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."

Blacked Out

Owing to recent large thunderstorms, I am sitting at home in the dark. Lucky for you, I figured out how to blog from my cell phone.

Modern Marvels: Contextual Advertising

I am continually amused by the contextual advertising chosen by the cutting edge technology over at Google. For example, there has been a lot of discussion about the reunion on our class message board. Google has provided helpful advertising to go along with this: three of the ads are for reunion planning services. One (in German) is for a travel agency that books reunion trips. The reunion theme continues with the final ad: "Ready for BOTOX® Cosmetic?" it inquires. "Order Your Welcome Kit today."

Creepy popunder ads

It has been brought to our attention here at Kumquat headquarters that some of you may be experiencing unpleasant popunder ads when browsing this site. Personally, our Google toolbar was doing a good job at shielding us, so we hadn't noticed. But we aim to please, and wouldn't want the 15 people who visit this site every day to take their procrastination business elsewhere. So we have decided to christen a blue-ribbon investigative panel. Here is their preliminary report:

Whatever is causing the pop-unders, it appears to be hidden in script being pulled from another server, since viewing source does not reveal the offending code. There is no smoking gun, but this guy has a theory that Bravenet has begun serving popunder ads with its "free" counters at random intervals.

To test this theory, we're going to expunge any bravenet-related code from our templates. Please let us know if you continue to see popunders when you visit.

I thought things were going to calm down...

... after the reunion, but it turns out things have been crazier than ever. Lately, every time I ponder a blog entry I think about how much catching up I have to do, and then I go watch The Simpsons instead. So below is my attempt to catch up in one fell swoop, hopefully facilitating a return to the normal level of inane drivel in this space.

Let me back up and start at the beginning:

• The Reunion -- The reunion was a blast. And I'm not just saying that because I helped plan it. As previously mentioned, we had money left over, and started out by giving everyone $10 and a free drink ticket. That probably helped. But the really fun thing was just seeing all these people again. In my role as de facto class webmaster, I have a vague idea of what a lot of people are up to. But in terms of really keeping in touch, there are only a few folks that I actually communicate with regularly. So it was a pretty cool thing to see all these people in the same place having a great time. Everyone seems to be doing well -- and it's amazing how many different paths people have taken. A lot of people still live in Maryland, but there are also outposts in Seattle, Florida, St. Louis, NYC, and just about every other corner of the country. There are doctors, lawyers, actors, computer programmers, marine biologists, aircraft carrier drivers, and (yikes!) parents of four children.

  The evening was, if anything, too short (the hotel cut off our electricity to get rid of us!) and ended with an increasingly drunken party at a local dive bar on Route 1.

  I documented the thing pretty thoroughly over here. And, no, I'm not really sure what was going on right here. We'd had a few drinks, ok?

• The Tradeshow -- Entirely by accident, the reunion coincided with a major trade show in Washington, so I the company actually paid my way to DC! Once the reunion was over, I spent a few days hiking around a massive exhibit floor in DC's brand new convention center. I also managed to schedule a visit to another division of our company on Wednesday to look at a system we're considering buying.

  On Thursday I was supposed to join my Mom to go down to my grandfather's farm and see my grandmother in the nursing home. However, my mom was planning this little excursion, and I was shanghaied and forced to fix computers at her office. So we were off to a late start to begin with. This was followed by the two hour drive to the farm, a hurried lunch at the Stanardsville Dairy Queen, and quick visits to the farm and the nursing home.

  My mom was supposed to be back for a 7:00 meeting, and I had a 9:00 flight, so we burned rubber up Route 29, only to hit massive traffic jams as we approached the city. (You would think heading into DC in rush hour would be easy, but not so much.) In an attempt to avoid the beltway traffic jam, we tried staying on I-66 toward downtown. When that didn't work, we got off, and partly due to garbled directions phoned in by my dad, ended up winding across half of northern Virginia before finally cutting through downtown and back up into Maryland. My mom was late for her meeting, and meanwhile my dad was throwing all my remaining belongings into my suitcase and rushing to meet us so that I could get to the airport on time. Needless to say this wasn't really the most relaxing day.

• Back in Nashville, I figured everything would calm down for a while, and got ready to enjoy a complete weekend with no plans. Which worked well, until Sunday morning, when one of our key servers had a heart attack on the table during scheduled maintenance and refused to wake up. So I was called in to work and spent most of the next three days there. We finally got things back to normal at 5:00 AM on Tuesday.

• Independence Day -- Once the crisis was resolved, I made a split-second decision to fly back up to DC for the 4th of July weekend. My yougest brother was home from the summer camp where he's currently employed, so I got to see him for the first time since last winter. I was pondering the idea of trying to go downtown for the big national parade, but am glad I didn't since it was called off early due to a deluge of biblical proportions. Instead we had a quick family cookout in between rainstorms, and then I went to a party at a friend's apartment in the city. Last year they had a good view of the fireworks through their window, but this year the smoke was blowing towards us and we mostly saw clounds. Still, it was fun. As I drove back up Georgia Avenue toward home, the city streets were sputtered and popped as the locals experimented with their own (illegal) fireworks. It was fun driving through it all.
  Click for more photos

  Takoma Park had been the subject of good-natured ribbing for delaying its festivities until Monday, but the city had the last laugh when the day dawned sunny and dry. Unfortunately my brother left that morning to meet a new group of campers. But my parents and I did our annual march over to old-town for the festivities. As always, the parade was a hoot, with various organizations and neighborhood associations turning out. As the Post pointed out,

  Grant Avenue offered up a giant gray-and-yellow cardboard Humvee that was propelled Fred Flintstone-style by nearly a dozen hot and sweaty denizens of that street. Labeled "Weapon of Mass Consumption" for its figuratively unquenchable thirst for fuel, it careened wildly right and left along the route with Dan Robinson as driver.

  "Every five seconds, we run out of gas," he explained with a grin.

  The presidential campaign was never far removed, with marchers in the Sherman Avenue "Bush Country" entry chanting, tongue firmly in cheek, "Don't think -- vote Bush" as they passed by. "Billionaires for Bush" appeared a few minutes later, in tuxedos and evening gowns.

  We spent part of the afternoon planning my parents' trip to Italy this fall, and then grilled again for dinner. After dinner my dad and I trekked over to Takoma Middle School for the local fireworks. And thus ended by Independece Day extravaganza -- the next morning I was back at work and trying to catch up. So this is only the second time I've spent a full day at home since the middle of June. Whew.

So that's basically where things are now. I'm off again to California for my cousin's wedding in a couple of weeks, and am planning to spend a week or so exploring out that way. (I actually don't have a return flight right now, so maybe I'll just decide to stay...)

Whew...

What I'm up to

In reunion planning hell until tonight. Yesterday's errands included going to the bank to pick up $1000 in $10 bills, buying nametags and certificate blanks, and trying to teach a kinkos guy how to use a computer. Plus dealing with a major server failure back in Nashville last night.

More of the same today. Reunion is tonight, and then off to the convention for tomorrow through Tuesday. After that, maybe a trip to the farm, and/or visiting another division of the company to see a new system in action. Back to Nashville next Friday. Whee.

A manager's lament

Editor's note: What follows is a bitter rant that I will no doubt regret in the morning.

I feel like all of my interactions with senior management go something like this:

Me: Here's what I need to do what you're asking.
Them: No, what we need is the absolute bare bones estimate. No frills.
Me: That's what this is.
Them: So you're saying that this is the absolute minimum your department can get by on.
Me: Yes.
Them: Ok, here's half of that. And from now on can you also have your staff wash the windows and empty the trash?

I am really freakin' tired of this. I work for a Fortune 200 company that pays regular dividends to its shareholders, yet to hear folks around here talk you'd think we're subsisting on government cheese. I mean, we ration Post-It! notes, for crying out loud. And our mileage is reimbursed at a whopping $0.24 (bumped up from $0.22 due to the gas price increases.)

At the moment I'm supposed to feel grateful because this year they only cut my laptop budget by 50%, instead of last year's 100%. Even if the budget were fully funded, we would still have 6+ year old machines in our fleet.

And I also found out today that some of my staff had simply been ignoring a public-facing voice mail box for the last three months. I can't blame them, because I've been pressuring them to do other things, and they simply don't have enough time. But I'm utterly frustrated that the company doesn't provide us with sufficient human and financial resources to do what is expected.

At some level, I know things could be worse. I mean, there are companies in our industry that are laying people off. But at the same time, I can't help wondering if things could also be better.

Supreme court considers making history; instead goes for pizza

After agreeing to hear a controversial case on the constitutionality of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the Supreme Court yesterday decided to weasel out of the debate by finding that the guy in question didn't have standing to sue. This leaves unresolved the core issue of how one reconciles the 1950s-era congressional insertion of "under God" with the the constitutional admonition that "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

"Passionate & Opinionated" vs. "Fair & Balanced"

I thought this was pretty interesting. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mark Oppenheimer points out that the most interesting and challenging teachers tend to be those with strong, passionate points of view that are expressed in the classroom:

Disagreement is a prime engine for advancing human knowledge -- and besides, hearing boldly stated opinions is tremendous fun. For smart students to feel challenged, and for dull students to lose their cobwebs, they need to learn that academic subjects are both a matter of grave moral concern and a source of exhilaration, worth becoming overheated about. They learn this not by being invited to care, but by watching professors who manifestly do care. For the college professor, the proper pedagogic role is not as facilitator, coaxing children into thinking, but as role model, showing young men and women what a thinking mind looks like.

My suggestion that professors are too mild, not sufficiently opinionated, may at first sound ludicrous. It is well known that professors take their fields too seriously. They are too inclined to think that second-century Roman coinage is a matter of ultimate concern, too willing to end friendships over what Willa Cather's lesbianism might mean for her depictions of wheat fields. But while professors may get contrary at conferences and in journal articles, those same professors are often profoundly milquetoast in their classrooms, so eager to get in opposing points of view and to assure students that no opinion could be wholly wrong that they forget to have opinions themselves.

Yes, some professors are known for "advancing an agenda," which is thought to be a bad thing. But for the most part, they hold to the well-meaning liberal dogma that students ought to figure things out for themselves. That leads to the kind of teaching that all of us dread and yet engage in: "Very good. I see where you're coming from. Now, does anyone have another point of view?"

I wonder if the same calculus applies to attempts by the news media to be "fair and balanced" (in the real sense, not the Fox sense). By trying to present every point of view equally, are journalists creating gutless prose that fails to inspire meaningful intellectual debate?

Justification for travel?

Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance--steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?

Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!

Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?

-- The conclusion of
Around the World in
Eighty Days, by Jules
Verne, which I just
finished re-reading.

What I've been up to

Sorry for the blogging dry spell... Here's what I've been up to for the last week or two:

I spent most of the week doing various things related to a conference being held here in Nashville. One of the departments I supervise at work was on tour on Saturday, so we spent a lot of time frantically straghtening things up and getting ready. I think it ended up going pretty well.

Sunday I spent part of the day preparing a Powerpoint for my own presentation on Tuesday. In the evening I made an abortive attempt to meet up with someone who was supposed to give me a ticket to one of the conference events. I spent an hour wandering around Opryland, but never found him. So instead I went home, grabbed my new camera, and went down to the riverfront where a carnival was set up. (Might post a few of the pictures when I have a chance to upload them.) I ran into a couple of other amateur photographers doing the same thing.

After that I spent a fun week out at Opryland doing various conference-related things. The conference was great -- I learned a lot, and met some pretty fascinating people. (Oh, and never let it be said that librarians don't know how to throw a party.)

Since that's over, I'm trying to dig out at work, and have also moved on to the next planning crisis: the 10-year-reunion that I'm co-chairing next weekend. While I'm in D.C. for that, I'm also going to stop in at another conference for work.

Today was the first day that I've really been able to totally goof off in a few weeks, and I took advantage -- sleeping in, watching some TV, talking to one of my Boston friends, and reading. Tomorrow I guess I should try to accomplish something a little more productive.

New camera

Last week I finally broke down and bought the new camera I've been pondering for quite a while. I don't think the DSLR is going to replace my point-and-shoot entirely -- it's a lot clunkier to carry around, for one thing. But it should give me more flexibility in terms of lenses, time-exposures, etc.

Monday evening I went walking in Shelby Bottoms for about two hours, and brought the camera along to play with. I'm still learning how to use it, and I don't think anything I took is really that great. But it was fun to experiment. I've already decided that I need to get a longer lens than the 18-55mm it came with. (Actually more like a 28-90mm lens due to the smaller digital image sensor.)

The only problem with buying lenses is that the good ones are really expensive. Like more than the camera. I think I'm probably going to let my checkbook cool down for a bit before I send more money over to B&H.

Personal Enrichment

Our company has an Internet station set up in the cafeteria, mainly so that employees without computers can access the intranet, benefits website, etc. I was at work late, and went down to get a Diet Coke. There was a guy sitting at the machine surfing, while his friend microwaved a bag of popcorn. "Check this out," he says to his friend. "Decapitations by helicopter." I glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, there were pictures.

Daily Yearly Bread

Continuing this weekend's theme of "all kitchen, all the time," I will now tell you about the loaf of bread. Not just any loaf of bread. The loaf of of Harris-Teeter brand "Premier Selection 9-Grain Enriched Bread" that I purchased last September or October and then accidentally left in a cabinet until now.

I'm sure you're expecting a scary-sounding description of mold and decay. But the actual result of this little inadvertent science experiment was even scarier. The bread looks and feels just like it did the day it left the supermarket. No mold. No staleness. Just plain old spongy American-style mass-produced bread.

Apparently they pump this stuff so full of preservatives now that it can basically stand decades in storage with little loss of its basic bread nature. Let's contrast this to bread from the local bakery, which tastes great, but basically starts going bad after a day or two.

So obviously store-bought bread has some powerful chemical juju going on. For all we know, Harris-Teeter just made one giant batch of super-durable bread made in 1987, and they've been selling it ever since. Kind of scary, if you ask me.

Truck Balls

I'm thinking about building a new Linux box to use as a media center/development server/web server/file server/etc. Ideally I'd like to get one that can just fit under my desk rather than taking up a whole shelf in my storage room. So I did a google search for "small form factor." It came back with helpful links to a variety of small PC vendors. But one of the adword results did't quite seem to fit:

I ask you, my friends, is this a great country or what?

My kingdom for some soap

Speaking of better living through chemistry, what I wouldn't give right now for some Boraxo. This morning I went to painting project sponsored by Hands on Nashville, and managed to cover my hands with latex paint. Boraxo is the only thing I know that gets this stuff off without a fight. Maybe I'll go on a soap expedition in a few minutes.

Kitchen declared federal disaster area

In addition to the Grape-Nuts fiasco (see below), I am also dealing with a massive ant infestation in my kitchen. When they first showed up, they just went after some hard candy that had been sitting in a mason jar on my windowsill for a few months. I got rid of that temptation, but new they were interested, and immediately commissioned ant-explorers to forage in new areas. Like the cabinets, the toaster, the sink, and just about everywhere else.

So yesterday morning I made an emergency trip to Cumberland Hardware. If you're imagining Home Depot, think again. This is the sort of old-school hardware shop that has been exterminated by the big boxes in most places. The moment you walk into the tiny shop, one of the proprietors quizzes you about what you're looking for. They then instantly locate it from amidst the floor-to-ceiling clutter. Once I asked for a lightbulb that they didn't have, but helpfully they sent me to another shop two doors down. I'd give you a web address, but they apparently don't have one. Which figures -- their main concession to modern technology is a cash register powered by a metal crank on its side!

Anyway, they sold me this stuff called Terro. It's a little bottle filled with clear goop that looks sort of like sugar syrup. And from what I understand, that's basically what it is, albeit with a dollop or two of boric acid thrown in for good measure. The idea is that you leave this stuff laying around, the ants go into a feeding frenzy on it, take a bunch of it home to the missus, and the die a horrible death. So far they're definitely snarfing it down as fast as I can ladle it out, but I haven't noticed a marked decrease in the number of ants marching in.

Too bad there aren't more of these guys around here.

A major Grape-Nuts related incident

For breakfast this morning, I was going to open a new box of Grape-NutsTM cereal. But the plastic liner in the box was very stubborn and refused to open. In hindsight, I guess using a pair of scissors would have been a good idea. But being a manly-man, I instead opted for the brute force method. And it worked -- sort of. The bag suddenly tore wide open, causing a massive Grape Nut explosion the likes of which have never before been seen. There are now Grape Nut nodules embedded in every nook and cranny of the kitchen. There should be a warning label on those things.

Graduation Day

Close, but not quite...

A guy in our department just got a phone call from someone asking if this was the Special Ed. Department. He had to think about it about it for a minute before he decided that it was a wrong number.

More on new Blogger features

I just tried enabling Blogger's new built-in comment feature. I then disabled it and went back to YACCS.

The new commenting interface seems to be headed toward the livejournal model, where commenters are either members of Blogger and post under their username, or must post as "Anonymous." I have never liked this, since I don't think it's fair that blog-less friends, Movable Type users, etc. should have to suffer the indignity of being known as "anonymous." The YACCS model allows anyone to enter contact info in on the fly, which is more democratic.

On another note, I also turned on the new "post by e-mail" feature, which sounds pretty cool. If this works, it means I should be able to blast out blog entries from my SmartPhone. (I've tried to do this before in other ways, but it's never been very reliable.) I'll give it a try in a bit.

I don't blog for a day...

... and they change everything! Not sure how I feel about this freaky new version of blogger, but it does seem to have some interesting features.

gak

Since I'm just about done with classes, I was totally looking forward to a weekend of freedom. I had been thinking all about what to do with it. For example, finally going to see that Frist Center exhibit that will be disappearing in a few days. Or maybe trying to watch some horses. Or maybe just running some errands around town.

Instead I spent today in orbit between the bed and the futon, feeling like crud warmed over. I seem to have picked up some sort of nasty head cold that is sapping my will to live. Hopefully with a lot of sleep it will blow over soon.

On the good side of the scale, the brother who was laid off back around Thanksgiving, finally found another job -- and it sounds like it's a pretty good one. Yay.

The Song

Ok, you've suffered long enough. The lyrics below were from "The Cranes," sung by Patty Larkin on the album "Red = Luck."

Name that tune...

Inspired by Danielle, who was, in turn, inspired by someone else, we will now play a fun game.

1. Grab the nearest CD.
2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.).
3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist)
4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don't name the band, nor the album-title.

On their wings they are returning.
On their wings they fly.
Shadows fade; the sun is burning... high.

Every day the light stays longer.
Every day you sigh.
Shadows fade; you start to wave goodbye.

If you're thinking of leaving, you're leaving at a very bad time.

No Googling Allowed. Which performer performed this song on which album?

On the brighter side of life...

We just handed in our group paper for the biotech class, which was the last major assignment left before graduation. I have a few more little weekly position papers, but by and large I am done. Yay.

Why else would they put the stage in the middle of a river?

From today's paper:

''I'm drinking alcohol,'' explained Julian Casablancas, lead singer of red-hot rock band The Strokes, to the packed River Stages audience Sunday night.

''I'm not drinking water, I'm not drinking juice. I'm drinking liquid cocaine.''

Casablancas' explanation seemed somewhat necessary, and not entirely unexpected, given that he and guitarist Nick Valensi had urinated minutes before into the Cumberland River.

Charming... Now pardon me while I go and refill my Brita with premium grade Cumberland River tap water.

But it's non-GMO cirrhosis...

Came across this while working on my paper:

Emulating the food industries, Japanese breweries have also joined the competition to offer GM-free products. In 1998, Paarlberg said, the Kirin Brewing Company announced that starting in the year 2001 it would use only GM-free corn starch in its beer. Only one day after Kirin’s announcement, its competitor, Sapporo Breweries made similar promises that its beer would be as GM-free as its competitors. Recognizing this commendable display of health consciousness among beer drinkers, Paarlberg pointed out that even Japanese smokers made the decision some years ago to consume only non-GM tobacco leaves.

-- Robert Paarlberg, "Asia’s Response to Genetically Modified Food

Mexico in old school 35mm

Here are a few of the photos I snapped on my first day in Mexico city using my trusty Pentax K-1000. These are inside the Mexico City Cathedral, and then outside where they were rehearsing the passion play for later in the week. (They may be a bit distorted by the scaling, but I don't feel like messing with Photoshop right now.)

  

Or not...

When you roll out of bed midmorning on a Saturday, walk into the kitchen in your boxers, look out the window, and see people jogging past the 20 mile mark of a marathon, it sort of makes you feel a bit lazy.

Hoofin' It

This morning I decided to walk to work. I've done this a few times before, but never on a regular basis. I'm thinking about trying to start doing it more often. The (relatively) new Shelby pedestrian bridge makes it a much nicer walk.

It's about two miles from there to here, and there's some nice scenery along the way. The only drawback is having to allow enough time to get here, and having to do it again at the end of the day whether I feel like it or not. (There's always cabs and buses in a pinch, I guess.)

I figure the walking is an easy way to help make up for the computer screen I stare at much of the rest of the day. We'll have to see if this idea survives once the mercury tops 90, though.

I'm making a valiant effort on my section of this biotech paper. But it just seems like a crime against nature to be sitting in front of a computer when it's this nice outside.

I'm back. Spent 12+ hours yesterday trying to dig out at work. And to make matters worse, after perfect weather in Mexico, I came back to snow showers in Nashville!

The trip was fantastic. I'll try to write more about the trip the first chance I get. But I also have a group paper to work on for class, and a visit from my cousin. So no promises.

teaser

No time to blog, but here are a few photos to whet your apetite...

Buenas Tardes

In Mexico City. My feet hurt, but it´s great. More later!

Getting ready to leave for Mexico tomorrow: Packing bags. Mowing lawn. Trying to recall my two years of middle school Spanish. Figuring out how the heck a night owl can catch a 6:50 AM flight without staying up all night.

Your tax dollars at work...

With all the pressing issues facing society in today's complex and dangerous world, it's good to know that the Tennessee legislature is on top of the growing drive-by porn epidemic.

Root Canals, Group Projects, and other fun activities

I just got off the phone with a member of my project group for my "Social Issues in Biotechnology" class. During the conversation, she mentioned that she just finished a graduate writing workshop recommended by her advisor. After I got off the phone, it occurred to me that no one had ever suggested that I take a writing workshop in grad school. With a sinking feeling, I went and looked at her midterm paper on our class website. Let's just say it didn't fill me with confidence in her writing ability.

Now to be fair, I don't think she is a native English speaker. And I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who knows enough of a foreign language to attend graduate school in it. But on the other hand, when your grade is on the line, you can't help but think that it would be nice to be in a group with a few gifted wordsmiths with a remarkable command of the English language.

I should point out that I've worked with plenty of native-born Americans who were lousy writers, and I'm sure there are plenty of non-native speakers who can write circles around me. But unfortunately they aren't in my BIOT640 project group.

Oh, yeah. On top of that, I have once again summarily been elected group leader. We were playing a game of chicken. The first person to panic and suggest that maybe we should actually meet was tagged as the sucker, and henceforth appointed ruler. That was me. So it's my job to guide the group into coming up with a coherent paper in the next month. It's going to be a long month.

Letting sleeping birds lie...

BoingBoing highlighted this article on managing your body's hardwired "biological clock" that determines sleep cycles. It explains why the only time I usually see the sunrise is when I stay up for it.

The body tells time with a master clock in the brain, a pinhead-sized cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus that takes cues from optic nerves that signal sunlight. By sticking people in isolation chambers, scientists discovered that most people's internal clocks run a bit longer — about a half-hour on average — than the sun's 24-hour cycle. That's why, for most people, it's easier to stay up later and compensate by sleeping in than to force yourself to sleep early and wake early, explains Dr. Eliza Sutton, an acting assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Morning larks are those rarer birds whose body clock is shorter than 24 hours, so they wake up raring to go.

On Frida Kahlo, Mexico, and Art

A friend at work recently went to Mexico City, and has been giving me crib sheets for my upcoming trip. He recommended that I watch Frida, the award-winning film about Mexican artist Fridah Kahlo and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera.

So last night I rented the movie. It was shot entirely in Mexico, and was absolutely beautiful. A lot of the credit for this goes to director Julie Taymor. After listening to her director's commentary, I am a huge fan. She is amazingly articulate about how she manages to portray emotion on film, something that not all directors are able to convey. And her vision and connection to the material in the movie are apparent.

As usual, I spent a lot of time trolling through the DVD extras. The second disc included a variety of interviews with the participants in the film. One particularly fascinating one is with Chavela Vargas, a famous Mexican folk singer (in her 90s) who performed in the film and who actually knew Frida Kahlo. Through the subtitles, she almost seemed to be speaking in poetry.

Another hidden treasure was this story, relayed by Julie Taymor during an interview with Bill Moyers:

I am often interested in the story of the outsider. You know I lived in Indonesia for many years. [...] I was there for two years and I was planning to stay longer and start a theater company. I went to Bali to a remote village by a volcanic mountain on the lake. They were having a ceremony that only happens only every 10 years for the young men. I wanted to be alone.

I was listening to this music and all of a sudden out of the darkness I could see glints of mirrors and 30 or 40 old men in full warrior costume-- there was nobody in this village square. I was alone. They couldn't see me in the shadows. They came out with these spears and they started to dance. They did, I don't know, it felt like an eternity but probably a half hour dance. With these voices coming out of them. And they danced to nobody. Right after that, they and I went oh, my God. The first man came out and they were performing for God. Now God can mean whatever you want it to mean. But for me, I understood it so totally. The detail on the costumes. They didn't care if someone was paying tickets, writing reviews. They didn't care if an audience was watching. They did it from the inside to the outside. And from the outside to the in. And that profoundly moved me then.

The rest of the interview is online right here.

"There is no such thing as a safe Shards O' Glass Freeze Pop."

It must be fun to work someplace where your entire job is basically to be a pain in the tobacco industry's backside. Case in point:

Shards O' Glass Freezer Pops

At Shards O' Glass, our goal is to be the most responsible, effective and respected developer of glass shard consumer products intended for adults. Our Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops are the nation's top-selling frozen treats containing glass shards. Little wonder, considering all we put into them! Enjoy your stay here. And remember, Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops are for adults only.

TobaccoDocuments.org is also pretty cool -- it's an ongoing project to index, cross-reference, OCR, and make available online the thousands millions of tobacco industry documents revealed during tobacco litigation.

Free books

Random discovery: The National Academies Press has placed more than 3000 complete books online for free. They are mostly technical and scientific books (Immunization Safety Review: Influenza Vaccines and Neurological Complications, anyone?), but there are some hidden gems. For example, Degrees Kelvin: A Tale of Genius, Invention and Tragedy:

Charismatic, confident, and boyishly handsome, Thomson was not a scientist who labored quietly in a lab, plying his trade in monkish isolation. When scores of able tinkerers were flummoxed by their inability to adapt overland telegraphic cables to underwater, intercontinental use, Thomson took to the high seas with new equipment that was to change the face of modern communications. And as the world’s navies were transitioning from wooden to iron ships, they looked to Thomson to devise a compass that would hold true even when surrounded by steel.

But as the century drew to a close and Queen Victoria's reign ended, this legendary scientific mind began to weaken. He grudgingly gave way to others with a keener, more modern vision. But the great physicist did not go quietly. With a ready pulpit at his disposal, he publicly proclaimed his doubts over the existence of atoms. He refused to believe that radioactivity involved the transmutation of elements. And believing that the origin of life was a matter beyond the expertise of science and better left to theologians, he vehemently opposed the doctrines of evolution, repeatedly railing against Charles Darwin. Sadly, this pioneer of modern science spent his waning years arguing that the Earth and the Sun could not be more than 100 million years old. And although his early mathematical prowess had transformed our understanding of the forces of nature, he would never truly accept the revolutionary changes he had helped bring about, and it was others who took his ideas to their logical conclusion.

The catch to all this (and there's always a catch) is that you either have to read the books page-by-page online, or pay to buy a printed copy or download a complete PDF. Still, it's a pretty nifty program.

Too much information

I'm sitting in Bongo Java working on my Biotech paper. One of the guys who works here is having a loud conversation with a customer while sweeping the floor. It's all about how he was sick yesterday. He vomited a lot. He's going into great detail. I don't claim to be a marketing expert, but it seems to me this might not be the best patter for a place that serves food.

Being naughty

Someone posted a chain letter asking for money on an Internet message board that I administer. The message included both an e-mail address and a postal address. I deleted the message of course, but not before doing a google search for "mail me more information" and picking out 20 or so things that Miss. Cuevas of Oceanside, CA is now interested in. I threw in a few others that didn't show up in the Google search for good measure -- for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses now know that she would like to be contacted, and that the best time is 6:00 AM on Saturdays. The Scientologists and the Realian movement are also going to be in touch.

If only I had this sort of devotion to stuff I should be doing right now.

Slippery when wet

This morning I slipped when getting out of the shower. As I fell to the floor, I had visions of dashing my brains out on the commode and being discovered by the neighbors months from now . Luckily that didn't happen. But I did slam my shoulder quite vigorously against the tile doorway, and slammed the back of my head hard enough on a windowsill to loosen it from the wall.

After laying on the floor and contemplating the ceiling for a minute or two, I staggered to my feet and noticed a throbbing pain whenever I moved my arm. My shoulder was definitely not a happy camper. In comparison, the head thing was virtually unnoticable.

As the day has gone on, however, the shoulder pain has mostly dissipated. But the dull ache in my head has been getting worse. ugh. Hopefully a good night's sleep will make it all better.

An update

So here's the story about the Indian guy... An organization that I'm a member of is having a big convention in Nashville. They are giving a leadership award to this guy who has helped the organization grow in India. They are paying for his plane ticket, but apparently cheaped out on providing a hotel room. So I got an e-mail from someone in DC asking if I (or another local) could provide a place to stay. I figured it couldn't hurt to know someone in India, so I volunteered.

In other news, I've been staying busy with schoolwork, planning a high school reunion, and various other things. Oh, and reading about Mexico whenever I have a free moment. Looking forward to the trip, even if I haven't convinced anyone else to go with me...

Indian Summer

This June, some random guy I've never met is coming from India to spend a week at my house. Wierd.

senior year

Just for giggles, I've been reading over some old e-mail from my senior year in college -- which is amazingly seven years ago now. I came across this e-mail that I sent to my boss/instructor at the academic program I was working for. (She was also a pretty good friend by the time I left, so this isn't as crazy as it sounds.)

To: program coordinator
From: Me
Subject: you win: it looks like I have to fill a few credits

It looks like I may take Soling next semester - it depends on how my petitions 
turn out, but I may have to fill 3 credits. The only stipulation is that 
if I do take it, I refuse to get out of bed for class before 10:00 am. 
(the moment that happens I am out the door signing up for 
basketweaving and beer appreciation!)

-DD

Yup, that's pretty typical. I've never been a morning person! ;-)

I've had a bit of a blogging draught lately. Between work craziness, schoolwork, two different pro-bono websites, and reading all about Mexico, I've not had much time left. I'll do better in the future, I promise. For the moment, I'm off to renew my license plates, which it turns out expired a month and a half ago. Oops...

Oklahoma

It galls me that I don't think I can check off Oklahoma. When I was in Wichita, Kansas with Habitat for Humanity, I'm pretty sure we talked about driving south and going into Oklahoma just for the heck of it. But I'm also pretty sure we never did it. (We spent 48 hours in a van that week just to get to Kansas and back, so I guess it's understandable.)

Then a few years later, my friend and I did a week-long driving trip around the south, going from Nashville to New Orleans to Houston to Dallas/Fort Worth to Caddo Valley, Ark. where I left my transmission (long story for another time), and back to Nashville. I'm pretty sure I drove through Texarkana, which is only about a quarter inch from Oklahoma on the map.

So I had two perfectly-good opportunities to set foot in Oklahoma, and I flubbed them both. Oh, well... Next time I have an opportunity to visit, I'll snap it up. Although perhaps I should learn more about it first -- the only thing I know off the top of my head is that it's "where the wind comes sweeping down the plains."

Vermont -- the final (east of the Mississippi) frontier

I just filled in Vermont on my "states visited" map below. I talked to my parents, and turns out that they're pretty sure we went through Vermont on one of our Grizwold-esque New England summer vacations.

The car on the right is a near facsimile of the Chevy Malibu we drove on most of those trips, except it's a few years newer. This picture comes from the web site of a guy who apparently spent a great deal of time tripping out this 20-year-old station wagon. "The ultimate goal," he writes, "is to turn this old wagon into a sleeper, powered by 425 cubic inches of Oldsmobile V8 :o)))))))"

Everyone needs a hobby, I guess...

I'm probably nuts...

... but I just made a plane reservation for Mexico, leaving on April 7 and coming back on the 12th. These people almost scared me off, but then some of these people gave me a nudge in the right direction.

Now I just have to figure out where I'm staying and what I'm doing while I'm there. Finding someone else crazy enough to come along would also be a plus!

South of the Border?

I have a very definite case of springtime wanderlust. Now I'm comtemplating a spur-of-the-moment trip to Mexico City during Holy Week. Instead of doing my homework, of course.

Random belated pictures

Here are pictures from my trip to DC and New Jersey last month. They are of many different things, and I haven't bothered to caption them, so you'll have to use your imagination a bit. Buried somewhere in there are pictures of George Washington's diary, a snowstorm, a map signed by Robert E. Lee, and the abandoned church in Camden where my brother is working. Like I said, kind of random.

 

Big Music shoots itself in the foot yet again

For the last few days, I've been grooving to the beats of the Gray Album, D.J. Danger Mouse's artful mix of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album. The funny thing is, if it wasn't for EMI's ridiculous attempts to sue this album out of existence, I probably never would have even heard of it, let alone downloaded it. The music industry needs to get over its insane addiction to lawyers and focus on coming up with better ways to take advantage of digital music. The EFF has an interesting proposal for "voluntary collective licensing" of music on file sharing networks. Sounds like a good plan to me -- a lot better than continually paying lawyers millions to sue grannies and grade school kids.

Gotta fix that gaping hole on the upper left

I finally got around to putting together my visited states map. (Thanks for the inspiration, Laura.) It was harder than I thought, because I've never really kept track. Initially, for example, I had Vermont checked off, because I've traveled all over New England and just assumed I'd been there. But when I started thinking about it, the closest I could remember being was Plattsburgh, NY, across the lake. So to be fair I took it off the list, making it the only Eastern state I may not have visited.

As you can see, there's a gaping hole in the Northwest quadrant of the country. My cousin is getting married near San Francisco this summer, so maybe I'll try to fill in a few more states on that trip. I also have another cousin in Alaska who has a four-year-old daughter I've only seen in pictures. One of these days I want to make it up that way.

I tried doing "visited countries," but it hardly seemed worth it. The complete list (other than the US) is Canada, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Vatican City, and France (but only a tiny corner of France, so it felt wrong to check off the whole country.) I think I'm going to try to expand that list this year. I was briefly considering doing a last minute trip to England in the next few weeks due to crazy-cheap fares. But I procrastinated too long and the fares disappeared. So I'll probably wait until the summer or fall for my next international trip. Anyone got any good international travel ideas?

UPDATE: I just filled in Vermont without even leaving home! See entry above for details.

create your own personalized map of the USA or write about it on the open travel guide

Sedalina started an lively debate about the gay marriage brouhaha with this post. An interesting read...

Mountains... Trees... Wildlife... Skiing...

If you like those things, you should make Vail and Jesse happy by buying this house from them! Hey, it has its own domain name, so you know it's gotta be good!

Another way of looking at things...

Feeling a bit backward? Try out Elgoog!

Random Childhood Memories: Installment I

It probably started with a Hardy Boys book or some other literary opus where the characters made a daring escape through a tunnel. I decided I was going to start digging in the back yard. My parents had given me a set of orange-pained child-sized tools for Christmas, so I was well equipped.

The excavation commenced one afternoon. I applied myself vigorously at first. It soon became clear that the people who dig real tunnels probably aren't using a six-inch square spade designed primarily for sandbox use. I think the hole ended up being about a foot deep before I tired of this game. But not before I struck what I thought was a rich coal seam. More likely it was the leavings from someone's hibachi, but I entertained brief fantasies of retiring early from Elementary school and living out my life as a coal baron.

My dad eventually dug deeper and planted an azalea in the hole. That was the end of my tunnel-digging phase.

Another time, I was playing mountain climber on our back hill using a massive claw hammer that looked like a climber's pick. I swung a little too vigorously and embedded the claw in my ankle. 20+ years later, I still have a tear-drop shaped scar to remind me of that one.

Valentine's day in San Francisco

Boing Boing pointed out this first-hand account of the marriage marathon currently in progress in San Francisco.

We walked around the side of the line and saw hundreds of same-sex couples in all states of dress (punk to tuxedo to family heirloom dress to just-off-the-street-in-work-attire). One couple wore yarmulkes and carried a siddur; another couple looked like ordained ministers, but I didn't know for sure of which Christian denomination. (It must be one willing to ordain gay women.) At the back of City Hall, the line was making its way through the door past a group of about half a dozen well-wishers with big pink signs. They looked like high school students. One of them was carrying an American flag with gay rights symbols in place of the stars.

[...]

The balcony opposite ours was set up in the same general way: officiants, couples, families. We heard frequent applause as people there were pronounced "spouses for life", and shortly the same thing happened right in front of us, perhaps three or four feet from where we stood. There was no privacy, and there was merely a basic decorum; nothing was ornate or elaboratively choreographed. The emphasis seemed to be on speed with appropriate respect. (One couple carried signs saying that they had been together for 18 years and had wanted to be married the whole time. Dan Bern says "I know how I hate to wait / Like even for a bus or something / An important phone call / So I can just imagine..." but of course I can't imagine. [...]

Zack and I applauded for the couples as they were married, and shook hands with them. The couples were as diverse in age as they were in dress: I saw a pair of women get married and was sure they were younger than I am. And I saw and was most touched by several weddings of people who had likely been waiting even longer than 18 years. Two women of my mother's age, or a little older, were married right in front of me, and they started to cry. I almost started to cry, too.

We did see history. We saw a dozen or two dozen people get married on Valentine's Day, who all very badly wanted to and who got their chance.

I think this is the most hearwarming thing I've read in quite a while, and I'm glad San Francisco is doing it. What are you waiting for, Nashville?

Things I accomplished this weekend:

• Had one beer in the tiny taproom of the Yazoo Brewing Company, a relatively new microbrewery in the back corner of the old Marathon plant. It's not really in the best part of town, but it's convenient to work, the beer seemed pretty good, and you can get refillable growlers "to go." Definitely worth a return visit.

• Considered FedExing yappy mop-dog next door to these folks. If they like dogs so much, let them listen to six hours of barking late on a Friday night.

• Went to the grocery store. On a Saturday afternoon. On Valentine's day. When they think perhaps there could be a bit of snow. When the cash registers are flaking out. Bad idea.

• Ran to CompUSA to buy RJ-45 heads after the local Radio Shack proved deficient. Ended up also buying a 160 GB drive ($75ish after rebate) and an external firewire enclosure.

• Using said parts, got my new ReplayTV up and running on my home network. This involved some amount of mucking about in the dirt pit under the house to get a network cable over to the living room. But now that the thing is working, I'm totally loving it. I can program it to record shows, then pull them over to my PC for archiving or viewing using DVarchive and VideoLan. Now I'm debating if I want to void the warranty by trying to install a bigger internal hard drive.

  I've already used it to catch part of a nifty PBS documentary that I otherwise would have missed entirely. (It's now set to snap up the second half next week.)

• Did laundry. Didn't fold it. Cat slept on it. Of course.

• Excavated my computer table. Paid lots of bills, did my taxes, and went through tons of mail that built up while I was in DC. Filed all sorts of stuff. (Stayed motivated by streaming the Simpsons to my PC.)

• Made ham and bean soup. The HoneyBaked people will sell you the ham/hambone, beans, and a bunch of spices for around $5 if you catch them when they're having a 2-for-1 deal. Add in some celery, onions, canned tomatoes, garlic, and more spices, and you get tons of great soup for relatively little dough.

  In the process, I tried out my Christmas food processor. I wanted my onions diced, but I ended up with something more along the lines of julienned. The soup didn't seem to care, and I saved some to put on sandwiches later in the week. But I think perhaps I am in need of remedial Cuisinart training.

• Talked to my brother, whose job search doesn't seem to be going real well. Anyone need a mechanical engineer?

• Did some schoolwork, but didn't do the staff evaluations I told my boss I'd try to finish over the weekend. (gak.) Oh, well... Guess I'll scramble on that tomorrow.

Still alive...

I'm still alive, and still in DC. I've been staying very busy getting up at the crack of dawn for my class, being studious all day, coming home and dealing with work on the phone for a few hours, and then collapsing into bed. Plus dealing with the start of my last UMUC class and coordinating various outside projects. (Among other things, I'm co-chairing a 10-year reunion and trying to get my mom's church website off the ground.)

Last weekend I visited my youngest brother, who's spending the year in Camden, NJ with Urban Promise.

That's a quickie update -- look for pictures and more details later. Heading back to Nashville tonight.

Rotten review of the day

I was amused by the opening of Desson Thomson's review of Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! in the Washington Post:

There are so many layers of bad when it comes to the Hollywood romantic comedy, it would take the film-reviewing equivalent of a geologist to identify them precisely.

So let's not waste our time divining upon which subterranean level of awfulness "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!" should rest. Let's just say, there is no reason on God's good Earth to see this movie. Not even if your house were to burn down on the coldest night of the winter and the only place to house you and your shivering family was a theater playing this film. Hypothermia would be a thrill compared to sitting through this.

Don't think I'll be lining up to see that one...

School Daze

A couple of years ago my company was looking for a schmoe to manage our company's internal library and archives. This department had basically been driven into the ground by budget cuts, and I think they were just looking for someone to sign the timesheets and not make waves. I was available, and over my halfhearted objection this got tacked onto my job description.

In the end, though, running the Archives has turned out to be one of the more interesting parts of my job. It definitely beats listening to users bitch about their laptops. As I've gotten more into this, I've realized how much I don't know about how to organize and preserve historical materials. So last year I applied for "employee grant" funding to attend two weeks of training at the National Archives. My request was approved, helped along by the fact that I could sponge off my parents and incur no hotel or meal expenses.

So now I'm in DC for about two weeks for the Modern Archives Institute. I'm looking forward to it.

To make things interesting, my assistant on the IT side of things is about to become a father, so he's likely to be out for a few weeks as well. That means our new part-time support person is running the show. It also means I'm probably going to be spending my afternoons on the phone after class lets out. Fun.

On a vaguely related note, I just signed up for the last class in my Technology Management degree. To mix things up a bit, I decided to take Societal Issues in Biotechnology. This ends my long history of avoiding classes in the natural sciences. But working with a biotech startup last semester got me more interested in this sort of thing. And the alternative was an E-Commerce class that probably would have bored me to tears. So this seemed like a good option -- we'll see how it goes.

Be Patriotic -- Support The Economy -- Buy Stuff

Following the excellent example of Tom and Ray, Newton's Kumquat now has its own Shameless Commerce Division. It's actually run by some dude named Dave, whoever he is. In any case, we have it on good authority that more stuff will be showing up when he gets around to it.

When you start your day with an 8-inch knife through your head, things can only look up from there

My uncle is a surgeon in Roanoke, Virginia. He recently operated on this guy, who came into the hospital with an 8-inch-knife jammed through his head. Amazingly, the guy survived.

Historic folk music for 99 cents

The Smithsonian Folkways label is planning to make its catalog of 33,000 American folk and world music songs available at $0.99/pop. Nifty! (Link)

An observation...

I just caught the second half of the State of the Union address. I have only one thing to say about it. I would vote for a turnip before I would vote for W. That is all.

Update: Now my cat is tossing her cookies all over the house. Apparently she didn't like the speech either.

Odds and Ends

Think your chances of striking it rich in the new Tennessee lottery are slim? The Tennessean points out that winning the lottery is actually quite likely when you compare it to the odds of, say, becoming president or dating a super model!

Taxation without Representation

Washington, DC held a non-binding presidential primary yesterday, mostly to draw attention to the fact that residents of the city have do not representation in congress. Dean, who has expressed support for DC congressional representation, won, and Al Sharpton came in second. Five of the other contenders opted out of the race entirely, signaling their disregard for DC residents.

Personally, I find it disgraceful that residents of our capital city have are second-class citizens in the political arena. It's high-time someone fixed this.

The farm

There are always ways to occupy yourself at the farm. We dug through the house until we uncovered the hidden photographic evidence. We found a slide projector and all hung out in the living room to laugh at the older generation in its formative years. We took a long walk to look at cows and fields, and ended up collecting scads of empty beer bottles along the road. We cooked a big dinner featuring a honey ham and smoked turkey. We laughed at my aunt's phobic dog as she rapidly dismembered her Christmas Teddy bear. We met my cousin's fiance, and were surprised at the announcement of the wedding.

I tried my grandfather's brand of hyper-fizzy beer. He's been trying out homebrewing, but he overdid the carbonation a bit. Several of the bottles apparently self-destructed in clouds of flying glass. The ones that didn't apparently explode into a foamy mess when the cap is removed! So the only way to enjoy this Virginia delicacy is to carefully punch a pinhole in the cap and then let the excess CO₂ bleed off. Despite the gyser of beer vapor, there's still an impressive amount of head and fizz on the beer. I brought a bottle back with me, but haven't been brave enough to open it yet.

Something woke me up early in the morning, and I rolled off of my air mattress on the living room floor and walked outside in the early morning chill. I watched through the trees as shades of blue and gold emerged behind the foothills across the narrow valley. Shivering a bit, I slipped inside and fell back asleep.

We ended this trip with a visit to my grandmother in the nursing home. These visits have become increasingly one-sided -- she doesn't seem to remember who we are, and conversations flow over and around her to no effect.

It was clear that something was wrong years before anyone actually said anything about it. By the time I was in middle school, we were used to covering the same ground as my grandmother replayed the same conversations over and over again. As we got older, her short-term memory continued to drift away, and she coped by keeping copious notes on a sheaf of paper in her purse.

I think I first really understood what was happening when I spent a night at the farm over winter break during my freshman year of college. I arrived late at night and collapsed into bed in the guest room. The next morning, I awoke at the crack of dawn to a knocking on the door. "Wake up! Rise and Shine!" she said. "You're going to miss your school bus!" She continued to rush me out of the house, convinced that the other kids at the bus stop would leave without me. I was 19 years old, yet I was participating in a play whose lines were written before my birth.

After that, it was all a blur. At some point, my grandfather made the hard decision to move her into the nursing home in the small town a few miles from the farm. At first, things went on somewhat normally -- I remember visiting a Dairy Queen with them during a visit. But each time I saw her she looked much older, and there were fewer indications that she remembered who we were or anything else about her past. I remember how excited I was on one visit when she said the words "There we are!" in response to a picture of her family on the beach in the 1930s. That was the most coherent thing I'd heard from her in a long time -- or since.

Maybe this is why I'm so interested in the old family photos we found. My grandmother's illness has dragged on for so long that I have trouble remembering how she was before it started. I stare at these old photos because they give me a glimpse of a normal life: Of the woman my grandfather decided to marry after a long hike on the C&O canal. Of the woman who was a proud homemaker and girl scout leader. Of the woman who used to tell me stories when I woke her up early in the morning and climbed into her bed, and who served us chessmen cookies at her house after church on Sundays. Of the woman who went on safari in Africa. Of the woman who indulged my mother's desire for a coonskin cap, and my uncle's love of cowboy suits. These snippets are the fragmentary reminders of a past that has disappeared into a dense fog of age.

I left the farm with a crate full of photos and slides. My cousin did the same. Our plan is to sort and scan them, catalog them, and perhaps understand more about our own family. These dusty prints are directly related to our lives, yet oddly removed from the reality we have lived with for the last 15 years. They are a looking glass into a world we barely remember.

A holiday revue: Part I

I was running late, of course, but I finally zoomed out of Nashville around 8:30 PM on December 23. According to Mapquest, it's an 11 hour drive from my front door to my parents' house in Maryland. I drove with a vengeance that evening, and ended up throwing in the towel around 4:00 AM in Salem, Va. I pulled into some generic-cheapo hotel, and asked for a room. Unfortunately, due to "the computer," you always have to check out at 11:00 AM regardless of when you check in. I really wanted a bit more sleep than that, so in a small act of civil disobedience, I set my alarm for exactly 11:00 AM and then called down to the desk and told them that I was going to be late. They were ok with it -- I guess the dayside staff doesn't live in fear of the computer!

I left Salem and continued my drive up I-81 through the Shenendoah Valley. Unlike the night before, I had some time and could enjoy the drive a bit. I got off the interstate several times and followed Route 11 as it meandered through small towns. Then at New Market I veered off on Route 211 and wound my way up through the mountains and through Shenendoah National Park. This road is full of sharp turns and switchbacks, and was much more fun to drive than a boring old Interstate superhighway. I eventually made it to Warrenton, where I headed up Route 29 to I-66, and then into downtown DC. I could have looped around the city on the beltway, but I grew up hardly ever driving through the city itself, and I'm determined to improve my navigational skills. So I now tend to drive straight through whenever I get the chance. I passed all the obligatory monuments, and made it to my parents house just after dark.

My first observation was that the ouside of my parents' house wasn't looking very Christmassy. So I whipped the assembled brothers into action and we quickly strung lights outside. (My parents were already at church -- Xmas eve is a working holiday for a pastor.) After the lights were up, I quickly changed clothes and we headed up to church for services. We then adjourned to a parishoner's house for a party, getting home around 1:00 AM. After a few more hours unpacking and wrapping presents, I finally got to bed in the wee hours of the morning.

Christmas day was pretty predictable. Everyone finally woke up and staggered downstairs sometime around noon. (Santa Claus no longer comes in the middle of the night at our house -- he now staggers in and drops off stockings around 11:00 AM, cleverly disguised as my dad.) We ate brunch, opened presents. My mom and I got my dad a turntable so that he can reopen his long-dormant record collection. My parents got me a flatbed scanner so that I can finally start scanning some of my old film.

I gave each family member a framed enlargement of one of the photos I took this year. This was not all that expensive -- I got mats and frames at Michael's for under $15 each, and I printed the 8x10 enlargements using my photo printer. Some of them came out remarkably well -- I'll try to post links here when I have a minute.

Later we piled into cars to go visit my dad's parents in southern Maryland. Got to see my cousin Steve again, and had a big Christmas dinner. We arrived home late at night.

The next day we all piled into cars again and headed for the farm where my mother's dad lives. We were meeting up with the other set of cousins in a massive event masterminded by Laura after her visit to Nashville in November. We were supposed to bring various food items, so my brother and I made a grocery run in Warrenton and bought a cooler-full of ingredients.

We managed to cram about 11 people into my Grandfather's house, including my cousin's newly-announced fiance. We made good use of sofa's and air mattresses. It was the first time we had all been there together in years, which was great fun. I'll try to post some pictures soon.

Tune in next time -- same bat time, same bat station -- for more in the continuing saga of my Christmas vacation...

Back, but snowed under.

Figuratively, not literally. (This is Nashville, after all.) I'll try to post a bigger update soon, but the short version is that I successfully made the trek from Nashville to DC to Stanardsville to DC to Boston to DC to Nashville. Now I'm back in town for a few weeks before I have to head to DC again for two weeks of training. (Looking forward to the training, but also to the fact that it's basically a corporately-financed trip to go hang out at home for two weeks.)

Creepy wierdo of the day:

Murfreesboro man tells why he froze 114 cats: "The only thing unusual about him, said neighbor David Whitten, is that Davis often wears boots, a long coat and a hat, 'like a Texas rancher.'" Well, that an the fact that he keeps Fluffy friends in the Frigidaire. Yikes!

A quick update:

Made the trek from Nashville to DC to Stanardsville,VA, and back to DC. I'm heading to Boston in a plane, train, or automobile (still hazy) in a couple of days. I've seen lots of long lost family members, tasted homemade beer, communed with cows, driven on windy mountain roads, gone to various churches, committed to scanning a massive crate of family photos, and gotten a cold. I'll try to post more details later, but hope everyone is having happy holidays!

Cranberries, evergreens, and a reptile ranch

Lately I've been a decorating fiend... I put up some clear lights outside last week. Then, I decided to go out and get a Christmas tree, despite the fact that I'm actually not going to be here for Christmas. I lugged the tree back, dug up my stand and lights, and set the whole thing up in the front hall, where you can see it through my front door.

I don't actually have many genuine Christmas ornaments -- in fact, I'm pretty much limited to a couple of boxes of generic glass balls. So I had to get a bit creative. In some dark recess of my brain, I remembered making Christmas tree garlands out of cranberries and popcorn. It took two grocery runs to find whole cranberries in Nashville, but I was soon stringing up a storm, with only minor needle injuries. It takes a long time to do a whole tree that way, but it's pretty mindless work and I watched a movie while I was working on it.

Turns out that I somewhat underestimated the number of linear feet of cranberries in a bag. (These folks need to investigate this!) Despite creative use of cranberry spice sauce for dinner on Sunday night, I still have two bags left. Anyone have any good cranberry recipes?

After the garlands were on the tree, it still looked a bit empty. So I wandered around my house looking for ideas until I found a book of Route 66 paper cutouts, purchased for their kitsch value a few years ago while on vacation in Arizona. I pulled out the book and started happily punching out pieces and putting tab A into slot B to create models of all sorts of Mother Road ephemera -- fireworks stands, Mexican restaurants, Airstream trailers, and more. I then carefully punched holes in the cutouts and stuck them on the tree. So I now have a kitschy Middle-American tree with cranberries and popcorn. (If you look carefully, you can even find an adult bookstore.)

I also have a wreath on the door, greens on the window sills, and a cat determined to make herself sick eating Pointsettia leaves. Plus I made fudge and prepared dough for sugar and spice cookies. I'm totally down with the whole holiday thing this year.

Bus.... Magic Bus!

From last week's Economist -- an old-school internet mail relay network using Wi-Fi and public transportation:

At “The Future in Review”, a wide-ranging technology conference held in San Diego earlier this year, Allen Hammond of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think-tank, outlined a cunning scheme to provide e-mail access in rural India using buses. Each bus would be equipped with an e-mail server and a high-power Wi-Fi base-station, with a range of a mile or so. This communicates with nearby computers in homes, schools, offices or post offices, delivering and collecting e-mail wirelessly as the bus drives past, so that there are a handful of deliveries and collections each day. The buses connect to the internet when they reach the depot at the end of the line. Given the reach of the bus network, it is estimated that this approach could provide national e-mail coverage for a paltry $15m. E-mail by bus—why not?

A Public Service Announcement...

Brought to you by the fine folks over at the National Latex Novelties Association:

What's an office without a rubber chicken or two? Rubber chicken on the wall, rubber chicken on the floor, rubber chickens are funny and make your spirits soar. We are pretty sure everyone's mood will pick up a little bit when you have some rubber chickens laying around the office. Make Monday Rubber Chicken Day and have everyone carry one around to meetings and stuff... how much fun can your office handle?

-- OfficePlayground.com

The week in review -- the good, the bad, and the really bad.

As you may have guessed, posts are a bit sparse lately because of my periodic end-of-semester academic panic -- not helped by the fact that I spent big two of the last four weekends goofing off with family instead of working. In any case, here's the reader's digest condensed version of what's happened since my last dispatch:

• Flew home. Arrived hours late due to typical holiday delays. Was very calm about this, since I had nowhere in particular to be that night.
• Actually read two novels: Prey and About a Boy. Also read two fascinating articles in Harper's: one about Clear Channel's radio station juggernaut, and another about a possible resurgence of locally-owned companies. Both are worth picking up.
• Had Thanksgiving dinner with grandparents, parents, one cousin, and a whole mess of food. Accidentally spilled candle wax on my mom's best tablecloth. She was not happy.
• Visited the research lab of the biotech company I'm working with for my class. Met with them for several hours. Was amazed by how much AP Bio stuff I actually remembered.
• Bought a wireless router for my parents so that I can finally get online from my laptop at home.
• My parents, brother B, brother B's girlfriend, and brother B's girlfriend's parents went out to dinner together. Meanwhile, I went out to dinner with brother A, brother B's girlfriend's sister, and brother B's girlfriend's sister's cousin. We ate at the local Salvadoran place, followed by some aimless wandering around and a trip to Cosi -- a nifty place where you can toast your own S'Mores on an open flame at your table. I drove the assembled masses nuts by taking hours to figure out why some guy jumped in front of a bus after eating a seagull sandwich.
• Got to play with the fireplace, which still works after being fixed last year. Bought a new chain for my dad's chainsaw, but didn't get around to installing it.
• Went to my mom's church. Talked to a lot of people whose names I probably couldn't remember if you paid me.
• Had very belated birthday cake for me and my brother. Gave my brother a Sony Clie as a birthday/graduation gift. He now wants a memory stick so he can listen to MP3s on it.
• Got up very early Monday morning and caught the subway back to National Airport. Waited in a really long line to get through security. Flight was late anyway. Went to work.
• Got home and started working on my part of the market plan for our company. Interrupted by a call from a friend whose new(to her) computer had a malfunctioning modem. Talked to her for about an hour. Then continued working until my eyes glazed over. Went to bed late.
• Woke up to a call from my brother, who was in a state of shock after being unexpectedly fired from his job. He had no idea this was coming -- his new dishwasher was delivered yesterday. This is totally sucky on so many levels I won't even go into it here. But suffice it to say I think very little of his former company.
• Talked to him until I realized I was going to be late for my weekly Long Boring Meeting Where Nothing Happens. Burned rubber into work and still got there late. As predicted, nothing really happened. Despite earlier plans to avoid work entirely and finish my paper, ended up putting in a good 6 hours. Found out that one of my employees is in the hospital with severe pneumonia. Not a good day.
• Tore out of work as soon as possible and headed to Fido, where I'm currently camped out working on said paper. It's slow going.
• Friend just called, so I believe I will be taking a break to go have a beer across the street. Yay!

Anyway, that's what's new for now. I plan on being more bloggy after the semester ends.

Getting colder...

I'm not always up early in the morning to shoot this sort of thing, but I once again worked all night at the office. That's not good, but at least I got to appreciate a perfect fall morning.

Well, I thought it was perfect. Some people don't agree!)

Domain of the Day

http://www.wewannadoanythingwewannadoanytimewewannadoit.com/

Seen on Monster.com

Wonder if I can get a leave of absence from work -- I just found my meal ticket for a month in Ireland!

IE-Dublin-Father Christmas & Elves
Status: Full Time, Part Time, Temporary/Contract/Project

Unique Entertainment are looking for persons interested in working for them on a part-time basis throughout late November and December 2003.

We require persons to fill the following roles:

• Father Christmas
• Elves

Please send brief CV, including a passport photograph, details of your availability during November and December and the roles you are interested in to...

From the silver lining department:

One advantage of being at work at 3 AM is that you can play your CDs as loud as you want, and no one gets pissy about it. Right now I've got Handel's Messiah going at about 80 decibels.

Ihr Steuergeld an der Arbeit:

Berlin to get trash cans that can talk. Ain't technology grand?

A real Nashville weekend

This weekend was a true Nashville experience. My grandfather and my cousin Laura both showed up in town, and I got to do all that fun touristy stuff that the locals never get around to.

On Saturday, my grandfather went to the Parthenon and the Frist Center. Both were great, but the Frist center has an especially good "Art of Tennessee" exhibit with everything from wood carvings to maps to photos to muskets. It was extremely cool.

Then we went to the airport and picked up Laura. We went home briefly, then headed over to Hatch Show Print. We walked around lower Broad for a bit, and also stopped into Lawrence Record Shop, where we met Mr. Lawrence. This was a very memorable experience -- you can listen right here!

We gave up our coveted $10 parking space and headed back home for a few hours, where we amused ourselves by looking at old photo albums.

That night, we had tickets for the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium. But before the show, we stopped in to Jack's Bar-B-Que. Then a few steps across the alley to the Ryman, where a long line was just beginning to snake through the door. We got to our seats in the balcony just before the show started. One of the first performers was Nanci Griffith, who Laura had seen a few days before in Boston.

The next day we stopped by my office to scan some of the old photos we found, then headed over to Bicentennial Mall, where we explored and played with our cameras until the misty darkness overtook us. (Listen) My grandfather took a detour into the farmer's market, where he purchased a bottle of Dave's Triple XXX Insanity Hot Sauce. The vendor cautioned to only use one drop!

Afterward, we went out to dinner at Basantes (a great Italian restaurant in the lobby of a Day's Inn), and returned home to watch "When Harry Met Sally."

Monday morning, my Grandfather left at the crack of dawn, and Laura and I had breakfast at the Pancake Pantry before her medical school interview at Vanderbilt.

All-in-all, a great weekend. You can view more photos right here.

A bloomin' family reunion, and a lot of malfunctioning stuff!

My grandfather (the one who lives on the farm in Virginia) e-mailed me to say that he was planning to come down and visit me in Nashville. He has been saying he would do this for years, but this time he was serious. So he's arriving this weekend.

Then a few days ago, I got an e-mail from my cousin Laura, who I haven't seen in almost two years. She has been going to school in Boston, but graduated and is now applying to medical schools. It turns out that she has an interview at Vanderbilt on Monday. So she's also coming down -- and naturally I offered up my place.

So all of a sudden I have two out-of-town guests, and it's time to get the house presentable. I've been spending every free moment cleaning, dealing with repairs, etc. Plus, we have a business plan due in several weeks for my class, and our company is getting impatient. Then late last week the massive server that holds our company's electronic archives decided to die in the middle of the night. This has already been good for one all-nighter and countless hours of additional stress. The worst part about the work is that it's a "hurry-up-and-wait" operation, because it takes so long to move around the tons of data we're dealing with.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day (from 6:30 AM until around 4:30 PM) working on the system from home while the plumber and handyman simultaneously abused my house. (After two trips, I believe I now have a working toilet in the guest bathroom!) I also broke down and hired a maid service to clean the place. I feel so bourgeois. But at least the dust bunnies have left the building.

Somewhere in there, I also ran a line directly from the phone network box to my DSL modem, and proved that my DSL problems are not the fault of the ancient phone wiring in my house. The next guess is a bad modem -- they're sending me another one. The phone company is convinced that there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with the line, so we're trying everything else first.

I then went in to work for a meeting around 5:00, and stayed there working until midnight.

This morning dawned with temperatures in the 30s, and I discovered that once again my furnace seemed to be dead. This happened last year. The repair guy said to just cycle the circuit breaker several times. After about five attempts, it finally came on. (It's an outside unit, and apparently moisture can creep into the unit and cause it not to light. A safety device cuts off the gas if there's no flame. Cycling the power resets the safety device and lets it try again. The unit hadn't been used in a few days, and it poured rain yesterday. So hopefully this won't become a regular occurrence.)

And to add to the pile of malfunction and misfortune, the zero key on my cell phone has died. So to anyone with a zero in your number, I won't be calling you. Everyone else, you're good. (Actually I can work around it with speed dial and other tricks, but it's a real pain!) Verizon says I have to take the phone to one of their stores, which are apparently all in the distant suburbs. And they're very vague about what might happen when I get there. I fear that they may ship my phone off to Timbuktu for repair and leave me without phone, which would be bad since I've also been disconnecting my home phone as part of the DSL troubleshooting.

Now I've got to go into work for more pointless meetings and server angst. Plus I've still got to go grocery shopping to do.

I'm ready for another vacation!

Eclipse

I walked in to the neighborhood grocery/health food store to pick up a few veggies for dinner. The checkout counter was abuzz. The moon, it seems, was half gone.

When I arrived outside, I saw this for myself. I drove home, grabbed my digital camera, and headed for the backyard. I subsequently stood outside in the chilly fall weather that suddenly arrived a few days ago and watched the moon drift into the shadow of the earth. (Unfortunately I lack a real telephoto lens, so the photos aren't great.)

While I was waiting, I called my parents. My mom was busy writing a sermon, and I had to convince her to go outside. My dad went outside with no prompting. They stood and watched the eclipse with me. Suddenly the 700 miles between us didn't seem so far.

Just another (birth)day...

And today, with a whimper rather than a bang, I enter the 28th year of my life. It's been a pretty average day so far. Not that I was really expecting all that much out of it. The last birthday I can remember getting really excited about was when I turned 25, because it meant that car rental companies would stop hassling me when I tried to rent a car. (IMHO, just because you're in a demographic group that's statistically inclined toward wrapping cars around telephone poles doesn't mean they should have the right to give you a hard time!)

That may have also been the year that my birthday fell on a Saturday and I went to Boston for the weekend. So I spent my birthday visiting penguins in the Boston Aquarium and doing various other fun things.

But I really just can't get all that excited about it this year. It's too much like just another day.

To be fair, I guess this has been a pretty decent year. The highlights were Italy, New Years (in PA), my brother's graduation in Maine, the 4th of July in DC, and my trip back to Syracuse. Hmm. None of the highlights were in Nashville. That sort of sums up why I want to leave one of these days, I'd say.