The Wikipedia Reliability Index

I had a brainstorm in the shower this morning. I'd been playing around adding information to Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as you may know, is a collaborative encyclopedia that literally anyone can update. The idea behind this "open-source" information model is that anyone can add or correct information, and that eventually bad information will be weeded out through a process of natural selection.

The problem with this, at least according to lots of folks, is that the instability of the information and systemic bias in the encylcopedia makes it unsuitable for use as a serious reference work.

This is a complex problem, and not one that can be easily solved. Some have even proposed a formal peer review process for articles. But there might be a way to increase the awareness of potential problems without the organizational overhead of trying to coordinate formal reviews of a constantly-changing work.

Here's my idea in a nutshell: every article in the Wikipedia should include a mathematically-calculated "reliability score" that gives the user a general idea of how likely the article is to be correct.

It would take some work to figure out the perfect formula for this. My initial thinking is that more page views and more edits should generally increase the score, since this indicates that the article has been subjected to a high level of scrutiny. A large number of recent edits (say, within the last 6 months), however, should reduce the score, since this tends to indicate that the article is in flux. Long edits (based on percentage of total article length) should, in general, also reduce the score more than "minor" edits, since they fundamentally change the content of the article.

It would also be possible to incorporate subjective criteria -- for example, number of sites linking to the article according to Google, and perhaps a rating system where users can vote on the accuracy of the information (along the lines of the "did you find this article helpful" links you often see in tech support databases.)

These factors would need to be incorporated in such a way that one person could not unduly influence the ranking.

It is possible that someone has already proposed this idea (if so, someone please point me in the right direction.) If not, consider it proposed!

the company we keep

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Mi hermano va a viajar a España con mí y mis padres.

After some deliberation, my youngest brother has decided to join us on the trip to Spain in October. This is the brother currently living a life of poverty while working at an after-school program for inner city youth, so the money is an issue. But we found a really good airfare ($110 less than my parents and I paid for the same trip! grr.) And we agreed on various measures to keep his costs down. So this is slowly turning into a family trip. Should be an interesting experience, since the furthest we ever made it on family vacations when I was little was to Michigan.

The other brother is still deliberating, but doesn't seem especially interested in going to Spain in the first place.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Washington

Being an explication of known and unknown sites and attractions in our nation's capitol, as recorded by a former resident and frequent visitor.

A friend of mine from Nashville is going on vacation to Washington DC next week, and asked me for a few touristic recommendations. Once I got started, I couldn't stop. So here's a long essay on the subject. Feel free to add your own sugestions.

Museums:

Washington DC is lousy with museums -- and most of them are free since they are part of the taxpayer-financed Smithsonian Institution. Here are a few ideas:

The insect zoo (now brought to you by Orkin, which cracks me up) is in the National Museum of Natural History, which is right off the Mall. (It's one of the domed buildings close on the Capitol end -- the other is the old wing of the National Gallery.) Other popular things there include the giant taxidermied elephant in the rotunda (which I remember seeing when I was in elementary school), the gems and minerals exhibit (including the "cursed" Hope diamond), and the Dino bones.

The Air and Space museum, across the mall from there, is the most popular of all the Smithsonian museums, but it's generally really crowded and last time I was there the exhibits seemed a bit tired. It was planned/built in the early 1970s when space exploration was in vogue, but I don't think it has been maintained very well. Supposedly they began a major remodel recently, so it may be improving.

The museum of American History is interesting, although a lot depends on what exhibits they have going on when you're there. They used to have a history of computing exhibit, but I haven't been there in a while so I don't know if it still exists or is worth seeing. It also used to have a massive pendulum that swung from the roof to the basement. I believed they still have this but may have shortened it substantially to make more exhibit space.

There are a ton of lesser-known museums that might be interesting depending on your taste. The National Postal Museum is surprisingly interesting (and convenient, since it's right across the street from Union Station, which is worth seeing in its own right.) The National Building Museum is also supposed to be good, although I've actually never been in it. (Although I think that's the building that my parents took refuge in when I was 6 years old or so and we got caught in a massive storm downtown.) The National Museum of the American Indian is brand new, and definitely interesting. (Although it's not exactly like a traditional museum -- more like a freeform stream of conciousness.)

There are also some well-regarded private museums. The Holocaust Museum is supposed to very good, but I've never been. (It always seems like a bit of a downer when you're sightseeing with friends, which is usually how I see these things lately.) The International Spy Museum is also supposed to be good, but you have to pay admission and make reservations. (Didn't know about the reservations thing last time, so we only got as far as the gift shop.) And the Corcoran Gallery of Art was another frequent field trip in grade school, but since I haven't been there in years I'm don't' recall many details.

Other stuff:

An architectural gem that I only discovered last year when I went up for the archives training is the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Notice that the carvings of American cherubs are all engaged in useful professions, not lounging around like those lazy European cherubs of yesteryear! The main reading room alone is pretty spectacular -- but maybe that's just my affinity for libraries showing through.

It's worth it to take a walk around the reflecting-pool end of the mall, where you can see the Lincoln memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument, and the new WWII memorial. Unfortunately there's no Metro right in this area, so you either need to walk down from the Smithsonian stop or walk in from Foggy Bottom or another stop further inland. Despite having lived in DC for the bulk of my life, I have never actually been up the Washington Monument. The last several times I tried, it has been closed -- first for restoration, and then for landscaping and security upgrades. Last October it was still closed, but maybe if your lucky it will be reopened by now.

If you want to do some more walking, the Korean War Memorial, the FDR Memorial, and the Tidal Basin/Jefferson Memorial are all between the reflecting pool and the river. (There's a good map of all the sights in the "monumental core" right here. A lot of these green spaces around the mall were covered by "temporary" buildings during WWII to house the growing ranks of government bureaucrats. These "temporaries" ended up lasting for decades -- my grandfather worked in one for years.

Arlington National Cemetery is interesting, but perhaps a bit ambitious if you're traveling with a kid. Things to see are the changing of the guard, the Kennedy gravesite, and the cemetery itself. It was built around Robert E. Lee's family house during the civil war after the government took the land to spite him for leading the confederate army. One of the first 20 or so gravestones down the row from the house is Somebody Packard (forget his first name), who is one of my ancestors. He was in a unit from Maine and died in one of the battles in Virginia. This is not in the tour books, but I figured I'd throw it in for your edification.

Don't imagine you'll want to do much of this with a kid in tow, one interesting place to go hiking is Roosevelt Island (in the Potomac -- you can walk there from the Roslyn stop if you don't mind dodging traffic and taking a long detour to get across an unfortunately-placed highway. Or you can drive to it on the GW parkway.) The island is mostly made up of wooded trails, but in the middle is a slightly bombastic monument to Teddy Roosevelt featuring a massive statue of the man himself. Another good hiking place is Great Falls, where the Potomac crashes down across the fall line. The Virginia side includes the remains of an old canal that bypassed the falls, with massive walls blasted out of rock, as well as the more spectacular view of the falls. The Maryland side is a smaller backwater, but also has the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal, a restored canal with a hikable towpath that runs along the Potomac from Georgetown (in DC) to Cumberland, MD. (Despite the name, they never quite made it to Ohio.)

Another place I haven't been in years but is probably a good stop is the National Zoo, which is located a ways from downtown but is convenient to Metro. The National Cathedral is another very cool stop, although it is pretty much inaccessible via MetroRail. But you can take a bus or drive pretty easily. I was last there in College when we filmed a documentary on eclesiastical needlepoint that featured staff experts at the cathedral.

If you want to see a movie in an "old school" huge screen movie theater, you can go to the Uptown in Cleveland Park, which is one of the few survivors of the era of great movie theaters. Other interesting places include the Avalon in Friendship Heights, which is an older theater that was preserved by a citizens group (sort of like the Belcourt in Nashville) and now shows arty films. The AFI Silver Theater in downtown Silver Spring is another old theater that has been fixed up, although I haven't been in it yet.

Restaurants:

As I mentioned, my grasp of the DC restaurant scene is a bit shallow since I haven't actually lived there full time in years. But here are two places I've eaten at recently that were pretty good. Both are in the Maryland suburbs, since I tend to spend most of my time in the Takoma Park/Silver Spring/College Park orbit when I'm home.

• Woomi Garden According to the Koreans who share my mom's church building, this restaurant in Wheaton is one of the best Korean restaurants in the area.
• Samantha's Tiny Salvadoran restaurant in suburban Silver Spring, and a favorite of my parents.

I'm also crushed because I was going to recommend Haussner's, a family tradition in Baltimore that had been around since the 1920s. Unfortunately, it appears that it closed in 1999 and its massive art collection has been auctioned off. In addition to hundreds of paintings and Maryland specialties like fried soft-shell crab, they had a giant 800lb ball of twine that had been amassed by saving the string from napkin deliveries. Despite the German heritage of the restaurant, I remember my Grandfather mispelling his last name (Dichtel) as "DICKTELL" when making reservations to ensure correct pronunciation.

Big news - Boston Bound (eventually)

I've been pretty quiet lately because I've been busy trying to plan the rest of my life. The good news is that I think I've finally figured it out -- at least up through next January.

As you may know, I wear at least two hats in my current job: IT Manager and Library/Archives Manager. I like aspects of both things, but I've also become frustrated with the amount of time I spend dealing with day-to-day technical support issues. And the 24x7 support pager is getting really old.

I've also become increasingly interested in the Library and Archives side of my job, to the point of attending the Modern Archives insistute at the National Archives last January. I enjoy working with this stuff, and would like to nudge my career toward it. But given the hybrid nature of my what I do now, it's hard to find time to focus on the stuff that I really enjoy. Furthermore, I don't have the formal training that will open doors to the truly interesting jobs in the field.

So I've decided to go back to school (part or full time TBA) to pursue a MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science) with an archival concentration. Back in January, I applied to three schools that offered these programs: University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland, and Simmons College (Boston). Pitt and Maryland are both massive public schools, and while Simmons is a tiny undergraduate women's college in Boston with a well-regarded coed graduate Library school. I have been accepted into all three programs.

After much deliberation and visits to two of the three schools, I have pretty much decided on Simmons. I was very impressed program, and the faculty, staff, and students I met were extremely supportive. The archival program is top notch, featuring internships and teaching partnerships with dozens of institutions in the greater Boston area. Furthermore, the school seems to have a real commitment to self examination and improvement -- all course evaluations are published in binders in the student lounge for others to read. Furthermore, the school shares a brand new, well appointed, building with the graduate school of Social Work, and is in a great location in the heart of Boston -- a place I've already decided I wouldn't mind living (except for the rent -- yikes!).

Simmons also offers a dual degree program leading to an MLS archival concentration/MA in History. I was accepted to this program, and am seriously considering sticking with it. While it would take a bit longer than the MLS alone, it seems like a really interesting way to emphasize that I can do more than IT.

So having made the decision to move to Boston to pursue this at some point, the next big question is when. I go back and forth about how badly I want out of my job. There are days when I'm ready to walk out and never come back, and others when I really enjoy what I'm working on. Lately the former have been more common. So it wouldn't pain me much to leave in a month or two and head up to Boston for the Fall semester. But there are drawbacks to this plan. I have a lot of documentation, organization, and prep work that I need to do so that someone else can take over for me (my "to file" pile alone will likely take me a few weeks to excavate!) And I can use the extra money, given my concerns about expenses during my return to the land of financial aid. But the biggest factor is my recently stepped-up efforts to learn Spanish. I've been taking classes at the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute since January, and have decided that I'd really like to get to the point where I'm more or less fluent in the language. I have a long way to go, but I'm getting there. As part of this effort, I convinced my parents that they should go to Spain on vacation and take me along as a translator. Our original plan was to go sometime in the spring or summer, but as schedules came together it became clear that the only time that would work their usual vacation window in October. So starting school in September would preclude me from doing the Spain trip, something that I might not have the time/money to do once I'm back in school and struggling to make ends meet.

Because of this, I've decided to defer my admission to Simmons until January in order to go to Spain. In fact, I pulled together a conference call today with my Mom in Ocean City (there for a pastoral retreat of all things), my Dad somewhere on I-95 in Virginia, and me in my office in Nashville. After a lot of Internet searching, we went ahead and purchased three tickets from Washington to Madrid leaving on my mom's birthday (Sept. 25) and coming back on my parents' anniversary (Oct. 16.) At least that's what we hope will happen -- ten minutes I ordered the tickets, my dad called back to inform me that he'd just heard on NPR that US Airways was in merger talks with America West. So assuming the new company still goes to Madrid in October...

So to sum up, my rough plan is to stay in my current job until Septemberish, go to Spain and pratice my Spanish, come back and then work for another month or two while simultaneously moving out of my house and somehow arranging for all my stuff to go somewhere in Boston. I don't quite know when I'll actually leave the company, but my best guess is that it will be sometime in November or December. Depends on how long they want to keep me around as a lame duck, and whether I figure out something better to do with my time.

I will simultaneously be looking at potential living arrangments and jobs in Boston. I'm not thrilled about working full time while going to school, but I also have to face the unfortunate reality of the Boston rental market. So I'm probably going to look around for something interesting but not too taxing that I can do while going to school. If I could find a job with a generous tuition reimbursement benefit, so much the better. Hmm....

That's the big news from over this way. Still dotting the I's and crossing the T's, but I finally feel like I have a plan.

Spam as Art

There's somethingsurreal and intriguing about the nonsense text tacked on the bottom of spam to thwart filters. I assume it's probably generated through some nefarious process that misappropriates snippets of private e-mail. But I find it amusing anyway:

this site is good way to get in touch with past and present friends feel free to email me anytime s rogers -- bendix to bendix g e to g e.
oh and that little moment between ginny and luciusry ry unexpected and cool and very ood!lucius in a way so there are weasleys who can see shades of gray in the malfoys after all.
the bandits are hiding behind the tank as the train under the false order stops to take water just before she pulls out they stealthily board the train between the express car and the tender.
i had my second session the other day i was worried that my trance training would not be strong enough for a good experience.
- free space of linux webhosting is also provided we are happy to present services of registration new domain name space offers ad free webhosting domains and free email address.
i really would lik e to see some male male pairings like giles wesley but as long as you keep writing i will be completely happy.
em breve esse frenesi silencioso essa placidez delirante essa força delicada que é carmita viana aparece ao público de novo depois dessa exposição no burburinho.
arghs blogger won t let me post so sorry if i didn t post it until like a day
later blame it on blogger and sorry to cherie and michelle if i couldn t post it on time.
directing actors audience expectation suspense surprise violence humor dynamic dialogue scenes static dialogue scenes group dialogue scenes tips documentaries experimental.
- freeservers is one of the oldest free web hosts still offering free web space and a solid hosting platform get a free web site or try one of our unbeatable premium hosting services today! choose.
as long as george w dosn t decide against rattifying it and as for his santa claus defence system well !
incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored from nicholas webb.

Blogging while intoxicated

Somewhat drunk and watching a sappy romantic movie. I've been horribly remiss about updating this blog. But suffice it to say that big changes may be in the offing. Have been accepted at two of the three library schools that I've applied to. I've been hesitant to write about this, because it's all so speculative. But (at least in my drunken stupor) I've become convinced that it's time to make a change. It's not that I really have anything against Nashville or my current job. But I feel like it's time to do something different. And this is difficult when I am stuck in my humdrum existence of malfunctioning servers and complaining users. I feel like I'm in a rut (socially, intellectually, and romantically), and it's time to use some figurative dynamite to get out of it.

It must be nice to be truly rich. Not because of the things you can buy. I think you would quickly beome accustomed to these and they would cease to matter. But because you truly have the freedom to drop everything and pursue your dreams without worrying about the financial consequences. Last night I saw a show on PBS about an English guy (whose family had an estate) who was devoting his life to finding a new species of orchid to name after his grandmother. This is the sort of thing that you can only pursue when you either have more money than God or less sense than a hatmaker on crack. In this case, I'm pretty sure it was the former.

I have to settle for finding a middle ground between total conformity and total irresponsibility. For the moment, this means looking at library schools, planning a possible trip to Spain with my parents (hopefully a chance to use my developing Spanish skills) and looking for new experiences where I am right now.

I've had another IT job drop out of the sky within a 30 minute from one of the library schools I've applied to. But this is the one school that hasn't actually accepted me yet, and I'm not sure the job would really be a good career move anyway. So I'm pondering what to do about that.

Meanwhile, my parents' house was broken into, and my mom's engagement ring was stolen, along with most of the rest of her jewelery, their DVD player, my brother's class ring, etc. This is one of those things that could be a lot worse, but at the same time it stinks. It's just stuff -- as I told my mom when she called me the night it happened -- but it's stuff with immense sentimental value. They have a detective assigned to the case, but based on the MO they don't have a lot of faith that much will be recovered. Sounds like the perps were mainly interested in things that could be sold quickly on the street for drug money.

In other news, I've spent three of the last four weekend days working on a Habitat for Humanity house sponsored by my employer. I frequently worked on construction projects in high school and college, both through theater construction and through Habitat-type projects. But this is the first time in a while that I've spent more than a few hours at a time on this sort of thing, and I'm remembering why I liked it so much. There's something incredibly fulfilling about seeing a structure rise in the course of a few days and knowing that you had something to do with it. (On the downside, whacked myself in the face with the claw of a hammer yesterday. Despite all the blood, however, this turned out to be a pretty minor injury, and it really didn't hurt that much!)

4-year-old gets munchies, drives to store at 1:30 AM

You may have thought you didn't need to worry about this sort of thing until the teenage years. But kids grow up fast these days.

More on the WHFS/El Zol Metamorphoses

Today's Washington Post had an interesting article on the challenges Infinty broadcasting faces with El Zol, as it tries to mastermind the succesful conversion of an alt-rock station into a spanish language outlet aimed at DC's diverse Hispanic community.

Interestingly, when you go to WHFS.com, you are now redirected to AOL Radio, which is supposedly bringing the old HFS back to life on the Web.

A big shout out... In which D- get's off his butt and actually reads what y'all are up to.

I've been almost as bad about reading other people's blogs as I have been in writing my own. So I just now came across this musing that Karen posted sometime last week. I thought it was dead on -- so did a lot of other people, apparently:

[S]ometimes I seriously feel like an imposter in my life. My nurse practioner said today that she thinks we all feel like that. That sometime around age 18 we stop really believing the things in our lives. I sometimes look around and wonder who's house I'm in, who's car I'm driving, when I even got a driver's license (I didn't get one until I was almost out of college), how I ended up married, and so on. It's surreal sometimes. I feel like yesterday I was greaduating from high school and today, I'm married, have a kid (albeit temporary), have a house, have a car (and a license to drive it!), have art, have a real job. Seriously, when did I stop "playing grown up" and become an adult? Weird.

Yeah, I'm a freak. But seriously, lots of people have told me they feel the same way. So maybe I'm not crazy (at least not about this imposter thing).

Oh yeah... While we're sending out the catchup love, here's a belated happy first birthday to that kid over at Polygon. I can honestly say I knew him when his main motor accomplishment was bonking himself in the head -- and now he's walking and stuff! Obviously good parenting at work. :-)

Continuing best wishes to Vail who is struggling with one construction nightmare after another -- which she is handling with her usual grace and aplomb.

Long overdue congratulations to J. over at the Last Page, who evidently up and eloped to Vegas while I wasn't looking!

Laura understandably laments the loss of WHFS -- a staple of high school radio that suddenly and with no warning transformed itself into a Spanish language radio station. Not that I have anything against Spanish language stations -- in fact, what with my Spanish class and all I've become a bit of a Univision addict. But HFS was a fixture, and one of the more truly local stations in the DC area. It will be missed.

And Danielle's brother is continuing to improve -- which is very good news.

Tracy's supposed to be studying -- but instead she's playing with MP3s and lusting after an iPod Shuffle. I can dig. (Her last mix CD is still frequent roation in my car, so I can state with certainty that her procrastination is more productive than mine!)

On a related note, iTunes just begin playing "Hotel California" as realized by the Raleigh Ringers handbell choir. I am very amused. And impressed, given that the handbell choir I played in years ago didn't have the chops for much classic rock! That song ended, so now I'm listening to "Flieg nicht so hoch, mein kleiner Freund" -- German language country/western at it's best.

Paint factory escape, part II

You may remember the little stream of conciousness about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that I posted back in mid-December. I've been pretty lousy about blogging lately, but I figured it was about time to post an update for my two or three loyal readers.

As I vaguely remember telling a friend in a bar on Friday night, this really isn't precisely about escaping my job, so much as it is taking charge of my life. I could see scenarios where I could be happy where I am now. But I think it's going to be easier for me to make the life-changes I need to make if I'm not fighting 6 years of intertia. And I also think that this might be a good time to pick up some skills and credentials that will expand my career options further beyond the technology ghetto.

So, over the last month, I have applied to three graduate programs in Library & Information Science. (Link, link, and link.) I was looking at a dual program in Library/Archives and history at the two schools that offered it. I'm not sure if I really want to pursue that route, but the consensus was that it would be easier to drop a second program than to add one. But there were logistical problems associated with applying to the Maryland program. Because I already have a good track record in a Masters program, most schools do not require a GRE. But the Maryland history department does require it, and even if I had sat for the test immediately upon realizing this, my admissions portfolio would have been incomplete until at least a month after the deadline. So I decided not to apply for the dual program at Maryland. Simmons did not require the GRE, so I went ahead and applied for the dual program.

You may be wondering how I decided on these three schools. I was interested in programs with archival specializations, which narrowed the field somewhat. Simmons and Maryland both have very strong programs in this area. (Maryland is situated right next to the new National Archives in College Park, so it's a great location for that sort of thing.) Pitt has an archival option, and I also noticed that faculty are doing research on digital preservation, something else that I'm interested in. And then there's geography. Boston is ideal since I already have a lot of friends there. Maryland is also good, in that I grew up there and still have family and a few friends in the area. Pitt would be a bit of a leap, but it's still many hours closer to DC, NYC, Boston, and other Northeastern places I frequent.

I looked briefly at UCLA, partly because I think California would be an interesting change of scenery. But UC has an unbelievably strict "bilk the out-of-state students" policy that means you'll pay about $15,000 more per year if you're not from around those parts. To avoid this, you have to have lived in CA for at least a year -- and they'll check your drivers license, utility bills, ATM receipts, and possibly even major body cavities before they'll grant you in-state status. This all just seemed like a bit more hassle than I felt like dealing with, so I stuck mainly to eastern schools with less draconian out-of-state tuition policies.

I think the required forms, recommendations, transcripts, etc. have all been submitted, so it's just a waiting game at this point. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I talked to my current and former bosses about the possibility that I might be outta here later this year, and they were both very supportive. The new boss also seems willing to rearrange my responsibilities to nudge them more toward what I'm interested in. (But as I mentioned above, this is about more than just not liking my job.) And he talked about other opportunities elsewhere in the corporation, possible consulting, etc. I'm keeping my options open on this, since as of yet I have no idea how I'm going to pay for a 1-2 year descent into academia. I've been careful to emphasize that no concrete decisions have been made as of yet.

In the meantime, I began a noncredit Spanish class at the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute. I initially signed up for the class geared toward total beginners, but I quickly realized that I had retained more than I thought from my two years of middle school Spanish and my frantic study sessions prior to last year's Mexico City trip. So I transferred into the next class up, which seems to be a better fit. In addition to the classes themselves, I've been watching Univision religiously, and have been working through a growing pile of flash cards. I'm making progress slowly, although it's going to be a long journey toward a fully functional Spanish vocabulary.

In other news, I'm heading to Florida for a few days in the middle of February to talk to a vendor and various other corporate flunkies about the possibility that an unofficial, unauthorized IT system we've helped develop may suddenly become very much official and authorized, and be rolled out to other branches of the company. And the day after I get back, I've been coerced at the last minute into teaching a class on "Digital Asset Management for Newspapers" at a conference in town. (If you have any ideas on what should be in such a class, I'd love to hear them -- it's not coming together very easily.)

Systems analysis and your sock drawer

Nova ScienceNOW just ran* this amusing segment about a robotics engineer at MIT who has taken a systems analysis approach to his life. For example, he has determined that it is inefficient to do laundry more than once a month, so he has expanded his wardrobe to incclude six weeks worth of clothing. And he plans his time to the point where he only ties his shoes at traffic lights. The only problem? His girlfriend says he's always late.

Daniel, this one's for you.

* Just ran... As in, just ran on my ReplayTV. really it ran sometime earlier in the week.

Christmas Snapshots

		ABOVE: My brother. Or maybe a character from Chicken Run. We're not sure. LEFT:Mom hard at work...
More pics...

Another year, another catchup post

Once again I find myself having skipped weeks at a time in this blog. So I will once again follow my time honored tradition of using a bulleted list rather than actual descriptive writing. (Thank God for <ul>!)

• Drove 12 hours home for Christmas, barely making it in time for my Mom's Christmas Eve service. (Wouldn't want to know the consequences of missing that one.)

• Hung out with family.

• Spent a full two days working on the office computer network at the church. Got the new front office machine and the fax/printer working. But my Mom's laptop crashed 6 times in the first two hours, including one crash requiring a fresh ghosting from the recovery CD. Sent that sucker back to Toshiba, which means that I'm probably going to have to fly up again to finish this project. Someone from work mentioned that a friend's daughter works as a techie in DC but has to fix her Mom's computer whenvever she comes home to Tennessee for the holidays. Meanwhile I live in Nashville and have to fix my Mom's computer whenever I'm home in DC. Maybe what we need is a nationwide cooperative of techies who agree to work on other people's parents' machines in return for "credits" that could be used to buy tech support for their own parents. Hmm....

• After valiant attempts to lure various northern friends to Nashville, I again copped out and went to Boston for New Years. Actually, I convinced my brother to go with me, which was fun. Except for the fact that, due to his non-existent finances, we drove, and it took 12 hours in each direction. On the way there, we ate at a nifty little diner north of Baltimore. On the way back, we met up with my friend Brian in New Jersey. Yes, that Brian.

• In Boston, I visited a bunch of friends, helped unload a u-haul (after we spent over an hour trying to dislodge the stuck door), watched a New Years Parade and some fireworks, ate Indian food, and watched football.

• Drove back to DC. Arrived much later than expected, so scrapped plans to continue to Nashville. Instead met up with other brother, made grocery run, and made fajitas. (Parents had just hosted a lobster dinner for a friend, but us kids weren't invited. Oh, well.)

• Finally got out of the house around 11 AM the next day. Drove all day and arrived back in Nashville around 11 PM. The total for the trip was around 2,500 miles, which I believe is more than I drove in the first 11.5 months of 2004.

• Went to work on Tuesday. As day wore on, my disturbing cough became worse, and tiredness and disorientation set in. Despite this, stayed until late at night trying to get caught up.

• Woke up Wednesday and could barely move. Called in sick and spent day sleeping and/or wishing for death. The worst was the high fever stage around 8 P.M., when I called my Dad from under a pile of blankets and pillows, figuring that I should relate the contents of my last will and testament.

• Thursday was a lot better, although I stayed home from work again to be safe. I actually felt up to some simple cooking, so made some of my new favorite oatmeal that my Hibernophile parents hooked me on over the holidays.

• Back to work on Friday. Ugh.

• Saturday slept in, then did some things around the house. Filled a few photo orders from the reunion I shot back in October. Went to see A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was visually stunning but didn't really grab me. Went grocery shopping for a few things. Read Fist Stick Knife Gun, a fascinating book about urban violence given to me by my brother.

• Sunday, the cable guy came and fixed my fuzzy reception. Pondered the looming pile of grad school applications, but didn't really do nearly enough work on them.

• This week has been work punctuated with various other things. More on the other things in the next post.

Christmas, as hurriedly dashed off in an e-mail to a coworker

Made it to DC ok -- although I didn't actually get out of Nashville until 10:00 on Thurs, so was worried about making it in time for my mom's Xmas eve services. Drove until about 3AM (4AM eastern), and then slept at Motel 6 for about 5 hours. Then drove another 6-7 hours and got in with an hour or so to spare. Then to the church, where I took photos for their website effort. Then to a party hosted by one of my mom's widower parishoners, at which he proposed marriage to his girlfriend! Then home, to bed. Today was a bit more laid back -- xmas presents and stuff in the AM and family dinner in the evening.

No snow here -- in fact, once I got a few hours away from Nashville everything was totally clear. It is cold, though -- I still have the remains of the Nashville ice storm on my truck.

Anyway, was checking in because I got a voicemail about a server problem. Need to sleep now!

It's time of shutdown!!

One of the software packages we use at work was programmed by a ragtag band of Russian programmers hired at sweatshop wages following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They may have been C++ gurus, but their linguistic prowess didn't always extend to English. I'm always amused by the odd turns of phrase I find buried throughout the system. Like this one, from a log file generated by one of the servers:

My own little paint factory?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the trajectory of my life. (Yup. It's going to be one of those "deep thoughts" posts. If you're looking for more laundry disasters and other typical NK pap, try back tomorrow.)

In some ways, I feel like I've always followed the path of least resistance when making major life-decisions. This seems like an odd statement, given how hard I work at the things I take on. But I feel like I've sometimes made decisions by default, basing them on the collective "common sense" of society and not on what I really want to do. My technology career is a perfect example: it's based more on a knack for the work than a deep passion. And lately I've been wondering if I really want to spend another 30 years doing more of the same.

I was struck by this tribute to a man I knew only as a wizened old movie reviewer with a cluttered office.

During his travels, Mr. Wyatt visited more than 100 countries. Over the years, he rode a camel by the pyramids in Egypt, lectured at a college in Kyoto, met with dissidents in pre-Velvet Revolution Prague and strolled among ancient Incan ruins in Peru. [...] Mr. Wyatt graduated from North (Nashville) High and David Lipscomb College and held a law degree from Vanderbilt University. He also studied Russian history and language for two years and took an Arabic language course at the University of Baghdad from 1945 to 1946. Mr. Wyatt served for 2½ years as a crypto analyst in the Military Intelligence Service, mostly in the USSR and the Middle East. [...]The longtime reporter, editor and lawyer merged his journalistic and legal interests in reporting on legal aspects of race relations in the 1950s.

Will my obituary be that interesting? Not at the rate I'm going. Here lies D-, struck down in his prime. He, umm, did something with computers.

As this was marinating somewhere in the back of my brain, I saw this story in the paper:

A mower, some cans and a dream of the Gulf

In mid-October, Bainbridge got bored with Indiana, his home for most of his adult life. Unable because of an injury from a severe auto accident to hold a job and unwilling to be trapped in "factory work" even if his back were stronger, the Hoosier said he "just felt like he had to get out while he could."

So Bainbridge, 44, cranked up his 34-year-old Massey Ferguson lawn mower — bought for a song for $35 — hitched on a small trailer that serves as his home on wheels and headed for the Gulf of Mexico … picking up a small mountain of discarded beer and soda pop aluminum cans to finance his trip along the way.

Last weekend, Bainbridge slowly rolled through Lebanon and into Murfreesboro on U.S. 231, attracting stares and a few waves.

[...]

If all goes as planned, he'll ride his lawn mower to the Gulf, dip his toe in the surf and "turn left."

"I'll go through Georgia and turn north. I've always wanted to go to Maine," he said.

Here's another guy whose obituary will not lack for interesting material. I was captivated by his ability to simply shake off "common sense" in pursuit of happiness. Then today I read Quitting the Paint Factory: On the virtues of idleness , an essay by Michael Slouka that finally brought this all together for me:

Increasingly, it seems to me, our world is dividing into two kinds of things: those that aid work, or at least represent a path to it, and those that don't Things in the first category are good and noble; things in the second aren't. Thus, for example, education is good (as long as we don't have to listen to any of that "end in itself" nonsense) because it will pre­sumably lead to work. Thus playing the piano or swimming the 100-yard backstroke are good things for a fifteen-year-old to do not because they might give her some pleasure but because rumor has it that Princeton is interested in students who can play Chopin or swim quickly on their backs (and a degree from Princeton, as any fool knows, can be readily converted to work).

Point the beam anywhere, and there's the God of Work, busily trampling out the vintage. Blizzards are bemoaned because they keep us from getting to work. Hobbies are seen as either ridiculous or self-indulgent because they interfere with work. Longer school days are all the rage (even as our children grow demonstrably stupider), not because they make educational or psychological or any other kind of sense but because keeping kids in school longer makes it easier for us to work. Meanwhile, the time grows short, the margin narrows; the white spaces on our calendars have been inked in for months. We're angry about this, upset about that, but who has the time to do anything anymore? There are those reports to re­port on, memos to remember, emails to deflect or delete. They bury us like snow.

The alarm rings and we're off, running so hard that by the time we stop we're too tired to do much of anything except nod in front of the TV, which, like virtually all the other voices in our culture, endorses our exhaustion, fetishizes and romanticizes it and, by daily adding its little trowelful of lies and omissions, helps cement the conviction that not only is this how our three score and ten must be spent but that the transaction is both noble and necessary.

[...] All of which leaves only the task of explaining away those few miscreants who out of some inner weakness or perversity either refuse to convert or who go along and then, in their thirty-sixth year in the choir, say, abruptly abandon the faith. Those in the first category are relatively easy to contend with; they are simply losers. Those in the second are a bit more difficult; their apostasy requires something more ….. dramatic. They are considered mad.

In the final analysis, Slouka relates the obsession with work and the antipathy toward idleness to proto-fascist ideals of the early 20th century -- and lays out his belief that America's obsession with "success" (as achieved through work) is destroying our democratic society. Idleness, as distinct from the commercialized idea of "Leisure", is necessary because it allows time for reason and informed decision-making:

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due.

[...]

Could the Church of Work – which today has Americans aspir­ing to sleep deprivation the way they once aspired to a personal knowledge of God – be, at base, an anti-democratic force? Well, yes. James Russell Lowell, that nineteenth-century workhorse, summed it all up quite neatly: "There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and sav­ing it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

Quite so. The mind, however, particularly the mind of a citizen in a de­mocratic society, is not a boat. Ballast is not what it needs, and steadiness, alas, can be a synonym for stupidity, as our current administration has so am­ply demonstrated. No, what the democratic mind requires, above all, is time; time to consider its options. Time to develop the democratic virtues of independence, orneriness, objectivity, and fairness. Time, perhaps (to sail along with Lowell's leaky metaphor for a moment), to ponder the course our unelected captains have so generously set for us, and to consider mutiny when the iceberg looms.

So what does all this mean for me? I don't know quite yet. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

There are some things I'd like to do that have always seemed somewhat incompatible with my day-to-day Office Space existence. For example, I'm attracted to the idea of iving in a foreign country long enough to become comfortable speaking the language. (The top candidates for this would be Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, or somewhere in Central or South America, since I already have a slight linguistic headstart in German and Spanish. But I'm not all that picky.)

I've also been thinking about my longterm professional plans. Right now my job is split between a traditional techie job and managing an internal research library and archive. The techie stuff is lucrative, but there are big parts of it that I just don't enjoy that much, at least the way my job is currently structured.

On the other hand, I really enjoy a lot of the work I do in the library and archives. The problem is that my company really doesn't place that much value on this. Officially it's 15% of my job description. And in the constant battles over time and resources, things like organizing 70 years of photographic prints take a backseat to fixing laptops.

Furthermore, while I've had some training in archival management and now have several years of on-the-job experience, I'm smart enough to know how much I don't know. Most organizations that take this sort of thing seriously look for degrees in history, preservation, and library science. My liberal arts, journalism, and technology management background is a good start, but it's probably not enough to open some of the most interesting doors in the field. So I've been pondering what sort of course correction it would take to steer my career toward greener pastures. Perhaps the most likely scenario involves quitting my job and going back to school full time for a few years. (Maybe pursuing program like this.)

Of course, all these major life-changes would represent a huge financial hit -- something I'm still working through. But they might also be an opportunity to escape the corporate quicksand into which I fear I'm sinking. Maybe it's time for me to escape.

Dissonance

The Nashville Symphony's performance of Handel's Messiah (at the Ryman) ended at precisely the same time as the WWE Smackdown at the Gaylord Entertainment Center. Walking down lower Broadway, it was pretty easy to tell who had been to which event.

fade to orange

I was pouring bleach into the washing machine, and leaned the bottle against my dark gray t-shirt. Apparently there was a bit of bleach on the bottom. Now my shirt has an orange parabola emblazoned across the front. Drat.

On the other hand, since the shirt's ruined anyway, this may be a perfect opportunity to play with my new Clorox Bleach Pen (TM). Maybe if I further disfigure the shirt people will think I meant to do it in the first place.

the hiatus

Obviously I've been pretty bad about blogging lately. There are a lot of reasons for that. For one thing, I used to use blogging to procrastinate on schoolwork. Unlike other procrastination techniques, I could actually tell myself that I was working. After all, I was in front of the computer, right?

Now that I've graduated, I am no longer spending as much non-work time in front of the computer. And my goofing off is taking other forms -- for example, I actually get to read books that don't appear on a syllabus.

Plus, I've been a bit down in the dumps for the last few weeks, and haven't felt like sharing my blues with the world.

But not blogging is cumulative -- the longer you don't do it, the harder it is to get back in the swing of things, because the more you've missed. So this post marks my effort to catch up and get back on track.

We'll begin with a list of things I've done in the last month, in occasionally almost chronological order:

• Visited DC for a quick weekend with college buddies Aaron and Jay who were in town for a wedding.
• Took cab from Union station to their hotel. Went out in the rain. Found trendy asian fusion restaurant. Ate. Went back to hotel bar. Hung out with wedding party. Drank. Returned to room. Slept.
• Woke up. Walked around DC a lot. (8 miles or so, based on my quick calculations with a tourist map.) Met up with various other folks who happened to be in town.
• Went to the World War II memorial, the Spy Museum (but didn't get in -- you need reservations! Who knew?), the Natural History museum, the new Museum of the American Indian, and various other places. Tried once again to go up the Washington Monument, but apparently after years of renovations on the inside, they have now closed it so that they can landscape the grounds.
• Met with committees at Mom's church about technology and websites.
• Back to Nashville.
• Work and stuff.
• Saw movies: I (Heart) Huckabees, Donnie Darko Director's Cut, and Primer. Is it just me, or have there been a lot of metaphysics flicks lately?
• Went home for Thanksgiving.
• Enjoyed life sans electricity for most of Thanksgiving day.
• Learned that even gas ovens are now dependent on electric power. Yearned for a simpler time.
• Explored alternatives: hooking the oven up to a car battery and cooking turkey in a trashcan were among the best options.
• Started cooking Thanksgiving dinner around 4:00 when the power came back on.
• Ate dinner at midnight.
• Played family at Monopoly. Or actually an unauthorized "Urban Remix" edition created with contact paper and a color printer by one of my brother's Urban Promise pals.
• Spent much time ordering and installing $5000 of computer equipment for my mom's office at the church. Get to do more of this at Christmas. Whee.
• Went to Washington City Museum with my dad. Unfortunately, it's closing because they ran out of money. It's in the old main Carnegie library at Mt. Vernon Square, and has cool things like a giant illuminated aerial photo of the city that you can walk around on. Hopefully they'll figure out a way to get more money.
• Went to community Christmas Tree lighting at my Mom's church. Took some photos. Would have been even better if I'd brought a tripod -- had to make do with balancing the camera on fenceposts.
• Back to Nashville. Work. The usual.
• As Tracy noticed, I went to the (night) Christmas Parade on my way home from work last week. It was pretty cool. really. Next time I'll bring gloves.
• Got a new boss. Too early to tell how that's going to turn out.
• Applied my pitiful sewing skills in an attempt to save various items of clothing. It amazes me that people actually wore clothes before the sewing maching was invented. No wonder the Roman Empire came up with the toga concept!
• Made stew, but burned it a bit because a friend called. Chicken/vegetable/matzoh ball soup. That one turned out better.
• Got new down pillows as a belated birthday present from my parents. Last night was the first time I used them, but I didn't get to savor them in the morning due to a work emergency. Gak.
• Finally got paid for the freelance photo/web design job I did in October. And got a dividend check from my insurance company for $46. Yay!

Ok, now I'm all caught up and stuff. So I should be able to blog about my normal silliness without feeling like I'm leaving things out.

Bridal Veil Falls

Another test -- this time I'm trying Flickr's ability to blog photos via e-mail. And yet another image from out west this summer, this time of Bridal Veil Falls in Oregon.

Crater Lake

Crater Lake
Originally uploaded by D-.

I just set up an account with flickr, which I'm hoping will make it a lot easier to quickly post photos to this blog. As a test, you should be seeing a photo I took at Crater Lake over the summer.

Back from a tiring yet awesome weekend trip to DC. Will try to post more later, but now must sleep.

24 hours I would rather forget

It started yesterday morning. I got up late and had a slightly lazy morning at home owing to the fact that I knew I'd be stuck at work dealing with elections until early the next morning.

One of my shamefully-bourgeous habits hiring a cleaning service to come in and remove the top layer of crud once every two weeks. (I started this last year, and it has definitely improved my bachelor pad standard of living.) The normal arrangement is that they are supposed to come Tuesday afternoons. Only their definition of afternoon keeps creeping earlier and earlier. Yesterday it creeped to 11:30 AM, a time when I was happily ensconced in the shower with the bathroom door wide open. I knew they had arrived because I heard people walking around the house. When they realized I was in the shower, they were apparently too flustered to turn off the burglar alarm. So the atmosphere of confusion was enhanced by a loud siren started emanating from the roof of my house.

I staggered out of the shower in a towel, shut off the alarm, and made peace with the assembled masses.

Believe it or not, the day got worse after that.

I finished dressing and cleared out of the house, only to discover (of course) that my truck wouldn't even begin to turn over. It just made a sickly clicking sound when I turned the key. So I bugged one of the cleaning folks to give me a jump start, and things were looking up until I got about a block away and the car died again. Admitting defeat, I called Triple-A, who said they would send someone within an hour to tow it.

They told me that they could call me when the driver was 25 minutes out, so I decided to take a chance. The most important thing I had to do yesterday was vote. So I abandoned my car and hoofed it from my house to the polling place. (I know, I should have voted early. I've already heard that one.)

After waiting in a short line, I was signing my name on the voter roll when my phone rang. The AAA dude said that the tow truck was on its way. So I boogied into the booth, pressed the button for Kerry, and skeedaddled. But as I was walking out the door, AAA dude called back to say that he had screwed up, and that the tow truck was actually already waiting at my car. Ack! So I double-timed it back down to my house, luckily making it before the tow truck driver got fed up and left.

Next was the ride over to CarMax, all the way listening to the tow truck driver tell me how much better his personal truck was than the borrowed truck he was using.

After dropping off the car, I waited around until a friend from work picked me up, and then worked until sometime in the neighborhood of 3:00 AM. (Typical election night in the newsroom: bad food and stressed people yelling a lot.)

Finally went to bed around 5:00 AM, at which point there was still hope that the mysterious provisional ballots in Ohio might yet salvage the Kerry campaign. By the time I woke up at 11:00, the illusion had worn off, and Kerry had called Bush to concede.

So I sit here now digesting the fact that I live in a country full of people who think the Iraq war has been a success, that the economy is just dandy, thankyouverymuch, and that the most important public policy issue for the new millenium is making sure that Steve and Roy can't marry.

Furthermore, the mechanic just called. We've now broken the $500 mark.

Today I am 29 years old.

Like a swarm of locusts with a sweet tooth

Last year I only got a few Trick-or-Treaters, so I wasn't expecting all that many this year. Even so, I loaded my trusty tin bucket 3/4 full of candy just in case.

But for some reason, this year is different and I'm getting hoardes of kids. 2/3 of the candy is already gone, and it's only 7:00! I have this bad feeling that I might run out before the night is through.

Furthermore, the annoying yappy dog next door just wouldn't shut up. Whenever he's left outside after dark (which unfortunately happens with great frequency) he barks pretty steadily. But tonight with the masses of costumed critters around the 'hood, it was especially bad. Furthermore, my usual trick of drowning it out with headphones or the TV wouldn't work, because I needed to listen for Trick-or-Treaters. So after about an hour and a half of continuous barking, I finally got fed up, called the neighbors, and asked if they could PLEASE put the dog inside. I feel like Scrooge McNeighbor, but at least I can finally hear myself think!

"How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?"

It's appropriate that the title of What the #$*! Do We Know!? (AKA 'What the bleep do we know?') is a question, because the film is more about stirring up a tasty goulash of provocative questions than it is about providing any sort of concrete answers. It has been criticized by a number of scientific and religious authorities. And it is one of the few times I can remember a movie audience applauding during the closing credits.

I went to see this movie last night simply because I saw the title on Fandango, clicked through to a description, and decided it sounded interesting. I had no agenda going in. Coming out, I'm not sure. I can say for sure that it's been quite a while since a movie made me think this much.

The film is an effort to relate quantum physics, spiritual mysticism and elements of post-modern thought into a coherent worldview that rejects the idea of objective reality and instead emphasizes the power of thought to influence reality. All this is done through a narrative storyline featuring Marlee Matlin as a neurotic photographer in Portland, Oregon, a bunch of truly phenomenal computer graphics, and a series of talking heads -- everyone from physics professors to "Ramtha," a 35,000 year old prophet allegedly being channeled by a psychic.

In clicking around the Web, I've seen it described as "The Matrix without the robots and computers." I've seen it described as a promotional flick for a new-age cult. I've seen it described as pseudoscientific bunk. In this public radio program, the director shrugs off criticism. He was trying to make people ask questions, he says. That people have a strong reaction to it shows that it worked. The show also features a skeptic of the film and a physicist interviewed in the film, and the two go several rounds about whether the scientific claims hold up. One of the folks on this show said something along the lines of "skepticism is important -- no one should accept ideas blindly without questioning them. But at the same time, skepticism only maintains the status quo. It takes leaps of imagination to move forward."

Interestingly, the idea that advanced physics may provide a theoretical framework for spirituality also popped up in Angels & Demons, a Dan Brown paperback I recently picked up while stranded at National Airport. As a novel, I thought this book wasn't that great (it read like a rough draft for his later and more well known The Da Vinci Code). But one of the premises of the book is that the Vatican had been secretly supporting quantum physics research at CERN because it offered the possibility of resolving conflicts between science and religion. Remarkably similar to the science-spirituality connections hinted at by "What the bleep."

One of the scientists interviewed in the film tells a story about how when the American Indians who first saw Columbus' ships come over the horizon, they literally did not see ships. Instead they saw a large wave in the ocean. They had never seen large ships, so their worldview did not permit such a thing to exist. It was only after a spiritual leader spent several days staring at the sea that he perceived that these were ships bearing people. At this point he passed on this knowledge, and the worldview of the community changed.

Whether or not this story is apocryphal, it effectively encapsulates the concept behind this film -- that the way we perceive the world is rooted in our preconceptions, and that a total paradigm shift is necessary to truly understand human consciousness. Furthermore, advanced science can be integrated with traditional religion to create a new unified worldview.

I honestly don't know what to make of all this, but it already inspired me to spend several hours online reading about physics and mysticism. Fascinating stuff whether or not you buy into film.

Mouse Hunt

The cat cornered yet another mouse, and this time I got to watch the process. I first became aware that something was afoot when I heard a crash in the dining room followed by a squeak and some scuffling. My cat then tore into the office making strange noises and with something hanging out of her mouth. It was yet another mouse.

Here's the thing. Being felis domesticus of the well-fed, 21st century persuasion, my cat apparently views mice not as food, but as self-propelled playthings. So rather than delivering the death blow, she would periodically let the mouse go and then chase it again. This went on long enough to do several complete circuits of the office and dining room while I devised a gameplan to end the carnage.

My eventual plan involved putting on shoes (I had been lazing around barefoot), donning a pair of work gloves, and grabbing my trusty 5-gallon orange Home Depot bucket. I then joined the chase around the dining room. Eventually the cat cornered the mouse near the curtains, after several false starts, I manged to shake the mouse into the bucket from the bottom of the drapes where it had taken refuge. (The cat, not realizing what had happened, is still skulking around the drapes waiting for the mouse to re-emerge.)

The mouse seemed remarkably calm once it got into the bucket. I think it realized it had been given a reprieve from hours of torture by Goldie the Cat. I walked it to the vacant lot across the street and released it, hoping that maybe it won't feel like crossing the street to come back.

The natural order of things

I have my own little "Wild Kingdom" situation going on in the house. Lately I've heard a bit of skittering in the walls. My suspicion that a mouse family had taken up residence were confirmed a couple of weeks ago when I found a dead mouse in the dining room. It was reasonably intact, and I thought perhaps it had died laughing at the cat's efforts to stalk it. (I had noticed her spending a great deal of time staring at the refrigerator -- presumably the doorway to mouse HQ is somewhere back there.)

Early this morning, I arrived home to find a smug looking cat and a another thoroughly disembowled mouse on the dining room rug. And I mean thoroughly. We're talking decapitation and mutilation, folks. I'm writing this entry as in order to avoid the task at hand, which is picking up the pieces. Ugh.

Hopefully that's the last mouse. I'm not looking forward to much more of this.

Keeping up with the news...

Today's highlights:

• William Donald Schaefer is a dumbass, as usual
• Update on what has now become known as the "Voodoo Hand
• Mason's sell out, allow historic building to be demolished by evil developer.

Democracy in action

Last night I escaped from work around 8:30 and dashed over to Two Doors Down, a sports bar where a bunch of Democrats and fellow travelers were getting together to watch the debate. A friend at work told me about this, and I figured it would beat watching it at home or the office. (More beer, if nothing else.) The crowd was pretty tough on Bush, and frankly it was somewhat inspiring to be in a room with a bunch of other people who are fired up about actual issues -- the war, environmental laws, erosion of civil liberties, etc. A pleasant break from the constant horse-race coverage of attack ads and spin.

As the night wore on, one thing led to another, and I suddenly found myself coughing up the $7.50 for a ticket to Michael Moore's appearance at the GEC.

Tonight's event, sponsored by the Music Row Democrats, was kicked off by the head of the Kerry campaign in Tennessee. He introduced a theme present throughout the evening: Kerry could still win Tennessee.

This being music city, there was also a strong musical presence. MRD unveiled Takin' My Country Back a new song produced by Honky Tonkers for Truth. [MP3], and "Bob Something" of Monkey Bowl weighed in with two songs, including Al Gore, featuring a taped cameo by none other than Al Gore, who lives down the street from him in Belle Meade.

The musical headliner, however, was a short acoustic set by Steve Earle, who said he turned down a gig in Arizona to be in Nashville because "we're not giving up on winning Tennessee."

Earle then introduced Moore, who I believe had been watching the opening acts from a seat a few rows in front of mine. He donned his trademark red baseball cap and arrived onstage as disheveled as ever. The crowd, while certainly not a sellout for the arena, was surprisingly large -- and clearly in Moore's corner all the way.

I'll be up front with you about Michael Moore. I don't agree with everything he says. I think in some ways he is to the left as Rush Limbaugh is to the right -- a rabid ideologue with a tendancy to assume the worst about his opponents. That said, I think by-and-large he makes valid points about many things, especially the war in Iraq. And if nothing else he helps stir up debate important issues and balances out the culture of right-wing talk radio television.

The speech was mostly the same schtick that has already made news elsewhere (including the infamous giveaway of ramen noodles and underwear to folks who didn't vote in the last election.) There were, however, a number of interesting factoids buried in the rhetoric. For example, he drew a contrast between the $18 million or so spent by the 9/11 commission to investigate how to prevent future terror attacts and the $75 million or so spent by the Office of the Independent Council to investigate Bill Clinton's personal life. Moore also predicted that if US foreign policy doesn't change, the country will be forced to reinstate the draft simply because there will no longer be enough volunteers to sustain our military commitments abroad. A bold statement, but perhaps plausible given the manpower problems being encountered in the military as the Iraq quagmire drags on.

Moore said that his next film is going to be about the pharmaceutical industry. Word has leaked out, he said, and Pfizer -- the company that brought you primetime impotence commercials -- is worried. Moore read from a memo that he said was distributed within the company warning staff to be on the lookout for a "a bearded, heavyset man with rumpled clothing and a microphone." If Moore began asking questions, the memo continued, staffers should immediately call a hotline number to report it. This got a good laugh, and the entire arena simultaneously whipped out their cell phones to program in the number for the Pfizer "Michael Moore Hotline." (For reference, it's 212-573-1226, which a Google search reveals as the the number of one of the company's PR flacks.) Moore suggests giving them a buzz on Monday and saying in a whisper "He's heeere... Inside the house....!!!"

After the event, I wandered around downtown for a bit and then strolled back across the bridge to East Nashville. On the way I chatted with a (possibly homeless) man who was headed in the same direction. He says that he's been back in Nashville for six months and has been looking for work, but that the temp agencies and day labor places where he used to be able to get work are now mobbed with unemployed jobseekers.

During our conversation, he tossed off the standard line that Bush and Kerry are just two sides of the same coin, and that neither of them would make the economy better. I retorted that while Kerry might not be ideal, could he really do any worse than Bush? That brought a snort of agreement. Perhaps this isn't the best criteria for choosing a president, but one I'm pretty comfortable with at this point.

Speaking of animals...

If I were a dog, I would most certainly bite anyone who tried to dress me as Raggedy Ann. I'm just sayin'...

Blessing of the Animals

I was in DC this weekend for several reasons, including a freelance gig photographing a reunion and an attempt to burn my U.S. Airways frequent flyer miles before the company goes under. It happened to be "Blessing of the Animals" day at my mom's church, so I ended up photographing that as well.

Unfortunately, my good digital camera is in the shop, so this weekend I was using a combination of my point and shoot Powershot S45 (gives decent results in good light, not so much with the flash), and a new EOS Rebel TI that I bought so as to be able to use my canon lenses and stuff with film. After realizing how much it's going to cost to process the 11 rolls I shot, I'm reminded why I like digital so much! :/

Crime in Canada

Dog Drives Off As Owner Watches Hockey Heh.

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.