring and all that "decorative" stuff. So I trundled along to the Design Center and helped him pick tile for the bathroom and laundry, countertops, bathroom fixtures, all that stuff.

It was kind of fun. We started referring to me as the "rental wife", since he doesn't have a woman in his life to give him a hand with all that.

Today was his final walkthrough prior to closing -- you know the drill, looking for things that need to be fixed, making sure tha l lthe doors and cabinets open and close, all the faucets work, that sort of thing. He asked me to come through and look for stuff.

So I arrive a bit early at the house, where the two representatives of the building company are waiting and introduce myself as the 'surrogate, rental wife'. They chuckled a bit, but Mark arrived shortly afterwards and Mark made the comment that I'd been really helpful, and that my husband was glad I wasn't doing it for our house.

"So, you're not married?" Chirpy walk-through woman says in surprise.

"Nope."

The look on her face was priceless. For just a second, before I could say that I was just giving Mark a hand with the aesthetics, you could tell that she was thinking...huh? What sort of weird sex triangle have I stumbled into? There's a husband somewhere?

We laughed like hyenas, which I imagine didn't help.

Data Mining is Dangerous

Had a DUI? A misdemeanor charge from back in college? Don't plan on going to Canada any time soon. At least don't expect smooth sailing.

Because of a demand by the US Dept of Homeland Security to have criminal background infomration from Canadians, there is a new program in place to share data between the US system and the Canadian system. Pretty much anything in your criminal record -- from speeding tickets to possession of marijuana back in 1960 -- that can be seen by a state sheriff is now available to the border guards in Canada.

Travellers are being turned back at the border for transgressions that are thirty years old.

...ask the well-to-do East Bay couple who flew to British Columbia this month for an eight-day ski vacation at the famed Whistler Chateau, where rooms run to $500 a night. They'd made the trip many times, but were surprised at the border to be told that the husband would have to report to "secondary'' immigration.

There, in a room he estimates was filled with 60 other concerned travelers, he was told he was "a person who was inadmissible to Canada.'' The problem? A conviction for marijuana possession.

In 1975.

The rules haven't changed, of course; Canada has always had laws controlling immigration and entry to the country. But now Canada has records, shared real-time (apparently) from the US, that make the job a bit easier. Canada has always turned away those have criminal records -- crossing the border is entering another country, even though we have taken for granted that things go pretty smoothly between the US and Canada. But this new data mining is overkill.

I imagine this is the result of the us demanding all this information and Canada (quite rightly) demanded reciprocity. I, for one, am a bit annoyed that the DHS both demanded this info of other countries and has made our crinimal databases available. I know that the intent is to find and refuse entry to actual criminals, but a misdemeanor charge from 1975? This is relevant how?

And this is only the beginning. Canada is only the first country with which we are sharing data. I'm sure others will demand the same access. Eventually, the criminal records of every US citizen will be collated and shared, probably with other countries, as they also request the data in return for their own records.

Does Canada have this right? Of course they do, just as the US has a right to screen those it lets through our borders. I'm not arguing that at all. Foreign nations have every right to make their own laws and enforce them. We don't get special treatment, and while it's going to be problematic for some travellers, Canada hasn't done anything wrong here.

That's not what makes me twitch about this -- what makes me all freaked about this is the beaurocrats and politicians suddenly thinking they know about databases, data mining, and the sharing of information. Records from the municipal, state, and federal leveel are being gathered into a single database and made available. It contains everything, even minor infractions, and are being opened up to beaurocrats all over the world.

This is what I do for a living, and believe me, I have ZERO trust that a slew of cooperating government agencies understands the ramifications of making this data essentially public. It's only a matter of time before something that shouldn't be public, that shouldn't be shared, makes it into that matrix.

Meeting Groupthink

I knew it! Putting a half-dozen people together in a conference room is actually detrimental to finding a solution. Meetings -- supposedly to share information, "think outside the box", come up with innovations -- simply don't work.

People have a harder time coming up with options when in a group than when alone. It apparently has something to do with repetition. Meetings do foster discussion of issues, but the more than a particular solution is said out loud, the harder it is to think of other ideas.

The researchers speculate that when a group of people receives information, the inclination is to discuss it. The more times one option is said aloud, the harder it is for individuals to recall other options, explained Krishnan, associate professor of marketing at Indiana University.

I've seen this happen in meetings -- one idea is discussed endlessly, and when the group finally gets around to talking about other options, people are fixated on the first idea that was talked about.

Heck, I've used this to my advantage in meetings where I want the group to do things my way. Persuasively present the preferred solution...and then ask for other ideas. People gravitate back to the same solution, as if it gets stuck and is somehow validated, because they simply can't think of other options when they are saturated with discussion about the first solution. People fall into "groupthink" because it is self-supporting: get approval and positive reinforcement for reiterating the ideas of other, and eventually they seem like the right choice.

Interesting that someone has proved that it is a consistent effect, though.

Squicky Ad

There is an ad out for Dominos Garlic Bread pizza that absolutely squicks me out -- gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies.

Guy opens box: his nose covers half his face. "Smell the garlic!" Across the table is a guy with a weirded-out enormous CGI mouth, "Taste!" and then pan to a guy with huge eyes stretched to fill his whole face.

It's all CGI, of course, but for some reason seeing the faces all mooshed around that like really makes me queasy. Yuck. This is supposed to be appetizing?

Factoid!

Weird things I learned today: You can tune just about any modern instrument against the dial tone on a regular phone.

At least in the US. The dial tone is a "buzz" between an F (350 Hz) and an A (440 Hz). Most instruments tune to an A, so you can just pick up the phone and go.

Melancholy? Really?

According to the people who populate the discussion forum I frequent, I should be sad, disappointed, melancholy, regretful (add your favorite adjective here) that my menstrual cycle has finally decided to jump into the random, disjointed pattern that signals menopause.

Probably not imminent, but at least it heralds the light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, really. I've never wanted kids, never intended to use any of the female plumbing, yet I've had thirty years of monthly annoyance. I've had a few hot-flashes (wow!), and some of the other symptoms of peri-menopause, and honestly, I've been waiting for things to stop. My family has a history of early menopause, and I can only hope.

When I expressed pleasure that my cycle (which has been clock-work consistent down to the hour for thirty years) had started to succumb to chaos theory (five weeks, four week, six weeks, three. Lasting ten days, five days, two days, four), no less than five people expressed sympathy at my "end of fecundity". I should be saddened and less, apparently, that I have finally started to cross the threshold of barrenness and somehow my "womanliness" is diminished by the fact that I will soon no longer be able to bear children.

I have to admit surprise at this attitude. It's been a long time since people have equated a woman's worth with her ability to produce children. That women are defined by motherhood. I had hoped that the idea that you can't posisbly be a "complete woman" if you don't have children, and that being fertile was somehow a status determinator was long past. Bearing and raising children can be the most important thing a woman can do (and the raising of children shouold be on the list of the the most imporant thing a man can do, but that part seems to be a bit more flexible), but it's not the ONLY thing she can do. It seems archaic and patronizing to assume that women will be lessened by their inability to have children, as if their sole purpose is to do so.

More women are choosing to be childfree now than ever before, and those women who do have children are having fewer (at least in the US). Is this a bad thing? I don't know. So many women in the past had children because "it's what you do -- you get married, you have kids". My own mother did. Perhaps if the social pressure to follow the "norm" and start having kids as soon as you married had been less, she might have done differnet things with her life. I don't think she regrets having kids, but there didnt' seem to be any other choice for her.

For me, the decision (if I every actually had a decision) was very easy -- no kids. I like kids well enough, but I have simply never had any urge to have my own kids. I'll borrow everyone else's and be a cool auntie, but having my own never really crossed my mind as a possibility. I can facetiously say that it's because my Mom did daycare at home for years and I had a very realistic view of life with a toddler, but it's more than that. Most girls show some interest in babies and having children and I never did. My mom thinks I need therapy, that i's unnatural to not want children, and I see her attitude in the response of my "invisible friends" online.

Can't have kids? How sad. Don't want kids? You're wierd or unnatural or disturbed and -- and here's the REALLY annoying part -- you don't know what you want.

I can't tell you how many people have told me, "oh, you'll change your mind" or "it's different when they're yours" or "you can't possible mean that" when I told them I didn't want kids. When I married the Adorable Husband, we discussed this very seriously -- and I still heard that it would be unfair to him to not have kids; or, at some level, that he thought I might change my mind, too. He never really wanted kids except as an abstract, but social pressure (and family pressure) is intense.

Do I regret not having kids? Nope. I've had opportunities that my childed friends don't have, and I have wonderful nieces and a sweet nephew. Like I said, my mother thinks I'm disturbed and need therapy to discover my natural role as a mother, but my life certainly isn't lacking anything. Many people have suggested that I've "missed" something by not having kids. I can't decide if that's because they are so happy being parents, or if they envy me for not having the constraints on my life they do. There is sometimes a desperation in the criticism of the "childree life" that smacks of jealousy. I get an undercurrent of that from some people, "oh, you can do that because you don't have kids.", "I wish I could go to Ireland for a month!" In some way, that's true. We travel for weeks at a time, and I took a quarter off last year -- something that would be much harder if we had a traditional family. Difference choices -- and the Adorable Husband and I made the choice not to have kids, it's been a different path. Better? That's a judgement I can't make.

Dear Abby (or Ann Landers, I can never remember) once asked if parents would "do it again" and a suprising number admitted that they wouldn't have kids, or would have delayed having children, if they had the change to go back in time. I'm not surprised -- having kids is at once the most rewarding and most frustrating things people can do, I think.

Well. Here's hoping that the two-days-every-three -weeks is the new schedule and that this doesn't drag on for years. Although I have determined that rushing out to the store for an emegency stash of tampons does indeed effectively stop your period. Heh.

Mathematics Fails

We bought a really cool double-bookshelf curio sort of thing last weekend, and the furniture company tried to deliver it today. I say tried, because they were unable to maneuver the enormous thing down the stairs and into our "library".

I'm disappointed, because we measured the thing (and did it twice) and really thought that they'd be able to inch it down the stairs and through the door. Mathematically, it should have fit! With perhaps a quarter-inch to spare. I'll admit, but it should have made it down the staircase and (more importantly) through the door at the bottom). The delivery guys balked. They did try, I have to give them credit, but they got it halfway down the basement stairs and decided that they coudln't do it without gouging something.

Ok, I decided. It can go upstairs (can you tell I really love this piece?). They tried, and despite the fact that I coudl see at least 2" of freespace around them, declared that they couldn't get it UP the stairs either. Without the limitation of a doorway, I figured they could boost itup over the railing. Apparently, they shoudl have sent BIGGER guys. Luckily, the Adorable Husband was home (delivering foam insulation for the wine cellar with the rental truck from Lowe's) or the little guy on the bottom of the stairs would have been squished. But the delivery guyswere insistent -- it an't gonna go.

They could, the lead guy announced, get it upstairs if we didn't have the bookshelves in the landing (if you haven't seen the house, we have a wall-full of 6"-deep shelves in the landing for paperbacks). Ooookay. They wouldn't wait while I cleared out the books and removed hte shelves. They insisted that I reschedule. So, they reloaded the thing on the truck and drove away. I'm not sure if I should be pissed they did that, or grateful that they tried so hard. I opted for grateful, and tipped them 20 bucks for the other stuff they delievered, and the attempts to get this huge beast down and then up the stairs.

Feh. The Adorable Husband and I are in negotiations as to whether we can put this in the sitting area upstairs, or whether we return it and get something else for downstairs. I bet you can guess which side of the that argument I'm on....

Legal Reform?

If this doesn't convince you that we need some sort of legal reform, I give up. I can't imagine that a) any attorney took this case and b) it might actually make it to court. It should be dropped and this guy should be fined to within an inch of his life for proposing such absolutely ridiculous arguments

A man is arguing that being fired for spending time (apparenlty a lot of it) on internet chat sites describing explciit sex acts is discriminatory -- PTSD from Vietnam made him an Internet Sex addict and he shoudl be recognized as having a disability. So firing him is discriminating aginst a disabled person and should be protected under the ADA. He was warned about his behavior, and continued. WTF? Surfing porn on the web might be "protected"?

Hey, I can think of a whole host of things that I could possibly claim as disabilities, so I don't have to take responsbility for my actions and can get the world to revolve around me. What's the attorney's name again?

Protecting what?

Attorney General Launches Initiative to Protect Religious Freedom:The First Freedom Project

"Preserving religious liberty requires an ongoing commitment to protecting this most basic freedom for people of all faiths." --Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales

Call me a cynic, but this has nothing to do with protecting religious freedom, of course. It's all about imposing a specific religious belief on those of us that don't want religion imposed on public life. Its going to allow the favored group -- evangelical religious-right christians, who have dominated political life recently -- to demand all kinds of concessions from employers, teachers, zoning boards etc. This is all about special rights for a religion (and, in the history of this country, a specific religious belief), not about religious freedom.

I don't get it. Who is being prevented from exercising their religious beliefs? Who is being forced to deny their religion? Whose rights have been abridged by any law or behavior of the government?

Apparently the people who think that their religion requires that they force it on others. When they are prevented from making other people follow their specific beliefs, they believe they are being "prevented" from observing it. Sorry. That doesn't match reality.

I understand that I'm generalizing the opinion and actions of a small fringe group. But I can't help feeling that those people claiming that they are being persecuted, that Christianity is somehow threatened by the views of other, aren't living the same world that I am. Do good, and I will fully support you, whether I agree with your beliefs or not. Act like a club-carrying thug and I will try to make sure you're disarmed.

Much of the complaints that I see are because other religions are now getting the same sort of concessions and recognition that have historically been given to the Christian faith in America. Whether you ascribe to the mistaken belief that we are "a Christian nation" by design or not, Christianity has been a cornerstone belief of the US. For the most part, this has been a positive influence. However, we no longer can claim that Christianity has primacy -- the world is a small place nowadays, and people who believe in many other definitions of God abound. If you believe they are all mistaken, that's well and good. They think the same of you, as have most of the people who populated the earth since we climbed down out of the trees. But accepting that the differing beliefs of others should have the same cultural and social treatment is quite a stretch for some people, and is quite threatening to them.

One of my friends tried to explain to me once why 'tolerance' of other religions was dangerous and disengenuous, and I have to admit that I never quite got the argument. Tolerance somehow validates alternate beliefs and weakens the faith of those who go along with it? From my perspective, it's a non-issue. A person of any faith criticizing someone of another faith for having the "wrong beliefs" is quite astounding to me.

I've been reading 'Misquoting Jesus' in the last week or so -- and despite the title, the book is actually not a condemnation of any religous belief or the bible itself, it's a rather long-winded explanation of textual criticism and an explaination of the process of copying and deriving versions of the New Testament and how we know what the "original" looked like, even though we have never seen it. More like "how do we know what we know?" Very interesting. What we believe is so firmly entrenched in what we have been given as resource material, it was interesting to trace how we can trace how that source material has changed from early versions to newer ones and map the general beliefs of any age of Christianity to the influence of the written word. I strongly recommend it.

Woah. That digressed. Sorry!

Radio Ad Missing the Point

Not only is my email filled with offers for things to enlarge anatomical parts I don't have and offers for drugs to keep said anatomy ready-and-waiting for action...now the radio is starting with adds for Viagra and Cialis that are sounding quite a lot like my spam.

On the way to lunch today, I heard an add for Viagra "soft tabs" from some online pharmacy that promises you results in 15 minutes from a reformulated Viagra tab that "dissolves under your tongue."

"Did you know," the ad intones seriously, "that Viagra can take SIXTY to NINETY MINUTES to work?"

All I could think of was that this ad was obviously aimed at men. Me? Well, I think all those Viagra-hungry men should spend that 60-90 minutes doing something useful.

Like foreplay.

An hour and a half before you have an erection? Piffle. Be creative.

Beer Guzzlers

I love The Week magazine. Interesting summary of the week in the world.

This week -- a startling tidbit that 10% of beer drinkers drinkg 43% of the beer consumed. That's a little over a gallon a day.

I have no idea if that's worldwide, just in the US, just in the UK, or what. But stil....Boggle.

Wine tasting fun!

Apparently when I finally get immersed in a project, I forget to update anything! As you can tell, I've been sucked into a new project that involves a complete re-engineering of a 15-year-old application with no documentation, no requirements, and a short timeline.

Actually, I love it. I'm really excited to start the rewrite. Of course, I'm in the process of creating use-cases, process flows, context diagrams, and (hopefully soon) detail design docs). Lots of visio diagrams. I'm having a blast, even if I'm starting to dream about "process enhancements". Ugh.

So, what's been going on?

We went to a really fun, kind of impromptu German wine tasting at a friend's house this weekend. The invitation said" bring a german wine to taste, and german food". Well, the wine was easy -- head to the Boulder Wine Merchant and ask for "something different from Germany", but the german food was a bit of a problem. We all brought lots of sausage. We found German cheese and Bockwurst. Another person brought beer-cheese fondue, and smoked sausage and sauerkraut. I'd forgotten I really like sauerkraut. My mom used to make polska keilbasa and sauerkraut, but I'd forgotten that it was so good.

We all decided that German red wine is...well, disappointing covers it. We brought a Pinot Noir (Spatburgunder) and someone else found a red table wine. We all hated both of them. We also found a "champagne" from Germany -- a sparkling reisling that was the hit of the evening. Everything else was variations of sweet-to-dry Riesling. Good, but definitley not my cup of tea. It was an absolute blast, though. Next month, we're all trying Irish food and beer, in honor of St. Paddy's Day. Our dear friends the LInnemeyers, have been doing this for awhile and invited us!

It's a fun idea -- invite people to bring a wine to taste, bring a dish to share, and enjoy an evening of good food and wine and conviviality. I'm thinking we need to do this a few times a month!

Introducing the Book

If you have ever answered the phone or emails for a helpdesk, you know that some of the problems can be trivial and mind-bendingly weird. And you know how hard it is to be calm, helpful, solicitous, and nice when faced with a user who Just. Doesn't. Get. It.

Ever wonder what it was like before technology? Check out the Norwegian Old Helpdesk.

It's in Norwegian, but don't worry -- you'll get it.

Especially if you've ever had to make a call just like this poor helpdesk technician.

[I found a version with english subtitles, if you'd rather know exactly what they say. We had more fun imagining our own dialog, but....]

Blogging the Bible

Most people haven't really read the whole Bible -- all the books, chapters, and verses. Most people know the big stories -- the flood, the ten commandments, the sacrifice of Isaac, the story of Joseph, etc. But few of them have read the text themselves.

They have read bits and pieces, or have had bits and pieces "explained" to them by clergy or one of the hundreds of 'how to read the bible' guides. They have things packaged and carefully filtered to teach a specific lesson, or they work through passages with someone else's interpretation to guide them. If you accept things without question, it's much easier, and not many people are interested in digging any deeper. This is a culturally iconic text, and for many centuries, detailed analysis was frowned upon.

So what happens when someone starts at the beginning and reads the whole thing, word by word, without bringing in those preconcieved ideas? Well, David Plotz, and author at Slate magazine, decided to do just that -- and carry everyone along with the process by blogging each book and chapter and his feelings.

It's not a slam on the bible, it doesn't appear to have any hidden agenda at all -- just the reactions of someone who has been a practicing religious person their whole life, but who hadn't ever tried to read the bible on their own. He compares what he reads to the lessons of his childhood and the misconceptions he had about things (for example, that the mark of Cain is actually a mark of favor, not of condemnation), and how some stories are very different than he was taught. It's been interesting to see his experience.

You can read the whole series (still in progress, I think) at Slate Magazine. The set of entries is called Blogging the Bible.

Momentary Brilliance

So, I get this call on Friday morning, my boss asking if I can use OWB (Oracle Warehouse Builder). Well, yeah. I did a huge project using an earlier version of the tool, I could probably figure out the newer one without too much problem. I figured he was looking for some project proposal analysis, or something.

Nope. A new client called with a Serious Production Issue -- they had lost connectivity and were absolutely frantic that htey couldn't do their data loads from ther old system into their data warehouse. Could I come out for a few hours and fix it?

Gaah! I hate that kind of gig. You have to come in, get up to speed, and be a gold-plated expert in two hours or less. There are technologies that I'm perfectly happy to do this for, but Warehouse Builder is not one of them. Not any more. I haven't touched it for a year. The salesperson on the gig had told them that we could send someone "today", but I really wanted a bit of time to refresh myself on the tool.

So I blithely told the client on the phone that I had client responsbilities for the rest of the afternoon and I'd be there first thing Monday morning, without waiting for the sales person to get a word in edgewise. WHile it was a production environment, there was ONE user and she was out. Ha!

In the end, I was there for less than two hours and things were back up and running, and the person I was helping was actually pleased that I'd not come on Friday. If it had been fixed on Friday afternoon, she would have had to work all weekend. I told her this was part of the well-rounded services that TUSC provides.

I got to feel momentarily brilliant, but then I had to go back home and feel inadequate and dense while trying to decipher the code in the application I'm supposed to re-engineer. Sigh.

Color Photos, 1911

Someone posted a link to photos of turn-of-the-century Russia, and at first I thought they were colorized versions of orignal black and white photos. Not so -- the photographer, Prokudin-Gorskii, had figured out how to make colored images from mutiple black and white glass-plate images. He took three distinct photos -- with green, blue, and red filters. He never printed photos in color, of course, but he mimicked the output by projecting the three images onto a screen simultaneously during his lectures.

This photo (from the Empire that was Russia website) is NOT a modern photo. It was taken in 1911. The photo is of the newly ascended Emir of Bukhara and was not "colorized" by modern methods. The website explains how they reproduced the color photos from the glass-plate images, but what I was struck by was the modernity of the images. They look as if they were taken last week, with modern equipment.

They're easier to relate to than black-and-white images, for some reason. There is a liveliness there that you don't usually see in old photograps. I wonder if that's just because we are so programmed to see things in color, and black-and-white photos (especially old photos) are seen as 'unreal'.

You can see the rest of the photos on the website -- the architecture photos are particularly striking, as if the explanation of how they do it.

$4300 a square foot

And we complain about real estate prices? Ouch. Apparently, the Chelsea area in London is one of the most expensive places to own property on earth. The average asking price for a house is 1.1 million pounds (about 2.2 million) in this ritzy area. That's appalling enough, until you realize the sorts of places that are for sale in Chelsea.

A janitor's storeroom in an existing housing block was just listed for 170,000 pounds ($331,000). It is 7 x 11 feet -- about the size of a closet. It has a cupboard for a shower, and a tiny kitchenette -- or it will, after the new owners shell out another $50K to add electricity and proper plumbing and clear out the rubble that fills the tiny room.

Even the estate agent selling the property admitted the flat was "incredibly depressing".

"We have to go in with a torch because the lights do not work and it is full of rubble," Jason North, associate director at Lane Fox.

Nevertheless, the flat is expected to attract buyers due to its close proximity to the fashionable bars, shops and leisure facilities of Kensington and Chelsea.

The article goes on to note that it might be one of the few affordable places in the area, if you don't mind living in a windowless room that's actually a bit smaller than a maximum security cell in prison.

Vista Gotchas

I've been running the beta for Windows Vista as a dual-boot on my work machine -- it's a lovely operating system, seems to have been pretty stable, and adds in a lot of functionality. Like other recent versions, though, it tends to "dumb down" some of the security and network stuff. For the most part, this is good, I guess; but annoying the user to manage security because Windows has such a horrible history of dealing with it is perhaps not the best solution. I don't want it making decisions -- MS has proven in the past that it can't make good ones.

I will probably move to Vista permanently on my work machine, but only after the first service patch is released (I really don't want to be one of the first adopters on this one). But I read something recently hat made me rethink my possible change to my home machine and laptop:

From the BBC -- the fine print in the new version of Windows grants Microsoft the right to delete whatever it wants to from your computer, and there's nothing you can do about it:

Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge...Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, a security program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software". The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software... even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted...

For those users frustrated by the software's limitations, Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software"...

Well, yes, Microsoft, I can work around the technical limitation and monumental invasion of privacy that your license suggests: I can not upgrade, or I can swap out to another operating system, such as Linux or move to a Mac. Perhaps Microsoft might want to think about that before deciding to "manage" my computer for me.

Subway Model

I ran across this while surfing aimlessly -- the US Interstate system as a subway-type model. Interesting.
You can see a much larger version here.

Kiss of Death

There's a running joke in the more leftist forums I hang out in (although, how can I call it a joke when it has such far-reaching and disappointing results) that if Bush starts touting some program or congratulating some group, in a few days, he'll cut funding for it.

More disturbing to me -- and part and parcel of politics in general -- is the adminstration's knack for getting a ton of positive attention and credit for talking about making the right choices and funding/unfunding the right things, but when it comes to enacting the change, they quietly and without any fanfare, don't do it. But everyone remembers that they talked about doing it, so everyone also remembers that it somehow happened, even if it didn't. If you don't pay attention to page 42 of the paper below the fold, you never know that the much lauded plan to do X was cut. A prime example of standing ovations and applause for education:

“Bush’s proposal to increase the maximum Pell Grant for lower-income undergraduate students was greeted with fanfare when it was announced last week.
But his FY08 budget released Monday contains no new money to pay for it,” CongressDaily reports. [ThinkProgress]

Or this, which got a ton of attention in Bush's new push for a healthy populace:

To fight childhood obesity, Mr. Bush asks Congress to set aside $17 million for a new program to promote ‘healthy behavior’ among adolescents. But at the same time, he asks Congress to eliminate the preventive health services block grant, which provides $99 million a year to help states prevent obesity and other chronic conditions. [NY Times]

It happens all the time (and to be fair, Bush isn't the only one who has a history of this) but it's damn frustrating and hard to keep track of. I'm still searching for a website that lists all these popular programs and statements about them -- adn the real, concrete actions that were taken, good or bad. I haven't found it yet.

Truer Words Never Written

I saw a tagline/signature line that made me laugh out loud:

I am fairly sure that if they took porn off the internet, there would only be
one website left, and it would be called "Bring Back the Porn."

Football Alternative

I can't say I'm a football fan, and even though I like the commercials during the superbowl, they're usually not enough to get me to sit and watch four or five hours of football.

Instead, might I recommend The Puppy Bowl, on Animal Planet. Four hours of cute puppies playing. That's it. Just puppies. For four hours! I spent most of my afternoon working with the Puppy Bowl on tv. I'm a complete sucker for cute puppies.

Of course, I need a Samoyed puppy. Now. Maybe three.

Ouch.

Bush has been touting his "surge" option, and reiterating his commitment to his currentplan in Iraq and, apparently, his inability to recognize that things need to change. He tends to be relatively tone-deaf, and repeated the same arguments when speaking to the house Democrats during their annual retreat. But...

Later, in a question-and-answer session that was closed to the public, Democrats questioned Bush about the war. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters afterward, "The president really stood his ground on Iraq" during the session.

Asked if she was disappointed by his stance, she replied, "Disappointment is attached to expectation. . . . I knew what to expect." TimeRichmond

Ouch.

Winter Social Life

When it gets cold, and dark at 4pm, everyone out here in Sunny Colorado starts to hibernate. It happens in all cold states during winter -- we don't leave the house, we stop talking to people, we basically hide out until spring.

Not entirely, but everyone who has snow knows the drill. I can't wait for the warm spring nights so we can hang out on our porch, have a glass of wine, and enjoy the company of our lovely neighbors as they wander by. Neary every night in summer, someone on the culdesac is hanging out on their front porch and we all end up there.

Our neighbors invited us to dinner at a new Italian place in Niwot -- Treppeda's --great place, and we broke ouf of the mold this weekend, and actually socialized! Whoohoo! Since we still have two feet of snow in our front yard, and at least 6" of ice on the roads in our part of the neighborhood, we're feeling very adventurous!

Having good neighbors is such a huge blessing. We've lucked out entirely -- our culdesac turns out in force to snowblow and clear the driveways, we hang out on summer weekends, and in general we have a great bunch of people. I've never understood people who don't know their neighbors, or prefer to have a six-foot privacy fence between them and anyone who might possibly see them in their backyard. I like knowing that I can borrow a cup of sugar from any of my neighbors, and that they feel comfortable asking to borrow any of the Adorable Husband's vast collection of tools. It makes me feel part of a community, not just like I happen to own a house somewhere.

Harry Potter VII

So, have you pre-ordered yet? Amazon sent out emails this morning to order the last Harry Potter book (released in July) -- and it's already the #1 book on Amazon. Actually, it's number 1 and number 2 -- the deluxe edition comes in a close second.

There were roughtly 1.5 million pre-orders at Amazon of the Half-Blood Prince, the previous book, and Amazon fully expects that the last book will outstrip even that. Half-Blood Prince was also notable for selling 6.9 million copies the first day it was released (worldwide) and having the largest initial printing of any book. It looks like the last book will do even better.

Amazon.com today announced that in just the first seven hours of pre-order availability for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" the online retailer has sold over 200 percent more books than it did the entire first day of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" the sixth book in the series. In fact, sales on Amazon.com in the first seven hours today have eclipsed total sales for the entire first two days of the sixth book. [dmn newswire]

That means three million or more pre-orders. Just at Amazon.

Wonderbras are not for me

I hate buying bras. Bras are the bane of my clothes shopping trips. Seriously. You'd think that such a common thing as a comfortable brassiere would be easy to find.

Well, maybe if you're a stick-thin model who needs no more than a couple of bandaids to keep things in order, or someone for whom a training bra has been all they ever need.

Deifnitely not for anyone who is endowed with more than a gentle swell of bosom. I fall into the "generous" category, which makes things even more difficult, but even those who are perfectly proportioned often have problems buying a well-fitting bra. The most recent numbers that I've seen have said that up to 70% of women are wearing a bra that is the wrong size (Last year, Oprah has said 85%!) To small, too large, wrong shape, bad support, wrong type.

I can sympathize, having had all of these problems at least once (seriously, a sexy demi-bra is not something anyone over a B cup wants to try. I ended up looking like things were going to explode upwards and someone could have been lost in all that cleavage). The other end of the spectrum is handled by the serious industrial-strength "support bras" for larger sizes, which are anything but sexy and often make you feel as if you're wearing a straightjacket made of spandex (if you're lucky -- most of these serious "foundation garments" have little or no stretch at all). I suppose that voluptuous women could resort to sports bras, which keep everything in place but can result in the monoboob look, or simply resign themselves to sturdy white utilitarian numbers. But that seems very unfair.

It doesn't help that every manufacturer is different, that sizing is not consistent, that there are fourteen ways out there to determine the "perfect" bra size. Numbers and letters abound, and woe to anyone who isn't in the 32B range, unless you want to start spending mega-bucks on your underthings -- and even spending a hundred bucks or more doesn't guarantee that things will fit.

It's funny, really. Every single woman that I've met who is an A-cup or B-cups have waxed yearningly about having breast implants or being a D or DD cup. Every women who has natural D or DD cups (or larger) has sighed and said with feeling that they would rather be smaller. I haven't honestly had the chance to ask many women who have had implants if they are happy with them, or if they would rather have simply perked up what they had.

At any rate, why did this come up all of a sudden? Well, they stopped making the style of bra that I have been wearing for years. I really hate underwires, since I've never been able to find one that doesn' poke and jab, and this style is the only non-underwire bra that I've found that's comfortable and seems to fit well, and now that I need to replace the half-dozen that I have, I can't find them. (I seem to have bad luck with underthings. I find a style I like and they stop making it. Feh.)

Which all leads to the reason for this post -- to point women at HerRoom, which has an absolutely excellent site on bra-fitting. It's not enough to just take a few measurements, they say, there are more variables than that to get a good fit. I was pleasantly surprised to find it, and I've printed out the checklist for when I shop.

I have a note!

Well, this might put a crimp in the Superbowl festivities! Apparently, many of the 60,000 people who are treated each day with some form of radioactive isoptopes have enough residual radiation in their bodies to set of detectors. It's likely a few of them will be in attendance in Miami this weekend.

Nearly 60,000 people a day in the United States undergo treatment or tests that leave tiny amounts of radioactive material in their bodies, according to the Society of Nuclear Medicine. It is not enough to hurt them or anyone else, but it is enough to trigger radiation alarms for up to three months.

Six people set off alarms at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony last year in New York, and there are a few who are stopped at airports each month because the new sensors for "dirty bombs" are detecting trace amounts of radiation. The sensors are used in airports and other venues that have been identified as possible terrorist targets.

I wonder if a note from the doctor is going to be enough?

Gatekeepers

I really hate this idea of executive fiat. The president, regardless of who s/he is, really shoudln't be able to write laws disguised as policy and "interpretation". Signing statements, which Bush is inordinately fond of, executive orders, etc smack of an end-run around the proper process of legislation.

Some are pretty innocuous, of course, but others -- like the recent EO by Bush that puts politically appointed oversight over many government organizations -- bypass the "normal" process and don't allow the public a chance to even comment on the ramifications, much less have their representatives in congress decide on things.

NYT - January 30, 2007 President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy. In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries.

The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities. This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts.

Shouldn't the priorities of the president be our priorities? I can even agree with the logic that there should be a test as to whether the government should interfere/set rules in any given situation -- there should be some check as to whether we really need a government agency sticking its nose in things. But this sort of rule shouldn't be dictated by fiat, and especially by an administration/president who has shown a remarkable disregard for science and proper process. I don't want a political appointee who may not have any particular expertise (and remember how fabulously effective those appointees have been in handling other government roles? Remember Katrina?) making decisions on what documents are published, what data is used to make decisions. Yeah, take that responsbility from the scientific community and put it in the hands of political appointees. This sounds like a good idea? Putting the beancounters in charge of policy?

Besides placing political appointees in charge of rule making, Mr. Bush said agencies must give the White House an opportunity to review “any significant guidance documents” before they are issued. ...

Nice. Censor data that is being used and disseminated by the departments in question. Don't like that the dept of Health and Human services has come out supporting condom use? Don't like that food regulations will impact corporate profits? Don't like the information about pollution? Want to further your own particular belief system? Regardless of what the intent was, this executive order just made it easier to supress that sort of information and make sure that any documents released by the government conform to the propaganda. Here's hoping congress addresses this soon.

I Knew It!

A recent study published by the US Dept of Health and Human Services shows that moderate wine drinkers use Medicare less. The research was initially started to see if alcohol use was costing Medicare money -- and the results were a huge surprise.

They found that

"light and moderate wine drinkers on Medicare each save about $400 in health care costs each year."

During the five years of the study (which tracked over 4000 patients), those who drank wine moderately (1-2 glasses a day) had $2000 less in medical costs. Those who drank spirits also saved money, but not as much. Heavy drinkers had the same costs as nondrinkers. Moderate drinkers seek medical attention less often, and are hospitalized and treated less often.

"For us, the question was whether Medicare ought to be discouraging alcohol use more actively...and it appears probably not." Dr. Kenneth Mukamal.

We have already seen that a glass of red wine contains resveratrol, which is good for the heart, limits brain damage from strokes, helps you live longer, and may help prevent certain types of cancer. (details of the research can be found at WineSpectator). Having a glass a day may really be good for you -- and I, for one, will be following that prescription!

Sound Familiar?

Declaring "I'm the decision maker," President Bush yesterday challenged congressional efforts to formally condemn his Iraq plan

Decision maker, decider...when he doesn't like the opinions of others, he just starts telling us that it doesn't matter, since he gets to do whatever he wants, because he's the Decider, see. He decides. And it's hard work.

Somehow, I don't think it's going to fly this time. Defending a bad plan never works well.

Altitude Sickness

The weekend was lovely -- although I don't think my company is going to be holding any more all-company meetings at altitude. Quite a few of the Chicago folks were affected by altitude sickness, a few serious enough to make them very, very sick. A couple of people left early, and some didn't come to the dinner because they were ill.

It's a big enough issue for those of us from the foothills -- going from 5K to 10K makes most of us suck wind when we have to do anything remotely physical. Coming from sea level can be a serious problem if you don't have time to acclimate. It can also lead to very serious (even fatal) complications in a small percentage of people (1-2%). We think of it as something that affects climbers of Everest, but it can hit people at altitudes as low as 6000 feet. I remember it took weeks to get acclimated to Denver (5280ft) after living in Georgia (~ 0 ft).

We sent out a couple of email messages about how to deal with altitude sickness (drink lots of water, avoid alcohol and caffeine, take it easy) - but the sales group was here a day early and -- as sales groups are wont to do -- they apparently had a bit too much fun at the bar after the meetings, and most of them were quite ill. Alcohol hits you hard when you're at near 10K, you should drink less, and for every alcoholic drink make sure you also drink water. Otherwise, the hangover is super-bad. They sent out a reminder about altitude sickness after that.

Breakup? Reconciliation

A tiny bit of news from last week - Cingular Wireless decided after much market research that the AT&T wireless division that it bought out a few years ago actually has better consumer reputation and recognition. People like the AT&T name, and so they are changing back.

It's all very confusing, but Stephen Colbert, of the Colbert Report explains it all.

Mandatory Meeting

My company is flying everyone to Colorado this weekend for an all-company meeting -- to celebrate the fact that we had a stupendous year, made boatloads of money, and are poised to continue that trend. All well and good -- people from our Chicago office fly in tonight and we'll all have a meeting tomorrow morning to get the rah-rah speeches and then we'll meet again at dinner to have some time to socialize with everyone and their families.

Most of the Chicago people came, and while it was nice to see everyone, i can't help but feel that a weekend getaway trip to Keystone resort for skiing and winter fun is pinched a bit by a mandatory meeting. Especially when said meeting convenes at 7:30am on Saturday.
I can't fault the intentions -- we rarely get to see everyone in the company, and it was nice to see those faces again. We all had a good time, dinner was lovely, and the Friday get-together at the local pizza place (exclusively for our company) was fun. We're excited that we did well, but we knew that (or we wouldn't all be out skiing for the weekend). I never understood the need to do the rah-rah thing if you've already pitched the reward. Ah, well.

I'm sure we'll enjoy the weekend -- we'll meet friends for a nice dinner, the Adorable Husband will ski all day, and I'll get a facial and spa afternoon after the meeting. We'll get to see everyone at the big fondue dinner up on the mountain, and talk to all the people we normally only "see" through email. Fun!

Fuzzy Math

One one of the big "plans" put forward in the SOTU Tuesday was a tax deduction to cover the cost of health insurance for millions of uninsured American families. They'll pay less ($4500 less) in taxes, which they can use to pay for health insurance.

Sounds good, right? Well, it will only really benefit about 3 million families, because -- and here's the part that seems to have escaped our fearless leader and his cohort-- many people who are uninsured don't make enough money to pay any taxes, so an additional deduction isn't going to help them.

Those who get their insurance through their employer, even if they pay for most of the cost themselves, don't get this benefit. In fact, this tax cut is financed by taxing employee health plans and redistributing other funds that go to community health centers and hospitals that provide healthcare to uninsured patients. Isn't this stealing from Peter to pay Paul? He's not actually putting any new federal money into any of these programs -- he's just shuffling it around like a very expensive shell game.

Last night - the Colbert Report "translated" Bush's new Health care initiative:

Colbert: It's so simple. Most people who couldn’t afford health insurance
also are too poor to owe taxes. But...if you give them a deduction from their
taxes they don’t owe, they can use the money they're not getting back from what
they haven't given to buy the health care they can't afford.

See? It's so simple.

Dog Pet Peeves

A dog's top ten peeves about humans:

1. Blaming your farts on me. Not Funny. Not funny at all.
2. Yelling at me for barking. Hello? I'm a dog, you idiot!
3. Taking me for a walk, then not letting me check stuff out. Exactly whose walk is this anyway?
4. Any trick that involves balancing food on my nose. Stop it!
5. Any haircut that involves bows or ribbons. Now you know why we chew your stuff when you're not home.
6. The sleight of hand, fake fetch throw. You fooled a dog! Woo-hoo! What a proud moment for the top of the food chain.
7. Taking me to the vet for the "big snip" and then acting surprised when I freak out every time we go back.
8. Getting upset when I sniff the crotches of your guests. Sorry, I haven't quite mastered that handshake thing yet.
9. Dog sweaters. Hello? Haven't you noticed the FUR?
10. Acting disgusted when I lick myself. Look, we know the truth. You're just jealous.
    

More Snow!

It's snowing again -- a lovely flurry of fluffy white flakes. On top of the snow that still buries everything since Christmas.

It's weird. We don't usually have snow that stays on the ground for more than a few days. Almost a month is unheard of. We still can't see the pavement in our culdesac, although most main roads are clear. The Adorable Husband was out snowblowing the entire culdesac again this morning.

I missed the storm in the midwest, and got home from Canton, OH with no problems. I actually had good travel juju, which is unusual for me. Teaching class actually went very well, and the client wants me to come back to teach a few other classes and do some consulting work -- specficially me, which is awfully flattering. It's always nice when you get good feedback. And considering that we squashed five days of class into three short days, and that I was sick the whole time, I'm glad it went off so well.

No other news on the homefront. Dogs are well, we are well, life is pretty good!

Truer Words

My sister is talking to a therapist (hoping to figure out how to handle the rather whacked dynamics in my family) -- who told her that "it might have been easier if you'd been raised by wolves".

It's really not funny, not really. But truer words have never been spoken.

We've been wrong all this time

"The constitution does not say that every citizen has the right to habeas
corpus"

Huh?

Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, has decided that it's not enough to reinterpret most statues and defend torture...now he's arguing that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are not really granted to people by default.

Apparently, he believes that the constitution doesn't actually GRANT any rights to people -- it only specifies when rights can be revoked. Uh -- in what world? Does this mean that the other rights given to citizen in the US by the constitution aren't really the default? Is the argument that you actually have to be explicitly granted these rights for them to be supported? Who grants them?

Gonzalez is, in one fell swoop, announcing that he (and by association, the current administration) believe that the rights we all take for granted as the basis of our legal system and society (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc) do not actually exist.

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.
“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away
except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.”

Neither of which is occuring today. But by his argument, we don't need to apply habeus corpus, a fundemental legal right, to everyone because they don't actually have it by default. That's a frightening -- and dangerous -- delusion.

I don't know why I'm surprised, but I certainly hope that the calls for his impeachment are heeded.

Off to the Hinterlands

I suppose I shoudln't call Cleveland/Canton OH the hinterlands. But I seriously don't want to travel this week. I'm still sick, and teaching is always so draining. Wah!

But, before I go: Courtesy of Sadly, No!:

THE PRESIDENT, in an interview given to 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley, January 14, 2007:

The minute we found out they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so. Scott, all I can do is just tell the truth, tell people exactly what’s on my mind, which is what I do.

THE PRESIDENT (May 29, 2003):

We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They’re illegal. […] But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.

Mrs. and Mr Who?

The ACLU has taken up the cause of a couple married in California in 2005, because the husband wants to take his wife's last name, instead of the other way around. Instead of the simple process of filing a marriage application (which is all that is required for a woman to change her name upon her marriage), he was told he would have to go through the "normal" channels of a court order and public notification process to change his name legally.

Huh? Women can change their entire name and become whoever they want to simply by filling in the blank under "married name" on the marriage licence in most states. Why can't men do the same? There isn't any real reason, except "that's the way it's always been", and some not-so-subtle sexism in the law that implies that a man would never have reason to change his name at marriage.

Having had a serious issue with my name change when I got married (well, not then, but recently when I was an International Woman of Mystery, acccording to the Social Security Administration), I can sympathize with the frustration. It's supposed to be easy to change your name when you marry -- based on the assumption that at least the woman will change her name either to her husband's surname or to a hyphenated version of it. Some couples keep their own names, but most follow tradition to share a common name.

I personally think a couple should have the same last name, but I don't really care which one it is -- husband's, wife's, a new one they made up on the spot, I don't care. I've also never been a huge fan of the hyphenation thing (which is why my middle name is now my maiden name -- kept my original name intact, just didn't end up with a 30-letter last name), but a lot of people are choosing to do that nowadays. Perhaps it's because people are marrying later, and have well-established social ties with their "old" name, I don't know. I rarely see that the man takes the hyphenated name of his wife. So you have John Smith and Mary Jones-Smith, which looks vaguely like the last names you might expect if there was a Mr. Jones involved in their polygamous marriage.

One of the things I do wonder about the hyphenation crowd is: what name do your kids (if you have any) have? Are your kids Jones-Smith, or Smith, or Jones? If it's Jones-Smith, what if they marry someone with the last name Johnson-Butler? How many hyphens can you have? At what point do you give up and make up a new name?

Ok, maybe a bit of hyperbole there. It's not an unreasonable question, though, at least not in my mind. My SIL and her husband kept their own names, and the Adorable Husband and I had a rather odd conversation about what last name the twins have. My sister gave her son a long string of names to cover KidName MiddleName DadLastName LastName, since she is not married to his father, but wanted his name in there somewhere. She usually drops DadLastName when she writes out her son's name, but it is in there legally somewhere. Admittedly, it's less complicated than some of the traditional naming schemes (look at some of the scandinavian countries, where daughters and sons have different "last names" (Johnsson, Johnsdottir, for example), or names are a string of patrilineal names. Maybe.

In the meantime, maybe we just need to add spaces to all the lastname fields everywhere.

Hey, We're Smart!

We always laugh about how odd Boulder, CO is, but apparently we rank as #1 in the "Smartest Cities" in the US, followed by Bethesda, MD and Ann Arbor, MI.

The home of Apple, Google, Yahoo, and the rest of silicon valley (San Jose) falls in at tenth.

They base the ranking on the number of people with college degrees, which is obviously a fairly flawed way to determine intelligence (some of the best educated people are surprisingly stupid in real life), and it obviously favors college towns...but still, it's neat!

Catching Up

Oy! New years and vacation and flu -- I haven't even been at the computer in a few days. Here's the scoop:

1) Our housesitter's New Year's Eve Party went swimmingly (with continued apologies for assuming that we'd be out of town) and our house was immaculate after the twenty or so people left. We got back at 12:30am from a lovely dinner with friends and snuck upstairs. The party was over by 1:30 and we never heard them leave.

2) The family Disney Vacation was a qualified success. My mother decided not to come at the last minute (with much proclaiming of 'never speaking to us again') and we all had a brief moment of feeling bad about it. A bit of stress, since it's impossible to get everyone in my family pointed in the same direction for more than a few minutes at a time, but Disney was lovely (albeit HOT) and we had a blast on the new rides, and spent some fun time with my nephew. We stayed at the Polynesian Resort, which is a lovely place.

3) We got home on Saturday and I promptly succumbed to the Generic Sore Throat Ick that I'd been nursing for a few days. I don't actually remember Sunday, what with the sudafed and sleeping all day, and I'm still not up to par, but at least I can work from home in my jammies. No conference calls for me, though -- my voice comes and goes.

4) My sisters pug dog, Truman, won a first place ribbon and at least one second place ribbon at the dogshow on Saturday. And, he may be a featured puppy on the MilkBone dog biscuit boxes.

5) My dad's eye surgery for strabismus was a grand success -- no more double vision and he's back to feeling comfortable driving! I'm really happy; having problems seeing was really making him withdraw and disconnect from the people around him.

6) His wife, however, was in yesterday to have a cancerous lump removed from her breast. She's doing really well, waiting for the final pathology and next steps. She's very upbeat and feels good right now. Hopefully, they'll have a continued run of good luck. Cross your fingers.

7) Chemo for the dog was delayed again for a week --we're going to a four-week schedule, since he takes a long time to bounce back from the low white count.

8) I'll be in Canton, OH next week, teaching class. Apparently no one really goes to Canton, since I had the worst time finding an airline flight that didn't require me to be travelling for 7-8 hours. And the other instructor from my company told me in no uncertain terms, "Do not go walking in the client neighborhood. Keep your doors locked." And this from a guy who was raised in Jersey!

9) I have absolutely no idea what to do to solve the quagmire in Iraq, but I am absolutely certain that whatever Bush has decided to do will make it worse. And he'll blame the Democrats.

10) The Sony eBook Reader that the Adorable Husband got me for christmas is the Best. Christmas. Present. EVER. I absolutely love it and carry it everywhere. Having 80 books at my disposal is nirvana. I can't wait to get a memory chip for it so I can carry hundreds and hundreds!