Something to aspire to:

"The path to profitability, as Peters sees it, is simple. He wants the PBA (Professional Bowling Association) to be Nascar with fewer crashes and slightly better teeth."

(Don't laugh... According to the article professional bowling now has more TV viewers than NHL hockey.)

Two weekends in Nashville

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and my DSL has been going down every five minutes, give or take. So between those things, my blogging willpower has been pretty dismal. That said, here's an all-at-once update. After the marathon week at work, my brother did show up last weekend. The summer camp where he was working is done for the year, and he's now on a tour of the south before heading back to work at Urban Promise for the school year. This was his first time in Nashville in several years, and we made it count. Activities included:

• Dinner at Jack's Barbeque on lower Broad, followed by a trip to The Grande Ole Opry
• A trip to the farmer's market for vittles, followed by a kebab cookout and a DVDs-I-already-have movie night.
• Me going to work while he went hiking at Fall Creek Falls.
• Heading to Davinci's for pizza, followed by the Saucer, where we watched Olympics and waited many moons for our beer to arrive.
• Brunch at the Pancake Pantry
• Wandering around downtown and going to Hatch Show Print -- where I made friends with the staff and got to explore behind the scenes a bit. (Maybe some pictures to come if I can ever stay online long enough to upload them.)
• Electric guitar shopping at Valley Arts. My brother was a music major, and already has a string bass, an electric bass, and an acoustic guitar. But he lacked an electric guitar. My parents had agreed to buy him one as a graduation present last year, but hadn't actually purchased it on account of not knowing anything about guitars. It had been languishing until now, and we figured Nashville was probably a pretty good place to be in the market for that sort of thing. Alas, we discovered that he could save $40 of outrageous Tennessee tax by shipping it back to Maryland, so I didn't get to play around with it. Maybe over the holidays...
• Ate dinner at the Sylvan Park Cafe, home of the best Southern comfort food in Nashville. Then tore around town despterately trying to buy a 6-pack of GooGoo Clusters, because...
• The Nashville Sounds were having "buy one ticket get one free when you show up with a 6-pack of GooGoo Clusters" night. Even when you add in the extra gas we spent driving around, it was still a good deal. (Hint: the little yuppie market in Sylvan Park and the Eckerd on West End were both found lacking. The Foodland on West End is the place to go for all your GooGoo needs.)
• My brother wanted to leave at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, since he was heading for Roanoke next, and that's a good day's drive. Only problem was that he had been driving, and we forgot that I had abandoned my car at the office after work on Monday. So I also had to either leave at the crack of dawn, or walk to work. Normally walking to work in return for an extra hour or two of sleep might be a good deal. But since it was pouring rain, I decided to take the ride instead.

So that was my exciting last weekend. This weekend I basically did very little productive, but many different things...

• Started a book on the personalities behind the development of the atomic bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Interesting, but not a quick read. Still going on that one.
• Puttered around the house.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Did a bit of laundry.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Watched The Killing Fields off my ReplayTV
• Went out to brunch with a friend at The Red Wagon.
• Drove around aimlessly.
• Browsed at CompUSA but bought nothing of substance.
• Went to Border's, bought a travel book about South America, a photography book, and a Kafka anothology.
• Read The Metamorphesis for the first time.
• Wondered what that guy was smoking, anyway.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Went to see The Corporation at the Belcourt. It was thought provoking. The filmmakers are dead on in their diagnosis of the problem with big corporations, but they failed to offer workable solutions. As this review points out, governments can make just as big a mess of things as big companies.

  <soapbox>Another thing that grated on me a bit were slightly snide comments by the narrator regarding "pollution tax credits" and related programs that give companies a market incentive to behave responsibly. Rather than present these as a way to charge companies for the externalities that they're responsible for, the narrator breathlessly proclaimed that "corporations even want to own the air we breathe!" This really misses the point -- that these programs reinforce the idea that the environment is a shared resource, and people should have to pay if they mess it up.</soapbox>

  Anyhow... I recommend seeing this if you get a chance.

So that's what I've been up to. Whee.

In good company

Seems I'm not the only one who got a speeding ticket while on vacation in Oregon...

Molasses in January

I'm no expert on the guts of databases, but as far as I can tell there is no reason on God's green earth that this

insert into soccerstats
select s.id,games.game_id,
s.school_id,s.player_id,s.goals,
s.assists,s.saves,s.timestamp
from soccerstatsold s 
left join games on (
(s.game_id = games.old_id) and 
(games.sport='7' or games.sport='14'))

should be taking over eight minutes to run. It's maddening! Think I need to get a copy of this.

I've been back for a while, but have been massively busy with work. In case you haven't already gathered, I work for "the Media" -- although I hate that term, because it's often used to imply some sort of massive global information conspiracy, and I personally know that my company couldn't effectively conspire its way out of a paper bag. But I digress.

The point of all this was that my workload tends to fluctuate depending on various cyclical news events -- at the moment, primary elections and high school sports. Plus our company has a management retreat in two weeks so we've got reports to write and powerpoints to slog through. Plus my brother is coming to visit during the same week. And at the moment one person in my department is out sick, and another is on vacation. So, yeah, things have been a bit crazy.

Anyway, in the meantime, I'll leave you with a nifty link to this story in today's paper about this guy who makes pop-art using etch-a-sketches. Very cool. There's only one photo in the article, but here's his actual website.

A picture or two

I was planning on putting more pics here, but haven't quite gotten to it. Uploading pictures to ClubPhoto is painful over dialup, and I'm too tired/lazy to resize the ones I want to show manually. I did send a few yesterday, so I'll whet your apetite:

   

Mixed bag:

The Good

• saw Crater Lake, several nifty waterfalls and lots of chipmunks.

The Bad

• accidentally got a massive speeding ticket (was busy listening to John Edwards' speech at the Democratic Convention, not paying any attention to my speed until I saw the blue lights.)

• Despite this, pushed on to Eugene, only to find out that it is hosting the "Junior Olympics." This means that virtually every hotel room in town is full of rowdy teens. After trying 4 places (and calling others out of town,) I found one with a cancellation. My room has a stuffed dalmation in the corner. Scary.

• Realized that I totally overbooked this trip. Something's going to have to give. Think tomorrow I'm going to head for the coast and meet up with my parents for a day or two. Not sure what after that.

• Not really bad, but just funny: I ran into the stuck SUV people again Crater Lake. They thanked me again for pushing.

"This is definitely the best drive-thru tree I've ever seen"

The day started out with a cruise up the remains of Highway 1, later merging onto US 101. The fog burned off early on, and the scenery was again gorgeous. Along the way I took a quick detour to drive through a massive 2400-year-old redwood tree. (The quote above was overheard from one of the bystanders.)

Somewhere near the California-Oregon border, I crossed a bridge and saw a herd of elk lounging on the banks of the river. There was a turnoff ahead, so I pulled over to see if I could get a closer look.

Several other people had the same idea. At first I followed their lead and bushwhacked my way through a grove of stinging nettles (ouch!) to get closer. The view wasn't that great, however.

On my way back to my car, I realized that there was a dirt road leading down to the gravel and sand-covered river bed. I was driving a rental car, and there was no way I was going to risk burying it. But I walked down the road to get a closer look.

Some folks, however, didn't share my prudence. One dumbass in particular drove his front-wheel drive SUV down, and then proceeded to bury it up to the axels in sand. His driving showed a remarkable lack of common sense -- he was able to back up, but rather than simply backing out of the sand onto firmer ground, he went a few feet and then zoomed forward to have another go.

After watching this little show for a few minutes, I offered to help push. The guy's wife also got out to help, and a Korean tourist pitched in. The three of us waded into the sand and began frantically pushing, eventually dislodging the underpowered SUV. Unfortunately, however, I lost my footing in the sand when the vehicle started moving and did a split -- ripping a rather noticable hole in my pants.

Not content to be a Good Samaritan/sucker once in a day, about an hour later I was driving down a road and was flagged down by two adults and about 10 kids standing in the middle of the road. A shirtless guy explained to me that they were out of gas, and asked for a ride to a gas station. I wasn't in a huge hurry, so he climbed in with one of the kids and we headed to a Chevron station about 10 miles up the road. While riding, however, it emerged that the guy didn't actually have money to pay for the gas. So I ended up subsidizing a few gallons for them. It may be they were really in trouble -- or that they have just hit on a scam for getting a few gallons of free fuel. Who knows? In any case, I'll live without the $6.

Spent the night at a Motel 6 in Medford, Oregon. Today I'm off to Crater Lake, and then heading back toward the coast.

Fog.

Ended up doing the last hour in the dark after a slow drive up CA route 1 yesterday. Spectacular scenery during the brief interludes between clouds and fog, though. Accidentally went through San Francisco again when I took the wrong turn onto the Oakland Bay Bridge. Once I got back out across the Golden Gate, headed to Muir Woods for an hour or two, and then off up the coast. Ate dinner in a decent but very overpriced place designed to look sort of Russian. Amazingly managed to find a $48 hotel room. That's where I am now, but heading out soon. Hopefully will at least make Oregon today. And hopefully the fog will go away so that I can actually see the scenery!

Back again

The laptop has randomly started working again, but in a rush right now. Might be able to post more later. Here's the quickie version of what I did over the weekend:

• Rode the train into SF with my brother and mom. Walked up to Union Square. Took a cable car across the city to the Hyde Street Pier/Ghirardellhi Square area. Wandered around. Took the Muni back through the city, and then rode the train back to Pleasanton. Changed and went to the rehearsal dinner at the Pleasanton Hotel in old town.

• Sunday, we got up late, went to "Dean's," a local fixture that serves every omelet under the sun (including some with clams and other oddities). Mine was hot peper, Italian sausage, and spinach. Very good. Then my mom and dad went antiquing, while my brother and I drove across the Oakland Bay Bridge, through San Francisco, and across the Golden Gate Bridge. We then stopped and walked around the bridge for a bit, and then hightailed it back to Pleasanton for the wedding. We got dressed and headed over to the Wente vineyards in Livermore, where the wedding was held. There were about 120 people there, and dinner and dancing went on into the night.

• Getting a late start today for several reasons, but my plan is to drive up the California coast toward Oregon.

If the laptop keeps working, I'll try to post a few pictures tonight.

In the dark...

Unfortunately it appears that the backlight in my laptop screen has suddenly up and died. Right now I'm managing to use the machine by aiming a desklamp at the screen and squinting, but it's not pleasant. So I may be somewhat out of touch for the remainder of the trip.

"The Desperate Town in the West"

After a 4.5 hour flight from Nashville next to a reasonably well-behaved baby, I'm now camped out at a hotel in Pleasanton, CA. According to in-room literature provided by the helpful folks at Hilton:

In the mid 1850s bandits and desperados gave Pleasanton the title of "the Desperate Town in the West." Main Street shootouts were not uncommon. Infamous bandits, such as Joaquin Murrieta, would ambush prospectors on their way from the gold fields and seek refuge in Pleasanton.

So far all I've seen is two Interstates, a Denny's and a Home Depot. I'm going to be disappointed if I don't get to meet a few desperados while I'm here.

Not sure what the plan is tomorrow except that the rehearsal dinner is in the evening. Might try to go into San Francisco for a bit.

Car bomb at Opry Mills?

This is bizarre. Some guy's car blew up (with him in it) in a remote corner of a mall parking lot.

We already have his neighbors weighing in: "I have to be honest, we have always been afraid something was going to happen," says one.

Of course, this story is getting buried by the much more weighty material. The Titans are dropping Eddie George.

The Saddest Music Movie in the World

I saw this movie. I like artsy flicks as much as the next guy. And if you're looking for some interesting visual effects, it might be worth a glance. But otherwise this is simply a piece of disorganized filmmaking that revels in its own artsiness without actually making much of a point. Sure you can glean meaning from it. If I try hard enough, I can glean meaning from a pile of rotten broccoli. (I am an English major after all! <g>) But that doesn't mean I have to happily fork over $8 to do it.

I have a tolerance for bad movies that don't purport to be anything special. For example, I'm willing to (somewhat) forgive the makers of the insanely-bad Stepford Wives remake, because it was obviously intended as summer-movie pap. But when a director goes out of his way to show off how artistic and avant-garde he is, he better have something to back it up. In this case, Guy Maddin comes up with nothing.

For what its worth, I remember having a similar reaction to this.

They say money can't buy happiness. But if it could...

Two economists, apparently tired of letting those psychology prima donnas grab all of the juicy sex headlines, have taken it upon themselves to study the economics of sex and happiness. According to the New York Times:

In their study ["Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study"], Mr. [Andrew J.] Oswald and Mr. [David G.] Blanchflower analyzed the self-reported sexual activity and levels of happiness of more than 16,000 American adults who participated in a number of social surveys since the early 1990's. (Happiness is notoriously difficult to define, and the surveys make no attempt to do so; the respondents simply record how happy they believe themselves to be on a sliding scale.) By factoring out the measurable effects of other life events, the study revealed, to no one's surprise, that, "The more sex, the happier the person."

Furthermore, the economists compared the levels of happiness produced by a vigorous sex life with other activities whose economic values had been calculated in prior research, allowing them to impute, in dollars, how much happiness sex was worth. They also estimated that increasing the frequency of sexual intercourse from once a month to at least once a week provided as much happiness as putting $50,000 in the bank.

A lasting marriage, by comparison, offers about $100,000 worth of happiness a year -- that is, on average, a single person would need to receive $100,000 annually to be as happy as a married person with the same education, job status and other characteristics. Divorce, on the other hand, imposes an emotional toll of about $66,000 a year, though there may be a short-term economic gain from the immediate relief provided by leaving your spouse.

So, the way I figure it, that means that happily married folks should have to pay more income taxes!

Oswald acknowleges that there are some limitations to his statistical methodology, but he says it's difficult to carry out controlled experiments in the field. "It would be great to assign Mr. and Mrs. X a certain amount of sexual activity and a certain amount of income, and see how it impacts their happiness," he said. "But I think it would be hard to get government funding."

Here's the actual study (PDF), but be warned that it has, like, numbers and stuff! ;-) The NY Times story is now stuck behind their paid archive, but you can read a similar account over here.

Westward ho!

One of my projects for the weekend has been planning my upcoming trip to California/Oregon/Washington.  I made my plane reservation to get to San Francisco for the wedding several weeks ago.  But my plans were very vague. So I've been trying to hammer down the details -- I've been camped out at Fido all afternoon with my travel books and computer.

When I went to Mexico City, I was able to find a family owned guesthouse in the heart of the metropolis for about $30/night. Alas, I'm quickly realizing that traveling to the high-rent district that is the Pacific Northwest is an entirely different story. In the U.S., guesthouses of the sort I've encountered in Italy or Mexico have been pushed out of the market by the the ubiquitous chain motels that spring up like mushrooms around Interstate exits.  So if you're looking to stay "in town" in a place with a bit of character, you end up perusing the "Bed and Breakfast" market -- complete with antique furniture in the room, breakfast served on crystal, and a hefty price tag.  Definitely overkill. But I'm really not thrilled about spending every night in a generic motel room out by the Interstate -- I want to be where I can walk around and sightsee, and where I'm likely to meet other people in the process. So that makes things a bit more complicated.   

Plus, the stuff I'm interested in seeing in Oregon and Washington is less centralized than Mexico City -- I'm considering trying to see Mount Hood, Crater Lake, the falls on the Columbia River, etc. This means that to do this with any sort of speed, I'm going to need to have a car. And the cost of the car rental is probably going to dwarf the cost of my plane tickets to California.   

The end result is that the trip is going to be a lot more expensive than I initially thought. Still, though, I'm looking forward to it. Now the big challenge is simply figuring out how to cram everything into 11 days.   

Right now all I know for sure is that I'm arriving in Oakland on Friday night, and leaving from Seattle the following Tuesday afternoon. Everything between that is up in the air.

 In addition to sightseeing around the Bay area and the actual wedding on Sunday, here's a rough list of things I may want to hit on this trip: 

• Drive across the Golden Gate Bridge (I've been under it before on a boat, but think it would be cool to drive across as well.)  Go to Muir Woods and possibly a few other things in that area. Then figure out some sort of scenic route from there north to Oregon.
• In Oregon, I'd like to see some of the coast, Crater Lake, Portland itself, the Columbia River gorge, possibly Mount Hood, and other things if there's time.
• In Washington, I want to get to Seattle itself (including the givens: Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, etc.), as well as perhaps Olympic National Park and maybe a daytrip over the Washington Cascades to the farmland beyond.

I have no idea how exactly I'm going to accomplish all this, however.  If y'all know anything about this area and have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.  

Those who don't study history...

Friday's USA Today had an interesting article about A Short Guide to Iraq, a training manual produced by the U.S. Government about 60 years ago. It was designed to provide common sense advice to GI's who were occupying the country during World War II. Things like:

American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis ... like American soldiers or not. ... One of your jobs is to prevent Hitler's agents from getting in their dirty work. The best way you can do this is by getting along with the Iraqis and making them your friends. ... Every American soldier is an ... ambassador of good will.

and

Kerbela (and) Nejef ... are particularly sacred to the Iraqi Moslems. ... It is advisable to stay away from them.

Apparently the folks running the current occupation hadn't read this book.

The complete document is available as a PDF right here.

Criminal Mastermind Captured

The Washington Post reports on the capture of "Magnum," a 110-pound black Labrador retriever with case of lawn-ornament kleptomania. The perp was identified after police publicized a surveillance video of the dog making off with a ceramic squirrel, chipmunk, and fox.

Guess that whole homeland security thing is paying off...

Dangling my feet

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I've been "passively" job hunting for years. This basically means that I keep my eyes open for interesting job opportunities, but don't really actively network or anything. The end result has been several applications and one job interview, but nothing really serious.

At the moment I'm in no huge rush to get out of my current job, although I'm still interested in what else is out there.

So when I was contacted by a headhunter trying to fill a job in Knoxville the other day, I didn't immediately tell him to take a hike. But I also didn't get all lovey dovey with him.

Basically, the job sounds like it would have pluses and minuses. With the biggest minus being that it's in Knoxville. I've always told myself that if I left my current job it would be to move back to the Northeast. So I'm not especially interested in this.

On the other hand, everyone has a price. <rationalization>And Knoxville is closer to the northeast by about three hours... :-) </rationalization> So I sent him a note back essentially saying that I might be interested if they were paying about 25%-35% more than I'm making now, but it would still depend a lot on the particular company (which he's being cagey about.) I'm not expecting anything to come out of this, but it makes life interesting to have it floating around out there.

Back in the land of air conditioning and electric lights...

The power came back on. Thus concludes this episode of "Frontier House Nashville."