Blog title

14 Pageviews yesterday? I haven't had any meaningful posts here in five years. Why the sudden interest?

I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark,
living in a powder keg and giving off sparks.

I've been in my new job for just over a year now. Curiously, I'm probably under even more stress than I was in the old job, and getting even less sleep. But it's a different kind of stress. It's the kind I can do something about and feel good when I've dealt with it. I work with managers who know what they're doing, and who are comfortable with who and what they are and don't find it necessary to try to emulate a role model. A few weeks ago, I told my senior manager that I'm happier with my job now than I've been in several years. I guess I must have been the first person in this company to make that statement in a long time. He seemed truly stunned.

The executor job still isn't behind me. The workload has been considerably reduced but occasional crises still erupt.

Now the major focus is on college. It looks fairly certain it will be a conservatory. This is all unfamiliar territory for me. We'll need to visit lots of colleges. I've never understood the purpose of visiting colleges. All you can see are buildings. What are you supposed to look for when you visit? It's kind of like test driving a new car before buying. I never do that either. It's easier to get the information you need from the Internet.

I had to add my $.02 worth after the latest hurricanes of the current season. I was intrigued by the Lone House Still Standing in Gilchrist. It was in all the news media. You can find it with a few seconds of googling, if you don't already know about it. The owners' house was destroyed after Hurricane Rita, and then they rebuilt with an engineering firm supervising the builder. The photos circulating around the Internet show a scene of total destruction - no trace of any houses on the island, except for this one house, which looks completely unscathed, except for some railings and decking that were blown away. Eventually they found the owners. It turns out there is major interior damage to the house, and it may have to come down. All that money, all that extra-tough material, will all end up in a landfill somewhere. Yet we still hear about coastal communities where building codes are being toughened so houses will be able to withstand the worst storms.

It probably makes sense to mandate that buildings in hurricane-prone states be built to withstand the most powerful hurricanes. And it probably makes sense to prohibit any construction right next to the water. But that isn't likely to happen. People will insist that they are entitled to their dream of a house right next to the ocean. And the potential for all that property tax money will be too great for the towns to resist. But we have seen what happens when houses next to the ocean are built to even to most demanding specs. The owners of that lone house would have been better off if their house had been swept out to sea. Now they have to deal with the expense of having it torn down, or even worse, having it repaired, when it will never be quite the same.

Here's a different approach. We'll allow building right next to the water, but the building codes will require that houses be built of the flimsiest material, which must be biodegradable and environmentally friendly. We'll assume that any hurricane with full hurricane-force winds will completely sweep these houses away. Our goal is to ensure that the wreckage of the house does the minimum of environmental damage. We also ensure that the house will be relatively cheap. This will help hold down the insurance payouts. Some owners might choose to go without any insurance. Beachside communities will go back to being what they were in the early days of the twentieth century - just simple cabins where a family could go for an occasional weekend or maybe a full week during the summer, to relax near the water. Some resourceful people might figure out how to make a collapsible house that they can take down and load into the back of a truck when they need to leave quickly. It would be nice to provide no electrical service for these houses but this probably would not be practical. Some people would use generators; the rest would protest loudly. Instead, I propose that electrical hookups be restricted to a relatively small number of amps - just enough for a refrigerator and a few lights.

Oh yes - another thing - no stilts. Again, we are trying to make the message clear that you will NOT ride out the next Big One. We're not trying to fight Nature. We're assuming Nature will win. We just want to cut our losses. The beach also becomes a refuge from the class system. There will be no McMansions to declare who is the wealthiest person in town.

How about it, Galveston? You're starting almost from scratch. Now is the best time.

I haven't been very active here lately. Things haven't been going well with the job for the last several months, then in February, my father died, leaving me with a huge administrative burden, then right about the same time, things got horribly worse with the job. During all of this, it became evident that we had made a bad choice of high schools for my son, and we had to take measures to deal with the fallout from that. Through all of this, my wife and I were both driving incredibly long distances just as gas prices were peaking. I'm now in a different department, with an incredibly steep learning curve ahead of me, but still feeling a great sense of relief. My Executor duties are starting to wind down. I sold my parents' house last month, so I'm no longer spending my weekends crawling around in dust and cobwebs, sorting out the accumulated possessions of a 58-year marriage. My son will be going to a local school in the fall, which should remove another source of stress.

There's not much point in dwelling on events that were just plain hellish. I guess I never really noticed how much all of this was affecting me. Something interesting happened during my first week on the new job - I had a couple dreams. They weren't especially interesting dreams. They were neither pleasant nor scary - just ordinary dreams. But then I realized that I haven't had (or at least can't recall having) any dreams since at least the beginning of this year.

The truly educational experience was my role as an executor. Throughout my entire life, even when I got into my 50s, the topic of death was always whispered among the grownups. Whenever I got close enough to overhear the conversation, I was told "You run along and play. There's nothing for you to listen to here." But this time, I couldn't run outside and play; I was the key figure in the proceedings. My father's death was not unexpected. We knew years beforehand that it was coming, and things moved at a steady pace over the final months and weeks, so we were prepared. I knew I had been selected as the executor. If someone close to you has died, or if you have a friend who's lost someone close to them, you need to be aware of the distinction (unless you've already been there). You're either an executor or you're just a spectator.

Lots of people think that when a parent dies, you do the following (not necessarily in any particular order:
- Arrange the funeral
- Collect the inheritance
- Sit in a dark room and cry
Maybe it's that way in some cases. Most of the time, the deceased is either wasted away with Alzheimers in a nursing home, totally detached from the Real World; or they leave behind a healthy active spouse who just has to remove their name from the joint accounts and then get on with life. But what happens when it's someone who still owns a house and has a Real Life, but doesn't have a healthy spouse to pick up where he left off? Then the executor has to show up and reconstruct all his finances and routine administrative activities, get long-term care for his wife, and go through the legal papwerwork of settling an estate.

If you come across such a person, don't try to commisserate with their grief. Executors have no time in their schedule for grief. If you want to show support, the best thing you can do is to stay out of their way. They have deadlines to meet and a lot of bureaucracy to slash through, and the worst thing you can do is suggest that they stop and pull themselves together.

I'll post more when I have time. I'm back to my early morning hours again (still no time for hallwalking though) so I get quite tired at night.

I am the Fault Line. Think about what a Fault Line does. It stands between two uncompromising forces that want to move at different speeds but are locked to each other. It quietly absorbs all that stress for years, but the mathematics of the situation add up and eventually something has to give way. The Fault Line suffers the brunt of it. But then the Fault Line gets the blame.

MANCHESTER EVENING HERALD, MANCHESTER CONN, WEDNESDAY JULY 15, 1936

JOHN MAHONEY DIES: MASON CONTRACTOR


Passes Away After Four Months Illness – Was Well Read and Known for Good Nature

John Mahoney, 60 Maple street, a native of Manchester, having been born here April 12, 1871, died at the Manchester Memorial hospital last night shortly after 9 o’clock. He had been in poor health for the past four months and spent about two months at a Hartford hospital. Returning to Manchester he was home but a short time when he entered the Manchester Memorial hospital. His death last night was sudden.

Local Contractor

Mr Mahoney as a boy entered the employ of Cheney Brothers in their silk mills, but worked but a short time. He then secured work as a mason’s apprentice. He first worked with C.O. Treat, who was one of the leading mason contractors in those days, but later engaged with Jerome Hills of Hillstown, who was doing considerable mason work on homes that were being built. In this way he was able to learn the setting of the stone for the cellar, the mixing and preparation of the mortar for the walls, the actual application and the building of the chimney. It was a good training and he proved a good student. For three years he engaged in this work with Mr. Hills and for a year later worked with Frank Dutton, another local contractor who had come to Manchester from Glastonbury.
When Charles O. Treat was given the contract to erect the power station for the Hartford, Manchester & Rockville Tramway company Mr. Mahoney went to work on that building and it was he who built the chimney.
On the completion of the work for C.O. Treat he became the head of the plasterers and bricklayers for Patrick O’Gorman and six years later, or in 1903 he went into business for himself.
One of the first important contracts he had when he started in business for himself was the plastering of the interior of St. Bridget’s church. It was while working on this contract that he met with an accident. He was working well up towards the center top of the church when he fell. He was taken to his home and when friends were allowed to call on him within a day or two, he had several callers. One of his friends asked “Were you hurt much when you fell?” to which he responded with the ready wit for which he was known: “No, it was not the fall that hurt me, it was the sudden stop.” Though it may not have been original with him it was typical of his exuberant good nature.
Mr. Mahoney worked hard during the summer months and his spare time in the evenings was given up mostly to reading. He became well-informed on many matters outside of his business and had a remarkable memory for names and dates. He was especially good on history and took much interest in reading of every battle that was fought in the Civil War as he had an uncle, who was killed in service and who was the only private mentioned in the history of the Tenth Regiment Conn. Vol., because of his bravery in battle and described as “fearless to a fault.”
He was a charter member of Court Manchester F. of A., and for several years was a member of the board of trustees. He was also a charter member of Campbell Council K. of C., and the first chancellor of the council. The part of the chancellor in the first degree work of the Knights of Columbus is the most important office in the degree and soon after he was elected and served in the office he became recognized throughout the state as an exceptionally good officer and he was called upon to assist in degree work in many of the other councils in Connecticut.
Mr. Mahoney was married in 1905 to Miss Annie McVeigh, who survives him as do nine children, John, Helen, Bessie, Anna, Doris, Marion, James, Frederick and Margaret Mahoney, all of this place and one brother, Dennis Mahoney of Hampton Beach, N.H.

Funeral

The funeral will be held Friday morning at 8:30 at the W.P.Quish funeral home and at St. James’s church at 9 o’clock with burial in St. James’s Cemetery.
The body may be viewed by friends at the Quish funeral home after 4 o’clock this afternoon until the time of the funeral.

I'm really falling behind on my blogging. It's now 2:45 in the morning. A few months ago, this would have been close to my normal awakening time. But lately, I've been staying up late and discovering that I actually do my best work after midnight. Today, I woke up, looked at the clock and saw that it was 9:30, laid there for a while longer, and then decided that staying in bed until 10:00 would be way too slothful, so I got up, got dressed, and then went to have breakfast. It was only when I got down to the kitchen that I realized it was already 13:30. Fortunately my management seems to be tolerant of this extreme flex-hours arrangement, but sometimes I do wish I could live on the same hours as normal people.

Anyway, having returned to my blogging after such a long hiatus, I feel like I should express an opinion on something. Since everyone else has a solution for Iraq, I'll offer one of my own. What would happen if the U.S. took Saddam and 20 of his meanest toughest bodyguards and henchmen (who are probably already in U.S.-operated prisons by now), gave them several thousand dollars, a few cars and trucks, a lot of hand weapons, and agreed to drop them off anywhere they choose in Iraq? The deal would be that he have seven days before the U.S. announces what they have done. Saddam could make a public appearance and announce it earlier if he wishes. The last thing they would tell him before driving away and leaving him and his security guys to make their own way is "One day we may call upon you to do a favor for us."

Would Saddam be able to re-establish his government? Would he be able to take over leadership of the Baath party and the Sunnis? Would he have so many enemies that he would be forced to go into hiding? Would he get blown up by a roadside bomb just because he and his people are traveling in a convoy of new vehicles and look important? Would he find it prudent to plead with his captors not to release him? Whatever happens, it would likely alter the situation sufficiently to create some new options, one of which may be feasible. What we know for certain is that as things stand now, there are no good options. We have nothing to lose.

It's been a slow day today - no good stories or funny pictures - so I'll reach into the archives for a good tale.

A long time ago, during a bygone century, I was in college. I was taking an evening course (I think it was CS114), it was a long class, it was a warm evening, and everyone was getting a little bit sleepy. The professor could see that it was time for a break, so he called for a break. Too lazy to move, I just stayed in my seat. I must have done something - I'm sure I didn't just sit there staring at the board. But I can't remember what I did, so maybe I did just stare at the board. Meanwhile, the rest of my classmates were hanging out in the hall, conducting transactions with vending machines, using the lavatory, etc. Eventually they began returning to the classroom, and there were almost enough people to get the class going again.

It was then that I noticed a steady thumping sound in the hall. Maybe every ten seconds, there would be another loud thump. The professor asked "Where's Joe?" (Actually I don't remember the name of the student in question, so I just made up the name Joe, which, as it happens, was the professor's name.) Someone answered "He's trying to get his bag of chips out of the vending machine. It got stuck on the little spiral thingy that's supposed to release it." The thumping continued, and got louder. Finally there was a huge crash and the sound of glass breaking. Instantly everyone (well almost everyone; I stayed put) got up and ran out into the hall. I could hear a great deal of commotion, and the looters returned to the classroom with armloads of candy, cookies, chips. The slower ones came back with bags of raisins. And finally Joe came walking back into the classroom carrying his single bag of chips that he finally got his hands on, while picking bits of glass out of his hair. We heard that during the looting frenzy, security showed up, chased the looters away, and then helped themselves to what was left. The next day the glass was cleaned up, the machine was repaired and restocked, and there was no evidence that anything had happened there.

What struck me about this incident was how much it was like a revolution. One peasant can't stand the injustice anymore, and demands his rights - nothing more, nothing less. The rest of the crowd senses that the uprising has begun and they release all their inhibitions. Finally the King's Guard show up, restore order, help themselves to the spoils of war, and blame it on the peasants. In real life, some of these revolutions actually do succeed, leading to a new corrupt elite, but most are like the candy machine. The peasants let off some steam and then everyone tries to pretend it never happened.

Things are pretty quiet here today so I'll tell you about what happened last month - July 12, to be specific. I was at home, just getting started with a 16:00 conference call. There was a thunderstorm starting - nothing out of the ordinary for a hot hazy July afternoon. Enough people had showed up for the conference call to consider it a quorum, and we were starting to get down to business when ... it happened. The loudest crack of thunder I have ever heard. We've all been through a number of thunderstorms, and some have been pretty intense. After over half a century, I've experienced some really memorable ones. But this lightning bolt just put all of them to shame. I'm not quite sure what happened next. I think after I landed back in the chair again I sat there for several seconds in stunned silence. It took some time for my hearing to come back. I think then I said some things that were not very professional and probably should not have been said in a business conference call. That didn't really matter though. I wasn't on the conference call anymore. The electricity, the phones, and the cable service were all dead. There was a strange smell in the air of fresh ozone and something burning.

Finally it occurred to me that I should tell the people on the conference call what happened, since I was supposed to be one of the main participants. I dialed in on my cell phone, and tried to describe what happened. I probably wasn't very coherent. My boss then explained to the other participants (in various parts of North America) that we had had a lot of nasty weather here. At the time, I didn't realize the significance of this statement. They then decided to postpone the conference, and I went on to inspect the house to make sure it was still all there. Everything appeared to be intact. I still was not about to go outside to check out the situation there. Then I called the neighbor across the street. She answered, so I knew that not all of the phones in the neighborhood were out. However, she had no electricity. She said she heard things popping and sizzling in the house when the lightning hit.

I don't remember if there was any more lightning after that. It probably did a good job of stabilizing the electrons in the air. After about half an hour, there was no more lightning, the sun was out, and things looked fairly safe, so I went out and started up the generator. It appeared that the electrical stuff in the house was all still operational. I then decided to go out for a drive and find out where the lightning had hit, expecting to see a large crater in the ground somewhere. I found that the power was off only at our end of the block. I found another neighbor at the house a couple doors down from us standing outside and asked if he had electricity. He said he didn't. He also said he knew where the lightning had hit. He pointed to a tree across the street (at the home of the neighbor I had talked with earlier). It still looked intact, but was missing a very large section of bark. He said he was out getting his mail, carrying an umbrella, when the lightning hit. He was standing less than 30 feet away. I have to admire him for his courage.

I determined that the phone outage was due to some wires in our house that got shorted out, and I was able to bypass them. The cable company was out at 4:00 the next morning to do the necessary repairs to get their system working. I then had to replace a couple splitters that didn't survive the event. The electricity was off for about 24 hours. The power company had to replace a transformer. Later on I found a couple light switches that were no longer working. A few days later, we had malfunctions in a couple computers. I couldn't be sure, but these may have been a result of that lightning bolt too.

I expected that I would have a lot to talk about at work the next day. With no cable service (no TV, no Internet), I had no access to news but I was certain that the news media would be buzzing about this event. ("In tonight's news, we have anarchy and a fresh wave of terrorist attacks in Iraq, the outbreak of full-scale war in Lebanon, but first we take you to outer Suburbia where the Lightning Bolt From Hell left a whole cul-de-sac in darkness.") Well, I knew something was amiss as I got down to the last quarter mile to the office. The road was closed. There was a police vehicle blocking the way, but no one there to tell me why. I then went around through the back roads and approached from the other way, and found the road closed there too. Then I finally decided to turn on a local radio station, and discovered that while I was sitting at home getting all excited over a little bit of thunder, a tornado had come through just a couple hundred yards from where I work. Finally, I parked a couple blocks away and hiked through the woods. What I found was a building that was still there, no broken windows, power still on, everything apparently OK. I found out later that no one who was in the building even knew there had been a tornado. It got very dark, very windy, the power went off for a few seconds, and then it passed. However, people found out shortly afterward that there was no way to go north from there. At least one person went across the river, went north on the parkway there, and then came back across the river. I later drove by where the tornado had come through, and found the damage was impressive indeed. A large section of trees by the side of the road just were not there anymore. Apparently the tornado was just far enough above the ground that no cars were affected by it.

Still, the extreme weather was not over with. Early the following week, another monster thunder/wind storm came through the southern part of the county and left widespread damage there. I still haven't seem the extent of that damage. I assumed that they had enough worries without sightseers coming through to gawk at it. Fortunately things have been a little bit quieter since then.



I wasn't expecting it to look like this. I would have thought there would be burn marks or something. Given the volume of the thunder that accompanied this, I would have thought the whole tree would be vaporized. We are all wondering what will be the long-term effect on it.

Yes, I still do my daily hallwalking. Encounters with security guards are rare these days. A couple days last week, they left the lights on nighttime settings throughout the entire day, probably in an effort to conserve electricity. And in the wee hours of the night, they don't run the air conditioning, so it actually feels like they've turned on the heat. When you hear me saying it's uncomfortably warm, you know it must really be hot.

Anyway, we still haven't seen the last of the interesting signs. I have to admit, I altered this one. I had to blur out the text that would have caused it to make sense. However, the image is accurate. Anyone want to take a guess at what the text says?

OK - it's been a long time since my last post. I feel like I should be telling about all the momentous things that have been happening in my life that have kept me from posting, but all I can offer is a kind of wimpy "haven't gotten around to it."

I'll start out again with something light that has been a perpetual annoyance for me (and probably most of the population who drink cold drinks) since the beginning of time. You probably were wondering why, in the middle of the summer, I'm posting something about a phenomenon that occurs in midwinter after a really big snowstorm. Well, read on.

Why is it that when you're having a cold drink with ice cubes (or ice crescents or whatever they call those things that the icemaker in the refrigerator produces) and you're really really thirsty and urgently need to ingest high volumes of cold liquid refreshment, that's when those ice cubes (or ice crescents) decide to line up in just the right way in front of your lips so you can only get a small trickle of your drink, if even that? You can stir them around and try to sneak up on another part of the top of the glass, but the ice always manages to get in there and block the flow. Life can really be a drag sometimes.

There are so many things in life to complain about, I scarcely know where to begin. But if you complain about really significant things, then people get the idea that this is something that matters and they get much too worked up. I prefer to think of complaining as an art form intended primarily for entertainment, so I stick to topics that won't have people insisting that Something Must Be Done about this burning issue.

Today's topic is web pages that keep getting wider. I've always believed that a computer monitor should hold as much content as possible. As I get older, my brain holds less information. Well, actually it holds more, but much of it is not really useful in everyday life. For some reason, my boss has never asked me to recite the lyrics of Horse Latitudes from memory. But when he does, I'm really going to impress him. Anyway, the best way to have more information ready for immediate access is to have it on my computer monitor. That means I need as many pixels as possible. Ever since the first 3270 displays on the mainframe computers in the 1970s, I've always insisted on having a display with the maximum possible amount of content. These days, I refuse to work with a laptop with less than 1600x1200 resolution. My desktop computer at home (a Dell XPS Gen 5 if you're interested) has a 1920x1200 display. I now wish I had waited a few more months and saved up a couple thousand dollars more so I could have a 3007FPW display with 2560x1600 resolution. I typically have lots of windows scattered around my desktop, so I can keep an eye on all of them. However, my way of doing business seems to be rather atypical. Most users seem only interested in big type. They want to see fonts so big, the characters look like they were written with a crayon. Since they don't know how to adjust the font size, they go for the largest display possible with the lowest resolution possible. In most cases, this means 1024x768. If they want to get more than two words of text per line, that means they really need to maximize their browser window to fill the whole desktop.

So what is happening now is that authors of web pages are optimizing their pages for a browser at 1024x768. Even with a 1920x1200 desktop, a 1024x768 web page takes up more of my desktop than I think a single web page deserves. Horizontal scrolling is really a major pain, so I am forced to make my browser wide enough for these pages. If you do a lot of web page design, please try to keep the width of your web pages to 800 pixels or less. Even if people are maximizing their browser on their 1024x768 desktops, you're not really doing them a favor by filling up that entire space. They're probably having a hard time finding the next line when they finish reading a line of text. Even better, you can design your web pages to automatically adjust to the window size.

And if you're one of those people who thinks that your web page is so important that you have to automatically resize the browser window to fill the entire desktop, be advised that while I oppose the death penalty, I make an exception for people who engage in this practice.

It's been over a month since my last post. Nothing of interest has been happening here during that time. Mostly I've been in all-day meetings and conference calls. No matter how hard I try, there's not much I can do to make that sound interesting. After several consecutive days of this, I finally decided to take a couple vacation days to unwind. Today I went out to clean up the yard. Usually this means picking up lots of twigs and branches that fell during some of the more lively winter storms.


Today I found a guest - a Spotted Turtle. Turtles seem to like our yard. Twice, I've found box turtles laying eggs in the back yeard. Once I found a beautiful Wood Turtle. Unfortunately that was in the days before digital cameras, and I never was big on film.

Can I convince this human that there's nobody home?

Another discovery I made was what appears to be a piece of jaw. I assume it was a jaw because there were some teeth still stuck to it. I have no clue what species it belongs to. I hope there are some paleontologists out there who will be able to help. Perhaps this is a previously unknown species. I assume that someone will be able to reconstruct the rest of the skeleton and make a drawing of the actual animal, based upon this fragment. I'll keep you all posted if I find any other bits of this creature.

You were thinking the same thing I was, weren't you? They said the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter could spot a kitchen table on Mars. The Global Surveyor was able to spot a school bus on Mars. What do the folks at NASA know about Mars that they aren't telling us? I just wish our town could send a school bus to my kid's high school.

Did Scott Adams read my Hallwalking post? Have a look at the March 5 Dilbert strip and decide for yourself. Also note the reference to a slow computer, which could be a reference to my Slow Download speed post. If I see a reference to Saginaw in the next couple weeks, I'm definitely going to have to have a word with him.

It didn't really take four days - it was more like four hours, and it wasn't hitchhiking in the classical sense (with thumb up in the air), but this is probably the closest I'll ever come to using that line. Google it if you don't know where it comes from. You'll need to do this to understand some of the other lines in this post. If you were around during the 1970s, you have no excuse for not recognizing it.

My trip to Midland, Michigan was a success - I think. The trip from New York (LGA to Saginaw, via Detroit) was on time and uneventful. The flight from Detroit to Midland was an a DC9, which brought back a lot of childhood memories from the 1960s, when DC9s first came into service. I never met any Customer-type people, so maybe my haircut wasn't necessary. By the last day, I was starting to look somewhat geeky with three days' growth of beard. That's one of the drawbacks of travel these days. You can't bring a razor blade on the plane (yes - I still use a razor) and when you have a busy schedule and aren't staying at a high-end hotel, you have no chance to buy a disposable razor. Getting back to the trip though - lots of information was exchanged, and everyone agreed that the meetings were a huge success. I hope my management agrees.

In my opinion, Michigan weather isn't the major ordeal everyone says it is. However, we did have a significant snowfall on Wednesday night and Thursday. The Holiday Inn we stayed at was a delightful experience. It wasn't quite five-star, but it was comfortable and, like so many midwestern motels, it was a classic study in 1960s decor. Also it had free Internet service. And on Thursday morning, I looked outside my room to find that someone had cleared all the snow off my car. I don't know if this is a service they provide for all their guests, or if some other poor confused guest had trouble figuring out which car was his. After breakfast, we were driving out of the parking lot, someone pulled up next to us and started blowing the horn and hollering at us. We rolled down the window and found that they were telling us we had a flat tire. Maybe whoever cleared the snow thinking it was their car got so mad that they deflated the tire to get even with us? It wasn't totally flat, so I was able to get to a gas station, where I found they wanted 50 cents to use the pump. By the time we got to the third gas station, I realized we probably weren't going to find free air anywhere, so I paid my 50 cents and filled the tire. We arrived 30 minutes late for our meeting that day, but we were able to blame that on the snow.



The morning after. Who cleared the snow from our car?


Buying air


We had a return flight from Saginaw to LaGuardia via Detroit. We all got loaded into the plane (a Canadair commuter jet). I thought I was in luck because I scored an exit row seat, but then I found that on this plane, exit row seats are like any other seat, except you don't get an armrest at the window seat. They announced that they were closing the door and getting set to head out to the runway, but nothing seemed to be happening. Then we found out that they couldn't get the door shut. They tried and tried, mostly by slamming it so hard that the whole plane shook. Then they called lots of maintenance people out, and they tried and tried, again by slamming it even harder. Finally they rolled up the jetway and dumped us all back in the terminal. We finally were able to get on a limo (actually a small bus) to Detroit and then catch a flight to LGA from there (later than the one we were originally booked on). The driver said they get a lot of business from Northwest. I wonder why. There was an accident on the highway that blocked traffic for a long time. We ended up getting into Detroit late, but we were in luck - our flight was even later. We finally got off the ground a little over an hour late, and it was a good flight until we got to New York and encountered heavy winds. A lot of people seemed to be sick or close to it, but fortunately, a bumpy ride helps settle me down, so my head and stomach ended up feeling better than they had for the last couple days. New York was colder than Michigan. My ice scraper broke while I was clearing the windshield, so I had to rely on the defroster to dislodge the ice on the windshield.


Broken airplane


Laughing on the bus. Playing games with the faces.

It's now two days later and Michigan seems like a dream to me now. There's a fair probability I'll be out there again.

Today was a good hallwalking day. I didn't encounter any security guards or anyone else to disrupt my solitude. What I did encounter was a yellow sign. Anyone want to take a guess at what this was supposed to mean? As far as I can tell, the sign is there to warn us that there is a sign there.

Yesterday I went to have my hair cut. After over half a century, you'd think this procedure would be routine. It shouldn't be that hard to tell them what I want. I don't really need to have my hair styled, just cut. Every time I go, I tell them I want it to look like it was three months ago - or six months, or two years, depending on how long it's been since I last had it cut. And every time I say that, I get a blank stare that seems to say "I never met you before today. How should I know what you looked like back then?" I go to a hairstylist in the local mall where they seem to have hundreds of people working. Since I just want to walk in when I have time and don't want to wait, I just go with whoever is free, so I rarely get the same person twice. This time, I was assigned to a guy whom I don't think I've ever seen before. I told him I wanted to look like I did two months ago, and he declared that hair grows at half an inch a month, so he would take one inch off. I didn't look much different afterward (my wife didn't even notice) but I guess that's to be expected when you only have two months' worth taken off.

What always shocks me is seeing the hair fall down and noticing its color. It's not even gray anymore - it's white. It seems to still have a lot of black in it when I look in the mirror. Do they intentionally cut away the white hair or am I somehow delusional when I look in the mirror? Maybe I have a big bald spot and a receding hairline and I'm not noticing that either?

I don't usually have it cut this soon after the last time, but next week I am going on a business trip and I may meet with a real live Customer. I work in the Research division of a large corporation, where we are fairly well isolated and just do our Geeky stuff with very little contact with the outside world. This is the first time in several years that I might meet some customers. I've decided that I shouldn't look too uncivilized when I meet them. But then again, it might be good to maintain the Research mystique and show my wild side. If I don't have to meet with any more customers, I might let it grow out for a year this time.

I work for a big corporation in a big office building in the suburbs of a big city. As a certified Geek, I don't like being around people. I have made my life somewhat tolerable by flexing my hours so that I show up at the office at around 4:30 am and go home at about 2:30 pm. This way I can avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic (although rush hour in this part of the country is almost 24/7 by now) and I get some time alone at the office. However, it can be a challenge to become fully functional when you get up at 3:00 am. My solution is every morning, shortly after I arrive at the office, I take a brisk walk in the building, taking a route that covers every corridor on the fourth floor (where my office is (4n-c22 if you happen to work in the same building and are curious)) at least once. I do five laps of this course. A lap takes about five minutes if I walk very fast. This walk can get rather boring, but it is refreshing. I imagine that if aliens from another planet were watching me (surely aliens have the necessary technology to see me from their spaceships) they would be saying something like "There he goes running the maze again. He must think there's food in there somewhere."

The problem is that at some point in the early morning hours, a security guard will come up here to turn the lights on. During the night, they only keep a few lights on to save electricity. If I happen to meet up with the security guard, the result is usually that both of us will be very startled. But at least he has an excuse for being here, he doesn't look very geekish, and he is not walking at a high speed. For a few weeks, things worked out well. He came up at about 5:00 every day, so I just waited until I saw the lights were on in the hall, and then I took my walk. But then there were a couple days when the lights came on at 6:30, and by then other people were arriving, so I couldn't walk in solitude. I adapted to this schedule and did my walk at 5:15 (avoiding 5:00 in case they returned to that schedule) but then today the lights came on at 5:30 in the middle of my walk. Fortunately I was a safe distance away from the light switches and I was able to duck into a lab for a few minutes until I was confident he was gone.

What's funny about all of this is how annoying it is. People are starving in various parts of the world, people are getting blown up by other people (usually in an effort to make God happy) and a lot of people are even dying because of cartoons. Yet I sit here feeling extremely irritated because a security guard comes upstairs to turn on the lights at unpredictable times and I can't walk in solitude. I wonder if we all have a certain amount of displeasure in us and it has to be meted out sooner or later, and if we don't have a good reason, we'll just settle on a bad reason. Maybe Orwell was onto something with Goldstein. Isn't it better to have a target for anger that can be controlled than to let the anger seek some totally innocent target that happens to be there at the wrong time? For those of us who are Republican leaning, the targets are well defined - Osama, gay marriage, abortion, liberals. For those of us who are not Republican leaning, the Republicans themselves are the target. I'm sure I would be much happier if I joined the mainstream and directed my anger at an approved target and got lots of support from the media assuring me I was right, rather than getting annoyed at a poor security guard who has to come up and turn on the lights in the middle of the night (and probably feels somewhat annoyed himself because I'm intruding on his solitude).

This post isn't really about Slow download speed. It's my first post and I wanted a Title that would be more catchy than "My First Post" but I couldn't think of anything. So I just clicked in the Title textbox to see what was in the autocomplete buffer, and it came up with "Slow download speed." I must have posted something somewhere about that topic, and it must have been very important to me at the time for me to go through the effort of posting it, but I just can't remember. Whatever the problem was, it has apparently gone away now because I've been pretty satisfied with my downloads lately, especially since Optimum Online upgraded my service to 15 mb. Anyway, now I need to find a better title for my second post than "My Second Post" and there's nothing more for me to pull from my autocomplete buffer.