Guest Blogger as Guest

Al was out in the area this last week and drove over to the house for dinner. It was one of those rare warm evenings here that we only seem to get in September and April. He got to see the Iris Lady's domain in all of its late summer dormant glory awaiting the winter rain. He suffered the slobbery affection of the dogs with good humor. We were trying to remember the last time we had seen one another and guessed it must have been one Thanksgiving at Ken and Sharon's place in Great Falls. That was a long time ago. We compared notes on the goings on of kids and family, and we even engaged in a little geek talk since he was out here to get some training on some software my people produce. It was nice of him to drive all the way from across the bay, fighting jet lag, since I was taking off the next day. We'll try not to make it such a long interval in the future.

Glamour of Travel

I haven't posted for a while because I spent a few days in Ottawa. Along the way I managed to spend one night in Chicago (on purpose, because you can't get to Ottawa in the same day from here if you leave after noon) and one night at Dulles. The latter was due to weather problems causing a missed connection. Along the way I enjoyed the benefits of the new inane idea of putting your toiletries in a quart ziplock bag. The good news is I could carry on everything I needed. The bad news is that someone really thinks asking you to put your mouthwash and toothpaste in a baggie so they can see it is making us all safer. I did not know about the new movement to express your opinion on the topic, or I might have joined in. Lord knows I had plenty of extra time at the airport. Another delay wouldn't have made any difference.

Digital Photography

When she takes off her Iris Lady cape (wasn't the Iris Lady one of the original Fantastic Four?) and reverts to her civilian life, Dara likes photography. She has cut back on her picture taking over the years as digital stuff took over (not to mention the need for reading glasses). As I mentioned, though, when I posted the pictures from the UK trip, she got a new camera. Me, I'm taking pictures with the Sony pocket digital and plenty happy, but Dara now has a proper SLR for thru-lens viewing and the usual complement of options like a removable lens, shutter priority, aperture priority, etc. I was a bit skeptical, but we went to a Saturday digital photography class together last weekend, and I am now seeing the light. White balance adjustment, Photoshop, and raw format pictures here we come. The good news is that I don't have to turn the basement tool room and bathroom into a darkroom any more. Thank goodness that pressure has been removed. Instead, I need to upgrade the computer, monitor, and printer to support her habit! It's like buying a piece of furniture and discovering you need to remodel or paint to make it look right. Ah well, this thing I'm typing on is so old it's surprising it still works at all, so I'm glad to have the excuse. At least my mother won't have a better computer than me by the time I'm done.

Free the Ferrets

Garrett (aka Ferret at his job at GameStop) always wanted a ferret, not unlike my unfulfilled desire for a pygmy hippopotamus. Alas, they are illegal in California. You have to smuggle them in over the state line from Nevada if you want one, and that requires getting through the agricultural inspection stations. Not quite like smuggling migrant farm workers in, but not something we were ever willing to do in support of his ferret dream. Seems like there are a half a million illegal ferrets in California now, and a potential ferret emancipation ballot initiative. Maybe this is something we could fold into the illegal alien legislation that is moving so efficiently through Congress.

Smell the roses

U-Va.'s One-Year Wonder - washingtonpost.com I thought this guy was blogworthy. Interesting as a student and even more interesting as a parent. Something tells me he missed alot regardless of his super intelect. Whats next for him, maybe a career in mathematics and retirement by 22

CSI: Rockville

Kyla's been actively looking for a job while she's going to GW. She's looked at dog walker, lab slave, and tutoring jobs. Before she left, she saw a posting on a GW message board for a job at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL). The job description seemed like it was written with her in mind: part time, flexible hours, undergrad in Biology or natural science, lab background, etc. AFDIL is apparently the place to get work experience in her field. She sent in a resume and letter and commenced biting her nails. Then it turned out that one of her classes was taught out there. (Even weirder, after she takes the subway and bus to get there, she gets off the bus right across from Westat, Dick Beatty's old company.) She was a bit bummed at the thought of increased competition when her prof displayed the job posting to the entire class the first day! She poked around and found a lab slave job at GW, but she really wanted this one to come through. Last week she interviewed there, and today she heard they will offer her the position. Congratulations, Kyla!!!

What Lies Beneath

A campaign of contrasts, right down to footwear: Senator George Allen, left,
Republican of Virginia, favors cowboy boots, while his opponent,
James Webb, a Democrat, prefers his son’s old combat boots.

I guess the toupe was why I liked this picture from the NYTimes coverage better. I have been thinking about contributing to Webb's campaign using some of the handy dandy online ways that are out there.

Bad Hair Day

As previously discussed the Va. senators race Allen v Webb has generated national interest, so much so they featured a debate on Meet The Press last sunday. Fertile ground for the likes of Tim Russert, and plenty of mud to sling on both sides. Both candidates managed to smear one another pretty severely, Allen's now famous slur got plenty of time as did Webb's statement that women were not capable of leading men in combat, and bla bla bla. What really stood out for me was the fact that someone was able to convince Webb he looked good enough to apear on national TV with the worst toupee I think I have ever seen, it looked like a small furry animal was riding on his head. In my mind there is something dishonest about a rug, it just seems like a straight shooter would prefer to appear as he is and not lie about having hair. Of course you can't let something like that sway your vote can you? When the smoke cleared they both probably lost a little. With choices like that West Va. looks better all the time.

Aye Mateys

I am notoriously bad at foreign accents. I often find myself wanting to use an accent when I'm telling a story or joke where the participants are not Americans. Kyla and Dara were on the receiving end of this sad skill set when we visited the UK. The closer to Scotland we got, the more I wanted to pretend being Scottish. The unfortunate byproduct of my lack of skills is that I end up sounding like a demented pirate. (I'm not talking about Johnny Depp, who, if you ever saw the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, is worse at the accent than me.) Thankfully, tomorrow, I will be joined in my efforts by a worldwide collection of people revelling in talking like a pirate. I encourage you all to participate and amaze your friends.

Standings

I think the reason my puter crashed was I checked my roto league standings and I was in 1st place, I almost crashed myself. Unfortunately that was before the Monday nite action where I promptly slid to 4th, still that is my best fantasy effort thus far. Also not in 1st place is Dan's baseball team, they have managed to win 1 and lose 2. Even with the losses Dan remains focused on the team and his efforts, he wants to practice at home as well as attend every practice. He seems to have secured the 1st basemans job although he has pulled some duty in the outfield as well. His coach is a big burly x-jock who commands quite a bit of respect with his players as well as the parents. Everyone plays no matter what and that makes him a winner in my book. There is also a little thing called the NFL where tomorrow one of the biggest rivalries in sports will be played out, Skins v Cowboys. Thats probably more sports than anyone here wants to hear about so I will return to my mowing, where I am losing miserably.

The crash of 06

I new something was about to go wrong with my computer when it sounded like my weedeater one day. Shortly after that I was shutdown completely. After a few lengthy sessions of lame attempts I gave in and went to a pro, 3 days later and 175.00 poorer I'm back in action. That was money well spent for me, It seems like I never would have been able to tackle the problems anyway and the time consumed was begining to mount up. I hope over the weekend to have some time to post some.

Pharma Kickbacks

The story about Yale Medical Group instituting guidelines "that doctors refrain from accepting gifts, meals or free medications of any value from drug companies" has been making the rounds out here. That's because similar measures are being instituted at hospitals in the SF Bay area. To give you a flavor of the kinds of atrocities being prevented by these measures, I thought I'd show you a picture (not mine, but one I found online) of a gift I was given as a 40th birthday present. It came from someone whose father was a pharmacist. He got it as a gift from a Pfizer rep.

I have been looking for a proper occasion to wear the tie now for very close to 10 years. Still, I can't bear to toss it out.

Self Checkout

Dara pointed out Jon Carroll's column on using the self-checkout counter. You'd think that for a tech savvy guy like me, it would be right up my alley. No. I have to say these things have the most unintuitive user interface ever devised. When Dara and I were at the grocery store together, we had the exact same experience:

I have two boxes, so I decide to run the same box over twice -- I have seen checkers do this with multiple items. But the self-checkout does not want to do that. So I take the other box out, scan it, and then I bag both items. I put the bag back in my cart.

A voice says, "Item out of bagging area! Item out of bagging area!" I say, "What's the matter with that?" I have promised myself never to talk to machines, but I frequently break my promise. "Item out of bagging area!" I look around guiltily. Has a silent alarm gone off in the security office? Quickly, I put the bags back in the bagging area.

And so it went. With Dara's calm guidance, we managed to make it all the way through.

Modern Sound System

Twenty years without a stereo seemed like long enough. With the empty nest, we needed something other than barking to listen to, so I set us up with a new sound system. Pretty much all the music we have has been ripped from CD's onto the computer so we can listen using an iPod. Since we have a wireless network set up in the house, I got a wireless device that lets us play all that music from a real set of speakers. It also plays Internet radio, and we can play Pandora stations on it as well. Since we didn't have a stereo, I had to get an amplifier and a set of speakers. A few years back when we last got struck with stereo envy, we came very close to buying one of those players that holds hundreds of CD's. Today that would be like having a dinosaur in your living room. Amazing how that has all changed.

As long as I'm on the subject, let me expound on the evil of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Remember your VCR and the movie industry's efforts to keep people from being able to record movies? Ah, those were the good old days, when the entertainment industry actually was forced by the courts and established copyright law to allow personal use copying. Now we have the wonders of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes it a crime to make copies of online works. I'm as big a fan of paying for music as the next guy, and we have paid for hundreds of CD's at music stores and hundreds of 99-cent songs off of iTunes. Still, Apple embeds DRM protections into each song as part of the Recording Industry Association of America's attempt to prevent people from stealing things and circumventing their stranglehold on who-becomes-big in the music world. As a result, since I didn't buy my new little wireless box from Apple, I can't listen to any of the damned songs I bought and paid for on iTunes. For a while there, it looked like the French were going to force Apple's hand on this stupidity, but then they backed down. Now I will wait for hackers to defeat the encryption so I can use what I bought. Moral of the story: DRM and the DMCA are evil, and the RIAA should wake up and embrace the new world's way of music distribution.

Quakes vs. Hurricanes

No, it's not another sporting event. It's straight from the Naples Daily News: a 6.0 earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico that shook up Naples.

Scientists said it was the largest and most widely felt of more than a dozen earthquakes recorded in the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the last 30 years.

Sunday morning. Hmm, I should not have been able to beat Mom to blogging about it.

Greek Maiden

One of our favorite cheap eating places at GW was always Bon Appetit, a little hole in the wall below a staircase on I Street. Their specialty was burgers, and they always had one associated with the current occupant of the White House. How long ago was that, hmm. Well, the political burger of the day was the Miss Lillian. I'll let you blog readers figure that one out, but suffice it to say that Kyla had no clue who Miss Lillian was.

The burger I usually got was the Greek Maiden. The lowbrow college humor associated with eating a Greek maiden added to the enjoyment. As I recall it had feta cheese and olives on it. I've never found any place else that served such a thing. Today I heard Kyla managed to locate Bon Appetit and eat a Greek Maiden.

Delivered Expectations

I got a laugh out of the shattered expectations post, I guess you can make a little fun out of any situation if you try. Guided by my 4th round lottery selection and some lucky breaks I am planning to lead the way to fantasy glory this year, in my own mind anyway. On the subject of expectations I am hosting this years thanksgiving celebration, having upwards from 20 people over for dinner was not enough of a challenge so I have started a kitchen remmodeling job here, of course the built in deadline of Thanksgiving will help to keep me motivated and insure a level of completion I may otherwise never reach. I am hoping for a big turnout, this year the Harris's may actualy outnumber the Harrison's. At this point I'm not sure who will attend but certainly the West Coast Harris family is invited, Kyla I hope will make it as well as AJ and family. At this point I'm not sure whether to request guests to bring a dish or a nail apron.

Tom Sawyer 2.0

What do you do when you are Google and have a zillion images on the web but no decent way for people to find them? You make a game of it by telling everyone how much fun it is to identify key words for images, and you pair people up randomly to lend some semblance of quality to the end result.

You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out.

Maybe one day someone will write a book like The Professor and the Madman regaling the fascinating story of the person who racked up the most points labelling images for Google. They could call it The Capitalist and the Bored Man.

Shattered Expectations

I am sure, Keith, you have your picks made by now in Fantasy Football, but maybe you should consider the Onion's version called Shattered Expectations:

Think that only Fortune 500 CEOs get rewarded for their incompetence and failure? No more! Now you can field a winning fantasy roster of underachievers. Pick underperforming players in the following positions: QB, RB, WR/TE, Kicker & Defense. Earn points and cash for TDs not scored and yards not gained.

That way if you lose you can also win.

Pack of Lies

I keep an eye on the NYTimes "most EMailed" articles. If a lot of people thought it was worthwhile EMailing something to someone else, it's often interesting. Less interesting is the "most blogged" section, which is probably a better gauge of how hyperventilated the blogosphere is at any point in time. I'd been ignoring a most-EMailed article entitled Pack of Lies for a while. After all, I figured I read enough blogs about that stuff. Surprisingly, it turns out it's about a TV show on the National Geographic Channel called The Dog Whisperer.

While Mr. Millan rejects hitting and yelling at dogs during training, his confrontational methods include physical and psychological intimidation, like finger jabs, choke collars, extended sessions on a treadmill and what is called flooding, or overwhelming the animal with the thing it fears. Compared with some training devices still in use — whips and cattle prods, for example — these are mild, but combined with a lack of positive reinforcement or rewards, they place Mr. Millan firmly in a long tradition of punitive dog trainers.

The article proceeds to rip the guy apart. I won't be tuning in, that's for sure. Our oldest dog, Oreo, is the only one who actually attended training class. Dog training class, if you have never been, is really owner training. Next up, Stormy, got the home-grown training. She is, however, the most eager to please dog you can imagine. Last up, D'Or, is a terrier. When you read about terriers, all the books explain that they are a "challenge" to train. That's because they really just don't give a damn about what you want. They love you to death, but that doesn't mean they're going to come when you call them.

Thank you Ernesto

Finaly some rain! Its probably not good to get all your seasonal rainfall in 2 days but it looks like thats what is going to happen and most people around here are glad to have it. Besides the bennefit from the water I'm rejoicing the time off my jobs and in my office a little later this evening I may actualy find the surface of my desk, and when I do I quit for the weekend.