Worth a listen

I subscribed to O’Reilly’s Distributing the Future podcast a few weeks ago, but have just now gotten around to listening to the first one. The one I listened to on the way home from work today, Attention Span, is really worth 25 minutes of your time. If you don’t have 25 minutes, at least listen to the first part — the part about Continuous Partial Attention. It is soooo true. The second part, “What Business Can Learn from Open Source,” is pretty good as well and is not tech-heavy stuff.

Just in case you don’t know, you don’t need an iPod to listen to podcasts. Just click the link and listen at your desk if you prefer. Like I said, this one is worth a listen.

Trivia fodder

I’m more than a little cheesed about Friday night’s posts getting eaten. Nothing puts a writer off his feed faster than losing work. Anyway....

Here’s something to regale trivia buffs with at the next opportunity: Benito Mussolini had five children. His youngest son died last week at the age of 79. What did he do for a living?

I swear, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Crossing fingers

Maybe Blogger has stopped eating posts now....

The Lobster Crash

So yesterday morning, Lobster dragged himself out of bed and headed on to school. I’ve always been a little leery of the turn into that school (the private one where the kids went last year); it’s just below the crest of a hill on a fairly busy highway. So Lobster is waiting to turn left into the school/church lot, with the sun in his face. He went for it... and some goober in a big pickup pulling a boat, came wailing over the hill and clipped Lobster in the rear, totally destroying Lobster’s truck bed.

Nobody hurt, fortunately... just a couple grand worth of repairs that nobody can pay for. Of course, Lobster got the ticket because he was doing the left turn, but he’s going to ask for an investigation because the guy was traveling at a pretty good clip in what should be a school zone.

One more expense for the kid. I’m not much inclined to cut him a break; his attitude of late is that he is entitled to do what he pleases, regardless of how we feel about it, and to live here basically for free. I kind of think his living here is compounding the problems he’s having with his own parental units — both sides may feel like they don’t really have to work out their differences because he can just come here instead.

I’m not sure whether it will take a crowbar, or those new mini-nukes they want to drop on Iran, to get the extra peeps out of FAR Manor. Maybe I should grab an axe like in The Shining, yell “Honey, I'm home!” and chase ’em outta here.

State of the County

We had a town-hall meeting for our county district tonight, hosted by the church I go to. I’m sure it was far more interesting than any collection of talking points the pretendersent might deliver. I’ve found in general, when you miss TV, you don’t miss much.

The hot topic (and I do mean hot) was the county commissioners having a study... well, commissioned... to see if we would benefit from a “general aviation” airport. You could build a gays-only wedding chapel in this arterial-blood-red part of the planet and not get people stirred up as quickly as just talking about an airport. The problem is, Atlanta’s aviation authority owns a large tract of land in the county, and (after bulldozing it level and cleaning up a highly radioactive spot, which I may talk about in another post) could put a commercial airport on it. The FAA tells us that building a smallish airport (i.e. a place where individuals and businesses could hanger their planes) would overrule any larger airport in the area, so it seems like a case of the Lesser of the Two Evils. But you can’t tell these people that....

Other interesting topics included road building. This part of the county is still mostly (51%) dirt roads. I asked about bicycle routes, which have been talked about in conjunction with other highway building projects before. Cyclists have marked out a couple of routes already and (even at this time of year) are out & about on weekends; I get nervous for those guys on our narrow roads with drivers who don’t always pay attention. The road guy is going to get back to me about the status of the bike routes. He did say they (with the DoT) are working with some cycling clubs, so maybe something will happen. I hope so; the way things are going, the bike paths will get used pretty heavily before too long just for transportation.

The really interesting part is that they have a zoning plan for 2025 (20 years from now) — our area is expected to be “exurban residential,” and it’s primarily agricultural right now. I don’t envy the first developer who starts building out here.

My father-in-law told someone he wants me to run for the county commission. I said I’d do it on the Green Party ticket. Actually, I think Greens could actually do well in this area if they describe their platform in the right words. People like to fish & hunt; you need clean water & healthy forests for that. They prefer the government keep its nose out of their business. And above all, they don’t want a lot of (or more than a little) development out this way. All Green positions. I’d do it, but it would be such a hassle if I actually won....

Changing your mind...

...is said to be a mark of intelligence. It works for The Boy, anyway.

Last night, he came home to an irritated mom, who demanded the van keys immediately. This set him off, and he announced that he was quitting school. We talked for a while about it; he said he would go back to the private school next year and finish up. “I doubt you will,” I said.

“The public school sucks. I don’t get any help from the teachers or anything. I’ll be able to work at the other one.”

“That’s exactly what you said about the private school last year,” I reminded him. “You said you couldn’t concentrate, the teachers didn’t help you, etc.”

“The old principal is back; I did great when he was there before.”

“Whatever,” I said; I get tired of his pretzel logic in a big hurry these days. “I hope I’m wrong, but you won’t go back next year. By then, you’ll be too busy.”

We left it at that, and went to bed. He refused to get up this morning, but apparently changed his mind sometime today. He did end up going to the doctor with his cold... and she said it appears to be early signs of emphysema. He must have Mrs. Fetched’s constitution, if smoking one or three cigs a day for a couple of years brings it on that quick. I’ll have to remind him that he only gets so many do-overs, and he’s had more than most people get in a lifetime.

But he asked me to get him up for school in the morning. He has a doctor’s excuse for the two days he was out, and maybe he at least subconsciously understands the do-over part....

Daughter Dearest, Zombie Queen

If you need a zombie queen for your next horror movie, I have just the girl for you...



Need I say more?

Recurring dreams

When I was little (like 4 or 6 or so), we had a flat tire in our rustbucket ’59 Impala; Dad pulled off to the side and changed the tire. For whatever reason, that event stuck with me and I would dream about it. In the dream, I usually stood across M-40 (on one side of town or the other), looking at the car as the wheels and tires sagged like one of Salvador Dali’s clocks. I had that dream several times, even after the Impala got traded in, and never figured out why.

These days, I dream about going back to college. The dream itself is a lot more variable than the Impala dream — in one dream, I’m standing outside the dorm I lived in, chatting with some people; I might be walking to a classroom in another — but it’s always the beginning of the school year. In last night’s dream, my old roommate and I were moving into a largish two-bedroom apartment that had a third bed right in front of the door. The centerpiece of this dream was a large clothes hamper on casters, lined like a baby’s bassinet, that could tip its contents into a basket on the floor. Toward the end of our dream, the landlady was getting ready to move it out thinking we didn’t want it in there; we protested and then she showed us how it worked.

Other details I remember (more or less in order) include:

• Thinking the bed by the door was mine, until I realized I had my own room


• Seeing the hamper


• Plugging in the clock-radio that currently adorns the dresser on the wife’s side of the bedroom, and throwing some luggage on the bed


• Wondering if my ex-girlfriend would want to sleep over, and wondering why I even thought I wanted her to (the breakup was not amicable) — dreams truly do have their own #%@*&!!! logic


• Making a list of things I had to drive home to get — a 10-hour drive in the dream and when I was in college; it would be a much longer trip now, and I wasn’t college-age in my dream


• Being interrupted in my list-making by the landlady coming in to get the hamper

That was the first time in some months that I’ve had one of those dreams. I haven’t figured out what the deal is with those.

Why I’m a Cat Person #72,379

Truth is certainly stranger than fiction. I laughed my butt off reading this story, and I have a LOT of butt....

They're inside of it. They crawled inside, and now I have a giant incredibly heavy piece of carcass in my yard, with 2 dogs inside of it, and they are NOT getting bored of it and coming out. One of them is snoring.

It just gets worse from there.

All’s quiet

The Boy, as usual, is taking his sweet time getting home. He has to get up & go to work in the morning, and he hasn’t had much sleep as it is lately, and he has a cold... but when you’re 18, you can burn the candle at both ends for a while. Things have settled down into a series of head-butting contests with Mrs. Fetched; she’s ready to take him back to his apartment and leave him there. Now if only he would stop the head-butting crapola, she might let him have the old minivan (we got it back this week) and he could have all the fun of living on his own for real.

The chances of his (and Lobster’s) graduating this year are pretty slim at this point. Lobster has often elected to sleep until whenever instead of going to school; The Boy is a little better but is often tardy. Report cards are pretty rank, with the usual I’m-doing-better-now protests that don’t pan out. If Lobster wants to spend the rest of his life working in a KFC, he’s certainly going about it the right way... at least until he sleeps late once too many times and gets fired.

The wife’s new dog (Crissy, although I often call her Princess Bladder or Pissy for reasons that should be easy to guess) is learning the ropes amazingly quickly. I think today was the third day she’s been to the chicken house and she’s already picking up dead chickens and bringing them to Mrs. Fetched. There was the incident last week where one of the in-laws’ dogs attacked her on her first day at “work,” chewing on a foot and freaking everyone out, but she has pretty much healed because this afternoon she (again) climbed over the top of her pen and jumped out. Nothing wrong with that foot if she can take a six-foot drop and not yelp! Her breed, whatever it is (I was told blue healer but she doesn’t look anything like the photos I found on Google) is energetic and thinks a chain-link fence is a ladder. We’ve had several dogs from this line, and they’ve all been like that.

Me, I’m doing OK. I left a post on Eat4Today that lists some of the benefits I’m already seeing from trying to get my own situation under control. Those first 15 or so pounds were easy come, easy go; I suspect the next 15 pounds won’t be quite as easy or quick to shed (they’ve been there a long time). There are other things I talked about that I think are more important than simple numbers... maybe I’ll start feeling more energetic before too long too. Or maybe I should try getting more sleep....

As gimmicks go... I like it

The former oldies station in Atlanta, Fox-97, is now calling itself “97.1 The River,” playing what they call “classic hits.” The format is similar to Jack FM, no DJs and a medium-size playlist, but River seems to stick to lighter stuff. For example, “School’s Out” is the only Alice Cooper song they play.

Yeah, just another not-too-oldies station... except for their kickoff promotion. They’re claiming to play “10,000 songs in a row, commercial-free.” Assuming they started on New Year’s Day, I expect they’ll wrap it up some time over the weekend or maybe Monday.

Gutsy move. I’ll retreat back to Album 88 when the ads start running, but for now it’s a nice change of pace.

Fiction: A Picnic at Mt. St. Cardiac

This is one of the five or so short stories I found when cleaning up the outbuilding, getting it ready for its new carpet, and the second to appear on the blog.

I wrote it in the early 1990s, I believe. Cyberpunk had by then established itself as the up-and-coming sub-genre of science fiction, although by then some people thought it was well in decline. Me, I thought people were missing out, treating “cyberspace” strictly as the habitat of criminals and mega-corporations. Certainly, people would work, play, and perhaps even work out emotional issues in cyberspace as well.

So click the “Read and Comment” link, and see what happens when a family takes...

A Picnic at Mt. St. Cardiac

The VR headset magnified the circuit board until it looked like... well, a miniature city. Clichés, even at the microscopic level, Mike grinned. But an exotic ghost town of copper streets and black epoxy buildings was just what it looked like.

Mike lifted his viewpoint above the board’s surface — and there was the problem. A hairline crack in a solder joint, although at this magnification it seemed big enough to slip his hand into, on pin 3 of chip U407. He reached up with gloved hands and brought down a huge — or so it seemed at this scale — soldering iron and a line of solder as big around as his arm. In a few seconds, the crack was patched.

As Mike was about to start diagnostics on the board, his phone chimed. The status area in his headset said simply, Dad. Mike smiled and opened the video onto one corner of the display. His father’s puzzled face appeared in a window on the side of one of the chip-buildings.

“What’s this? You playing that new VR City game, Mayor Mike? Patching up potholes? But where’s the media with their photo-ops?”

“Nope,” Mike grinned even wider. “Hey, why don’t you join me?” His image froze, one finger held up toward Dad in the universal gesture that meant Wait a minute, then reanimated; a pair of silvery benches appeared behind him. “Link up and come sit for a few. Remember that RW-4 factory rework unit you helped me pick up last week?”

Dad raised one eyebrow skeptically as he stepped into the rework unit’s VR, the window dissolving behind him, and sat on the bench opposite Mike. “Naw. You couldn’t have got that thing working, could you? I thought you bought it for scrap.”

“I did,” Mike chuckled. “In fact, I opened up the power supply first to see if there was anything worth salvaging in there. What I found was a mouse nest and a bunch of chewed wires. I thought ‘what the heck,’ spliced everything together, and it came right up. I think it has repair maps of most everything built through last year.”

“Quite a find. And a steal, for fifty bucks. I’m impressed. Y’know, you could go into business with this, fix up stuff —”

“Or buy up rejects and sell ’em as refurbs,” Mike finished. “I already have a flyer out, looking for a batch of boards.” He looked around to see if the slow fade he’d set up was noticeable yet. Sure enough, the circuitry was starting to look grainy and rippled, the benches grew darker and rougher, and his clothes were fading away completely.

“Good. If you need a little help from time to time, let me know. I’ve gotten down to twenty hours a week at work now.” Dad looked around him, went Wait a minute, then returned with a grin and a different look. This image of Dad was younger and thinner, with black hair (only one or two grey strands) down to his shoulder. The appendectomy scar was still there, though. Mike’s next thought started him: He used to look like that when he was younger. And it’s how he still sees himself.

Dad brought Mike out of his reverie. “I’ll go along with the nude beach. Better be careful with the wood benches though; wouldn’t want virtual splinters in your old man’s backside.”

“No probble,” Mike said, then subvocalized. The benches became canvas beach chairs. “Better?”

“Yeah, but you forgot the babes.” A volleyball game popped into existence nearby. “And this is kind of a generic beach — may I? Thanks.” Wait a minute, then the sand became coarser and darker with grassy dunes marching up from the shoreline. “I always liked Lake Michigan; too bad they didn’t have nude beaches up there.” They watched the volleyball game for a quiet moment.

“OK, Dad,” Mike said to break the silence. “I give up. I didn’t shock you with the nude beach. So what’s happening?”

“Shocked you, though,” Dad grinned. “I pretty well know you, son. You’re not much different from me when I was twenty-eight, even if you were on the way by then. Anyway, I was just going to make sure you were coming by —” Wait a minute, a prolonged one. Dad’s image reanimated with a worried look. “Trouble,” he said.

The volleyball game disappeared just as Mom popped in, sporting a grainy image that indicated a real-time meatspace scan. “Hi, son, I — God!” she gasped. “What do you two think you’re doing?”

Mike and Dad quickly added swim suits. “And a good afternoon to you too, Mom,” Mike replied. “Dad and I were just playing Shock Each Other. He won.”

Dad glared briefly at Mike, then stood to face Mom. “You ought to try it some time,” he said. A quick subvocal, and a four-foot schlong sprang from his swim suit, complete with sound effect.

“You wish,” Mom hissed. “Fifty-six years old, and that’s still all you think about.”

“Uh, Dad,” Mike said. ”You broke the rules. No caricatures.”

“Woop,” replied Dad, and returned to normal proportions. “You’re right. Congratulations, hon; you won your first game of Shock Each Other by default.”

Mom ignored the attempted deflection. “So when did you ever look like some long-haired idiot?”

“When we met,” Dad said evenly. “Don’t you remember?”

Before Mom could respond, Mike spoke up. “Good to see you, Mom. You don’t usually visit by VR; what’s the occasion?”

“Well, I was going to make sure your dad didn’t forget to ask you if you were coming by tonight —”

“Which is what I was about to do before you butted in,” Dad snapped. “Besides, didn’t you ever figure out that this is what VR is all about, to be what you always wanted to be?”

Mom smirked. “You never wanted to be a nudist. Besides, the resort is just a few miles up the road, where it’s always been.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Dad retorted. “You’ve got to stop looking at just the face value of things —”

“Uh, you guys are running up a tandem bill with this little discussion. Maybe a change of scenery would be appropriate,” Mike suggested. “How about the golf course?”

Mom looked skeptical. “I don’t golf —”

“No probble, Mom. You’ve never come to visit our masterpiece; just sit in the cart and enjoy the view.” Dad laughed and nodded as the beach dissolved and all three stood before a black iron sign. The sign read, in animated dripping blood:

MOUNT SAINT CARDIAC
The golf course from Hell!

Mike and Dad had created this elaborate construct several years ago as a practical joke on a few golfing friends of Dad’s. The friends thought it was hilarious, and told other friends. The word spread, and father and son quickly found themselves adding and refining. Soon, Mount Saint Cardiac became the place for people who wanted a break from real-world golfing. It was one of the most popular golf-oriented constructs in VR, running neck-and-neck with the authorized virtual St. Thomas. The visitation fees they made from Cardiac usually paid the entire family’s monthly VR connect charges with enough left over for a weekly gold outing in meatspace.

Mom looked even more skeptical. “I don’t think I’ll enjoy this. It doesn’t look like my idea of a good time.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Just come on, will you? You won’t enjoy it if you don’t give it a chance, that’s for sure. Here, hop in the cart.”

“That’s a cart?” Mom goggled. The golf carts at Mount Saint Cardiac looked like a cross between a black 1970 Corvette Stingray and a plain golf cart. It had an open top and the back end was rebuilt to hold a pair of bags, but the rest was one evil-looking vehicle. It purred menacingly as it rolled, driverless, to where they stood.

“It’s safe, Mom,” Mike reassured her. “This is VR, remember? You can’t get hurt.” Mom climbed into the passenger seat, Dad took the driving position next to her, and Mike grabbed handholds on the back. “Hit it, Dad.” The motor roared, tires squealed, and they fishtailed up to the tees on Number One. Dad grinned like a maniac and whipped the cart into a power-slide that slung the rear next to the tees.

“I see your driving hasn’t changed much,” Mom remarked dryly as they climbed out of the cart.

“One big difference,” Dad deadpanned as he and Mike selected Cardiac Drivers — clubs with heads roughly the size of a bowling ball sawn in half. “No tickets here, and nobody wrecks.”

Number One was typical: 570 yards to the green, with the tees on the edge of a sheer cliff far above the fairway. The sign, which showed the layout and the hazards, named it Over the Edge. Dad and Mike both teed off and watched their balls land in the fairway below, then everyone climbed into the cart.

“Another good thing about this course,” Mike chattered. “You can’t lose your ball even if you try.”

Mom looked around. “So how do we get down there? I don’t see a path.”

“Here, I’ll show you,” Dad grinned. “Remember the name?”

“Over the Edge — nooooooooooo!” Dad floored the accelerator. The cart roared, tires howled as they spun around, and Mom shrieked as they vaulted off the cliff. Before they dropped more than a few feet, the cart spouted wings and became a glider. As they descended, Mike picked himself up from the back of the cart, laughing hysterically. “Mom — you should have seen — your face,” and again fell giggling to the floor.

“I ought to slap you,” Mom growled, then allowed herself to smile as the cart landed and folded its wings away. “So what other surprises do you have in here?”

“Oh, every hole has its own little personality,” Dad replied. “Like Boa Boa. When your ball hits the fairway, a big snake slithers out and swallows it. If you stomp on him, he coughs up the ball and goes away.”

“Your snake phobia gave us the idea for that one, Mom,” Mike continued. “Another hole is pitch dark, except that the green and your ball glow in the dark. The idea is for you to remember where you are — in VR where you can’t get hurt. Here you can overcome whatever fears you might have, since they really aren’t here.”

“Psychotherapy?” Mom looked skeptical and a little sarcastic.

“Funny thing, Mom: some shrinks actually bring their clients here. We get email all the time from people who said this place has helped them out some way.” Mike chattered on about other comments they received, while Dad steered them to a picnic area in the shadow of an erupting volcano. They sat in the lush grass and watched the lava flow endlessly down.

“But what’s the point of all this?” asked Mom. “Just entertainment? Or is there something else to it? You know I don't go virtual, or whatever you call it, very much.”

“Sure, it’s entertainment,” agreed Dad. “But are you talking about the golf course, or VR, or the entire Net?”

“All of it, I guess,” Mom sighed. “I know people go to work over the Net all the time, and there’s lots of games, and stuff like this place — but why do you go around looking like that, twenty and hair down to your back?”

Dad sighed in turn. “What’s the whole point of an illusion — or a fantasy world, if you’d rather — if you can’t control it? There’s a part of me who’s still twenty, and will always be twenty no matter how old I get on the outside. Here, I can let him out.

“But what about you? Haven’t you ever wanted to look different?”

“Well, you know I’ve always wanted to lose weight,” Mom grimaced. “But what’s the point? I could look like a supermodel here, but that won’t change anything.”

“It might change how you see yourself,” Dad replied. “Here, let me work your image. Now don’t look at me like that; I’m not going to do anything weird in front of your own son.” Dad went Wait a minute, then reanimated. “You wanted to be thinner? Here you go.” Dad reshaped Mom’s image into a young woman’s, made her hair longer and pulled it back into a tail, then replaced her generic floral print dress with overalls and a flannel shirt.

“Hey Mom,” Mike grinned. “You look gooooooood.” He subvocalized a full-length mirror so Mom could see herself.

Dad winked. “You know, women in overalls always did turn me on.”

“Uh, guys, I’ve got a board to finish fixing,” Mike said, recognizing his cue. “See you tonight in meatspace.” He dissolved and was gone.

Mom looked at Dad and grinned shyly. “So now what?”

“We go for a ride,” Dad replied. He whistled, and two horses with full tack trotted out of the woods. “Somewhere a bit more traditional. This can be your fantasy, too.” The scenery shifted, becoming a grassy meadow, with hazy mountains in the distance and a chuckling stream nearby. The horses ambled over and drank.

“Let’s go somewhere different,” Mom countered. “How about that beach? We can build a driftwood fire when it gets dark.”

“You’ve got the idea,” Dad replied happily. They mounted up and rode across the dunes.

Are we there yet?

A while back, I wrote a letter about the oil crunch to come, probably sooner than later. It looks like it might be getting started.

This IEA¹ graph, from their Oil Market Report, shows world oil production from 2002 to the end of 2005. As you can see, total production seems to be levelling off — only in the last half of 2005 do you see production for two quarters in a row lower than the previous quarter.

Better news is in the text of the report: production climbed to 85Mbpd in December, resuming the steady climb (US production was hosed up by the hurricanes, and is slowly coming back on-line). But what the text giveth, another graph taketh away: follow the link and compare the "World Oil Supply" and "World Oil Demand" graphs. Demand is consistently outstripping supply, which suggests the reserves that Western nations have been building up for an emergency are being tapped and slowly(?) depleted as well.

So are we getting close to Peak Oil? The graph above suggests world production is starting to plateau, although it may well be a temporary hesitation while the Gulf of Mexico producers get their collective act back together. OPEC et al can still increase production, but it’s getting more and more difficult. My crystal ball is a little murky, but I think we’ll see another year or two of increasing yields before the trend turns the other way. The wild card is the deteriorating situation in the Middle East: military in Iraq, diplomatic in Iran. As bogged down in Iraq as we are, we can’t make a credible threat to Iran.

What’s more important is the difference between demand and supply. Unless Americans suddenly get rational and park their SUVs, permanently, demand will continue to climb. But even if we could control our own consumption habits, we can’t control China’s and India’s increasing thirst for oil: anything we leave on the table, Asia will grab with both hands.

The only thing I know for certain, the era of cheap oil is over.

---

¹International Energy Agency, a consortium of energy-consuming nations.

Dangit

Mrs. Fetched baked some salmon last night, with some potatoes etc. on the side. I put the leftovers into two microwave plates — one for my lunch today and one for The Boy after he came home from band practice.

As things really went, Lobster ate The Boy’s plate... and The Boy ate my plate.

Hey Solar-bro...

Gimme a call tomorrow morning, 8 a.m. would be great, let me know that Dad got there OK... OK?

Thanks!

Camera shakeout

Seems that the photography industry has started quietly shaking out: Konica/Minolta is throwing in the towel and Nikon is dumping most of its film cameras to concentrate on digital — quite a turnaround in attitude at the iconic manufacturer.

Film is going to be around for quite a while — unless you have massive thousands of bucks, digital is going to lag film’s quality for some years to come. On the casual/consumer end, a lot of people still have good film cameras and aren’t ready to drop $350–$400 for a decent digital just yet. But for those of us who have them already, the quality is fine for snapshots and 5x7 prints (if you don’t look too close). The best part is that we can blow through the equivalent of four rolls of film in a day, keep the good shots, and make the bad stuff disappear with no guilt, extra cost, or waits for processing. It’s also nice to not have to keep a scanner around when I want to put my pictures on my blog.

One of the neat things about digital cameras is that many of them have a video mode, so you can take at least short clips of video. My camera takes video at 320x240, roughly equivalent to VHS quality, and can manage up to 3 minutes at a time (which about fills a 128MB card anyway). iMovie, to my pleasant surprise, converts and upsizes its AVI files so I can edit them and even mix them with DV video from my camcorder. Some digital cameras can take full-screen 640x480 video, which would require the biggest flash cards you can afford since it would require about 4 times the space of 320x240 video.

But that’s where things will head, eventually. Flash memory will continue to get cheaper (I’m thinking about a 512MB card for my camera), processors will continue to improve, and I expect solid-state camcorders to start pushing into DV territory in the next few years.

The Boy and His Pills

The Boy gets a pair of trips to his endocrinologist each quarter — one to draw blood, one to get the results. As we expected, his sloppy maintenance resulted in an A1C score of roughly 10... if you don’t know what that means, it’s not good; it should be around 7. After a stern lecture from the doc, who went into graphic detail of the slow painful death (piece by piece) that awaits him if he doesn’t get his act together, he confirmed that The Boy is indeed a Type II rather than Type I. “He would have probably hit 500 and ended up in the hospital over the summer if he was Type I.”

This is very good news for The Boy: it means he’s down to typically one injection (the Lantus he takes at bedtime) per day, with the Novolog as a backup if he needs it. Of course, he still has to poke himself and meter his glucose, but that’s no big deal by comparison.

I took an empty pill bottle and had him put a few of his pills in it to keep here. His regular supply is at his apartment, but if he comes home for a weekend or whatever he’ll have them even if he forgets his normal supply. (We also have a backup glucose meter.)

A great laugh for Zork players

Former or current, it’s pretty funny. But he left one question unanswered: where’s a grue when you need one?

Exceeding expectations

I was rather amazed.

The Boy actually found an apartment that didn’t ask questions about his educational status. Sure, it isn’t much: two rooms (not two bedrooms, mind you) plus a decent bathroom, full kitchen, $400/mo includes utilities. Good thing about the latter; the door has a pretty good gap under it to let the chilly wind in and keep his heater running. But it's his own place. It’s also within walking distance to where they do band practice, which was probably one of his more important considerations. His 18^th birthday was Friday, he put his own money down on the place: well, go for it, kid. People are giving him furniture; if he’s not careful, he’ll be tripping over it. I suggested to Mrs. Fetched that I, her, and Daughter Dearest all mark a calendar with the day we figured he would have a problem big enough to need some real help. She said no... like it made a difference.

So a friend of his loaned him a little pickup truck to get around with & move his belongings from FAR Manor to his new nest (and pick up gifts of used furniture, of course). Like a lot of young guys, he associates staying up late with being cool, or adult, or something... I remember being that way but can’t really say what the attraction was, just that it was there. So about 2 a.m. Sunday morning, he called Lobster (who was elsewhere) and asked him if they wanted to meet at McDonald’s. After that, they were driving back to his new place when they got the Blue Light Special on aisle 136. Turns out that the friend neglected to tell him the truck didn’t have current plates! Smooooooooth.

That details aren’t too clear about what happened next, but Ossifer Friendly wound up searching them... and found a joint on The Boy. Break down, take down — you're busted. Fortunately for Lobster, the joint was the only contraband in the truck. The second cop (they travel in pairs these days) took Lobster back to his own truck and let him go. The Boy went directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

So The Boy used his phone call to tell the friend who loaned him the truck, whose mom knows a guy with a tow truck; they came and got it. Lobster called M.A.E. (note that nobody so far is in much of a hurry to tell us) about 9 a.m. Sunday morning. M.A.E. went to Mrs. Fetched and said “Something terrible has happened!” With that for a lead-in, the wife’s reaction on finding he was in jail was like, “Oh, is that all?” In other words, major relief. She was thinking hospital or worse.

So The Boy exceeded — no, shattered — all expectations. I figured he’d last about a month until he got in over his head, although I was thinking financial issues or diabetes complications. It took him all of one day.

Then the phone calls started. Collect, of course, even though the jail & we are in the same phone exchange. It sort of complicated things, what with Monday being a holiday... although that at least meant I could be there to help bail him out (literally, for a change). Even though it was a holiday, they set his bail, a bondsman (actually, a freckled young lady) was available, came to the jail & took care of things. I had to ask her how she got in that line of work; she said she works for her dad, who’s an ex-cop (an Irish cop, from the looks of his daughter).

We collected The Boy (who was, ironically, wearing a T-shirt with “How Not to Get Caught” instructions) and took him home. Mrs. Fetched yelled at him; I yelled a little and laughed a little. Fortunately, he’s looking at a misdemeanor charge. Even more fortunately (have I ever said this kid is massively lucky? well, for the most part), he said the cop never read him his rights. Lobster was there & didn’t hear it either. Sounds like he might get off on a technicality, which would suck if he doesn’t learn anything from this — but would be good if he’d just get (and stay) straight. The bad part is that it could drag on for two years before he gets a court date... which makes getting it tossed on a technicality a bit more attractive.

The other bad part was that he told the jailers, M.A.E. called and told them, we called and told them, he’s diabetic. They didn’t give him any insulin while he was there, or check his sugar, or anything. Since Mrs. Fetched knows the sheriff, she’s going to have a little talk with him. I took him to his place to pick up his meter; he was at 296. The more I think about that, the happier I’d be to see his case thrown out for something stupid. If there’s anything that cheeses me off even more than what Bush-league is doing to the country, it’s sloppy local law enforcement.

Friday Night Cinema - we’re back!

You’ve watched up all the DVDs you got for Christmas, the bills started coming in, and you still haven’t cleaned up from that New Year’s Party... never fear, we bring you short flicks that won’t strain your budget or schedule.

Daughter Dearest pointed me to this one. It’s been 8 years or better, and people still find ways to get a chuckle out of the Hamster Dance. Tune in, turn on, and get ready for the Psychedelic Hamster Dance!