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?

M.A.E.: You Got Served

“Someone called from the lodge today,” M.A.E. told me Friday evening. “She said a cop was up there looking for me.”

I reacted swiftly and decisively: “Huuhhh?? Why would a cop be looking for you?”

“I don’t know, unless my mom is pulling something again. Everything is OK with the probation officer, and I know I haven’t done anything to get arrested.”

“Could be.” I once described M.A.E.’s mother as “a serious piece of work,” and nothing has happened since to change my mind. “But she can’t have you arrested without some evidence of a crime... you think she’s having papers served on you?”

“That’s probably it,” M.A.E. agreed. “She called me and gave me a bunch of crap about how I need to stay away from my sister, blah blah blah...”

Sometimes, you just need to bite the bullet. M.A.E. is brave, or really believes in the system: she marched into the sheriff’s office today and asked why the deputies were looking for her. About 10 minutes later, they got it together and handed her a restraining order that accuses her, among other things, of being on meth 24/7 and violent. I’m 95% sure she’s not on meth at all, let alone 24/7, and 100% sure she’s not violent. So she’s going to get a drug test, which will put the lie to SPOW (Serious Piece Of Work) and likely get her zapped for making false statements or even perjury.

I’m not impressed with M.A.E.’s past. But she’s trying to put that past behind her for good and live the life of a respectable citizen, and that does impress me. I just don’t understand why someone — especially a relative — would try to throw wrenches in that.

News briefs

All the news that you didn’t hear about (but probably should have).

One reason I avoid blogging from work: even if you have free time, you don’t want to get in the habit if there’s no set policy. That’s one good thing about Microsoft that I’ve mentioned before: not only do they allow blogging, they let developers blog about work.

You just can't make this stuff up. The in-laws just installed an incinerator at the chicken houses; maybe we need to plant flowers around it.

Viagra could cut heart stress... well, sheesh. I can tell you why: one thing you don’t feel after nookie is stressed out. Well, unless you’re committing adultery and somebody’s spouse comes up the driveway, you don’t. (I’m guessing that would be the case anyway; I have no first-hand experience in that matter. No, really.)

OpenOffice 2.0 has been released. No piracy required, just download and enjoy.

You Are Now Informed.

Rosa Parks and determination

A lot of people have posted tributes to Rosa Parks today, and deservedly so. It took a lot of guts to say I ain’t movin’ in that time and place. You can only work within the system so long, especially when the system is rigged to consider you a lesser being, and there comes a time when playing nice and following the rules just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The bus boycott that followed Ms. Parks’s arrest and fine was another display of determination. When the bus was your primary means of getting from place to place, it was a real hardship to stay off. When the black people refused to play the inferiority game, it took courage to continue in the face of bricks, bombs, and bullets. It took something beyond mere courage — it took guts — to refuse the easy road of retaliation.

Some years later, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed — shortly before he was to turn the civil rights movement to the needs of American poor, both black and white. I think it was no coincidence.

Meta-blogging

... or blogging about blogging.

Seems like Blogger got the performance probs fixed last week — a tip of the ol' beer mug to the guys who keep this thing going. I’m sure the admins get their fair share of complaints, but I hope they know how much we appreciate them making this available for all of us. Now, guys, lemme tell you about these nifty features I think everyone would love....

I converted all my blog bookmarks to RSS feeds in Safari early this week. It saves tons of time and I don’t miss anything.

Anyone reading for a while has probably noticed I’ve been throwing postings up here left & right. I thought I’d do well to make three posts a week, but it’s been closer to three a day for the last some weeks. Except for Mystery of the Haunted Vampire, I think I’ve been out-cranking everyone on my list — and Carnacki has like four people posting there. October has always been a busy month for me, just not in this particular way. I’ll probably slow down in a while; I was cranking out haiku pretty steadily a while back and then it dried up for a couple of weeks. (But I’ve put up four new verses in the last couple of days, maybe the drought is over.)

Gotta admit... it fits.

Results from the What Muppet are you? quiz. I don’t know how they did it, but it fits.

You are Dr. Bunson Honeydew.

You love to analyse things and further the cause of science, even if you do tend to blow things up more often than not.

HOBBIES: Scientific inquiry, Looking through microscopes, Recombining DNA to create decorative art.

QUOTE: “Now, Beakie, we’ll just flip this switch and 60,000 refreshing volts of electricity will surge through your body. Ready?”

FAVORITE MUSICAL ARTIST: John Cougar Melonhead

LAST BOOK READ: “Quantum Physics: 101 Easy Microwave Recipes”

NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT: An atom smasher and plenty of extra atoms.

brought to you by Quizilla

Publishing moves on

On Saturday, I wrote about publishers suing Google over the proposed Google Print service. Like the music and movie industries, book publishers also consider the new technology as a threat instead of an opportunity. Call it hidebound management or corporate culture, call it a failure of imagination by the very companies that survive on selling imagination. Either way, analog media companies are faced with wrenching change — and they can’t do anything but react, badly.

Once upon a time, the dream was to write the Great American Novel. The Hemingways and Steinbecks of a previous generation were the rock stars of their time. Video may have killed the radio star, but the novelist was wounded in a collateral damage incident and now the video star is sick in bed as well. Like any large industry in decline, book publishers (and to a lesser extent, music & video) turned first to wringing more out of the formula that worked so well in the past. When that didn’t work, instead of looking for new ways to do what they do best, they cast blame hither and yon, and fell even farther back onto formula.

it’s a truism that “nobody wants to read anymore,” and I’ve often said it myself — but blogs give the lie to that factoid. It’s not that people don’t want to read, they just don’t want to read the goop on bookstore shelves. There are exceptions, to be sure; I mentioned Neil Gaiman in an earlier posting, but without much promotion (that I’ve noticed, anyway) beyond a new Stephen King release or one of the Left Behind series from a while back, how do you find good new stuff?

Well, your host has never shied away from stating an opinion. Since Hallowe’en is just around the corner, I’ll offer up a couple of horror novels on other blogs.

First, my friend and bob-brother Carnacki’s novel, The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire. Its style is a series of diary entries, which naturally works well when published on a blog. It takes a different angle on the traditional vampire story by casting vampires — or rather, a particular vampire — as the hero. I don’t want to spoil it for you, just go read.

If your tastes run toward werewolves, What is happening to me? delivers. It’s structured as an actual blog, so you have to start with the first post (to which I pointed you) and work your way up from the bottom. Someone described it as an “epistolary novel," a story using a series of letters (or diary entries) as building blocks. There’s an immediacy, a “life as it’s happening” quality to it that the traditional novel would be hard-pressed to offer.

One thing both stories have in common: their plots twist in ways I didn’t expect. That can be dangerous, but in both cases I found it delightful. Surprises are good, as long as they don’t go off in some random direction — the plot twist has to connect the new direction to earlier elements of the story is all.

Again, go forth and read. And shiver.

Please Standby

Category: Work
Music: Groove Salad
I got included in an email chain at work late last week. To make a long story short, one of our customers was returning eMTAs (embedded MTA, a cable modem with phone lines built in) complaining that they could get dial tone but no Internet access. Our lab techs hooked them up to the test equipment, which reported No Fault Found. Upon further investigation, it turned out that somebody (whether a subscriber or an installation tech) was pressing the Standby button — which disconnects the Ethernet and USB ports from the cable network. The latest generation removed the Standby switch, since subscribers would also bump it unknowingly after installation, then complain that their service was out.

In some ways, we’ve made great advances and gone backwards simultaneously as far as user interface design goes. 40 or 50 years ago — let’s pretend personal computers were as available then as they are now for the sake of argument — a Standby switch would have been a big ol’ toggle switch on the front panel, clearly marked “STANDBY” up and “NORMAL” down. It would have been very easy to tell what mode the modem was in without trying to decipher a pattern of LEDs on the front panel. Product design these days is all about contours and smooth curves — a practical, easily visible toggle switch pokes out and just doesn’t fit today’s style.

Whatever happened to “form follows function”?

The eyes have had it

Last night, Mrs. Fetched asked me to see if she had anything in her eye. I didn’t see anything, but it did look a little red. It was still hurting her this morning, so she went to an eye doctor to have it looked at. Not good news: her eye got dry, stuck to some skin in the socket, and the membrane got torn. The eye doc told her to get some goggles to wear outside; if she gets it infected she could well lose the entire eye. So she has to put cream in it and will start on eyedrops next week.

She doesn’t deserve this.

[Almost forgot:] This isn’t really related to her blurry vision. Once the cream does its work, the doc can figure out what her prescription should be.

Somebody else's tax dollars at work

...for a change. The Register always manages to find the most compelling human interest stories.

El Reg... news about IT and other weird things. It don’t get much better than that.

Moonshine Festival — Dawsonville, GA

If it’s October on this planet, it’s time for fall festivals. My mother-in-law makes (and sells) quilts and bonnets at two of these outings a year, so I managed to drop by and get a few pictures before my camera batteries wheezed.

As always, click a picture to get more detail.

My mother-in-law at her booth. I said she usually does two of these outings a year, but this year, she had decided to do none until the Moonshiners called her and begged her to come. She was one of a tiny handful selling honest to God crafts this year, so that explains the call.



The vendor’s-eye view of the festival.

Aside to Mom: this is about where I was standing when I called you this afternoon. That blue Mustang was making all the racket.



Outside the friendly confines of a vendor’s booth, it’s wall-to-wall people.



Dawsonville claims to be “the birthplace of NASCAR,” and it’s a strong claim. NASCAR was born out of moonshine running, which required fast, nimble cars to get to the markets in the cities (and to outrun the “revenoors”). Dawsonville was well-positioned to be the “moonshine capital” — it boasted a sparse population yet is fairly close to buyers in Atlanta — and many of NASCAR’s first generation of racing champions were from Dawsonville or nearby.

The cars here are restored racers from the 1940s and early 1950s. Every hour or so, the owners fire them up, and all conversations along the street pretty much stop until they shut down.



The engine in a vintage Chrysler 300M race car (not the new one, obviously). This car is capable of 130MPH average lap speeds — that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but this car raced in 1953 (over 50 years ago)!



The moonshiners and cops were in a technological arms race of sorts: to catch a moonshiner, you had to be able to keep up. But some of those drivers, like local legend Lloyd Seay, had both horsepower and skill on their side. One story about Seay says the cops were waiting to arrest him in the winner’s circle after his last race on September 1, 1941. Instead of stopping, he just drove through a fence and roared on home, with too much of a head start for the cops to even think of catching him. The next day, he was shot dead by a cousin in one of those violent disputes that moonshiners were reputed to have often.



Lest you get the idea it’s all NASCAR and vendor booths at Moonshine... there’s song and dance as well. Daughter Dearest helped open the festivities yesterday morning with her high school chorus (the sound equipment arrived an hour late, but they simply changed their playlist to a capella numbers and the show went on). This particular group (didn’t catch the name) was playing some hard-thumpin’ variant of country. Local bands often strut their stuff here, everything from gospel to metal (and if The Boy has his way, they’ll combine the two soon).



A separate performance area hosts clogging (and other Americana-style dance) troupes. These young cloggers were just starting their performance.



At this point, my batteries gave out and I helped mother-in-law pack up for the trip home.

Interesting thought

Heard during sets on a streaming Internet station last night: “If Jesus had a tape recorder, how different would things be today?”

Google Print and stupid lawsuits

From a student paper, dated October 21, 2782. Don’t ask me how I got this.

The following is one of the recovered fragments of The Book of Internet. There are gaps in the translation, due to disk errors on the ancient and rusted hard drive, recovered from the archeological digs in Silicon Valley.

... then Google was born, and indexed the Internet. And it was good.

... Google looked at the world, and asked itself, “what else can I index and make available to my mighty Search Engine?” And it came to pass that Google passed a bookstore. “Eureka!” cried Google. “I shall scan all these books, cause them to be searchable, and display small snips, that users of my mighty Search Engine may locate books and perhaps buy those that please them.” And Google obtained The Mother Of All Scanners, returned from the Public Library with an armload of books, and got to work. ...

But the Publishers were wroth, and gnashed their teeth and waved their lawyers at Google, crying “Cease and desist! For your scheme will surely allow your users to read our books online, without paying us for the privilege!” ...

Then was the wrath of the Authors stirred up against the Publishers; and they spake unto the Publishers, saying, “your lawsuit is not helping me or my book.” ....

It is plain from this and other surviving records that purveyors of “analog” technologies (printed books as well as recorded music and video) were having trouble adapting to the digital realities of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

Unfortunately, the knee-jerk refusal to embrace digital technology only hastened the demise of the old gatekeepers. Not only was digital media easy to transfer, it was easy to create. It seems odd that there was ever a time that people were passive consumers rather than consumer-creators, but such was the reality as humanity entered the Third Millenium. The pace of change at the time seems almost mythical, and may explain the toxic political and pseudo-religious movements that dominated the first few years (as a coping mechanism by those unable to understand or participate in the rapidly changing world of the time). Many people of today consider the people of the early 21^st century (if we think of them at all) as ignorant, benighted savages. However, it is important to remember that they are not only our direct ancestors, they gave birth to the society we enjoy today.

Herding cats

Nearly home from dropping off Daughter Dearest, I saw several pairs of eyes reflecting my headlights on both sides on the road, and got on the brakes. A few seconds later, I saw a ran-over kitten in the road, and several survivors off to the side. Dangit, I thought, some ’hole dropped ’em off. I pulled off to the side, thinking maybe I could catch all or most of them (I think there were five, some black, some tan/white), take them home, and let them live in the outbuilding until I could find homes for them. From experience, I’ve found the best way to give away kittens or puppies is to take them to a Wal-Mart. Their unwritten policy seems to be “people taking the critters will buy pet food and accessories.”

Little wild teases: they would stand their ground, let me walk right up to them, then run away as I bent over to grab them. Then I saw a bigger cat and realized it wasn’t a dump-off. The mama was a bit friendlier; she let me touch her (and was she skinny!). She was on the side of the road I’d been driving on, calling to the babies who were on the other side. So I chivvied the little buggers across the road (by pretending I was trying to catch them) and away from the pavement, then went on home. If they’re still hanging around tomorrow, I’ll take some catfood to them. That mama looked like she could use a couple of turns at the Fire Mountain buffet line.

Uh-oh

I drove Daughter Dearest to her first homecoming dance this evening. Oh wow. I knew this day was coming, but knowing & being ready are often two different things....

The Boy and M.A.E. were going to a movie with a friend, so I dropped them off at the friend’s place since it was on the way. And I have no idea where Lobster is tonight.

Just me & the wife here. We cracked a bottle of peach wine, and she (as usual) is zonked after one glass... too quickly for me to take advantage, as it were. :-P

The General Stickiness of Stuff

Mountain Cerridwen (aka SallyCat) wrote a fine Crass Commericalism Rant today. That, and the post immediately below it on Sally’s blog, called to mind a conversation (i.e. yakking on AIM) about materialism (I’m in red here; he’s in blue)...

True. I don't know why I keep a bunch of CDs with outdated software on them, even with a dialup, but there you are....

Yeah, totally. I probably have discs that have the cutting-edge IE and Netscape 3's. Why keep them? I don't know but I do. Nostalgia for the good old days when it was exciting to rip open the magazine plastic and see what's on the CD, read the Mac Addict letters to the edit, etc.

I don't really care anymore but can't let go of it.

Seriously, I think sometimes it's easier to just leave stuff behind than take it with you.

If I had a mind to, I could clear out of my house with all the possessions I *really* wanted to have in about an hour.

Well, you know what would be easy is to pick out the things you want, like that. It'd be easier than making a conscious decision to throw something else out. Grab your computer, some clothes, some things from a file cabinet, maybe a photo album or two, and burn the house down.

Over the top, sure, but it’s too true. It’s easy enough to identify the possessions that are really important (beyond family, of course) — but having identified those things that are important, why is it so hard to let go of the other stuff?

I suppose part of it involves ego — the “he who dies with the most toys wins” mentality, or maybe it’s “I paid good money for that crap, I need to get something back out of it.” The latter, at least, could be dealt with by throwing a yard sale. The problem with yard sales, though, is you have to drag all that stuff out there and then drag all the unsold stuff back in at the end of the day.

A friend of mine told me about how she cruised yard sales, bought designer clothes, then sold them on eBay for a tidy profit. eBay would work for what would be high-end stuff in a yard sale, but the cheapo paperbacks & workaday clothes would wind up with shipping charges 2x-4x more than the price of the stuff.

One thing I’ve managed to do on occasion is to bundle up a big ol’ pile of stuff and take it to the local thrift store. I get a receipt I can use at tax time, and some extra space; they get more stuff to sell cheap to people who can’t afford to shop anywhere else, and those people get more choices. Everybody wins.

I have an alarming number of PowerMacs in the outbuilding. Fortunately, I have a home for one; a friend of The Boy needs a computer and knows his way around MacOS. That leaves several other Macs to give away or sell. Plus a bunch of other crap.

The Eyes (Don’t) Have It

Wife is slowly getting over herself, although it’s taking a little longer than usual. I picked up The Boy from his job (very late) last night; he asked me “What was she mad about today?” Nothing really, just the hangover from the night before. M.A.E. grabbed an order of jalapeño bites for him on her way out of Arby’s (I ate one of them though!) so he had a little snacky before bed.

So this morning, the wife was looking at M.A.E’s schedule. They make a printout of her hours for the week & we stuck it to one of the refrigerators in the kitchen (yes, we have two fridges, and we use ’em both). The printout is pretty small — like 4-point type — and the wife couldn’t read it. She had to ask me to look at it.

So far, the most sucky part of hitting the mid-40s is the vision change (only because menopause hasn’t started, I’m sure). Over the last year or so, I’ve had to peer over my glasses to read, or just take them off. In the morning, it takes a while for my eyes to want to do their job, so I try not using the computer for the first hour of the day. A minor inconvenience. But in the last couple of months, I’ve noticed that she’s had a seriously hard time reading small print of any kind. This morning, she finally admitted what I’ve known for a while. I hope she doesn’t have to get bifocals; from everything I’ve heard, they sound like more trouble than just having two pairs of glasses.

I wonder if the R-K surgery she had done back when is a factor. I’ve always been leery of elective eye surgery myself.

Autumn nights

...mean bonfires!


I’m slightly proud of this one: I got it going with one match. Having lots of dry pine straw in the pile helps a lot.

I spent an hour or so tending it until it died down enough to feel comfortable leaving it alone. Then I had to go back out and find the camera cable. Sheesh.

Ah, nuts...

Coming back from lunch, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t getting any sound from the left side of my headphones. So after wiggling wires and looking close, this is what I found (look where the wire almost goes into the earpiece, click to get a bigger image)...


Dangit. Those were my favorite headphones, too. I switched to the old reliable set of Koss earbuds (bright yellow wires!) and I’m now getting music out of iTunes the way Steve Jobs intended.

Those of you born after the baby boom probably don’t remember when “Made in Japan” pretty much meant the same thing as “Made in China exclusively for Wal-Mart” means now — in a word, junk. But Japan put its sense of national pride on the job, and it started to show in the early 1970s. Nowadays, “Made in Japan” usually means solid stuff. But not even the Japanese have figured out how to make wires small, flexible, and kink-proof, apparently. :-P

Wife-BOOM-ba

“It’s quiet... too quiet.”

Or it was.

The Boy has lately been reneging on his agreement to be in bed by 11 on weeknights. Naturally, this makes him harder to get out of bed in the mornings, but that’s not the issue at hand.

Last night, he was told several times to get upstairs and get to bed. Around 11:30, SWMBO ordered me to go upstairs and “find out what all that banging is about.” (His bedroom is directly above the living room, and anything that interferes with her TV watching is Not Allowed.) So I went upstairs, to find Lobster in bed and The Boy sitting on the floor next to his bed. Given the general order of the room, it looked like he’d been cleaning.

“What was that thud noise your mom heard?”

"What noise? I dropped the Xbox, is all.”

“Fine,” I told him, ”get to bed, it’s 11:30.” He got up and got in bed, I went downstairs.

“He dropped his Xbox,” I told SWMBO. “It looked like he was cleaning up his room a bit.”

“He’s supposed to be in bed now!” she barked, with a tone that implied that I was to blame for this whole thing. Like I said, next to idiots in Accounts Receivable, nothing puts her back up faster than interrupting her TV.

“I told him that,” I replied, using a similar tone. A while back, SWMBO told me I needed to stand up for myself more often. She was right. Change begins at home.

It didn’t help matters that music started coming down the stairs at that moment. Of course, she told me to go up and tell them to shut it off, then stopped me. “Just stand where you can hear,” she said. “I’m going to find the breaker and turn it off.”

So I stood at the bottom of the stairs, and she started flipping breakers. “Did that do it? Did that do it?” even after I told her that I would let her know as soon as the music stopped. I saw the bathroom lights go off and on, then Daughter Dearest came out of her room.

“What happened to the lights?” she said. I explained, while SWMBO went through the entire breaker box unsuccessfully.

“There’s got to be more breakers,” she said.

“There’s that box in the garage,” I reminded her. “Do you want to go out there, or do you want me to go?”

At this point, she got even more irrational, and repeated her assertion that there had to be more breakers. I simply repeated what I said, not that it did any good. Finally, she threw up her hands and told me to go tell them to turn off the music. (I have absolutely no clue what the problem was with going to the garage.)

So I went upstairs, and turned off the stereo since it’s right inside his door. The Boy, who was laying in bed by this point, got huffy. “I was just playing that one song for Lobster!”

“Doesn’t matter, you should have been in bed for a while now. You agreed to 11 o’clock, lights out, stereo off.”

He just shook his head. “Why is it such a big deal?”

“Because it’s bothering your mom!” I said.

She was 1) listening at the bottom of the stairs, and 2) took offense. “He can just listen to his %&#@!! music all he wants to, for all I care!!!” SLAM went the doors. I gave The Boy a dirty look.

“Why did she go off like that?” he asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “If you had done what you agreed to do, none of this would have happened, and you would be easier to get up in the morning.” I left and went back downstairs to put up the laptop.

SWMBO was in the bedroom as I came in; I just started putting things away and she huffed out. Next thing I know, I heard The Barge going out. She probably went down to her mom’s; all I know for sure is she didn’t come back. I went to bed. When caught by forces of nature, it’s best to just ride it out and move on.

After about 20 minutes, The Boy came downstairs and we talked for a while. We talked about things; he said he was going to save his money and move out by January.

“Just hang in there for a while and it’ll blow over,” I said. He claimed to take offense to SWMBO’s use of “%&#@!!” and so forth. I wanted to tell him that lying about not smoking was just as bad as foul language — SWMBO found a pack of cigs in his room last week — but it wasn’t the time. So we talked about things for another 20 minutes; after we finished I told him we needed to talk more often, but not at 1 a.m.

So I’m working at home today. SWMBO came in long enough to get a change of clothes, then off to the chicken houses. Neither of us said anything. What... ever. Like the computer said in War Games, “the only way to win is not to play.” If she doesn’t come back, I’ll put FAR Manor on the market and move closer to work. She knows that, so I expect she’ll be in by lunch and pretend nothing ever happened.