| 2009 Reading List: Beat 2008! |
[Dec. 31st, 2009|11:59 pm] |
I read slowly. I read thirteen (13) books by the end of 2008, including two short ones (but they offset the ridiculously long ones). I want to do better than that in 2009. (Should I include things like Electric Velocipede, which are effectively short-story collections?)
Books in italics are the ones I'm currently reading, but have not finished yet. I will switch that to an underline, date when I completed it, and then add a microreview.
( The List ) |
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| Israeli Hospitality Flaw |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|11:47 am] |
I haven't written much, and there are several reasons for that:
- I don't have internet access until I get back to the hotel after work. That's right, I'm at a business partner company which is high tech and does not allow access to the internet.
- That's because their work, and the work I'm doing here, is highly confidential. As in, I had to get a government security clearance to do this work.
- And I take it seriously. So a lot of what I'm doing, I can't tell you.
However, I have got a few posts' worth of material simmering on back burners, such as the fact that Israelis all talk at once, and I was raised not to interrupt. When I do have something to say, I tend to shush people who try to interject before I'm done. I'm sure that makes me the Ugly American, but I can't keep my thoughts coherent during those everybody-yammering sessions.
In my darker moments, I believe that they can't keep their thoughts coherent either.
But mostly, Israeli hospitality has been quite nice. They've helped me out at meals, translating and defining certain dishes, and I've tried to be experimental. They learned early on that I like spicy food, so now they try to steer me toward it. All. The. Time.
However, there's one bit that both of the hotels I've stayed at have gotten totally wrong:
The Shower Curtain.
My business hosts tell me that they all have shower doors (y'know, of glass) at home, and those make perfect sense. But both hotels have had shower curtains, and the curtains are billowy cloth, and the curtains are rigged to stay outside the tub while I shower. This nullifies the point of shower curtains, which is to keep the water inside the tub.
And the billowy cloth means that EACH AND EVERY SHOwER has been me wrestling with the curtain to keep it from wrapping itself around me. The stream of the shower has (so far) kept the curtain from getting on the wrong side of the shower head, but I have yet to shower here without a large wet drape laminating itself to my legs, back, or even face.
Still, the bathrooms do have drains in the floor here, even in the nice hotels. Perhaps they expect lots of water to come out of the shower.
Obviously, this is a country which does not have much of a mold problem. |
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| Whine |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|09:58 am] |
I'm packed. I have enough underwear, socks, and shirts for ten days, even tho I expect to be there for a shorter time period than that.
I have the paperwork with confirmation codes and crap like that, including the phone number(s) to move my return flight earlier.
I have my passport, sunglasses, and medicines (again, for ten days).
My pocket knife is in my check-in bag.
My wallet is empty of anything I won't need there (local store cards).
I have the cell phone provided by work; this one had better work in Israel.
I still don't want to go.
It helps if I think of this as rescuing my coworker, who showed up the same time I did and still hasn't made it back home. |
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| Back to Israel |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|04:51 pm] |
For a whole bunch of reasons, I am headed back to Israel. My flight leaves on July 4th, and I'm currently scheduled to come back on July 14/15, but that's a drop-dead date.
With any luck, I'll be coming home next week.
I will be arranging to take the day before and the day after Blogathon off, but that's not set yet.
No, I am not especially happy about this. |
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| Odyssey of Mine |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|08:05 pm] |
"So Mark! How was you trip from Israel?"
The trip started at 6am on Friday in Haifa. I had prepared everything the night before, so all I had to do was gather everything up, and I was hauling my bag and my laptop down to breakfast. The hotel breakfast was wonderful, and will be altering our lifestyle here at home for the better as we include more breakfast salads in our lives. (Diced cucumber and tomato! Yum!)
I head for the front revolving door, and ask about the cabs, when a large man walks up and asks, "Mark?" Yes, I am, and I'm heading to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, so this must be the cab that my hosts ordered for me.
The drive to Tel Aviv was uneventful, which is a major plus in Israel. It helped that it was Friday, which is the first day of the Israeli weekend.
My driver (Raml Mohamed) helps me hoist my bags, and bids be a good trip. He was a much better cabbie than a diviner, I'm afraid.
The first thing that happens in the airport is that I join the line to be screened by security (which is real there, and not just theater), and the passport control officer asks me for my passport and my security papers. "My what?" Apparently, I wasn't just supposed to arrange a visit with a major Israeli defense contractor; I was also supposed to get copies of my clearances for passport control. "You're probably in the computer," my passport officer says, so she disappears with my passport for a side door. Leaving me standing in an Israeli security line without my passport.
She arrives soon thereafter, with my passport and some stickers that I can't read. "Next time, you will have your papers, and avoid this."
I proceed thru standard security, buy a few souvenirs with my credit card (thus completing my entire time in Israel without ever seeing a shekel), try to play a game on my laptop (and utterly drain the battery), and read a book while an obnoxious young teenager is bouncing a ball all around the impatient passengers. We hear in Hebrew and English that our plane is delayed by half an hour because it hadn't arrived at the airport on time. But we eventually get boarded. I am behind a family of five, none of the three children older than six, and their father was the worst of the bunch.
It was a typical overpacked Boeing 777 and a typical 12 hour flight, until over Newfoundland we were informed by the pilot that Newark was socked in with rain and heavy traffic, so we'd be diverted to Boston. Yay! And that passengers whose final destination was Boston would not be allowed to leave the plane. What?!
Yes. We sat in Boston, at Logan, on the tarmac, for two or three hours before finally getting the clearance to fly to Newark. The pilot assures us that he has been in contact with Continental Airlines in Newark, and that we should all be able to make our connecting flights.
Continental Airlines lied.
We get to Newark, obtain our bags, and I break my thumbnail trying to sweep up luggage off the revolving rack, take our passports and U.S. Immigration forms to passport control, take our bags thru Customs, and then high-tail it to our connecting flights, all of which have left. So I get redirected to the International Travel Gate, along with everyone else from my flight, and stand in line there for 45 minutes, furbling thru the velvet ropes until I am finally talking with a customer service dweeb who learned his English from Indian tech support lines. "Your flight gone. We fly you to Boston Sunday night."
I boggle, but recover. Oddly, I did not swear at the dweeb, nor make any ad hominem statements. I limited my response to "That is not acceptable. I have some place to be on Saturday. So how are you getting me back to Boston tonite?"
"We have no planes..."
"Yes, I realize that. I have accepted that I am not flying to Boston. So how are you getting me back to Logan tonite?"
The dweeb calls in his supervisor, who is used to fending off New Yorkers, and so is armored for a full explanation of his limits, which I deflect by accepting them. "Yes, we've already established that you cannot fly me to Boston. How are you getting me back to Logan tonite?" The supervisor knows that Continental has a deal with Amtrak, and so takes the phone from the dweeb and confirms that they have a train that leaves at 1:35am and can get to West Newton or South Station.
"I'm sorry, but neither of those get me to Logan, and the T stops running before the train even leaves Penn Station, so that doesn't work either."
"You'll have to stay at the airport hotel until we can fly you stand-by tomorrow."
"That's insane. We're not talking about Newark to Los Angeles; we're talking about Newark to Boston. I can drive that. So you'll rent me a car. Where are the car rental desks?"
As it turns out, Continental is limited by liability from actually renting me the car, so the supervisor handed me a form for my company's bean-counters to beat over the heads of Continental's bean-counters, and I head to Newark's internal subway train to get to the terminal with the car rental offices.
I get to Avis and wait in line for around 25 minutes (discovering then that Michael Jackson has died) before one of the vehicle wranglers comes in and says, "Everyone in line has a reservation, right?" Why no, I answer, I don't have a reservation. "All we got left to rent if you don't have a reservation is pick-up trucks." I thank him loudly, and then sotto voce ask him how to find the Hertz office. He quietly tells me, so I promise to go to Avis first next time.
The line at Hertz is shorter for some reason (possibly because they process reservations faster than Avis does), but I get to the head of the line and rent a Ford Focus to drive from Newark to Logan. I get the pre-paid fill-up, because they're selling it for New Jersey gasoline prices, and I know I won't be able to fill up in Boston near Logan for anything resembling that price. I put the car rental on the corporate American Express card, and hope that they'll reimburse me. They better. (They will, I'm assured today.)
I go out to the lot, find slot 260, drive the car to the gate where the guard checks the contract against the car, and informs me that I've got the wrong car. I thought it was a bit big to be a Focus. I turn around and put the car back where I found it (in slot 261), find the Focus behind it, and try again. This time, I've got the right car, and it has a normal radio instead of a satellite radio.
I spend the next 45 minutes negotiating with the tolls in New Jersey and the Bronx, but the three hours after that are quite smooth and very pleasant. I get receipts at every toll booth.
I arrive at Logan with nothing more stressful than hitting the "Scan" button on the radio every time I run outside of a station's broadcast radius. There is an agent at 3am at the Hertz desk at Logan, he processes the paperwork, and points me at the Hertz shuttle which can take me to Terminal A, where I'll wait for the Logan Shuttle which will take me to Economy Lot 3, where my car is waiting.
I stand there, watching many other shuttles go by (including Logan's "Employees Only" shuttle, which went by four times). For some reason, the twenty minute wait for the Logan Shuttle was the most excruciating. But it finally arrived, I got to see the driver pull a smooth three-point turn in a bus, and then I got dropped off at Economy Lot 3 (next to the Water Shuttle lot). I dump my bags into my own car, get a receipt for the Sumner Tunnel toll, turn north onto I-93, and head home as the sun starts to rise.
I get home, feed the cats, log on, proclaim to Facebook that I have arrived home after THIRTY HOURS, and then see the post that the people I thought I'd be catching a ride to the Jazz Fest in Saratoga (NY) were attending a bar mitzvah in western Massachusetts, so they'd left last night. Foo. So I grab a couple days worth of clothes, transfer my dop kit from my baggage to my weekend bag, and drive to Saratoga Performing Arts Center over Rt.2 (figuring the gorgeous drive would keep me from falling asleep. I stop by the grocery store for cold cuts, kaiser rolls, cherries, and a bag of ice to keep my canned beer cold in my wheeled cooler. (No glass is allowed at the Jazz Fest)
But by now, I'm in full Israeli daytime (as far as my jet-lagged self is concerned), so I have no problem getting to the Jazz Fest during the first act. I relate this tale to a boggling group of my friends, and have a lovely summer day that couldn't be beat until the sun went down after 9pm. SMV (Stanley Clarke, Marcus Wilson, and Victor Wooten) were tremendous, and Pattie Labelle closed the night, and my college friend Elaine graciously let our host drive her car, so she could be my passenger as I drove mine down to Troy where we were all sleeping for the night.
The lovely ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ladylonglocks tossed some sheets and fluffed some pillows on the couch in their sun room, and I coasted to it in a bit of a fugue state. I remember lying down fully clothed, I remember putting my glasses on a nearby coffee table, and I remember laying my head on the pillow. I also remember being tucked into the sheets, which ladylonglocks confirmed that she did when I asked the next morning. At that point, I'd been awake for forty-nine solid hours.
I slept for nine.
But I slept deeply. I slept thru the incident of my hosts' cats bringing a baby bunny into the house thru the cat door which was right next to my head.
That's one way to beat jet lag. |
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| Short Form: I've Been Busy |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|02:21 pm] |
I have been in Israel since last Saturday on business. Saturday, I spent readjusting to the time zone. Sunday is the first work-day of the week in Israel, and I got everything set up and the gnarliest part accomplished right off. Monday, we exposed parts of the code we'd never seen before because it depended on their hardware, so we did some debugging; I worked so late, my coworker had to abandon me and I got a ride back to the hotel in a taxi (paid by our host company). Today, both my coworker and I worked late, so once again I got back to the hotel after dark.
They say Israel is lovely. I haven't seen it yet. I hope to walk the Ba'hai Gardens tomorrow evening, if I can manage to get back to the hotel before sunset.
I also haven't eaten in the evenings yet: breakfast in the hotel is huge and full of yummy vegetables (such as cucumber-tomato salad), and lunch is in the host company's cafeteria (and paid by the hosts). So I literally have spent nothing on food, and am not going hungry at all.
I have two more critical pieces of functionality to get working in the next two days. I am very confident about that.
But in the back of my mind, I keep thinking that I ought to see some of the country while I'm here. |
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| Exercize Log |
[Jun. 14th, 2009|04:42 pm] |
Wii Bank: 30 minutes
Had to pass on "Lunge" and the "Palm Tree" yoga pose, as my left toe is still against the notion of supporting half my body weight. |
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| Birthday Dinner Weekend |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|08:50 pm] |
We have successfully relocated for the weekend to Greenwich CT, at the home of tamidon's mum. The kids are unwinding upstairs, and I am unwinding downstairs (watching the Stanley Cup final game).
Yes, this family travels with three laptops. It will be four in the near future, I'm sure.
Traveling music:
Nihil, KMFDM
Hot, Squirrel Nut Zippers
Mezzanine, Massive Attack
Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Stereolab
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| SCotUS Drops One on the Floor |
[Jun. 8th, 2009|02:44 pm] |
The Supreme Court has refused to consider Pietrangelo v. Gates, 08-824., which is a challenge to the Constitutionality of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The Obama Administration was defending the policy, even as they claim that they're working on legislation to rescind it.
In court papers, the administration said the appeals court ruled correctly in this case when it found that "don't ask, don't tell" is "rationally related to the government's legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion."
Fortunately, there already is discussion in Congress about repealing DADT, so hopefully this will wind up moot.
In time.
During this administration, preferably. |
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| Focus |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|09:28 am] |
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| Dr. Appt. |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|04:03 pm] |
I'm seeing my Primary Care Physician tomorrow at 3:45pm.
He'll probably tell me to exercize. But let's see what else he has to say. |
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| Pain |
[May. 31st, 2009|05:03 am] |
Pain.
Eye-crossing, unrelievable pain. Occasional flashes of white. No position I can put my foot in which isn't pain. Awake since 2am trying.
Shivering, want to sleep, can't, pain.
Worse than yesterday. Much worse. Not waiting until Monday for some kind of doctor visit.
Pain that feels like amputation is a legit path to try.
So stupid. It's just a toe. Why won't it shut up?
Pain! |
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| Do I Have "Turf Toe"? |
[May. 30th, 2009|01:58 pm] |
For the last few months, I've occasionally felt a twinge of pain from the big toe on my left foot. It was nothing much, for the most part.
For the last few mornings, I've woken up with that toe asserting its pain in an adolescent fit to get attention. So I tried to ignore it, figuring it was being aggravated by the low barometric pressure.
This morning, I woke up in real pain. Even trying to curl the toe sent shooting pain. Walking is a limping affair. I took off my socks to compare my big toes, and the only noticeable difference is that one of them has some redness. (Yes, the one that's in pain.)
I looked up "turf toe", and learned a bit about metatarsalphalangeal joint sprain. That big word that you just glossed over is meta-tarsal-phalangeal. The Wikipedia article talks mostly about how football players get it, but the upshot is this: hyperextend the toe once, and the sprain can get progressively worse.
Now I'm almost hoping that it's arthritis.
I'm gingerly flexing my toe to help loosen things up. Oddly, standing with my left foot out sideways is much less painful than standing with it facing forward. It does not feel stubbed; it feels like it might be broken, but I wouldn't really know. (Besides, breaks don't act like this; they demand attention immediately, not after several days. No, this is acting a lot more like a sprain.)
If I wake up similarly discomfited on both Sunday and Monday, I'll take myself to the doctor with it. |
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| SCotUS-Watch: Sotomayor |
[May. 29th, 2009|01:58 pm] |
Let's dispense with the distracting crap, and actually look at Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
I don't like her record on the bench much.
I have major concerns about her "Second Amendment" case, where she claimed that the New York law against nunchuks was not invalidated by the Supreme Court's ruling that the right to bear arms is an individual right. She claimed that this ruling covered the District of Columbia, but did not necessarily apply to the states. So I'm not exactly upset about her stance on the 2nd amendment, but I'm very upset about her seeming ignorance or unwillingness to read the 9th, 10th, or 14th amendments: if it's a right held by individuals, then no level of government in the United States gets to infringe upon it (i.e., without an explicit overriding state interest).
Then again, she's hardly in the minority in this; most judges since at least the 1930s have been screwing this up.
She's got a good track record (from what I've read) in deciding international cases, and delineating jurisdictions and when one nation's rules can and cannot overlap another's. So that's good.
I started out not liking her ruling on the discrimination case, where three "white" candidates were passed over for promotion because there were no "non-white" candidates up for the same job. But the more I looked at that, the more I saw that she kept her ruling (or non-ruling) narrow.
And that brings us to the other eight members of the Supreme Court; Chief Justice Roberts likes to get a consensus when he can, he loves unanimous decisions, and he's perfectly willing to narrow rulings in order to get it. And the same seems to be true of Sotomayor; ironically, this avowed liberal choice may just get along great with the conservative Chief Justice.
But let's face it: the one thing nobody (not even the strident gas-bags) has managed to accuse her of is unqualification. She is clearly qualified for the position.
I may not like her liberal tendencies, her seeming willingness to allow laws which infringe on individuals and those in private positions of power to "mold public policy". But President Obama wasn't going to nominate a strict constructionist, so at least he seems to have nominated a potential Justice who is willing to fix the case at hand, if not the system as a whole.
I expect to see occasional sparks between her and the technocratic Justice Alito; two New York Catholics going head-to-head, with Chief Justice Roberts throwing out aspects of the case which keep them from agreeing.
She'll probably get thru the Senate with less tension than Chief Justice Roberts got.
And that will probably be okay. |
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| Another Reason for More Frequent Back-Ups |
[May. 25th, 2009|01:41 pm] |
My younger, 10 years old, has been using the family desktop computer more frequently. She has taken to writing short stories, and plays some (parentally-approved) web games, etc.
Yesterday, she was going over some of her writing with her writing partner (also 10), and after her friend left, stayed on the computer for a while. Then she came downstairs to say, "The computer is acting weird. It won't reboot."
I checked it out, and sure enough, it was having some kind of system error which kept it from booting up all the way. I interrupted its boot, tried a Windows XP system restore, to no avail. I made a mental note to call up the Concierge Service to see how we'd go about rescuing the data on the hard drive before forcing a fresh install.
Two hours later, I go upstairs to find my younger at the computer. She has found the "System Wipe" feature, and "fixed" the computer. I inform her of the magnitude of her error, wiping out all the music, all the photos, all the user data (including our tax documents) from the machine.
She melts down, runs to her room, locks the door, and cries for a while.
Good.
I don't have to punish her any further.
I haul out the external hard drive, re-register the "newly" installed XP, log in as administrator, and set to re-establishing our system as it was on... January 5th.
Argh.
More users, more frequent back-ups. Got it. |
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| Caffeine Redux |
[May. 23rd, 2009|03:09 pm] |
Seeing as chhotii is withdrawing from caffeine and getting her tolerance down, this looks like as good a time as any to talk about my own lower level of caffeine use.
It's successful. My blood pressure is back down to what used to be considered safe (120/90), and I'm happy with it. I have one cup of coffee first thing on work-day mornings, maybe one more cup if "necessary" (which works out to once every other week, on average), and then decaf for the rest of the day (which I realize is not "caffeine-free", but its level is low enough that my blood pressure doesn't notice).
And on weekends, unless I have to drive ridiculously late at night, I don't do caffeine at all. And, by and large, I haven't had much withdrawal problems since cutting my tolerance level back.
So, hoorah. Whoopee. Success.
Trouble is, I hate it.
I don't have a caffeine problem anymore. I have a lack of caffeine problem.
On the rare occasion (once every two or three months) when I have a substantial amount of caffeine at once, I can feel my brain turn on. It's a disturbing feeling, as it means that my brain has been off the rest of the time. This accounts for my lesser productivity at work, my total ramp-down in fiction writing, and lassitude in general.
I knew that cutting down on caffeine would be a life-style change, but I don't like it.
If I could get my consumption back up without threatening my health, I definitely would. |
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| Crap-Cakes. Back to the Drawing Board |
[May. 20th, 2009|04:26 pm] |
The NH state House has rejected the gay marriage bill, 188-186. Unlike the bill passed in the NH state Senate, this bill had explicit language allowing religious institutions to discriminate against married couples.
The press is missing a key point of this: the "protections" in NH Governor Lynch's version of the bill did not just recognize the right of religious institutions to not perform a same-sex marriage; the "protections" also allowed any institution which claimed any religious support to deny benefits to the same-sex spouse of an employee.
This bill has been sent back to committee, where hopefully the proper protections can be left in, and the right to discriminate after-the-fact can be pounded out. |
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| Vapid Pop Culture Post: Cupid |
[May. 19th, 2009|11:27 am] |
ABC has decided not to renew the Rob Thomas creation "Cupid". This is the second time for this concept, after the aborted version "starring" Jeremy Piven (but really Paula Marshall) back in 1999. This time, we got Bobby Cannavale in the title role, as a much more charismatic lead, and Sarah Paulson as his foil/love interest.
Problem was, there was no chemistry between the two leads in either series. The first time, it was because we never understood why Claire would tolerate that annoying troll who claimed to be a love god; the second time, it was because we never understood why a permanently-adolescent love god would tolerate his stick-in-the-mud therapist.
The other problem may have been in Rob Thomas's concept: this was always intended to be an episodic series, where a different couple-of-the-week would overcome obstacles to fall in love. In this respect, it had more in common with "The Love Boat" than any quasi-supernatural story-arc-based show.
Which is a shame, because (for us sappy romantics) the episodes were mostly good.
In the first version, we can easily blame Piven for being Piven.
In the second version, we can't really blame Paulson. She did her level best at being the rational, level-headed observer, who occasionally scraped off some of her armor to do the irrational thing in the name of love. But maybe Thomas is to blame for the whole situation: Cupid is supposed to fall for Psyche, or the deluded crazy person who thinks he's a love god is supposed to fall for his psychologist. And vice versa.
But to play the psychologist believably, Claire (Marshall / Paulson) can't really buy into Trevor's (Piven / Cannavale) delusion. It would take a long time to come to a common story for both of these characters to live in.
And the 1999 version got 15 episodes; the 2009 version got 6.
This show was doomed by the realities of long-arc television, despite being written for episodic television. |
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