Close to mexico

Sitting in the El Paso airport, waiting to board the first flight, to 110 degree Phoenix.

I am looking out the window to the south, where I clearly see the barrios of Juarez, going up the hills on the Other Side of the pretty narrow Rio Grande.

On the freeway coming in from the north, you come quite close to the modest river, with at least one stretch guarded by an industrial-strength metal fence.

Just a quick plane-change in Phoenix, then on to 98 degree Portland, where KG, friends, music and a cold beer wait.

three hours later...

I found El Comedor without any problem, after taking a quick look at the historic Mesilla plaza, which I visited some years ago (it hadn't changed much). Unfortunately, I had hoped to have a look inside the church, but, alas, it was locked.

As I mentioned, El Comedor was reviewed pretty favorably by TripAdvisor. It certainly had the feel of a small, family place. The service was very quick, and the menu presented many tempting things. I wanted to sample several things, so I had to order the combination plate.

There was a Taco de Pastor, an enchilada de pollo, a chili rellano, a serving of chili verde, the expected beans and rice, and a big flour tortilla (I barely touched the salsa and home-made chips).

Everything was pretty good, and it was a challenge to finish it all (I rise to all challenges). The clear winner: the chili verde. It was spicy and very flavorful. I could have made a meal just with that.

There was also a beer. Total: about $15.

Now, I am back in my motel room for one more night, watching Rachel on MSNBC. Maybe I'll see if there's a movie on TV. The swimming pool is still open for another hour. So many choices.

Heading home tomorrow. No complaints.

Does it get any better?

I finished my three days of intensive work with my two project teams here in Las Cruces, and am now back in the Ramada, enjoying my $3 margarita.

The work week is over. It was very good.

I did some web research, and believe I will soon head to a restaurant that TripAdvisor says is the best Mexican in town. Stay tuned.

amazing desert lightning in New Mexico

Finished my 2nd day of meetings, down here in Las Cruces. It's all going very well, with lots of decisions being made and my To-Do list growing hourly.

I stepped out of the motel to walk over to the burger place across the street (WhatABurger) to get a chocolate shake. There were dramatic clouds and setting sun, with frequent, classic, forked lightning flashes illuminating the sky to the south.

Not sure I'd love to live here, but it sure is different from western Oregon, and I can see the appeal!

Tomorrow is the final day of meetings with my project teams, then back home on Saturday.

having it both ways

So the teabaggers keep saying they just want to 'return to the Constitution'. I even saw a bumper-sticker the other day, that said 'I vote the Constitution.'

I assume that's a euphemism for 'Obama is not the President.'

Well, with all the right-wing blather about 'activist judges' interpreting the Constitution, instead of simply following its straightforward language, I have to laugh (uncomfortably) at their recent jibes at the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to anyone born here.

You can't have it both ways - either we follow the literal sacred words of the Founding Fathers (where the amendment is clear) or you admit that times change and interpretation is necessary, to adjust to current realities (which demolishes their pathetic argument that 'the Constitution does not address Gay Marriage').

Of course, intellectual consistency is for oxymorons.

Best wishes to Christopher Hitchens, as he nears the End.

transition days

spent yesterday with Karen and guests working in the yard, weeding, mowing, pruning, and picking.

then out to dinner at Seasons and Regions. Could not finish the 2nd pint of IPA.

will visit a local client tomorrow, then pack for Tuesday departure.

Lying in bed this morning before getting up - missing my dog.

back from the beach

two weeks in Manzanita with friends and family just went by.

now to pick up the pieces of my Portland life, before flying to New Mexico on Tuesday.

what did you expect?

not much to say these days

Tomatoes are enormous; beans coming along; peas mostly done; squashes getting big.

Watching the steady march of the Tea Party brown-shirts. Everything is right on schedule, according to the time-honored progression of Republics into Empires into Fascist right-wing lunacy, as the unsuspecting masses have had their pockets successfully picked by the bankers, and their emotions successfully inflamed by the man-behind-the-curtain.

Happens every time, as predictable as out-of-control squash plants.

Happy summer, everyone.

fooled again

Breitbart.

When will they ever learn?

stuff that makes software developers salivate

Over the past few years, I have developed a couple of applications that run under Windows CE, using various Microsoft tools. Since I use a Windows smartphone (and am VERY happy with it), this has been cool.

With the advent of the iPhone and the precipitous decline of Windows Mobile, I have felt like I am locked out of future meaningful development on the phone platform.

Now I see this. It tells me that Android is the way to go, since it does not have the locked-in restrictions of Steve Jobs Universe. Can't wait until this is released.

Will it be enough to have me abandone my trusty HTC Tilt? Hard to say, since I will miss the built-in Word and Excel (which I actually use on the phone). Time will tell.

this will blow your mind

wow

Also, I'd be remiss if I failed to send Happy Birthday greetings to Ringo Starr, 70 today.

The July 3rd deck project happened!

Today is the Glorious Fourth. I have fond memories, as a kid, of making the drive with family from Elmira to Ithaca, where we watched, every year, the best fireworks display in the world, at the Cornell football stadium. It was a ritual.

As you left the stadium at the end of the show, there were barrels at all the exits. Folks tossed in some cash, whatever they wanted, and some company used the proceeds to spend the next 364 days building next year's show. It was self-supporting for many years. Now, that's Democracy.

We spent yesterday building the framework for the deck in our back-yard, that has been in the planning stage for a couple of years. Thanks to the engineering vision of our friend Robert Perron, the master carpentry of our cousin Rion, and the labor and amazing chop-saw of our cousin Steven, it all came together in about 8 hours. Good thing I dug the six holes for the pier blocks the other day - that saved a lot of time.

After we leveled the square concrete slabs in the holes with gravel, placed the pier-blocks in the holes, and laid the beams in the pier-blocks, came the tedious, necessary task of setting levels.

Steven cut little posts, to raise the beams to the proper heights. This took a while.
Check and re-check all heights.
Are the posts right? Maybe we should shave off another inch?
This took a long time, but had to be right.
OK - looking good. Let's lay out the first joists and make sure they're level, too. They were!
Laying out all the 12 foot joists - we had to fabricate one from a 10-foot piece.
And a couple of hours later, all joists are screwed to the beams! Note the nice indented corners! Next year, the posts for the roof will go there. Rion was an amazing help.
End of the afternoon. There is temporary facia around the entire perimeter, with lovely, precise 45 degree cuts on all corners.
Another view. Next up - decking in a few weeks!

amazing Civil War photos

here.

Mouse over photos to see caption (file name) at bottom of browser. Some truly amazing scenes, plus portraits of most of the major figures.

See Lincoln at the 2nd Innaugural, with, apparently, Booth in the photo, in the crowd above him.

Lots of scenes from Antietam and Gettysburg - places I am familiar with, having both studied the battles and visited the fields.

Also noteworthy: the under-construction Capitol and Washington Monument. Check it out.

I don't mean to mess up your day, but...........

Lots of folks are linking to this OpEd.

Basically, there is a growing possibility that the Deepwater Horizon oil-volcano really is the pivotal event of our lifetimes.

why am I not surprised

it all makes sense. it's always all about the pillage opportunities.

can there be any doubt?

The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is the defining event of our times. Even the Texas schoolbooks of the future will be obligated to mention it (probably in connection with a sin of some sort).

The developing scenario is reaching the Pandora's Box realm of released evils. For a truly frightening assessment, from someone who appears to know of what he speaks, try this blog post. Yes, it's very long, but it explains the physical forces at work here, and the slim chances for human engineering to control it.

What we have, folks, is a disaster movie, worthy of the great distopian disaster movies of all times. Unfortunately, Bruce Willis is not going to save everything in the final 15 minutes.

Where did America go wrong? Very simply, I believe there can be no doubt that the election of 1980 set the course which lead us to this day. The folks who brought you the Reagan Revolution set it all in motion, and the most-rotten of the rotters, present at every rotten, slimy, greedy point, is KBR/Halliburton.

Just sayin'.

what a world

This morning, our steady Mexican laborer, Rolando, appeared at our house around 7:30, as Karen was leaving for work. Normally he comes by on weekends, and we always have work for him to do, and he does it well.

He does yard-work for several folks in our neighborhood, and he was desperate to find someone with cable, to watch the Mexico vs. South Africa World Cup game.

I told him we don't have cable, but I may be able to find a free stream on the internet. While he nervously watched, I spent several minutes trying several sites, before, magically, I found one, where the commentators were either Russian or Polish.

So, we sat in my kitchen - I made him coffee and toast - one American and one Mexican watching as teams from Mexico and South Africa played soccer, with the audio and video coming from half a world away, on a wireless connection to an old laptop. It's the modern world!

Rolando's joy when Mexico tied it 1-1 was great to see - he stood up and was almost dancing around the room. In the final minutes, he had to get up from his chair and pace nervously. When it was over (1-1), he smiled broadly and left, to go on his way.

I felt lucky to share in his excitement, and am glad I don't have to watch any more soccer for the time being.

on israel

Great piece in the NY Review of Books - you should read it. It echoes what I've been thinking all along, that the sweet, innocent Israel of my youth (50's and 60's) is long gone.

It discusses the demographics that today's American Jewish youth are largely ambivalent to the Zionist passions that affected so many in my generation.

The split between the older defend-Israel-always attitude and the but-wait-aren't-they-really-oppressors sensibility was brought home to me a few days ago, during a casual conversation with one of the older guys who sings with the chorus at the Jewish Assisted Living home (where I have been playing piano weekly for several years).

Refering to the current tensions between Israel and Turkey (and knowing that Karen and I were in Turkey a couple of years ago), he asked, "do you have relatives in Turkey?" I said, no, we were just tourists. That seemed to be an invitation to discuss the current bad stuff and I made a comment along the lines of "I just knew when Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister that he would be a disaster."

My friend bristled and said, "what do you mean, he's exactly the kind of tough leader that we need, unlike that Obama."

We changed the subject soon thereafter.

I grew up in a home where the UJA 'pushke' (those little blue boxes with the map of Israel on the front and a coin slot on top) was always present, and I was always encouraged to 'put a penny in the pushke'. I was active in Young Judaea all thru high-school and was even in an (shudders to think about it) Israeli folk-dancing group.

But this Israeli government, and a large segment of Israeli society, seems on the wrong side of history and the quest for Human Rights - you know, the one that began when we were slaves in Egypt.

children become domesticated eventually

Ben's favorite holiday has always been Thanksgiving. As readers here may know, he moved into his own house last February, and the first milestone was a brunch he organized, a couple of months ago, for about 6 people. It was a smashing success (homemade bagels, champagne, etc).

Next Sunday, he is hosting (and doing most of the planning for) what he's calling 'Half-Thanksgiving', with an 18 pound turkey and (at last count) 15 guests (including us). I was over there yesterday, delivering cloth napkins, roasting pan, etc, and helping him set up the tables and chairs.

He's really into it, which is both amusing and gratifying. Dylan is expected to come up from Ashland for the weekend, which will be nice, too.

There's more shopping to be done, but, this morning, I made a gluten-free cornbread for the stuffing (which is my contribution). Must get busy...

back from an abbreviated camping weekend

We drove out to Cove Palisades Saturday morning. It was raining hard in Portland, but, by the time we approached Madras, clearing nicely.

Got set up at the campground, then Karen and I went for a bike ride along the rim road, with turnouts to the magnificent views of the Crooked and Deschutes canyons.

Dinner and campfire with the group was fun Saturday night, and Sunday dawned sunny and clear.

Four of us went for a hike up to an incredible viewpoint, overlooking the canyons. There were a ton of colorful wildflowers and lots of birdlife. Here's a photo, from my cell phone, of the flowers, rocks and cliffs. We hiked to the highest point you see, on the left-end of the rim.

It was still sunny and warm as we finished the 4-hour hike, but, around 3 pm, the clouds descended and the rain commenced.

Dinner was cooked and eaten in the rain, and, as everyone prepared for a damp, chilly night, Karen and I decided to bail. We tossed our gear into the car, said our goodbyes to the group, and drove back to Portland, arriving home around 11:00 pm.

Spent Monday doing yard-work and other chores. All in all, a mixed bag, made somewhat sad by both the weather and the fact that this was our first camping trip without a dog in many years.

It's been a week since Zacky left us, and we are adjusting to his absence. Not easy.

Couple of music gigs coming up in the next few days - a welcome distraction.

I don't understand

Yes, I should be grieving for my dog, but the knowledge that he is released from his growing infirmity is some comfort.

So, I thought I'd hit Google News, to see what's the news on the Gulf oil disaster (which, I sense, is THE pivotal event of our times). Amazingly, there is no trace of this story:


Lindsay Lohan and Dancing with the Stars? Yes.

Ecological nightmare, not so important...

dog gone

the Owyhee trip

I left Portland around 3 am last Friday morning (after about 2 hours of restless sleep), and headed east on I-84, stopping every once in a while to add gas, delete pee, and add munchies, eventually arriving in Rome, OR (via western Idaho) around 11:30 am.

It was a beautiful ride, going past several places last traveled/viewed on Cycle Oregon in 2003.

Eric and David arrived in Rome (from Santa Cruz) around 1 and Ann (and her dog) arrived (from far-northern CA) around 2. We rigged up the boats and organized food and gear for a couple of hours. By the time we were ready to launch, it was after 4 pm, and we decided to spend the night at the boat launch in Rome, rather than hit the river with all of us tired and brain-dead.

It was a wise choice. We had pretty-good sandwiches at the Rome cafe (wifi available), and Friday night in Rome was peaceful, with a zillion stars visible. Saturday morning, we had a quick breakfast and headed down the Owyhee, Eric and David in one boat and Ann, Lamu-the-dog, and me in the other.

The first few miles are a gentle float thru farmland, gliding by occasionally-interesting formations. Here's a photo from about mile 4:


Since we had a very early start, we planned on a big-mileage day for Saturday. It was very hot and sunny.

We stopped for lunch and a brief swim (brrrrr) in one of the first big canyons we encountered, then continued down to 'Weeping Wall', where we camped for the first night (about 18 river miles). Very peaceful, totally nice, and Eric's dinner of charcoal-broiled tuna steaks (Trader Joe's), (instant) mashed potatoes, and salad was just right.

Sunday morning, we continued thru varied scenery. The formations grew more eroded and exposed, sort of similar to Bryce Canyon formations of sedimentary rock. We camped at the base of Pruitt's Castle, a formidable formation of multi-colored and fancifully-eroded, crumbly mud and rock.

After setting up camp, I went for a walk up to the castle, taking lots of photos and wandering around under the towers. It was pretty darn cool. Here's a photo of Lambert Rocks, just downstream from Pruitt's Castle - typical of the formation.

I was on for dinner Sunday night, and my menu was a big pot of Cajun Red Beans and Rice (with added canned diced green chiles and canned tomatoes) and a frying pan full of sauteed onion and green beans, with Trader Joe's seafood mix (shrimp, scallops, and calmari) tossed in, at the last 2 minutes. Everyone seemed to be pleased with the results.

Did I mention that there was beer, too?

After dinner, the 4 of us walked back up to the Castle, where we took more photos and climbed around on the hills, getting great views up and down the river. It was pretty wonderful.

Back in camp, I broke out the Trader Joe's (see the recurring theme here?) Lemon Bars, which were pronounced very fine.

Today's river mileage: I think just about 6.

Monday morning: a hearty breakfast at Pruitt's Castle (scrambled eggs with veggies and leftover beans-and-rice folded in flour tortillas, and lots of coffee), before we pushed off.

Great rock formations (see the above close-up of Lambert Rocks), a variety of cliffs and canyons, and a few nice rapids. We stopped for lunch at a cave that Ann had remembered, just immediately upstream from Green Dragon Canyon.

This canyon is astonishing - thousand-foot cliffs rising up from the narrow, rushing river. I took lots of photos. Here's one - really, this canyon was the most-impressive one of the entire run.


We found a campsite in the heart of the Green Dragon and set up camp. It had been a sunny, warm day and, after pitching my tent, I went for a 5 minute swim in the pretty-cold-to-start Owyhee, emerging totally refreshed and happy.

About an hour later, the wind came up, and it started to rain a little. Then a lot. We all retreated to our tents as the gale increased to a wild level. The wind-gusts were so strong that I was actually holding down the floor of the tent, and hoping that the water leakage would be minimal.

This went on for maybe 45 minutes before the storm abated enough for everyone to emerge and compare notes. We all agreed that it was quite a storm, and hoped that the evening would be a little more calm.

It was still windy, though, with dark clouds visible in the slit of sky that we could see (remember, we are at the bottom of a very deep, narrow canyon). We decided to try to cook some dinner, and Eric did a great job, under the circumstances, delivering some instant kim-chee, rice, and a veggie stir-fry (onion, mushroom, eggplant, etc) with both tofu and tempeh. It was hearty and satisfying, as the evening came on, dim, still a little windy, and still threatening more rain.

We went for a brief walk after dinner, then had dessert (Trader Joe's creme brules, served, without plates or utensils, directly onto our outstretched palms - it was a unique approach to camp-dining!).

It did rain a bit more during the night - nothing too major - and Tuesday dawned, chilly and cloudy.

After a mile or so, we emerged from Green Dragon Canyon into a wide-open section, still with high cliffs on either side, but no longer deep in a narrow, enclosed space. The day was improving.

A few more riffles and rapids. We stopped for lunch in Jackson Hole, a broad valley with long vistas in all directions. It was turning into a nice day. One of the maps promised a couple of petroglyphs in that area and we found a couple of small ones.

Later in the afternoon, we pulled over at a sandy beach on river-left, based on Ann's intuition that there was something there, and found an amazing group of petroglyphs - the largest collection I had ever seen - a couple of dozen at least. Here's one group - pretty darn cool to be visualizing the ancient people, bent over these boulders, and publishing the news of the day.

It was time to pick our final campsite. Looking at the map, we saw a marked camp at the base of a formation called "Devil's Tower". It was impossible to miss Devil's Tower, and we stopped at a camp-site that was probably not the one on the map, but having a great view of the Tower and surrounding hills.

We set up camp, and it turned out to be the best one of the trip. The afternoon was warm and delightful, and the scenery was wonderful, as the late-afternoon sun and clouds bathed the surrounding hills with shifting shadows and highlights.

Here we are getting ready for dinner. That's Devil's Tower on the left (only a passing resemblance to the real one, in Wyoming). Can you find the wine bottle?

It was my turn for dinner, and my menu was (after appetizers of smoked oysters and other leftover veggies and dips) cheese tortellini (with a sauce of fresh spinach, two kinds of pesto, and Trader Joe's Red Pepper Spread, with eggplant and garlic) and the rest of the steamed green beans. There was wine. There was joy in camp.

After dinner and scenery appreciation, we all went for a walk on the expansive sagebrush plateau directly behind the camp. It was lovely and peaceful.

Then, it was back to camp for my dessert (which I had made a couple of hours earlier and placed in the cooler): Jell-O No-bake cherry cheesecake. It turned out great - how could you go wrong?

We went to bed. It had been the last full day of rafting, and everyone agreed that it had been pretty good.

Wednesday morning, we packed up the last camp and headed to the take-out - about 5 miles.

We stopped briefly at the hot springs at Greeley Bar, then continued on. It was a hot, sunny day. I took lots of photos. Here's one from the final stretch - can you see the white raft (it's pretty small)?


We got to the take-out, at Birch Creek, around noon, and packed everything up in the two vehicles that had been shuttled there from Rome. We left Birch Creek around 1:30 and, as we were told it would be, it took an hour and a half of steep, twisty, bumpy dirt-road to get to highway 95, just north of Jordan Valley.

We had a minimal lunch at the JV Cafe (we were looking a tad grubby, after 5 days), then drove on to Rome, where my trusty Subaru had been waiting for my return. I threw my dirty, disorderly gear into the back, we said our good-byes, and I took off. It was around 4 pm.

Great trip, eh?

I drove the long, straight miles, north and west, towards Burns. It was a lovely afternoon and the endless miles were mostly deserted. I saw roads I had last traveled on Cycle Oregon 2001 - September 11, 2001, to be exact. That was eerie.

Got gas and a sandwich in Burns (where I finally found cell-phone coverage and could call Karen). I headed west towards Bend, arriving there around 7:30. I stopped for more gas and then decided there was no way I had the energy to drive all the way to Portland.

I stopped in Sisters and got a motel room. First hot shower in almost a week. Clean sheets. Good.

Woke up early Thursday morning - there was a dusting of snow on my car and the motel roof. I grabbed an indifferent breakfast in Sisters and headed home.

It began to snow hard just outside of town, and there was a blizzed blowing as I ascended Santiam Pass. Traffic was slow, but that was OK.

Eventually descended into the familiar, green Willamette Valley, and drove up to Karen's office around 10:30. Arrived in our lush, beautiful yard around 11 - said hello to the dog - unpacked a few things - went to bed.

There's no place like Home, and there's no place like the Owyhee.

weirdness

Yesterday, on the last day of rafting, Ann asked me how I got interested in piano.

I told her about our family friend, George Feinstein, who played piano and violin, and how fascinated I was with his music and especially their baby grand piano. George gave me his copy of Kammen Book 1 many years ago, and I still have it, yellowed and worn. I hadn't thought about him in at least a couple of years.

An hour ago I got a call from my brother. George died yesterday.

Synchronicity strikes again.

back from rafting the Owyhee

had a great time - still editing photos - will post some soon.

getting ready to head out

I am leaving Portland around 4 Friday morning, to drive to Rome, OR, to meet up with my brother-in-law, Eric, and friends, for a week-long float trip on the Owyhee.

I am mostly packed - still have a few items to buy for the two dinners I am responsible for. The expectations for fine-dining-on-the-river are very high!

Wrapping up my computer work for a week has been a challenge. Just a few minutes ago, I finished my last victory - a VBA module that permits you to create or modify pass-thru queries (from Access to SQL Server) on the fly (using the VBA code to build the SQL exactly as you need). The pass-thru query can then be linked to a combo-box's RowSource. Cool, eh?

It may sound arcane, but being able to do that opens up a tremendous potential for developing a maintainable hybrid Access/SQL Server application, that leverages the server database engine's power and minimizes network traffic. That's a good thing.

If I don't manage another posting, I'll see y'all in a week.


UPDATE: Don't get me wrong - I sure didn't write that module from scratch! I found an example by browsing around (Google magic!) and made a few slight modifications. Life is too short to try to figure that stuff out for yourself!

good thing I'll be dead

It's my genes that I'm worried about.

We are the Ancients that the folks of the Future will shake their heads at and say "how could they have been so stupid?".

Then, again, maybe the nuclear wars that finish us off will cool things sufficiently so that Global Warming turns out to be a hoax, in an ironic sort of way.

This is the way the World ends - not with a Bang but with an Oops.

profiles in courage

Not only courage, but amazing talent. Thank you, Lena Horne.

hard to be depressed

The weather is finally improving, just in time for the dinner party planned for Saturday night (16 people expected).

Lots to do before then, but, first, I need to listen to Ralph Nader on Thom Hartman's radio show, in 10 minutes.

Uh, oh - I just remembered that the Gulf of Mexico is filling up with oil. Crap.

oil

This morning, I read an account of the situation that described matters as a 'volcano of oil', rather than the innocent terminology of a 'leak' and a 'spill'.

The image of Pandora's Box comes to mind.

We have meddled with forces far more profound that the ability of engineers to devise (cost-effective) systems to manage them.

Thanks, again, Ronald Reagan, for ripping Carter's solar panels from the White House roof. Guess we showed the world the stuff we're made of! Consume, baby, consume.

making lemonade out of lemons

So, you've probably heard about the voter registration fraud, where folks thought they were signing petitions for pot legalization, and actually registered to vote as Republicans. Apparently, the petition-gatherers were paid something like $8 for each GOP voter they registered.

Authorities are proceeding to see if a crime has been committed (hint: yes), but I kinda think this is a good thing, and here's why.

1) Bad publicity for the GOP is always welcome, especially when it involves an issue (voter fraud) that they've always yelled about (think ACORN).

2) People who were taken in by the fraud are now technically eligible to vote in all Republican primaries, with, shall we say, some incentive to vote for the most outrageous, right-wing-nut candidates on the ballot. I know this is dangerous territory.

on a lighter note...

Can there be any doubt that Werner Herzog is one of the true geniuses of our time?

Watch, watch, and watch.

privatize the profits; socialize the risk

What better example of the above guiding principle of Corporatism than the oil spill in the Gulf?

Somehow, I don't think that the oil company is likely to reimburse the US Treasury for the Coast Guards costs in dealing with this.

the Republican Party - always thinking ahead

Must read, by Greg Palast.

no more excuses necessary!

I feel validated, and, this afternoon, will feel sleepy again.

bartering for health care

You're probably aware of the Nevada candidate running against McCain, who says we should return to the barter system when negotiating with doctors.

Great idea - a couple of car washes for that office visit to get the anti-biotic prescription.

The system kinda breaks down, however, when you need to pay for the $5000,000 cancer treatment. Two words come to mind: indentured servant.

teaser headline of the day

Liberal Democrats predict election victory

Unfortunately, it's in Britain.

asparagus!

Just picked the first three 8" spears, culminating a year of preparation, uncertainty, and waiting. There are at least 10 more teeny ones currently coming up. It's gratifying.

Peas, onions, and potatoes are coming along nicely. I have 16 tomato seedlings still under grow-lights in the kitchen. Hoping to do the third rhubarb harvesting tomorow, in time to make a nice dessert for a dinner party tomorrow night.

Maybe there is hope, after all.

first they went after the Muslims...

I can't avoid the fear that, with the new willingness of the media to call the Big Bankers on their frauds and chicanery, that it won't be long before denunciations of 'Jewish bankers' are a lot more common and explicit at Tea Party rallies.

Of course, they will be unable to see the irony in saying that Obama = Hitler, and,by the way, he's in league with The Jews.

my son, the philosopher

Ben is presenting a paper on 'Environmental Ethics' at a student philosophy conference, at Pacific University in Forest Grove this weekend.

There he is, in the schedule, in the 8:00-9:30 sessions:

• ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS (Marsh 201)
  • L. Pippa Callanan (Portland State University), "Intrinsic Value for the Environmental Pragmatist"
  • Commentator: Jackie Burgett (Pacific University)
  • Ben Lavine (Portland State Univeristy), "On Weighting Humanity in Utilitarian Calculus"
  • Commentator: Bieu Bu Tran (University of Connecticut)
  
  

He's come a long way from his days working for 'Hot Dog On A Stick'. Maybe at his next presentation they'll spell 'university' correctly.

amazing discovery in back yard!

For the past few weeks, I've been poking around in our one-year-old asparagus bed (last year's big project), seeking in vain any evidence that the 13 crowns that emerged last year were still alive.

As recently as last weekend, there was still nothing.

Today, there are now 6 visible new asparagus stalks, one of which is over 4 inches long already!

I weeded around all of them - here's hoping that more emerge within the next few days.

Can we eat them yet, or are we supposed to wait until the third Spring? Must check.

Meanwhile: watch this for a combined chuckle/shudder.

probably just an isolated incident

Seen on Americablog today:

A furious transatlantic row has erupted over quotes that were attributed to a retired Italian bishop, which suggested that Jews were behind the current criticism of the Catholic church's record on tackling clerical sex abuse.

A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism, considering how "powerful and refined" the criticism is.

The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.

Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: "They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."

Uh, oh.

um, now can we agree, once and for all, that "We are a Christian nation" ain't so?

Heard this morning, as they announced that the last 4 miners were found dead, that normal mining operations will resume on Sunday.

Wasn't Easter just last week? How soon they forget.

follow up to krugman article

Yes, it was somewhat depressing, and the unfortunate sense that nobody in 'authority' (whatever that is) will really do anything meaningful to address the potential catastrophe, can be mitigated by some pleasant gallows humor.

krugman explains it for you

Yes, it's long, but this NY Times piece is a must-read, if you want to understand why cap-and-trade may be the best solution after all, to forestall impending planetary doom.

Or, instead, you can just watch American Idol - your choice.

Bryce Canyon and the Civil War

Many years ago, as I drove the last few miles to Bryce Canyon, I noticed that I was beginning to see, along the road, minor examples of the amazing formations that fill the park.

Since then, I have often noticed that areas adjacent to major geologic formations frequently have lesser, less-perfectly-formed examples of those formations.

The obvious conclusion is that the forces and conditions that result in well-formed results operate on a continuum, and, on the fringes of the zone where the formations are perfect and distinct, it is often possible to see fragmentary examples of the upcoming recognizable formations.

I think that social phenomena work the same way. The emergence of the 60's Civil Rights movement was preceded by a number of harbinger events. World War II was preceded by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the German experiments with mass bombing/terror in Spain.

Looking at the many 'isolated' events where angry white-folks are beginning to act on their beliefs that insurrection against the Federal government and violence against its elected representatives is OK, are we seeing certain forces and conditions coalescing, in preparation for blossoming into the perfect forms of 'Civil War'?

Just asking.

the WikiLeaks video

Very troubling. Has anyone heard if/how the Tea Partiers have reacted?

Will they cheer the noble Americans who took out the bastards, or will they decry the dehumanization, waste, and sheer horror of the images? I honestly don't know what side they'll come down on.

It is very disturbing, what is done in our name. Silence is, unfortunately, complicity.

got a few minutes?

check out this slideshow

here's one of my favorites, but there are several classic gems:

let's assume that Obama plays chess

And not checkers.

We are already seeing that the insurance companies are finding loopholes and excuses to continue to raise rates and deny coverage. They must be smirking at their successful manipulation of the final bill, which delivers to them 32 million new customers, some of whom will be subsidized by taxpayers. Sweet.

However, just suppose that public outrage hits a tipping point, as abuses and outrages continue to hit the news. Who gets the blame?

Congress, certainly, but perhaps the Insurance corporations will be finally recognized (hello? media? yeah, right) as the source of Our Misery. In which case, Obama gets to say "we made a great first step, but now it's time to recognize that Big Insurance has no real interest in supplying actual Health Care, so let's have a true Public Option...".

So, in my grandiose fantasy, Obama has been merely following a "give them enough rope" strategy. Could it possibly be so?

"Sarah Palin's Alaska" show

I heard that this is to be a new program, coming soon. Wonder if they will talk about this?

the Germans (bless their hearts) had the perfect word

Schadenfreude (see Wikipedia, in case your Deutsch is a little rusty).

an inconvenient fact

Thinking about the frenzy among Republican Attorneys General, to repeal the Health Care 'reform' law as unConstitutional. Oops.

who says Health Insurance companies don't have a sense of humor?

Really, these guys are a riot!

more on Cantor story

It just keeps getting better and better. Turns out:

"Later Thursday, however, Richmond police said in a news release that the bullet had been fired into the air around 1 a.m. Tuesday. It finished its random arc back to earth at a sharp downward trajectory, breaking a window pane on the bottom floor of the two-story brick building where Cantor’s campaign leases the top floor."

Got that? Cantor's campaign consultants lease an office on the top floor, and the random bullet broke a window on the bottom floor.

Yes, this event was sure important enough to bring anti-Semitism into the stew.

Pathetic clown.

Meanwhile...

"Tear down this Government" (but wait until I get my check)

Heard this on KPOJ this morning, too, as reported on TalkingPointsMemo. Should we be surprised?

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

The Washington Post today has a profile of Mike Vanderboegh, the 57-year-old former militiaman from Alabama who last week posted a call for people to throw bricks through the windows at Democratic offices around the country to protest their votes for Health Care Reform. Whether the people who actually did this over the last week did so in reaction to his call to arms is not clear. But he's happy to take credit and others are crediting him too.

But Vanderboegh really is a classic exemplar of scream-at-your-TV tea-partyish extremism. A radical libertarian, champion of getting big government off the people's backs, his day job? Vanderboegh lives on government disability checks down outside of Birmingham, Alabama.

eric cantor

Now that it's becoming clear that the bullet not only was NOT directly fired into the building, but the building houses political consultants that Cantor uses, NOT his campaign office.

Two words come to mind (besides 'total idiot'): 'Reichstag Fire'.

better get used to this story

tick, tick, tick...

Barney strikes again

Just heard the 'rest of the story' about the recent epithet shouted at Barney Frank.

The idiots yelled 'Fascist faggot' at him, and Barney simply replied 'I am not a Fascist'.

uh oh

On Friday, former militia leader Mike Vanderboegh called for anti-Democratic vandalism across the country to protest the health care bill.

Vanderboegh posted the call for action Friday on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars.” Referring to the health care reform bill as “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act,” he told followers to send a message to Democrats.

“We can break their windows,” he said. “Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”

Sound familiar?

anyone else having computer derrangement today?

OK. so far today:

1. My main computer wouldn't power up. I had to unplug everything and jigger the case to make the on switch come alive. It seems to be normal now.
   
2. Up at Karen's office, all three of her computers had odd things: one could not recognize the CD drive (loose cable), one lost changes to a Word document (computer was getting automatically rebooted after I uninstalled the horrendous AVG Version 9), and one had a sticky mouse (it was as if Shift-Click was permanently turned on - I pressed the Shift key a couple of times and it returned to normal).
3. Back home, I am trying to fax a document and perpetually getting a busy signal, despite the recipient swearing that all is well on their end.
4. So, I decided to scan the document and email it, instead of faxing. My scanning software continually tells me that there is a hardware problem with the sheet feeder, although I was able to do a Copy without issue, using the sheet feeder.

What's wrong here? Why is everything breaking down today? Am I alone here or are devils hassling you today, too?

food for thought

On one of the blogs this morning, someone made this comment, which, I feel is right on:

"The number of Republican votes in favor of the bill that passed is exactly the same number the bill would have gotten if it had included a true Public Option."

Also, I hear Grandpa McCain solemnly promised this morning that the President would not get any cooperation from the Republicans for the rest of the year. So what else is new?

not one Republican

In the House voted 'Aye'.

34 Democrats voted with them.

It's a first step - the insurance industry is not invincible.

Next stop - the Vatican!

breaking news: Kucinich to vote 'Yes'

He is coming around to the 'hold your nose, get something passed, then fix it later' thinking, that Bernie Sanders has also adopted, and I am OK with this.

Still, I'm glad I sent $5 his way yesterday.

cool YouTube from Ben

pretty clever

Obama

So much promise before the election. So much excitement at the Inauguration.

So much compromise since then.

So much corruption throughout the system. Something is rotten and we all know it.

Pass the damn bill, and try to fix it.

Maybe, in context, Obama will have been a necessary first step, that had to be taken to prepare the way for the Kucinich/Grayson ticket (you remember, the one that ran against, and lost to, Palin/Cheney).

Tick, tick, tick...

it's nice when things work...

...without having to read the documentation, that is.

I've never done anything significant with SQL Server, but there's a chance that an upcoming project will be an Access front-end to an SQL Server database, so I figured I ought to get the basic development stuff set up now.

I downloaded and installed SQL Server Express and its management tool. It was pretty easy to create a new database, add a table, define some fields, and insert some data. Pretty slick.

The next challenge was to build an Access database that can see (and modify) the SQL Server table, and the obvious way to do that is via a linked table, using ODBC. The one critical step to do this is to correctly define the ODBC data source and confirm that the connection is valid.

However, my efforts to define the ODBC data source failed again and again, as my frustration and dread grew exponentially. I tried every combination of the parms that I thought it wanted, but I got a 'connection failed' message every time.

It was totally frustrating, and that was the state I was in last night, when I headed for bed.

Naturally, at some point during the night, a thought 'occurred to me' (as they say), and, in short order, this morning, I created and successfully tested the ODBC data source definition (hint: the default server-name that Windows inserted was incorrect), I created a proof-of-concept Access database with the SQL Server table successfully linked in, the SQL Server table was copied into an Access table, and I created a form that can display (and modify) EITHER the Access table OR the SQL Server table, based on a parm that I can easily toggle in an Application Constants table.

So, I now know I can build an application with forms pointing to tables on either platform, copy data from one to the other, etc. It may not sound like much, but it opens up a lot of possibilities for development.

Now all I need to do is hope they come thru with the contract!

Your reward for getting thru all the above boring stuff is this.

now that my anxiety level has decreased...

I can concentrate on getting prepared for tomorrow night's klezmer concert, where I am just a piano player.

It's at 7:30 at the Portland JCC, and is part of Jewish Arts Month. I think we have a fun program planned. I hope Ed took good notes at our one and only rehearsal, so that we don't have too many surprises (like when to end a number, which can be a challenge once you're in there enjoying yourself).

Taking Dylan to the airport in 15 minutes, for his flight back to Medford/Ashland. Kudos to the amazing customer service person at Horizon Air, who was unbelievably accommodating in transforming the unused portion of last Sunday's itinerary into a seat on this afternoon's flight, without charging us anything. That was a surprise.

Gotta run...

the final word on Dylan

At today's appointment, the doc confirmed that it is indeed a tonsil issue, and he is 99% certain that there is no cancer involved.

Did we over-react by insisting that he NOT return to Ashland the other day, but stay in Portland until we get this figured out? Perhaps.

Apparently, the recovery for tonsil surgery is about 2 weeks for adults, and generally uncomfortable. We are leaving it up to him to schedule the surgery, with the understanding that he will probably have recurring sore throats until it's taken care of.

He is itchy to get back to his Ashland life, so we'll probably put him on a plane in a day or so. Right now, he's hibernating up in his room - seems depressed about having had his plans disrupted by nosy parents.

So it goes.

fascinatin'

The things that can be learned from DNA analysis continue to astonish me.

update on the previous mysterious post

I guess now it can be told.

My son, Dylan, who has been living in Ashland for a couple of years, complained about a persistent sore throat months ago. Naturally, we repeatedly told him 'go to a doctor' since we have insurance, etc.

Of course, he never did.

Last Friday night in Pasadena, on the eve of Sylvia's 99th Birthday party, he mentioned that he still had the sore throat. We pulled out a flashlight and looked into his mouth, and were shocked to see a marble-sized mass that was clearly not supposed to be there.

Karen, having represented a number of people with throat cancer and other horrible stuff, fretted all night about what this could be, and we told Dylan that he would NOT be returning to Ashland on Sunday, but, instead, would stay with us in Portland so that we could make sure this got looked at ASAP.

She took him to a couple of places today until she found someone who would look into it, and, to great relief, the first opinion was that it's a horribly inflamed tonsil, not cancer.

Next appointment is tomorrow afternoon, when we'll find out if he needs surgery (probable) or if it can be handled with medication (hard to imagine). Regardless, he's going to be in Portland for at least a few days, but it seems that our worst fears (which you can imagine) are over.

Kids.

back in Portland

Ben and I flew down to LA Thursday night, and the whole family, Dylan included, returned to Portland late Sunday afternoon.

Saturday was my mother-in-law's 99th birthday party. She's an amazing artist, and it's always a treat to spend time in the house where she lived for 50 years, since just about every square inch of surface has some bizarre painting, ceramic, or 'construction'.

All her neighbors were invited, and as much family as could be assembled were there - about 70 people. Naturally, there were scattered downpours, so the outside time was limited. There was plenty of food and drink, and two astonishingly-large cakes.

For the singing of Happy Birthday, someone had made a huge clay sheet-cake, into which the requisite number of little candles had been inserted. It was lit with a blow-torch and the smoke detectors went nuts - you can imagine the general hilarity.

Since I didn't know 80% of the attendees, I was happy to sit at the piano and play popular songs of the 30's and 40's, my favorite pasttime.

There was only one incident that cast a cloud on the proceedings, and, depending on what happens over the next couple of days, it may become a major topic in this blog, but I hope not.

Enjoy Life, and especially enjoy others whose lives are inspirational.

rumor just heard on Thom Hartman show

The RUMOR (totally unconfirmed at the moment) is that John Roberts is going to resign as Chief Justice due to medical problems.

Please let it be true.

UPDATE: now the original report is being retracted. Oh well, I felt pretty good for a few minutes.

small satisfactions

With Karen gone for a few days (law conference in San Diego, and then to Pasadena to prepare for her mother's 99th birthday party, this weekend), PLUS the full moon, I hardly slept last night.

Instead, I spent hours (or so it seemed) compiling a list of all the things that had to be done today. There were almost a dozen, and, as of 12:30 pm, all but two are completed, including doing the first major lawn-mowing of the year.

Now, I can coast for a couple of hours.

home for Purim

The savvy among you will immediately get the association with 'For Your Consideration' - the rest of you should go rent it.

Yes, it's Purim, and last night I played piano at Havurah for their annual fun-fest. It was great to see all the little kids, and the parents who also got into the spirit of things (there were many bottles of spirits being appreciated).

Many memories, of course, of Purims past, in my little home town in upstate New York. It's too bad that my boys won't have those rich memories of the all-consuming Jewish experience that I had.

At any rate, it's now Sunday morning, and I am all alone in the house. It's a rare thing. Karen is in San Diego for a law conference, and, since Ben moved out a couple of weeks ago, that leaves me and the animals.

I made myself a strong mug of coffee and that went down just right.

I am playing a set of jewish music with friends at the Cedar Sinai home this afternoon, and spent an hour playing thru the playlist that Ed sent earlier this morning. Should be a fun program - we are doing it twice: once in the Rose Schnitzer auditorium (that has a wonderful, familiar piano) and then across the street, at the Robison nursing facility, where the audience is a lot more 'lower-key'.

My fingers feel very nimble, which is good, considering that the next big concert is March 11th, a very public event that is part of Jewish Arts Month, and the group only has one major rehearsal scheduled!

But I digress.

After playing wildly in my empty house, filling it with music, I let the silence creep back in, then went out onto the back porch, where I sat quietly for a while, finished my coffee, and watched the birds and squirrels, trees, and flowering shrubs. It's spring, and there was (naturally - it's a Jewish holiday!) a full moon last night, which means that I slept erratically.

I am home for Purim, and alone. For today, that's OK.

A friend of ours, who is selling his house and needed a place to crash for a while, is temporarily moving into our freshly-cleaned and furnished basement room tomorrow, so my time alone is coming to an end.

I should be working on taxes, but I am listening to the Yiddish Hour on KBOO (Liz is hosting today - she is in the group that I'm performing with this afternoon). It's all OK.

Happy Purim, y'all.

best snarky epithet for the Republicans at the Obama HCR 'summit'

Heard on KPOJ radio today: 'the vermin on the Mount".

interesting perspective

we are all complicit.

beautiful

simply beautiful. Note the twinkle in DeFazio's eye at the end.

KPOJ is doing an "I'm as mad as Hell because..." segment this morning. Well, I'm as mad as Hell that the Democrats haven't been doing this since the day after Obama was sworn in.

'Nuff said.

woody allen retrospective

Yes, he was quite a great character in the 60's, and this page summarizes his early career, with links to many wonderful clips.

No matter how you feel about his, um, personal life, the guy was a great character in his earlier days. See the silent film they did for 'The Woody Allen Show', with a very young Candice Bergen.

white house unveils new HCR proposal

'State-based exchanges'? You gotta be kidding.

Yes, there are a few good things, but, Jeez, where's the audacity?

I called Wyden's office this morning, asking if he had a position yet on signing the letter advocating the public option. 'No,' the staffer said.

I just don't get it. Where are you, Ron?

Feb. 18th

It's my mother's birthday - she's been gone since December 2008.

She taught me how to make stuffed cabbage, but nobody made it better.

The Flintstones was a Documentary!

I guess it shouldn't be too surprising.

We really are a pathetic people - after all these thousands of years of 'progress', it has come to this.

Fat, dumb, white, and angry - Americans on the march! At least they won't get far before they have to rest and eat.

getting ready to go on the air

I am hosting the Portland Yiddish Hour this morning, at 10 am PST, on KBOO FM (90.7). You can listen live over the internet at http://kboo.fm

Obviously, I will be playing songs about love and marriage, since there are so few Yiddish songs about Abraham Lincoln.

Heading over to the station in about an hour, with a stack of CDs, my notes, and hope for the best.

best snarky epithet yet for Glenn Beck

Seen on a blog posting today: Nostradumbass

a sobering message

At last, someone concisely lays out what I've been feeling for a while - the problems with the American economy are not likely to disappear as the recession 'recovers'.

The manufacturing base that fueled our prosperity since World War II is gone and NEVER coming back, thanks to the insistence of multinational corporations of moving American jobs to workers who will work cheap.

It's that simple, but the article explains the long-term costs to our society of this drain, and it ain't pretty, especially if you are a middle-aged blue-collar worker or a young adult looking for a non fast-food job.

I found the last Y2K bug this afternoon

And I caused it, by a design decision I made 10 years ago.

To generate unique record keys in databases I have developed, I have an algorithm that takes the current date and time and appends a 4-digit random number, so you get keys like this:

0904220824438920 (which tells me it was created on 04/22/09 at 8:24:43 am), and, for it not to be unique, two records would have to be created at the exact same hundredth of a second, and the random-number generator would have had to, twice in quick succession, decide on 8920.

All of these databases came into being since 2001, so it was reasonable to assume that the lowest possible record-key that could be generated would be 010101000001xxxx (that is, one-hundredth of a second past midnight on January 1, 2001).

I have a routine that says 'find oldest data on file' and it gets the minimum value for this (string) field it can find, in the first table that is created when initializing a new database. Got it? Should be fool-proof.

Well, they keep inventing more-clever fools.

Recently, my tester imported data from a group in Mongolia (really), and the 'find oldest data on file' routine failed.

I probed and quickly saw that one of the keys in the table in question in their data was 8801012140074820 (that is, a record created on January 1, 1988, many years before the database came into being). How is this possible?

I surmise that the clock in their computer was incorrect, and their system time really was set to January 1988, which also explains why some other data in their copy of the database was stamped with that date.

I never dreamed that ANYONE would have any (automatically-generated) key dates that referred to a 20th century date, which is why I am only using a 2-digit year in my internal keys. Had I included the '19' or '20', it would have been OK, so this is actually the last Y2K bug to be discovered (maybe)!

fun, huh? I thought I was clever saving those 2 characters in every database record, and, up until today, it has worked out great.

I wrote my first computer program in 1970. Old habits die hard.

scott brown gets sworn in immediately

Read all about it.

Contrast this to Al Franken's somewhat-delayed swearing in.

yikes

Just looked at my calendar for February - I have 9 music events, rehearsals, or performances coming up before the end of the month.

And, during this time, we need to:

1. get my mother-in-law's 99th birthday party (to take place March 6 in Pasadena) organized and invitations printed and mailed out
2. get Ben moved out of this house and into his new house (after we buy a refrigerator, decide on roof repairs, and finish some minor lighting-fixture issues)
3. decide on Zacky's euthenasia date (currently targeting Ash Wednesday)
4. plunge in on a new database project for my USDA folks in New Mexico
5. etc. etc. etc.
   

busy week ahead

Picked up Karen at the airport around 4 - she had been in Santa Cruz since Friday, helping her 99 year-old Mother adjust to a new assisted-living place - it's an 'experiment'.

I managed to get everything on her honey-do list done (or, at least, in progress), so that's a relief.

I'm playing piano for a music program Thursday night, and, in addition to the one hour before the performance, today's one-hour rehearsal with three of the vocalists is about all we will get. Should be fun, though, and didn't have to transpose too many of their songs.

More music stuff coming up in the next couple of weeks, some of which involves tunes I don't know (yet). Also, my partners at the USDA in New Mexico really want to release the next database upgrade on or before Friday, so we are scrambling to test out the most-recent changes, looking for those ever-increasingly-subtle bugs. It's a living.

Above all, the gloomy, wet, chilly day reminds me why it's so much nicer being in Mexico.

Oh yes, Republicans suck - did I forget to mention that? Let me count the ways (yes, Mitch McConnell, I am thinking of you)....

PS: Senate Dems are, sadly, totally ineffective and/or compromised. Obama's recent appearances, however, have been quite good. How nice to have someone intelligent at the helm, even though the keel is leaking badly (thanks to all the GOP mischief/theft since 1980).

Finally: RIP Howard Zinn.

computer changeover coming

It's always a stressful thing to contemplate, but Ben convinced me that his old desktop (which he never uses since he migrated to a small, very powerful laptop) is a better computer than my main development machine, which has been loyally running daily for about 4 years.

More memory, faster processor, better video, etc. I haven't had any problems with my current, very reliable Dell, but moving to a freshly-rebuilt, totally clean PC is too good to pass up.

There were some hurdles to eliminating the few issues with his machine, to wit:

1) It had a very noisy fan, but Ben found a free utility called SpeedFan, that monitors CPU heat and adjusts the fan level accordingly. Most of the time, it's now a whisper, occasionally rising to the level of a murmer.

2) The PC would not wake from Hibernation. I use Hibernate all the time, so this was a problem. He updated drivers on all peripherals and finally ended up flashing the BIOS on the motherboard - problem solved!

3) The built-in Ethernet port was flaky (i.e. not working). Ben said that the guy he bought the unit from admitted this from the start, so he's been using a USB WiFi connector with it. Yesterday, I made a pilgrimage to FreeGeek, and bought a PCI Ethernet card for $5. I popped it in the morning, plugged it directly into my router, and, voila, I am in business.

Now comes the onerous task of moving all my files and applications over, but I just might take the next big step (I've already installed and tested my super-critical apps), to unplug my old computer, plug in the new one, and, little by little, get all my files and apps moved over.

It's a little scary.

making progress at ben's new house

Been here since 8:00 am, doing a variety of chores including:

Figuring out why the garbage disposal wasn't working
Fixing a gate latch
Setting up the dining room
Cleaning and applying a coat of finish to the kitchen and bathroom floors
Sweeping a ton of sheet-rock dust in the garage room
Mopping the garage floor
Setting up the WiFi router, after the DSL guys arrived (more about that, if I want to go into the gory details)
Testing out the WiFi in various rooms in the house - it works!

Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's been a busy time, and now I'm about ready to finish the clean-up, then take the carpet we bought from a craigslist dog-owner, to get it clean and deodorized.

Somewhere in the house is the stylus for my phone, which I must have put down and walked away. That would be nice to find before I leave. There's always something.

All we need now is a refrigerator, and the place is ready to have him move in.

turning a tree into building materials

Here is our diseased Port Orford cedar, which has been slowly dying for a couple of years.We had a tree guy take it down in 9 foot sections. It took him over two months, due to weather and flakiness. He finally finished the major work last Saturday (although there is still a big brush pile, which he's supposed to clean up this afternoon - we'll see).

So, we are envisioning a structure to be built over our slowly-being-restored backyard well, and, since we now have some pretty big chunks of cedar, it made sense to get it milled. Karen found a local guy on craigslist, who has a portable mill.

Justin arrived on time this morning, got his monster set up, and we rolled the logs over to the staging area.


He's a real artist, constantly making measurements. Our goal was to get six 6x6's, a bunch of 4x4's, and whatever else could be created.


Halfway done, and the pile of finished lumber is growing. Zacky was enjoying the view and sounds (not to mention the pungent cedar smell permeating the yard).


And here's the finished pile. Beautiful 6x6's, 4x4's, a bunch of 2x4's, and assorted other pieces. Total cost of transforming all those logs: $115

Pretty amazing. Don't forget to call Justin for all your wood-milling needs!

a headline that made me do a double-take

On Buzzflash this morning, I scanned this headline and then had to re-read it:

Air America Will Cease Operations, Liquidate Holdings

When I first read it, I missed the word 'Air'. I thought it was a case where the American Empire had just formally crumbled, after yesterday's Supreme Court ruling.

the Supremes strike again

Not too happy about today's ruling.

as if the 2000 coup was not bad enough

There appears to be a growing nasty smell about Ohio 2004.

Big Brother meets Amazing Effeciency

We ran thru Ikea last weekend, grabbing a bunch of things for Ben's new house. Naturally, once the dust settled, there were a couple of items that we didn't really need, so they had to be returned.

No problem, since Ikea's return policy is quite liberal, as long as you have the receipt, which we did.

HOWEVER, scrutinizing the receipt at home, we noticed that the checker had mistakenly rung up one ($22) item twice, and I was wondering if they would just take my word that we had indeed only purchased one dish set, especially since I was returning that set.

'No problem', says the returns person, who saw the date/time of our purchase on the receipt. "Who were you with and what were you wearing?" I answered as best I could, she made a phone call, and, a couple of minutes later, got a call back authorizing the credit for the mistake.

This means they have archived video of every purchase, in every checkout line, and can quickly go to the video of us and the items we unloaded on the belt, and verify that what we claim is true.

Now isn't that amazing?

for the record: it was NOT a one-way ticket

Spread the word. The meme got planted in the public consciousness by a couple of media outlets, and reinforced by Rush, et al to the point where it's now accepted truth.

Makes you wonder what else you believe that just ain't so??

the world turned upside down

Watch the linked BBC video, and let me know what you think.

Then refresh your memory about Emmanuel Goldstein, the public face of Evil in '1984'.

It seems altogether possible that 'Al Queda', that started out as a necesary component of BushCo's 'perception management', has become a self-fulfilling reality.

This is not to say that there are no Bad Guys, and overlooks the entire issue of Why They Hate Us.

headline: Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade

Here.

If they think they have problems now, just wait until Sea Level rises a few meters over the next century. Honestly, I remember chugging out of Miami on a cruise ship a couple of years ago, and looking back at the Miami skyline, and wondering two things:

1. How odd will it be for future people to go sailing around those abandoned skyscrapers?
2. How much am I personally contributing to the problem by flying to Florida to cruise around for a week, in a big circle?
   

Our modern world is so damn unsustainable, and we collectively spent a billion dollars on Avatar, over the past couple of weeks. Gotta stay entertained!

avatar

OK, we gave in to the hype and saw it, in 3D, at a nearby filled-to-capacity (both the theater and the parking lots) multiplex.

Aside from the fact that it's basically Cowboys-vs.-Indians, wow.

Several scenes give new meaning to the phrase 'over the top'. You know that you WILL see it eventually, so you might as well give in soon.

I think Roger Ebert's comment, likening it to the first 'Star Wars' impact, is right on. Something new has happened to film technology.

We had tried to get in New Years Eve, but it was sold out, so we saw the new 'Sherlock Holmes' movie instead. It was, in it's own way, also over the top. I'd give it a B+, only because it was so much more CGI-whiz-bang than Conan-Doyle deductive reasoning.


This is a big week - we are to close on the house for Ben tomorrow, which means, among other things, that we will not only be driving to NE Portland a lot over the next couple of months, but also, by March, we should reclaim our basement space that he 'temporarily' occupied last August.

Now for some coffee and maybe even a little work.

'democrats join call for Napolitano resignation'

I see this headline in 'google news'.

Will someone explain to me how the failure of airport people in Amsterdam to keep the guy off the plane is Napolitano's fault?