Kaysho

Christmas like huskies

2009-12-25T19:30:30Z

Yesterday I arrived in New Jersey for Christmas with the family. The first order of business after getting off the plane was going to the store to get gifts for my niece and nephew, since one doesn't try to transport the Fisher Price Western Adventure Playset (with twelve little people and 65 extraneous little bits that will all eventually end up under the couch) on an airplane ... at least not if you don't want the TSA to confiscate all the little plastic guns.

Thus it was that we found ourselves in the toy section at Target on Christmas Eve, which was not nearly as much of a madhouse as one might have expected. I was walking along, minding my own business, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted them.

"Ooooooh, huskies!", I ejaculated, veering suddenly ninety degrees to the right toward a display covered with miscellaneous plushies. This was, at least, toned down nicely from the time when I was at a truck stop and saw a display of Beanie Babies across the store and squealed, "Huuskiiiiiiiiiiiiies!" and ran toward them in a manner that, given the venue, probably should have caused Hilarity to Ensue.

In any event, there I was, going through a big pile of husky plushies while my sister interrupted her progress. Clearly I was not shopping for the children, except to the extent that I am a big kid. What can I say? I'm an addict. Besides, these weren't just any old husky plushies ... they were dressed in little red or blue sweaters with Christmassy snowflake patterns woven into them.

"I really don't need to be buying more plushies ...", I rationalised to my sister as I started delving through the pile for the husky with the cutest face and that didn't already have its legs splayed open from being stuffed into the shipping case too hard. "You know, you're right ... you REALLY don't need one ...", she pleaded to no avail. I found one with a blue sweater that was pretty darn cute and held onto it while I checked the rest of them.

"How about a red sweater?", my sister offered helpfully, proferring another that was so dressed. "No, no, this one has a cuter face ... I don't really care about the colour of the sweater", I replied, continuing my quest.

"Well, that one has fur across its eyes, but this one in a red sweater doesn't," she suggested. "Most of them have fur across their eyes," I responded, sensing that she was beginning to reach that point of Make Up Your Flipping Mind Already.

"You know, they'll still have these AFTER Christmas, and they'll probably be on sale then and you could get one for half price," was her next helpful offer.

"They're ten dollars and that would completely defeat the point of an impulse purchase," was my smiling rejoinder, which sealed the deal. Besides, I'd already decided that my selection with the blue sweater was The One, and into the cart it went.

For those who follow me on Twitter, this is what prompted the tweet a few minutes later: "Hello, my name is Kaysho, and I am addicted to buying husky plush. BUT THIS ONE HAS A CUTE BLUE SWEATER! *grabs!*" ... and I tweeted a picture of the little guy:

That evening at my sister's house, we did our family's opening of gifts on Christmas Eve. Toward the end, after the children had received so many gifts that the floor was completely covered in extraneous bits, my sister handed me a big gift bag and told me to open it ... and after a moment of confusion wherein I inquired how she had managed to re-wrap my husky plush and get it over to her house without my knowing it, I fell over laughing:

"This is why I wanted you to wait until after Christmas! This is why I was like, 'Are you SURE you don't want the one with the RED sweater?'!", she exclaimed while I turned a shade of red dangerously akin to the sweater's. At the risk of thinking that I have a great mind, great minds do indeed sometimes think alike.

From my inadvertent new family to yours ... Merry Christmas.

Better than twenty pounds and sixpence

2009-12-17T22:33:21Z

In Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield, a character named Wilkins Micawber, who has perpetual troubles with debt, expresses his appreciation of his predicament in what is one of the best known quotes from the novel:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Mr. Micawber was always short on money. Given my busy schedule lately as work brings us to the end of the fiscal year, I am running short on sleep ... which is every bit as pernicious as Mr. Micawber's bad habit, as I am trying to borrow time instead of money.

So allow me to opine this:

Alarm set for 7:15am, rolling over in bed and seeing that it reads 6:59, result happiness. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A sign of the times? I have a new mobile phone, so its built-in dictionary is pretty much virgin of all the aspects of my personality that will gradually impregnate it as I send more and more messages and it learns of my ways. So I was quite amused, when I was sending a text message that included the abbreviation "WRT" (with respect to), that the phone helpfully corrected this to ... WTF.

WTF?! :)

Might as well be a Bananaphone

2009-12-12T00:16:39Z

*ding ding ding, ding ding-a-ding-a-ding!*

Hmmmmmm, someone's mobile phone, somewhere in the office, is ringing. It's kinda muffled ... probably on the other side of the floor somewhere.

*ding ding ding, ding ding-a*

Yup, it went to voice mail. Probably got abandoned on someone's desk when they went to the bathroom or something.

*ding ding ding, ding ding-a-ding-a-ding!*

Man, someone's trying to reach that person rather urgently. They really should answer their phone. Oh well ... it went to voice mail again. Back to work!

*ding ding ding, ding ding-a-ding-a-ding!*

Aw, come on, answer your stinking phone!

*ding ding ding, ding ding-a-ding-a-ding!*

*ding ding ... * Oh crud, that's me! Hello! Hello, yes, sorry about that ...

Ah, the joys of having just acquired a new, unfamiliar mobile phone, and then keeping it in my pocket so from under my desk it sounds as though it's coming from far away ... :)

Reach out and touch me

2009-12-10T21:04:39Z

For those who may not be logged in, I just posted my new mobile number and a call for Christmas cards in a friends-locked post.

Thanks!

And perhaps iDon't

2009-12-08T19:49:44Z

So last night I finally had the time to go purchase a new smartphone. I'd been researching for a while, had compared all the specs, and finally went to the store and tried out a bunch of phones ... since no matter how many specs you look at, nothing tells you whether you like a device like actually getting your paws on it and seeing if it delights or frustrates you.

And I have to give Apple credit: in terms of sheer "I picked it up and was able to do what I wanted right away with next to no growling", the iPhone was light years ahead of anything else I tried. So I bought one.

Now, of course, when you buy a new phone, the first thing you want to do is get all your data onto it from the old phone, since otherwise you have a shiny paperweight. The instructions for this were very simple: plug the phone into your computer, iTunes will launch, and your data will be synchronised. OK, I like instructions like that. That was one of the things I liked the most about my Palm ... one program synced all my data, right out of the box, and I could work on my data on either my computer or my Palm, no muss no fuss. Granted, I'd have to convert my Palm data into iTunes data, but surely there's an app for that.

So I plug my phone into my computer, and it launches iTunes. "Would you like to synchronise your data?". Yes, yes I would. First thing I do, of course, is take an image off my computer and copy it onto the phone, so that I have wallpaper. I mean, come on, priorities here.

"OK, I'm done!", it squeeeees. Right, there's my one photo on both devices, good deal. Now ... where is everything else? There's a tab in iTunes for music, videos, photos ... but I'm noticing a distinct lack of the data that matter the most. You know, things like contacts, calendar, notes. This seems a bit of an oversight. So I go into the setup screen.

"A supported calendar application could not be found."

I chuckle, as this is the sort of user-unfriendly error that Apple likes to tout as being typical of everyone's products but its own ("You're screwed -- click OK"). Perhaps a little help here? What calendar applications are supported? I mean, I suffer no illusions that anyone will offer direct support for Palm Desktop, but give me a break here. A link to a place to download a supported application? Support for the calendar application that's built into the operating system? Anything?

"A supported notes application could not be found."

I'm sensing a theme here. Right, so either I can manually enter all of my hundreds of contacts and calendar entries into my new phone and then have no way to back them up, or I'm going to need some help. I need a Genius.

So I walk into the Apple Store with that look on my face that says, "My new shiny isn't working", and a Genius takes pity on me. I explain my plight, and he gives me the news:

"On your computer, the iPhone will sync all your data with Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Exchange."

These are, of course, software packages that don't come with the phone, don't come with the operating system, and aren't free. What happened to the cheerful "it syncs with iTunes!" that I was told yesterday? Yes, it syncs with iTunes, but only for the data types that Apple wanted to support in iTunes. Everything else, and iTunes is just a conduit to third-party applications that Apple neither provides nor supports. Or ...

"You can also open a MobileMe account, and then all your contacts and calendar entries will sync automatically with MobileMe. This costs $99 a year."

Right, so for a two-year contract my $200 phone has now become a $400 phone. I'm not sure I like this option. Why didn't Apple just put a simple calendar and contacts editor into iTunes, or support the applications that are built into Windows, or otherwise offer and support some kind of sync option that doesn't cost extra, instead of making me purchase a $100 product from Microsoft that I don't particularly need for anything else? On top of that, it's a product that the Apple Store doesn't even sell, since it's not Macintosh software. The fellow at the Genius Bar advised me that there was a Best Buy across the street.

He also advised me that the iPhone would sync with iCal and the Address Book software built into Snow Leopard, but he was also enough of a Genius to recognise that a customer who was already displeased at being told to spend an extra $100 on Outlook or an extra $200 on MobileMe wasn't going to be thrilled at the option to spend an extra $1,000+ on a computer that he didn't need.

OK, Plan B - "there's an app for that". Surely someone else has recognised that this is an issue and has figured out how to make money off it at a price lower than $100. So I asked around, and was advised that the best solution is a program called "The Missing Sync". I like it already for the cute name. According to its website, it syncs your notes, tasks, files, text messages ... OK, hmmmmmmmmm, no mention of calendar entries or contacts, probably because Apple gets huffy about letting any third-party application step on its own territory. But it does have a tool called the Migration Assistant that will take the data from a Palm and get it into your iPhone. This I can use.

"Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007 required for Migration Assistant"

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

A little more web surfing turned up several other sites with helpful advice about how to get your data from a Palm into Outlook, "after which you can easily sync it with your iPhone!". Lovely. Yes, I know, "everyone already has Outlook"; but alas, when it comes to Microsoft Office, I am on the short bus.

The iPhone really is a smashing device, and really is light years ahead of everything else I tried, which is why I'm not giving up on it over this issue and will probably just go ahead and snag a copy of Outlook rather than waste more than $100 worth of my time trying to solve this problem "less expensively". But ...

When I bought my Palm, lo those many years ago, I received the device and the software needed to synchronise all the data on it. It was a simple solution that worked just right out of the box. Given how Apple loves to brag that it's the company that makes things that "just work", I had expected the same from the iPhone.

Oh well ... at least it was a lovely box.

Let me make you a deal

2009-12-05T00:59:44Z

Back when I was a kid, there was a game show on television called Let's Make a Deal. The host of the show, a genial fellow named Monty Hall, would pull people out of the studio audience and offer them "deals", which were basically opportunities to win something. The show was known for its general silliness, which was made all the worse when an audience member one time showed up in a funny costume and Monty picked him ... after which everyone started showing up in ever-more-ridiculous costumes and turned the studio audience into one big ludicrous Halloween party.

The producers, never ones to look a fortuitous accident in the mouth, loved it and encouraged it.

Monty's most famous deal, and the one that spawned the phrase the show is known (and parodied) for, was to offer the contestant three doors. Do you want what's behind Door #1 ... or Door #2 ... orrrrrrrr Door #3? Behind one door would be something juicy, like a car or a trip to Tahiti. Behind the other two ... well, perhaps a mound of dirt, or a rusty bicycle, or a half dozen opened cans of paint.

To make it more suspenseful than just a random one-in-three shot and hey, it's over in ten seconds, if the contestant picked, say, door #1, Monty might offer a peek at what was behind door #3. Oops, that looked a lot like cans of paint! Now, dear contestant, just to increase the suspense, what would you like to do? Would you like to stick with door #1, your original choice ... or perhaps you'd like to change your choice to door #2? And the audience would shout do-it or don't-do-it and the contestant would sweat and dither and ultimately make his choice.

(Monty, of course, knows exactly where the car is beforehand, so he doesn't accidentally reveal the car.)

Call me Monty. I've told you there's a brand new car behind one of those three doors. You've chosen door #1. Since I'm feeling generous, I open up door #3 and reveal a loaf of mouldy bread ... and then give you the chance to switch doors. You really want to win that car. What should you do to make the odds that you'll win the car as high as possible?

This is actually a now-classic problem in probability, because the correct answer is not the intuitive one. It's called the Monty Hall Problem, even.

The intuitive answer is to say that it doesn't make any difference. You know the car is behind door #1 or door #2, because Monty revealed a non-car behind door #3. Whether you switch doors or stick with your initial choice, the odds are 50-50, right?

Wrong. The correct, totally counter-intuitive answer is that you should switch to door #2. We mess this up because our brains like to assume that dividing things into sets means dividing them into equal sets (when you were a child learning division, the answer to 6 / 2 was 3, not 2-and-4); and because this problem has both an initial and an intermediate state.

So why do you switch to door #2? Here's why:

The car does not change positions once it has been put behind a door. Therefore, the odds that the car is behind door #1 are 1 in 3; behind door #2, 1 in 3; and behind door #3, 1 in 3. This does not change for the duration of the deal. You've picked door #1. If you pick either of the other two doors, the analysis doesn't change, so we'll collapse those possibilities, although you can run them yourself later if you'd like.

If the car is behind door #1, Monty can open either door #2 or door #3, since both have non-cars behind them. Since you have no information about Monty's particular preference in this case, the best approach is to figure he picks one at random. Therefore, since the odds were 1 in 3 that the car was behind door #1, the odds of each combination are as follows:

Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #2: 1 in 6
Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #3: 1 in 6

If the car is behind door #2, Monty must open door #3. He can't open door #1, because it was your choice and would ruin the gag. He can't open door #2, because that would reveal the car and ruin the gag. Similarly, if the car is behind door #3, Monty must open door #2. So the odds of each situation, overall, are as follows:

Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #2: 1 in 6
Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #3: 1 in 6
Car behind door #2, Monty opens door #3: 1 in 3
Car behind door #3, Monty opens door #2: 1 in 3

Or, to put it in a way that makes things easier to see later, out of 6, the odds of each situation are these:

Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #2: 1
Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #3: 1
Car behind door #2, Monty opens door #3: 2
Car behind door #3, Monty opens door #2: 2

So far, so good: that's the initial state. But now Monty opens door #3 and reveals the loaf of bread. Now we are no longer in the initial state ... we have additional information. Of the possibilities in the initial state, we now know that some of them can't possibly have been correct, since Monty did not open door #2. In this intermediate state, what's left? Well, cross off everything where Monty opens door #2, since he didn't.

~~Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #2: 1~~
Car behind door #1, Monty opens door #3: 1
Car behind door #2, Monty opens door #3: 2
~~Car behind door #3, Monty opens door #2: 2~~

Lo and behold, the odds aren't 50-50. It is twice as likely that the car is behind door #2 as it is that it is behind door #1. Therefore, you double your chances of winning the car if you switch to door #2.

Of course, if the car could move around as Monty opened doors, then "it makes no difference" would be the right answer, since the position of the car would have been re-randomised. It is because the car's initial state can't change and because Monty can't just open a random door that the additional information that Monty reveals actually does you some good.

The cool thing about the Monty Hall Problem is that, even after you sit down and look at the logic of it, it still intuitively feels totally wrong. I know, every time I'm exposed to it, I can remember that the correct answer is to switch, but can't remember for the life of me exactly why that is, because the wrong answer just feels so right. It's almost like the mathematical equivalent of an optical illusion.

If you still don't buy it, run a Monte Carlo simulation, even (i.e. test it out over and over again with the car in a random place each time). You'll find if you don't switch, you'll win the car only about one time in three, no matter how much your instincts tell you that you should win it half the time.

Of course, the show is now off the air, so fat lot of good this information does. :)

Right, one of these days I'll get around to writing up my MFF con report ...

Pee in an ashtray

2009-11-26T20:01:18Z

When I started my current job, there was a ritual that I had to go through on the first day. I met with my "HR representative", who told me how much I would be making, gave me a quick tour of the building so that I'd know where the bathrooms were, and then sent me to a nearby clinic so that I could pee in a cup.

Luckily, you know, I had given up cocaine for Lent.

Anyway, all kidding aside, I passed my illegal drugs test with flying colours; and since then I've been governed by the usual rules on such things ("Don't show up for work under the influence of anything, legal or illegal, and we can re-test you at any time if we have reasonable suspicions.")

Last month was open enrolment for our Company health plans. In an effort to control costs, this year my employer offered a new wrinkle: the employee co-pays for coverage were all going up in line with costs, so that the percentage of our total coverage that we were paying for would stay about the same ... BUT, we could get our 2010 coverage at the unchanged 2009 rates if we signed an affidavit attesting that we did not smoke tobacco (or more specifically, for the benefit of those who used to but have quit, that we haven't smoked in at least a year).

Since I don't smoke tobacco and have no plans to acquire a nicotine addiction (but really, does anyone plan such things?), I signed up. The terms are about what you'd expect: I agree to inform the Company immediately if I do take up smoking tobacco, and if I don't I may be denied coverage and/or disciplined up to and including termination of employment. While I was in Chicago, I got my notice in the post showing me what my 2010 coverage is and reminding me about the terms of my no-smoking pledge.

So now, if on a Friday night I go over to a friend's place and he has a hookah going and I take one puff, I can be fired for doing so. But if at that same friend's house I'm doing lines of coke on the glass coffee table top in a gauche recreation of the 1970s, I just have to be sober by Monday morning.

There is something deliciously ass-backwards about this.

If this is what they mean by "going mainstream" ...

2009-11-26T09:22:47Z

... then I'd rather stick with being "niche":

http://sites1.adult-empire.com/6518/?rs=1

WARNING - link is both seriously NSFW and kind of embarrassing ...

Hilaire-ious

2009-11-18T05:48:49Z

To thee, dear goal, so long deferred
Like old Aeneas -- in a word
To Africa we came.

We beached upon a rising tide
At Sasstown on the western side;
And as we touched the strand
I thought -- (I may have been mistook) --
I thought the earth in terror shook
To feel its Conquerors land.

In getting up our Caravan
We met a most obliging man,
The Lord Chief Justice of Liberia,
And Minister of the Interior;
Cain Abolition Beecher Boz,
Worked like a Nigger -- which he was --
And in a single day

Procured us Porters, Guides, and kit,
And would not take a sou for it
Until we went away.*
We wondered how this fellow made
Himself so readily obeyed,
And why the natives were so meek;
Until by chance we heard him speak,
And then we clearly understood
How great a Power for Social Good
The African can be.
He said with a determined air:
"You are not what your fathers were;
Liberians, you are Free!
Of course, if you refuse to go --"
And here he made a gesture ... so.

* But when we went away we found
A deficit of several pound.

He also gave us good advice
Concerning Labour and its Price.
"In dealing wid de Native Scum,
Yo' cannot pick an' choose;
Yo' hab to promise um a sum
Ob wages, paid in Cloth and Rum.
But, Lordy! that's a ruse!
Yo' get yo' well on de Adventure,
And change de wages to Indenture."

We did the thing that he projected,
The Caravan grew disaffected,
And Sin and I consulted;
Blood understood the Native mind.
He said: "We must be firm but kind."
A Mutiny resulted.
I never shall forget the way
That Blood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound,
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:

"Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not."

He marked them in their rude advance,
He hushed their rebel cheers;
With one extremely vulgar glance
He broke the Mutineers.
(I have a picture in my book
Of how he quelled them with a look.)
We shot and hanged a few, and then
The rest became devoted men.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Nobody could skewer the colonial mindset like Hilaire Belloc, and I have found a copy of The Modern Traveller. It is going to be a good evening.

sad

2009-11-17T09:22:16Z

I get to telephone my boss in the morning and tell him that I've busted my tail for the past year and a half for nothing because a decision made halfway around the globe has just rendered everything I've done useless.

Maybe I'll be sober by then.

The more things change

2009-11-06T21:24:39Z

I've had a LiveJournal now for almost six years (really? Has it been that long?). When I signed up for LJ, I created a quick little biography for myself, because that was the thing to do. I haven't changed it since ... and I just went back and read it.

About half of it isn't true any more.

I'm 40 years old. If my 20-year-old self could see me now, he would be flabbergasted at how different I am now than I was then. My 60-year-old self will probably someday look back on me now and feel the same way.

This is not meant to suggest that I'm somehow especially flabbergasting at the moment (errrr, I don't think so anyway), but ... there is no point in trying to step into the same river twice, is there?

One of these days I should update that bio. :)

Time to retire Ol' Betsy

2009-11-05T19:00:19Z

I've been quiet in these online parts for the past week or so because of business travel. As George Carlin once observed, travel is the time when you take all of your Stuff and cull it down to just the Stuff You Really Really Need, so that you're not one of those sorts who takes fifteen minutes to get through airport security. This means that anything you do choose to bring with you had better bring you satisfaction.

And this has made me realise that I don't get no satisfaction from my cell phone any more. Considering that it's three years old, and that mobile computing follows the Weird Al All-About-The-Pentiums rule ("it was obsolete // before I opened the box"), this shouldn't be surprising. And considering the deal that I got on it through the Microsoft Developer Network (i.e. practically free WiMo smartphone with no contract and a discounted data plan), I certainly ain't complainin'.

On top of that, the touch screen on my venerable old Palm organiser is also starting to have a few issues ... which means that my entire Life Management Solution is going to hell in a handbasket. And Lord knows, I need a life management solution lest I forget what my name is.

Here's what I'm thinking:

iPhone: The obvious choice. When other manufacturers and software developers bring out new devices and systems, the question that people always ask is, "Is this an iPhone killer?". Definitely the dominant platform in the smartphone / mobile computing industry at the moment, locked into the same virtuous cycle of software-and-accessory development networking effects that Windows enjoys in larger computers ... and the hardware is pretty. But they do seem to have more than their fair share of reliability issues and require more frequent OS reinstalls than I like ... and the big negative: they are locked into AT&T, which is not my favourite carrier and whose network is getting slammed because everyone wants an iPhone.

Android: The up-and-coming #2 platform in the consumer smartphone space. Has the virtue of not being tied to a single device or carrier. Generally not considered quite as polished as the iPhone, and some of the hardware that's been released with it has been a bit chunky; but each new iteration of the software has been getting better and better reviews. Has a smaller "app count" than the iPhone, but more developers are starting to release iPhone and Android versions of their software at the same time. Since I'm with T-Mobile, would not require a carrier change.

Blackberry: Still the 500-pound canary in the business sphere, but really struggling to move into the consumer market. Their attempts to make "hip" hardware have mostly sucked: I'm trying hard to think of anyone I know who has bought a Blackberry and not moved on to something else (who thought it was a good idea to make a touchscreen that you had to press down hard on to make it click, reducing your typing speed to near zero?). Not totally irrelevant in the marketplace for consumer-oriented applications, but definitely a distant player behind the iPhone and Android. On the other hand, there are tons of available devices from pretty much every carrier.

Palm Pre: The built-in software is really really sweet, but it's going to be an uphill climb to get developers to show much interest in creating a new Palm ecosystem that could rival the big players. I find the tiny keyboard frustratingly useless. And it's available only from Sprint, which is a carrier that screwed my mate over and with which I will not do business. So much for that.

Windows Mobile: Increasingly irrelevant as Microsoft sat on its laurels instead of moving its platform along with the times. BART did not release a new version of its Trip Planner software for WiMo because "we do not support obsolete platforms" - ouch. And the application that I consider the true smartphone killer app, Shazam, is not available for WiMo because the developers sold the exclusive rights to it on that platform to AT&T, which will let you subscribe and then charge you by the song. I can do better.

Are there any I'm forgetting?

A good rule of thumb that I've found, in any sphere, is this: go with the #1 or #2 option, or forget it. Not only does this reduce the possibility of analysis paralysis (to which I am dreadfully prone), but especially in fields like smartphones where there are strong networking effects, anybody #3 or lower just isn't going to get the network. We all auction our stuff on eBay and put our classifieds on Craigslist for a reason. So, that means iPhone or Android. And that conveniently brings me down to just three choices: the iPhone on AT&T, the myTouch 3G on T-Mobile, or the Droid on Verizon.

I want something that can replace both a Palm and an older smartphone, so I want good organiser functions (including easy note-taking, since I use my Palm for things like shopping lists and expenses), a good browser, and a good cellular network. Anybody got any advice before I take the plunge and whip out the plastic?

But what if you dress up all the time?

2009-10-30T05:50:41Z

A Halloween costume, like any other costume, has one primary requirement: it has to be something you wouldn't ordinarily wear. It is difficult, if you're a doctor, to go to a Halloween party dressed as a doctor. All your friends will laugh at you and say, "Couldn't you come up with anything better?"

It would be like me going to a party dressed as a mild-mannered accountant.

So if you're a fursuiter, do you go to a Halloween party in suit? 99.9% of humanity might say that a fursuit is "costume enough", or even more than enough ("Aren't you hot?"). But then again, 99% of humanity can go to a Halloween party dressed as a doctor.

So when I see fursuiter friends wondering what they're going to do for a Halloween costume, I chuckle but understand fully where they're coming from ... much though the urge at first is to go, "Ummmmmmmm, if you look in your Action Packer I think you'll find something ...".

Now let's see, where did I put that harness with the extra-large neck or those oversized T-shirts? Cuz, you know, I can't go to a party without (more of) a costume, either!

Know when to fold 'em

2009-10-29T17:21:46Z

My opponents are indistinct, as though a grey mist covers the room. Even the table barely registers in my mind, although it must be there. My attention is totally on the cards. I am in the Zone.

I'm holding three jacks, a pair of sevens, and a four. I know this is good. I have a full house on the deal. My pulse quickens ... I have a chance. This hand is for all the marbles. The stakes are high, so high that there aren't even any chips in front of me. We're not playing for anything so meagre that it could be reduced to mere chips.

It's not good enough. I can't see my opponents' faces, can't feel the serenity at least one of them feels now that he's looked at his cards, but ... I know it's not good enough. The four is easy: pitch it. My brain mentally greys it out. But the sevens ... it's a boat. I have a boat, so I hesitate. If the draw turns this into mere trips, I'm dead. Yet my gut knows: I need that fourth jack or it's all over. Break the boat and I triple my chances, slim as they are.

With that sense of finality that comes from making important decisions where none of the options is easy, I grab the sevens and the four and throw them into the centre of the table. I hold three jacks in my hand. The cards that I'm about to get will determine everything. Please be the jack.

The unseen dealer flips cards my way, their backs Bicycle blue. I lean forward to reach for them.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

*mashes the "alarm off" button*

Dammit!

There was a crooked man

2009-10-29T03:01:19Z

In my quest to make my new apartment more "me", I have begun putting things up on the walls. Given my tastes and inclinations, one of those things is ... my Kama Citra poster.

No, before you ask, it is not going in the bathroom.

Now, I am no handyman, but I could play one on TV. If I purchase a bunch of tools, I can pretend I know what I'm doing. And really, how hard can it be to hang a 2' x 3' poster nice and level on a wall? The poster frame that I have for it has these nice little eyelets on the back and everything.

Right, so it's two feet wide ... that means the centreline should be one foot from each side ... and I want the bottom to be even with the base of the nearby light switch, which will put it nicely at eye height when walking past it ... and the centreline should be centred on the wall itself ... and the little eyelets are three inches down from the top of the frame and three inches in from each side ... which means I need to use my measuring tape and measure from here to ... here to ... up there ... is it straight? I don't know, and I don't own a level! Well, OK, the measuring tape looks straight, so three feet up to here ... and then three inches over from there ... and up from there by the length of the hooks themselves ... and ... man, this is requiring more maths and more manual dexterity than I thought.

But still, with all due confidence, I made little pencil marks all over the wall, then pounded the picture hooks into the wall at the two points that were the result of all this calculation. Then I carefully slid the poster over the hooks ...

And it fell right off the wall. The hooks that I bought to put into the wall are too short to reach the eyelets on the frame. Well, blast. Perhaps I'll just let it hang from the top of the frame, and forget the eyelets ... it'll be a little bit low, but ...

No, it's crooked. It's definitely crooked. Granted, if any poster shouldn't be straight, it's this one, but ... this is going to bother me. I need to go buy a level.

So just now I did, and I just got home and tested the poster. It is, in fact, perfectly straight. Therefore, either my whole apartment is crooked, or I am. And I think we know the answer to that one.

OK, I still need to re-mount it on the wall about three inches higher, so that it's not disturbingly below eye level as people walk past and admire it on their way to the bedroom closet, but ... Kama Citra is on the wall in the bedroom.

Now it's home. :)

Monetise this

2009-10-28T18:21:35Z

It's no secret that there are a lot of parties out there who are seeking to "monetise" the Internet ... which is to say, figure out better ways to deliver content to people and actually make money from it without having to bow to the old broadcast-TV model of running advertisements. Even though I rather prefer things that are free to things that I have to pay for, all else being equal, I also acknowledge that all else is not equal. I mean, how many of us any more actually watch broadcast TV or listen to broadcast radio? We have cable, or Netflix, or satellite radio, or streaming music to our favourite music players ... yet why would we bother with such things when there's free TV and radio?

This is also why I have had no objection to paying $99 a year for a subscription to the online Wall Street Journal. Enough people at my office received the print edition, which would sit in the coffee room and let me glance at a teasing headline or two before the actual subscriber took it away. If I wanted to read the rest of the article at my desk, I could either get my own paper subscription (which is messy old-fashioned paper, and reading it makes it obvious that, at that moment, I'm not particularly working), or I could get an online subscription (no messy fingers or recycling and it "looks like work"!). I was sold on spending the money, even if one could argue that it was the Internet and "should be free".

(Hell, they should pay me for being subjected to the Journal's oft-petty neo-con editorial section, with which I have a merely modest rate of agreement) :)

Then Uncle Rupert bought the paper. Uncle Rupert has never made any secret that he wants to make more money out of his online properties ... that he wanted to test to see what the market would bear. Hey, I've asked for a raise before, because I thought I wasn't getting what I was worth. I can't inherently object to the concept.

Although finding my recent annual renewal on my credit card at $197, without even so much as an E-mail warning me about a price increase (nay, price doubling), was a bit much. Especially when I went online to see if this was just a clerical error and found that the new subscription rates were $197 a year or $12.95 per month. $12.95 per month times twelve is ... less than $197 a year. That makes no sense: newspapers usually give a discount for renewing for a longer period of time, not a surcharge. I was rather miffed, in much the same way that I'd be miffed if I went to my favourite local filling station and found that their $2.75 a gallon price had just been increased to $5.50. It was time, officially, to Get Miffed.

*ring*

"Thank you for calling the Wall Street Journal. All of our representatives blah blah blah you know the drill."

*hold music*

Interestingly, the hold music for the support department is experimental jazz. How very un-conservative of them!

*hold music* Hi, this is Randi, how may I help you?

"Hi Randi! I'm ... a bit confused. I just got charged $197 for a new annual subscription, which is double what I was paying before ... and I see that I can get a monthly subscription for just $156 a year. What gives?"

"$197 is our new annual rate, yes ... we do offer service by the month, but paying for a year at a time locks you into that rate and protects you against any future price increases."

"That sounds kind of like a protection racket to me! I'm guessing that means there are more price increases coming up?"

Randi laughs, because I've asked her a question that I know she can't answer, especially on a line where our conversation is being recorded for our protection.

"Well, look, I like the Journal, but doubling the price is a bit much ... and if I go month to month I can tell I'm pretty much guaranteed to have another price increase very soon. It's not worth $197 a year to me, so let's just go ahead and cancel my subscription."

These are, of course, the magic words. Now I have to be Retained. As I have been trying to remove clutter from my life lately, and especially clutter that costs money, I am accustomed to talking with retention departments. Retention departments are, I must say, pretty good at getting me to stick around if they just offer me a good enough deal ... like the airline miles credit card with the $50 annual fee where I realised I was earning less than $50 worth of miles on it every year. Call to cancel, hey, annual fee waived.

So sorry, Uncle Rupert, you don't get a raise. Retention just sold me another annual subscription for my good old fashioned rate. Monetise this! :)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I have been scarce in these parts lately, for which I apologise. Unlike many, I cannot blame Twitter. I blame work, which has had me working seven days a week for the last several weeks. Even if this leaves me time for recreations like LiveJournal, it doesn't leave me any energy or willpower. If my next post says "I quit", well ... it shouldn't, but sometimes it's getting tempting. :)

Easy go, easy go some more

2009-10-22T06:37:55Z

When I was just starting out in the world, I had a very simple ambition. I wanted to be rich. And I didn't want to have to do much to get that way.

Hey, come on, I was 18. It made sense at the time, and the world hadn't yet taught me that it just doesn't work that way.

But this meant that I was gullible fodder for every get-rich-quick scheme that came down the pike. You know those piles of old books that I've been throwing out? Do you want to know how many of them were things like, "Secrets of the Super Rich" and "Money-Making Opportunities in Multi-Level Marketing"? No, you don't. You don't want to know primarily because I don't want to think about it. These books usually sold through mail order at the price of $15 or $20 or $25 plus shipping and handling and promised the moon and the stars ... and then arrived printed on cheap paper, full of typos and just plain bad advice.

Of course, I know now the advice was bad. As they say, if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don't need advice.

In 1987, in my quest for the holy grail of Riches Without Work, I received an advertisement in the mail for a series of publications by Hume and Associates of Atlanta, Georgia called "The Superinvestor Files". This, I was sure, was it. These weren't printed on cheap paper; they arrived, nicely bound, from a reputable commodities investment advisory group. Each file described in great detail a commodities trade that had been extensively backtested ... and unlike most other such things that had very obviously had their ruleset drafted specifically to fit a certain small set of historical data, but that would work only on that set of data and never on any future set of circumstances (an odious but obvious practice called "curve fitting"), or that had rules so vaguely defined that you would already have to be an expert in order to determine what actually to do in the market (in which case, why would you need the advice?), these had detailed, specific instructions of what to do in every circumstance: when to buy, at what price, when to sell, at what price, detailed triggers, explanations of why each rule was there ... everything a neophyte trader would need. And with around fifteen years of consistent, backtested results on each trade, you could trade with confidence.

I was sold, at $25 each plus $2.50 shipping and handling. A new Superinvestor File would arrive every month like clockwork, with a new trade from which I could profit.

$27.50 back in 1987 dollars is more like fifty bucks today, so imagine me paying $50 a pop for these suckers ... out of my income when I was 18, which wasn't very much. Did this leave me any money left over with which to open an account at a commodities brokerage house, much less trade? No, but ... the time would come when I would be able to use these things, as assuredly as the sunrise; and then I'd be rich.

Hume wrote a total of 29 of these books, which arrived at a pace of one per month until the day in 1989 when I had them all. With the gradual pace of their arrival, it was easy not to notice that I had spent, in modern money, $1,450 on the set. Even with my income nowadays, that's a very large sum of money. Now imagine how much money it was when I was 18.

I just found them in a box.

Naturally, I never made a single trade with any of them. But I just did a little Googling, and discovered two things: first, that I really do have the complete set, which potentially makes them much more valuable; and second, that while Hume hadn't fallen prey to curve fitting, they had fallen prey to another common foible in backtesting, which is using data that weren't time consistent but assuming that they were. Without going into a lot of detail (IM me if you really want it!), if you use a buy price from one time and a sell price from a different time but assume that you could actually have done both at the same time, you can get artificially inflated results that could not be achieved in practice.

Anyway, real-world testing of Hume's strategies on live data, as opposed to backtesting from historical data, have shown that they don't work.

Well, fudge. But, that said, the Superinvestor Files are sort of classics in the field, and some people still swear by them (although it should be said also that most commodities speculators lose money). I was going to throw them in the recycle bin, but ... well, maybe they're actually worth something! Maybe I could recover a few hundred bucks of my original $1,450 investment in these suckers ... so I checked eBay. How much does a complete set of the Superinvestor Files actually go for?

Ten bucks.

The good news, I suppose, is that had I actually made any trades using Hume's advice, I probably would have lost a lot more than $1,440. The bad news?

I paid $1,450 for something that I just threw into the recycle bin downstairs after getting no value out of it whatsoever. Easy go, easy go some more!

Big events in small places

2009-10-21T05:26:09Z

Back when I was a kid, I visited the site of a Civil War battle. Honestly, I don't remember which one, and it doesn't really matter. But all I remember of the entire battle site was this little ravine, with a path leading down into it that was just wide enough for one man ... and through which an entire Confederate army retreated, man by man, under fire, improbably surviving to fight another day. It was so quiet ... such an insignificant little place, it seemed hard to believe that a hundred years earlier it could have been the scene of such chaos.

But the places where big things happened are always smaller than we imagine.

I have found myself in Dallas, Texas the past couple of days ... here for a business conference. In the evenings there hasn't been much to do, and I pretty much totally failed beforehand to see if there were any evening social opportunities here that didn't involve going out with co-workers, so I've been spending my evenings mostly walking about and seeing what I stumbled across.

So it was that I found myself earlier tonight wandering around Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Dealey Plaza is a little park / statuary / fountain / reflecting pool area, put up in 1940 by the Works Progress Administration, which was little noted outside Dallas until 1963, when everything around there suddenly entered the world's consciousness. Elm Street. The Texas School Book Depository. The "grassy knoll". The triple underpass. Shots fired. Walter Cronkite trying not to lose it on camera. The Warren Commission report.

I had never been there. I sat on the grassy knoll for a while and just watched the cars go by on Elm Street, into the triple underpass, at the site where the president slumped. It was so quiet ... such an insignificant little place, it seemed hard to believe that fifty years earlier ...

A few other people wandered around, for the same obvious reason. I mean, of all the grass-covered lumps of dirt in the world, this was THE grassy knoll. If you're going to sit on one and think for a while, this would be the one ... even if absent what had happened it would just be a forgotten patch of grass on the way to a railroad underpass.

I fly home tomorrow. My life has sort of been on hold since the move, as I have made myself deal with the overwhelming crush of work and of my unwanted possessions in lieu of spending time on LiveJournal and other more pleasant things. I have eleven boxes to go.

It was funny to sit on the grassy knoll and think about ... eleven boxes. Talk about even more insignificant ... and it's all that stands between me and my life resuming its normal course. "I can handle this," I thought, brushing the grass from my trousers as I stood to start the long walk back to my hotel, pausing briefly to look at the tiny historical marker in the grass, down by the street, that marks the spot.

Yeah, I can handle this.

I sense the source of your problem

2009-10-12T17:05:50Z

From Amazon.com, under the listing for the Alcohawk personal breath alcohol tester ("meets DOT standards"!):

"Customers who bought this product also bought: The Complete A**hole's Guide to Picking Up Chicks"

Remember kids, don't try this at home.

Birds of a feather?

2009-10-10T23:48:29Z

Yesterday I was walking out of my apartment to head out to dinner with a friend, just minding my own business ... when on the street I saw something I certainly hadn't expected to see.

It was a blue Mercedes-Benz 240D sedan, parked next to the kerb in front of the building next door. This would have been entirely unexceptional except for its number plate: WERWLF.

"Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm", I thought, "this could be a Fellow Traveller, as it were ... or it could just be a coincidence, one of those 'parallel groups of people who don't know the other group exists' sorts of things. Whoever this is, he's presumably not here to visit me, so ... hmmmmmmmmmmmmm ..."

Then I headed on my way.

This afternoon I was walking out of my apartment to head out to the bank, just minding my own business ... when parked next to the kerb in front of the building next door I saw a grey Audi A6, number plate PAWPTRL. Presumably "paw patrol". Now I had to laugh.

Who are you people and what interesting character lives next door to me? :)

Soft grows hard

2009-10-09T23:26:46Z

OK, so, from previous posts you may know that I'm in the middle of unboxing all my possessions, which includes all the boxes of plushies that I've come across to date. At a friend's suggestion, I have been "storing" my plushies in a big plushie pile all over the bed. The first night that I went to sleep in the bed after creating the Great Plushie Mound, I realised there was a certain logistical problem with this arrangement: no room in the bed for me. I was able to solve this problem relatively readily: I rearranged the plushie pile into a new configuration that was twice as tall and half as wide, since plushies apparently have a fairly high angle of repose. That gave me half the bed to enjoy as my very own.

Trouble is, I normally sleep in the middle of the bed and tend to sprawl a bit if not confined by, say, the presence of another person in the bed ... so this still felt a bit restrictive. If I rolled over, I'd risk the plushie cascade. But at the same time, the urge to gravitate back toward the middle of the bed in my sleep was ... well, difficult consciously to resist when I was unconscious.

So it was that I half-awakened around 5:00 this morning to find myself under the covers and sleeping on my belly ... under the plushie pile.

And it felt so much like the weight of a lover ... well, you know, minus the humping.

I will say that I haven't ever been particularly interested much in plushies "that way" before. When the solitary need arises, I've always been inclined to a quick, simple solution ... something that doesn't involve preparation and elaborate ritual or any extensive clean-up and maintenance afterward. Someone did give me a "love plush" as a gift once, and I did give it a go, but ... well, I own a few other non-plushie playtoys that tend to get the same once-in-a-blue-moon treatment. It's a delight to share those things with others who are more interested in them than you are, because then you get to share their joy, and their appreciation of them makes it ten times more fun; but if I'm by myself, most of the time I like my plain ol' paw just fine.

Or perhaps I've just been going about this the wrong way.

Now I will grant, the half-awake male imagination is especially potent at 5:00am. At that hour and in such a semi-lucid state, a Social Security number can be erotic ... and having the morning wood pressed into the sheets wasn't helping things, either. I was lucid enough to think, "OK, this is far more erotic than it really should be" and laugh at my little predicament ... but at the same time, the gentle weight of the plushie pile ... the knowledge of all that adorable up there ... the way they tumbled and moved as I shifted underneath them, like little touches all over my back ... the occasional touch that happened to fall right where a lover would touch ...

I knew I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep until I gave in ... so I did.

So remember when I said I wasn't terribly interested in plushies that way? Perhaps it's time for a slight amendment of that statement. It may just be that I've been thinking about plushies in the wrong direction.

Maybe I'm just a plushie bottom.

*whimpers and hides behind his paws*

OK, yeah, I'm such a perv.

Michael Jackson's plushies

2009-10-07T23:33:44Z

The unboxing of the new apartment is taking ... a bit longer than I had expected, both because work has been busy and because the volume of stuff that I own has been ... well, a bit horrifying, honestly. Therefore, it's a good thing that I am finally dealing with this, even if it means that I'll probably have an entire week here of being pretty much anti-social so that I'm not distracted.

Today's target: the plushie boxes.

Plushie boxes are a joy to move. They are huge and look frightening, but then you pick them up and discover they're light as a feather and are filled with cute doggies. This makes a pleasant contrast to book boxes, which are small and look harmless ...

Books do have one advantage over plushies, though: books are easier to dust. When Kay and I were together and we had our dogs, plushies pretty much of necessity lived on high shelves, lest they turn into dog toys (as a few did anyway). This meant that they gathered dust ... and plushie fur has lots of little staticky plastic fibres that act like perfect dust catchers. You could probably dust your house with them far more efficiently than with an actual dusting product.

I had made a comment to a friend yesterday that I had all these plushies and no real place to put them all, since a lot of the bookcases that used to be their home had gone to the dump. "Why not put them on the bed?", he asked as though that should have been perfectly obvious ... and indeed, at my new place the rule of "everything within a metre of the floor belongs to the dog" does not apply. Not to mention I have a big fat king-sized bed all to myself that is just crying out for a few dozen plushie friends to share it.

But in that case, these suckers are going to get dusted. How do you dust a plushie? You hold it out the window and beat it.

I live six storeys up. Someone down on the ground is going to see me, from that distance, dangling a dog out the window and pounding on his head, and he's going to call the SPCA. I will be most amused.

And yes, as soon as I'm done with the unboxing and have time for online things again, there will be a picture. :)

Will build to suit

2009-10-03T20:02:06Z

Since I just moved from a fairly large house into a much smaller apartment, I'm taking advantage of this golden opportunity (i.e. necessity) to get rid of a bunch of things. Today, before I go to the Goodwill store, it's the turn of the unwanted clothing. This includes my fairly extensive collection of old suits and jackets that I never ever wear. There are good reasons to wear the jackets (at least) absent the context of a wedding, funeral, or job interview; but alas, I never get around to it. You know that "fashionable" look where you wear something totally beyond casual, like a t-shirt and jeans, and then throw a jacket on over it to make it all trendy and fabulous? It just makes me look silly.

Therefore, I should try it again sometime.

However, in the meantime, it's time for ~~some~~ most of these suckers to go. The jacket that I got back in the mid 1980s that's light blue, a colour that was in fashion for exactly three months and that my mother then picked up for me on sale afterwards at Sears? OUT! Will never wear it. How about this brown one that looks fairly decent aside from the fact that the best word for its particular shade of brown is "loam"? OUT! Good gravy, at what point was it ever a good idea to wear anything that is literally the colour of dirt?

Oh right, the 1980s.

Now, even in casual California, there is one very good reason to wear suits and jackets, and that's pockets. T-shirts almost always have none. A polo has one if you're lucky. Jackets have pockets EVERYWHERE. Two on the outside at the waist, the pen / handkerchief pocket on the outside on the breast, the wallet pocket on the inside ... a suit jacket is like cargo pants for the upper body. You wear one to formal events, like the theatre, not because you want to look formal, but so that you have someplace to put the tickets and the programme and still be able to hold your drink.

In the 20-odd years that I've owned these jackets, I don't think I've ever emptied the pockets. Tickets and programmes go in ... nothing comes out. Now that I'm giving them away and I have to empty the pockets, it's a veritable treasure trove. Look, here's the programme from my college graduation! It ended up, amusingly and coincidentally, in the same pocket of the same jacket as the programme from Kay's graduation fifteen years later. Here, in another pocket, are the invitations from three different weddings, spanning ten years.

Here's a little gilded prayer card with an image of the Virgin Mary from my grandmother's funeral in 1994.

Here's a name tag that I folded up and stuck in a pocket when I was done with it, presumably because I couldn't find a trash can at the time. Hello, my name was ...

Here's a little silver chair, about two inches long. A silver chair! I haven't the slightest idea! I think I'll keep it, though, just so that I can put it somewhere and laugh at the ludicrousness of a little silver chair that was probably a table favour at some event or other ... probably a wedding where providing such things to the guests was some sort of ancestral tradition that the bride had to do because her great-great-grandmother had done it. Although the "made in Taiwan" sticker on the underside of the chair sort of gives away its lack of antiquity.

It shows how often I wore that jacket, too, because I would have noticed that weight in there after a while. You'd think.

So much history in so little clothing that now, honestly, has so little practical value. They're all either in unwearable condition, or are so far out of date that I couldn't be seen in them ... or they just don't fit any more. There's one suit in there that I actually like. The coat is in fine shape and is one of those "timeless" designs, unlike the light blue jacket. The trousers look good and fit fine. Even if I'd wear it only rarely, hey, everyone needs an "emergency suit".

I've put on enough muscle on my chest and shoulders that I can't even get the coat on over them and pull my arms forward more than a few inches. Wow, I was really scrawny once!. While this means that I do need to go purchase a new suit at some point instead of keeping the one I have, I do have to say this: growing out of your clothing that way feels really really darn good! The suit goes into the Goodwill bag with a smile.

Now where's a good spot for that chair ...?

Possessed by my possessions

2009-09-29T07:52:07Z

As I sit here in my new apartment, which is slowly coming together but which still contains far too many boxes, it occurs to me that "possessions" are a curse. The joy of things comes not in the owning, but in the searching and acquiring. That's when you appreciate them. After that, no matter how wonderful they are, they all degenerate into stuff.

Perhaps the secret is to buy things, decide in advance how long you're going to keep them, and then give them all away.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

You know that delivery of music via physical media is a dead concept when you're sure you own a song on CD, but you purchase it again online because going and finding the bloody CD is just too much trouble.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The first rule of moving house is that things will get lost. It doesn't seem possible. You start out with one residence. You take everything in that residence and put it into boxes. You take those boxes to the new residence. You unpack them all ... and a good portion of your things just aren't there any more. It's like the socks that somehow don't make it out of the dryer but aren't in there afterward, either, leaving you with improbably mismatched pairs.

I am in the middle of moving house. There are a few things that I knew in advance that I would need to access well before the end of the unboxing process, things that I did not want to risk losing (or finding three weeks from now, which would be the moral equivalent). To forestall this, I separated them from the rest of my possessions and put them in logical, obvious places ... places so obvious that I knew I would be able to find them readily when I needed them.

Now I can't find any of them, and I have no clue what places would have seemed logical and obvious at the time.

Since the stuff we want to keep we end up losing, and the stuff we don't care much about is the stuff that manages to survive every instinct for disorganisation we can throw at it, the trick to having important things survive a move is obviously to throw them directly into the rubbish bin. That way they will resurface at the destination in perfect order, neatly stacked on my desk.

I'm sure I'll find those things that I was supposed to take with me on last week's trip to Denver ... any day now ...

Mea maxima culpa

2009-09-23T21:37:09Z

I confess to almighty God,

On the ceiling of the bedroom in my new apartment is a ceiling fan. It's directly above the bed, a very nice position for comfortable sleeping. On the wall is a switch. If I push the switch up, the fan comes on. If I push it down, the fan gradually slows to a stop. I can lie on the bed and stare up at the ceiling fan and watch it slowly change from an object into a flickering blur.

and to you, my brothers and sisters,

I have been staring at it a lot the last few days.

that I have sinned through my own fault,

He tried so hard to make me happy. When he was about to graduate from paramedic school, and we had numerous options on where to live, he gave me a list of places and asked me to rank them. One of the places was the San Francisco Bay Area. I ranked that one #1 ... and pretty much dismissed the rest, even though some of the others were actually better career options for him. It was my way or the highway. He acquiesced, and looked for jobs in the Bay Area.

in my thoughts and in my words,

When it came time to look for a place to live in the Bay Area, he wanted to be up in the mountains where it's pretty and green ... and I wanted to be in the city near more of my friends. If he found a place that wasn't what I wanted, I would unhesitatingly shoot it down. There were decent places up in the mountains, but I wasn't willing to give up easy access to the social life that I wanted. I thought a little bit at the time, "Hey, he was willing to move to the Bay Area for you ... surely you could move to Boulder Creek for him", but the little bits never summed up to an intention, much less an action. He acquiesced, and found us a house in San Jose.

in what I have done,

I wanted to spend time with my friends. Some of the time, and with some of those friends, that meant spending time in bed. We had long had a simple arrangement with regard to that sort of thing: be safe, don't keep any secrets, make sure each of us remained the other's top priority, be respectful about it ... and keep our hearts just for each other, no matter what we did with our bodies. So why, then, one night when a particular "adventure" was running way behind schedule did I phone him up at 11:00pm and ask him if he could possibly not come home just yet ... you know, just hang out elsewhere and do something, even though he had nothing elsewhere to do ... just so I could get some from someone who wasn't him? If he were really my top priority, would I have driven him out of his own house so that I could get what I wanted? That was so disrespectful ... yet he acquiesced.

and in what I have failed to do;

He tried so hard to make me happy. He gave me everything I wanted. I never even said thank you. Did I even honestly appreciate it, or feel any gratitude for the sacrifices to his own life, his own career, his own interests, that he made for me? Or did I just pursue what I wanted, regardless of what he wanted, always on a quest for "I got mine" and reducing him to just one more thing that I "got"? Did I love him? Or was it more that I loved me and loved what he did for me? Do I need to answer those questions if I find myself even asking them?

and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin,

I was a selfish little shit. I took him for granted. And I gave him no reason to stay with me. I said I valued him. I said I loved him. But did I, or had I let him degenerate in my heart into little more than my trophy husband, my handsome man with the great career and the generous willingness to let me go "be myself" ... oh, look everybody, isn't it wonderful that he and I have been together for thirteen years? That makes me feel so good!

all the angels and saints,

Pain is a brilliant teacher. Unfortunately, the lessons it teaches, it always teaches too late. I drove him away. I pushed and I pushed, I took and I took, I didn't give him anything in return when it wasn't convenient for me. I put him in a position where the only way that he could get anything he wanted in life was to leave me ... and he left. But in all fairness, hadn't I left him long before that where it counts, in my heart? If I hadn't, I wouldn't have treated him the way I did. I am getting what I deserve.

and you, my brothers and sisters,

Now I have what I obviously thought I wanted. I have an independent life where I can do what I want, when I want. So why do I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling fan, hour after hour? Why do I look at my new rooms full of my possessions and find it all to be just so much unwanted rubbish? Why do I lie here and beg him in a tearful whisper that he can't hear to come back to me, even though I know he has no cause, even though I know he has someone now who really does appreciate him and does love him? Isn't it just one more act of selfishness to want him back because I am in pain, because my new life feels so empty without him? Yet could it be, perhaps, that I see now that I had what I truly wanted all along ... and I threw it away for nothing?

to pray for me to the Lord, our God.

Kaysho

Christmas like huskies

Better than twenty pounds and sixpence

Might as well be a Bananaphone

Reach out and touch me

And perhaps iDon't

Let me make you a deal

Pee in an ashtray

If this is what they mean by "going mainstream" ...

Hilaire-ious

*sad*

The more things change

Time to retire Ol' Betsy

But what if you dress up all the time?

Know when to fold 'em

There was a crooked man

Monetise this

Easy go, easy go some more

Big events in small places

I sense the source of your problem

Birds of a feather?

Soft grows hard

Michael Jackson's plushies

Will build to suit

Possessed by my possessions

Mea maxima culpa

sad