Mark Warner -- No Noob

Recalling the previous blogging about Mark Warner showing up at the YearlyKos convention of lefty bloggers and hosting a reception there, perhaps you'd be interested in his latest online foray. It seems there is a virtual world kind of thing called Second Life, not that I know much about it. The basic idea of one of these places is that you have an avatar to represent you, and you walk around and talk and interact with others, buy and sell things, generally living out some kind of online fantasy life with others. If you're interested, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is probably the first and best scifi book I know about where a virtual world kind of place was envisioned.

So... Mark Warner hosted the first of several virtual town hall meetings there. It started by him being beamed down to the virtual stage. Sounds weird, eh. You can see how weird if you follow this link. I liked the concluding remarks:

MW: You've gotta cut me some slack, this is the first time I've flown onto a stage!

HA: You've performed quite well, sir. You are not a noob.

MW: I've got a video crew waiting to film some website spots -- how 20th century. Old school...

Got to run, thank you all for appearing in all of your various forms!

The guy is seriously courting the geek vote.

East-West Commute News

I thought you DC types would be interested to know that your local stunt of having the person with the biggest commuter sob story blow up the old Wilson Bridge made into the local paper out here. Misery loves company, I suppose. This weekend they're closing the westbound lower deck of the Oakland-SF bay bridge for seismic retrofitting.

On the lighter side of blogging...

In light of Dad's new interest in fashion and his long-standing interest in blogs, I thought he might enjoy this. It's a blog called "Go Fug Yourself," a blog all about the fashion faux pas of celebrities (for those of you who don't know what fug or fugly means, it translates to f-ing ugly). It was pointed out to me by Paige and is definitely good for a few laughs.

Mimosa Wilt

We have a large mimosa tree shading the south side of the house and filtering our view toward the front gate. It's grown remarkably since we've been here, and our bird feeder hangs from it so we can see it from the dining area and family room. I love that tree, in spite of the profusion of crap that it rains down on the garden below it and the abuse it takes for blooming pink in the midst of the purple garden. I also have very fond memories of the mimosa tree in Mim's little yard in Park Fairfax. And I remember how sad she was when it suddenly decided to die very quickly.

This year we seem to have had more than the usual number of branches die back, including some large ones at the bottom. It's not looking all that good at the top, either. Googling around a bit I can see exactly what the problem is: mimosa wilt.

Once a tree is infected, death is imminent - there is no cure. Infected trees should be removed at once and destroyed, preferably through burning. Where a tree has died as a result of this disease, a species other than mimosa should be planted as a replacement.

Egad! Somehow I wish I could have had the news broken to me more gently :(.

Newspapers and the Future

I am a fan of a good newspaper, and I often lament the lack of independence, leadership, and just plain old journalism in today's media. Occasionally I blog on the topic, and I find the way that the Internet is playing in the equation to be fascinating. So, I thought this opinion piece in The Economist on the death of newspapers was pretty good if you're interested in the topic. There is an accompanying article on how papers are coping, too.

Evolution of PC

Gotcha! Not really a techno-posting, but a social posting.

After the recent "macaca" incident with George Allen, I was amused to hear someone referring to it on television, replaying the video, and finding that they had bleeped out the word "macaca". Wow! Later I saw someone explaining how offensive "tar baby" was. Always one to avoid offending people, I knew then that I had to update my vast repertoire of knowledge regarding what is politically correct. I didn't even know what a macaca was (Google fixed that), much less that it was some kind of commonly used derogatory term in French (its apparent source in that good 'ol boy's vocabulary, thanks to his mother). And, thanks to the big picture book of Uncle Remus Tales we read as children, I use tar baby to refer to a sticky situation that is difficult to extract yourself from, without thinking twice. Maybe we should start using the term "Iraq" instead, but I digress.

So, I set off in my PC research and turned to Wikipedia. One thing about Wikipedia is that it is up-to-date -- for example, the George Allen entry already has all the macaca poop, pardon the imagery. In looking up "tar baby" I see it says:

American conservative public figures who have used the term to mean "sticky situation" have encountered controversy and censure from black leaders, popular daily media, and those on the American political left

And then it goes on to note:

Employment of the term by public figures on the American political left has frequently escaped censure

I felt like, "Gee, it seems kinda politically slanted for an encyclopedia." So I poked around to look at the discussion section on the article. Notably, this entry, titled "Vandalism":

Should the repeated POV changes to the "Notable Recent Usages" section be considered vandalism?

After seeing what he is doing on the Mitt Romney page, I think it is safe to refer to his actions as vandalism.

And then looking a little further at the history section, you can see the back and forth as the battle for positioning takes place online. It's obviously a work in progress, multiple pens competing for space on one piece of electronic paper. Interestingly enough, I could go in and edit it if I felt so inclined.

Oh well. I'm sure some of you may accuse me of being overly politically correct, but I suppose I will opt for "sticky situation" in the future over "tar baby."

Pluto

The fuss over Pluto losing its planetary status has been a little much for me, but it is definitely an improvement over the nonstop Mel Gibson and now JonBenet Ramsey resurrection coverage. It is a bit disturbing to think that all these years of memorization that there are nine planets have been wasted. I mean, think of the reprinting costs on Trivial Pursuit games! Still, I found Dave Ross' radio segment on Pluto this morning to be worthwhile listening to.

Paranoia

Dara apparently bought some songs on iTunes while she was on the road or preparing to go. I could see the receipt in EMail this evening. Take a look at the titles. These are understandable; after all, she's on a trip with Kyla:

Far Away
My Little Girl

These, on the other hand, make me wonder whether I should be worried:

When You Were Young
Suddenly I See
Broken
SOS
Fightin' Words
I Wanna Feel Something

And these make me wonder what she's up to:

Backwoods Boy
Dangerous Man
The Trouble With Trouble
Unbroken Ground

On the other hand, I suppose the explanation is that it's all just country music.

Very Empty Nest

Garrett's classes started today, and I don't think he appreciated my texting him "School Days, School Daze" to his phone. Someone has to carry on the annoying tradition. On the other side of the country, in a galaxy far, far away, Kyla and Dara managed to make it over to the new apartment in Arlington and connect with Paige and Iva. Kyla also brought her cat, Pinto, with her. With the three dogs, one of whom would just as soon kill a cat as a rat, poor Pinto has been relegated to house cat status for a long time. Apparently she was incredibly good on the plane next to Kyla and is currently sulking and recovering.

Open Mouth Insert Foot

Allen Flap May Give A Boost To Webb End Lamont vLieberman enter Allen v Webb and another chance for the dems. Not a comentary just an observation

What's Large, Gray and Likes to Play Polo?

What's Large, Gray and Likes to Play Polo?I saw this and thought it may be of interest to players and fans of polo that may read our blog. I have to admit I don't like our teams chances after finding out they have to practice without elephants since their mounts are stabled in Asia. Kyla may shed some light on this but it seems like a completely different game considering the distance to the ground when you fall off and the certain doom if you are stepped on in the process.

Ping Pong and Blue Grass

I went on a sales call this afternoon BORINGuntill we went in the guys basement and I saw the ping pong table, I commented its been a while but I used to play frequently with my brother after the sales pitch he asked if I wanted to play a game or 2, I figured why not, the music he selected to listen to was the Seldom Seen, I thought right then how can I lose I have nostalgia on my side. Wrong again he whipped my ass properly in 4 games. To my credit I was making steady progress, each game was a little closer I figured another 30 or 40 games and I would have been right with him. It brought back memories of our basement in Annandale especialy the music, as I recall the games were a hell of a lot closer.

Dropping Garrett Off

The whole lot of us went down to San Jose State to move Garrett in today. He's there for "frosh start," and classes don't start until Wednesday. He's on the third floor of one of the "classic" dorms, a very short walk to the student union, with the aquatic center and dining commons next door. It's really a nice setup. He shares a room with another student who is not showing up until Monday (I think). They have more room than Kyla had with her freshman roommate. He's a bit nervous, but I suspect things will calm down or heat up now that the parents and his big sister have cleared out!

Career sidetracked

Dan's carpentry career has been temporarily derailed by fall baseball. Corrupted by his friends and encouraged by his parents he signed up yesterday. Between school, practice, and a 28 game season working saturday's looks like a stretch. At least I can go back to working the crap out of my helpers and not feel guilty.

An Island to Oneself

After seeing a pointer and discussion about An Island to Oneself on BoingBoing, I am going to have to add it to my to-be-read list. Maybe one of you will beat me to it and let me know how it is. When I clicked Tom Neale's name on the Amazon link, I see he also wrote lots of cruising books, particularly on the Chesapeake.

You can read it online, too, but for whatever reason, I am not up to that. If only I had that eBook!

Re; Personal Politics

Before I start let me say this is more personal than political I think that was sort of the frame of mind of the original post, anyway. I read the links that were available and found some of them to be kind of refreshing since they seem to be written in sort of an informal format, a little more like a jobsite conversation of course with the exception of George Will. My problem (personal problem) with political columnists and alot of the extreme press is There is a whole lot of whinning and complaining and not a whole lot of realistic ideas, for the most part they are on the outside looking in, not a great place to advance your ideas from. On the other side of the equation, those on the inside looking out, could not be less progressive virtualy insuring a pissing match beyond most peoples comprehention. I am no student of politics (in fact I'm not sure I am even spelling it right) but it seems to me this dynamic is not new but certainly at levels never seen before. My immediate reaction is be moderate hoping to return to the days of bipartisan comprimise. Newt and Joe may not be anyones favorite right now but they will work with one another based on the value of their ideas not which side of the isle they sit on, a quality both sides could learn from. If the people do the talking the next round of elections may produce some leaders that are a little more agreeable and alot more progressive.

Personal Politics

I know this is the no politics zone, but since I'm more or less obsessed with politics, I have a hard time staying away from the discussion at a personal level when blogging here is basically about being personal. I'm not talking about trashing Bush, but about some of the things I see going on in the political sphere. What is spurring me to talk about it is some of the outfall from that Lieberman-Lamont race we discussed a bit before. So much of the news media is casting it as an anti-war backlash. I suppose that has some to do with it, but I really think there is something a lot more fundamental going on, and it will be really fascinating to see how it washes out in that far, far off time: November.

I pretty religiously read online The Washington Monthly, Carpetbagger Report, and Talking Points Memo. Links are, as usual, down on the lower right of the page under Liberal. All of these guys are at least self-described moderates. In the great blog tradition, I like reading things written by people I feel like I could have a rational discussion with, and I mostly find myself agreeing with these guys more than I do some of their more strident lefty readership. For fire-breathing partisanship, I read Kos and Atrios. The interesting thing has been to hear these bloggers discuss their transformation from moderates seeking to find a middle ground with others (here for Washington Monthly, and here for Talking Points Memo, here for Carpetbagger), into a more partisan in-your-face opposition type of approach. It's also interesting to see the rabid partisans' responses (for example, here) to the moderates' ruminating. This trend of the "irate moderate" was reasonably well captured in a NYTimes editorial (originally here). Certainly I find myself to be irate, and having talked with those Democrat caucus-goers in CT back at graduation time, I can tell you they were irate. The anger wasn't really focused on the war, although that is clearly part of it. Their anger was quite generalized, and it is a mistake to think that Lieberman's many supposedly middle-ground positions that were basically supporting Bush didn't play just as heavily into it. For all the attention bloggers are getting in the mixup (certainly the "angry liberal bloggers" are the boogeymen being set up by Lieberman and his, er, supporters), they really aren't that big an influence. When it comes right down to it, there is just a huge bunch of really pissed off regular people who have figured out that, under the rules of the current environment, the middle ground is a killing ground when it comes to changing things.

I distinctly remember being with Mom in 1994, watching TV as the returns came in when Newt Gingrich and company rode their way into majorities in both houses. How depressing it was for me! In fact, I am pretty sure I told Mom, "That man is evil." In hindsight, perhaps that comment established the basis for the no-politics blog. Well, we shall see if the worm has turned. Even George Will is squirming in his seat, and that must give Mom pause. Read the links if you want to see what is sloshing around in my head; don't if you're scared or don't care. We will now return you to your regularly scheduled blog entries.

Almost Heaven

West Virginia! Ever since I used to belong to a hunt club in Hampshire County WV I have toyed with the idea of buying some property there. Not neccesarily Hampshire county although it is beautifull but somewhere in the state. Real Estate there is certainly reasonable enough, if you do your shopping you could buy a small tract of land {somewhere around 100 acres} for as low as 700.00 per acre. That seems cheap to me, so if you are from San Francisco or Naples it probably seems like a give-away. Given the current realestate market difficulties and the demand for property in such a remote location, the hardships of winter may provide some buying opportunities not seen in some time. If I could avoid being a victim of those conditions myself I might test the market and at least look at some property. The Capon Valley is particularly beautifull, I drove thru it last fall on a hunting trip and the scenery is spectacular. Kirsti is properly mortified by the idea and doesn't want to talk much about it , if I bring it up at work or with neighbors, well thats how rumors get started, so that leaves me with the blogg to float my dreams over. That is about all it is right now, just a dream.

Shop Talk

Yesterday I hired another helper, Danny, It seems he is a little short on cash and he came to realize his B-Day was not going to be the way to get all those expensive things he wants. Thru the years I have hired more helpers than I can count, some get fired for various infractions of workplace ethics, but most wind up quitting when they realize they have to work their ass off serving me and other carpenters by actualy doing exactly as they are told and moving tons of material and equipment, then cleaning up after us when we finish, its not a fun job. I like to think I have helped a lot of young people decide college is for them. With Dan I am hoping to do just that without the buildup of animosity and eventual hatred I usualy experience. I have fond memories of going to work with Dad, It always started with a big breakfast followed by a day of work, it never seemed hard to me but I always left filthy and feeling as though I had accomplished something even if it was just going to the store for a bunch of roughnecks and getting them smokes and sodas. At the end of the day I was a little richer and I felt a little more like a grownup. I decided to start Dan off like I did, except on weekends their is nobody to work with but me, and that can get ugly quick. It was kind of refreshing for me trying to treat him as an employee instead of my son and I think he actualy enjoyed it, I know he liked the part where you get paid. One day is not much of a career but we both seemed have a little fun and I know I felt a little more grown up. In the end I am hoping he will be just another one of those young people that decided college is the way to go.

Net Neutrality

I guess I should do a public service at least within the family and mention that if anyone tries to sell you a bill of goods about how net neutrality is somehow a bad thing or is imposing regulation where it shouldn't or some such bullshit, please don't let them. I liked Craig Newmark's (of Craig's List fame) description of it:

Let's say you call Joe's Pizza and the first thing you hear is a message saying you'll be connected in a minute or two, but if you want, you can be connected to Pizza Hut right away. That's not fair, right? You called Joe's and want some Joe's pizza. Well, that's how some telecommunications executives want the Internet to operate, with some Web sites easier to access than others. For them, this would be a money-making regime.

You really want to trust Craig on this one. Personally, I'm of the opinion that anything the telephone and cable companies are so hot to trot over can't be anything but bad for me. And per what seems to be standard practice these days, they've spawned a bevy of friendly sounding sham organizations to make their message more palatable and to sucker you into thinking they're only thinking of your interests. Some of my favorites for the sheer chutzpah:

• Consumers for Cable Choice
• FreedomWorks
• Progress and Freedom Foundation
• Internet Innovation Alliance
• Hands Off the Internet
• NetCompetition.org
• Video Access Alliance

Contrary to opinions in some quarters, the Internet is not a series of tubes. We're already paying to get on the Internet. We shouldn't be paying more depending on where we want to go on it, and the people who are serving up the things we use it for should not be separated into first class, second class, and steerage.

Birthday Boy

No more teenagers for us. In celebration of the big two oh, Dara arranged for all of us to go to the Punchline in San Francisco to see Mike Birbiglia. None of us was familiar with him, but he was terrific. Garrett was happy to find out that he didn't smash food onstage. Apparently his style is only to do comedy that centers around his real life. In describing how decidedly non-technical his mother was, he said she faxed him something and then called to ask him if he could fax it back because it was her only copy. His most entertaining pieces for me anyway were about his sister being charged by a bear on their trip to Alaska, and his tendency to sleepwalk and act out his dreams. In the latter case, he apparently jumped through the window of a hotel. He said he eventually learned he had REM Behavior Disorder, which I just looked up:

Dreams that involve physical or violent activity— such as fighting, dancing, running, chasing, attacking, being attacked, running from an assailant— are more likely to trigger RBD activity. Sleepers with RBD sometimes injure their bed partners. Some people have been known to leave the bed, run into a wall, run through a window, or run down the stairs. But RBD activity is usually confined to the bed and the surrounding area.

Anyway... he was very funny and would come highly recommended from us if you ever get the chance.

Everybody Needs a Hobby

Some friends suggested once that we build a miniature golf course on our property -- windmills, gnomes, and so on. It seemed like a great retirement hobby to me, one you could annoy the entire neigborhood with. It has to be better than compulsively digging tunnels under your house, though. Using a "shovel and homemade pulley," the "Mole Man" dug out a set of tunnels up to 26 feet deep and 60 feet out from the house. I liked the guy's assessment of it:

I first tried to dig a wine cellar, and then the cellar doubled, and so on. But the idea that I dug tunnels under other people's houses is rubbish. I just have a big basement. It's gone down deep enough to hit the water table - that's the lowest you can go.

I expect the neighbors would have gone for the miniature golf course if they had been asked.

More Reading

Vacation for us usually includes a bag o' books. This time, going to the UK, we tried to keep it more limited. We ended up shopping for books. In spite of the bookmania, I didn't read on trains, other than a newspaper here and there, because I wanted to see the sights. Still, two ten hour flights had to be filled! The list since last time (not all on the trip, of course)...

A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby. I've liked everything Nick Hornby has written and was waiting for this to show up in paperback. This was a bit more offbeat than usual, but I enjoyed it. It's the story of four people who encounter one another, each with the intent of committing suicide, on the roof of building on New Year's Eve. They're a pretty pitiful bunch, but they reluctantly find some connection with one another and move on.

Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, by Peter L. Bernstein. I thought this non-fiction book would be a good mixture of history and overcoming great obstacles, but it was too mired down in minutiae for me even to finish it. After a few hundred pages into it, there still wasn't anyone to root for. To play off an old Erie Canal song, "Slow book, everybody down."

Third Translation, by Matt Bondurant. This fiction book sounded a lot more interesting than it ended up being. It's about a specialist in translation and decoding of hieroglyphics who gets mixed up in a plot to unravel an ancient Rosetta-stone like object at the British Museum. The mixture of geeky characters, cartoony villians, and father-daughter reconciliation mixed in didn't do much for me.

Gravesend Light, by David Payne. I really liked this book that takes place on the North Carolina shore. It involves an anthropologist, who grew up there, studying the rapidly changing culture of people making a living fishing offshore. He, of course, finds he can't stay as distanced from his subjects as he thinks, and he gets involved with a recent Yale grad doctor who was looking to escape from the hell of New Haven. Might make for an interesting read while holed up on the Outer Banks some time.

Shadows of the Sun, by Alexander Parsons. Very good book with great characters. Takes place during WWII in New Mexico, as the gummint seizes ranchland for, er, special bombing range testing. The son goes off to war and fights in the Pacific, while the families try to figure out how to keep their lives together back home after generations on the ranch. The book is split about half-and-half between the experience of the son as a Japanese POW in the Pacific and the folks back on the ranch.

Alibi, by Joseph Kanon. I've read and enjoyed a few of Kanon's things (notably, The Good German). He's got the formula down for fiction wrapped around the realities of WWII, especially the aftermath of it. This one takes place in Venice after the war is over, and centers around a socialite American and her son. He falls in love with a Jewish Italian girl who suffered in the war, and the mother ends up getting engaged to an Italian who the girl implicates as the guy who handed her father over the the Germans. It was a pretty good book, except that you just can't see yourself behaving like these people, including doing the many stupid things that are required to keep the story going.

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. I had picked this book up a hundred times. I'm a sucker for the Pulitzer Prize Winner seal on books, I'm afraid. Each time I would look at the back and decide I just couldn't get interested in a story centering around a hermaphrodite. But, hey, it was a really great story, spanning generations starting with the Greek immigrants escaping to the US, life in Detroit during the depression, growing up in the 50's, and so on. The narrator is Calliope (later Cal) who is by all visible signs a girl and raised as such, who confusedly discovers she has some messed up plumbing and the chromosomes to go along with them.

The Golden Spruce, A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, by John Vaillant. A non-fiction story that was touted as being akin to Into the Wild (a terrific book in my opinion). It centers around a guy who ends up cutting down a giant, basically mutant, golden, one-of-a-kind spruce tree up near Vancouver. He was making a statement (and what a statement it was) about how the timber company would use its "pet tree" to help make itself look good, while just on the other side of the hill it was clearcutting old growth. Very strange guy. That part of the story was more interesting to me than the role of this tree in the native culture up there, which tended to drag on.

Until I Find You, by John Irving. It's hard to beat John Irving for original and unpredictable storytelling. This book certainly fits that description, and I enjoyed it quite a lot, but the subject matter may be weird enough to prevent you from picking it up. The main character is raised by his tattoo-artist mother and has a lot of formative experience around traveling with her to try to find his father after the organ-playing father got her pregnant and then moved on to the next great organ in various European cities' cathedrals. The kid grows up and becomes an actor, being most famous for playing transvestites. Are you hooked yet!!! Very strange, but this was one I enjoyed on vacation.

Mountains of the Mind, by Robert MacFarlane. This was one I picked up in a bookstore in Scotland. It's non-fiction and covers the history of man's fascination with mountains through history. He talks about both the why and the what. One thing I got more perspective on was the role of Mont Blanc and Chamonix in the European fascination with mountains, and the evolution of dangerous activities as something people like to do in their leisure time. It was enjoyable, with a bit of the old frozen bozo appeal mixed with introspection as to why frozen bozo adventuring is appealing.

We Need to Talk about Kevin, by Lionel Shriver. Another one picked up on the trip, and sporting the Orange Prize for literature. Creepy story about the mother and parents' perspective as they raise their child only to have him become one of those Columbine type of killers at their school. The story is told through a series of letters from the mother to the estranged husband after the fact, reliving things as flashbacks. The style was a bit offputting to me, and I'm not quite sure why I chose it to begin with. Still, it was different, and while I'm not sure "like" is the right word to use for my reaction to it, it left me a bit disturbed -- is that good?

Blogs, Technology, and Politics

When we went to Kyla's graduation, Dara was getting coffee and the shrinkwrapped continental breakfast at the Motel8 when she discovered that there was a group of Democrats staying there as part of their state caucus. They were all rabid Ned Lamont supporters, former Leiberman supporters, all suffering from deep disappointment verging on anger. They were amused that I even knew who Lamont was, coming from California, so I was filling them in on how much visibility the race had in the blogosphere. They were just older, politically involved types, used to knocking on doors and participating in get-out-the-vote activities, who didn't know a blog from a bog, so it was fun to talk with them. They were reveling in the fact that Lamont had come up with something like 30% of the vote in the caucus the night before. Anyway, it was interesting to me because I've been following the race from afar with both a political and technical view.

Now the race has emerged as a bit of a touchstone, so we'll see how it turns out. Today, though, I was amused to see this posting about a lobbyist who is following Lamont around and campaigning for Leiberman. Leaving aside the politics itself, it's fascinating to me that the combination of blogs and YouTube is empowering people like this woman who has a mildly popular blog to get a message like this across to people like me who would otherwise never have seen it. Of course, there are plenty of paid professionals out there masquerading as Joe Everyman on the Internet, but any way you slice it there are some fundamental changes coming in the role of traditional media vs. online media and the role that people who are not professional journalists play in things. In the broad scheme of things, I think it will be a rough road, but in the end it will be a good thing for all of us.

Mel Who?

Does it really make a difference what the hell Mell Gibson thinks about anything? I meet peopole everyday that are more important to me than him. I guess I am just dissapointed to see him and his problems on CNN for a good 10 minutes, complete with pictures, and not a positive word about much of anything else. I guess thats why they invented Sports Center and ESPN.

Sudoku Mojo

As noted previously in this blog, we have some Sudoku crazies out here. It's hard to set down a coffee cup on a table without it landing on a Sudoku book coaster. And they come in various flavors -- Insanely Hard Sudokus, Sudokus for Yalies, Jane Fonda's Sudoku Workout -- I don't know; I've lost track. Through all of this craze, I have steadfastly refused to be dragged in. I say, "I'm really not a puzzle person," while what I really mean is, "I don't want to be humiliated." So night before last, in a lapse of judgement, I announced that I was going to actually do one. Shuffling through the selection of Sudoku books, one of the Sudokuites managed to find me a suitable candidate on page one of a book -- your basic Sudoku for Dummies kind of thing. Probably half the squares were populated, including the full diagonal of the grid going sequentially from 1 to 9. I was ready!!! Armed with a pencil, I applied my rigorously analytical mind to the problem. After 15 minutes of poking around, I hadn't filled in a square. Dara in the meantime is about to die from resisting the urge to help me. Finally she says, "Let me just show you one thing so you are armed with some of the basic strategy." "No!!! I am going to do this myself!" Kyla then shows the real Beatty genes in her makeup. She picks up one of the other books -- I think it was Sudokus That Will Make You Cry -- and announces that while I am struggling with the Sudoku With Training Wheels, she is going to work the Sudoku for Einstein in parallel to see who gets done fastest. Of course, she whipped it right out while I was proudly filling in my 2nd or 3rd square. Burn!!! as Garrett would say. Well, I am proud to say that I did finish mine -- the next night. Photographic evidence supplied above.

Kyla asked if I was now addicted. I would have to characterize it more as cured.