Under the weather

I've never been able to figure out why "under the weather" means "not feeling well", but here I am again: under the weather and under my afghan. This wouldn't be particularly interesting to me or anyone else, but if one were to scroll back to last year's archives, he or she would see that it was about this same time that I was laid up, watching Olympic curling.

The worst part is that the weather I've been under since about midday Thursday has been nice. I could have been getting in some training rides, if I'd been able to draw a full breath without triggering a coughing fit. For now, though, it seems like enough of an achievement just to be sitting upright and typing on the computer.

Which brings me to something I meant to post earlier but didn't feel well enough to bother with...

More bathroom humor

Just when I thought I'd heard it all, someone went and upped the ante.

I was at work and decided it was time to return my first three cups of coffee to the wild. Almost as soon as I entered the men's rest room, I could hear music coming from the handicap-accessible stall—tinny, like someone was listening on headphones and had the volume cranked up loud.

Stomp-stomp. CLAP! Stomp-stomp. CLAP! We will... we will... ROCK YOU! Sing it!

And he did, sort of under his breath, tapping his feet. But not clapping. If he'd been clapping, I think I might have been tempted to sell tickets.

When worlds collide

As I sat down in front of the TV to drink my first cup of coffee and send a thank you note to a fellow blogger for her MS 150 sponsorship, I noted that the tube was still tuned to CMT, where I'd been watching an interview with Larry the Cable Guy, yesterday. There was Ricky Skaggs, looking ageless, paired off with Bruce Hornsby, not so much. I like Ricky's bluegrass, so I lifted my thumb off the remote and was rewarded with a rousing cover version of an '80s classic.

Rick James' "Super Freak".

The earth shifted slightly on its axis, and I felt the same sort of disorientation as the first (and only) time I heard Leslie Gore doing her rendition of AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" or The Oak Ridge Boys covering "Carry On Wayward Son" (both from the When Pigs Fly compilation).

I think I'm awake now.

One for Shoesie Badoozie

As promised.



Things you should know about this footwear:

• These boots were made for walkin'--not scootin'. The only boot scooting I ever did was when I found myself in such a crush of humanity that I was unable to take a full step. Not so much a scoot as a shuffle, really.
• Like Anne's, my feet have grown a bit since I bought the boots over 15 years ago.
• Unlike Anne, I'd still wear them if they fit. I've lost about 1 1/2" in height due to my degenerative disks and could use the elevation. And wouldn't it be easier and less humiliating than having to change the information on my driver's license?

My first MS 150

Donate Online!

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I'll be riding in the Sam's Club MS 150 (Dallas) on May 5-6, 2007. Over two days, we will ride 150+ miles. Starting from Frisco, Texas, we'll ride to the Texas Motor Speedway on day one. The next day, we'll start at the Speedway and end at Sundance Square in Ft. Worth.

I'll be riding with The Wheeler Dealers, an MS 150 team founded in 2005 by my friend Bob. I'm pleased to be riding with them this year, not just because they have so much fun but because I've seen firsthand the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis. You see, Bob's wife, Gerry, has secondary progressive MS and has been confined to a wheelchair for the past eleven years.

Turtle and I first met Bob and Gerry in 2002, and each year we've seen Gerry lose a little bit more of her mobility and strength to the effects of MS. She's a lively, outgoing woman who handles her disease with aplomb and courage, but it's tragic to see her increasingly become a prisoner of her own body.

Then there are our friends Barb and Joe, another couple who both suffer from MS. Joe was diagnosed first, and was already using a motorized wheelchair to get around, by the time we met him. Barb is able to walk using a cane, but has an entirely different set of symptoms than Joe's.

MS is a wasting disease that presents itself differently in each of those afflicted with it, and it takes away dignity and mobility. If I can do a little something to help by just riding my bike—because I can ride my bike—then I'm in.

But I need your help. If you feel, as I do, that finding a cure for MS is a worthy cause, I hope you'll help me to meet my fundraising goal by sponsoring me in this year's MS 150. It's easy to make your donation online, and it's tax deductible. It doesn't even have to be a lot of money. $10? $5? Every little bit helps. And if you know others who might be interested in helping out, please refer them to this posting or to my official MS 150 donation page.

Thank you.

The web we weave

More than a decade after my first faltering attempts to get connected to "those internets" using Spry's Internet In A Box, I've become a little jaded about the wonder of the web's interconnectedness. But every once in a while, I still find myself marveling at how Al Gore's creation has brought the world closer together.

Case in point: I was working my way through my blogroll and several twists of the rabbit hole later found myself at Pink Ginger's Sketch of Life 珂琳随笔: Why Must I Eat With the 2 Sticks ??. A native of China who doesn't take eating with chopsticks as a given? Mon Dieu! Who would have dreamed of such a thing?

As a fledgling Foo-let, back in the '60s, it was not uncommon for me to find myself scowling into a plate of chipped beef on toast (a.k.a., "s--- on a shingle") or staring down the barrel of a stuffed green pepper. On those occasions when I dared to think I might simply wait Mom out and sneak away from the table, she was quick with the standby admonition that so many of my generation heard: "There are starving children in China who would love to have that food."

"Can't we just send it to them?" I said, taking a philanthropic tack. But Mom wasn't buying it.

"How do you know that Chinese kids even eat this kind of... of... stuff?" I parried, hoping a social studies/world geography approach might work. It didn't.

In the end, I tended to find myself sitting alone at the table, mournfully picking my dinner into smaller and smaller pieces in the vain hope that they'd go down easier that way. It was at such times that I wondered if some Chinese kid was sitting at his table, with something I liked on his plate and wishing he could find a way out of eating it.

I wish I was a Chinese kid, I thought. 'Cause if I had to eat with chopsticks, it would be a whole lot easier to get away with dropping a lot of this stuffed pepper on the floor for the dog to eat—and get away with it.

The inner nerd

Thanks to okkernoot.net blog for this:

One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he’s socially inept—because everybody’s been there—but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.

- Randy Waterhouse in Cryptonomicon

Look to the future

Over on Write Lightning, Deb suggests an interesting visualization technique that might be used in clearing away emotional clutter when one is faced with a decision. The short of it is this: you imagine walking in to a house, then into a room where you sit with an older, wiser version of yourself and discuss the situation.

Some of you may recall from one of my earlier postings that I have not been, historically, a huge believer in visualization techniques; but I've been trying to decide whether I really need this [some nondescript luxury item that won't distract from the point of the narrative], or if it's my inner child whinging down the aisle of the virtual toy store, so I gave it a whirl.

I walk up to the stoop*—my imaginary old folks' home has a stoop—and knock politely on the front door. No answer. Old Foo must have his hearing aid turned down again, I think, so I try the knob and find the door locked.

Curses.

I take off my t-shirt, wrap it around my knuckles, and clench my teeth as I punch through one of the door's glass panes. No burglar alarm (not that the old codger could hear it if there were). Older and wiser, my hindquarters.

After reaching in and unlocking the door, I step into the foyer, grimacing at the sound of crunching glass and feeling guilty about scarring the hardwood floor. I make my way toward the living room and spot my older, wiser self. He's sound asleep in his chair, with a crocheted throw pulled over him and a laptop computer on his lap. Tropical fish swim across the LCD display, uninterested in my arrival.

"Old Foo?" I say, tentatively, not wanting to startle him.

No response.

"HEY OLD FOO!!"

The old fart duffer jumps, blinking his eyes, disoriented. "Huh? Wha--?"

His eyes focus and I see recognition dawn in them.

"You! GET OUTTA MY HOUSE, YA LITTLE BASTID!!"


Seems I'm 0 for 2 in the visualization exercise department.

* n. Chiefly Northeastern U.S. - A small porch, platform, or staircase leading to the entrance of a house or building.


Now playing: Kansas, Song For America

Cartoon Network ad campaign bombs

Over the years, I've pretty much stopped tuning in to Cartoon Network. With the exception of South Park, which I'll occasionally watch when Turtle's out of the house, most of their offerings are either insultingly mindless or far too arty and hip for an old fart like me. Or both, maybe.

I stumbled on Aqua Teen Hunger Force once while flipping channels and found it to be pretty stupid (or maybe too hip), so I'll admit I don't really "get" the show. Maybe that's why I can't imagine what the show's creators were thinking when they decided to promote it by planting suspicious black boxes all over Boston and other cities.

"It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme," Mayor Thomas Menino said. "I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred."

The 1-foot tall signs resembled a circuit board, with protruding wires and batteries. Most depicted a boxy, cartoon character giving passersby the finger — a more obvious sight when darkness fell.

Link (AP, via Yahoo! News)

Nice.

Now playing: Trevor Rabin, Can't Look Away

The flip side of Mac & PC

No matter which side of the issue you come down on—or if you're like me and don't really care—you've got to admit that as spoofs go, these have the originals dead to rights.

Now playing: Spock's Beard, The Kindness of Strangers

Transform yourself

It really was wrong of me to show you my M&M alter ego and not tell you where you could go to reinvent yourself. Enter the M&M Character Creator:

Now... go forth and get candy coated.

P.S - Here's my sweet wife...

Random Thursday

Wear Yellow

My life as an M&M:

Pizza what?

After a brutal, wreck-littered, stuck-behind-aimless-wanderers commute home from work, I stopped at a Pizza Hut a block up from our house. The traffic held me up long enough that I didn't get to see Turtle before she had to leave for her meeting, so she told me to fend for myself.

That's okay. I like pizza.

I walked in, and the gal at the counter promptly told me to wait. So I did. And I did for five minutes, while she was back in the back visiting with someone. When she finally got around to waiting on me, I asked for a supreme personal pan and laid my cash on the counter.

"Your phone number?"

"You don't need my phone number," I suggested, adding the Jedi Master wave of the hand to reinforce the point. "I have cash."

"I have to have your phone number, or I can't enter the order," she said.

I thought about that briefly. There I was, standing right in front of her with cash in my hand, and I had to give up a phone number too? I could have given her the number for time and temperature, but I didn't.

"I see," I said, pulling my legal tender back across the counter and stuffing it back in my wallet. "Well, you have a nice day. Bless your heart."

Twenty feet away, the neighboring Subway shop was perfectly happy to take my order without a background check. The young woman just smiled, welcomed me, and efficiently made me a tasty sandwich. The only questions I was required to answer were "What kind of bread would you like?", "Would you like it toasted?", and "What kind of cheese?" Those seemed relevant, so I happily answered them.

A Subway club was probably better for me than a supreme personal pan pizza anyway.

It's official

Back before the holidays, I made the decision to join a friend's small MS 150 team and ride in honor of his wife (also a friend), as well as several others in the same circle of friends, who also live with multiple sclerosis. We're the Wheeler Dealers, a reference to poker and The Gang's love of gambling. The jerseys are snazzy, with the faces of the folks we're riding for emblazoned on playing cards over a green background.

As of this evening, I'm officially signed up. It's time to start getting back in shape (I haven't been on the bike, on the road, since November) and start figuring out how I'm going to meet my minimum fund raising requirement without having to reach too deeply into my pocket. Any of you MS 150 veterans with an interest in sharing your tips? I'm all ears.

I feel for you (but don't tell anybody)

Every now and then, my lovely bride reacts so strongly to something she sees on TV or hears on the radio that I'm left feeling like I might have spent too much of my time in the company of machines. It could be argued that this is less the cause for my apparent lack of empathy than a symptom, but the fact is that I often take as facts of life the same things that nearly reduce Turtle to tears. Driving down the road, I see a bag of trash that fell off the back of someone's truck; she sees someone's German shepherd, hit by a vehicle and left for dead. She hears about someone setting a cat on fire or sticking a dog in a laundromat washer and turning on the hot water and is furious; I hear the same story, and I'm disgusted but not surprised.

That's why I found some encouragement in a chance encounter I had during Monday's icy slog home from work. At a stop light,* I found myself behind a black Kia Spectra hanging off the back of a tow truck. The right rear taillight was obliterated, as were parts of the rear and quarter panels surrounding it. I could see that the hood was buckled and most of the right front of the car caved in. Ouch.

As I waited for the light to change, I also noticed that there was a sort of fuchsia-furred tribble-like thing hanging from the rearview mirror. Young woman, I inferred.

The temporary license tag on the back read "1-29". When I bought Dorian, my temp tags were only good for about three weeks, so I further concluded she'd only had the car for about a week and a half.

That sucks, I thought. On my mental movie screen, I saw the Spectra's driver headed to work at The Gap (probably because I was stopped alongside a mall at the time). She'd rather not, because she's nervous about having to drive her new car on the slick roads with all the maniacs, but she has to. She has a car payment now, and she can't get off work. Suddenly, brake lights flash in front of her, and she steps on her brakes—new, unfamiliar brakes that work much better than the ones on her old, clapped out Toyota. The car starts to skid, the rear end slowly swinging to the right.

WHAM! She slams into the rear of the car in front of her. The slide turns into a spin, slamming the right rear of her car into the side of a car in the next lane. What a tragic mess, I thought, giving the unfortunate Kia owner a mental pat on the shoulder.

As the light turned, some young chicklet with a cell phone pressed to her ear whipped her Honda Civic between the mashed Spectra and Dorian's front bumper. My imagined scenario with the Kia driver changed, and my newly-rediscovered empathy evaporated as quickly as you could say "Hello... State Farm?"

NOTE: Apparently, that last paragraph was just a bit too poetic to be clearly understood. Dorian is not wrecked. Quite dirty, still, but unharmed. My State Farm comment was made in reference to a future that might have been, if not for Dorian's four-wheel disc brakes and what's left of my aging reflexes.

* Some people call them "traffic lights", but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I say it's a duck.

Winter Blast!

[cough]

To hear the local news stations tell it, the Dallas/Ft. Worth area is entering a second ice age. I guess they have to do something to stir up some excitement, but it's not really necessary. Just trying to get from Point A to Point B is excitement enough.

I got suckered twice this week. First, on Monday, when we had an "ice storm" that turned out to be significantly less severe than the meteoroligists had been trumpeting for the previous four days. I was at work by 7:20, but the office didn't open until noon. Today, we awoke to "snow" (in fact, a sort of airborne slush that only looks white when it accumulates), and not a warning shot from the weather persons. The sand truck drivers must've been depending on the TV weather, because when I hit the roads at 6am, there wasn't a sign that any of the overpasses had been treated.

Not that I cared. I took to the side streets where the only hazard I had to face was the frozen stuff, not some moron in an Econoline talking on his cell phone instead of concentrating on my brake lights. By 7:30, I had arrived at my office, where I immediately called Turtle to let her know I was still alive. Then I went looking for the usual idiots stalwarts who show up regardless of the crap on the roads.

My boss's boss looked up from his desk. "What are you doing here? The office is closed."

"I could ask you the same thing," I said. "But the fact is that the message I got when I called in to check said the office would be open at 9am."

"You're the third person who's told me that, but the office is closed." He then dialed the main number and let me hear for myself. Obviously, it had been changed since Turtle had checked while I was en route.

So I checked a few emails, drank a second cup of coffee, made a trip to the men's, and turned Dorian north again.

My morning in a picture:



(Hmm. That's interesting. Looks like Blogger's using Picasa for images now. Google truly owns my soul, now.)

I know: it doesn't look like much, but there's enough on the roads that I had to chip the slush dingleberries out of Dorian's wheel wells before tucking him in to the garage.

Maybe I'll go take a nap with the kittens...

Yes we have no words today

Sorry. Nothing new to report, because I used up all the best words writing novella-sized comments on other people's blogs, today.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Why is it that spammers like Alexandra, who keeps e-mailing me about "emaciate whirlpool", constantly warn that "This is our final attempt to reach you"—but it never is?

Meanwhile...

The latest batch of search terms (not including the poor souls still trying to figure out how to make their cars and their RoadRunner internet service work):

• sasquatch's cousin Yeah... you know, I can't remember her name either. We only went out a couple times.*
• carrie underwood's nickname in college Just because we drove past her home town on the way back from our holiday trip, that makes me an expert?
• road rage shooting plano texas I could see that being a possibility...
• b48a7bb1654c8f50f2e1aee00dcb99828be05147360a Oh yeah? Well, 6120686578206f6e20796f7520746f6f.

* And having said that, I'll probably receive a nasty letter from the same lawyer who's representing the cavemen in those Geico ads.


Now playing: Coldplay, X & Y.

Down with those *&%#@ cyclists!

I know that some of my accounts of encounters with hostile and inattentive motorists have been met with some skepticism—and I really do understand. How can one guy have that much bad luck with his fellow humans unless he's doing something to bring it on himself?

That said, I'd like to provide an illustration of at least one instance of the sort of thinking that keeps me on full alert every time I go out for a ride. Check out the first comment in response to a posting about a proposed safe passing bill, on the local paper's cycling blog.

Ahhh...

The first week back to work after the holiday trip was reasonably calm; but after being off work for ten days and quite a few days during November, as well, four days seemed like a very long week. I'm getting back into the swing of things, though.

Turtle and I have been chipping away at the task of getting our new laptops set up the way each of us like things. Unlike Bret's new baby, ours aren't the fanciest or the fastest of Dell's line (or anyone else's), but they're nearly as fast as the four-year-old machine I use for my daily development tasks at work. That's a huge improvement over Turtle's old Toshiba, which had a pronounced tendency to lock up while trying to load just the antivirus software.

Aside from the speed increase and the ability run applications that were unavailable to us with the old Win98 machine, the most pleasant surprise is how much more sensitive the internal wireless card seems to be than the Linksys wireless-g card we were using on the old laptop. Add to that the relative simplicity of connecting to a new wireless network under WinXP using Dell's wireless connection manager, and life is going to be much easier for Turtle. One of the main reasons for her getting a new laptop was so that she could use it from her rented office space and... oh... the sort of upscale coffee shops where she tends to meet with prospective clients and collaborators. She never could get the old laptop to connect, because the process was just too fiddly.

For my part, I'm quickly becoming spoiled by the wide, crisp LCD display that at the same time is sharper and brighter than my flat screen monitor at home and handles wide content better than my cathode ray monitor at work. The Synaptics pointing device was a bit awkward, at first—I was used to the old laptop's "nubbin", which I could use without moving my fingers from the home position—but I'm getting used to it. Enabling the scrolling gestures and modifying the hot spots to my own preferences helped.

The new machine's battery actually holds a charge, and with that comes previously unexplored mobility. Unless it's during the day when I'm at work, you'll never know where I might be blogging from. This has been quite handy, this weekend. We've kicked off the new year for the Ride of Silence™, which means that I've had a torrent of e-mails from event organizers confirming their information. Each of these must then be update in the database and activated for display on the site. I've been hauling the laptop with me wherever I go in the house so I can keep working. Sweet.

And the heat generated by the thing keeps my lap warm.

Your mileage may vary

Over the past couple weeks, several people have asked what kind of gas mileage I get with the new car. The answer is "it depends".

Dorian is rated for 31 mpg on the highway. In the first leg of the trip, burning the MTBE-laden fuel we have here in the metromess, he got about 29 mpg. Throughout the rest of the trip, the fuel economy was between 31 and 32 mpg.

Seems to me that any benefit that the extremely toxic MTBE might have in decreasing emissions would be lost because we're burning more fuel. But hey, what do I know? It's only math.

Home again, home again

Jiggity-jig.

Three travel days, three days at my folks', three days at my in-laws'. 1845 miles under Dorian's belted radials, and at least five more pounds over my belt than when we left our driveway.

We had a nice trip again this year. At Mom and Dad's, it was lots of hugs and kisses from the godkids. I just can't believe how big they're getting. Godgirl is five going on eighteen; Godboy is two and... well, he'll probably be less unhappy next year, when he's three. Both are so adorable that it makes my teeth hurt. Along the way, there was some adult conversation, a couple TV football games, and a touch of some kind of stomach bug.

Also, the beginnings of another round of holiday package tag with UPS. You see, Turtle and I ordered a couple laptops for ourselves, and Dell decided to ship them a full six days before they were supposed to. To our house. Where we weren't.

I jumped on the UPS web site, called customer service, and was told that there was nothing they could do until the first failed delivery. Once the first attempt failed, I should call the local depot to make different arrangements.

"Oh. Okay. Can you give me the number for the depot?" I asked.

"No, we don't have that information."

"But I know from past experience that the local depots' numbers are unlisted precisely to prevent customers from calling there," I said. "How am I supposed to call them if I can't get the number?"

"I don't have that information," he repeated. "You'll have to call the depot for that number."

Blink. If that's the sort of Möbius thinking that drives UPS shipping logistics, it's no wonder I have such a hard time connecting with my packages. There ended up being a lot of tail chasing over the next few days, but Turtle hit on the idea to call our pet sitter. She gave us the prized InfoNotice number from the dreaded sticky note stuck to our front door 700+ miles away, and we were able to use that number to re-route our computers to my work address. There they'll sit until 2007.

Where was I? Oh yeah... from my folks' place, we headed over to Turtle's mom and dad's. We're not used to the constant buzz of activity that surrounds small children, so we were really looking forward to the quieter environs. Of course, we forgot how loud the Turtle parents' house can be when the relatives are all together. But aside from that one afternoon, it was much calmer and quite relaxing. We had a wonderful visit with my in-laws and even found time to have a nice lunch with a couple of Turtle's friends from her old job.

Dad (as I've become comfortable enough to call him) and I made our rapidly-becoming-traditional trip to the liquor store to pick up my 2007 bottle of Jack Daniel's Old No. 7. Around these parts, all we have are wine and beer sales, so I don't get in to real liquor stores very often. It's kind of fascinating to me to walk the aisles and marvel at all the fancy bottles and types of liquids fermented and distilled.

Somewhere along the line, it occurred to us to wonder: if both the green label and black label varieties of Jack Daniel's are now 80 proof (black label used to be 90 proof), then what's the difference? We asked one of the employees, and the answer was "none". Apparently, the same liquor is sold under both green and black labels because black label devotees such as myself have a traditional bias against the green label and wouldn't buy it.

Marketing. Gotta love it.

We got home last evening, and as usual the cats won't let us out of their sight today. We made some tentative plans to spend this evening with friends, but after being on the road for the past nine days, I'll be quite happy to just stay at home if the opportunity presents itself. In case I'm not awake at midnight, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

DON'T. PANIC.

Turtle and I are "fixin' ta" head out on our holiday trip bright dark and early tomorrow morning and won't be back until the day before the ball drops. Dad joined the 21st century earlier this year and now has broadband internet, so I may have a chance to check in before we get home. Or I may not.

With all the distractions—such as my two godhatchlings, my ex-high school crush (who wants to talk to Turtle about her business), Turtle's ex-hair stylist, and my in-laws' bottle of Old No. 7—who can say?

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a complete lack of fruitcake.

A mare-brained theory

Ever since The Da Vinci Code hit the big screen, The Discovery Channel and The History Channel have been running documentaries purporting to debunk the life of Christ. For years, they've been running UFO programs so chock-full of nuts that they should be sponsored by Snickers, Planters, and Aunt Myrtle's fruitcake.

On occasion, I stumble upon one of these while flipping channels and watch for a while, like a rubbernecking commuter who spots an overturned pickup truck on his way to work—but not recently. Which is why I was a little surprised by the strange burgoo that my subconscious was cooking up when the alarm went off at 5:20 this morning.

The Christmas-themed outlandishness went something like this: Mary, mother of Jesus, remained a virgin not because of anything to do with divinity or miracles but because she didn't give birth to Jesus at all. The whole thing was a bit of legerdemain on the part of benevolent space aliens who implanted baby Jesus in the womb of a mare.*

When Mary and Joseph made the trek to Bethlehem, it was this same mare who carried Mary on her back and Jesus in her belly. Then, once they were all settled away in the manger, the mare gave birth. Mary took all the credit and the presents.

Speaking of presents, it turns out that the star followed by the three magi wasn't actually a star at all. It wasn't even a comet. It was the alien mother ship, decloaked and running with all its exterior lights on, that guided the wise men to Bethlehem.

The views and opinions expressed in this dream do not necessarily state or reflect those of the author.

The holiday trip can't come soon enough. I obviously need some rest.


* The equine in question being a horse, not a donkey. It seems that my dream generator's capacity for blasphemy has its limits.