Professionalism, Rants, and Support

Techcommdood related a flare-up over Flare on techwr-l, a mailing list strictly dedicated to work-related communication by and for technical writers. He went on to say,

All facts removed, this was an inappropriate post. Why? Well, it offered little information and, well, it was a classic rant. You have to ask yourself, "What value did this add to the community?"

One word: none.

I don’t know about that. It pointed out some potentially serious problems with Flare, a fairly new help authoring tool (HAT) that’s trying to dethrone RoboHelp. MadCap (the company that produces Flare) stepped up and offered to work with the ranter to fix the problems, so maybe there’s a happy ending to come. Whatever: being a Mac user, neither MadCap nor Adobe (RoboHelp’s current owner) gives much of a rip about what I want or need.

Dood’s point was to decry the unprofessionalism of ranting on a public forum, whether directly or through an intermediary (as in this case) — of course, there’s Techcomm, a forum for tech writers that’s meant to be 95% rants and silly jokes, but that doesn’t really count. But there’s several kinds of unprofessionalism on display here, and they can all be seen in the ranter’s rhetorical question (caps lock removed): “Why should I pay $700 for a product and then spend my time doing workarounds to get it to do what it should do automatically?”

First, the ranter didn’t mention whether MadCap had tried to fix the problems before the rant, or if they were even aware of the problem. If you’re going to spend $700 for a piece of software, you should ask for help and expect to get it… and if you’re charging $700 for that software, you should a) make something that doesn’t break; and b) make sure your customers don’t get to the point of ranting about you in public. (The latter is often something that small companies like MadCap actually do better than larger ones like Adobe.)

The larger unprofessionalism is depending on some pretty $700 piece of software chrome to do your work for you. Face it, fellow tech writers, HTML (or even XML) is not rocket science. We complain about those icky tags, then we wonder why we get replaced by “technical writers” with a certificate education, at half the salary. Then there’s the whole issue of trusting your work to a monolithic database, which destroys everything when it gets corrupted (e.g. the late, unlamented ForeHelp), or any other software that doesn’t allow you to easily extract your work out of it (Word).

I’m not saying that we should be building help systems by hand — but we should certainly be willing to get involved at a much lower level. HTML-based help, after all, is simply a wrapper around a series of HTML (and graphic) files that provides (usually JavaScript-based) niceties like search and context. You provide table of contents and index files — and the content, of course — and that’s it. You don’t have to work directly with HTML — but you should be able to use what your authoring tool gives you to produce HTML, then be able to clean it up and prepare it for use with the help system. Yes, it takes a little time, but so does importing stuff into a dedicated HAT and fiddling with your content there.

Probably the most trouble-free help-building system I’ve seen to date is Mif2Go with FrameMaker to produce OmniHelp, an open-source help viewer. I’ve also used groff to produce HTML that works well with OmniHelp — everything can be modified to work the way you want it to, with no $700 “license fee” involved. Why are we not taking more advantage of set-ups like this?

It’s time to take control of our operating environments and to start living up to the title, technical writer. We’ve let the word become little more than a way to distinguish what we do from journalists and fiction writers for too long now, to our detriment.

Go Back To Shopping, America

D-Day lays out our whole economic dilemma in one fine rant. In a nutshell, if we don’t spend ourselves into bankruptcy we’ll bring down the economy.

Anyone who has been out of debt for 33 years is worth listening to.

Programmers. Argh (2.0)

Seagull: someone who makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything, then flies away.

It’s been a while since the last one of these, before I started Tales from FAR Manor in fact.

One of my recurring work projects is a four-volume set of software firmware documentation — one volume each for features, provisioning (i.e. installation and configuration), management, and troubleshooting. These are the “wonk” documents, as opposed to the consumer documents. I depend pretty heavily on the developers (i.e. programmers) to get me the information that I need to put into these documents, and their usual modus operandi is to wait until the last minute and drop a ton of changes on me.

On occasion, some of the things they want just, as Mrs. Fetched says, “get all over me.” In Programmers. Argh. 1.0, it was a request to add text to the manual, verbatim, that contained a howling grammatical error. This one is a bit more complicated, and started a couple of months ago with this request:

We *really* need section numbers in the documentation. I am asked *all the time* to explain how certain features work. I would like to just reference the correct guide and section number for the answer. With the way the document is structured, I have to go into the document and find a *string* to reference that can be searched on to find the information.

Now you have to remember that this is a programmer manager asking for section numbers. I haven’t used section numbers in customer documentation in nearly 20 years, and 98% of what I’ve done was for technically-oriented audiences. Not to mention that section numbers really wouldn’t solve his problem: the manual needs a better index, and he can use page numbers to refer them to the right place. I need to do a better job of indexing, I’ll be the first to admit, but the thing that bothers me is that they didn’t even think to include me in the discussion, or even forward any kind of post-mortem to me. I like getting comments about my work, so I can make it better (and if you, yes you, are wondering whether I want comments on my blog, the answer is yes).

Now it was my turn to make a mistake: I quickly wrote a response, saying pretty much what I just wrote, and Notes (once again) came up b0rk3n. I saved the reply in my Drafts folder and promptly forgot about it until it came up again.

Fast-forward to last week. Here come the comments, courtesy of the guy who pulled 1.0 on me, and guess what was at the top of the list? I started looking for the original request and found the response in Drafts. Cursing Notes and the IT department that forces us to use it, I updated the reply and sent it off. The bit-munchers were copying everything to my new boss, which only irked me more — not only do I suspect them of deliberately waiting to drop all their comments at the last minute so I’ll be the one late and officially holding up the release (giving them more time to fix their problems), they are trying to make me look bad to my boss. I sent him the general history of the project, including the stuff that has gone on before, and suggested he contact previous managers for confirmation.

He dug in, I dug in. You can’t out-flame a writer, and he probably knew that: all he had to do was stonewall until it was time for him to leave on two weeks vacation. But he may come back to find the company short one tech writer. One of my co-workers helped to diffuse the situation somewhat, arranging (and refereeing) a meeting between me and this guy’s manager (who kicked off this particular request). We compromised: I agreed to put chapter numbers and titles in the headers, especially since I’d planned to do it in the first place, and he agreed to start copying me on customer squawks that involved documentation. But I’m still pretty cheesed about the whole thing.

Time to find my resume and start emailing, I guess.

The frustration of forgetting

The usual pre-visitor cleaning frenzy is well under way at FAR Manor. Let me be frank here: I usually don’t bother doing any cleaning until Mrs. Fetched gets into a lather about it, because it’s a losing battle. The 80/20 rule applies here: 80% of the clutter is caused by 20% of the people (one, and that’s Mrs. Fetched). She’ll come in and drop whatever she’s carrying — groceries, mail, tools, church stuff — on the most convenient horizontal surface because she’s too tired or too busy to deal with it right away. Naturally, she denies it. (I suppose I would too.)

The real problem arises when I try to do (or suggest) something that might be something approaching a solution. Any time I’ve done anything, she immediately shoots it down with no consideration of discussion. Fool that I am, I keep forgetting this and need a reminder from time to time.

So during the cleanup, a couple of dusty paper trays (in/out boxes) turned up. Hey, I thought, we both end up with magazines and miscellaneous bits of paper strewn around the house — why not put these to use as a way to collect those things we haven’t dealt with yet? Since there was plenty of “test data” on the kitchen table and the built-in desk next to it, I laid the trays side-by-side on the desk and started sorting stuff into them. I guess The Boy gets his ability to construct elaborate fantasy worlds from me — I had the idea all laid out in my mind. Anything we weren’t ready to sort through would go in our inboxes; we could put stuff in each others’ boxes as long as we didn’t care what happened to it next. No more clutter all over the place, right?

WRONG.

Mrs. Fetched took one look at it and immediately said, “That can’t go there. I’m putting the bread box there.” No curiosity about what I had in mind, no consideration given to the idea — and when I tried to explain, it immediately became open hostility. It was my idea, it was a solution, therefore it had to die and quickly. I tipped the contents of her box onto the desk, picked up the few things of mine and dropped them in the bedroom, then took the trays to the outbuilding where they might see some use.

Mrs. Fetched isn’t very big on solutions, she much prefers to complain about the problems instead. This has been demonstrated over and over again, and it just doesn’t seem to stick in my mind no matter how often it’s been hammered in (probably because I can’t even imagine such illogical thinking). She would rather complain about mice in the house than let the cats in, for example. I suppose it would be OK if my entire home life consisted of following her around and cleaning up after her, but that’s too high a price to pay. In the last couple of years, I have begun to understand why some men will go from work to a bar for several hours — there’s no supper (but lots of complaints) waiting at home, why would anyone rush to go home to that?

I then considered setting up a small desk in our bedroom where I can keep my things organized, but I know exactly how that would play out. First, there would be resistance to bringing a desk in — it would make it harder to reach the blinds, it would block the window, it would block the vent, it doesn’t look right, etc. etc. etc. Even if by some miracle I brought the desk in without her disapproval, it would rapidly become useless to me. She has no concept of “my” space: it’s her house, her kitchen, her furniture... I just pay for everything.

Proof: In the house we lived in before, she suggested I take over a room that had been added on and was connected to the rest of the house through an opening where the dining room window used to be and a door that opened on the porch. I had the place all set up the way I wanted it... and then anything she didn’t want to deal with, she started throwing in that room. I’d clean it up and she would throw more stuff in. Before too long, I was having a hard time keeping enough floor space clear to walk from one end to the other. After a while, I gave up — then she complained how messy it looked. I told her to stop throwing her crap in there and she escalated hostilities. I’ve never been one for confrontation, unless pushed to the wall, and that works against me (but some years back, every time she complained about clutter, I would automatically respond “Stop buying more crap at Wal-Mart all the time then,” until she actually stopped). At FAR Manor, the reason my outbuilding hasn’t been treated likewise is because it’s not part of the house — it’s more convenient for her to drop things on a table than walk 30 yards (round-trip).

So I guess I’ll have to start spending more time out there. I have enough air conditioning, but need better heat in the winter. I also need to get Ethernet or wireless run out there somehow (wireless might be easier if I can get a signal through the sheet-metal siding), and get a small refrigerator where I can keep some beer, then I’ll be home free. Daughter Dearest said about this plan, “and we’ll never see you again.” Well, maybe, at least until Mrs. Fetched is ready to do more about problems than complain.

Amen, amen, and amen

Douglas Crockford hits it on the head talking about “introduction” web pages:

What a Flash intro says to me is "I hate my job. What I really want to do is make films. But they won't let me do that because I don't have talent. So watch this Flash intro."

Web sites end up getting polluted with crap like Flash and JavaScript for various reasons, but perhaps the single most common underlying issue is that “designers” have no content to give you, so they substitute an “experience” for something useful. Yeesh. I don’t spend (way too much) time on the Internet to have an “experience,” I just want to get some information or look at pictures or something. It’s kind of like the now-defunct Damon’s, a restaurant chain that sported multiple big-screen TVs tuned to various games. They billed themselves as “A Dining Event!” I tend to think of a “dining event” as something like that time when The Boy found a dried-up roach in his cereal — I don’t want a “dining event,” I just want something to eat (preferably insect-free). Same with the web: I don’t want Flash and Java$#!+ substituting for content. If I wanted to waste time with mindless garbage, there’s a TV in the living room.

Think of a web site’s “design” in the same way you would think about packaging a product — what you’re really interested in is what’s inside. Apple is widely acknowledged these days (at least in high-tech) as the masters of package design — and guess what? The decorations are muted, even minimal. Even Microsoft (internally) acknowledges that they’re way behind Apple here (and everywhere else IMO).

Macromedia describes Flash as “the solution for producing and delivering high-impact web sites.” High-impact on my bandwidth, CPU, etc. I’ll show you “high-impact,” as soon as I find that sledgehammer.

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Thanks to Doc Searls for providing both the inspiration and supporting links for the above rant.

Roundup

I spent two of the last three weeks in Florida... unfortunately, it was the week in the middle I was at FAR Manor (two trips). As I’ve done in the past, I’m going to collect a bunch of short items into a single post. I might come back and update this tonight or tomorrow if I think of anything else.

The first week, you pretty much know about already.

Lobster is (as usual) late with the rent. He seems to think he can just blow us off and spend it on clothes or whatever. WRONG! I’m hoping he’ll just move out, personally — he’s pretty much worn out his welcome as far as I’m concerned. If he takes the money and runs, fine.

From the Wishful Thinking Department: At work, I got a purchase requisition signed off for a translation project. I’m hoping to come back to work Monday to find it’s well under way.

Driving to Florida on a Spring Break Friday is not something I would advise under any circumstances. Between the time it took just to get through Atlanta, the road construction on I-4, and the usual delays (including dropping off M.A.E.), we got to where we were staying at 3 a.m. (about four hours late).

Speaking of M.A.E., I joked with BJ a few weeks back that we might just drop M.A.E. off at her aunt’s and “forget” to pick her up on the way back. Bad move: it got back to her and she thought I was serious. While we were in Florida last week, she called us just about every day to make sure nothing had changed.

As usual, there was nothing available in Orlando this time of year so we stayed at a timeshare in Titusville. Getting there at 3 a.m., we didn’t realize that the unit we were staying in was actually on the street instead of the little lane where the office and five of the units are. It took us 15 minutes to figure that out, at a time when we really didn’t need that aggravation.

Mrs. Fetched and I agree: we like Titusville. That’s probably because it’s not primarily a tourist area; Kennedy Space Center is the primary economic engine and there isn’t a beach area nearby. Even though it’s on the water, there’s only one high-rise condo development and it’s under construction. The only hurricane damage that we saw was the demolished fishing pier. Another part of its charm is that it’s separated from the Orlando (aka Tollando) area by 17 miles of marshland — fat chance that will get developed any time soon! It has that scruffy but comfortable feeling of a favorite pair of shoes. I could see myself living there more than just about any other part of the state. Not that I ever expect to escape Planet Georgia, but you never know.

Toll booth operators hate it when you pay in pennies. Tough $#!+ — if you’re going to screw over the people that pretty much keep your economy afloat by charging them to get from Point A to Point B, you need to expect some pushback. Especially when people are down to their last few bucks.

We ended up spending a night over at Mom’s — we had invited them to visit us, but they started hitting problem after problem (sound familiar?) and gave up. We decided to check out a day early and go over there instead. Very nice!

From the Rant-o-rama Department: One of the more egregious pieces of happy horse$#!+ I heard (last week or ever): men consider the “ideal woman” to be totally subservient and totally uncritical. Talk about gritting one’s teeth to keep from making a scene. Personally, that would be boring after a short while. I’d settle for someone who thinks she is (and actually is) equal, rather than superior in every way, and isn’t compelled to point out every freeking mistake (in her mind) that I make, especially when she doesn’t want to do it herself — or worse, set me up to knock me down. For example, we got in about midnight last night. Mrs. Fetched decided that the four eggs in the refrigerator were probably bad — even though I’m totally strung out from driving the last 13 hours, I’m supposed to hear (and remember) not to use the eggs on one side of the tray. (I guess making an effort to throw them out was totally out of the question.) So she wants me to fix eggs for breakfast and gets them out. Naturally, I got the “wrong” eggs. Of course she had to tell me that she knew I would get the wrong ones; but again, actually making an effort to prevent me from doing that must have been beneath her — either that, or she wanted me to get the “bad” eggs so she’d have something to gripe about. It’s getting harder and harder to scream “F**K YOU” and leave when that crap happens. I’m starting to wonder if she’s trying to kill me with stress for the insurance money.

Going north on a Spring Break Friday isn’t much better than going south. The first 100 miles were stop-and-go, finally opening up around Gainesville FL. But the freeway was pretty much carrying its capacity all the way up to Atlanta. Breaking for a picnic lunch at a rest area is probably the best way to cope with it, although things won’t necessarily be better when you get back on the road.

Finally: road atlases definitely have a shelf life. They should probably be replaced every three years or so, especially if there’s a lot of construction in areas where you’re travelling.

Outrage of the Day: Bush-league posturing

So you commit criminal acts by using the NSA to spy on American citizens. The news gets out, and what do you do? Stop the criminal acts?

Oh, heck no. Not if your name is George W. Bush, anyway. You go after the “leakers” instead.

I’m sure more readers of Tales from FAR Manor are intelligent enough to know this already: but if you still think this administration is anything but corrupt, you’re living in la-la-land. Period.

The Latest Outrage: Sony music CDs install malware

Current Music: HBR1

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. — A bumper sticker

Wheeling

Mark Russinovich obviously knows his way around a Dozebox. So when his rootkit detector turned up something nasty on his computer, he went hunting (extremely technical article alert). He eventually tracked the culprit down to a Van Zant CD that added a few sour notes to the music. The upshot is:

1. If you have autorun turned on, insert this CD into a Dozebox and it automatically installs something calling itself “digital rights management (DRM) software,” along with a special media player, somehow forgetting to tell you it’s happening or to give you a chance to say no.


2. The DRM software — bah, let’s call it what it is, malware — wedges something called a “lower filter” between the normal CD driver softare and whatever applications access the CD drive. Its purpose in life is to prevent you from ripping the music into iTunes, or WMP, or whatever, and limiting the number of copies you can make.


3. Because of the “lower filter,” if you try to remove the malware using standard spyware cleanup tools, you end up with a disabled CD drive.

Mark describes the malware, supplied by a British company calling itself First 4 Internet, as “poorly written.” One of the people commenting on his article did a little digging and found that one of the principals of First 4 Internet is a former Sony director — no surprise there. Having a crony on board beats having a quality product any day, especially when you’re pulling something shady like this.

Dealing

Fortunately, there are ways around these problems. The easiest way is to simply not purchase music CDs that have copy-protection or “digital rights management” software (i.e. they want to “manage” your rights). Second easiest is to not use Microsoft operating systems (malware tends not to be a problem on MacOSX or Linux right now), although I certainly have no intention of supporting Sony’s behavior anyway.

If you have to use that particular operating system, there’s a way to disable autorun if you’re not using XP Service Pack 2 (which turns it off by default). This is a kind of scary way to do things, though: if you mistype something in regedit you can really hose a PC. An easier way to do it is to hold down the Shift key when inserting a CD, which turns off autorun until next time, although you have to remember to do it each time.

Sheesh. I thought we’d fought (and won) this battle back in the 1980s with software companies and copy-protection. Deja vu all over again. Oh well. In the next couple of years, we’ll have to replace our TV. You can bet the new one won’t be a Sony. Eventually, I want to upgrade to a nicer camcorder... but not a Sony. I was thinking about getting one of those minidisc thingies; now I’ll do something else. New headphones to replace the broken ones? I can’t trust Sony, so I won’t deal with them.

Fighting

I've written about the ongoing shift from the old consumer paradigm to the new creator-consumer paradigm before. Telling it like it is: Sony (and the other record companies) are scared to death of the wrong thing — while they go after kids swapping music, technology is letting people make their own music and share it at will. Not just music, but movies and books as well; ironically, Sony actually makes some halfway-decent music and video software for the PC crowd. But as long as the Sonys of the world insist on using courts and bought-and-paid-for congresslime to force us to give up control of our hardware to them, instead of trying to cope with reality, all they’re going to do is hasten their own demise.

So why fight? Why not let them cut their wrists and bleed to death quietly? It’s not like their DRM malware runs on my computer, after all. That’s an easy one: it’s not going to stop with a half-baked installer. I remember reading, but can’t find the reference off-hand, that the eventual goal of the record companies (and perhaps the movie studios) is to collect royalties every time you listen to a song — just like they do with radio stations now. To get that intrusive, they need to be able to take over at least some of the hardware so they can control what you can and can’t play. Indeed, about two years ago they attempted to ram a law through Congress mandating DRM controls on hardware. It failed, not because Republicans care a scrap about consumer rights, but because the hardware manufacturers objected to the added expense and potential public-relations fallout.

Now if record companies could control your computer, what would stop them from blocking free music from the growing number of artists placing their work online? That’s what it would come to: eventually, they would wake up to the real threat to their revenue and find the solution already at hand.

We can object all we want to, but the only thing that will put an end to this creeping corporate encroachment is one thing: crates of copy-protected music CDs coming back to their warehouses from stores, because nobody’s buying. That’s the only thing that killed software copy-protection, and it’s the only thing that will kill music copy-protection.

Outrage du jour

Just another reason to avoid Wal-Mart like the plague. It isn’t enough that they tell their suppliers to move manufacturing to China... they’re trying to figure out how to squeeze employee health benefits and get away with it. The link goes to a somewhat raggedy-looking PDF; I’ll summarize the lowlights:

• Make it harder to insure spouses. “Spouses are by far the most expensive plan members to cover...”


• Lower life insurance coverage.


• Use more part-time employees (because it takes longer for them to qualify for coverage).


• Push employees into Health Savings Accounts (as if they can afford them).


• Cut 401K matching from 4% to 3%.


• Encourage less-healthy employees to leave, thus saving their health care costs, by “[designing] all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g. all cashiers do some cart gathering),” and “dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart.” Sheesh.

I suppose it’s better than what they do now: give people information on how to apply for Medicaid.

Wal-Mart definitely has a self-inflicted image problem. Only 48% of eligible employees use their healthcare plan (vs. the national average of 68%). The memo further admits that “46 percent of Associates’ children are either on Medicaid or uninsured.”

Tell me again: in these days of runaway medical costs, when we spend more per capita for healthcare than any other developed nation and receive less for our trouble, when one of of five Americans can’t even afford health insurance, why a nationalized health care system is such a bad idea?

Are they trying to drum up business?

Daughter Dearest broke her ankle about a year ago, badly enough that it required surgery to put back together (two pins & a plate, won’t she have fun at the airports). We made the mistake of taking her to the nearest hospital to get the deed done. It’s not that they do a bad job on the medical end, except that there have been times in its history where you about had to be spurting blood on the ceiling to get quick help, but their billing department seems to be staffed by retarded howler monkeys (and that’s defaming retarded howler monkeys everywhere).

• We’ve caught them trying to double-bill us on a couple of occasions for this and other work (The Boy spent was diagnosed with Type I diabetes there last April, and DD got appendicitis about two weeks after that — last year would have been bankruptcy time if we didn’t have decent insurance).


• On another occasion, they sent a paid bill to a collection agency. Like I said, retarded howler monkeys.

But today tops even those. Wife calls me at work, wanting to know the number of someone at the insurance company. Turns out that the hospital can’t figure out their own code for the pins they put in DD’s foot, and the insurance company rejected the claim. So they’re threatening to screw over our credit record because they can’t figure out how to write their own bills! So she’s totally overreacting, which stresses me out...

Makes me wonder if they’re trying to make people sick to stay in business or something.

Let me say it one more time: retarded howler monkeys.

The stuff I have to document...

One of the products I write about at work has a command-line interface (CLI) used for debugging and troubleshooting. Customers got wind of it, requested documentation, and that’s usually where I get involved.

One particular (or should I say peculiar) troubleshooting command is “ti_ts” — which starts a troubleshooting routine on some TI chips in the box. I tried to get them to change the name, to no avail. So on this development cycle, they added a “codesperms” command (which translates to “active codes per minislot’). I have a pretty good idea what the next oddly-named command will be, but don’t want to give them ideas just in case one of them stumbles across this blog....

What do you want out of life?

Perhaps the best way to get what you want from life is to know what you want from life in the first place. As I cruise toward what I hope is the mid-point of my life, I think I know what I want of life and (being a guy) it's a fairly short & simple list:

• A place to stay


• A few toys


• “Whoopie” a couple of times a week


• Weekends mostly available for rest and/or recreation

Beyond that, a quiet, modest life with a quiet, modest retirement would pretty much wrap it up.

I'm halfway there: I have a place to stay (FAR Manor) and lots of toys. The rest is a faraway dream. I haven't had nearly enough to drink to willingly expand much beyond that. I'm interested in hearing what other people want though, and how far along they are to getting it.

Outrage #1: Robertson's Fatwa

So now Ayatollah Pat Robertson has apologized for his remarks about having President Hugo Chavez assassinated. Good. He really should get up on TV and do a Jimmy Swaggart “I have sinned” routine, but we all know that ain't gonna happen.

The Bush administration passed up an opportunity to prove that we've not become Iran with a cross instead of a crescent, opting to mumble something about “private citizen” instead. Yeah. I could buy that if it were just some backwoods Talibaptist blathering to his little congregation. But this “private citizen” happens to have a major TV network and the ear of the entire White House and about half of Congress, any time he wants it. At some point you cease to be a private citizen, elected or not.

An attempt to pretend he didn't mean “assassinate” apparently didn't work. I have a feeling he was getting calls and emails from people saying “take me off your lists” and had to backpedal a little farther to salvage his empire.

Thanks, Pat, for making all Christians look bad. On the other hand, you may have jumped the shark here, like Oral Roberts with his “send me money or God will kill me” shtick and the whole Jim Bakker/Jimmy Swaggart thing, and this is the beginning of your long slide into obscurity. This Christian certainly hopes so. “Sell all you have, give it to the poor, take up your cross, and follow Me,” is what the Son of God told the rich man. Think about it, Pat.

Outrage #2: Utah Rave

Current Music: DJ Lithium

You kann haff zee paperz, und zee paperz kann be in ordaire, und ve vill bust you anyvay. Ja wohl!

OK, if you suspect that someone in a crowd of 2,000 people is doing drugs (and in a crowd that size, you can bet on it), you bust those people. It doesn't warrant shutting down an entire concert. I'll bet you could go to any twanger concert and you'll find some attendees lighting up — but somehow the Gestapo doesn't see fit to point guns at people, kick women, and spray tear gas indiscriminately at a Travis Tritt concert. Oh yeah, kickers tend to be armed; they might shoot back.

Well, have a look at my “Current Music” links down through my earlier posts. Spray me with tear gas and call me a criminal: this mid-40s white churchgoing male likes electronic music, and has since Kraftwerk released Autobahn in 1975. I like the trippy ambient stuff, I like the hard-thumpin' dance numbers, and 'most everything in between. Next rave within driving distance of FAR Manor, I'm going just to make a statement.

At least there's still some vestige of the America that used to be, the one where people had freedom to peaceably assemble; the thugs were sufficiently embarrassed to try confiscating video cameras that caught them in the act. Fortunately, some of the video escaped. I'm generally an easy-going, forgiving type of person... but I hope the people in charge of this raid end up with new careers outside of law enforcement: poultry plant workers or garbage sorters would be too good for them. Making license plates, now there's a suitable job for 'em.

Sports vs. arts

Current music: Aura - Orbit Revival
Daughter Dearest had a pool party today, put on by her chorus teacher. Parents were invited too, so I got a little more sun than I should have without slobbering on sunscreen (another symptom of oncoming age; I used to never burn). She's in the Honors Chorus after a brief & successful audition.

As Arlo Guthrie said, “I told you that to tell you this.” I only find out after she starts school that last year, this chorus won a nationwide tournament in their division last year. Sheesh. If it had been any kind of sport, all the way down to middle school badminton, there would have been billboards at every road on the county line. If it's art, it gets in the papers and the school puts it up on their sign, but where's the community pride? Where are the billboards? Even a little sign as you enter the county?

Then we wonder why nobody seems to think funding the arts is any big deal.

School's in. I hate school buses.

Mid-August, and school has already started. I'm obviously not the only person who thinks this is ridiculous: several states are passing laws mandating school start on a particular date — it varies from state to state, but is fairly close to Labor Day. Good idea. I hope it catches on here too. It's not like they're holding more school; they're just building a ton of slop into the schedule now. What's the point?

On the way back from our weekend in North Carolina, I saw a road sign on a four-lane highway: SLOW MOVING SCHOOL BUSES USE THIS ROAD. I swear, my first thought was, “you mean there's some other kind?” Look, I understand the need for buses. Not everyone can drive their kid both ways. With gas prices going through the roof, Daughter Dearest is going to be riding home a lot more often (the school is only a block off my commute route, so dropping her off in the morning is no problem). She can socialize, nap, or do homework on the way home to pass the time like I did.

The problem is how the buses clog traffic. Some drivers are courteous enough to pull off at a good place and let all the backed-up commuters get by... but some seem to revel in holding up as many people as they can. Kind of like the geezers who whip out in front of oncoming traffic then crawl along at 15mph under the speed limit. There ought to be a law, where bus drivers have to let traffic go by when they have 8 or more cars backed up behind them.

OK, rant off.