None of the Above

[ rants ] 2001-02-28
So I replied:  to the obnoxious person who sent me the e-card. Here's what I wrote:

You wrote:
> Shut Up.

Um, no. I like to write, and it makes me feel better to do so. Occasionally, people actually like what I write, which is a bonus, but it's not why I do it.

> What drugs are you taking?

Caffeine is the only one I take on a regular basis. There are others that I take more infrequently and in moderation, but they're legal and they help me to feel better.

> You profuse with incoherency.

You make it sound like that's a problem.

> Did you ever get an education?

Define "get an education". I've had three years of college, but never graduated. Does that make me some kind of idiot not allowed to write a weblog?

> Were you a child brought up with religious beliefs that you have learned to disdain?

No. I was brought up as a Unitarian Universalist, which tended to lack concrete beliefs beyond "every person has dignity and worth". A bit too wishy-washy for me, after awhile. I'm thinking of starting my own religion eventually, though. I'm sure you're thrilled!

> I sense confusion, bitterness and misdirection in your life.

I'm confused about certain things, yes indeed. And I'm certainly bitter sometimes, about various topics. And yes, I've been misdirected in my life, sometimes by myself. I think these things are common to a great many people, actually.

> I sense no inner peace within you.

I have more than I usually hint at, but I am working on making it grow. Why are *you* worried about *my* inner peace?

> You need to reach out.

I do. To my friends. And my family. And sometimes to strangers whose ideas I like.

> Get some guidance and counseling.

Guidance? Of what sort? I scarcely think that there's anyone who knows more about what I'm going through and where I'm headed than I do. I almost went to counseling last night - couples counseling. Does that count? My uh, partner failed to realize we were supposed to go early this week, so we missed the appointment.

> I am sure there are many local agencies that can help you.

Like what, Planned Parenthood? Hahahhahahah. Actually I was thinking of the incredible help that Goodwill would offer me, serving as a useful place to drop off a lot of my unneeded material possessions, which tend to clutter up my life these days.

I am not sure what your deal is that you feel the need to go around insulting someone like me. I hope that someday you learn how inappropriate and hurtful it is, and that you stop.

-Beth

[ my site ] 2001-02-28
Someone doesn't like me:  So they sent me an extremely rude and snotty (DEAD LINK) e-card.

Um.

Ooooooooooooookay.

I wish this kind of thing didn't bother me, but it does somewhat. It does hurt to realize that a total stranger thinks that you're a pile of shit, so to speak.

I guess this is an exercise for me to learn how to not take things personally, even when they're aimed that way. :/

So I shall endeavor to be like a duck, and let this be like water falling off my back...

[ random thoughts ] 2001-02-27
What a long-ass survey!  I was one of the lucky, randomly-chosen IBM employees asked to fill out a work/life survey. It had 105 questions and took quite a while to complete.

It's nice that they have some flexible options available for some people at IBM, but being in a lowly department known as Technical Support, I get the idea that I'm not considered valuable enough to be able to take advantage of any of them. There are a couple people in my group who work at home sometimes. If I wanted to, I could crusade for that, but what would be the point? I hate my job, I'm about to quit. I can't stand it anymore.

I did get in some interesting bits, though:

• I talked about how Spencer (also an IBM employee) hasn't been able to use his allotment of sick days to care for our daughter, because there are not sufficient people to take care of his work for even ONE DAY. The stress on him of having to come back after an absence and make up for the time passed isn't worth it - so *I* have to use up all my sick days, plus an excessive number of extra ones. They might as well let us both pull from a collective pool of sick days.
• When asked how technology affected my work/life balance, I mentioned how Spencer's involuntary, frequent pager shifts have interrupted our home life, and that management should show a commitment to hiring adequate personnel so that these extra shifts are not necessary.
• When asked for my race, I put "Other". :) I encourage everyone, everywhere to do the same. Let us be truly race-blind. We're all related anyway, once you go back far enough.
• At the end, when asked for suggestions on what IBM could do better to help employees balance their work and home life, I suggested this: at least four weeks of vacation, like Europeans get, and a 35-hour or even 30-hour work week. I said that when it came down to it, my time is worth far *MORE* to me than money. IBM could do a lot of good, both for employee satisfaction *and* for their bottom line, if they adopted an overall work-scheduling policy that put its American employees on a par with the kind of free time that Europeans have come to expect.

Yeah, I know, my response will get tossed in the "freak" pile, but I don't care. At least I got to tell 'em what I thought. They won't listen, but at least I said it.

[ beauty ] 2001-02-27
Wicked cool!  Daniel pointed me to this APOD pic of a tree's shadow during a partial solar eclipse.

Totally wild - all the small holes in and between the leaves acted as pinhole lenses, casting crescent-shaped sun images on the ground.

I know what I'll be looking for the next time I get to see a solar eclipse...

[ mammalog ] 2001-02-27
Do it once, do it a million times:  I'm now learning just what odd little creatures two-year-olds are. Elena's not yet two, of course (not til April 23rd), but functionally, she's close enough - because she's so darn brilliant, you see.

Part of the oddness of people at such a stage is that they *love* routine and repetition. So when I drew a little butterfly on the back of her hand the other day, I didn't realize that I have set myself up to draw hundreds, maybe thousands. She *adores* them.

Originally I drew a butterfly on the back of one hand, and a ladybug on the other. The ladybug she didn't like - she kept saying "Go away, bug!" at high volume and I considered that it had been unwise of me to put such a thing on her where she can't take it off.

So the second time, I did two butterflies, and she finally actually tried to say the word "butterfly". She pronounces it "bufferby", which is just *entirely* too cute.

Well, she's so enamored of this idea now that I have to re-do her butterflies any time they start to fade. In other words, just about after every bath or hand-washing (and I use a Sharpie [tm] permanent pen, too!).

Which brings me to another topic - OCD. That is, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I think I have some of this in a rather rare manifestation (which I uh, don't feel like mentioning right now), and I wonder if Elena has some, too, or if she's just at some odd little kid stage.

She is absolutely obsessed with washing her hands. She demands it, repeatedly. If I leave her stepstool out, invariably she's at the sink, putting her hands under water, then getting the soap. It worries me somewhat. I do hope it eventually lessens, at least a bit.

Anyway, back to the butterflies. Elena wanted to draw butterflies on my hands, too, so I let her. To anyone else, they look like a set of random, mostly-parallel lines, but to me, ahh, they are exquisitely beautiful.

[ rants ] 2001-02-26
Typical bullshit:  I totally missed this when it was going on, but while going through the archives at NowThis, I see that apparently Hillary Clinton caught a lot of flack for not having as polished of an appearance lately.

She's been faulted for not dressing as nicely as she used to, having a more utilitarian hairdo, and not wearing much makeup.

What a crock of shit! This is straight out of the book The Beauty Myth - if a woman is in a position of power, she will inevitably be harshly judged about her appearance - "she's too ugly and unfeminine to be doing the things a woman *should* do". And of course she can't win, because if she looks *too* good, she will be considered incompetent because she "obviously got there just based on her looks, not her abilities".

When, oh when will we get past this crap? ARGH!!!

I want to send Hillary a note telling her that I think she's great for focusing on her job more than her looks these days...

[ humor ] 2001-02-26
Two in one:  In the interest of economizing, I realized I could accomplish two objectives in a single weblog entry. So, I point you to a cool customized valentine heart picture-making program, and at the same time perpetuate the fastest moving meme around, albeit in a truncated form:

[ good ] 2001-02-26
This newseum place sounds neato:  A news museum, called the Newseum, was written up in NowThis, and it sounds like a spiffy place, so I'm putting it on my informal list of Places I'd Like To Visit Someday.

[ weblogs ] 2001-02-26
So who's the lucky guy?  Lily Tao of Girlhacker has announced that she's engaged. Cool! The only thing is, I'm wondering who the heck she's engaged to. She didn't mention who it was specifically. I dunno if it's obvious to the rest of the world, but I'm certainly confused.

Well, good for her (and him, whoever he is) !!!

[ random thoughts ] 2001-02-23
Feeling lazy today:  So I am just going to list some of the things I'm reading today.

• Correspondence between cartoonist Dave Sim and some other guy whose name I can't remember, which is quite deep and interesting in parts:

  The idea that Art should, only ever be a mirror to reality has always seemed ass-backwards to me, given that Art is always and everywhere well-groomed and impeccably turned out, whereas Reality wears a pair of two-year-old Adidas trainers and a Toy Story T-shirt. As far as I'm concerned, it's rather the job of reality to try and reflect Art. The purpose of Art is not to mirror reality, but to shape it by the imprints and aspirations that it leaves in the human mind. Anyway, enough about Art and Reality. Let's talk about me.

• A Nascar fan writes: I Killed Dale Earnhardt
• This new book on quantum theory looks interesting.
• Alan Moore is the name of the other guy in the correspondence mentioned in the first bullet point. Here's an interview with him, which is uh.... really deep in lots of ways which I will have to explore more fully later. It's also quite long.

  To me, consciousness, the mind, language is the prime channel - part of this thing I am doing with the Moon and Serpent, this theory with Steve Moore, is any nascent consciousness, whether you are talking about an emerging culture or a single human infant, what they first have to do is undergo a process of discrimination when they are trying to come up with a worldview. What you have to do first is separate yourself from the world, most new-born babies don't see any difference between them, their playpen and their Dad. It's all them. Only after a little while do they start to realise that it's not all me, just this bit is me. So by the invention of something similar to the word or concept 'I' we separate ourselves from the universe. Then we start to separate up the universe. We will divide sky from ground, the organic from inorganic. Looked at like this, doesn't it provide a literal interpretation of the Biblical Creation story. If you take the idea of God in the Bible as a metaphor for any nascent, formative just-created intelligence, is that not how we all create the universe. We divide the firmament up from the waters of the abyss, and the key to how to do this is in the first line: in the beginning, there was the word. By giving sky one word, the ground into another, we break the universe down into manageable things that we can interact with through language.

[ humor mammalog ] 2001-02-22
So, on Valentine's Day:  I had to make out all the little valentines for Elena's classmates. It was kind of fun, actually! It's been a looooong time since I've done any kind of Valentine stuff.

I got Elena the Toy Story 2 valentines, because she absolutely adores that movie. She's always talking about Buzz and Woody, and Jesse the cowgirl, but she calls her Jessica (since there's a Jessica in her class at school).

As I was making out the valentines, I noticed that one of her classmates is named "Ransom". I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why someone would choose such a name for their child. Would the siblings be named "Blackmail", "Extortion", and "Bribe"??

I'm all for people being free to express themselves, but when it comes to naming a child, I always feel sorry for the poor kids who get stuck with really doofy or trendy names.

When I was pregnant with Elena, I took great care in considering names, seeking one that was not too common, not too unusual, easy to spell and pronounce, and beautiful. I think I did a good job, actually. I like the sort of international appeal her name has, as well (it occurs in the same form in Russian, Spanish, Italian, Hawaiian, and perhaps other languages, too). She can travel the world secure in the knowledge that she won't encounter too much hassle with people mangling her name, either through mispronounciation or misspelling.

[ mammalog ] 2001-02-21
I am not dead:  Nor am I missing. I am merely busy taking care of a small sick person. Elena had a barfing spell the other night, and lots of diarrhea yesterday, continuing into today.

I will just sum it up this way: I am thankful to the power of modern automatic laundry facilities. I will be making offerings at the shrine of Maytag later today.

[ good ] 2001-02-19
Whoa, cool!  Sometimes, I just fall down a rabbit hole of delight... Like today, when I folled the link on Mike of Larkfarm's weblog for the instructions on how to make a fire plow, I wandered up in the site to find a wealth of info on primitive living techniques and stuff.

This has been a budding interest of mine for awhile. Some of the books and so forth look quite excellent, I'll have to order some.

But of course, I'll never eat a bug. :) Unless I'm so starving and dazed and in pain that I have no choice, but I will take great pains to avoid ever getting that way.

Several of the spiffy pages I'm going through:

• Hilltop Outdoor Primitive School
• Barbed Wire Baskets
• Contemporary Living Skills
• (DEAD LINK) Wildflowers & Weeds
• Building a House on Limited Means
• Slipform Stone Masonry
• A Winter Camping Tale

You get the idea - there's so much there, I can't list it all! Wow, this is truly a treasure trove, I'm glad I stumbled onto it...

[ body rants ] 2001-02-19
Things I will never do again:  Well, I have a long list of these things, and as of Saturday evening, I have a new one to add:

I will never again have my upper lip waxed.

Sigh. It all started out so innocently - I went in to get a haircut for me & Elena, and while Spencer kept Elena busy outside, my hairdresser, Gina, suggested the waxing. She had mentioned it before, but I had always been too chicken.

She cajoled, told me it would only take a minute, etc. "Oh, alright", I agreed, having become extremely sick of my stupid moustache's bushiness (and having tired of bleaching it repeatedly, only to have it darken once more).

In other words, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

How many huge mistakes in human history have fallen under that description? Too darn many. Anyway, the waxing itself was uneventful, over in a minute or two. It hurt, but it wasn't a big deal.

I gleefully awaited the calming of my reddened skin, to be followed by a several-weeks-long enjoyment of my bare, feminine-looking area-above-my-upper-lip. So I thought...

Well, the first sign of trouble was that it was still red when I got home, and still red several hours later. By the time I went to bed, I realized the extent of the destruction I had wrought.

Yes, dear readers, I had several tiny little zits, where my oh-so-sensitive skin had decided to close up over the ripped-out hair follicles. Oh, crap. Soon they were joined by at least a dozen of their brethren. Every time I look in the mirror, there are at least half a dozen more. Eeeeuuuugh!

Okay, I'd like to trade in my way-too-hairy and prone-to-ingrownitude genes for some new ones, please. I'd prefer wispy, blonde body hair, or actually none at all, if that option is available. Pretty please?

So, I am greatly embarrassed to even leave the house, but I have a sense of humor about it. What, after all, am I afraid of? Will crowds of people circle around me and point and laugh at my upper lip? No. So I am forcing myself to sort of get over it. Or at least, not dwell on it too much.

Each day that passes is a day closer to full healing of this monstrousness. And when I finally return to my normal, moustachioed self, I will have learned something.

Namely: stick to the bleach, and count myself lucky.

Then again, I have been considering laser treatment (I know, it could be even worse - I could end up with ingrown-hair-zits AND permanent skin discoloration, not to mention an empty bank account). Maybe it'll be a few more years before I seriously consider messing with it...

If I hold out long enough, maybe someone will invent nanotech-enabled hair transplantation, and I could donate it all to some bare-pated person who would be happy to have the Hair Follicles That Cannot Be Conquered.

Until then, I guess I'll have to hope that society suddenly embraces the aesthetic of Aunt Bunny (from Eddie Murphy's comedy routine, y'know, the one he was terrified of kissing, to the point of tears?). It could happen.

It'll happen right around the same time that scars, stretch marks, saggy boobs, varicose veins, and cellulite come into fashion, that is.

[ random thoughts ] 2001-02-19
Scary signs of a democracy in trouble:  Here's some disturbing food for thought.

[ consume good ] 2001-02-17
I got a new monitor today:  and there was much rejoicing! Yay!!! I decided to apply my store credit towards a name brand monitor this time, instead of just getting a trade for the cheap, cheesy monitor.

I've got a ViewSonic now, let's hope it doesn't decide to die on me.

[ rants ] 2001-02-16
Why?  Why do I feel I have to try to understand how cognition works, why people think the way they do, and how this can be affected in positive ways?

Because of crap like this Trokosi ritual slavery in Ghana:

Trokosi is an eternal penance. When one woman dies, her family has to bring a new girl to the priest, who is then initiated with the Trokosi ritual. Some are younger than 10-years-old.

The girl kneels in the shrine in front of him and the village elders, all men. Then, while chanting, they strip her of her bracelets, her earrings and all her clothes until she is bowed and humiliated in front of them.

From then on, she is a slave. She is raped frequently.

If she escapes and is caught, she is beaten. If she gets away to her superstitious family, they just send her back.

What is it that can cause people to do this to their own children? Why is a human mind capable of destroying that which it holds most dear? How can this be prevented?

I've got my work cut out for me, that's for sure... I don't know if I'll ever achieve a good answer, but I have to try. From my privileged position, there is a lot I can do...

[ food good ] 2001-02-16
Dining in the dark:  A restaurant lets patrons experience what it's like to be blind. Cool! And the servers are blind, so they do just fine in the darkness. Very, very spiffy!

[ mammalog ] 2001-02-16
A period once a season:  That is, merely four times a year with a new birth control pill. Sounds spiffy, if you're of the type who can handle them.

I tried bcp's before, and well, it threw a big nasty monkey wrench into my hormonal machinery. I hate it when that happens... Anyway, I've still never gotten back to normal since then. Alas. But it was sure nice not having any for about a year after Elena was born!

[ weblogs ] 2001-02-16
Nother weblog:  the null device

[ design good ] 2001-02-16
Mars has some good things to say:  about design, so go read them. Just a coupla paragraphs, it won't hurt. I promise.

And someday, when he's a Guru even more lauded than Great Leader Nielsen, I'll be able to say that I knew him before he was famous... :)

[ rants the net ] 2001-02-16
Jerks.  NSI sells domain registrants' info.. But, I would be an idiot if I expected anything different.

I've already gotten some spam like this, asking me if I wanted to switch hosting providers. Fuck that. Grrrrrr. Guess I'll be having to come up with some good email filtering, soon.

[ design rants ] 2001-02-15
This is just plain stupid:  A cell phone that purports to "predict your ovulation cycle". What a total crock - not only do such things vary tremendously from woman to woman, but also from time to time for the same woman (especially if she's lactating, under stress, or experiencing varied hormonal shifts for other reasons).

If you check your basal temperature and cervical mucous regularly you can get an idea of what's currently *happening* with your ovaries and related parts, but no stupid phone is going to predict it for you. Really.

Now, if you could enter your individual data into the phone and have it graph it for you or something, that would be cool, but I seriously doubt that's what they're getting at.

I'm assuming that they probably programmed into it that ALL women have exactly 28-day cycles and ovulate on day 14. Which is total bullshit. That assumption, and the assumption that every woman will have a 280-day pregnancy, are both totally wrong. Yet the doctors and other clueless folks trot out the charts or wheels and proclaim loudly that this is how a woman's body functions, and people thus believe it.

Sigh.

[ design ] 2001-02-15
Okay, I have to say:  that at Disney's new California Adventure Theme Park, the big bear-in-the-mountain thing doesn't look like a bear at all.

It looks like a wolf. Really.

Look at this page, and it's clear to see that they've built a huge honking wolf, and they're trying to tell everyone it's a bear. The effect is much more pronounced on the tv ads.

Anyway, I'm not buying it. It's a wolf.

[ humor ] 2001-02-15
Going through customs after moon journey:  Well, I thought it was funny.

[ good ] 2001-02-14
This is a good article:  I'll just quote a little here, but I suggest that you go read it:

But we - society - and all our leaders, governments, priests and experts of all kinds, have lost control of our own abilities. We can do anything, but we have a very poor sense of what's really worth doing, or how to ensure that we get what is really needed, and avoid what is not. Science and high technology are caught up in economic and moral feedback loops that often seem to ensure they will operate antisocially, for the benefit of only a minority and at the cost of most of us. For the most part, we stand back and watch this happen. We accept the assurances of experts and governments that all is being done for the best, and that nothing can or should be done to change the way things are. Those who do protest are held to be crudely Luddite.

[ rants ] 2001-02-14
Lotus gets ready to cut jobs:  So sayeth (DEAD LINK) Techweb. And of course, in true corporate spirit, the cuts are planned to finish by the end of the month... that is, two weeks before bonuses are scheduled to be paid out. Isn't that clever of them?

Jerks. Sigh.

If I get laid off (and I don't think it's very likely), the severance package sure as hell better make up for not getting a bonus, that's for sure.

[ beauty ] 2001-02-14
Oooh, pretty!  I made some Julia set fractals this morning, and uploaded a few. They're kinda blurry, but oh well. Go take a look, if you like.

[ good ] 2001-02-14
Yesterday, bowling went well:  I got a 139, then a 151. This is pretty darn good for me - my average up until now is about 112. This was the second week that I got to use bbbb (the Black Beauty Bowling Ball), and I'm getting used to her quite well, I must say. I still mess up and try to look up to aim the ball instead of just relaxing and *feeling* it.

We were partnered with these two very nice older ladies, both of whom were named Jo. They also were about the same height, wore similar clothes, and had similar hairstyles (short and completely white). They did, however, bowl quite differently.

Anyway, they were quite a hoot - one of the Jo's, at hearing me say "Dangit!" when I threw a gutterball, explained to me that I must say "Dammit!" instead, because although it is more profane, sometimes we mortals need to express our outrage that way. That really made me chuckle.

And the other Jo was a total whiz with the bowling computers. Normally it displays about four frames at once, but she had theirs set to show all ten at a time. Spencer wanted ours to do the same, so she showed him. In a quick flurry of button pressing, it was accomplished.

And she knew how to do every screen - like when Spencer was a little late getting to the bowling alley and we had to start without him, she knew how to skip him in the rotation, then bring him back in once he arrived (after just a couple of frames). I was pleasantly surprised to see someone so much older than me so at ease with technology, especially a piece of technology that I barely knew anything about. It was truly refreshing!

And on top of that, at the end, she knew how to get to some secret recap screen that I had never seen before - it showed all the calculations. Quite amazing.

Even though I just met them, I really admire the two Jo's. I hope I can be somewhat like them when I'm older - out enjoying myself with fun stuff, and not afraid to learn new things.

[ beauty ] 2001-02-13
Foggy today:  I took a pic, see below. Sorry about the glare. You can see a vague reflection of me holding the camera at the left. Also notice that all the trees are in straight rows. This is one of the big things I hate about this IBM facility. Anyway:

It was quite beautiful this morning, especially in my neighborhood, where the trees arched above the narrow streets. I think the word is "ethereal".

[ rants ] 2001-02-13
Frickin' post office:  was closed at lunch. CLOSED! I've never heard of such a thing. So I waited for a little while, then went to Poke-Jo's for some bar-b-que. I got half a pound of turkey and some sauce, to go. I went back to my car and waited some more.

As the line of people waiting grew, I realized there was no way I could wait. It'd be another ten minutes (at least) for the Post Office Personnel to show up, then who knows how long waiting in line. Grrrr.

So this piece of mail that I wanted to send Priority to get there on time, I will have to send tomorrow, as Express. I just couldn't wait any longer - my bowling and errand-filled lunch hour had already stretched too far.

But anyway, the Post Office is always freakin busy. What's up with that? It's so damned aggravating. A person should be able to send a package without having to make a special trip in the middle of the work day and waiting in a huge line. Total blasted inefficiency.

There oughtta be a law.

[ good weblogs ] 2001-02-13
I edited my preferences at metafilter:  And now they have a big box where you can write a bit about your name and what it means to you, and yadda yadda yadda.

So I started writing, and it turned into a bit of an essay, but I really like it. So go check it out, if you like.

And if you have any comments on it, please share them in the box o doom there on the left. Thanks.

[ good ] 2001-02-12
Examples can sometimes have more meaning:  I came across this piece at oreilly.com by Steven Feuerstein, about why he used certain politically-oriented examples in a software book he wrote. I thought it was quite interesting...

I believe that just about every technical book comes with a body of politics, an ideology that governs and usually restricts its example set. We don't notice the political slant because it reflects the dominant viewpoint in our society and is thus invisible.

He goes on in more detail, about how the typical database examples tend to feature people as numbered entities organized according to their business identity. Hmmm... I like his perspective, actually noticing this and what it means, instead of taking it for granted.

I admire his originality, too. Pretty cool.

His personal site looks pretty interesting, as well. He's got a bunch of stuff about his stance on Israel, including pictures of himself holding a protest sign that says "I am Jewish and I want Israel to stop killing Palestinians". Wow, that takes guts; I admire that.

[ rants ] 2001-02-12
IBM helped Hitler:  I heard about this on the radio the other day. Truly disturbing. At this point, I definitely want to read the book to find out more. Here's a quote from the story above:

"IBM did not invent Germany's anti-Semitism, but when Germany wanted to identify Jews by name, IBM showed it how. When the Reich wanted to use that information to launch programmes of social expulsion and expropriation, IBM provided the means. When the trains had to run on time between concentration camps, IBM offered the solution."

You can argue that the maker of a tool is not liable for the nefarious uses to which it might unknowingly be put, but it sounds so far that IBM was far from naive about what was going on. And as Mars Saxman wrote (in a comment at metafilter about the electronic recording of faces of everyone entering the Superbowl this year):

If you keep making a process more efficient, eventually it becomes capable of doing things that were uneconomical before, and is thus a de facto new process. There is, after all, nothing a computer can do that a human with a pencil and paper can't - but the fact that the computer can do it so much faster makes it a new situation capable of doing new things.

So the effectiveness and efficiency with which this is done is exactly the point and exactly what makes the system new and therefore suspect. Things can (and will) be done with it that could not be done before, simply because it is automated and fast. It's perfectly legitimate to suggest that these might not be things we WANT being done.

Without IBM's help, surely, Jews would have still been killed in vast numbers. But at least Hitler's forces would have been a bit slower about it - having to work with pencil and paper to do their dirty work.

Overall, I'm repulsed and saddened. And I guess it gives me yet another reason to quit working here. I really don't want to be associated with such a company. I am curious to see what the Official Corporate Reaction will be - I'm worried it'll be the typical denial of responsibility that one would expect. And that would truly, deeply, disappoint me.

Of course, I worry on the one hand that the value of my IBM stock will go down. And then I worry that it *won't*, that no one will care, or think that this would make IBM a stock less worth holding. I don't know which is worse.

[ design good the net ] 2001-02-12
Google bought deja.com!  Wow! I actually had hoped for this to happen back in October (when I heard the Usenet archive was up for sale), but I'm thrilled and stunned that it actually has!

Google has a press release about it, of course, and now deja.com points to groups.google.com.

I think some Very Cool Things are going to result, yes indeed.

Kulpreet told me that something big was coming on Monday, and that they had signed a deal on Friday. (When I called for Kathy this weekend, and she was out, we chatted a bit).

Gee, maybe I could get Google to hire me to do informational architecture for the Usenet archive. :)

[ books good ] 2001-02-12
This is incredibly cool:  Ancient illegible texts may be readable with new technology. Wow. I can't wait! I wonder if any of the newly revealed stuff will turn assumptions about some of the Classical authors on their head.

As many as 850 Greek and Latin philosophical and literary works were excavated from a 2,000-year-old Roman villa in the ancient city of Herculaneum near Naples by Italian antiquarians in the 18th century. Among the works, which academics hope to read using the new equipment, are the lost works of Aristotle (his 30 dialogues, referred to by other authors, but lost in antiquity), scientific works by Archimedes, mathematical treatises by Euclid, philosophical work by Epicurus, masterpieces by the Greek poets Simonides and Alcaeus, erotic poems by Philodemus, lesbian erotic poetry by Sappho, the lost sections of Virgil's Juvenilia, comedies by Terence, tragedies by Seneca and works by the Roman poets Ennius, Accius, Catullus, Gallus, Macer and Varus.

The researchers are from Brigham Young University. Of course, I wonder if the newly-readable works will be oddly supportive of the claims of the Mormon church, heh heh. I am just kidding, of course. :)

[ design rants ] 2001-02-12
I broke my monitor:  Yesterday, I committed the stupid naive sin of assuming that my computer monitor could withstand horrific treatment. Yes, that's right, I cruelly turned it off, then came back several hours later and turned it on.

In response to my obvious negligence, it promptely broke internally, such that the screen looks mostly white, totally warped, and it's completely destroyed.

Just like the first one I had.

You see, I did this months ago, with another specimen of the same monitor, which is a no-name brand that came with my CompUSA pc. Anyway, I had taken that one back after it fried (from the same cause), and gotten the new one. I also managed to aggravate an old back injury in the process, triggering weeks of pain, but that's beside the point.

So now I have to go digging (again) for the receipt, and take the damn thing back (again), and try to get them to give me a new one (again). AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

I just want my stinkin' monitor to work, is that too much to ask? I'm not on the bleeding edge of uncharted technology here. This should be simple stuff. Instead I end up with crap that's completely defective, for no good reason, and I harbor fantasies of drop-kicking the damn thing right through CompUSA's front window.

Combined with the problems I've had with my cd-writable drive, it's just about enough to put me over the edge.

Well, not really, I just like to vent about it, because it helps me calm down.

This is going to be a royal pain in the ass. Sigh.

[ the net ] 2001-02-09
I made my second submission  to The RISKS Digest today: And I'm hoping it's safe to post here, because I only have two readers, and you aren't the kind of naughty people who would abuse such a horrid security hole. :)

Here it is:

Subject: iPing.com enables anonymous harassment by telephone

I decided to check out iPing.com yesterday, having heard that this web-based automated telephone reminder service was handy.

I found several troubling items, which make this service easily exploitable for telephone harassment:

- You can use a completely bogus email address; no attempt at verification is made (though a notification is sent, with your password in plaintext!).

- To activate your account, you must let it do a "test call" to your phone, and then you must punch in the last four digits of the phone number when prompted.

Once your account is activated, you can then enter up to three phone numbers (office, home, and cell) and a pager number, which can then be used to send reminders, alerts, and so on. You can even specify an extension, if required.

The risk: There is NO verification required for any of these other numbers. You can set up calls that repeat as often as once per day for up to four months. Imagine a miscreant who set up dozens of reminders per day to harass someone - and then imagine that the victim needs their phone line available for emergencies (such as a physician).

Imagine also a victim who has no internet access, and thus no way of telling iPing to shut off the messages. Or even a victim who does not speak English.

It could get very, very ugly. If the phone lacks caller ID, then the unfortunate recipient of the calls would have to answer each one, in case the call was actually from someone they needed to speak with. Answering unwanted cell phone calls will still eat up plan minutes, and pager services may have limits for numbers of pages allowed per month.

- For the "test call" verification, you could easily use a pay phone. You or an accomplice could punch in the last four digits of the phone number, and then you could invoke reminders at a public web terminal. It would be superficially easy to remain anonymous, especially considering the lack of email verification.

- Even without actually activating an account, you could trigger a "test call" to any phone number (in the United States), at any time. If it's not your phone and the person who answers doesn't know about the service or doesn't want it, they can press 9, when prompted, to cancel it. But you've still caused them to have to answer their phone. And you could do this, presumably, any number of times.

- iPing offers customized messages, either with voice or with text-to-voice translation (using a machine voice, I presume). This could be used to issue threats or other specific aggravating messages. When I tried it out yesterday, the text-to-voice translation didn't work - even though I used short simple messages, I didn't hear anything of them, but of course the advertisements on the call were perfectly intact! To receive the message, the recipient must press 1 when prompted after answering the phone.

And, as a side note, during the registration process (and in the confirmation email), my password was helpfully echoed back to me in plaintext. Tsk, tsk! So I suppose I should not have been surprised that I later learned that the rest of their setup did not reflect adequate awareness of security and how to maintain it.

I am sending a copy of this message to iPing - I hope they can make some changes soon before their service is abused, since it's so wide open to would-be harassers.

-Beth Roberts
bethroberts.com

p.s. Is it customary to delay publication of wide-open security holes like this one until the site has a chance to respond or take action? I would hate for an unscrupulous person to read the RISKS digest and decide to take advantage of this opportunity to aggravate someone...

[ movies ] 2001-02-08
Proof Of Life is a good movie:  so I don't quite understand why so many reviewers reacted to it with such lukewarm enthusiasm. Here are my reasons why I thought it was good:

• Good characters - plausible, three-dimensional, several of whom underwent change due to the events portrayed.
• Good action - kept the movie going, wasn't gratuitous, wasn't so fast you couldn't keep track of what was happening, furthered the plot.
• Good pacing - some of the movie was rather slow and drawn out, which made sense considering it was a hostage drama that played out over 120-something days. It was never boring, mind you, but it did convey well a bit of the frustration of waiting for long periods of time without much happening.
• Good acting - Russell Crowe was of course stupendously wonderful, but David Caruso was a fabulous surprise as well. Meg Ryan did well in a role that by necessity pinned her to a narrow range of "worried wife". For a few moments, I thought to myself "hey, what has she ever done that's been a truly challenging role?" and then of course I remembered Courage Under Fire, which is one of my all-time favorites - she was truly excellent in that one.
• No gratuitous sex. All we see is one (1) kiss. That's it. And it's a very emotional and appropriate kiss, I thought. Now, I'm not an opponent of sex in the movies when it makes sense in the context of the story, of course. So many movies just sprinkle on some naked breasts (like, ahem, Shadow of the Vampire) or sex scenes like salt on french fries.
• Good dialogue - nothing seemed stilted or stupid or cliche. At least to me.

Now, I'll grant that the presence of Russell Crowe by itself scored huge points for me, but I think they are deserved. :)

It's the first time I ever went to a movie by myself, by the way. For some reason I have always been too nervous to go by myself. How utterly silly - it was not a big deal at all.

I got there late since I thought the movie theater was somewhere other than where it was, but I only missed the first part of the credits.

It was bizarre how the vending counter lady tried to get me to buy the super-huge soft drink, when I only wanted the middle size. She even offered to pay the difference for me. I said "What's the deal? Are you required to sell a certain number of those?" She shook her head No. So I have no idea why she did it. I explained that the big one was too big - I'd drink too much and then have to pee before the movie was over. Finally, she relented. It was surreal, I tell ya...

[ rants ] 2001-02-07
I need a "disgusted horror" category:  I just decided to look up sex offenders in my neighborhood. Bad idea.

First, in my zip code, there are 26. Um, that's a lot. I don't like that number. I'd prefer it to be zero, please.

And then, I couldn't help looking at the nearest one, a mere four blocks away from us. Four *short* blocks, mind you.

He assaulted a six-year-old girl.

Six.

Okay, so I click on the link to view his picture, for some stupid reason.

All I can think of is hate.

All I can think of is "not *my* kid".

All I can do is imagine the fury I would feel at anyone who ever even thought of harming my daughter, much less attempting it, much less actually succeeding.

They would die the most horrible death imaginable. At my hands.

This is what I'm thinking right now. Just the thought of harm coming to her brings this out in me. And I'm not a violent person.

And then I think about how on earth I will cope with not being able to protect her, her whole life, from everything. And how fragmented our society is, how anonymous, how insane. And what the hell am I going to do?

What can I do?

I'll think of something...

But in the meantime, I stupidly wander to see what some of the other sex offenders in my neighborhood have done to get themselves on this registry.

The next one assaulted a three year old.

Whatever it takes to protect her, I'll do it. I'd kill for her, I'd make such a person wish they were never born.

But will I be able to be creative for her? To be afraid of looking and feeling like a doofus but still stick with my proposed solution(s) for making life better?

Well, she deserves it.

All of them do. All of us do.

Hmm. Thinking, plotting, planning...

[ mammalog ] 2001-02-07
Mother's milk helps 16 lost at sea:  One can debate just how badly off these folks would have been without it, but I think it's clear they would have been in a significantly worse world of hurt. Here's the Orlando Sentinel article.

I can hardly imagine how uncomfortably engorged she must have been - she didn't bring her child on the journey (both a good thing and a bad thing, in a way).

It's a neat story, but very sad about how these people are in a situation where they feel it's worth it to take such a risk on an often-deadly sea crossing...

[ mammalog rants ] 2001-02-07
Scummy, scummy people:  really piss me off. On Lactnet, someone just mentioned (DEAD LINK) this lovely PR campaign by a company in Chicago. It was done on behalf of infant formula manufacturers, who worried about their image after publicity about infant-killing marketing tactics was making the rounds.

PCI organized a series of editorial board briefings with major metropolitan newspapers across the country for a team of company officials. Editorial background briefings were held in the 18 top markets to correct misconceptions and misinformation among editorial policy directors, editorial writers, and medical and consumer affairs writers. PCI initiated the contact with media, prepared top company officials for these sessions, prepared leave-behind materials and accompanied company spokespersons on the sessions.

...

The goal was to provide accurate, documented information so that future coverage on the editorial pages would present the facts fairly. The editorial board briefings were successfully conducted over a period of several months. No negative editorial appeared in any newspaper subsequent to a visit by the company team. Ultimately, the issue subsided.

Okay, this is really, really making me angry. Being able to buy a falsified happy-face public image like this makes me want to vomit. Those bastards - both the ones who market baby formula in a way that they know attacks breastfeeding, and those who help them to cover that fact up.

Grrrr... I agree with Bill Hicks about sales & marketing types - they should do us all a favor and just kill themselves.

Okay, no, I am not really advocating violence. Take it metaphorically, then - they should "kill off" their sales & marketing personas, and take jobs doing something useful, such as cleaning toilets.

[ good ] 2001-02-07
Experts are the problem:  Or at least a big part of it, according to David Sackett, in this British Medical Journal article. I am utterly blown away - he puts into words something I've been thinking for awhile.

And what's more, he's shown he believes in what he says - he's twice stepped down from his own status as an expert in a given field, once he realized the damage to Science that it caused.

Wow. Just read the article, please.

It then dawned on me that experts like me commit two sins that retard the advance of science and harm the young. Firstly, adding our prestige to our opinions gives the latter far greater persuasive power than they deserve on scientific grounds alone. Whether through deference, fear, or respect, others tend not to challenge them, and progress towards the truth is impaired in the presence of an expert.

...

Surely a lot more people could retire from their fields and turn their intelligence, imagination, and methodological acumen to new problem areas where, having shed most of their prestige and with no prior personal pronouncements to defend, they could enjoy the liberty to argue new evidence and ideas on the latter's merits.

What he's done is so incredibly cool. It reminds me of Joseph Campbell talking about thinking of your life in terms of your consciousness, and your body is just the vehicle of that consciousness (and his analogy - do you identify yourself as the light bulb, rather than the light that shines from it?).

So Sackett has identified himself with his spirit of scientific inquiry and exploration, and not with his ego, position, and status as an expert. What an utterly brilliant fellow.

And, of course, he keeps himself from getting bored! Quite elegant...

And I realize there's no way that people would agree with his proposal of forcing experts to retire instead of just encouraging them to do it voluntarily, but it's certainly interesting to ponder what kind of a world we would have if this were the norm.

[ body ] 2001-02-07
Ahhhhh...  I'm tired and hungry but I'm not going to eat because I've got this downward-weight-momentum thing going on and I really like it so I'm going to play it for all it's worth. I've managed to lose 9 pounds in about three weeks, so it's going rather well. Of course, I started losing weight after rapidly gaining 6.5 pounds above my usual stable weight, so it's not as glorious as it might be.

But yesterday I got to wear jeans I couldn't fit in for quite awhile, and today I'm wearing another pair that had been sitting idle in my closet.

Before too long, I hope to be able to wear my Holy Trio O Jeans, which I haven't been able to get into since college. Sigh.

The other day, I wore my short-ish black dress, and I noticed I could see the muscles clearly with each step as I walked out of the office (we have big reflective windows). Just the few inches above my knees, as I walked, erupted in nicely sculpted muscle, and I felt good to see that. See, I really am lucky - I've got a nice body hiding under all this extra padding, I've just got to let it out.

And another contour has made a reappearance - dare I say, I can see the slight indentation showing where my abs begin (on either side). Yay! I never had a six-pack, mind you (nor do I want one), but I did have a nice midriff in times of yore.

Slowly I am progressing... I won't pretend it's all fun, though. Through years of casual overeating, I've set myself up for the work I've got to do. And then of course I have to recalibrate, to learn how to stop eating when I'm no longer hungry instead of just stuffing my face because each bite feels *so* good to eat.

[ rants ] 2001-02-07
B U S T E D!!!  Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. They finally realized I'm not doing as much at work as I *ahem* should be. I won't go into detail about how long my little lack-o-motivation thing has been going on, but suffice to say I have to turn it around. Now.

My manager was as nice as he could be, and I must say I'm grateful that our little meeting that we just concluded was over the phone and not in person.

But still. Crap. Sigh. To tell the truth, I *do* owe it to my (very nice) team to at least clear away the bulk of this leftover crap before I go...

I feel a bit like a heel. But not too much. The progress of modern civilization has not been halted due to my negligence.

Or has it?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to my new career as a freelance whatchamacallit or whatever. As long as it's not as mind-numbingly boring as this job...

[ my site ] 2001-02-07
Belated doomed feedback:  I'm such a doofus, I forgot to check my box o doom email lately, and I found a message from this weekend - apparently someone was worried that my lack of posting meant I was gone:

Beth? Oh Beth? Are you there? Have you left us forever to sit at our computers, forelorn at your disappearance, wondering what we did to offend you?

Fear not, Reader - I was merely busy. Often at home on the weekends, I don't make any entries. But you can rest assured that I'm probably doing fun, adventurous, log-entry-worthy things and saving them up for a flurry of posting on Monday.

[ good ] 2001-02-06
Black Beauty is a great bowling ball:  Well, at least I think so. Granted, she's a bit on the heavy side for me, but I think I'll get used to her.

The first ball I bowled today was the first time this ball has been used since 1978. I got a strike. :) Unfortunately, it was a practice round. Doh!

I bowled a 117 and a 135, or thereabouts. Pretty good considering my average is 108. I still have to get used to this ball, but it's nice to know I'll only have to get used to it *once*. Here's what I looked like:

Click the little one for a bigger image. It's a pity you can't see more of my silly bowling shoes. I'll have to see how the little movies I took came out - I can't download them from the camera at work, I'll have to do it at home.

[ beauty canoe ] 2001-02-06
Time to get wistful:  Just for a little bit. When I was looking for a pic of Waimea for the previous entry, I came across some sites with good pix of other Hawaiian beaches, so I just have to link and share a little more.

• Ali'i Beach Park - this is near where my canoe club is located. Well, it's no longer my canoe club, but it's still there.
• Ka'ena Point - I went on hikes here by myself several times, to the only corner of Oahu that can't be reached by car. I took my binoculars (huge old ones that were my grandmother's - she bought them with the money she won on a Daily Double at the horse track) and spied a few humpback whales breaching offshore, tiny in the distance. I remember how my skin was covered with salt when I came back, because the huge waves crashing on the rocks released so much salty mist into the air. The pictures above are of the other side, where there's a beach. I always made my approach from the North, so I never saw that side, except when I got to the Point itself and looked around.
• Pokai Bay - this is where we'd go bodyboarding and snorkeling, and it's where I had my first outrigger canoe ride, that changed my life forever. For the better. This place will always be special to me. I think it's my favorite beach.
• Waikiki - the outrigger race here was the only one in which my team won a medal. We weren't very good (we usually finished close to last), but on that day we managed to catch a wave at just the right time, and we came in second! I still have the little medal.
• Ma'ili - on the day of our race here, the jellyfish were out, and one of the women on my team got stung on the way out of the boat. She was all right, though. I spent the rest of the day swimming in the water during the other races, and I never got stung. And I found a dollar bill floating in the water. After verifying that it didn't belong to anyone within the sound of my voice, I kept it. I guess it was my lucky day!

There's more... I'll scan some pix of me at some beaches at some point, including a picture of myself in the Toilet Bowl! Muahahaha! It's not what you think...

[ body canoe ] 2001-02-06
It was three miles:  or rather, it still is three miles. Between the Mopac bridge and the I-35 bridge. So I paddled three miles in 46 minutes. Not bad!

This makes some sort of sense, since with my canoe club in Hawaii, it took us about an hour to go about four miles, from Haleiwa to Waimea.

Mmmmm, Waimea. Sigh.

Anyway, that was a bigger heavier slower canoe with six people and waves to contend with. Here in Austin on Sunday, I was on my own, but in a faster, lighter canoe, with no waves to speak of. But there were some mighty gusts o wind, that's for sure.

I also measured on the map to figure that I can go about six miles straight without turning around - that's the rough distance between the dams at either end of Town Lake, with a little margin added on (so I don't have to actually touch the wall of the dam with my hand, just get within a few dozens of yards or so). Eventually, I hope to be able to go that far without stopping. And then I hope to be able to do it *fast* and *strong*.

My back feels much better today - I passed the Peak Soreness Point yesterday evening while I was organizing my Stuff. (I bought 36 of these cool little storage bins on clearance at Target, so I put many things into those). As I put it, I had a case of the FLOPS, aka Feeling Like an Old Person Syndrome.

But luckily for me, I am already feeling much better, so the return of the Black Beauty Bowling Ball (bbbb) should go well today. That is, at our lunchtime bowling league today, I'm going to use the wonderful bowling ball my mother sent me, which hasn't seen a lane in 22.5 years. It should be a blast! I'll take pix...

[ cognition design humor ] 2001-02-05
I'm a woman:  and the gender test at thespark.com figured it out correctly, too. Cool! Try it out, it's fun.

What's amusing is that on their little bar graph thingie, I'm right smack dab in the middle. Seriously. Not surprising, considering I've always been a tomboy, though...

But I'm not sure what it means, if anything. Probably nothing. Hmm.

[ movies ] 2001-02-05
Shadow of the Vampire sucked:  And I wrote a Blab entry to Steve of Plurp about how my opinion differs from his glowing review:

Shadow of the Vampire just wasn't as good for me as it was for you. Where you saw elegance in the metaphor wrapping around itself, I saw plodding obviousness - "Oh gee, here we see that the director is at least as evil as Orlock, if not more so. Ho, hum, gee, how surprising. Not." This was foreshadowed and then slammed home heavy-handedly repeatedly throughout the film. The "You and I are not so different" line is wasted by being used so soon in the film. By the end, I was not surprised at all - the director was a total monomaniacal jerk in every other scene in the movie before the finale, so there was nothing to be surprised at (except perhaps that Orlock actually followed his orders/requests until the end).

Yes it was fun watching the exquisitely-made-up Dafoe's performance, but for me, that couldn't carry the film. Only the appearance of Eddie Izzard allows me to avoid resentment for the time this movie took from my life. Near the beginning, there was one scene where Malkovich and the actress he's speaking to are both completely blurry, although the wall on the set behind them is in perfect focus - was this supposed to be some artsy touch meant to impress me? It just came off as seeming sloppy - why on earth would you have your principals be blurry on purpose? This "technique" (if it was even done on purpose) wasn't used later on in the movie that I could tell, which in my mind lends support to the theory that it was just a mistake.

When Orlock says "it made me sad" in reference to Dracula, he then goes on to say *why*: because Dracula must have had to prepare food for the visitor(s) himself - he had no servants. Lamenting the absence of servants for a person accustomed to them does not cross my personal threshold for evoking pathos. Sorry.

And the end was sort of empty for me - I mean, the film Nosferatu is finished, but what happens to the characters? I guess this is part of the "if it isn't in frame, it doesn't exist" philosophy, but I couldn't help wondering whether Orlock was dead or just injured or something.

I've only seen three movies in the theater in the past two years, so my standards might be a bit too high, I admit. Also, when we left the house, I thought we were going to see Proof of Life (with Russell Crowe, *swoon*), but the paper misled us and we had to see something else instead... that may have a lot to do with my disappointment.

-Beth

As they say, there's no accounting for taste...

[ my site ] 2001-02-05
Yes, that's a Linux pin:  That Bob the pets.com sock puppet is wearing on my web cam today. It's got Tux the penguin in a little blue bow tie & blue jacket, and it says "ibm.com/linux" underneath. Spiffy!

Someone came by earlier handing the things out, so I thought I'd let Bob wear mine...

[ body canoe good ] 2001-02-05
My back is killing me:  and it feels *great*! Yesterday I went canoeing, and I really pushed myself quite hard. I went downstream casually for about 45 minutes, stopping at the I-35 bridge. I took this picture there: (click for a bigger version, as for the other canoeing pix below)

The green pointy bit is the front of my boat, otherwise known as the manu. I also took this pic, showing some of the skyscrapers and cranes visible from down there - the big building in the middle is the Hyatt hotel, and the little white pointy thing is the front of my ama (known to non-Hawaiians as the outrigger):

After I rested, I decided to head back upstream and go all the way to the Mopac bridge. (I-35 and Mopac are the two main North-South traffic arteries in Austin). I knew it would be tough, but oh boy, it was truly grueling.

I'm proud of myself for sticking with it, though. I really needed to push myself that way. I worked hard on the form of my stroke, using my back as much as possible and twisting with my torso as I extended each shoulder forward. The wind was brutal, and I was exhausted quickly, but I just kept going. I just told myself I would go slow if I had to, but I wouldn't stop until Mopac.

My back started hurting a bit, my nose was running, and my arms were getting weak, especially the shoulder muscles that lift my arms and the paddle on each stroke. There's nothing like wind and exhaustion to make you really hone your stroking form - any extraneous movement is punished brutally. I looked down a lot, and focused on leaning down, essentially falling forward as I plunged my paddle into the water again and again.

There were some really good stretches there when I had it perfect, it seemed - the paddle sloshed gently into the water, and I pulled powerfully and quickly up to it. But then the wind would come, and it was splash city! Ah, well, I can tell I'm getting better. I do have to work on making sure I'm not steering funny when I keep my head down. I'm sure I lost a lot of momentum zigzagging back and forth to correct my course.

It was fun passing all the recreational canoers and kayakers, that's for sure. Even with two people paddling in a boat, they couldn't compete. Ha! It helped keep me going, that's for sure, even though it was sometimes tough to steer around them. The people in rental canoes from Zilker park tend to loll around and go in circles, and I have trouble figuring out which side to pass them on, but I suppose I need the practice learning to do this anyway.

I was happy to be able to push myself to go as fast as possible at the end. I was soooo tired, but I made it, and it felt *SO* good to stop! I remember how good it felt to take a plunge in the water at Waimea when I'd paddle with the club in Hawaii. Too bad the water in Austin is too cold, too dirty, and too shallow to do that.

After the bridge, I rested a little and realized it took me 46 minutes to make the journey. I'll have to see how quickly I can do it as time goes on. I found to my surprise that even a short break gave me a ton of energy - it was so incredibly easy to paddle back to the dock (just a short way). I took a picture on the way, of all the slow people I passed, and you can see the dock a little bit in this shot, too:

The dock is just to the right of the big tree a little to the left of center. Notice how you can't even see any of the skyscrapers in this shot! It was a long way (I'm not sure how long - I've got to go measure).

Back at the dock, I was so tired I managed to accidentally let go of my boat, and it started drifting away. I felt so idiotic... luckily, a very nice lady in a kayak gave it a bump to send it back to me. Phew! I was worried I'd have to go swimming after it. Anyway, I took it apart and a nice guy from the rowing club helped me put it away. I also left a nice stepladder down there that I can I use to get it down from its rack (which is about 7 feet high at least).

So today, my back hurts, but I know it means the muscles are going to grow like crazy. I remember how strong my back was when I was in the best paddling form I achieved in Hawaii. I relish how I will have that again, soon...

I can't wait to go out again! First I have to let my body make some callouses on my hands, though - my right middle finger is quite ouchy.

[ humor mammalog ] 2001-02-05
Elena has been busy:  On Friday morning, she peed in the caboose of her choo-choo train. I was amazed - when she came and got me from the other room, triumphantly declaring "pee pee!", I thought she was leading me to her potty seat, so we could empty it.

Nope. Instead, she pointed me to her little molded plastic red Little Tikes train car. She had managed to straddle it and fill it with liquid. It was no problem, because it was easy to clean, but it was hard for me to stifle the inevitable giggles. :)

And then we have this:

She did this on her own, I promise. And those are her dad's socks on her feet, which she insisted on wearing, even though they were dirty (hey, sometimes I don't feel like enduring a tantrum if I can avoid it without anyone being truly harmed). What I didn't realize at the time was that while I was taking this picture, she was peeing on the floor. Doh!

She's getting better at using the potty overall, but it's clear that we've got to keep on our toes. The other day she "marked" the chair. Sigh.

[ humor ] 2001-02-05
There are trucks...  and then there are TRUCKS. Somebody here at IBM has a truck named, aptly, Godzilla. I'm not making this up. It says so right on the side of the thing. It's a very, very big pickup truck. I think the tires come up to my waist. And I'm six feet tall.

I took a picture of it last week:

That's a white Suburban(*) to its left, for scale. It's got neon green trim, and all sorts of logos on it advertising various things. I wonder if the owner won it in some sort of contest or something...

* May not actually be a Suburban, but it's the same size.

[ design humor the net ] 2001-02-05
From the Department Of Absent Clues:  I was trying to print a pdf file this morning, and it spewed forth bizarre symbols that didn't resemble English text, so I went on a search for a way to avoid the problem. I did eventually find a solution of sorts buried here - check the "Print as image" box in the print dialog box.

But the interesting part is that on the front page of Adobe's website I saw an irresistable teaser for a feature story:

Valerie Casey - Frog Design's digital media creative director explains why usability is dead.

Bwahhahaha! Usability is "dead"? Oh really? "Ha!", thinks I. Let's see what sort of justification this silly person offers for her stance...

At the beginning of the Web, if you could use a tool, you were a designer. Now, people are looking for skills in UI and design. Personally, as a creative director at Frog, I look for the credentials, and it's kind of ironic because I don't have them in that typical way myself.

Dearie, the word I believe you are looking for is hypocrisy. Must be fun, shutting out people because they lack the credentials you lack. Heh!

I teach students to provide context, rather than explicit instructions in their designs.

Current practice is overrationalized and focuses too deeply on task analysis, and not enough on empathy. I think that now, Web design has really crossed over to another point. I think that usability was a hot issue, and it's fading because people are getting used to computers. Now all of a sudden, the focus isn't "we aren't meeting our usability standards." Now it's "what kind of cool user experience can we make that has motion and user interactivity?"

All I can say is, I'm not convinced. Is this even a threadbare excuse for a justification? Sounds like a foolish opinion hyped up to be more than it is.

And for the record, I'm one of the kinds of users who speedily clicks the back button when I'm faced with someone else's idea of a "cool user experience" "that has motion and user interactivity".

Repeat after me: The Web is NOT TV. The Web is NOT TV. The Web is NOT TV...

Maybe I am thinking this because it's a Monday, but I can't help picturing this silly lady saying "Would you like fries with that?" repeatedly in her new career after this whole web thing finally shakes out and unusable and user-hostile sites are ignored into non-existence... and yes, the image brings me a deep feeling of satisfaction.