Merry Christmas

It's that time of year again.  I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.  In case your particular frame of belief doesn't include a Christmas, I wish youthe very best of whatever holidays and deities you celebrate, with a heartfelt wish for improvements in your situation in the coming year.

As usual, I'm not well prepared, but I still have a few hours in which to remedy that.  Tomorrow we all head for my brother's house in Virginia, and we're looking forward to the visit.  We're geographically close, but it seems our lives get so complicated we don't get actually to see one another more than once or twice a year, and now that our kids are grown, it gets even more seldom.

We have late church services this evening, and the Rudolph Grouplet will be singing at the close of the service.  With luck we'll stay awake and all the candle exhaust won't clog our pipes until we are done.  After that, it's head home, where I'll beg to open something and will be denied, then we'll go to sleep until far too early, get up and make a thorough wreck out of the living room, then get dressed and grumble about being late starting out for my brother's house.

Traditions are useful - they keep us grounded.

May your traditions bring you joy, and peace in this season. 

Cowards, Drunks, and other reprobates

This past weekend, a coworker suffered a loss that is hard to comprehend so close to Christmas.

Her husband, who was walking home, was struck by a hit and run driver of (probably) an SUV, and killed immediately.  I suppose one might say that the fact that he was killed immediately is a kindness, but somehow I don't believe that the family would find this particularly thoughtful of the person who ran.

I wonder what possible excuse there could be for so cowardly an action on the part of a person wielding a large deadly object.  As a gun owner, I have certain responsibilities as regards safety, concern for others, taking care that mu surroundings cannot be a contributor to others' harm - would not one believe that the driver of an automobile would be held to the same standards, particularly in light of the fact that we kill far more people with vehicles than we do with guns in this great nation.

Apparently, though, responsibility is only recognized for the odd among us - those who choose unusual means of transport, those who find firearms interesting (for whatever reason) and those who are over a certain age and grew up knowing that if an act of theirs had consequences, nobody else owned those consequences.

The family involved here is shattered - three children lost a father, a wife is left to pick up the pieces, and to bury her husband, and then rebuild a life at an age when life ought to be pretty sane and settled.  There is at present nothing to point to the driver of the vehicle that did this, so one has only to wonder - was it a drunk, was it an unauthorized driver, someone on dope, someone on a phone, someone having a fight with a wife / girlfriend - what possible excuse can there be for having failed so dramatically to accept responsibility for one's actions?

It is not hard to imagine accident circumstances - accidents do happen - but if it were an accident, why not stay around, explain that it was an accident and move forward?  The cowardly act of leaving does more than allow one to escape answerability - it leaves a goodly number of people with no closure, with nothing to understand, and no hope of justice, at least not in the forseeable future.

I have no answers for those that hit and run - I'd be tempted to shoot them on the spot, but that would be entirely too merciful - and one so devoid of personal responsibility could not be trusted to maintain the remnants of the family, see to their support and income, etc.

It is obvious to the casual observer that the potential penalty for this heinous act of cowardice is not great enough, or horrid enough because it continues to occur, and folks continue to try  to excuse themselves of responsibility for this. It won't wash - the responsibility is squarely on the person doing the fleeing.  A person so bereft of the basic concept of honor cannot be believed or trusted with anything - take the vehicle away and crush it.  Incarceration removes financial recovery for the victims - but there are those who might not understand anything less - although there are also those for  whom it could be considered a vacation, and that's scary.

I have no answers, no cures, no remedies - but I am deeply upset by this, and realize that I could have been the guy laying dead in the street.  Anyone reading could have been the dead person in the street.  I would wish better for my survivors than having to wonder how and why.

Have a great Tuesday, y'all, and think kind thoughts for a coworker whose Christmas has been so thoroughly disrupted and destroyed.  

Three more days...

Three more days until Christmas.  I think I'm allowed to say Christmas here - with all the PC BS flowing about these days, one is never certain. I have done part of my shopping, on-line of course, and have a bit left that must be done by standing in line, one of my least favorite pastimes.

I made coffee and looked outside at the thermometer and decided that being up was a mistake, but I can't do anything about it now since I am already up.  I forgot that my grandson is on holiday from his school, and started to wake him up, which earned me a bit of disapproval from is grandmother, who has Ronnie Duty all day today and really wanted to be asleep for a while.  Happily I had no luck at all getting him to awaken, so they're both sleeping the sleep of the just right now, while I am blathering on about Monday Morning.  Had I realized that he was already on holiday, I could have slept another 40 minutes this morning.  Oh well, as my cousin used to say in her own shorthand, "If dog rabbit."  If you wonder, when expanded that came out as "If  the DOG had not stopped to poop he might have caught the RABBIT."  I guess you had to be there.

I have mixed feelings about the Auto Bailout.  I wonder if it is not time to let something die, and let some lessons be learned.  The terms of the bailout include the stipulation that certain things must be done or a repayment of all funds falls due - and one is prompted to wonder just howthehell they are going to give back funds spent when they're broke?  I wish I could shed a tear for those fools that showed up for a handout in their corporate jets, but I find it hard to feel ufor someone so removed from reality.  I who have never had an executive jet at my beck and call cannot imagine being able simply to fly and let the accountants worry about the costs, particularly since I am my own accountant, about to start working on my own taxes for yet another year.

Right now I feel some sympathy for Barack and Joe, incoming president and VP respectively.  I saw a number of ads over the past few days indicating that they are all poised and ready to hit the ground running and Do Great Things in a few weeks, and wonder at their naivete, considering that Congress is like a train - it isn't moved or guided easily, and almost everything that they want to do will have to pass thru that august body, composed largely of folks who are dedicated primarily to the perpetuation of their own existance.

There's also a stirring in the local news from folks that want the Electoral College abolished in favor of a popular vote.  We've already done that with the Senate (originally its membership was decided by the legislatures of the states being represented - the House was there for all the people, the Senate intendd to look out for the interests of the States) and I remain convinced that it was a Dmb Thing to do, since we already had a popularly elected representing body.  The idea of a purely popular vote ought to terrify any minority because a purely popular vote would make it possible to legislate them to a state of subservience.  Of course, no thinking voter would allow such a thing - but all too many ought not to be accused of thinking, I fear.  Probably I should include myself sometimes in that category, since everyone has braindead days - but some folks seem to live that way.

But I promised myself I would try to stay apolitical today.

One of my coworkers lost her husband over the weekend, in a hit and run "accident" - which will I am certain cast a pall on the holidays for her and her three children.  Hit and run is something that ought to be classified as a hate crime, particularly when a fatality is the result. Nobody who is younger than I am plans on being dead, particularly not in such a meaningless manner - and life for her and her family is about to change forever.  I count myself fortunate any day I can wake up, look up and not see the roots of some grass.  

I just looked up at the clock and discovered that since I have to go to work today I must go and finish dressing, grab the computer that travels with me and head for the office.  I'd like to stay here today; there's more than enough to do around here, but certain unfortunate addictions (food, housing, toys [computers, motorcycles]) drive me to continued employment.

Happy Monday, y'all.

Commute rant redux

I have often been given cause to wonder if there is a special course  that is required of folks before buying a big Lexus SUV.  That course being, of course, behavior appropriate to assholes.  

I watched one this morning on my commute to work that about made me want to stop the vehicle and do grave harm to it - harm enough to turn it into a modern art stationary exhibit.

The driver rolled through a stop sign in front of me at some velocity in excess of the limit, about clipping my right front fender, then proceeded to run down the right lane for half a mile and cut in front of someone where the lane ran out, forcing three vehicles nearly to telescope whilst this person had space made - all this without a sign of a signal.  Even BMW SUV pilots are more thoughtful than this jerk was - but he seems to be typical of Lexus owners - particularly the large Lexus trucklets with a big chrome V8 on the back hatch.  Whenever I see one of these things, I wonder where is the cop?  I know cops don't make enough to own such a behemoth, so I know it's not a cop on a day off - but I really do wonder how someone can be so oblivious as to believe that nobody else out there has any right to safety.

Big Ford and Lincoln SUV pilots are not even as bad as Lexus folks, although they do come close - I watched the Lexus try to intimidate a Lincoln Navigator, and we nearly had bent sheet metal before the Navigator gave way, aolthough the Navigator pilot lost his cool enough that a number of obscene gestures were directed at the Lexus - not that the Lexus inhabitant took any notice.

Later on this morning before I arrived I had a BMW SUV come up a right on-ramp, and I carefully left space for him to move over - something he did not do.  Instead of taking the space I offered, he rushed past the four foolks in front of me and bulled his way into a line where there was no space when the ramp merged.  I always try to leave space for at least one person to merge, believing (perhaps naively) that it smooths the flow of traffic and helps heep everyone's blood pressure lower.  Am I really naive, or just being ignored by my betters?  Inquiring minds, etc....

I did eventually get to work without heightened blood pressure (something I arrange by heavy use of the AMESLAN asshole sign which makes me grin whenever I see such atavistic roadway behavior) and without any foreign paint on my old Volvo.  I sure wish I was important enough to behave like that, but I'm not capable of ignoring everything around me in order to endanger myself and anyone else on the road anywhere near to where I am.

What am I not understanding?

No longer Monday

Monday turned into a mental health day - by the time the morning stuff was done and the remainder was done in the afternoon, it was not worth spending two hours to travel downtown and back to work two hours - so it was 8 hours Medical instead of the four that I had planned.

If got cold overnight - it was still motorcycle-warm when I went to bed, and when I got up it was cold enough that I didn't even want to try to start one up.  I am sure that at least one will start - but there wasn't any real point since I don't really want to ride when it is that cold.  Must be my age showing through - there was a time when I'd ride no matter how damn cold it was.  But then again, there was also a time when I'd ride after ten beers to get a couple of cases to tote back to the barracks for those still thirsty.  Some of those adventures should have killed us all except maybe we just didn't know it at the time.

I have decided I need two more days in the week.  One to play poker and/or bridge, the other to bury myself downstairs in my house and fix the mess that is computers.  Procrastination is great stuff, but it can be overdone, and I've been proving that for a couple of years now.  I have a really nice IBM super workstation (dual 3 gigahertz Xeon processors) down there that I bought a year ago to replace the machines now doing mail server, file server, desktop and DVD/CD burning duty - and it still hasn't been fired up.  I'm going to be really pissed off if it won't start up.  I ought to go and get a one of the virtual machine systems except I don't feel like taking the time to learn it just now, so it will end up an XP machine doing everything that is currently done by three machines over in the work side of the basement.  I have a couple of terabyte drives for it that I intended to store all my MP3 and video stuff on - until the 250 and 300 gig drives in Alfred (that's the server's name - all my machines get names....  There's Alfred, Wallis, Rabbit, Howard, Charles, Golem and Andrew out there) started going bad.  Now I have most of a terabyte on failing/failed drives, and am pissed at myself for not taking hold of them when the failure started.  I'll probably have to go out and find all the stuff I had again.  This time, though, I think I'll do a RAID array and lay in a couple of extra terabyte drives against the day one decides to croak. They're cheap enough right now - if you look around they can be had for $100 or so.  If I can find the right motherboard, I may have to twin the super desktop just to keep from stepping on myself.  When Jamie left, he had cleared off what he wanted gone from the downstairs machine, so I can remove it and maybe replace it with something bigger and faster.

There's always something that needs done - I just hope I can recover enough of the web site and FTP site to make their rebuild just a matter of recollecting data from the binary newsgroups.  I'll also have to get a new Newsbin, since mine is on one of the fail3ed drives, and I'll have to go and make nice with Giganews, since my contract with them ran out when I let the credit card die that was used so they cut me off - but that was a year or more back, so they've probably forgot all about it by now.  Maybe I'll start on this tonight if I can find a piece of cat5 to reach from the switch to the table out in the other room.  Sounds like a good project for this evening provided I don't get sucked into a CSI:Miami marathon or something like that.

And of course I still have Christmas shopping to do - just about all of it, and I gotta call my brother because I don't have a clue in hell about what I should surprise him with this year.  This was a whole lot easier when he was only 30 and didn't already own everything that I could afford to get him.  I know - I'll call his wife and see if she has any ideas - although they've been married long enough she's probably as out of ideas as I am.

I think I've had enough fun for today, so I'm going to close up and go home.  Maybe I'll hear from Jamie tonight with more adventures from Australasia.  He's putting up his pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/ijam357 if anyone wants to look.

Happy Tuesday, y'all.

Monday Morning

Well, it is Monday morning again.  We have something to do before I head for the office, so I won't be in much before noon or so.  To balance, I'll end up downtown until around 8 or so in the evening, but I may actually Get Something Done today.

Jamie is now in Australia.  It took a bit - he went from Timaru to Wellington to Auckland to Sidney, and apparently picked up a tour guide, because he spent yesterday on a whilrwind tour of Sydney, including some parke he didn't know existed, and now is shopping for a GPS.  He even got a new telephone number afer leaving New Zealand.  Text messaging, FaceBook and Skype all come into play for information transfer.  We may yet get his Mom out of the 60's as far as electronic thingies are concerned.

I was hoping for a motorcycle day today, since it is supposed to get into the mid 60's but it is also supposed to rain - and I do not like riding in the rain.  Still, it is beautiful out right now.

Ten days to Christmas - don't even ask about my shopping - it is not only undone, it is practically devoid of ideas.  Never have I felt so far behind.  Yesterday I never even got dressed - I spent the day online and sleeping (not simultaneously) and am still tired.  Retirement is starting to look pretty good - it is a shame that I can't afford it yet.  I think Phyllis is probably glad I can't afford it - having me under foot all the time would probably make her crazy.  In the summer I could ride but in the winter maybe I'm better off going to work.

Well, it's time to go and see Joe, so I'll get ready and do that.  Have a good day, y'all.

Social Networking

My daughter Elizabeth finally harrassed me into joining FaceBook - if only to get access to some pictures I seem never to be able to get her to email to me.  Along the way I looked over MySpace, and have started playing with Skype and a webcam.

Now I need a 40-hour day just to pay visits to all this stuff along with all the stuff I should be doing.

Interestingly enough, both FaceBook and MySpace have found for me people that I have known over the years but could no longer find.  Of course, most of my generation won't be represented there because we tend to be Luddites - but it was surprising just which ones I could fine.  I also discovered a bunch of folks overseas who may be related to people with whom I was close, so a bunch of messages went out this afternoon while I was supposedly working.  

I should explain that part of what I do involves fixing things that break, and when nothing is broke and everything else is on schedule, I don't really have that much required of me, so I can cheerfully do other things as long as I am not too obvious about it (playing Solitaire will get me yelled at....)

I showed FaceBook to my wife, and she was horrified at the amount of personal information that she was able to see there on various people - but it is a new day, I explained and much of this is put out there to find folks of like mind with whom to converse.

I'm not all that thrilled with the search capabilities, however - I would love to be able to use more of Google-like searches, with phrases and separate words and groups to narrow the search.  Looking for Lang brings over 500 names - if I could look for Lang in Germany, the list would be smaller.  Maybe if I complain they'll fix it?  I dunno.

It has been interesting looking at how some members have customized their pages (some to the point that their color choice makes reading their information impossible, at least to my ancient eyes) and just how artistic some are.  I also stumbled into some pretty crude sexual stuff, but it seems that these wallwriters are ever among us, and to do anything besides ignore just encourages them.

Facebook and MySpace have interesting possibilities - I just wonder how long they can stay free of charge?  Someone somewhere is spending a lot on servers and disk space, and I wonder what their return is (besides advertising dollars, that is...)

If you have not looked into FaceBook and MySpace, by all means do it - give it a few hours, and then see who shows up to talk with you, and who you can find that disappeared from your area years ago.  You might reap a pleasant surprise or two.

As for Skype, well, the technology works - my wife and I chatted with our son who's in New Zealand (although he may be in Australia by now) and watched his face as we chatted (and he watched ours) using a couple of cheap webcams, our fast connection, and Skype - which at that time had in excess of 12 MILLION active users on line. 

And to think that when I started working on computers they all had tubes in them.

Amazing stuff out there, but you gotta mess with it to see its worth - just hearing about it or reading reviews is not good enough.

Happy Friday, y'all....

Wednesday, December 10th

Less than 15 days until Christmas - and I have nothing for anyone.  This seems to happen all the time.  I thought of a few really clever things on the way into the office this morning, but was busy driving and didn't want to look for a pen to write myself a note to myself to tell me what I had thought would be good for someone.

Of course, at the office lunacy abounds - folks are going out on leave, others are trying to squeeze the last bit of knowledge out of those going out before they go, just in case they get a brain wipe whilst they're away and have to be completely retrained upon return, I guess.  I've been doing this stuff for so long I don't know any more what i know, and am constantly being surprised by the things I remember only when I need them - any other time I would swear I didn't know these things, and it seems like I forget them as soon as I'm finished using them.  Maybe it is a part of the brain whose job is to keep my head from getting too cluttered by hiding the indices to the knowledge, bringing them out only in extremis.

When I got up this morning, it was just over 60 degrees and I thought "Hot damn, I'll motorcycle to work today!" - and then I looked out the window into a monsoon and determined that the old Volvo had to be stirred from its rest again today.   The drive in was horrid - what takes me 25 minutes ad night can take 95 minutes in the morning, and I really hate it.  Much of this is caused, of course, by the large number of anal sphincters that one encounters when commuting.  Today, I met the guy who runs down a half-mile on-ramp to the end and then forces his way into traffic, rather than taking the hole I carefully left for him to fit in without causing anyone to become upset.  Maybe he was talking on his telephone and didn't notice all that open space, or maybe he's just too important to bother with the normal courtesies - but I gotta tell you, someone up in front of me must've had some words for him, because he stuffed his way in where there was no room.  Where's the cop when you need one?

There was another that cruised in a marked exit-only lane for a mile or more and then stopped when it turned off and made everyone wait while he found someone he could intimidate into letting him in.  

'm just not important enough to pull this crap, and I'm entirely too fond of nonstress approaches to things - and I gotta believe that behaving like that induces far more stress than I'm likely to want at any given moment.

I had a nice "visit" with my son in New Zealand last night, using Skype with a webcam - the quality was better than I had a right to expect, and the hookup was clear and the sound really good.  I was pleasantly surprised, and spent another hour or so looking for otherpeople to Skype at/to but couldn't find that many familiar names - and the names that I did find were all asleep where I should have been.

But it is a neat technology, webcams are pretty cheap (I bought 4 for around $40 on eBay and gave one to my daughter, one to myself, took one to work, and still have one on the shelf) and work pretty well.  Last night, I hooked up with Jamie and let his mom chat with him a bit, and then drove her a little nuts walking through FaceBook to look at some of our kids' pictures, and see who we could find there that we knew.  She still won't touch a keyboard that doesn't consist of white and black keys, but she's getting closer....

Choir rehearsal tonight, and I need to be there, so I'm gonna run.  Hope y'all are having great days.  Tomorrow will be another day.

Patriot MicroChip

THE PATRIOT MICRO CHIP is intended to be implanted in terrorists. 
 
The implant is specifically designed to be installed in the forehead.

When properly installed it will allow the implantee to speak to God.  

It comes in various sizes.

The exact size of the implant will be selected by a well-trained and highly-skilled technician. The implant may or may not be painless. Side effects, like headaches and nausea are temporary. Some bleeding or swelling may occur at the injection site.

Motorcycle Vandalism, redux

Way back in October I babbled on about an incident in the garage where I work involving my motorcycle and a guy parked in my parking place, said guy finding himself blocked into that place. Rather than do what was required to find me, he muscled the steering until the lock was buggered. then left the motorcycle in front of another car.

It is all on video, and when it became apparent he was not going to be nice about it, I just filed a comprehensive insurance claim and had the report of his deliberate destruction of my property go on to Internal Investigations.

IID determined that since I had filed a claim with my insurance, it became a civil matter and did not merit any more investigation on the criminal matter of the deliberate and malicious destruction of my property. This irritated me greatly because it gave the guy a free pass on what ought to have been treated as a crime. I was advised to let it go and let the insurance companies wrangle.

Today I got a note from my insurance advising me that this guy was uninsured.

I was flabbergasted - Maryland is particularly crappy about insurance being required, and can make it really expensive if you don't play by the rules. Add to that the fact that the other guy was driving $85,000 worth of BMW, it boggles the mind to imagine that such a vehicle would be allowed out of the garage uninsured - not to mention that, lacking insurance, the vehicle was not legally tagged and should never have been on the road.

This guy is a cop - he ought to know better.

So Monday my boss will go back to IID and ask that the incident be reevaluated. I'm thinking that it is no wonder they guy was uncooperative, and that he has to have oatmeal for brains or a hidden limitles source of dollars, to be driving around an automobile so expensive without coverage.

I'm thinking that the local newspaper might love to know about this, but I'll wait a while before pursuing that venue. Meanwhile, though, once again I am irritated.

Oh yes, and along with that letter was one from my other insurance company telling me that they are still working to try and get my deductible back after a parking lot incident last February!! Apparently the Hartford Group doesn't like to play nice. AARP keeps telling me that they have insurance at a cost benefit to me - but it is Hartford, and somehow based on this experience I don't think I want to deal with that group under any circumstances.

I'm too old for this crap!

End of the Week - Again

 is almost time to go home again for a couple of days.  This has been a week - spent a lot of time with photos (visit http://picasaweb.google.com/rar1942g if you are curious) and more time with little computers.  Some of it paid off - I finally got my little tablet PC working, although I haven't yet got the little ToughBook to talk to me - it might have to be relegated to doorstop duty.

Jamie and I haven't connected - I put Skype on a bunch of computers at home, and brought one with me today just so I could watch and see if he came online.  Of course, if he did it was while I was in the john...

Skype has turned into a pretty nifty tool/toy - the basic form is free, but allows for video (I just have to find someone besides my son to test it with...) calls, conferencing, chats, and all kinds of other stuff - and even seems to work pretty well.  If you call all over, and are looking to spend less money, Skype could do it for you - provided you have a computer and reasonably fast InterNet (which you can get at any internet cafe that's wireles)  and the folks you wish to call have computers and reasonably fast connections, you can talk 24/7 and not spend any more than the computer uses in electricity.  If you don't mind paying a little, you can even call cell phones and landline phones with it - but the free part with the video is quite enoough excitement for me, thank you.

I know - I'll set Jessica up with it tonight, and we can videoconference between the kitchen and the living room.  Of course she'll hve to hide under a blanket or I'll hear her without the computer - but it should be fun - and maybe even useful when someone is downstairs....

Come to think of it, it might work really well with that Media Center PC I have in the living room feeding the big HD set.  Maybe tomorrow, unless I get called to work.  There's a major power change tomorrow, and something is bound to get hosed up.  I was going to come in and just work on some stuff I have to do, until I realized hat the power outage was in the server farm - and without servers all I can do is sit around and grumble.  

And of course Christmas is in just over 2 weeks and I am as usual unprepared - don't have a clue about what to get anyone.  Maybe I ought to go shopping this weekend, except that I hate shopping and I hate crowds - and crowded shopping leaves me needing a drink after about seven minutes.   If I am doing it online again, I have to get about it.  How does the time get away?

The bosslady stopped by late yesterday and asked if I would work another 20 years - and she knows how old I am since she's only 4 years younger.  Her reasoning was that money was so worthless nowadays hat we'd have to work until we died.  I told her that wne I died it would be my kids' problem to get me planted, and she doesn't have any, and her damn dogs are all too old to be of much use.  Shortly thereafter I went home and pondered it all a bit, wondering what it was all supposed to mean....  Does it mean I'm safe for 20 years?  Does it mean I will get her dogs?  Inquiring minds etc.... 

Got a couple of new cute pictures - I'll have to set up a separate area for the latest bits of foolishness so I can share them with all comers - some are really finny, some truly outrageous, and some just make you want to look twice and say "huh?" once.

I gotta go home - I've had all the fun they permit today.

Be well, y'all.

I.T. and the Peter Principle

If there is someone reading this who doesn't "get" the Peter Principle reference, the short form is In an organization, supervisors will rise to the level of  incompetence.  

Any place with an IT organization whose IT folks are not too paranoid to speak of it will tell you that this is always the case with IT folks - they people that run them are not IT-savvy, don't want to learn, and generally just want what they want when they want it.  The messenger who brings a no will be fortunate if that does not occasion an opportunity to work elsewhere, regardless of the practicality, feasibility or possibility of the unreasonable demand.  If the boss is paranoid or tends to micromanagement it gets even more painful.

I spent the morning in a meeting, mostly watching someone draw on a whiteboard.  I had to explain a thing or two, which I did - several times, using different words each time.  I was directed to telephone someone to ask something after discovering that there was a problem, it wasn't ours, and they were working on it.  When asked to telephone this person, which I knew to be working on the problem we had discovered, I expressed a reluctance to interrupt - the problem would need fixed before the person could begin to work on what I was asked to pursue, and it struck me as counterproductive to interrupt progress with something that would only cause mental overhead for this person, possibly keeping something broke for longer than necessary.  This was not an answer that anyone wanted to hear, so I ended up taking time to phone someone who was busy, thereby keeping two people from useful work - but that was what everyone seemed to think was needed.

I think I need to pull the plug and get out of here for a while, go to choir rehearsal, and spend several hours not thinking about what I do for a living - maybe even start up a motorcycle and see how long it takes to get numb riding in 40 degree weather....

Sorry, I'm frustrated and irritable. 

I'm certain that everyone has a similar tale.  If you happen to be everyone, let me know what your tales is - comments are open.

Roswell Fanfiction

This is one of my secret vices.  But it is a big one.

The Internet is a marvelous place - you can find all sorts of stuff there if you are not in a real hurry and don't mind that searching is a lot like free association.  Among the things one can find is what amounts to fan clubs for various TeeVee shows, some long defunct.

Fanfiction is fiction that takes the characters and sometimes the circumstances of a show series, a book series, or some other grouping and creates new stories, story lines, and story series based loosely or tightly on the information already present.

Some of this stuff is really well written, some is crap - just like everything else in the known universe.

I was a fan of the Roswell series when it was on TeeVee.  It lasted only three seasons (resurrected twice by fans who drowned the production company in tabasco sauce...) and had its ups and downs depending on who was writing - but the young actors in the series had chemistry such as rarely gets observed.  The Pilot and the first 5 episodes were probably where the show peaked, and after that it sometimes got gimmicky and appealed to folks looking for outlandish or outrageous anachronism or science untruth.  

For those who don't know, Roswell centered around the lives of four teenagers that had been foundlings at around the age of 6 and adopted in Roswell - and the four other teenagers who were schoolmates, playmates and soulmates some of the time - and the attempt by the first mentioned group to keep secret that while the looked like other kids, they were not at all like other kids, having been created from a mix of terrestrial people DNA and the DNA from elsewhere.  Sounds kinda uninteresting, but the relationships between the aliens and the natives were convoluted, and the analysis of what sorts of paranoia might rest in the aliens was well done, along with the interplay of the two species after the natives became aware of the secret of the others.  

In any event, the relationships were well done, the chemistry between the player pairs was so great that I've not seen the like before or since, and I could identify with one of the aliens - the alienation in school, the need to stay private - I've been there, and it is hard.

Anyhow, even before the show was taken off (and there was still enough interest that DVD's for all three seasons were released before the show had been gone for a year; and I own all 3 sets....) there were a large number of web sites collecting fiction written to the Roswell characters and legends - and there was an incredible load of it, and a surprising lot was really good.  Of course, some was absolute shit, and some was borderline pornography, but a surprising amount was very well crafted stuff, and over the years I have developed a list of writers whose every word I will read - as well as a list from whose stories I will run.

I check on some places several times throughout the day looking for new stuff from "my" writers, and have a pretty steady diet of new approaches to Roswell characters and circumstances, some of which might have allowed the series to run much longer.  The depth of understanding of the human condition that some of these writers have is amazing.  Many are young people, but many are not - the age spans high school to late 60's / early 70's - student, worker, retiree, retired military - everyone is in there writing for all they're worth.  

When I started reading this stuff, I had over 200 sites in my bookmarks.  Some have closed, some have gone static (nothing new, but site still there) but many still remain.  Most of my reading occurs over at RoswellFanatics.net - it is active with a good slate of good authors, and a large number  of finished stories.  Some of the writers are quick, some are not, and some never finish anything, so you take what you can get and enjoy the stuff that flows.  Right now my favorite writer over there calls himself GreyWolf and from what I gather, he's probably around my age, retired carreer Air Force officer, and pretty bright - and he really does his homework!

I have always been one to read, and read a couple of books a week, in addition to trade magazines, email and my beloved FanFic - but it is amazing how good a lot of what is out there is. Another site is FanFiction.net which has 3477 Roswell stories, and a huge number of other stories written around a couple of hundred show characters sets and stories.

If you like to read and are searching for new sources, google FanFiction and pick some places to try out.  It's cheaper than paperbacks, and you get the added treat of watching the story grow, and even of shaping it by your feedback to the writer.

Try it - just be advised it can become quite a large part of your day if you let it.

December 1, 2008

This day will never recur.

That will be a comfort to some, I am certain.  For me, so far it is not a bad sort of a day, coming off a four-day weekend that did not require that I work until Sunday afternoon, and  even then I could do whatever was needed sitting in my recliner in the living room with the office laptop on my lap, using a nice fast fiber connection to a VPN.  

I had thought I would get a motorcycle day in, but it was not to be.  Maybe this week or the coming weekend.

Christmas is 23 days away - I wonder if everyone is as ill-prepared as I am this year. Seems almost as if I decide in July to go shopping in October - and no sooner do I decide that than we're at Thanksgiving and I have no ideas whatever. 

Now, my wife and I have only been together for almost 41 years - you'd think by now I'd have some ideas.  It's easier to just hand out checks - but it's more fun to get something that surprises and delights.  Unfortunately that requires a lot of work and research - something I no longer have the patience for (if indeed I ever had the patience for it.)  What she needs is a week away without even me, but she won't take it.  I'm not quite so noble;  I'll take away time if I can get it.

I got my little tablet PC working last week and by the weekend it was hosed again.  Dunno what I did, but it surely does tick me off!  Maybe it is trying to tell me my fingers are too fat for a thin tablet PC.  This week, I'll reload it as I get the time, and see how long it lasts this time - if it goes to crap again in a week or two, I'll get rid of it.

Thanksgiving was lightly attended - my youngest brother was out of town and his son has a 12-hour shift (he's a cop); my kids were there except for Jamie, who called us on Thanksgiving day to tell us he had arrived in New Zealand safely, and promptly found a 200-meter tall building off of which to jump.  His mother really didn't need to hear that but he's OK, so there must have been parachutes, ziplines or cables involved that he neglected to mention. He just loves to light up his mom - and some days she's so easy to light up.  At any rate, he was not with us, but the rest of our kids (and their kids) were with us.  Usually there's someone from outside the family there, but this year we did not have anyone, at least until Sunday when middle daughter brought around her new boyfriend.  He seems to be nice enough.

The happenings in India made me angry and disappointed.  It was only made worse when I learned Sunday morning that one of the other tenors that sings with me in the choir that my wife leads had family in that hotel over there who were now newly dead. The world is a small place - about the farthest you can get from home is a 12 hour trip by large jet aircraft - and apparently that might not be far enough to escape some of the foolishness that there is around us in the world today.  It is a scarier place than the world in which I lived as a child.  I wasn't more than 9 or 10 and rode all over parts of Pittsburgh by myself on streetcars, and nobody thought it odd or unsafe.  We had no cell phones, and kids would leave home in the morning and not show up again until dinner, and nobody called out the searchers.  It seems that each new technological change that allows us more timely communication is accompanied by a social change that makes use of these abilities necessary for continuance of life - and somehow I don't think that that's what the folks who bring us these magical things have in mind when they first create them.   Vehicles do everything at least ten times better than they did in the 50's - yet we have lower speed limits.   Families no longer routinely have guns around to use for shooting targets or for fathers to use to impress safety on kids while they're instructed in appropriate and proper use - and yet we seem to be killing folks a whole lot faster.

Something has changed.  Now I do not mean to suggest that we go back to the good old days because i would be loathe to part with some of what those days have produced for us to make our lives better, easier, or more interesting - technology has done lots to improve my work experience and general life experience.  But it has also given the means to do without personal contact - and apparently because of that (at least in part) folks are not learning politeness and compassion as they once did - it is far too easy to remain isolated from human contact, to fail to learn politenesses and social rituals that make it possible for a bunch of disparate creatures such as we to exist side by side and to learn from our own otherness to tolerate and learn from those who are not the same as we are.  I do live my on-line banking - but I've never seen a branch of my bank, know nobody on the staff and haven't a clue who the branch manager is (if, indeed we still have such persons) and this may well not be  an improvement overall, as it narrows my circle of people that I know, and diminishes my opportunity for interpersonal contact and the learning that goes along with it. 

Of course, I may have it all wrong - but today I have less of a chance to encounter someone who'll disagree and guide me - unless someone who reads this is moved to leave me a note.  

Anyhow, the state of my world today is pretty good - the Prozac works, the office queen isn't making life hard (yet) and I'm looking forward to getting home this evening and getting some sleep.  Last night I stayed up too late watching a movie, and working on the Tablet PC trying to convince it to behave.  My reward was going to bed after 3 AM saying something like "I gotta quit doing this!" 

I'm listening to a GotRadio shoutcast of piano music - very nice.  Maybe tonight I'll remember to get the Skype toys out and set up our household for videophone to Australasia, for the next time our son calls.

Happy Monday.