New Sculpture

I'm supposed to post this in my sculpture blog, but I'd rather post it here.

Finally finished a piece in pumice that has been waiting forever.

Tentatively title: Garden 2.
Dimensions: 37" tall x 22" wide x 14" deep.

There is a chance this will be available via a gallery in Los Altos. If you are interested, please let me know and I will put you in touch. No, I have no clue what the price is yet. Sorry. Still not even sure that the gallery will be interested in an outdoor work like this.

Something Controversial

If you're going to get offended and yell at me, stop reading now. Really.

No, really. Just find another corner of the net and ignore me if you're easily offended, because I am about to write something that will definitely offend a large chunk of the population of the US. At least.

Our alarm clock goes off every morning and gives us the latest news from our local NPR station. And every morning I regret the fact that it isn't tuned to an all polka station, or, in fact, anything but news.

There is something awful about waking up to the latest shooting. Every morning. If it isn't here in the US - which it usually is - then it's overseas.

And yes, I know that as a whole the planet is getting less violent and people are living longer, but that doesn't address the issue as I see it, so I am just going to come right out and say it:

Guns should not be a part of any civilized society.

It's really that simple. You want to hunt? Fine. Do it with a bow and arrow.

No one should have to own a gun. No one.

I am sick of hearing and reading about shootings: today's is in the Washington Navy Shipyard, a day or two ago it was police shooting someone who was probably asking for help after wrecking his car, drive bys, collateral damage, feuds between former friends or lovers, total strangers shot by bored kids for no reason. And the list goes on. It's practically endless. I'm not going to give you links because I don't even want to see the stories. You can find them yourself, far too easily.

It's pathetic. Guns are not the answer. Guns are never the answer.

To be honest, I have no idea how to get rid of the damn things. They are a huge business, and a slew of testosterone crazed males seem to depend on them for their personal sense of identity, or something. And as a country we idolize the stupid things, practically worshipping them as gods.

We are sick with them.

But guns do not make you a man. And as far as I can tell, in most cases they do not make you safer. Of course, we have congress and the NRA carefully working to prevent research into actual gun safety, so no one can be certain of anything. Because guns are so great and all that we have to protect ourselves from actual data about them.

No. They are not great. Anything whose sole purpose is to kill another person is not great, and never will be.

Of Yahoo, And Opportunities Bungled

This is an odd post for me, in a way.  You may find it boring, and if so you may simply skip it, I won't mind.  But this has been bugging me for a while now, so...

I am a member of a bunch of Yahoo groups.  Years ago, I think, yahoo bought some small company that made the original groups product.  Or perhaps I am wrong and they created it themselves.  Groups is an interesting beast. It has a web based UI but mostly works via email.  You send a message to a particular email address and it is forwarded out (as email) to the group members.  It's a handy way of organizing people and distributing information.

There are competitors, of course, most notably Google's very similar functionality.  And you can use any number of bulletin board systems from various sources, which you can host such things on your own server or find services to host them for you.

But a number of the groups I am a member of have a significant proportion of members who still aren't all that computer savvy.  Trying to get them to go to a website every day (or multiple times a day) is tough.  You're competing for limited time and interest, and it's a losing battle.  But most of these folks already use email, so if you can get them signed up as a member of a group, they're in, without changing their daily routine.  In ten years or so that worry won't be a problem.  Most people will be much more computer friendly, and getting something setup to move the information around will be easier, so there will be fewer hurdles in any case.

But back to groups... when I started using them, Yahoo had a clear UI advantage over Google's implementation.  There were still places it sucked, but Google's UI was pretty much impenetrable, so Yahoo won the day, particularly for those lists that contain a larger percentage of people who are less comfortable with computers and the Internet.

But Google has continued to work on their product.  They have improved it over time, and it may be to the point where it is usable by laypeople now.  I'm not sure of that because I haven't tried to create a new Google group in some time, but I have used Google's groups a bit since they use them to provide some kinds of support and discussions about their products.

Yahoo, on the other hand, let its groups product stagnate.  Nothing changed or was improved for years.  It's been the same UI and feature set since I first started using it, and problems have crept in.  Sometimes messages are delayed for unknown reasons between Yahoo's servers, images as part of email messages aren't always handled well, and so on.  But overall it worked, and Yahoo milked it by spending as little as possible on it to keep it running.

Then, just a few days ago, something changed.  The first indication of a problem was a huge batch of email delays that no one could explain.  They got so bad that people in my most active group complained bitterly.  And then, for some of us, the word "neo" entered our consciousness.

"Neo" means a new UI for Yahoo groups, and some reorganization of the features.  But it also means a lot more, including, but probably not limited to:

• Bugs.  And features that don't work or don't work reliably.  It's not clear if some of these issues are based on the browser, the OS, or just buggy code, but there are a number of serious problems.
• Features that have gone missing.  Things you used to be able to find in the UI are now gone.
• Incredibly bad UI design.  Want to search the contents of the messages in a particular group?  Don't click on the obvious "search" icon and enter your text because that only lets you search for message numbers, which no one will ever know or use.  Instead enter your text in the search box at the top of the page and press the button that says "Search Groups", clearly indicating that your search will span all of your groups, or - more likely - all of Yahoo Groups, which is clearly not what you want if you're searching for a message in one particular group.  Who designed that and how did they get the job?
• Unhappy customers.  Tens of thousands of requests to abandon the neo update and go back to the way things were.  Really.
• A complete lack of QA effort.  Neo is clearly not ready for prime time.  It's alpha quality software, or early beta at best.

So the nightmare that is "neo" is now a part of my life.  Users are switched, not whole groups, so some of the people in my groups are using the new UI with me, while others see no changes yet.  But they will.  Yahoo claims there is no going back.

Meanwhile Marissa Meyer seems to think the most important thing she can be involved in is the redesign of the Yahoo logo.  Something that no one cares about - but her, apparently - and that definitely deserves a lot less attention than the neo debacle in Yahoo Groups.

What can I do about all of this?  Looking at it reasonably, very little.  Moving from Yahoo Groups to some other platform might result in a newer and better feature set, with more ability to control and archive the contents, better search features, and so on.  But moving entails change, and that is always risky.  There would, no doubt, be a large loss of participation in all of the groups I am involved with if they were to move to some - any - new system.  So, unless neo proves unbearable and the bugs really don't get fixed, we're probably stuck with it.  And I'd bet those working at Yahoo know it.  They're probably counting on it.

The funniest thing about this is that I am ranting about it in a post on Blogger... a Google product.  Want to know how relevant Yahoo is these days?  Look no further than that.

I think comments have disappeared from here

It looks like all comments on my posts here from the past month or two are gone.

Odd.  I certainly didn't delete them.

I wonder what has happened?

If you know you left a comment on a recent post, please let me know.  I may have to report the issue to Google.  Thanks!

Revisiting Alien In A Different Way

I don't want to over-share, but I have a better appreciation for what happened to Executive Officer Kane - played by John Hurt - in Alien, just before the beastie popped out of his chest in that iconic scene.

I spent Sunday (starting at 4:45am) wondering if the same thing was going to happen to me.  By bedtime, whatever it was had passed, with nothing more than occasional - if semi-painful - discomfort.

I wish I knew what it was.  Maybe it was mild food poisoning, maybe it was a mild food intolerance, maybe it was an alien foetus, incubating within me, but that died for some reason before piercing my chest.  If that latter is what was going on, then I hope the old phrase "this too shall pass" is true.

I suppose said alien infant could still be in there, lulling me into a false sense of security before killing me in a spectacular fashion, but I doubt it.

Whatever, I am glad it's over now.  It was an awful day spent doing absolutely nothing.  I felt like a slug.

A Very Long Night

Last night we went to bed just before 11:30pm. Everyone had settled down - both of us and all three dogs - when that changed. Skookie and Cruzer - our two younger dogs - started barking in the general direction of the street. Odd, but maybe a deer walking around.

Then I noted the flashlights - obviously flashlight beams not car headlights - down on the road. And deer don't carry flashlights, so I got up and looked out the door. I saw two guys (this is from 200+ feet away, in the dark, heavily covered with redwood trees, so no real details were visible) walking the road, like they were looking for something. I watched for a couple of minutes and they seemed to be stuck in front of our house. Clearly on the road, but not walking in either direction along the road. So I let out the dogs. Much barking ensued, but the interlopers did not move on.

I put on a bathrobe, grabbed a flashlight, and stepped out onto my deck. I shined the light down at them and called out, asking if they were "OK down there".

They responded that they were fine, and something along the lines of "don't worry, we're locals".

Really? Somehow that did not engender calm on my side of things. Strangers on the street at 11:30pm, in the woods? Not a normal thing in my 20+ years of living here.

So I called the dogs and went back inside to ponder my options, and watched for several more minutes. The guys eventually started down the hillside on the opposite side of the street, towards a couple of old cabins down there. (I know the property owner... they don't live there, visitors aren't common, and certainly not at that time of night.) They walked down the hill and wandered around the cabins for several minutes. Did I mention it was 11:30pm on a Wednesday night, in the woods, and they clearly weren't the owners of the property, who would have called out to me right away on learning I was awake?

What should I do?

Call the sheriff? Well, yes, but...

• The response time to my area is forever, probably more than an hour. Even if I called right away these guys would be long gone before the sheriff arrived.  If the sheriff arrived at all.
• Last time I called about something vaguely like this - someone shooting repeatedly on the same property - I was asked if I "heard screaming or saw blood". I answered "no" but that I could still hear shots being fired, lots of them. And I was unsurprised when the sheriff's office dispatched exactly no one to the scene. Ever. (In the end I think it was someone target shooting, in the woods, in what amounts to a residential neighborhood. Yes, we have big lots up here - you cannot see most of the nearby houses - but still, a very dumb thing to do.)

So what did I do? I got dressed, grabbed my flashlight and cell phone, leashed up the dogs, and went for a walk.

I got to the place where the guys went down the hill and shined my flashlight down at them and waited, up on the road where my wife could hear whatever transpired. I could clearly see their lights down there, moving around the woods.

In a few minutes the guys realized they were being watched and started climbing up the hill towards me. There were actually four of them I then learned, as they spread out a bit on the path. My threat-o-meter went up another notch. just how stupid am I to be down here?

They get to the road and a rather tense conversation ensues. I ask who they are and what they are doing. They tell me they "shot a deer" earlier, are tracking it, and the "last blood" is down the hill.

Well now, isn't that interesting? Suddenly I have a whole new set of worries. Shot? With what? When? In this neighborhood? Are any of you carrying a gun now? Should I be running for my life? Should I just call 911 standing right here? What the *&^% do you think you're doing? But I remained calm - at least on the outside - and said none of that. And I was glad to have two largish dogs on leash with me, one of whom was picking up on how tense the conversation was and growled, as if to make a point.

Instead of panicking, I ask if they own the property - knowing they don't, but wanting to drive the point home. One responds, saying they don't, but that he grew up on a neighboring lot.

I say something like, "Look, it's 11:30 on a weeknight and you guys wandering around here is keeping my dogs - and me - awake." They apologize and say they were just trying to find the deer. Apparently they didn't think about the neighbors. Some agreement is come to - silently... I'm fuzzy on the conversation at this point - and they start walking up the street. I wait until they get out of the way and then go the other way, towards my driveway, with the dogs.

Nothing else exciting happens. I get home just fine, get the dogs off leash, and tell my wife what transpired. The guys have clearly left... the flashlights are gone and you definitely need them down there to avoid tripping and hurting yourself.

It's about 12:45pm. Now we can all get some sleep, right? Alas no.

I get back in bed, but am now too wired and hot to sleep. Not going to happen. So I get out my kindle and start reading.  Anne conks out (good!) and the dogs settle, sort of.

Sometime later - not sure how long... I thought it was about 1am, but I'd clearly been reading for more than 15 minutes - Cruzer throws up. I leapt up in an attempt to get him outside before disaster struck, but was too late. I sent him out anyway and got started cleaning the mess up. That woke Anne up, sadly.

Cruzer actually tried to avoid a problem and managed to throw up in the sliding door track, missing the carpet entirely. Fantastic. But it takes several minutes to clean it out of there, and find more out on the deck and get that cleaned up too. Whee.

Get back in bed, really awake again. Read some more. Cruzer doesn't want to settle, and comes over to my side of the bed, begging for attention, or something. Odd behavior for him, but if he isn't feeling well, it might be explicable. (And remember, I'm not exactly at my best at this point either.)

While reading - first session and second - we have low, loud overflights by (I think) two helicopters and at least one large jet. And when I say low I mean low. Disturbingly so, for the Santa Cruz Mountains in the middle of the night. And rare for our part of the world.

Finally I turn off the kindle and try to get some sleep. It's maybe 2 or 2:30... I'm honestly not sure. And I did sleep, a little, in fits, but not much.

The alarm is going to go off at 7am, so I am not going to get anything like a full night's sleep. Even worse, though, is the canine alarm, which went off at 5:45am. (I think. Can you say "groggy"?)

Both Skookie and Cruzer wanted out. That is very unusual. True, Skookie will always change sides of a door, but she waits until the alarm goes off before making her desires known. And Cruzer is an idiot and sleeps until thrown out or walked, so to have him squeaking at the door is odd. I got up and let them out. No barking. Fine. I went back to bed, waiting for Cruzer to start squeaking that he wanted back in.

But he didn't do that, and I actually dozed a bit more, only getting back up at 6:15am to figure out what had happened to him, since this is definitely not normal behavior. I look out the door and there he is, eating weeds in the dog run. OK... his stomach was bugging him a few hours before, so maybe that's what he needs. But he doesn't ask to come back in. Fine. Leave them out there and go back to bed, hoping for another 45 minutes of slumber.

Ten minutes later Skookie barks at something - probably a deer, but who knows - and I have to get back up and bring them both in before they wake Anne up (again). I managed to accomplish that, and got back in bed, yet again. This night is starting to feel like an exercise program. I wish I was making this up.

The alarm goes off at 7am, as usual. I listen to the news for a while, and then get up to feed dogs and make coffee. On the way to get the dog food I discover that Cruzer has thrown up again sometime in the night, this time down in the laundry room. And his behavior shows me that he is worried about being punished for it, which is something we would never do, but maybe his previous owners did. No way to know. I clean it up. No harm done, but I am keeping an even closer eye on him now.

The dogs follow me upstairs as usual and all go to their food bowls, so I think everything is fine, but as I get started making coffee, Cruzer turns up in the kitchen, long before he usually does. Odd.

I go look at his bowl. It is essentially untouched. He's not eating. This - combined with the other odd behavior and midnight vomiting - has me concerned.

I finish making coffee and get my morning banana. This is something Cruzer lives for: his morning bit of banana. (Honestly.) And he looks at me in something like the usual, expectant way, so I pull a bit off and toss it to him, just as I always do. And it bounces off the top of his head and lands on the floor. He doesn't even turn towards it... just looks at me. This is very wrong.

OK... now what? Anne finishes up her morning stuff, and we start the usual dog walk ritual. This is required every morning. It's not far - Leah, the 14 year old, isn't going far - but it's something, and we have to do it, regardless of anything else going on. It's important. And it's still just as important this morning too, so we head out to the garage to leash up.

And in the process I register just the tiniest little hiccup in Cruzer's stride as he goes down a stair. A back foot is held up just a bit longer than usual. But I am sleepy and unsure and out of it. We walk.

As we start down the driveway I wonder: we're getting some patching done on our driveway, and there is some fresh asphalt down there. Is it possible Cruzer got some of that on his feet last night when we walked down to confront the guys, then licked it off his feet and made himself sick that way? Seems possible. So we decide to change course and not walk on anything with new asphalt on it. Easy to do, and we encounter lots of new smells.

We get down towards the road and there are two guys walking on it. At 8am. Last night's meeting was in the dark, by flashlight, and way too late, but maybe these are two of the guys that were there. So I ask.

Yes, it's them. And they really are sorry about waking us up.

A brief conversation follows - with my wife there - and we learn that they'd shot the deer with an arrow - not a gun, good! - and were still trying to find it. And as much as I hate to say it, they look like hipsters. One has a big, full beard, and at least one had big, thick, dark, plastic rimmed glasses. Hipster hunters, I think. Really. Or so it appeared. (Google it. Turns out to be a real thing.) We said goodbye and kept walking the dogs back towards the house while they kept trying to figure out where their deer had gone.

As we get towards the house I realize that Cruzer is actually limping. Barely, but his right, back leg is definitely not right. We stop, I take Leah's leash from Anne, while she looks at Cruzer's foot. And between two of his pads she found an entire, small, pine cone. Buried so deeply he couldn't get it out himself. That had to hurt.  He probably picked it up in the middle of the night, walking along the road.

And he probably spent all night in pain, possibly trying to dig that thing out from time to time, and the worry (he worries a lot, believe me) made him sick. That's at least as likely as the asphalt theory. And he ate his breakfast when reminded it was there by me drizzling a bit of oil over it to make it more attractive.  Bah.  Poor dog.

As expected, the hipster hunters have wandered off again. I have no idea where their deer went, and apparently they don't either. I hope it isn't suffering.

There ends the story so far. Cruzer and I are getting by on very little sleep. (I, thankfully, have coffee.)

But it is going to be a very long day.

I still don't get twitter...

I know I said I wouldn't use it.  I tried. But in the end I am using twitter - in a very specific way.

A few people follow my twitter account for announcements about local fire events.  The sort of thing you might decide to leave work for, if - for example - you were told there was big fire near your home.

I've sent just a few tweets so far, and won't send tweets about anything not related to the topic I have promised.

I started doing this because there are obvious cases where email gets delayed, and in the case of a fire or other major event that could be a problem.  In theory tweets get out quickly, and can get to people who aren't in front of a real computer.

So far so good.

And since I have the twitter account and there might be other sources of data out there, I went looking.  A couple of people suggested sources I should follow there too, and in some cases I have done so.

And I hate it.

One or two twitter users I follow have a specific topic in mind - like my own use pattern - and those are fine.  I can see what they have to say quickly, and evaluate them for interest easily.

Most people, though, don't do that.  Their twitter feeds are a mess of stuff, mostly uninteresting, with only a tiny bit tossed in at random that might be useful to me as I try to track any major events going on in my area.  Sorting the wheat from the chaff is very difficult, and drives me nuts.

Adding injury to insult is the twitter website itself.  First, I am now getting promoted tweets at or near the top of the stream, which are totally uninteresting to me.  Junk that just makes the site less useful.

Beyond that, though, is the odd fact that the stream is not ordered in time.  It can jump around - at random - for no reason I can determine.  Why they do that I have no idea.  But it means that any time I look at the stream I have to try to figure out if what I am reading is in order or not, since that could affect whether or not any given tweet is still relevant to me.

What nitwit decided that was a good idea?

I've used my RSS reader to tap into some of those I follow.  What is displayed in there is (so far, anyway) in time order, and no promoted tweets appear, but now I have to check the RSS reader site and hope it has pulled the feeds recently enough to give me an up to date picture of what any given person I follow is tweeting.  And, of course, the RSS reader doesn't help at all of the source is tweeting junk interspersed with useful data.

I understand why twitter is a good thing at some level, but I do not yet grok the usage model that lets it be a primary news source for anyone.  In fact, for the most part, I don't think I care about more than a percent or two of what gets into my very tiny stream.

I must be missing something, but I have yet to figure it out.

And I Respond to Senator Feinstein's Response... Not That She Cares In The Least

Back on July 4th, I posted the contents of the letters I sent to some of my elected representatives, discussing the NSA spying situation and various related things.

Then, on July 11th, I shared the response I received from Senator Feinstein's office.  Sadly, thanks to limited formatting options in Blogger, I had to post her response on my personal website to make it legible.

Today I post my response to what I got from Senator Feinstein.  Again, though, the format doesn't work well, so you'll have to visit the page on my website to read it.  Apologies, but with limited column width and no real way to indent text effectively, it's better this way.

I invite you to comment.  Even more, though, I invite you to send your thoughts to your elected representatives.  Even if you disagree with me, they need to hear what the people think.  But - and this is important - we need to be educated.  We need to read the news reports about what the NSA has admitted doing (or been forced to admit), along with what governments in other countries are doing as well.  And we need to think deeply about what this country stands for, and is (or should be) afraid of.

If you've done those things and still disagree with me, that's fine.  Rational disagreement is possible on these topics, and I accept that.  If, however, you're just taking it on blind faith that our government can do no wrong and that terrorism is the ultimate threat, I suggest you need to do a lot more reading about these things.

Anyway, feel free to read any or all of the above links.  I hope they are interesting and possibly useful.

And Senator Feinstein (actually, her staff, I'm sure) Responds to my email:

In an earlier post I shared copies of emails I recently sent to my state senators and the president.  Today I got a response from Senator Feinstein's office.

I tried several times to include the text of the email in this post, but it turns out that Blogger's editor really doesn't have an easy way to make it look nice, or even readable. Kind of a problem.  And since I couldn't manage to do that I didn't even bother trying to include the contents of the PDF file here either.

Instead, I've posted both the email and the attachment on my personal website.  You can read them over there:

http://www.bangtherockstogether.com/nsa_flap/

As you'll see, I didn't write up my response just yet.  For now, suffice it to say that I think her email and the PDF embody the same, tired reply the government has been giving the press for weeks.  "These programs really do work." "There really is effective oversight." You know the drill.

In short, in my opinion, it's a crappy canned response that some harried senate staffer decided was the most appropriate given what little s/he read of my email and the choices they had available.  If I am lucky they added one to some total of complaint letters they got about the NSA issue as well.  If I am unlucky, they forwarded my email to both the FBI and the CIA, and I am now undergoing "additional scrutiny", since I am such a threat to the security of our homeland.

That said, something funny happened when I tried to reply directly to the message I got.

The senator's email came from senator@feinstein.senate.gov, so that is where my reply was going to.  Amusingly, it bounced with the following error message:

550 5.1.1 <senator@feinstein.senate.gov>... User unknown

If only it was the case that Senator Feinstein was unknown, and that someone who cared about civil liberties was in her place.  And I love the fact that my own senator is sending email with forged headers.  Cool, eh?  I wonder if the CAN-SPAM act makes that a crime?  I may have to look that up.

I will mark up Senator Feinstein's response and share it here in a few days, when I can make the time.  It will wind up on my website as well, no doubt, but I'll publish a link here when it's ready to go.

For those that follow this blog... I post on G+ too

Just a quick note...

I generally use this blog for posting longer thoughts and more complicated things.  Stuff where reading - and space - are required.

I've had a few exchanges lately that tell me at least a few readers here appreciate what I do.  Thank you!

If you want to see more from me - shorter stuff, mostly links to news articles and other blogs I find interesting, sometimes with comments, you can find me on Google+.  Specifically here:

https://plus.google.com/104648792622184339761/posts

Just about everything I post over there is public, so no G+ account is required.  You go take a peek and see whether I am equally interesting (or offensive) over there.

If you like it, I encourage you to consider joining the G+ community.  I have found it to be a lot more issue (and/or interest) oriented that other social media platforms.  I get a lot of good news about politics and science over there, and a lot less of the mundane stuff that shows up other social media platforms.  For me, that's a good thing.  Of course, your mileage may vary.

Also note that the quality of the G+ experience is completely determined by the quality of those you follow (the G+ term is "circle") over there.  You need to circle people with interests similar to yours, or who post articles you find interesting or useful in some way.  In all likelihood these will be people you don't personally know.  That's OK.  In fact it's good. It's the way G+ works.  Give it a shot if you are interested.  I hope you like it.  And feel free to circle me if you like.  No worries if you do or don't - just trying to share what I do if you're interested.