Wasp... again...

Yup. I got stung. Again. Some of you might remember this little adventure just before we moved: When Moving Preparation Goes Wrong.

Well, this morning at exactly 7:00 am (I checked my phone when it happened) another of the buggers stung me on the outside of my left hand, near base of my thumb. Ouch!

We were walking the dogs, and it was pretty cool. I noted a vibration in the cuff of the outer shirt I was wearing and wondered what it was. I reached down to move it when suddenly it hurt, and then something - a wasp, probably, but perhaps a yellow jacket - flew off.

Thankfully I am not particularly allergic to these things (yet) and all I have is some minor swelling and a tiny bit of pain. Not a big deal.

Except...

What is it about me that get me into these situations? I've seen plenty of wasps flying around our area, and never noted a nest. I've been careful as a result. But at 7 am when the temperature was perhaps 9 degrees (Celsius, for my American readers... it's not that cold) any self respecting wasp should have been asleep or catatonic, not flying into the cuff of my shirt and stinging me for trying to let it out.

Sigh.

Just my luck, I guess.

It appears humans really are all the same

There's an old saying:

If it bleeds, it leads.

According to the internet (and specifically this site), that phrase was first used in an article in the New York Magazine in 1989. I guess it's not really that old then, but it sure feels that way.

It happens that I don't get the New York Magazine. It also happens that I only get one dead tree edition of anything, and that's Science News, a publication where that journalistic philosophy doesn't apply.

But I do read the news online, using Google News as my aggregator. When we moved to Vancouver I adjusted my feed. Google News tracks what you read and click on to build things, but it also lets you pick places you are interested in, and I am pretty sure it also taps your physical location as well.

The current political situation in the US is such a disaster that I can't stop clicking on articles about the latest idiocy committed by the orange menace and his rabid followers, so my feed still has a lot of US based news in it. With luck that will drop over time, possibly because of an impeachment. If that happens, the feed should naturally shift towards more Canadian news.

However, tying this post back to the introduction, Canada suffers from "If it bleeds, it leads" syndrome just as much as the US does. There is a difference, though: Canada has a lot less violence overall, and only about 10% of the population of the US. As a result, the news media here has to go farther afield to find blood, but they do it.

Every morning in the local sections about Vancouver and Richmond, I scan headlines about bodies found, gun shots, accidents, and so on. These are local news sources, and there probably isn't that much local news every day, so they fill their pages with whatever they can get. Blood first, though.

Sadly the national news does the same thing. I read about violence in Victoria, murders in Manitoba, and serial killers in Saskatoon. (Yes, some - ok, a lot of - liberties were taken with the truth in that sentence, but I like it.)

It's actually rather depressing, but reality is a bit different from what you might think (and in particular from what the idiotic minion in charge of the US Justice Department wants you to believe):

• In 2015, the murder rate in the US was 4.88 per 100,000 people. Wikipedia puts that at 94 out of 219 countries. There are 93 countries with higher murder rates.
• In 2014, the murder rate in Canada as 1.68 per 100,000 people, and the same article puts that at position 158 out of 219.
• Due to the population difference, the actual numbers are starkly different: there were 15,696 murders in the US in 2015, and 604 in Canada in 2014.
• Violent crime rates in the US - and, indeed, just about all crime there - have been steadily declining for 20+ years now.
• Similarly, crime rates in Canada are mostly dropping as well.

Despite all of that - actual information! - people in both the US and Canada believe they are always in danger, and worry about highly unlikely events for no reason at all. And in both countries it plays into the hands of politicians wanting power to exaggerate those fears.

I'm tired of that.

In the US the deluge of crime and bad news - due simply to population size - means that if you live in Florida you probably don't read about murders in Oregon unless something really awful happened. And in big cities you don't read about every murder that happens just for lack of space in publications to document them. (Again that is due to population size, not overall crime rates.) So while"if it bleeds, it leads" is still true, there is other news on the front page, at least some of the time.

Here in Canada, though, we read about every murder, shooting, major accidents, and so on all over the country. The simple act of listing them all out in headlines can make you think that crime and death are rampant. It's actually a bit depressing.

I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this. I mean, the political headlines from the US are depressing enough, but add in the major crimes in cities 3000 miles away, and suddenly the news is just an awful read. I don't have any answers yet, but I am open to suggestions.

And yes, it really is safe here. It's lovely, and safe. Just avoid the news.

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Note: This is a secret post. That is, I am not emailing an announcement about this one because I've written a lot of posts lately, and sent email about them. I don't want to drive people getting those emails nuts. This will get announced on FB, and on G+. And I need to think about twitter too, I guess... hmmm. But I won't email the announcement list. If you find this post you are thus a member of a very select club. Congratulations. Being a member gets you absolutely nothing, but you're in. Yay! You can join the club by getting in touch - email, DM on FB, telegram, phone call(!), whatever - and giving me an email address where you'd like to receive notices of new posts. Once school starts I'll almost certainly post less often, so you shouldn't get flooded with email. Thanks!

Thoughts on Charlottesville

Two brief notes before I get to the gist of this post:

1. Some readers of this blog know me from a large mailing list where I was a moderator. In that role, I kept my political leanings and most other opinions to myself. In this blog, I don't do that. If that bothers you, feel free to skip those posts or stop reading entirely, but I am not going to limit my posts here based on the restrictions I faced in another - completely different - forum.
2. The content of this post was first published on Facebook. I've revised it slightly for the blog format, but the basic ideas are the same.

And with that:

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I am going to be a bit harsh here, but it is deserved, so...

I am appalled at the idiocy that went on in Charlottesville. Nazis have no place in America - or the world - and a president that supports them - even implicitly - has no place in the oval office. If you support the so-called "Alt Right" or the "New Right" (or any other variant on that lunacy) you're a Nazi, and I want nothing to do with you. There is no place for that in our society. World War II was supposed to have settled that.

Also, the south lost the civil war. It's over. Stop flying that horrible flag and move on. All humans deserve respect and dignity. If you can't do that, get lost.

It's sad that we've come to the point where making statements like that is necessary, but I have too many friends of different backgrounds, skin colors, and immigration statuses to be silent about this.

What happened in Charlottesville cannot happen again.

A Suggestion Regarding Costco and Food Sampling Stations

Have I mentioned I hate shopping? Have I mentioned that I really hate the modern, American way of shopping?

Yeah... thought so.  Regardless, after today's adventure I propose the following:

• Charge Costco (and other, substantially similar businesses) for each and every food tasting station they open within 10 feet of any intersecting aisles, and for each food tasting station they open in the middle of an aisle that is less than 50 feet wide. I propose a fee of $1000 per hour of operation, levied against each and every food tasting station in violation of either of those rules.
• Charge each person at least $1 per sample they take from any and all such stations. I am open to charging $5 or $10 per sample, though. Exact change required. Bills only; no coins.

You might suggest that would kill off food sampling in Costco stores. Yes. Yes it would. And I would be thrilled were that to happen.

You might wonder what would be done with the money collected, if anyone continued running tasting stations. I honestly don't care. Realistically it should probably be used to fund anti-obesity campaigns, but you could put it all in a big pile and burn it as far as I am concerned.

Anything to stop the abomination that is food tasting at mega stores. There's no way to get around or through the congestion, and I always come out of there feeling lucky some other customer hasn't gone postal as a result of the insanity.

Am I going too far with this?

Yellow Jackets Are The Worst

My wife found a yellow jacket nest the hard way this afternoon and was stung three times.  She's fine, but I am keeping an eye on her.

And I will be putting up traps in an attempt to reduce their population.  Nasty things.  I hate them.

I Hate Call-In Radio, But I Am Obviously Un-American

I absolutely despise call-in radio shows that try to tackle issues or inform about topics.  Without exception they are awful.

When I am trying to gather information about some topic I do not solicit the opinion of the man in the street.  Never.  The average American is invariably both uninformed and opinionated - the worst possible combination.  And those that call in to radio shows are the most extreme specimens of the breed.  I have no patience for their ranting.  And yes, I am ranting here.  Feel free to to read something else if you so desire.  I won't mind.  I hear the Internet is full of pictures of cute kittens, so go knock yourself out.

The alternative, of course, would be for news media to talk to people with actual expertise, those who have studied the topic at hand, or worked in the field.   Such people are sometimes present on call in shows, but they have to deal with the biases of the host(s) of the show and respond to the uninformed gibberish the callers spit out.  It's a waste of time for them and for the listeners who might be trying to learn something instead of just having their opinions validated.

Americans, of course, place very little value on knowledge and intelligence as a rule, so none of this should be a surprise.  We grow up on a diet of TV, video games, and associated crap.  We want our politicians and our corporate overlords to tell us that there is a simple answer to every problem, and we know that anyone who disagrees with our preferred answer is not only wrong, but actually evil and Un-American.    Frankly it's a wonder any of us can string together an understandable sentence, let alone spout an opinion on some complicated topic over which even experts may disagree.  (And we're expected to vote about those issues too... go figure.)

In any case, I avoid all commercially supported talk radio regardless of its point of view.  The combination of ads and blow-hards pontificating in response to grossly exaggerated controversy and the guttural grunts of those calling in would probably cause me to die of an aneurysm in short order.

Even NPR has succumbed, though, and there are many awful call-in shows on that network as well.  We have locally and nationally produced examples on our local NPR affiliates that cause me to run for the hills, but the worst has to be a show called On Point out of Boston.

Like the worst of the commercially funded call in shows, they drum up controversy in every topic I hear them cover.  They ask idiotic questions of their guests trying to manufacture argument and discord if needed.  And everything is VERY IMPORTANT!  You can hear the capital letters as they "discuss" whatever they are covering, and they do their level best to keep the pacing and tone right up there with the work of Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk.  Into that mess come the callers, and though NPR supposedly has a more intelligent audience than that attracted to commercial radio, I am inevitably appalled.

Commercial TV is just as bad - if not worse - of course, but I am thankfully without a signal source for that in my life, so I am not exposed with any regularity.  When we wind up somewhere with a functional TV, though, I am always happy to leave.  Any time spent watching TV leaves me feeling like I desperately need a shower.

How did it come to this?  Why does all media seem to devolve to the lowest, slimiest form?

Podcasts Stink

All kinds of people I know are listening to podcasts these days, and I keep wondering why.

This morning I tripped over a link to a podcast with someone I wanted to hear more from, so I decided to listen to it.  This one, at least, I wanted to hear, right?

Wrong.

Yes, there are aspects to recorded speech that don't show up in the written word, which is interesting at some level, but there are all kinds of cruft in there too.  Cruft that gets removed in a written presentation.  More importantly, though, podcasts fall into a gray area regarding how much attention they require.

If you're actually listening to them, it's hard to do something else, like work, at the same time, but that's one of the supposed benefits of podcasts - the ability to listen whenever you want and when you have the ability to do so.  Yet if it's actually interesting it still demands more attention than I can give it if I want to do something else.  And this is why I don't want to listen to podcasts or audio books while driving.  It's also probably the reason that cell phones are so dangerous when used by drivers.  We're not paying full attention to the job at hand.   For the record, I have the same issue with radio news and similar format shows.  If I am really paying attention to them, nothing else is - or should - be going on.

Then again, podcasts are not as immersive as a video of some sort.  There's nothing to watch while I'm listening, so I'm slightly bored, looking for something else to do, even if I am interested in the content.  It's only engaging half my brain, or something like that.

The resulting mental confusion drives me nuts.  The podcast idea sounds so simple and yet it really doesn't work.

But wait, I hear you cry, what about music?  Don't you listen to music the same way?  The answer is "yes", but with caveats.  As with a podcast, if I am actually paying attention to the music I can't really to much of anything else.  But beyond that, I suspect music uses a different part of the brain.  Podcasts are using the speech centers extensively, music not so much.  Yes, I know, vocal music does to some extent, but once you've heard it once or twice and know the lyrics, they fade a bit and you process them more as music and less as speech.  Or at least it seems that way to me.  The first time I hear a piece of vocal music, I have to listen closely and parse the lyrics out, thus consuming more attention, and making it more difficult to do other things.  Later times it takes less effort and I can ignore it much more easily.

In any case, even if that theory is complete hogwash (which it might well be), music doesn't demand the same kind of (or amount of) attention from me that a podcast does.  Even so, when doing something that requires thought - writing, etc. - I typically turn the music off (or way down) so I can focus exclusively on what I am doing.

Another objection to podcasts is their horrible inefficiency.  Let's say I really need the information in a 30 minute podcast.  I can burn the 30 minutes and listen to it, or, if the alternative is available I could download the text contents and read it.  The download would be very quick - there isn't that much speech in 30 minutes of real time - and reading it would be much faster than 30 minutes too.  Plus, I can reread and find interesting bits quickly in text, something that a podcast makes difficult at best.

As a vehicle for moving information around, podcasts stink.  This morning's attempt was a total flop.  I abandoned it after about 15 minutes.  It was, sadly, a waste of time.  Give me the contents in text form, please.  Really.

Thoughts on Stress

Many things can mess with your head, of course, and we're all different in terms of what affects us, but for me stress is a killer.

The house remodel isn't done yet.  In fact, though it is nearing completion, it may be another month before we can do the final sign off with the county.  I hope it is faster than that, but it may take that long or longer for reasons that are entirely out of my control.

Oddly, despite the fact that the vast majority of the time remaining is spent waiting for things to get done, not with people actively working at the house, it is still very stressful for me.  Very stressful.  And that stress just cripples me in other ways.

I'd like to do some serious fiction writing, but just finding the energy is hard.  I'd like to carve more stone, but the same issues apply, along with cold weather making things tougher to do.  I'd like to go back to the gym twice a week, but the vagaries of scheduling the times when the contractors are here makes me hesitate to do even that.

In all, there are a lot of things that keep me from moving forward with life, and I find it all very frustrating.

One of these days it will be done, and I will move on.  I just hope that day comes sooner rather than later.  I need this project to end.

I hate computers...

Yes, it's true, I despise computers, despite having programmed them for nearly 20 years and continuing to earn a living from the silly things.

I have a nice big rant building up inside me about how Linux is only the lesser evil among a selection of evils ranging all over the map in power and degree of vileness (is that even a word?), but for now, let's just say I hate computers in general. Every beeping one of them.

Why, you ask?

I've been trying to setup a new computer for 2 days now. Not much luck.

Oh, it runs, sort of. But I can't get the device driver for my graphics card to work, and the sound drivers completely fail too. But my OS is from April of 2008, so clearly it's just too old. The proprietary video driver is only supported by the latest version, and it appears that version may have better support for the open source driver too.

So far today the only thing that has gone right on the computer is this: I managed to replace the busted keyboard in my laptop with one that works. The stupid little trackpoint thing was causing the mouse cursor to move whenever I typed on the keyboard, and since I use focus-follows-mouse, that was a bit of a problem. Plus, once it started moving it was sometimes 30 seconds or so before it stopped being wedged in a corner of the display. Very irritating.

So at least that's working again, which is an improvement. It's actually possible to use it as a laptop again.

So, while I continue waiting for Surfnet's lousy network (don't get started... don't get started...) to download an ISO image of the latest Linux version - in the desperate hope it will deal with the video and sound options in my new computer a bit better, even though it will have bugs too, some of which I am already familiar with from other installations - I am going to go do something much less painful: tax preparation.

That should give you some idea of just how screwed up my weekend has been thanks to these infernal "labor saving" devices.

Things I Hate: My Own Typos

I apologize, sincerely and completely, to everyone who has read this blog. Every last one of you deserves a medal for slogging through the forest of typos that result from my vague attempts at communication in English. (If I stuck to my native Gibberish I'd probably be just fine.)

Typos are my bane. There are probably still a few in this post that I haven't found. Yet.

Let me tell you a story...

An hour ago I exchanged email with a friend (hi Steve!) and former coworker - a technical writer - with whom I hadn't conversed in a long time. It turns out he has a blog. Naturally I read through some of his blog in the process of this communication. His writing is good. I've added his blog to my RSS reader.

With some trepidation I told him that I, too, kept a blog. A few minutes later he told me that he'd added my blog to his RSS tool. (The main attraction being the picture of me with a fork suspended from my nose.) Uh-oh. Now Steve's a nice guy, but look at it from my point of view: I've got a professional writer reading my blog. This'll be "interesting". I'd better go look at it real quick. From the outside.

And the first thing I noted was that I hadn't posted in 12 days. Even without Steve there as a motivator, that was not good, and I needed to remedy that. The previous - basically content free - post was the result. OK, fine. At least you know I'm still alive.

Then I went back and re-read the post I'd just written and published. Typos. Typo city! And Steve is out there lurking. He really is a nice guy, and I probably won't get email telling me that I have used "it's" where I meant "its" for the 10,000th time. But I could get that email. If not from him then from a few others that have been known to "express themselves" to me in the past. (Hi David.)

So I edited the post and fixed the typos I could find, including the gross spelling errors that spell check was warning me about when I typed the thing up in the first place. sigh.

Then I checked a few of the older posts, just to see how I'd been doing on the typo front.

Suffice it to say that if this was a war between me and the typos, they'd overrun my position years ago, taken my HQ, sacked my supply houses, moved in, married, had kids, and sent them to college. There were a LOT of typos out there.

So I fixed what I found in various older posts. I didn't get to them all, alas, and I probably missed some in the posts I did review. What can I say, though. I don't have hours and hours to spend at it right now, and finding my own typos is just about as easy as performing brain surgery on myself.

But once again I must apologize to all of you who risk reading my words. I'm not nearly as illiterate as they make me look. Honestly! Please accept this blog entry - even if it too is crawling with grammatical boo-boos - in the spirit of contrition in which it is intended.

Special thanks to Steve for causing this, even if it was entirely unintentional on his part. If you want a link to your blog in here, Steve, just ask.

I guess there was one benefit to finding all those typos: I got to add another post to my "Things I Hate" series.

(Now to proofread this before hitting the "publish post" button... shudder.)

I Hate Dental Tools

I went to the dentist today for my thrice a year teeth cleaning. (Yes, 3 times a year I suffer through this. My teeth have "issues".)

What I want to know is, why doesn't someone with a clue design dental tools?

Forget the drill. No, it's not nice, but I'm generally numb when it is used, and its use is irregular at best.

No, the real problems are the tools I see every four months:

• the sonic cleaner
• the polisher
• the spit sucker

These are the bread and butter of hygienists, and they are all my bane. The hand scaling tools are bad when the hygienist concentrates in one place for too long, but these things - the powered tools, if you will - are much worse. Let's examine each briefly, shall we?

There is a special place in hell reserved for the person who invented the sonic tooth cleaner, and I don't even remotely believe in hell. This thing causes pain at a level that is hard to imagine. Supposedly this is because I have exposed roots, but in reality all a hygienist has to do is leave this thing in a single place for more than a fraction of a second and I am writhing, even where my teeth are in excellent condition. It's a deep ache that spreads out from the point of contact on the tooth. If left in one place for more than about 5 seconds I am convinced I would black out. I'd probably confess to anything the Bush administration wanted me to confess to as well, but then I'd lose consciousness.

The polisher seems benign enough, I know, and most of you probably think it's harmless. However, if you visited my dentist you might discover your mistake. The polisher I am subjected to is air driven, and it exhausts the air right into my mouth, right onto my teeth. If I had perfectly normal teeth this might not be a problem, but I don't. Instead I have teeth that lack enamel on various surfaces, and cold air blowing out of the polisher actually hurts. Once again I think some tool designer needs to spend eternity in pain as a result of this bit of work. It would have been pretty simple to capture the exhaust air and route it somewhere else. Even just a foot or two back down along the incoming air line would have kept it out of my mouth and from causing pain, but no. If you designed a polisher that exhausts into my mouth, and we meet, and I figure out what you did, you may be missing some of your own teeth before our conversation is entirely complete.

And finally the spit sucker. This has the low tech version of the polisher problem. It draws air across my teeth in ways that I do not approve of or appreciate. This one I do my best to control during my visit, but today I found myself being pinned down by my hygienist as she polished my teeth and used the spit sucker at the same time. So I had two sources of drafty nastiness in my mouth. I was not a happy camper. Not at all.

When a dog needs to have its teeth cleaned they knock it out entirely. I am starting to think that maybe I should go to the vet to get my teeth cleaned simply to get knocked out first.

And if you're a budding young dental tool designer, please keep in mind that avoiding pain is a good idea. Find a way to make your tools pain free and I will be in your debt. But if you continue on in the grand tradition of existing dental tool designers, i will be your implacable foe for the rest of my life.

Another in the Things I Hate Series

I hate the flu. 'nuff said.

I Hate Gutters

I'm thinking of creating a new series of sporadic posts about things I despise. No one but me will find it interesting or amusing, but what the heck. If you can't talk to yourself on the Internet, where can you? I'll start with:

Gutters

There must be something better than gutters, as there certainly can't be anything worse. It's pouring rain and the water is streaming down your roof, carrying with it dirt and debris, leaves, and who knows what else. And what do we do with all this water and its payload? Here's an idea: let's funnel it into something that will catch all that muck and clog up, forcing water to go in new and unusual directions in the process.

We're in the situation of having gutters on multiple levels of roof. In addition. some of our gutters are effectively under a deck, making cleaning - or even seeing - them a challenge. During a recent storm, we had one gutter get stopped up and overflow. Because the water was no longer going down the proper downspout, it slammed into a second gutter under a deck. The unexpected deluge and accumulated gunk caused a backup there too, which overflowed and came down on the inside of a sliding glass door. I spent an hour getting things back into shape, and though I don't think any real damage was done, it was very irritating.

To be clear, I do understand the point of gutters. Having the water drip off the eaves can cause problems of various sorts, the most obvious of which is getting soaked when stepping out the front door during a rainstorm.

But they cause other problems too. Ice dams are a nasty issue in cold climates, and plants can actually grow in gutters. Even more fun, in the summer they make a nice place to catch both things that burn and flying embers to get them burning. That's great fun in fire country.

So, all you inventors out there, please help. There must be an alternative to gutters that works without causing problems. Something that cannot clog up, needs no maintenance, and still keeps me dry when I walk under an eve.

Anyone got an answer? If so, leave a response here so I can get rid of the gutters that make my life miserable every chance they get.