Rumours of my Death are Greatly Exaggerated

It's been a long time since I wrote here.  Or at least it feels like I long time.  I started work on June 14th, I think, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride hasn't ended since.

What to tell you?

Well, firstly, work is, well... work.  My employer and I are both equally surprised to learn that they wound up hiring me for an operations job, not really (in my mind, anyway) a release engineering position. 

Yes, technically it is release engineering, but the reality is that for the foreseeable future I am doing support and debugging of applications and the existing release process.  Without intending to slight him, the person who used to do this work, and who has now moved on, had a very high tolerance for pain, errors, unexplicable behavior, and so on.  As I figure things out I need to spend time fixing things just to keep sane.  Adding simple things like, oh, error handling, would be good in a lot of places.

The house remodel project continues.  Slowly.  The original estimate was 8 weeks. We're at 16 now and still going strong.  There is visible progress and not only has demolition ended, but construction has happened.  We have a new kitchen roof, for example, and the main deck is being put into place now, though that is taking plenty of time too, and has not been without surprises.

I hope we actually get things done this year.  At this point, though there are still 5 months left, I cannot say with certainty it will happen.

There isn't much else to report right now, and until the house is done and I get to feeling like I have enough of a clue at the office there probably won't be.  I appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Gone over a month... *sigh*

Life has gotten really complicated.  Too many projects that destroy any ability to think.

This blog is not dead.  I will return, but probably not for another couple of months.  At least not with any regularity.

Sorry!

Without a Shred of Remorse...

For very different reasons, I am following in the footsteps, to some degree, of my friend Merikay.  She is cleaning out a lot of the stuff in her life over time because she is hoping to RV for a while.  I, on the other hand, just feel weighed down by the stuff of life and am gradually trying to reduce it.

Now, however, I find myself confronted with a larger issue.  we're going to get some repair work done on the drywall in our den and guest bedroom.  Some of you may remember the issues we encountered this winter.

Well, we're going to get that fixed, along with another little water/drywall issue that cropped up when the typhoon remnant came through last year.

But doing that means getting the den and guest bedroom emptied out so contractors can work in there.  That isn't as simple as it sounds.

The result is a mutli-hour effort involving relocating, condensing, and (in some large measure) getting rid of things we no longer need or want or use.  There is also a whole subplot about wireless routers and repeating bridges that hasn't resolved itself just yet, thanks to problems on the part of Netgear.  But I digress.

I have finally pitched a bunch of cassettes that no one will ever listen to again, equipment for cleaning and demagnetizing cassette playback and record heads, an inline dimmer switch of unknown provenance, a bunch of toys I haven't looked at in years, and so on.  The net result was some six linear feet of cabinet and drawer space opened up so I could hide the stuff we need to keep and keep it safe from people wielding plaster and drywall.  Fun.  Not.

In any case, eventually the house was made ready for the great contractor invasion, which should happen tomorrow at 9am, and I have now collapsed in a heap.

I'll write up the bit about wireless networking when I have a resolution.  As of now I don't know how that plays out.

Merikay, at least you know you're not the only one getting rid of things.

Embrace the Cloud

I've got multiple friends who hate the entire idea of cloud computing.  They despise storing their data on the servers maintained by someone else, particularly Google.

I am rapidly coming to the opposite conclusion, and that's despite having a less than optimal ISP and a connection that rarely gets any faster than about 850kbps.

As I have used the cloud I keep finding things it makes better or simpler.  The first - and most obvious - is backup.  If my cloud providers are backing up the data for me, I don't need to worry about disk failures.  And as I am one who has suffered traumatic data loss in the past - at work, in an environment where there was no automated backup of desktop systems - I really appreciate letting someone else worry about the safety of my data.

There are a couple of obvious counters to that argument.  The first is that my cloud provider might disappear - probably by going bankrupt - taking my data with it, or their backup processes might be less than optimal.  For that reason I tend to use major companies as my providers.  Yes, bad things could happen, but it isn't likely, and the chances of my laptop being dropped or suffering a disk failure are much higher.  And for anything critical I can always download a copy, right?

Another obvious objection is that the cloud provider might decide my data is evil in some way, as when a blogging site shuts down a particular blog for containing spam, even if it really doesn't.  Recovery in that case is problematic, but it is possible if your provider has a system in place to review those decisions.  My own documents and content are pretty tame, and definitely not spammy or copyrighted by anyone else, so the odds on hitting this issue are slim at worst.

Data security is another objection I hear.  "I don't want X to have my data."  And I get that to some degree.  Some people hate the idea of their cloud provider scanning their data to better target ads, or whatever.   At some point, though, it is important to step back and assess the nature of your data usage.  An absolute minimum is really private.  Financial information needs to be kept safe, of course.  Health records might need that kind of protection, but as the nation limps towards electronic storage for that data it might make sense to put what I have online somewhere that my doctor can see it and add to it, right?  I suppose the occasional letter or some such should be private too, but in all honesty, who is going to read such things?  Who would even want to?

If I had something to hide I can imagine feeling very differently about this, but the vast majority of us are law abiding people who value convenience over that level of security, at least as far as trivial data goes.  Yes, I'd love to see something legal that prevents ISPs and cloud service providers from examining your data without your express consent, but until then it's a simple matter of keeping the few things I really care about out of the cloud.  The rest can go there, in theory.  It's convenient.


And make no mistake about it, convenience is what matters.  I like being able to edit documents online and know that they will be there when I change computers, without any complex data migration issues.  I like being able to share some of those documents with others too.

Picking the right cloud supplier, though, also requires examining their systems and polices to see what it takes to get your data out if you need to.  Here, so far, Google is a star.  All the services I use with Google (except Blogger, amusingly) make it easy to get my data out in useful formats.  Google docs, in particular, lets me export to my local disk in several ways that can easily be imported into other applications.

I'm sure there will be replies to this post from those who disagree, and I'll be accused of being simple minded about these things.  But for me, at least for now, the cloud is looking better and better.  Bring on Chrome-OS, too.  Something small and fast would be great.  Even better than Linux.

An Awful Malaise

I seem to be suffering from a serious case of, well, something that makes me incapable of doing much of anything.  It's all mental, I know.  I have a long list of things to work on but am completely unmotivated.

Two nights in a row I've been up at odd hours, and I suppose that might have something to do with it.  Tuesday night it was a dog waking me up.  Twice.  Last night the dogs were fine, but I still woke up at 2am and was mostly awake until at least 4am.  I don't know why.

Maybe part of it is still lingering muck from the time change.  Daylight savings time is a bad idea in my opinion, and as I get older the adjustment gets harder.

Maybe some of it is leftover stress from events a couple of weeks ago.  There certainly was (and to some extent still is) plenty of stress to go around.  The death of a family member is never easy to handle.

Maybe it's waiting for the contractor to get back to us on remodeling issues, and getting our permits with the county straightened out.  Add the cost of the (much needed) remodel the the pile as well.

Perhaps some of it is watching quite a few of my friends struggle to find work in the current environment.  These are good people - I've worked with and trusted them for many years - who can't yet find jobs, some since November when we were layed off.

In any case, whatever the cause - or causes - the last few days have not been fun, and I feel a bit like a beached whale waiting for the tide to come in and hoping it happens before I bake to death in the sun.

Government Stupidity (Redundant, I Know)

Today I found a link to www.broadband.gov, where you can find a new speed test tool for broadband connections.  I thought it might be interesting to play with it, so I ran the test.

And my browser hung using 100% of my CPU during the latency test.

After killing Firefox off I went and read the fine print: 

Users are randomly assigned the Ookla or M-Lab application.

Note: the M-Lab application currently does not work with Safari, Chrome, and Opera web browsers.

That's right.  Our beloved feds are randomly assigning a speed test application, but one of the two possibilities only works with IE.

Excuse me?  Why would you even do that?  What sort of idiot let that go live?

Yet Another Reason Not To Be A Verizon Customer

Here's a link to a story about Verizon.  Eventually I am sure the link will go bad, but in a nutshell, their customer service reps wouldn't shut down the account of a dead man because his family didn't have his PIN.  Really.  Read it for yourself.

I wish I had an alternative to them for our land line.  Their business practices stink (ask me about their minimum of $10 per month on long distance charges some day) and their cellular customer service was awful, as was their choice of phones.  Oh, and did I mention their pricing?

Yes, I know none of the other phone companies is any better, though T-Mobile has done well by me so far.  Still, my awful experiences were with Verizon, and I would love to get them entirely out of my life.

It's Been an Eventful Time

We're back home, now, after the funeral for my father-in-law.  It's been a rough few weeks, but Anne and I find ourselves moving forward.  Many thanks to everyone for their support.  It's meant a lot to us both.

Don't Be On The Roads At...

If you walk, ride, or are otherwise out, have you noted when it's safest to be on your local roads?

In my neighborhood, the roads I walk my dogs on give access to perhaps 75 houses in something like six miles.  In addition, they hold a winery and a church.  Over the years that we've been regularly walking our dogs I have tried to figure out when it is safest and most dangerous to walk.

I admit this is an entirely subjective assessment.  I am not taking notes or using a radar gun.  And besides, all it takes is one nitwit who is busy dialing his cell phone (which is illegal in CA now... hands free is the law) to kill someone, regardless of the time of day.  But it's still an interesting exercise.

The winery wants to expand its hours and open a tasting room on weekends.  That would, no doubt, add more cars to our twisty mountain roads.  I'm not in favor of that, but as I've already argued my point before the county (and apparently lost) I see no reason to waste time going to the next county meeting.  The supervisors will do whatever they damn well please and it doesn't matter what I think.

In any case, it turns out winery customers tend to be afternoon and evening people, on weekends.  I can mostly avoid them by walking the dogs in the morning those days.

Then we have rush hour.  It's easy to see why it would be bad to be on the roads when people are late for work.  And, in truth, I can see that in the traffic.  There are always a few people rocketing down these tiny little roads at 9:10am, trying to get to their office by 10, or whatever.  In general, it's best not to walk on week days before 10am, just to avoid them.  But - and this is important - rush hour folks are oddly spread out.  Late for one might be anytime after 9am.  Late for a software engineer might be "after lunch".  I see a few, but it's not like 8:45 - 9:15am turns our roads into a superhighway.  No, in fact, since we haven't got all that many homes here, it's not that many people who speed in the mornings.  A few, yes, but not many.

Other possible bad times are school related.  Opening more-or-less coincides with rush hour in the mornings, and I do see a few people scrambling to get their kid to school on time.  Correspondingly there's a rush around 3pm to see them picked up.  Usually those doing the pickup - mostly mothers - are in a horrible hurry to get to the school, but are less panicked on their way home.  So, avoiding the hour from 2:30-3:30pm seems intelligent, at least on week days.  Again, though, it turns out that we haven't got that many school age kids in the area I walk, so it's a limited problem to some degree.

There's another, more random class of individual that is a real menace, but is entirely unpredictable: the teenage visitor.  I usually hear these kids coming from miles away and get off the road well before they are anywhere nearby.  Occasionally, though, that isn't possible, and something low slung goes whizzing past me at a high rate of speed.  I've nearly been hit several times - we have no sidewalks here, of course - by teenagers driving way too fast.  In truth though, that's relatively rare.   Once every couple of weeks I hear them coming, and perhaps once every few months I am at risk.

The worst time to be on the roads, without a doubt, is when people on on their way to worship God.  Sunday mornings turn our little road into a race track for the devout.   Our local church has services at 10:30am, and sometimes the choir meets to practice an hour earlier.  Do NOT make the mistake of being on the local roads between 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after those times on a Sunday morning.  Doing so is asking for trouble.  Possibly death.

Those people are on a mission - the Lord's mission, apparently - and will not be delayed.  I am often waved at cheerily - as I try to reel my dogs in and leap off the road - but oddly no one ever slows down.  They drive as if their very life depends on getting to the church on time, even if they are already late, and perhaps it does.

Maybe God hates you more for being late to service than for killing someone on your way to that same service.

Just a thought.

Life Is Throwing Curve Balls Lately

I had planned a blog post about Google today.  Half of it was going to be something of a rant about how Google has screwed a few things up lately and needs to straighten up and fly right, in line with their motto.  The other half was going to be directed at the people and pundits who have been spouting off about how evil Google is, without looking at the big picture, and thus missing a number of interesting points, particularly comparisons with other companies and their actions.

I had it mostly written in my head last night as I was falling asleep.  It was going to be a good post.

That all changed this morning with a phone call.  Now my wife is on her way to her parent's house.  Her father is seriously ill, and it is not clear he will survive.

Such news - yet another slap in the face by the cosmos - puts the Google issues into perspective.  They're trivia, entirely unimportant.

At least to me.

Safe travels, Anne.  I wish your dad all the best, and I will do whatever I can for you as we go forward.  I love you.

Spelling Woes

OK... I give up.  Clearly English is going to be a problem for me.  Maybe I should write in Perl.

Why is it "usable" and not "useable" (the latter is apparently British) while "replaceable" has the 'e' left in?

But then why is it "judgment" and not "judgement"?  We remove the 'e' in that one.

I can see an argument for stripping the 'e' from the end of "use" before adding a suffix, and apparently we do.  And apparently we do it to "judge" too.

But, before you become complacent, it's "judgeable" with the 'e'.  So we remove it for "jugdment" but not for "judgeable"?

I think it's a plot to make us all (or at least me) feel incompetent.

For a long while I was horribly confused because Firefox (as installed by Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) defaulted to the British English dictionary for its spelling checker.  Given the fact that I moved around a lot as a kid and as a result never stayed in one school's English program for more than a couple of years, my spelling is hopeless, but the confusion caused by that Firefox default dictionary may cripple me for life.

An Open Letter To Charities

So, you run a charity of some sort.  And for some reason I am on your list of potential sponsors.

Let me make something perfectly clear:  If you call my home you will not be given any money.  In fact, I will instruct the poor person on the other end to remove us from your calling list, tell them we never give money to anyone who calls us on the phone, and hang up.

I do the same thing to surveys and political solicitations.

You have a million ways into the life of the average American: ads by direct mail, billboard, TV, Internet, wrapped cars, buses, and a million other surfaces; do good works resulting in news coverage; civil disobedience resulting in news coverage; buy your news coverage outright, and on and on.  Heck, half the charities in the world attempt to buy legislation to do what they want.  You do not need to use my phone to reach me.

Calling me on the phone is offensive.  It wastes my time and assumes I am willing to accept the call, which I can assure you 100% of the time is not the case.

I don't care if I've given you money before or not, do not call me.  If you do, your contributions will dry up.

If we all did that, imagine how much quieter dinner time would be.

Looking for Writers...

Are any of my (few) readers interested in writing?  If so, I'm looking for help of a sort.

A long time back my friend Doug mentioned in a book review that he liked Steering The Craft, by Ursula K. Le Guin.  It's a book on writing that (so far, anyway) avoids the obvious idiocies of many of the writing books I've seen  I've read perhaps a third of it and I'm really enjoying it.

Now, here's the problem: STC has a bunch of exercises in it that I really should do, but finding the motivation to do them when my life is full of distractions is hard.  If I had people who, like me, were committed to doing these exercises (and/or writing other things) for each other, it would be a lot simpler for me to make progress.  Surely I can't be the only one who is motivated by external deadlines.

So, I'm contemplating forming some kind of writing group.  If you want to write and are willing to get a copy of this book, it seems like a good place to start.  If you're in the bay area we could get together irregularly to share exercise results.  If we're farther apart we can form an Internet based writing group, sharing results via email, at least.

So, is anyone interested?  If so, please speak up.  I'm serious about this - I have a number of writing projects I want to tackle, and a writing group that is open to just about anything (fiction, non-fiction, excercises like this, etc.) could be very useful.

Drop me an email, reply to this post, or in some way get in touch if you're interested.  Thanks much!

Oh, here's a link to Steering The Craft on Amazon.

Of Herself, A Friend Says...

"I have a richly minimalist fantasy life."

I really like that phrase.  Intrinsically at odds with itself, it nevertheless makes complete sense.

Thoughts on the iPad

I'm not a Mac fanboy.  I bought two Macs in the dim and distant past and both had serious problems.  More recently I find that Apple's prices are too high and their products - while they work very well if you're doing exactly what Apple anticipated - are problematic if you're trying to do something Apple's engineers didn't plan for.

All that aside, I find the iPad interesting, at least as a concept.  I am unlikely to buy that specific product from Apple.  The cost is actually OK, as far as I can tell, but...

• I hate ATT as a network provider.  (And no, Verizon isn't any better.  Currently I'm on T-Mobile, which has much better customer service than either.  Their network, I know, isn't nearly as good, but then again I don't travel all that much, so it's OK for me.)
  
• It has no multitasking.
• Battery life may not be long enough to be a good e-book reader.
  

What the iPad does, though, is whet my appetite for something similar.  The vast majority of what I do on a computer could be done on such a device, though I'm not entirely sure about the keyboard without trying it.  Still, a fanless, lightweight, general purpose computer of that form factor could be very handy.

Imagine something of the general size and shape to the iPad running Chrome OS or a similar Linux variant.  (Such a device needs a lightweight OS, not Windows or MacOS, but something specifically designed for this environment.)  It should have a good integration with the Internet - essentially providing a cloud computing environment - but I also want both local data storage and locally run applications.

Being fanless is important to me. My existing laptop is just fine until I am sitting in a quiet room trying to think and the fan clicks on because FireFox is using too much CPU.  That's deafening and silly.

I also want a customer replaceable battery.  I know that will add to cost, weight, and thickness, but it's simply a requirement.

I just read a rumor that Google and HTC may be working on a tablet style computer.  That's what actually made me write this.  That's a device I'd love to see, and if they did a good enough job I'd buy it.

This is all just idle speculation on my part, but the age of the tablet computer may be coming.  I look forward to seeing what it looks like.

Hmmm...

What is that big shiny thing above my head?  The one against the blue background?  And why didn't I get soaking wet while walking the dogs?

Something very strange is going on...

Exercise for a Cause

Somone I know works for this startup:

Plus 3 Network

It's a social networking site that allows those of us that exercise to raise money for charitable causes at the same time.  Signing up is free and the results are cool.

If you regularly walk, ride, run, hike, do yoga, or any of a number of other activities, you can raise money for a good cause simply by logging your workouts.

Check it out, and if you sign up search for me on the site and we'll connect, something like Facebook's friend concept.  That way we can watch each other's workouts and encourage each other along the way.

Robert Burns Day

Today is Robert Burns Day... a celebration of Scotland and Robert Burns, composer of Address to a Haggis, among other things.

Alas it falls on a Monday this year, which makes it difficult to celebrate in the style it should be and still get up on Tuesday morning ready to face the world.  Thus, some friends invited us over for Burns Supper last night, which was a bit better, though still not perfect.  (I guess there are lower expectations for Monday morning than Tuesday morning, which makes an odd sort of sense.)  We ate home made haggis, neeps, and tatties, among other things.  Most importantly we toasted Robert Burns, Scotland, each other, and absent friends with a couple of good single malt whiskeys.

As an aside, we decided that since it wasn't really Robert Burns' birthday we were probably celebrating something else, which we decided was Montgomery Burns Day, which is entirely different, but still (in your best and most appropriate Simpson's voice) excellent.

A couple of years ago I spent a few days in Scotland and met a bunch of wonderful people.  Islay was particularly amazing, and I think I could live there, though my wife needs a bit more in the way of civilization.  Still, we both dearly loved it and would happily go back.

In any case, wherever you are, take a moment to think about Robert Burns, Scotland, and your friends, both present and gone.  And make the time to thank those you have for being there for you.

Cheers!

Tax Prep Time... Whee

While the weather stinks and keeps me from doing a project I have lined up, it's time to start the tax preparation.  For us, this involves an entire day or two spent going through the filing cabinet and extracting everything for 2009, getting it all lined up and organized to go when we see our accountant.

As to why we have an accountant, I suppose I could do it on my own.  I suppose I'd have a hope (just barely) of getting it right, too.  But in truth I want someone else to do it.  The ability to give her the data and have the results without the effort and worry about getting things in the proper place is worth the cost.

Those who know me well know I don't mind paying my fair share of the tax burden in the US, as I think we get value for our money.  I do, however, object to the outrageously complex way those taxes are collected and documented.  I have no problem with a progressive tax system - I even think it's fair - but surely there's a way for it to be simpler, so that someone like me (a college educated software engineer) could be confident that he's filled out the forms properly?

Apparently not.

So I have an accountant.  My life isn't really that complicated, but I guess the government wants it to be, or thinks it is, or something.

Anyway, I need to start working on the filing.  See you again in a day or two.

Just waiting for the power to go out

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the combination of wind, rain, and PG&E causes us to lose power.  But that's yet another result of living on the edges of civilization, rather than in the thick of it.

On a barely related note, why is it that the six year old Siberian Husky with the incredibly thick, luxurious coat is the total wuss and won't go out in the rain?  "No, dad, I can hold it until at least Thursday" seems to be his response to any thought of going outdoors to relieve himself when the ground is wet.  Very strange.

Anyway, I hope you're dry and warm and happy, wherever you are.

Just saw Avatar

Went out last night and watched Avatar.  Some thoughts, but no spoilers...

First, we saw it in 3D, and while it was nice, I'm not sure it needs the 3D treatment.  In fact, at a few points I found the glasses somewhat bothersome as they induced a bit of haze.  (Yes, they were clean.  I checked.)  In any case, they didn't play with the 3D all that much in Avatar.  They used it, but didn't bang it over your head that much.

What?  A special effects movie that doesn't concentrate only on the effects?  Well, not that particular special effect anyway.

It was pretty.  The cinematography (well... animation, I guess) was quite nice.

The story was, as my wife said, "well worn".  I'd call it predictable.  In fact, just a few days ago I wrote a review of The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin, which gives her take on the same kind of situation.  My copy of that book has a 1972 copyright, and the first blurb on the first page says "it tells an old story in a new way".  I guess Avatar tells essentially the same old story in a somewhat new way.

Overall I enjoyed the film.  It isn't something that changed my life, but it was fun.

Things you don't expect

How about a water leak when it isn't raining?  And no, a pipe didn't burst.

Apparently some time back - no one is sure how long ago, but probably back in mid-December before we left on vacation - one of us left a hose valve just slightly open.  The water dripped out once every couple of seconds.  Normally this would not be a problem, but we live in a house with a flat roof.  An 18 year old flat roof with a deck over it.

Well, apparently the part of that roof right against the house where the hose was dripping slopes the wrong way.  Water had pooled up against the house there over the years and rusted through the steel roofing.  That rust may have been exacerbated by nails driven through the wall just above the roof line, into something vaguely like but not really flashing.

Anyway, the water runs into the house there, drips down through the ceiling and into the guest bedroom.  But it's not really that simple.  The entire house is shear-sheeted with plywood - on the inside even - so that soaks up and holds a TON of water before it drips down onto the drywall.

We discover the mess in the guest bedroom a week after getting home.  I got some advice from friends and tore out a lot of water soaked sheet rock.  Now we run fans in that room all the time trying to dry it out (which is working) and I've opened up the deck and put a bunch of goo into the area of the leak which I hope will prevent additional water intrusion.

What a mess.  I have a garage full of busted up drywall and muck to haul to the dump and need to give everything a long time to dry out before we close it back up.  Fortunately we have little or no mold in there, which is good.

Oh, and I did note dry water stains on the back of some of the drywall as I pulled it out.  That means there was previous leakage that we never saw.  This could have gone on for years.

I guess this summer we get a new roof/deck.  What fun.

Facebook vs. Holiday Cards

Thanks to our trip this year (and this is the last post even loosely based on the trip, I promise) we never got around to sending out Christmas cards.  I felt - and still feel - kind of bad about that.  One friend I know is always late and wound up sending out Martin Luther King Day cards one year.  I doubt I'll do that, but I suppose it is possible.

On our return I got the huge pile of mail from the post office and found lots of cards in there.  As usual, quite a few had letters in them too, and it suddenly occurred to me that holiday cards are, in many cases, an early version of social networking.

Without wanting to offend any of my friends on Facebook, one of the things about that community is that it is largely made up of people I don't see regularly.  Of course, there are exceptions, but in large measure my Facebook friends are more distant in terms of space or accessiblity.  Many of my former co-workers are there, for example, and our paths simply don't cross anymore.  There are even a few people on that list whom I know but have actually never met in person.

Status updates from those more distant connections are a lot like those annual letters from family and friends that you never actually get to see in person.  Great Aunt Betty telling you about her year - the good and the bad - without a lot of context looks a lot like a Facebook newsfeed.

There are minor differences.  Facebook is a bit closer to real time, so I don't get an entire years worth of news all at once, for example, and most of the holiday cards and letters I get don't comment on things political or social, but I found the similarities quite interesting.  If I took all the posts from some physically distant Facebook friend, removed the political and social commentary, strung them together and printed them, I'll bet I'd come disturbingly close to a holiday letter.

Food for thought.  I keep reading articles about the wonder of social networking, how new and different it is.  Not so.  Rolodexes used to do on paper what Facebook and LinkedIn do online, and now I realize that even the status update that goes to a bunch of people is far from a new idea.

Perhaps there really is nothing new under the sun.

Reactions To Coming Home

As we neared home on our recent trip I found myself noting what I was thinking and comparing that with how the dogs were reacting.  Yes, it was totally silly, but it was amusing.

I, for example, was worried.  All the worst possible things go through my mind.  What if the house has burned down and no one called to tell us?  What if someone broke in and robbed us blind while we were gone?  What if someone is doing that just as we arrive?  Yes, I suppose these things are possible, but they don't merit concern until you discover they have happened, and why the heck do I only worry about them as we approach home, instead of for the entire two weeks we've been gone?  I worry about them none the less.  In some ways I am a compulsive worrier.

Then, as we get closer and we're on roads I drive often enough to know well, I start noting the things haven't changed.  We were only gone two weeks, but I still have to note that "the store is still there, right where it was when we left."  I try not to voice these idiocies out loud (google "My you're very tall" in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams for why not) but they do run through my head. What kind of neurosis is that?

Dogs, on the other hand, are a lot simpler in their reactions.

Having spent almost three days in the car, they are tired of it and want a change.  Our older dog - Leah - started sitting up nearly an hour from the house.  Something must have smelled right as it was dark by then and there wasn't much to see.  Still, she was alert to our arrival early on, even before we were on roads she knows from experience.  She watched out the windows and then pushed in to sit between the front seats and look forward as we hit familiar roads.

Danno, our younger (and dumber) dog, was mostly oblivious until we were only about fifteen minutes from home.  It was probably only after he picked up on something from Leah's actions that he, too, had to sit up and pay attention.

Both dogs exuded a kind of calm anticipation at this point.  They knew what was coming and looked forward to it, but there wasn't much celebration yet.  Some years ago a similar return home with Leah included barking with happiness for the last four miles.  I guess age - she's roughly ten - has mellowed her.

Once the car actually stops, of course, both dogs are dying to get into the house and back into territory they actually know.  The excitement is profound, though still relatively quiet.  By then, however, my own anticipation is basically over.  The house is still there, unchanged, and what faces me are the tasks that go with arriving at home: turn on the water heater, start the heat pump, unpack the stuff we have to have tonight, and so on.  I'm already in task mode while the dogs are romping and enjoying the return of familiar surroundings.

All of this only goes to show that our dogs are smarter than me, at least.  My wife would tell you that's an obvious conclusion.

Two More Trip Pictures - One With A Question

Some worried about road conditions while we were on our recent trip.  In truth, the roads were mostly fine.  We hit a few snow flurries, but nothing heavy in terms of new snowfall.  Worse, though, was blowing snow, particularly in Wyoming.  Anne drew the short straw for the worst case of blowing snow.  The picture below shows a mild case of what we were dealing with... 45 MPH wind gusts and a fair amount of snow can make for an awful mess on the road.  As I say, though, this picture is a less severe instance of the problem:

This next picture leads to a question I've had for something like 15 years, since the first time we did this drive:

 

What are those groups of three marks in the right lane?  They span what might be expansion joints in the pavement, and each group of three appears roughly where the tires of vehicles in that lane would be.  I only see these in Wyoming and a bit in Nebraska.  Just once this trip I saw a similar things with groups of four similar marks.

I haven't been able to figure out what these marks are for, but they've been on I80 in Wyoming for a long time.  If anyone knows, please drop me an email and explain it to me.  Thanks!

Holiday Excursion

I'm back from our semi-regular holiday excursion.  At odd intervals we pack ourselves and our dogs into a car and drive from our home in the San Francisco Bay Area to Chicago to visit family.  To many this sounds insane, particularly when done during the middle of Winter.  For us, though, it's the only way to do it that makes sense.

Gas, hotels, and food for the trip winds up costing a bit over $1000 the way we do it.  (It's 2250 miles one way, and while I'd love to do it in a more fuel efficient vehicle, our Honda Element is the one that can haul us, two big dogs, and our stuff.  Our 2000 Insight could do it for a less than half the gas used by the Element but there's no room for the dogs in there.)  Anyway, we make the trip in three days, weather permitting, and thus stay in two hotels in either direction.

Now, imagine purchasing two tickets from SFO to ORD, renting a car, and kenneling two dogs for that same duration.  The total cost is a lot more than driving.  Heck, just kenneling costs more than our entire trip.

And for those who claim that six days of driving seems like a waste I can only say that I'd rather drive for three days than wait in even one security line at an airport.  Traveling by plane used to be glamorous, or at least fun.  Now it's just insulting drudgery.  I'm not worried about safety - even after the recent scare - but being treated like dirt for that long and then being packed into a metal tube for several hours with a couple hundred total strangers just doesn't appeal to me.

Anyway, we do the trip, visit with two sets of in-laws, and return.  We change drivers roughly every two hours, which makes it possible to go 800 or 900 miles in a day without too much trouble.  That's how we can do the entire trip in just three days.

We get to see some really pretty country (Wyoming and eastern Utah come to mind) as well as some staggeringly boring terrain (most of Nebraska).  We also see some oddities.

This trip we noted that drivers in central Iowa were the craziest, weaving and speeding like they couldn't die, and that was despite a string of wrecks all across the state after a recent snowstorm.  We counted a dozen once we started, and we're certain we passed more than that before we started counting.  I guess Iowans simply aren't worried about their personal safety.

But the award for the place where people speed the most still goes to Chicago.  70 MPH on a freeway posted at 55 will get you run over, even when it is snowing.  There were fewer crazy drivers in our experience there than in Iowa, but it's clear that every car sold in Chicago comes with a brick on the accelerator pedal.  Oddly, the Illinois police seem just fine with this and never seem to pull anyone over for "just" being 15 or 20 MPH over the limit.  Go figure.

I have a few other observations that came from this trip as well.  I'll post them in coming days.

This time, though, I'll leave you with a picture taken at 75 MPH on I80 in Utah's western salt flats.  In places the surface water was frozen and rugged, and in others - like this one - it was almost mirror smooth.

I hope the holidays were good to you and yours, and may 2010 be better for us all than 2009 was.