One of the issues that comes up relatively frequently in many of the blogs I read is female fertility particularly as it pertains to age. I’ve entered the fray on a few occasions, though since I’m getting tired of saying the same things over and over again, so I’m going to dispel some of the less or untrue things that I’ve heard people say here and link to it when the subject comes up.

A few years ago, the problem with misinformation (at least as I heard it) lead to an overconfidence on the part of older couples that they would be able to conceive whenever they wanted. Everybody knew somebody that had children post-35 and fertility treatments were getting better and better so there was no reason to have kids now when you could wait until you were in a better financial position to raise them.

The results were tragic for a lot of people. They simply waited too long and when they were ready they had a lot of difficulty conceiving if it wasn’t outright impossible. As more and more people started trying to conceive for the first time at older ages, everyone started taking a longer look and it became clear that it was a risky proposition.

I found myself getting into regular arguments in college about this. My mother had my brother at 33 and myself at 36 and a miscarriage in between so older parenthood is a subject that I’ve always been interested in. It was impressive the vehemence with which a lot of young women held on to the notion that they could wait as long as they wanted and that my saying otherwise was somehow an indication that I didn’t want it to be true or something like that.

Lately, though, I’ve been butting heads with the opposite contingent. These folks believe not just that it becomes a lot more difficult to conceive the further into one’s thirties a woman goes, but make very bold claims that it’s practically impossible to get pregnant after 35, if you do get pregnant you’ll have a miscarriage, and if you do have the kid it’ll probably be retarded.

If one believes the above, it’s possible to voice these fears in a compassionate and concerned manner. I’d be more patient with these people if that’s how it was being raised. Instead, though, it’s being raised as a bat with which to hit women that have standards. The misinformation is an attempt on the part of some to bully women into lowering their standards or, absent that, as simply a mean thing to say to women that have not sufficiently lowered there standards.

In the general spectrum of things starting at “Settling For Whatever You Can Find” and ending with “Waiting For The One” I have historically falled in the first camp. I think that a lot of people, men and women, are trying too hard to find the perfect person rather than trying to build something good with a good person. That changed somewhat over time as I left a girl that was completely good and found a couple women that were more than just good and found someone that was right. Seeing as how it only takes one, and that I managed to find at least a couple people that could have been a lot better than just good, I’m more open to the idea of waiting for something right.

Men often believe that women are hung up on “alpha males” and won’t date any guy that isn’t a super stud and that’s why so many young men are single. Many women believe that men are hung up on getting some cheerleader-type and are unwilling to accept that the average woman has at least some body fat and some bad days and that this is the ereason that so many young women are single. I think that they’re both right about some people of the opposite gender, but both are wrong to believe that it’s completely and utterly skewed in one direction.

I go into the Settling/Waiting debate because it’s central to what ought to be a biological debate about fertility but often really isn’t. The larger the threat of infertility looms, the stronger the case for settling is. The stronger the case for settling is, the stronger the man’s hand is. We are fertile for longer. If it’s a waiting game until someone becomes desperate to act, then we win.

So when an article comes about like Lori Gottlieb’s a long time ago suggesting that women settle for imperfection so that they can have children, men are generally supportive. Female desperation works to our advantage. The bigger the infertility threat the stronger the desperation the more we win. So a lot of guys are very anxious to believe that women become maritally useless just around the corner and they desperately want women to believe that, too.

It makes me understand why some young women become so hostile when the subject of declining fertility comes up. It’s not so much that they’re in denial (though some are, of course) but that they’re used to men bringing it up in a certain context. A context that implies that a woman’s value is tied tightly to her reproductivity and that she’d better stop being so independent if she wants to “have it all”.

So what are the facts? What are the statistics? (more…)

This has been driving me crazy:

People across the country are reporting telephone calls coming from the numbers 623-238-6228 and 408-587-2116. These calls claim that your car warranty is expiring, but they are really scam artists trying to steal your personal information and identity. Other numbers generating these spam identity theft calls include 202-552-1332, 702-520-1105, 609-948-0971 and 562-289-8136.

The calls always say roughly the same thing (often leaving automated voicemail), along the lines of:

“Your car warranty is expiring. We have notified you several times by mail.”

or

“Your car warranty has expired! Protect your loved ones with an extended warranty!”

Sometimes, instead of an expired warranty, they will also offer debt consolidation or refinance loans.

In any case, they are after your financial information, and your money.

I get about three calls on my cell phone a week. Unfortunately, having moved to a new area with a whole new set of area codes, I can’t yet tell if it’s not a local call. Not that it matters anyway because it’s easier to take the call than have the messages pile up in my answering machine. The only illegitimate calls I’ve ever gotten on my cell phone (except maybe a couple in Deseret, now that I think about it) are from these people. They say on their automachine that if you press two they will remove you from their service, but I think all that does is tell them that you answered and that they should try again.

I’m getting the debt consolidation calls on our landline, which is on the Do Not Call registry.

Unfortunately, there really isn’t a whole lot that can be done. Obviously they’re not interested in the law. If you press “1″ to speak to a representative and start asking questions about what company they represent and what state they’re operating out of they hang up. I’ve tried that three times and only once did I get an answer (the company name was so vague as to be functionally useless and I didn’t get a state).

Apparently the answer to the “state” question is Missouri. No big surprise, it turns out that their “product” is about as disingenuous as their sales tactics:

Chris explained that this was a one-time deal and if I said no, their computer system would “automatically delete” my files at the end of the phone call. That was clearly designed to put pressure on me to make an on-the-spot decision.

Now it was Corey’s turn to close the deal. He had good news. I “qualified” for full coverage: four years or 48,000 miles. And he was going to waive the vehicle inspection.

By activating my coverage today, I would get 20 percent off the retail price. With that discount, the cost of the four-year coverage was $3,110 or $777 a year. Corey offered a variety of payment plans and pointed out several times that this was not a contract. “You are not obligating yourself to anything,” he kept saying.

I can’t remember the last time I had a car that was even worth $3,110, much less worth paying that much just to have a warranty on.

I made a decision about this blog of utterly minimal consequence, which is actually the reversal of a decision that I don’t think that anyone actually noticed. But it’s related to the history of my online nickname, so I’ll share a bit about that.

All of you have probably figured out that “Trumwill” is the first four letters of my last name followed by the first four letters of my first name. The name was derived from the account naming convention of a former employer wherein they did the same. The formulized account name became so prevalent in everything we did and the office environment itself was so cold and impersonalized that when it was pronounceable we called each other by our account names rather than our real names.

When I started this blog, a lot of it involved talking about work. The email addresses and account names at Falstaff, where I was working at the time were our first name followed by our last initial. Most of the accounts I’ve had were my first initial followed by my last name. Sometimes my first two initials. Once it was like “Trumwill” except it went 6-2 rather than 4-4. I was initially going to go with WillT (and I do use that sometimes), but I came to the odd decision that if someone from my work saw that naming convention it might be familiar or something, so I explored alternatives. wtruman and trumanwi were both lame, but trumwill was perfectly pronounceable and even if no one knew precisely where it came from it was indicative to me of corporate absurdity in a blog about (at the time) corporate absurdity. So “trumwill” it was.

So that brings me to the current decision. At the former employer, our account names were never capitalized. So for this blog, I almost never capitalized my name. Everyone else did, but I didn’t. Even in blog post titles. The idea in my mind was that it harkened back to the former job with the former company. I’ve since come to the conclusion that it is more easily interpreted as lame like a black-clad teenager that things that never capitalizing anything or capitalizing sporadically is kewl like ee cummings or some crap like that.

So despite its origins (which are largely irrelevant and will be made moreso as it’s unlikely that I will get into the grit of my current work since it’s all so bloody obvious who it’s with), Trumwill is now officially capitalized.

One of the things that follows Clancy whenever we move somewhere non-southern when they find out that she is southern is “You don’t sound like you’re from the south”

To which she wants to respond (and sometimes does) “Yeah. amd I don’t have two heads or scales, either…”

They usually mean it as a compliment, though it doesn’t always come across that way. It’s generally bad form to dig at someone’s background even in an effort to differentiate themselves from it. Because sometimes, you see, sometimes we’re actually not ashamed of where we come from and what we are. Even if we’re quite dissatisfied with the aspects of it that give it such a negative reputation.

I think I’ve been on my soapbox about that before (in fact I know I have because I’ve linked to said soapbox), so let me move on.

One of Clancy’s responses is to say that not all of the south is what people think it is. We’re both kind of on the fringes of the south. Her because she’s from a German Catholic enclave and me because I’m from a big city that houses people from all across the world. I think her response raises some good points, though I fear that people will come away with the impression “Oh, so parts of Delosa are not like the rest of that backwards region of the country.” While that’s true, it’s not the whole picture.

The truth is that the south is not a monolithic thing and it’s unfortunate that the totality of the south is defined by Alabama and Mississippi (I’m going to ditch the fictional locales from this point forward in the post) to many from outside the region.

Alabama and Mississippi are only one facet of the region. If you go east to Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia you get a different kind of south with more of the gentility sometimes associated with the region (Mississippi? Not so genteel). Florida (except the northern part and particularly the panhandle) has significant Spanish and Cuban influence. Cajuns from southern Louisiana that take more from the French are their own thing and not only different from other southern states but also from the northern part of their own. Texas of course has southwestern influence. Eastern Tennessee is full of mountain types more like one would associate with West Virginia. Ditto for parts of Arkansas. Many states, such as Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia, may or may not count as southern depending on how you count it.

While I think that people from border states and states that pull influences from distinct places are sometimes referred to as “less southern” I’m not sure that’s the best way to think of it. It falls into the trap of defining the the south as completely backwards and less backwards places to be considered less southern (by which, less backwards). It’s no coincidence that most major candidates for the presidency that come from the south come from places considered “less southern” (Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas).

Even leaving aside for a moment that Alabama and Mississippi have things going for them as well, we really should resist the temptation to think of these less populated areas as the epitome of the region.

I understand the need to categorize regions and to think of the south as an entity the same way that I think of the mountain west or north as an entity. I just wish more people would keep in mind that because it’s a thing that does not mean that it is a monolithic thing.

In my last post about why more people aren’t majoring in computer science, Web makes the following comment:

I hear {employers complaining that they can’t find top-notch Americans to do the jobs they need} a lot, but every time you look at the situation, what’s actually happening is that they’re not able to find said “quality” individuals who are willing to work for peanut wages. The H1-B has become one of the most abused visa categories largely because a H1-B holder is pretty much forced to work at $20-30k under standard market wage; plus, a H1-B visa holder isn’t likely to jump to another company, since quitting or losing employment means they lose their visa.

In other words, it’s to Gates’ (and other companies’) benefit to try to get more H1-B workers even though the workers are available in the US (and I’ve applied to them numerous times), simply on the basis that the H1-B workers are more easily controlled and manipulated.

Whenever Bill Gates or somewhat similar proclaims the need for more H1-B visas for lack of native-born talent, a lot of people trot out that the reason for the shortage is the pay. To Web’s credit, he then addresses what I think is the bigger issue, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

According to the article the average comp sci job pays $100,000 a year. Okay, I’m skeptical of that, too (then again, I’m from a less expensive part of the country). Even so, computer science is still a relatively well-paying field. Two of the three highest paid people I know are developers. People I know that have the ability to code do it for a living (if they can) because that’s where the money is. I’m an exception in that I’m a software tester with little desire to go into development… I’d say 2/3 of the testers I’ve worked with would rather be developers. Developers at my last employer made 3x what I did and if you only count the Americans among them lend credence to the above figure. They’re not paid peanuts, except in Deseret, where everyone’s paid peanuts.

That being said, if the market for developers were tighter it’s likely that salaries would go up and there’d be bidding wars like there were in the 90’s. That’d be great for people like me! It’s also possible that one of the toughest parts of the job, the often long hours, would be alleviated as employees get more bargaining power (or it’s possible that they’d have to be stretched even further). It’d be great for people like me because my testing coworkers that can code would be coding and they’d need more testers and I’d be making more than I’m making now.

I just don’t think it’s true that people don’t go into software development because it doesn’t pay well enough. The financial incentives are there. What are the disincentives? I thought the author made a good point about one reason. I also think that at least a few years ago there was the perception that the information economy in this country would go the way that our manufacturing economy did and why bother doing all that studying when your job is just going to be outsourced out of existence anyway? The more experience I have in the industry, though, the more skeptical I am that that is going to happen industry-wide absent some sort of global geopolitical shift that would render such outsourcing a lesser of our problems or some economic shift that makes it a lot more attractive than it is now. Anyway, that’s another post for another time.

As I said above, Web puts his finger on what I believe to be a bigger motivation than pay: Control. H1-B visa holder is that they’re loyal and motivated. They can’t just up and leave if a better offer comes around. The consequences of losing their job are much, much more severe than for an American. It’s noteworthy that the day a Chinese developer at my last job got the ability to stay in the country even if he wasn’t working for the company anymore, he went on vacation. He came back, worked for the remainder of that pay period, got his paycheck, and quit.

But that’s not all. There is a third thing that I believe to be really important. I think it’s a lot easier to get foreigners whose skills match up precisely with the required skill-set than it is to get an American. I don’t have proof of this, but I think that foreign schools cater their curriculum more closely to what employers need at the moment than do American schools and when American college students are reading Shakespeare, there’s are picking up another language. Even if I’m wrong about that, though, the surplus they have over there makes it more likely that they will find exactly what they want in terms of skills and whatnot. I’ve been complaining for years how inflexible a lot of employers are with required skillsets. Companies that can afford H1-B visas can afford to be*.

So what do I think about H1-B visas? Well, I certainly have my doubts that they’re in my best interest. On one hand, see the above paragraph. On the other hand, it’s quite possible that the more they have to pay Americans and the more they have to spend training them so that they can take their new skills and get paid more elsewhere… the more likely that they’d move more operations there rather than bring less of them here.

I know that I have at least a couple computer-people that read this blog. So for y’all I have a question.

One of the advantages of SATA hard drives over IDE hard drives is supposed to be that the former are “hot swappable” while the latter are not. I understand “hot-swappable” to mean that the computer will accommodate adding or removing a hard drive with the computer still on without any ill-effects (unless a file on a removed HD is open).

This is how USB Thumb Drives work. You put it in there and the drive appears. You take it out and the drive disappears. Does “how-swappable” mean something different when it comes to SATA drives?

I ask in part because I have a SATA hard drive that is somewhat blinkered. It seems to sporadically cut out. I have a USB external drive that cuts out, too. When the latter cuts out, the drive simply disappears and reappears and as long is nothing on it is open, there’s no problem. Even if something is open, typically the worst that will happen is an error message or two. The SATA, though, throws Windows XP into fits. If you so much as open Windows Explorer, the app will freeze even if you’re not trying to access data from that particular drive. Even if you don’t open explorer or try to access the drive the system itself will intermittently freeze for about 5-10 seconds every minute or two.

I was willing to attribute this to a faulty drive that was doing more than cutting out. Somewhat unrelated to this problem, I purchased a front-loading SATA bay wherein you can put the HD into the system while it’s on and take it out. The SATA drive connects to a port that connects to a SATA port on the motherboard. The box says in large letters “HOT SWAPPABLE!”, so I assume that I am not doing anything that this particular device did not intend.

Yet the behavior is identical to the faulty HD. If I take a drive out, the system throws fits. If I put a drive in after it’s booted, it doesn’t show up. The documentation I’ve seen on Windows says that XP and Vista both are hot-swap-capable for SATA drives, though maybe I’m looking in the wrong place. I haven’t actually seen all that much information beyond “Hey, isn’t it cool that it is capable of this?!”

So the two questions I have are:

1. Do I not understand the meaning of the term “hot-swappable”? If so, what does it actually mean?

2. Is there something in particular I have to do within Windows to enable this? Is it like USB drives in Windows 2000 where you have to tell it you are about to disconnect a drive? I haven’t found any information on this whatsoever.

By and large, I think that I’m a better person than I used to be. With age and experience comes wisdom, temperance, and understanding. Beyond simple experience, I married someone that brings out my better qualities and whose strengths are often my weaknesses and compel me to become stronger. I’ve learned many of the errors of my ways and am more open than ever before about being perceptive of the errors that I am making now. I look at the ways that I used to see the world and I just shake my head. Sometimes I wonder of course if the me that I become ten years from now does the same.

Despite firmly believing the above, I sometimes wonder what I lost along the way. Yes, I lost my destructive temper, but I’ve also lost a lot of my passion. I’ve become more understanding of shades of gray, of other points of view, and of life’s ambiguity in general… but I can’t always find my ability to just call a situation as I see it. I’ve learned to change, though I sometimes don’t know exactly where my core is.

In the end, I am better than I used to be. Just not in every way.

One of the aspects of myself that I lost periodically teleports into my mind and waves at me. I remember when my best friend Clint and my then-girlfriend Julie first talked about me, one of the things that they mentioned and agreed upon was how expressive my face was. What they meant — at least what I think they meant — was that I had the ability to make a face that would almost perfectly sum up a situation or at least my role in it. An “oops, sorry!” face or a “what are you talking about?” face.

I don’t think that I really do that anymore and I’m not really sure when I stopped. I’ve learned to laugh and to smile — two things I often forgot how to do when I was younger — and many other more conventional American (perhaps human) expressions, but I guess they came at the expense of my ability to do those things that were purely me. It makes me think a bit of how I used to sing atrociously… but now have mostly stopped singing altogether.

I guess as we grow up (in the earliest stages, anyway) we learn to become self-conscious. We become more aware of how others perceive us and why it matters how they do. We find out that our individuality is misinterpreted as arrogance, goofiness, social retardation, or worse.

For my part, maybe one of the contributing factors is that I found out how awful it is to try to be funny and fail. If I had to guess, I’d guess that I learned it from my former roommate Hubert. It used to be that when Hugh was in a group, he’d “turn it on” as my friends and I would say. He would try to become the center of attention. The funny guy. The entertaining guy. The guy that everyone wanted to talk to. Sometimes it worked. He had the ability to frequently make a great first impression. When Clint or I would say something negative about him, they’d ask “What do you mean?” Within a few months, they’d be rolling their eyes with us.

Hugh and I, it’s worth noting, had a lot in common. We were both smart but socially inexperienced, hot-tempered but sometimes eerily quiet, introverted but with the desire to be liked, expressive but contemplative, reflective but utterly oblivious to certain aspects of ourselves, and many other things. One of the reasons that our lives became so inexplicably intertwined was that we saw a fair amount of ourselves in one another whether we liked it or not. Sometimes it lead to rivalries that brought out the worst in us (his victory was my loss and vice-versa) or the accentuation of our differences that put us at one another’s throats. Years later, it’s one of the reasons that despite our tumultuous history he’s become of the easiest people for me to talk to despite my previous belief that it would never happen.

When he and I were living together, I watched him alienate everyone around us. He was going through a rough patch with his college fund drying up, his mother getting a divorce, and a change in majors. He was pretty depressed and tried to mask it my ramping up his extroversion. So when he was in a bad mood he was fuming or loudly sulking. When he was in a good mood he was purely manic… and we were waiting for the shoe to drop. He would try to be funny and we were all too uncomfortable to see the humor in it.

I mention all of this because as I watched him socially self-destruct I know that a part of me resolved never to let that happen. Remember what I said about accentuating differences. That’s totally what I did. I could write a post on this subject alone, but I think a part of me resolved to simply become not-Hubert. I can’t say with any certainty that it was out of this motivation that I started becoming a lot more stone-faced. The timing coincides, though it also coincides with the rocky start of my tenure with Evangeline wherein I had to play every card I had as close to my chest as possible to the point that I’d forget what kind of hand I was holding.

At any rate, it was sometime around then that I “learned” not to let them see you try if you’re not sure you can succeed. Don’t tell a joke unless you know that it’s funny or you know that they won’t think less of you if it isn’t. Don’t draw attention to yourself and how you feel. Go with. Go with.

There’s certainly utility in not drawing excessive attention to yourself and being aware of how something might be misinterpreted or giving yourself away. After all, I recently had a job interview wherein my ability to put so much of what I was really thinking and feeling aside quite possibly landed me the job.

On the other hand, I don’t have to worry about the dating games anymore because I’m married. Those that choose to be in my life socially have obviously made the decision that they like me enough to stick around. I don’t live in fear of being disliked or disregarded (though of course, like everyone, I do want to be liked). My self-esteem, howevermuch it may suffer from certain blindspots, is not the black hole that it once was.

I wonder if this is the sort of thing that can be changed. Seems likely that it can be. I remember on dates post-Evangeline and pre-Clancy where I was oddly able to fake being my more expressive self when I determined it might be effective. If I can fake being engaging in the more conventional way (and I can, though not as well as can a person to whom it comes more naturally of course), surely I can fake being engaging in my previous unconventional way until it comes back to me.

Anyway, food for thought.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Students respond more profoundly to cultural imperatives than to market forces. In the United States, students are insulated from the commercial market’s demand for their knowledge and skills. That market lies a long way off — often too far to see. But they are not insulated one bit from the worldview promoted by their teachers, textbooks, and entertainment. From those sources, students pick up attitudes, motivations, and a lively sense of what life is about. School has always been as much about learning the ropes as it is about learning the rotes. We do, however, have some new ropes, and they aren’t very science-friendly. Rather, they lead students who look upon the difficulties of pursuing science to ask, “Why bother?”

Success in the sciences unquestionably takes a lot of hard work, sustained over many years. Students usually have to catch the science bug in grade school and stick with it to develop the competencies in math and the mastery of complex theories they need to progress up the ladder. Those who succeed at the level where they can eventually pursue graduate degrees must have not only abundant intellectual talent but also a powerful interest in sticking to a long course of cumulative study. A century ago, Max Weber wrote of “Science as a Vocation,” and, indeed, students need to feel something like a calling for science to surmount the numerous obstacles on the way to an advanced degree.

I think the first paragraph is particularly insightful. It’s unfortunate that we live with the consequences of decisions that we made before we knew what those decisions would really mean. I say this as someone that took the vocational route and who was raised amongst the children of engineers many of whom went on to become engineers. When we talk about practical and impractical majors, we sometimes forget that at the time these decisions are made, they are entirely practical. You have the option of spending 15 hours a week with a bunch of people that are likely to have the same backgrounds and interests as you and another 30 hours a week studying on subjects that interest you… or you can spend a lot of time with something really difficult surrounded by a lot of people with whom you have quite little in common.

Of course there is the argument that these kids aren’t thinking ahead, to which I say “Yep.” That’s all part of a larger problem where a substantial chunk of college-bound students spend the five years prior to going to college gaining more and more “adult rights” without adult responsibilities. There’s really not that easy a solution to this part.

In the meantime, my solution remains a sliding tuition scale for different majors which provide more here-and-now motivations for students (with academic scholarships thrown in so that the least academically marginal have more flexibility), an idea deeply unpopular with most non-blog people I’ve discussed it with.

Anyway, from the above paragraph forward the article descends into standard anti-PC “kids are ruined by good self-esteem and a sense of entitlement” stuff we’ve all heard a million times before and already agree or disagree with.

The subject of the debate: American Sriracha hot sauce + Reduced fat cheddar cheese + crackers

Arguing in favor would be my taste buds, the side of my tongue, and the makers of the half-gallon of kool-aid I’ve had to drink tonight.

Arguing against would be my stomach, the front tip of my tongue, and my exhausted toilet.

(Please be aware that the bulk of this post was written before any conflict-of-interest that may or may not occur may or may not have begun occurring. Over the next couple of weeks I will be clearing the decks of such old posts so that they are not influenced by recent circumstances.)

I have written four different novels in my life using four different document formats. The first was originally written on Microsoft Write (*.wri), the freebie that came with Windows 3.1 that was replaced with WordPad on Windows 95. We didn’t own Microsoft Word at the time, but I probably wouldn’t have used it even if we did because I had the opportunity to use Microsoft Works but didn’t. The second was written on Word (*.doc). The third was written on OpenOffice.org 1.1 (*.sxw). The most recent one was also written on OpenOffice.org, but it was using the new OpenDocument Format (*.odt). I’ve toyed around with the idea of writing the next one on a more recent version of Microsoft Works (*.wkd) just to keep the streak going, but I probably won’t.

I first started moving away from MS Word in 2002 when StarOffice released the code for its software suite under the name OpenOffice.org and allowed it for free consumption. My friend Tony, a big-time Open Source Software (OSS) advocate, suggested it to me. I’d toyed around with StarOffice before and though it was perfectly fine I still ran into the licensing problem that MS Office had insofar as I had numerous computers and didn’t want to be responsible for holding numerous licenses*. OpenOffice offered me a chance to be thrifty and legit, so I decided to give it a shot. I was planning to write a November Novel and decided that I’d give it a trial-by-fire test run while writing it.

It took a bit of getting used to for finding the various features, but for the most part it passed with one grave problem. I did have a few complaints, though. It was resource-intensive (even compared to its Microsoft counterpart), interoperability with MS Office was flawed, and the aforementioned grave problem. I was writing the novel on a laptop and whenever I closed the laptop it would go into sleep mode. OpenOffice couldn’t handle that and when it came back up the document would revert to the previous saved version. Further, the auto-save feature was not very diligent. So I’d have to rewrite a page or to. How I actually put up with that considering the tight deadline I was under is beyond me, but I guess after it happens the first couple times you remember to save your work with OCD-like vigilance.

I voiced my complaints to my OSS-boosting friends and they responded how OSS people frequently did whenever their product fell short, which is to blame the user. It was my fault for expecting it to be able to handle such user behavior and my fault for not saving my work just to be careful. Further, they explained to me that it was Microsoft’s fault because their sleep mode should save everything exactly as-is. Be that as it may I simply said that even if it isn’t OOo’s fault it is their problem and that I wouldn’t be using the software on the laptop anymore (which, at that point, was the only place that I was using it).

Fortunately the corporations that contribute to Open Source Software are more large-minded than many of its advocates, so when OpenOffice.org 2.0 came out they specifically addressed all of the above issues. The part that sold me, though, was the implementation of OpenDocument Format (ODF). What ODF promised was an open standard that would be consistent across almost all software suites so that even if development on OOo stopped or at least stopped improving, I could simply take my documents and use them with something else. Microsoft hadn’t signed on** (of course), but Corel Suite and various others had.

Around that time I heard that Microsoft was itself changing its document formatting and that though conversion would be possible it would still have to go through conversion process and that without a patch of some sort my Microsoft Office wouldn’t be able to read new documents anyway. This was something of a last straw for me. I’d managed to keep on keeping on with MS Office 2000 and this started sounding more and more like a play to force me to upgrade when Office 2000 still did everything that I needed it to do. It also lifted the immunity I had from whatever draconian authentication schemes Microsoft came up with and made me want all the more to become independent of the company.

So when OpenOffice 2.0 came out, I downloaded it. In addition to fixing the problems above and the ODF support, it also have a very handy conversion tool so I was able to convert all of my documents at once (saving old copies, of course!). Interoperability with Microsoft had improved marvelously. All but the most complicated of my Word documents converted perfectly and even those that didn’t convert quite right came a lot closer than with OOo 1.1. Ironically, conversion was better between Microsoft’s formatting (*.doc) and ODF (*.odt) than it was between the old OpenOffice formatting scheme (*.sxw) and and ODF.

I’ve been reasonably pleased with it and use it 90% of the time. I had intended at the same time to start transitioning away from Windows. That transition was not nearly as successful.

Soon I will write more thoroughly about what OpenOffice can and cannot do.

* - Turns out that this was a needless worry. StarOffice, as opposed to MS Office, allowed you to install the software on multiple computers provided that it was the same person using them.

** - I think that Microsoft has since announced that it will support ODF files natively, which could mean that I can send my ODF files directly without having to risk a conversion blip or taking the time to stamp any blips out. The area where this would be most helpful is with my resume.

Because we’ve been a little low on money right lately, I decided to put off buying my new laptop until we’ve both gotten at least one paycheck. It’s a symbolic gesture, but I’ve found that it’s often good to put a little time between you and the things you want or think you need so that you are reminded that you don’t actually need them.

Her first paycheck has come in and mine comes in on Friday. Plus, now that we have a wireless setup she spends a lot of her time downstairs instead of the computer room and I’d really like my own laptop so that I can join her down there.

In short, it’s time.

So I go to the ThinkPad website and I’ve been rewarded for this good behavior by the fact that the model I was going to get is no longer in production, the replacements are not significantly cheaper (when adjusted for speed), and the web site no longer offers the XP Downgrade CD (meaning that performance on the computer will be worse or the computer a lot more expensive than it would have been if I’d bought it a month ago). I’m hoping that if I call I can get it.

quenkyle: Did you ever get those Exo-Squad files to work on your computer?
trumwill: No, I never did
trumwill: It never ceases to amaze me when a show hasn’t been released to DVD
quenkyle: Well, it does cost quite a bit
quenkyle: and some shows may not have enough of a following to make a profit
trumwill: Someone needs to find a way to do it cheaply.
quenkyle: What *does* surprise me, is that they don’t sell them online
quenkyle: Online distribution is that way
quenkyle: But the rights-holders are old school DRM enthusiasts
quenkyle: Generally speaking
trumwill: There’s got to be a way to put low-volume shows on DVD at relatively little cost.
trumwill: I mean, look at the $1 DVD section at Walmart! These aren’t exactly high-demand products.
quenkyle: True, but the quality of the video and audio tends to be godawful
quenkyle: I do want my DVDs to be in a semi-watchable state
trumwill: Oh, they’re at least semi-watchable. Not really DVD quality, but for low-volume stuff I don’t see that as a problem.
trumwill: It’s about as good as VHS (in fact, probably taken straight from VHS)
quenkyle: It’s a fine line to walk, though. Even if they put it out like that, the company in question may get a reputation for less-than-stellar DVD releases
trumwill: That’s why you create a special Discount label. Something like Cheap {Spit} Productions.
trumwill: Then you say “We’re going to release this via CSP, but if enough people buy it we’ll do a full-on release. So go buy this crappy product if you want the real thing!” Studios love pulling that crap.
quenkyle: But word will get out about who owns it. Just like when Disney quietly purchased Miramax and started editing things they didn’t like out of their movies
trumwill: See, I didn’t know that Disney even did that!
quenkyle: haha
quenkyle: I still think digital distribution is the best way to go. Especially for shows like Exo-squad, which they’ll never revive. Better to make a few bucks off it than have it moulder in a vault somewhere
quenkyle: Oh!
quenkyle: That’s another reason
quenkyle: A lot of those old shows have been lost. As in the masters are gone
quenkyle: Did you hear about The Who and Rock Band?
quenkyle: They wanted to release a full album, but the band itself couldn’t find their own masters.
quenkyle: Shit like that is pretty common, it seems
trumwill: Actually, what they could do is contract it out. Sell the right to produce crappy DVDs to some third party distributor for a commission or something. Kind of like the pirates do now, except legit (and probably of somewhat better quality)
trumwill: The masters only matter so much if you want to release something that looks really nice.
quenkyle: haha
quenkyle: That is kinda the point, though, I think.
quenkyle: Even if it were cheap, I wouldn’t buy a DVD that looked like ass
trumwill: What if you couldn’t get it any other way?
quenkyle: VHS quality is a no-go these days
quenkyle: Then I’d wait for someone to post the shitty quality one online and download it
trumwill: Damn pirates!
quenkyle: haha
trumwill: People actually pay $100 for VCR-recorded episodes of The Practice, Crossing Jordan, Judging Amy, and other shows that (thus far) have not made it to DVD. There’s money to be made here!
quenkyle: O.o
quenkyle: I had no idea
quenkyle: crazy bastards
trumwill: If it’s the only way that you can get the show, you’ll do what you gotta do. I almost broke down and bought The Drew Carey Show.
quenkyle: crazy bastard

-{See also: Coming Eventually to DVD}-

This post was originally going to be a review of Abel Keogh’s book but instead it’s mostly just a collection of thoughts and impressions. The book is called Room for Two and explores the aftermath of his wife’s suicide.

Suicide is probably the most emotionally complicated way to lose a loved one or even an acquaintance. If someone dies in a protracted manner, you can say that the death was the easing of their suffering. If they die suddenly and unexpectedly, you can remember them as the vibrant person that they were. You can tell yourself that they’re in a better place now and that maybe you’ll see them around the corner (which, paradoxically, you hope is a very long ways away). Whatever the case, it’s a tragedy but it’s a tragedy not without its comforts.

Suicide, though, is different. It does more than take them away from you, it mars your very memory of the person. It leads to doubts and recriminations. What did you know and when did you know it? What could you have known earlier if you’d just been paying more attention? You drift in this vague selfish feeling of wondering why you weren’t enough, of anger at the turmoil they left behind, and of the natural sadness of knowing that they’re not there anymore.

As many of you know, I had a really good friend named Walt that killed himself. I also had a former acquaintance do the same long after she had alienated me and everybody else. I’m not even going to begin suggesting that what he went through and what I went through are the same thing. Indeed most of the book I couldn’t relate to with my own experience. But the emotional confusion was something that I could.

There is a great book by Haruki Murakami called Norwegian Wood that explores the suicide epidemic in Japan many years ago. I remember as I read the book how angry I was at the characters that killed themselves and how scornful I was of Naoko, the lead female character who I knew by the nature of the book would do the same. I can’t remember hating a character so much. It made me think of Caitlyn, the former friend who was not Walter who killed herself. It was, to me, her last gasp of narcissism. The last best way that she could make those of us that had long stopped caring about her care once again.

The thing about Naoko and Caitlyn is that they were easy to hate. They were easy objects of scorn. My guard was up against ever liking the former and I’d long since stopped liking the latter. No emotional investment. In fact, not only could I cavalierly declare their actions selfish and cruel, I could redirect all the residual anger I had at Walt and redirect it towards them. They were such a convenient outlet. As such, as I gradually got over Walt’s death, my anger against Naoko and Caitlyn subsided.

All of this talk about friends and former friends and fictional characters doesn’t do the slightest bit of justice to the idea of losing what Abel did, the woman to whom he had dedicated the rest of his life to. At the outset, I wondered how he would express his anger in addition to his grief. Particularly when she took the life of their unborn child with her. Everybody will tell you how you shouldn’t feel, but it’s something that simply has to be confronted and dealt with.

In writing such a book, I imagine that most writers would be tempted to gloss over this part. Who wants to present themselves as being someone angry at someone that was such a mess that they killed themselves. One of the more refreshing aspects of the book was the even-handed manner in which Abel presents himself. He neither presents himself as the tragic victim who had done nothing to deserve his wretched fate nor go too far in the other direction by trying to elicit sympathy as the guy that feels responsible for something that was obviously not his fault.

On the whole, the book is a surprisingly quick read, both because it’s relatively short but also because it moves along quickly. He doesn’t get bogged down with details or the desire to express every thought and emotion perfectly. It provided some thought-fodder and then moved on before you got tired of thinking about it.

Abel is a friend to Hit Coffee and as such it’s unlikely that if I didn’t enjoy his book that I would actually say so. On the other hand, if I hadn’t enjoyed it, I probably wouldn’t have said anything at all. So consider these 800 words an endorsement.

Today as I was driving to get a bite to eat a handful of blocks down from our house, I saw a young black man running faster than I’d seen anyone run in quite a while. Less than a minute later, a police car calmly drove down the road and turned on the street that the running youth turned onto. While I was waiting in line at the drive-thru I saw another police car turn onto the same street. Then a police SUV. Then the SUV came back and turned down a neighboring street. As I drove home with my food, I turned down the street that was seeing a lot of action. Two police cars were parked in front of a house. The officers were stepping out with their guns in their hands aimed at the ground. I wondered if the cop(s) in the SUV were coming at it from the other end. I drove by before seeing what, if anything, transpired afterwards.

The remnants of the former crime zone of the neighborhood Clancy and I live in are still around. A lot of the local establishments have bars on the windows. Almost all of them have big signs with big lettering saying “NO LOITERING” with threats of prosecution. Hoodies, bags, and baggy clothes are almost as likely to be forbidden at convenience stores as the shirtless and shoeless are. Yet it’s not all as worrying as it might be.

Despite what I say in a previous post about my neighborhood in Cascadia, it is in a sort of transition. Whereas my neighborhood in Santomas was transitioning from a poor neighborhood to a yuppie white neighborhood, our neighborhood here in Soundview simply changed from a crime-ridden neighborhood to a safer (or less crime-ridden) one. Both the Northside neighborhood in Santomas and the Eastport neighborhood in Soundview have historically had crime problems, though things in Eastport (and Soundview on the whole, from what I understand) have changed in recent years.

I can definitely say that things feel different here than they did there. I wasn’t generally worried about my personal safety in Santomas, though I was frequently worried about my stuff. The main reason for that was the drug dealers living across the street. I didn’t see any turfwars brewing or anything like that, but I could quite easily see someone wanting to buy their next hit by bartering my car stereo or worse. I was horrified at the prospect of UPS leaving a package on our porch and not a Netflix shipment went by that I wasn’t worried that someone swiped it from the mailbox (which someone did, but fortunately only once).

Things are somewhat different here. Someone left two very large boxes on our porch here in Soundview the other day (racks from Target.com). I didn’t think to myself “Oh, thank god nobody took it!” I’m still going to see what I can do about having stuff put on our back porch instead of our front one, but I’m not going to go crazy with worry the way that I would have in Santomas. Hopefully life will not make a fool of me in that regard.

So what’s different here? On the whole I wouldn’t say that my current neighborhood is wealthier than it was there. In fact, the houses are smaller and we’re not as close to downtown so I would wager that there isn’t much difference. I’m honestly not entirely sure what it is. Part of it I think is that we live on a road that sees a lot of traffic coming through. We’re not ideally situated for someone to carry out some nefarious act. The lighting is also better. If I lived on one of the side streets, I might be more worried. Another difference is the lack of a transient population. The folks in the Zaulem Sound area are probably squishy liberal types when it comes to homeless, but mother nature isn’t nearly so kind to homeless people here as it was in Estacado.

A bigger difference, though, is the police. Some of it comes in the knowledge of knowing that they (and whatever social service agencies help) successfully cleaned up the area. Knowing that improvements have been made and that the police are monitoring the situation helps. Their presence here is felt. They’re very frequently driving through on patrol. If I were a thief, I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable breaking in somewhere.

In Santomas, the police weren’t around a whole lot. When they were, it seemed that they were there for a purpose. I say this because they always seemed to be in a hurry somewhere. I got the sense that they were there to take care of something and when they took care of it they would leave. In Soundview they’re often around taking care of business as with the case above or the other day when we were eating at a restaurant down the week and saw seven police cars speed by with their lights on, but often they just seem like they’re around rather than trying to get somewhere in particular.

Like I said, hopefully my time here will not make a fool out of me.

My new temporary friends Ron and Rob and I were smoking our cigarettes and trying to figure out how we were all going to get home as we stood below an overhang in the torrential rain. I still don’t know exactly what caused the thing that happened next. Maybe there was water building up on the roof overwhelmed it. Maybe it was the force of the rain being tossed in from the bay. Probably it was just a weak sign on its last legs. Whatever the case, the sign of the record store three spots over somehow fell off, slid down the overhang, and crashed into a six-foot wide puddle in the parking lot on the ground. We choked on our cigarettes. Even in the middle of a hurricane, you don’t expect something like that.

—

The last semester of my college year and the summer before it, I lived off-campus. My ex-roommate Dennis and his friend Karl had gotten an apartment on the northwest side of town. It was about a half-hour drive (going the other way from rush hour), but since I was only taking classes a couple evenings a week at that point, it was no big deal. That was the summer when Hurricane Adrianne hit. The word “hurricane” confers a certain amount of force and wreckage that wasn’t really applicable to Adrianne. It was a hurricane for about half a minute after hitting landfall and then reverted to being a tropical storm and not a particularly strong one at that. What it lacked in forced it made up for in longevity. Meterologists on television were remarking that this was the slowest hurricane they’d seen in quite some time.

But the hurricane came and went and life went on. To wit, classes at Southern Tech University the night after the hurricane were not canceled. It was actually kind of disappointing because I had made plans with Evangeline for that night. I was taking a programming class and as much as I would liked to have skipped the class with the excuse that I didn’t know that they were having them, it was one a class for our collaborative project and I had to go. Eva and I agreed to meet after the class was out.

Three quarters of the class did not feel the same way about the importance of the collaborative project and class was canceled anyway. From the hallway as I was walking to the door I called Eva and told her that I would be over in half-an-hour. She expressed some concern about the weather and that it was raining pretty hard. I said that we didn’t have to go anywhere but that I just wanted to see her. She and I were going through one of our many rough patches and I wanted some downtime to rebuild. She said that she would keep an eye on the weather report and let me know.

When I stepped outside, I saw what she was talking about with the weather. In the thirty minutes I had been inside, the weather had gone from simply overcast to a torrential rainfall. Getting to Eva’s could indeed pose a problem, but so would getting home and her house was closer. Besides, maybe the rain would provide an excuse to stay the night. Even if I would be sleeping on the couch (and I would be, as she lived with her father and step-mother), it would mean some morning time in addition to evening time. Two for one!

One nice thing about the timing of the plodding, apologetic little hurricane that had introduced itself to our city was that it occurred while I was borrowing my parents van. I’d needed it to cart some furniture I’d bought at a thrift store for my first-ever unfurnished apartment. The thrift store was needlessly boarded up so I had to wait a bit longer to get the furniture, so I still had the van. I thought of the good fortune of that as I got into it at the Sotech parking lot. If I was in the car I might need to worry about flooding, but not in the van. Not even in this weather.

I was only a few blocks from the university when I saw a car stalled on Epsen Road. As was my habit at the time, I pulled over and knocked on the window to ask if they needed any help. The girl in the car was actually quite rude. She said that she was fine. I asked if she needed to make a call and waved my cell phone. She said “no” and promptly rolled up her window. In retrospect, she was probably afraid that I was a threat of some sort. She’d probably made her call and was waiting for someone to pick her up. I got back into the van and back on the road.

Instead of letting up, the rain was getting worse. Years later a couple thousand miles away I would learn that when driving in snow it was best to stick to the main roads because those were more likely to be plowed. Well you can’t plow water, but the same is actually true in a flood for different reasons. If your car gets stuck, you want to be where there are other cars. Sometimes they’ll help you out and usually they will lend a cell phone. More helpful, though, was that other cars told you where not to go. If a car smaller than yours was stuck in water, it was as clear a warning as existed that you needed to go somewhere else. Rude Girl’s car conveyed such a warning to me, so I decided to work my way to the Interstate that looped around the city. Most of the Interstate was actually elevated anyway, so once I got there I wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

The Interstate to the Loop was already closed, as was the access road accompanying it. I pulled out my map and charted a different route. I needed to find a quick way of getting to her house. First, because the more time the drive took the less time she and I would get together. Second, because I knew that I was racing the clock before she used this as a reason not to see me. Third, because the weather indeed was miserable and I didn’t want to get stuck out in it.

Unfortunately, everywhere I turned was a closed street or a boatcar warning that the street ought to be closed. This made sense as Sotech is in the lower part of town nearer to the water than Eva’s house or my apartment. If I could just get out of the immediate area, I’d be fine.

As I was doing so, my cell phone rang. It was Eva. I had a pretty strong feeling what she was going to say. Sure enough, she told me that the weather had gotten so bad and was only going to get worse and that she and I shouldn’t go out tonight. I lied and said that it wasn’t that bad and that it must be worse wherever she is than wherever I am and that it would probably be passing soon anyway. That’s when she told me that the news was saying that Tropstorm Adrianne was back and that it was unlikely to get better any time soon.

I rolled my eyes. She was always so good at coming up with reasons not to see me.

“Oh, Will, I have to get up so early for work tomorrow.”

“Oh, Will, my sister is sad for some really inconsequential reason and I better keep her company.”

“Oh, Will, my sister is sad for some vague reason and I’d better keep her company.”

“Oh, Will, my sister is sad for some completely indiscernible reason and I had better keep her company.” (her sister was a pretty dramatic person)

“Oh, Will, Dad seems vaguely bothered about something so I think he may need to talk to me.”

“Oh, Will, somebody somewhere may need to talk to me tonight and I’d better wait for that phone call in case it comes and they call the land line instead of my cell phone and I might miss it if I’m talking to you…”

“Oh, Will, there’s a frickin’ hurricane out there so you should be more worried about getting home than seeing me.”

This time she was apparently so thorough as to enlist the aid of Mother Nature. Color me impressed. In the three weeks she had been managing to dodge seeing me for anything more than a lunch or group activity, this was her best showing yet.

We went back and forth. She told me that she didn’t want to go out in this weather. I said that we didn’t need to go out. She said I should be worried about my safety. I told her that it would be longer and farther for me to drive home. She replied that she was getting sleepy (at 8:00?) and that she wouldn’t be able to entertain me. I said that she didn’t have to and that just seeing her would be fine. At that point, the only thing I really cared about was not letting her hide behind this whole “hurricane” thing as a reason not to see me.

The “Hurricane” was actually at this point a Tropical Storm, though once something is a hurricane (no matter how weakly and how shortly) it keeps the name even when technically no longer accurate. Adrianne had apparently passed through Colosse, spun out to the bay, regrouped, and set its sights quite clearly on Colosse again. It apparently liked Colosse a great deal not only for the return trip, but also because on its second run, once reaching the city, it just sat there. One hand in the bay grabbing water and the other throwing it at us.

When it was all said and done, it became obvious to me that she was as insistent about not seeing me as I was about not letting her use this historic occasion as a reason not to do so. Unfortunately, she had an army of meteorologists on her side. Once it became obvious that as convenient an excuse as the hurricane was she had one and that I wasn’t going to win this argument. I conceded and got off the phone before the cell phone battery died.

The concession actually allowed me to relax. Now I only had to worry about getting home and there was no time limit on that. the relaxation didn’t last long. I wasn’t in a hurry to get to Eva’s house anymore, but desperately needed some 151 and there was a flame-arrested bottle with my name on it at the apartment. The longer I was out there, the stronger the craving.

I figured that if I could get to DeSoto Avenue, I could take that westward to the west side of the loop. DeSoto was known for being one of the better-drained roads in the city and if any road were still okay, it would be that one. Getting to DeSoto was easier said than done, of course. I had to ditch the plan of staying on populated roads in favor of some backroads that had better drainage ditches off to the side. At this point, carboat warnings everywhere were making where not to go. They generally occurred on spots of the road where there was a dip of some sort. Since Colosse is a generally flat place (so there weren’t any major crevices to pass or anything like that, the chances are that the next road over wouldn’t have the same dip in the same place.

Unfortunately, just about everybody was headed to DeSoto so when I got there it wasn’t moving an inch. I decided to drive to the next street over, but less than a block to the west was a giant puddle, eight carboats (the last couple of which apparently weren’t able to heed the warning of the first six), and a couple of SUVs pulling cars out one by one.

One of the things that I learned in Deseret was that it’s great when you have a neighbor that just bought a new plowmobile. Not only do they take care of their own driveways and lawns, but they will go around town asking if you want them to take care of yours. No one is quite so ambitious as a man with a new toy. I think the SUV drivers in a flood are the same way and get a kick out of showing off their vehicle’s horsepower. Some accept tips, naturally, but some don’t and the only cost you will incur is a lecture about how heathen liberal environmentalists want to take their SUVs away but aren’t we glad that he had one right now.

I decided that it was as good a time as any to get out of the van, assess the situation, and smoke a cigarette. There were about four guys standing below an overhang apparently of a like mind. The Bacardi Batsignal emanating from my apartment across town would have to go unanswered for a bit.

The first guy introduced himself as Ron. Ron told me that he’d just paid $20 for a pack of cigarettes from Rob, who was snickering with one that he lifted prior to their transaction. There was also a guy named Todd there who was quite bothered by the smoke but wanted in on the strategy session going on. As it turned out, all four of us were west-bound.

I told them about my plans for DeSoto and the surprise about it being so crowded. I joked that everybody must have had the same idea that I did. Ron shook his head while Rob broke the news that DeSoto had collapsed. Collapsed? There’s no bridge on DeSoto, I commented. Ron speculated about some pipes below that were probably crushed. It was quite a surprise at the time, though over the next couple of years it would happen a few more times without even a hurricane to blame for it.

When the sign a few stores over collapsed, we decided that our position under the overhang was more precarious than we had initially suspected. We decided to caravan over to Moreland and see if maybe we could find something there. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to caravan in torrential rain and cars with drivers half in fear of their life and we soon lost track of one another.

From there it was mostly zig-zag and trying to find routes that had enough cars so that I wouldn’t be going it alone but not so much as to cause bumper-to-bumper congestion. I can’t even remember what roads I went on, but I remember the direction that I went because before I knew it I was in Evangeline’s neighborhood. Whatever her reservations, I determined, surely she would let me sleep on the couch. Maybe it wouldn’t all be a bust after all.

When I pulled into her driveway, I saw a familiar car that wasn’t hers. It had a Southern Tech College of Communication bumper sticker, though, and that was enough to job my memory. It was her ex-boyfriends. Most charitably he happened to be over when it was all starting, she didn’t want him to leave, and she didn’t want me to come over and find tha the was there even though nothing was going on. Well, nothing was going on at that precise moment in time, but that was about all of my speculation that was true.

In any case, I pulled right back out and decided that I needed to be alone. I had apparently overstepped my bounds by seeking refuge.

From that point it was more zig-zag and more search for the higher roads. From her house to my apartment is a blur. I hadn’t realized it, but up until that point I was actually kind of enjoying the adventure. The fact that I was in a high vehicle provided me a sense of invulnerability that was likely misplaced. The Bacardi that was awaiting me when I got home was actually going to be sort of a victory toast. I only realized these things when it became that they were no longer the case.

At some point I got home. I don’t remember it but since I’m still alive I assume it happened. I also assume that I did break out the rum.

More rain fell due to Adrianne than fell in my first two years in Deseret. A dozen or so people drowned that night, as did several thousand animals. Tens of thousands were left homeless. On the upshot, it was a good time to be selling cars and if you didn’t mind a little damage, it was a great time to need furniture.

Jerry Seinfeld had a stand-up monologue in one of his shows about how our ability to put the man on the moon became a rallying cry for dissatisfaction with the limitations of modern society technology. You know, as in “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t get our dang restaurants to hold the tomato on an order like I ask!” or something equally inane. He said that Neil Armstrong should have said, “This is one small step for man, and one giant leap for every malcontented SOB in our country for decades to come!” I’m not getting what he said exactly right, but you get the gist.

—

In a lot of public restrooms, in lieu of a faucet the sinks have a button. You push the button and some water comes out as the button comes back up. If you need more water, you push the button again. More water comes out, the button comes back up.

—

When Clancy and I lived in Deseret, our apartment shower-head and/or pipes became clogged. Over weeks the water deliver became increasingly less forceful until it, as I put it, started moving less water than a rat terrier urinating. Then it stopped altogether. Until they could fix it, we had to use gallon water jugs to take our morning showers. It took her four and me two. She was more vigorous about washing her hair than I was and she had more hair to wash. You’d dump yourself with maybe 2/3 of a gallon to get yourself wet, lather down with soap, then finish the bottle washing the soap off. Then you’d do your hair, then maybe another round on your body, then again in your hair to take care of the shampoo, then your hair again for the conditioner.

It was slow, but it got the job done. Frankly, it got the job down better than those damnable low-flow shower heads.

—

I think that both Married With Children and Unhappily Ever After (one of the most tragically underappreciated family sitcoms in my lifetime) both had an episode with the main plot being the family becoming smugglers from Canada. If I recall, the Bundys smuggled toilets and the Malloys shower heads. Canada, in the show if not in real life (it seems unlikely that our environmental regulations exceed theirs in just about any respect), hadn’t banned low-flow toilets and shower-heads. There was an increasing demand because Canadian showerheads and toilets refrained from being so pansy-ass.

So yeah, count me among those that say “screw the environment and let my toilet FLUUUUUUUUUSH!!!!” Who doesn’t hate having to flush two or three times to get everything down or see it get clogged in circumstances where you suspect that a real toilet wouldn’t have. And what can you do with a shower-head that’s too weak to get the shampoo off your darn head?

But does it really have to be either-or? I mean, the environmentalists are right that flushing so much water is often unnecessary and having the shower at full blast while you’re standing away from the water soaping yourself down is unnecessarily wasteful. So how come, instead of the government regulating our water-expending apparatii somewhat useless, we haven’t instead come up with a solution?

For example, why must there be one strength of flush? Why can’t we have one flush that assumes that there is no solid waste matter, but then when there is have a “mega-flush” that loads some extra water into the toilet to prevent clogging and then swooshes it all down with a manly-man flush? If we can put a man on the moon…

For showers, we can use the aforementioned public restroom sink button. When we need some extra power with which to get the shampoo out of our hair or the soap off our bodies, we press the button and get some extra force. Because we have two faucets, it’s kind of difficult to easily change the force of the water without changing the temperature. If the power of the shower can be dictated by the showerhead (in addition to the faucets), surely there can be some sort of filter we can put before the showerhead to slow it down except when we press the button.

We can, after all, put a man on the moon.

I previously wrote about how I’m becoming a fogey about plastic swingsets and the like. Well, it doesn’t end there.

One of the big passtimes in our neighborhood (and I’m sure many neighborhoods, this was the case in Deseret too) is skateboarding.

I. Hate. It.

Hate it, hate it, hate it.

I hate the damn noise that they make. I hate the feeling that at any point when I’m driving down the road one of them could dart out in front of me (even though they appear to be pretty conscientious. I hate that all they do is stand around all day doing tricks on their skateboards.

I want to shake these darn kids and say “Go inside! Watch television! Play video games! Hey, play video games about skateboarding for all I care! When I was your age, we sat around and watched Saved By The Bell and Gilligan’s Island all day. What wrong with you kids?!”

Beauty - Mountains, water, vegetation, and urban architecture. What more could you ask for?

Weather - I was promised when I moved here that it would be cloudy and dreary. It’s not. I was lied to. Sunny days more often than not. Quite frustrating. The temperature is pleasant, though.

Food - We have had a heck of a time trying to find decent food at a reasonable price in Soundview. The good places we’ve eaten have almost universally billed at over $20 a head. The cheaper places aren’t that good. Some places are expensive and crummy. Even the seafood is unremarkable and none of the Asian (Thai, mostly) places we’ve eaten at have been remotely as good as the Asian places of choice in Deseret and Estacado.

Technical Colleges - There seem to be a lot of them up here. Not sure what they are, but they’re called ______ Technical College and look like ITT Tech sorts of places.

Race - We live in a racially diverse community that actually seems to be a genuinely diverse community. Diversity in the suburb where I was raised generally meant “Hey! Whites and Asians! Living together in harmony!”. In the cities of I’ve lived in it usually meant saying “The blacks may live over here, the whites over there, and the Hispanics over there, but if you back up far enough they’re all living in the same city limits!” If a particular neighborhood was diverse it was usually because the neighborhood was in transition from one race dominating to another. Here, though, it doesn’t seem to be nearly as much like that. Interracial dating seems frequent. The clumps of kids trolling about the neighborhood are rarely all of a single race and frequently of more than two. It’s heartening.

Politics - I have not seen a single McCain sign or bumper sticker since moving here. I saw one Bush bumper sticker in the Mindstorm parking lot, but that’s it. Oh, and curiously enough, a confederate flag bumper sticker.

Gas Prices - Unbelievably variable. Three blocks to our east it’s $4.25. Five blocks to our west it’s $3.93.

Taxes - High. Even when taking into account the lack of an income tax, still high.

Freeways - Poorly maintained for such an urban area.

Churches - A lot more Lutheran churches than I am used to seeing. Haven’t seen a single Catholic or Episcopalian Church.

Smoking - Banned from restaurants and bars, apparently. They seem to take their “No smoking with x feet of a public entrance” laws more seriously than other places I’ve lived. Cigarette taxes seem to be about the same as in Delosa and Estacado, making the only state that I’ve lived in with lower cigarette taxes… Deseret.

Fast food establishments - Less common.

Starbucks - I have never seen so many in my entire life. The End Of The Universe has revealed itself repeatedly here.

When we were back in Estacado preparing for the move, I made a lot of late-night trips to Walmart. Judge me if you like, but that they were open at three in the morning when almost no one else is is another great example of how convenience, not price, is their biggest selling point. I needed something from their gardening section, which was locked up, so they had me wait outside in front of the building while they got someone to open it up for me. While I was waiting, I was looking at the plastic swingsets and playground instruments sitting out front for sale.

“Ick”, I thought. “Plastic swingsets.”

Back when I was a youngster, plastic swingsets were rare. In fact, I don’t know that I knew anyone that had any. A lot of kids had swingsets and playgrounds with the back, but they were usually made of wood or a metal of some sort. Those, of course, were real playgrounds. What they build today is just crap. Crap, crap, crap.

That’s how I felt anyway, though for the life of me I can’t come up with any justification for that feeling. Or, for that matter, any feeling as to why wood-and-metal playground structures are superior to the increasingly common plastic ones. Maybe this wasn’t such a problem outside of the south, but if you tried to slide down a slide with aluminum covering and if your skin touched it, at best it will slow you down and at worst you about burn your dang skin off. There’s also splinters, of course. And longer-lasting? Maybe, but not necessarily. Metal rusts, wood rots. They use wood treatment, of course, which makes the wood last longer but of course adds various safety and environmental hazards to the equation.

Some of the things that I specifically cite not liking about them are not objectively inferior in any sense. I consider these things to be gawdy, but their colorful and children like colors. Then I try to say “These things don’t spur the imagination that building my own fort with a fridge box did! But come on, that’s pretty ridiculous. Kids can use boxes anyway and they can as easily ignore the sign above the plastic fort and make it a spaceship. I’m sure they do.

I guess I’m starting to show one of the first signs of aging, the dementia of believing that everything around me when I was growing up was authentic while these kids are stuck with consumerist plastic junk. Having grown up in the 80’s I won’t even pretend that fashion was better when I was growing up, but what the heck is wrong with these kids today and how they’re dressed?!

Over at Slate, the usually vapid/left-wing Dahlia Lithwick asks a surprisingly apt question: why is it that the court cases the fathers’ rights movement rallies around are almost entirely unsympathetic, weird guys?

I can’t speak from personal experience here, but knowing a few divorced dads (or in one case, a father who never was married to the mother), I can offer some insight.

The basic setup of the system - or at least the way it leans by judges - is to default to letting the woman keep the kids. There’s some presumption that men lack a form of parenting instinct, or that the men were “less involved” in the kids’ lives (especially if the woman wasn’t working as well), or something.

Starting with divorce proceedings (the most common way to get into this mess, though not the only way) the man is at a disadvantage. If he doesn’t get custody, a large portion of his income is going to wind up spent anyways, paying for the “privilege” of probably no more than alternate-weekend visitations. Lithwick points out the inherent problem here:

Even without abuse allegations, simple rules of physics (one child cannot be split into two and two cannot be split into four) make it likely that many good fathers will be downgraded from full-time dads to alternating-weekend-carpool dads. They will be asked to pay at least one-third of their salaries in child support for that privilege. Simple rules of modern life make it likely that an ex-wife will someday decide that a job or new husband demands a move to a faraway state. At which point the alternating-weekend-carpool dad is again demoted—to a Thanksgivings-if-you’re-lucky dad.

Adding to the problem is that the formulas used by most states assign child support based on the income of the non-custodial parent, and then subtract a “proportional” amount based on “percentage of time” - so if you get 20% custody, you’re paying less child support than someone who only has alternate holidays.

Another problem is the idea that in order for a man - even if he was the primary caregiver before - to get custody, he has to prove that the mother is somehow a ‘bad mother’. This puts men in a hell of a bind: if they want things to be reasonable, they have to be very careful about what they say in court lest they have the mother attacked/insulted and less likely to respect their visitation rights; the catch-22 is that the mother can take the very same court record and later use it as evidence to claim the father is “poisoning the children” against her during any visitations he gets.

And while there are a million ways in the court - wage garnishing, arrest warrants, etc - to “enforce” child support payments, there’s almost no mechanism for enforcement of visitation rights; far from it, in order to go through asserting his rights, the father has to go through yet another series of agonizing custody hearings and court proceedings.

Most family court lawyers advise the men to simply take whatever they can get, to stay in contact with their child by phone and email if nothing else and however they can, and wait for the kid to become a legal adult before asserting any back rights or suing for recompense for lost visitation, because the chance of that they’ll lose even more if they take it to court while the kid is still a legal minor is quite real. As long as the system is that tilted, I can’t blame them.