Carl's spam

Welcome to New York City

2009-09-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since I posted to this blog.

Judy and I were married in March. We celebrated with a reception at SAFECO field in August. And now we're in New York.

I had worried about the dogs. Teddy grew up in the burbs. Goober grew up on a ranch in Tenn. Both dogs have taken to NYC like natives! Goober was leery of the elevator at first. He didn't want to go into it. Then when it started to move, he got really worried. That was 3 days ago. Now he's a natural. When the door opens he rushes inside and he's still not totally at ease wen the elevator moves, but he doesn't look panicked.

We walk over to Central Park and before 9a.m. the whole park is off-leash for the dogs, so we let Teddy off immediately. She just follows us as we walk, unless she needs to go off to pee. Goober is too excited to let off the leash all the time. He has pigeons to chase, litter to sniff, people to investigate. He's learning not to bother all people - to distinguish between those who want to pet him from those who don't want to be bothered. When we run into large congregations of dogs, we do take him off leash because he stays with the group to play - run, play-fight, jump around. He loves it.

Today on the way home we walked with one of Goober's new friends - Penny, a 12 month old sheepdog puppy easily twice Goober's weight and height - and they were play fighting for a whole long block. When we got home and I asked Goober if he enjoyed the walk, he got all excited, jumped up on me and clearly wanted to go back out and play some more - RIGHT NOW. I had to disappoint him - but we'll take him back out tomorrrow.

Science Debate

2008-01-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

There's an effort to get the presidential candidates to engage in a debate strictly on science and science policy issues. I've signed their petition and added my favorite question to their pool of questions. See their web page.

My other blog

2007-09-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Although I have neglected this blog, that's nothing to the neglect my other blog has suffered. I started that as a gathering place for the old Ad Hoc Singers - from SLC, UT about 20 years ago. We had a reunion, mostly to get together with Vicki before she was too weak to enjoy it.

No End in Sight

2007-09-18T21:07:00.001-07:00

I've been neglecting the blog for a while - but Judy and I saw this movie a month ago or so - and it was wonderful! I was expecting a Michael Moore style slam of the war. The occupation does deserve to be slammed - but this movie was a balanced documentary along the lines of a Frontline report.

If you can see it, I strongly recommend it!

Robert Heinlein born 100 years ago

2007-07-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

Robert A. Heinlein was born 7/7/07 - 1907 that is - in Butler Missouri. Amazing that someone of that vintage could see what was coming so clearly.

More DST Woes

2007-03-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

I came home to find my older Panasonic recording a program - when it shouldn't have been.

Turns out, its clock had been set back to standard time.

I went to the setup menu and told it to do an automatic clock set - and it did - and came up with standard time.

All I can figure is that one of the PBS stations has a problem with its clock and is sending incorrect times out. This auto-set worked just fine on Sunday. The clock was right this morning, but sometime between 10:30 and 17:00, it got changed.

I tried calling the PBS stations, but it's too late to raise anyone. I'll have to call back tomorrow.

Das Leben der Anderen

2007-03-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

We saw that movie Friday night and I was bowled over. It was fantastic.

I have a slight misgiving about one plot detail (the speed with which HGW converted), but that's nothing compared to most movies. I've ordered the book and will see if it makes that point any clearer.

It's a good thing that we'll never see a regime like that again, where the government feels it has unbridled power to root out enemies from within the citizenry - the ability to arrest and hold people without charge and without habeas corpus - the ability to use "stressful" interrogation techniques on prisoners that intelligence agents suspect are enemies of the state - the ability to spy on citizens - the ability to have citizens inform on other citizens - .... That would be a horrible country to live in.

DST change: more than 2 different results

2007-03-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

So, this morning, I went around the house looking for how my various clocks handled the new Daylight Saving Time rules.

My XP and Vista systems handled it just fine. My Pocket PC on my iPAQ did not - still thinks I'm on standard time - but when I synced my calendar with Exchange, it shows appointments 1 hour earlier. So, the appts are at the right time, if I leave the clock on the Pocket PC alone. I'll do that and see what happens when the 1st Sunday in April comes along.

My Casio watch (setting itself by time broadcast) was correct. My Oregon Scientific wall clock, also setting itself by that broadcast, was wrong - but it rarely picks up the broadcast from inside the house. (You'd think with more space for antenna, it would receive better - but no.)

My oven clocks were all wrong, of course - because they're manual. So was my little wall clock.

The fascinating things were my video recorder clocks and my cell phone.

The cell phone didn't change times! You'd think it would be in touch with the base station. I had to turn it off and on again before it would learn the new time.

The 3 video recorders gave THREE different results, even though all three set themselves from PBS time signals.

My new Panasonic was correct when I woke up. I don't know when it made the switch, but it was between 2 and 8 a.m.

My old Panasonic was still showing standard time, so I had to goose it via the setup menu. Once I forced an auto-sync with PBS, it was correct.

My old JVC VCR was still showing standard time, so I goosed it also to sync with PBS. It did - and at 8:44 in the morning, PDT, it showed 9:44. I'm going to leave it alone, showing one hour ahead of current time, until April to see how it behaves. But, I'm puzzled. What kind of programming in the VCR's controller would lead to that result?

Great new GPS product

2006-10-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

As advertized on Prarie Home Companion, on 10/28/2006, it's the latest in GPS devices.

The ad at this link starts at 21:48 into the show.

"Why They Hate Us..."

2006-09-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

I was re-reading Howard K. Smith's book, "Last Train from Berlin" - just finished it - and came across a passage that struck me with its pathos. He's recounting an experience in 1940 or 1941, before he escaped from Berlin.

===========

``It is true to say that England has never been more popular on the European continent than she is today. Nor has Germany ever been more hated by her European neighbours than right now. And the Germans know it. Once, in Berlin, I ran into an aged German housewife I know; she was holding her almost empty market-bag in one hand and looking wistfully at a faded, ancient propaganda poster headed "Why They Hate Us...", referring to the plutocracies, which was pasted on the side of a house. I asked her what she found so interesting, and she said: "I was only thinking. That used to be a propaganda slogan--`They Hate Us'--but now the Fuehrer has fixed it. They do hate us. The Fuehrer achieves everything." ''

Debit card and ATM card theft

2006-03-10T12:17:00.000-08:00

This article, at the end, finally supports a claim I've made for years now, but according to them, it's worse than I have been saying.

My rules of thumb are:
1. it's OK to use credit cards online, because the credit card companies (and regulations) limit your loss.
2. it's not wise to use debit cards (e.g., branded like a credit card) because even if you can get your money back, you're out that money while you're trying to get it back. That article suggests that you're not always able to get your money back. I refuse to carry a branded debit card for this reason.
3. I had assumed it was OK to use ATM cards at a merchant because I assumed the box encrypted the PIN with a key known only to that one hardware box and the bank. I guess I assumed too much. The article suggests that folks are sloppy with their key management - using one key for many boxes and even letting network components know the PIN encryption key. I guess I will have to stop using ATM cards except at the bank's own ATM. That's too bad. I liked paying for things at the supermarket with my ATM card.
4. I refuse to use EFT, except for direct paycheck deposit. Once anyone is able to move money in or out of my bank account, they can drain it and I get no recourse at all.

I did use EFT once, getting money from Europe, but for that purpose I opened a special bank account with almost no money in it - received my EFT payment - moved it manually to my real account - and then closed the fake account.

No Superdome in my back yard

2005-09-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

This American Life, today, has stories from people who were left in New Orleans. This will be available on the web next week, they say.

One group was trying to walk to safety, over a bridge out of the city, and they were met by armed police from the town of Gretna who threatened to shoot them if they tried crossing the bridge. "You're not going to turn the West Bank into another Superdome." This was described as a racist/classist motivation. The policeman was keeping out the undesirables. After the group found a sheltered spot on a bridge on the highway and cleaned up the area to give themselves and their children a place of safety, another policeman from Gretna showed up, looking totally crazy, and started shouting at them to get off the bridge - and when they picked up what they could carry, a helicopter from Gretna came down to their spot to blow away all the rest of their possessions - cleaning off the bridge. Listen to that show - from 9/10/05 - "After the Flood".

We had a small town in the vicinity of Seattle that was preparing to accept evacuees from New Orleans - but a town politician was quoted on local radio saying that only well employed people were allowed to use that emergency shelter. No one who was on chronic welfare and who might be dangerous would be allowed into the shelter. This policy was necessary to keep the local community safe, she said. I was deeply ashamed of Washington State, when I heard that.

I'm reminded of talk I used to hear in Utah in the 1970s - of survivalists who were setting up their own enclaves for when the cities fall apart and the ravening hoards boil out of the city and might threaten the hard-built safe enclaves. These survivalists had guns - not small guns - assault weapons.

What is this other than the suburban::city split, taken to extremes? When the situation gets bad and people get desperate, weapons come out and people are threatened with death.

Is it too late to address the underlying problem? Can we find no way to convert American culture into one that loves one's neighbor - even the least of these? That's a Christian maxim, but I don't hear the Christians who are such vociferous Republicans adopting this attitude and modeling it for others. I see them modeling the suburban circling of wagons against the great unwashed in the city ghettos.

If they're not going to lead this effort to restore American culture to civility, who is going to?

When you see people in need - people who are desperate - people who have no supplies and who see a store with supplies on its shelves - people who break into that store to take what they need (diapers, baby food, water, ...) - do you take that as a sign of how desperate people are and therefore as a sign of how the governmental relief effort failed - or do you assemble troops to send into the area to shoot looters?

Randy Adams for President

2005-09-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not, but check out this interview from Weekend Edition Saturday. Here's a guy who actually is the kind of character that Robert Heinlein wrote about so frequently (especially in Farnham's Freehold).

David Brooks on PBS - Bush failing too obviously even for Republicans

2005-09-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

Did y'all see David Brooks on Newshour, Friday night? He was pissed with Bush for failing to show leadership.

It was so clear to me, watching Bush after he broke off his vacation and decided (or took direction) to show that he was doing something and Being Presidential, that I didn't see leadership. I saw a middle manager. He praised his direct reports (e.g., the head of FEMA). He admitted no fault. He spoke disconnected sound bites, as usual, and one of them was that the results weren't acceptable. There was no acceptance of responsibility - but the people demand that someone be blamed, so he blamed -- no one in particular.

This is what happens when you have a middle manager - and an inept one, at that. He covers his ass and he plays puppet, speaking lines that don't require him to take a deep breath to get through them or to spend any time thinking to remember them.

Will this be the end of the nonsense in Washington - or will the marginal majority that supported Bush start making excuses for him? We'll have to wait and see.

We finally see some people pointing this out, but the ones I heard were on NPR, and my Republican friends tell me that NPR is totally left wing. I think they're talking about Pacifica Radio, but I guess we have different definitions of left and right. To me, NPR is right of center, as is PBS.

Here's Linda Wertheimer giving a commentary on leadership this morning.

FEMA's list

2005-09-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

I heard about this on NPR this morning and thought I should post a blog entry about it, but first I searched the net and found that many others have done that better than I would. Try this one, for example, or this one.

The story: FEMA had a list of organizations you could donate to, and except for the Red Cross and maybe Second Harvest, they were all religious - and Pat Robertson's organization was high on the list.

Religious dictator?

2005-07-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

There's a non-fiction note by Heinlein in his Revolt in 2100, speculating on what it would take for the US to get a religious dictator. [Revolt in 2100 was about the overthrow of such a dictator.]

I've been reading it to friends more and more lately, so it's more efficient just to post it here.

Al's Lock and Safe

2005-07-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

WWDTM this weekend had a story about Al's Lock and Safe and the truck key they made from an X-ray. Side channel cryptanalysis, anyone?

Here's one news story explaining what happened.

Cardinal Sin

2005-06-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the BBC news tonight at 19:00 and they had a story about the death of Cardinal Sin. The anchor was interviewing a reporter from the Philippines and he asked her "will we see the likes of him again?" She answered, "no, Sin was original."

I swear there wasn't even the hint of a snigger in either voice throughout the entire segment.

Tom Tomorrow Archive

2005-05-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I read Tom Tomorrow, and I didn't realize how much I missed his cartoons until David forwarded me the latest. Here's his archive (or one of them, another being here.)

Star Wars III

2005-05-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

So, I finally saw it last night - loved it (mostly). The acting was still wooden in places. There was only one plot point that seemed too convenient (but I don't remember now which).

I got a real kick out of the political message, once I figured out that there might be one. Of course, it was so subtle that it was hard to be sure if one had been intended, but I'm really good at putting pieces together, so I am convinced that there were 1 or 2 places where some reference to current US politics might have been worked into the script. I wonder if anyone else caught them.

Waterpik site not found by Google?

2005-05-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

I searched for "waterpik hose repair" or "waterpik hose repair kit" (I don't remember which) and was sent to a reseller, not to Waterpik itself. In fact, their site didn't show up on the list of matches at all, at least on the first several pages.

The reseller was selling Waterpik kits - at about 2ce Waterpik's price.

When I received it and tried to use it, it failed (because the end of my broken hose near the handpiece was too short) - so I called the customer service number on the instruction sheet - 1-800-525-2774 - and the nice lady on the phone was very helpful - sold me a new handpiece for less than the original hose repair kit.

Why wasn't all this information on their web site? I went looking through their web site for repair kits and found NOTHING. No wonder Google found nothing. So, I wrote them a nasty-gram.

For my friends who might need something like this, write down the phone number. They're really very helpful.

Activist Press

2005-05-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

When they're done reforming activist judges - putting only the proper judges in place - will the next stop be the activist Press, using Newsweek's story about the Q'ran as the excuse?

...a story from one anonymous, high ranking source...

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

What if that story had been planted - to lay the groundwork for the coming attack on the Press?

We won; we get to dictate!

2005-05-14T01:10:00.000-07:00

Friday's Newshour was riddled with references to the idea that "we (the Republicans or the religious right) won the election; now we get to dictate the results. Stop acting like a diplomat. Act like a winner."

Such lack of diplomacy sounds like Bush and is exemplified by Bolton - but that's why we need the filibuster. Someone has to put a criminally irresponsible Executive Branch on a short leash and in our system, that needs to be the Congress.

A better solution, of course, would be to:
1. stop filibuster for all judicial nominations
2. require 75 votes in the Senate for any judicial nominee, except for the Supreme Court
3. require 90 votes in the Senate for Supreme Court nominees.

and, while we're at it, require 70 votes in the Senate for all other Executive Branch nominees.

After all, if a country is more evenly divided than 75:25 on an issue, the government's job is to find a common ground and prevent alienating a large percentage of the population. Bullying is not just obnoxious - raw power is dangerous and attempts to exercise it must be punished.

Shrubbish?

2005-05-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

This web site Kippi sent me must be made up. After all, any person that brain dead would never be elected to public office - even a small one. He would be too much of an embarrassment.

Cute Quote

2005-04-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

From Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; Apr 9, 2005; 07:37 into the first segment, Roxanne Roberts quoted Sir Jimmy Goldsmith as saying "When you marry your mistress, you create a vacancy."